MB Review: Chapter Three

Back around the time I started posting this review to the mailing list someone who had not seen Masterbook was wondering what the main differences were from the Torg mechanics, which served as the basis for Masterbook . So before I start bitching 8-) I will outline the major differences in the game mechanics (the differences in character creation have already been covered in previous posts.)

Changing to 2d10 from 1d20 changes the probabilities greatly; 2d10 will produce an infamous "bell curve", most results will fall around a certain value with points farther away less and less likely. This is in contrast to what you get with one die, an equal probability of rolling any number. The reroll rules in Torg and Masterbook do change these probabilities a bit but not significantly enough to alter the basic shape of the curves.

This is one of the areas where Masterbook is obviously going more for that "mundanity" that I complained about in my first post. The odds favor generating minimal bonus numbers (right around +0) so unless a character's skill value is about equal or higher than the DN he's probably going to fail . This discourages characters from attempting difficult tasks, especially the cinematic kinds that are a staple in Torg.

But wait, you might say, Life Points and cards will make up for the mediocrity imposed by the bell curve, right? To some extent, yes. But Life Points are very precious in Masterbook, the expectation is that you will spend only one per scene and that you will rarely have a surplus of them in the first place. So Life Points cannot really be counted on the way possibilities are in Torg, especially since players will probably want to save their Life Points for negating damage.

The cards are much the same way - while players still earn cards through approved actions the number of cards they start with and the number that they are restricted to at the beginning of a scene is much lower than in Torg, plus many of the cards have been made less effective than they were in Torg.

The cards will pick up some of the slack that the restrictions on Life Points create but not enough IMO to allow characters to match the heroic, action-packed pace of Torg . Characters are just not going to be able to pull off the kinds of stunts they can do in Torg unless the players are lucky enough to roll really well.

Ah, but speaking of probabilities, the odds of getting a Roll Again in Masterbook are actually better than they are in Torg, 2/10 (a 10 on either die) as opposed to 2/20 (10 or 20). Does this help make up for things? Again, not really. While the rerolls will bump the bell curve up a bit (I've heard from some people their group's average roll is around 14 instead of 11) the odds are still operating against players moreso than in Torg.

Plus there are some changes in the rules regarding Roll Agains. Characters who don't have any skill adds in the skill they're attempting do not get any rerolls unless they spend a Life Point (in Torg a P-rated character can still reroll on a 10 if he is unskilled.) Spending a Life Point does let players reroll both dice but unlike Torg there is no minimum value attached to a Life Point the Roll Again; if the additional roll is two 1's, the player is stuck with it and only gets to add two to his previous roll (in Torg a Roll Again from a P-Point has a minimum of +10 to the previous total.) These changes limit the effectiveness of Roll Agains to some extent.

Now while I see this as a major step down from Torg, it probably does not appear this way to people who have never played Torg; the rerolls and cards do allow players to get better results than they would off of the straight die rolls, which is how most games operate, so Masterbook does come across as being a lot more generous in this regard. I'm so used to Torg's method of doing it though that anything less seems to de-emphasize the potential to play heroic characters.

For games that are supposed to be less heroic, that's okay, but I'm disappointed that Masterbook started out with a very heroic and action-based setting, "The World of Indiana Jones", yet the level of heroism and adventure possible is much less than what can be accomplished with Torg's mechanics. Since Indiana Jones was an obvious inspiration for Torg (and the Nile Empire in particular), this is a particular problem for me.

One possible problem I've noticed but haven't had a chance to actually check out is that the generic difficulty numbers in Masterbook are exactly the same as they are in Torg (just named differently.) Considering that the bonus number generation is going to be different and characters are on average going to have lower skill values in Masterbook (due to the lower average attributes and greater number of skills to spread your points over) this could cause some discrepancies; probably not major discrepancies but for anal-retentive Torg GMs like myself it could be enough to make us wonder if Masterbook's Difficulty Numbers should be adjusted a bit.

For example, a Very Hard task ("Heroic" in Torg lingo) has a DN of 15 and is defined in Masterbook as a task that a normal person with no skill adds (acting value of 8) has a 3% chance of success. To get a +7 on the Masterbook bonus chart requires rolling an 18 or better, which I think on 2d10 is probably around 3% (anyone want to crunch the numbers for me and make sure?).

In Torg the same character would need to roll a 20, which is a 5% chance, close enough to be the same. But wait! The average PC in Torg is going to have a 9 attribute, not an 8, so he would need to roll a 19 or 20 to succeed, or a 10% chance of success. Do you see what I mean? The difference in dice and the bonus chart should be reflected in the Difficulty Numbers but I'm not sure if they are.

Is it fair to compare a Torg PC to a Masterbook PC? I think so, since even though Masterbook PCs are closer to Torg ords stat-wise the Masterbook PCs get cards and Life Points like Torg PCs do and there is no distinction between PCs and "ordinary people" in Masterbook.

Again, this is a problem that people who are not Torg players won't notice. My problem with it is that the difficulty levels do not evenly translate between the two systems and this could be a big adjustment problem for Torg players using Masterbook. Using the above example, what a Torg player thinks of as a Heroic task (DN 15) is not a Very Hard (DN 15) task in Masterbook , it is closer to a Hard (DN 13, 10% chance) task. This problem would impact GMs (like myself) more than players since it means realigning our base perceptions on assigning difficulties to various tasks.

The Masterbook Success Chart is basically the same as the Success Tables in Torg and Shatterzone, though here are a few changes. Some columns have been deleted or merged with other columns and all of the remaining columns have been extended from 15 result points to 20 result points.

Noticeably absent from the table are the columns for persuasion and charm interactions as well as the Speed Push column (and obviously the Reality Storm column from Torg.) The mechanics for persuasion and charm attempts have been altered significantly, they are now treated like the majority of the skills in that the General Success column is used to determine how well something was accomplished. All pushes are now handled by the same column so there is no need for seperate Speed and Power columns. I have some problems here as well but I will get to them later.

Looking a bit closer there are a few more noticable changes; the General Success column now has an extra success level ("Spectacular+") and "Average" has been changed to "Solid". Each level above Minimal now covers a four point range.

The Damage column has changed significantly from both Torg and Shatterzone and I will address that momentarily. The Interaction columns, now reduced to three (intimidation, taunt/trick, and maneuver) have had stymied and unskilled reversed from their positions on the Torg chart (the SZ chart is similar to the MB chart) which is something most GMs appear to have done anyway in Torg so that probably won't bother anyone. The Push column runs from +1 to +8 and doesn't appear as forgiving as the Torg chart regarding the amount of shock damage characters may end up taking.

Now, about the new Damage chart. There are several changes that look good but I'm not sure how well they'll work in practice. Instead of the straight progression that was used in Torg (and SZ I think) damage now increases in groups. For example, 10-12 result points covers the range where 2 Wounds occur and while 13 does give 3 Wounds it causes less K/O and Shock damage than 11 or 12 result points.

This makes the table a little less intuitive than before, which has its advantages and drawbacks. It does make damage results seem a bit more random (Knockdowns and K/Os are no longer limited to the middle of the chart) but the number of wounds is the only thing that evenly progresses down the chart and that might make memorizing it a bit more difficult (then again, maybe most GMs don't memorize the chart, but I find it helps speed up combat if I know the approximate result without looking at the table.)

This damage chart is actually one of the few areas in Masterbook where I feel that heroic levels of action are being supported by the mechanics; unlike Shatterzone (or Torg's Ord column) shock damage does not pile up that high; the highest shock damage result is 7 points, with most of the table being either 3 or 5. This may actually be a problem though for those who want 'realistic' damage as it does have the same problem that Torg has with the P-rated damage column; it's very difficult to knock a character unconscious and have them stay that way. While there are numerous K/O and KO results, those only last for a minute (six rounds) and then the character wakes up.

After the Success Chart is a listing of what skills are used to attack and defend with; for the normal combat skills it's all pretty self-explanatory and/or obvious; melee parry defends against melee weapons, and so on. The addition of a seperate defense skill is different from Torg and SZ and while I think it's an okay idea, I think it's splitting things a bit too fine; I would prefer to keep defense linked with the offense and allowing for defending to be a specialization instead of a seperate skill.

With the Interaction skills, things get a bit more complicated. The primary problem I see is that the table is misleading, at least to me. For example, the defense for trick is "willpower or Intellect". This says to me that you use willpower if you have that skill, Intellect if you don't. But going to the writeup on willpower in Chapter Four it is revealed that there's more to it than that. If you have willpower you can still use Intellect to resist a trick, the difference being that if you use your Intellect you roll the dice as if you are untrained (ie, no roll agains.) It would have been nice if the table or text in Chapter Three indicated that it was a choice, not a case of "if not this, then that."

One thing that has been rubbing me the wrong way about this section is that there's no symmetry. In Torg you defended against most interactions with the same skill or base attribute, with charm and persuasion being the only exception. I don't mind being able to substitute willpower in there, it makes sense and makes the skill much more useful. But the default defense attributes under Masterbook don't have that sense of symmetry. Most of them default to Confidence (ie, willpower done untrained) instead of the attribute that supports the attacking skill. Now if they all defaulted to Confidence that would be okay, it's just willpower used untrained. But out of the eight interaction skills (not counting maneuver) five of them default to Confidence (two being Confidence skills), two to the same attribute as the attacking skill, and one that doesn't do either of those things. It just feels wrong.

An optional rule for critical failures is provided. Basically, if a character fails by an amount greater than his skill level he really screws it up. Thankfully it's optional, otherwise I think it would be yet another rule that will discourage players from ever attempting difficult tasks.

Okay, next up is damage. The first part of this section is actually how to cause and avoid damage, ie attacking and defending. The only real change from Torg and Shatterzone here is that an Active Defense now has a minimum bonus of +3 instead of +1. I'm not sure why the change was made nor how much of an effect it's going to have on combat because there are so many different elements to consider; the different probabilities between 1d20 and 2d10, the different bonus value chart, the change to defensive skills, the result point method of determining the damage bonus, the changes made to the bonuses from cards, etc etc. I haven't played with Masterbook enough to be able to judge whether this change to a +3 minimum is a good or bad one so I'll leave it up to other people who have played with both to comment.

Once a character has successfully hit a target he needs to determine damage. Here is perhaps the biggest change made from Torg to Masterbook, certainly the one that will affect the most situations. Instead of adding the same bonus rolled to the damage value, the result points from the attack are added as the damage bonus.

This has good and bad points. The most obvious is that we no longer have the situation were someone with a very high defensive skill value will get wasted if someone actually manages to hit him because the attacker generated a huge bonus number just to hit him. To recap that problem for those unfamiliar with it:

Example: An attacker has a fire combat skill of 9 and a pistol with a DV of 15; defender has a dodge of 19 and a TOU of 9. In Torg the attacker needs to generate a +10 bonus to hit. If he does hit, his DV is increased to 25, meaning that his barely successful shot will do 16 result points of damage to the defender, killing him if he's an Ord and coming close if he's P-Rated. In Masterbook , if the attacker gets a +10 bonus to hit he will have 0 result points on the attack and his barely successful shot will only do 6 result points of damage, which better represents a grazing shot than the Torg result.

But there's a problem; while a +0 DV bonus can help represent a grazing shot when the defender has the higher skill value, it doesn't really represent a grazing shot when the attacker has the higher skill value. For example, reverse the skill values from above so that the attacker has a fire combat of 19 and the defender has a dodge of 9. The attacker can roll a 2 and still successfully hit the defender with 0 result points on the attack for damage of 6 result points. There is no way for the attacker to ever do less than 6 result points (barring situational modifiers that affect his DN of course.) By contrast, under Torg rules the attacker would do no damage at all if he rolled so poorly.

Now the Masterbook method may be more realistic for most combat situations, getting hit should result in some minimal amount of damage. I guess my primary objection is that I don't think a grazing shot should have a minimum EV .

For example, the pistol used in the above examples has a minimum damage result of 6 result points against a person with TOU 9, which is Knockdown K3. If I shoot someone and just barely clip them, say taking some skin off their upper arm, is that really enough to cause them to fall down and lose an action?

How about with a sword that has the same DV (say STR 9 and a rapier, STR+6)? If I'm more skilled but just barely scratch my opponent is that going to knock him off his feet or disorient him enough not to do anything for 10 seconds? I don't think so. I think it should be possible to have a negative damage modifier on an attack.

As was recently suggested by someone on the mailing list (sorry, forgot who posted it), one solution would be to use the result points or generated bonus value, whichever is lower. This way negative damage modifiers are still possible while at the same time keeping high defensive skill values from translating into instant death should the character actually get hit.

Shock - characters can take an amount of Shock damage equal to their Endurance (Toughness in Torg ) before passing out. The resist shock skill (something Torg doesn't have) increases the amount of Shock a character can take before passing out.

K/O - Possible variations are K, O, K/O and KO. If a character takes a K and an O, its a knockout and he becomes unconscious. One change from Torg (present in Shatterzone) is that the K and O don't have to be taken in order anymore, an O followed by a K will KO characters. This difference is because an O result lasts for one round instead of being ignored by characters who haven't taken a K already so if a character takes a K in the same round he received an O he would have both and be knocked out. Plus, since the O sticks around for a while characters can take multiple O results which cause excess shock damage the same as multiple K results.

Knockdown - Masterbook imposes a -4 penalty to all physical actions (including defending) instead of causing the victim to lose an action. This was an optional rule Torg introduced in Infiniverse Update volume 1.

Wounds - It now takes six wounds to kill characters and healing rates vary depending on the wound level instead of being a flat one wound per day. Wound levels also impose penalties on actions the character takes, a rule that first appeared as an optional Torg rule in Infiniverse Update volume 1.

For the most part I actually like these changes. In fact I only have one real problem and it's with the rate at which shock points are healed. For conscious characters, shock is healed at a rate of one point per minute of inactivity, same as in Torg , no problem there.

But an unconscious character heals shock at a rate of one point per round. Now a character rendered unconscious by shock damage will not wake up until all of his shock damage is healed (a change I like) but that's still going to be a lot faster than a conscious character will recover.

For example, an average person (END 8) who wasn't unconscious would have to rest for up to 7 minutes to heal his shock damage but if he were unconscious he would heal it all and be conscious in as little as 80 seconds, one-fifth the time! It would seem to be in the character's best interest to be knocked unconscious so that he would be back on his feet in the shortest possible time! Does this make sense to anyone?

One confusing problem I found was with the rules for using first aid on Mortally Wounded and Dead characters. As with Torg, a Mortally Wounded character takes one point of shock damage every round and if they should take enough to match their END, they die. First aid can be used to put a stop to the accumulation of shock damage, same as in Torg., no problem with that.

A character who has taken six wounds is Dead but if treated immediately his condition can be improved to Mortally Wounded. No problem with that either, I like it, but the rules are a little vague on what happens after that. Is the character now Mortally Wounded (ie, five Wounds) or is he still at six Wounds and is just treated as being at five Wounds (ie, does he have to heal six or five wounds to be fully recovered?)

There's no Healing Difficulty number given for six wounds so I would assume that the character is actually at five wounds, but I'm not sure I like "vanishing" wound levels. It is possible to treat a wounded character with First Aid so that they function at a lower Wound level (lower penalties on skills) but they still have to heal the full number of wounds. Well, isn't that the situation here with Dead and Mortal, the character is being treated as if he's at a lower wound level (ie, alive)?

Now that the character is Mortally Wounded he'll start accumulating shock points and could end up being dead again. What's the DN to stop the accumulation of shock damage, is it done as if the character were Mortally Wounded? No, but it took me a few times through the section to figure that out. Instead we have to use the Dead DN again (a difference of 4 points) to stop the accumulation of shock damage for being at Mortally Wounded. This should have been explained a bit better and again suggests that the character is should be considered to have six wounds instead of five.

There's even more confusion in that this process, called Stabilization, can only be attempted once a minute. Does that mean that the process takes one minute of continual effort or can I run off for five rounds then come back and attempt it when the minute passes? For that matter, how long does using first aid take? Just one round? This section and the skill description mention setting bones and stitches, can those things be done in 10 seconds?

Finally, it was recently brought upon the mailing list that the medicine skill operates at the same level regardless of the Tech axiom in Torg. Masterbook has the same problem, the Difficulty Numbers for helping someone heal a wound are apparently not affected by available technology, conditions or anything else. Obviously a GM should feel free to introduce modifiers but no guidelines are provided (none were provided in Torg either so it's a fault of both systems.)

Okay, we now enter the section titled "Combat Options", though in truth the rules covered are not options but modifiers such as range, maximum base damage for melee weapons, cover and concealment, surprise, auto-fire and so on. I suppose you could play without any of these or just pick and choose which ones you want but overall I think calling them options is a bit misleading, it suggests that they don't have to be used but I don't see how you could stick with Masterbook's "realism" level without using them.

Now, the most important part of this section is that the combat modifiers actually take into account the result point system for damage bonuses, which the Shatterzone combat modifiers did not do, much to the amusement and annoyance of everyone on the Shatterzone mailing list when the game came out (perhaps more amusing and/or annoying was WEG's insistence that the modifiers weren't broken....) Plus unlike the Shatterzone book the combat maneuvers are actually given definitions! 8-/

Instead of analyzing every modifier in the section I'll just go over the ones that I think are messed up somehow. The first one is rather easy, under Range it doesn't give us any numbers, it just tells us to check Chapter Seven ("Equipment"). Gee thanks. Going to Chapter Seven we find that there are different modifiers for different weapon types, which I don't like. I prefer the simple "one modifier fits all" range modifiers of Torg over this method, it's a lot easier to remember and work with.

I don't have a lot of experience with firearms so this may not actually be a problem, but the option Burst Fire as Single has a negative attack modifier. I suppose the reasoning is that there's less lead flying so attackers are not as likely to hit, since the opposite Single Fire as Multi works on the assumption that more lead in the air gives a bonus on the chance to hit. But if both types of weapons are used in their normal fashion there are no modifiers, a submachine gun has an equal chance of hitting as a pistol despite it throwing more lead into the air with its default burst fire, so maybe the amount of lead in the air doesn't affect the chance to hit?

Are the modifiers supposed to represent a skill problem in using a weapon the wrong way? But since characters use the same skill (fire combat) to fire all manner of firearms why would using a mini-Uzi in single-shot mode be any different from firing a pistol? I can see the reverse not being true (treating a pistol as an Uzi) since the mechanism isn't the same but the negative modifier for Burst as Single seems wrong to me. Of course it's only a -1 penalty so I'm just making a mountain out of a molehill but that's what I'm here for, right? 8-)

I have to wonder why anyone would want to use the Sweep (ranged) option as it only gives a +2 bonus to hit and has a -5 modifier to the damage; why not just use the Full Auto option which gives a better attack bonus and a positive damage modifier? I get the feeling that there might have been more to the Sweep (ranged) writeup but it got cut, because as it stands it's pretty useless.

For some reason muscle-powered ranged weapons are given their own table of modifiers, despite the fact that they're identical to the ones for regular ranged weapons. Perhaps they thought we'd be confused and would assume we could use Full Auto with a longbow or hand grenade?

The Trick Shot option has an asterisk next to its entry in the table but there are no footnotes on the table so I'm not sure what it means. From the description it would probably say "highly variable, assign on a case-by-case basis". The table gives a -4 attack modifier and a +2 damage modifier (in effect damage is reduced by 2 points overall) but if it's so variable, why even suggest -4/+2? If this is some kind of "baseline" value what kind of Trick Shot would it represent? Does it represent both of the trick shots given in the description, just one of them or neither of them?

The numbers under Hit Location are a bit weird; I always thought that a hit to the chest would be more damaging than an abdomen hit since there are a lot more vital organs (heart, lungs) up there, maybe they're accounting for the rib cage or something? But it seems to me that damage to the chest would lead to a more immediate death and should thus have a higher damage modifier. Or maybe they don't mean the actual abdomen, because the attack penalty for a shot at the abdomen is twice as much as for the chest (-4 vs -2) but at least on me the two areas are roughly the same size. Could they mean the pelvic region? That might be about right for the attack modifier since it's a smaller area but I don't think it would result in the character taking more damage than a chest hit (then again, getting smacked in the privates might count for more shock, K/O and Knockdown potential.! 8-)

Oh, and apparently we cannot use Hit Locations with Hand to Hand attacks, at least not according to the table; they can only be used when shooting something. So much for chopping people's heads off I guess....

The Hand to Hand modifiers give me the most problems in this section. Let's start with the first one, Short Range. This means performing a HTH attack on someone who is 2-4 meters away from you and it is supposed to represent flailing at the target. Flailing is probably a good word for it as I have a hard time conceiving of how anyone could hope to hit with a HTH attacks at a range like that, we're talking seven to thirteen feet away from, even with a claymore or a quarterstaff that seems really futile to me, yet it's only a -3 attack penalty! "Let me and my fists at them, I don't care if they're ten feet away, I can hit 'em, the rules say so!" And as my friends in the SCA would point out, this rule completely ignores the existence of polearms and suggests that they can only be effectively when used effectively in the same situations as other, shorter melee weapons, when the target is within two meters.

Next is the Sweep (HTH) option, which in principle makes sense, it represents an attempt to hit the target regardless of whether you'll do damage or not. The problem is that their two examples are a foot sweep and a roundhouse punch. To me a foot sweep is more appropriate for the Knockdown option but the attack modifiers for the Sweep and the Knockdown option are exactly opposite, +3 and -3. Why is the same maneuver easier or harder depending on what you call it? And while a roundhouse is defined in the dictionary as involving a wide swing, it's also most commonly associated with "knockout punches" and causing more damage, not less, or at least it is in the books I read and movies I see.

Then we have the Grab. It's only slightly harder than a normal attack (-1 attack modifier) and does less damage but that's okay, it makes sense to me. But why does the attacking character suffer a -4 penalty to his defensive skills? Shouldn't most holds make it harder for your opponent to hit you, not easier? Or does this represent defending against attacks from someone other than the person you've grabbed?

The Knockdown option is just what it sounds like, an attempt to knock someone down. The attacker takes a penalty on the attack and if he hits the first Wound result is turned into a Knockdown. Okay, but what happens if the damage comes up with a Wound and a Knockdown, is that Wound still turned into a Knockdown and if so, what effect does two Knockdowns have on someone? And as I mentioned above, wouldn't a foot sweep count as a Knockdown attack? Or are we supposed to combine the two, does a foot sweep have no attack modifier (+3-3=0) but a -5 damage modifier and the first Wound becomes a Knockdown (as if we'd be likely to get a Wound with that -5 damage modifier!)

Does this mean that hiding behind something introduces an entirely new set of rules for determining damage? 8-)

Under Surprise, the only real problem is a holdover from Torg, namely how stealth is used. The Surprise rules say that characters generate a Perception or Intellect total against aDN of the stealth skill of the person(s) being sneaky. The rules under the stealth skill say that the person using stealth generates a skill total against a DN equal to the Perception or Intellect of the target(s). Which is it? Do they both generate a total at the same time? Shouldn't the character(s) being snuck up on only get to roll if they're expecting trouble or are looking for someone/something?

There are differences from the Torg surprise rules but for the most part I think the Masterbook rules are better than the Torg ones (sacrilege! 8-) In Torg, surprise only affected putting cards into your pool. Masterbook gives the person doing the surprise an attack bonus which I think better represents the advantages gained by surprising someone.

The next section of Chapter Three is "Damage Options" and unlike the previous section most of these are actually optional rules. The Non-Lethal Attack is basically the Stun Damage rule from Torg except that the first Wound doesn't go away, it's turned into three shock points.

The Knockout Attack rule is basically an extention of the Non-Lethal Attack option, only you can turn more than one Wound into shock damage based on the success level of the attack. Now the only problem is that success levels do not increase after 20 result points but wounds do, so after that point you can't get any more shock damage out of an attack. Another possible problem is that it doesn't address such things as knockout gas, sleep poison or anything else that's primarily designed to create unconsciousness instead of death. Do I use the success levels of my prestidigitation skill if I slip a "Mickey" into someone's drink? What do I roll on for a cloud of gas to determine its success levels? What about a phaser set on stun, if I don't roll well enough I may kill the target, but that's not how it's supposed to work!

The Damage Cap rule is supposed to represent "realistic" damage in that it limits the maximum amount of damage a weapon can do in one attack to a number of result points equal to its base damage value. But this means that you cannot kill someone with any weapon or form of attack (in one blow) regardless of how good you are unless it has a DV of at least 20, yet most pistols have DVs less than that.

They suggest that this rule should be used in all but the most fanciful settings but I think that's incorrect, it should only be used in the most mundane and realistic settings otherwise it limits things way too much (ie, pistols, HTH attacks even wild animal attacks are completely incapable of killing with one blow regardless of the situation.)

Oh, and it also says this under the rule: "This keeps...a character with a lot of Life Points from taking out a giant mechanized robot with a single shot form a .45 for example." But I thought you could only spend one Life Point at a time, why should having a lot of them make a difference here? Maybe they're including Hero and Drama cards but if so they should have said something that isn't quite as misleading.

The fourth optional rule is Bleeding. This is not the same as the accumulating shock damage taken when Mortally Wounded, though the effect is the same (extra shock damage taken every round.) What happens is that the GM may declare a wound to be a "bleeder" which means that instead of putting that wound down as damage the character will take one shock point of damage a round until the bleeding is treated with First Aid. This seems like a good idea to me, it's "realistic" and so long as a character isn't allowed to bleed to death it will trade possible deaths for unconsciousness.

But there's a problem in the rules for dealing with all this shock damage. It says that if a character passes out from shock damage, the shock total is reset to zero and the character continues accumulating shock points - if he once again reaches his Endurance value his wound level increases by one level. But does it stop there? And don't unconscious characters heal one shock point a round, wouldn't that mean that an unconscious character with one bleeder would just lay there forever? If an unconscious, bleeding person is successfully treated with first aid is all their shock cleared away as well as having the bleeding stopped or are they still going to be unconscious until the shock damage heals? If the latter, why should someone who's nearly bled to death be able to wake up in the same amount of time as someone who has just passed out from fatigue?

The example given in the rulebook doesn't help much. While it does show that bleeding does not stop after increasing the wound level it confuses things by having the example character pass out from a KO, not shock, and it says that when he recovers from the KO he wakes up with no shock damage. But the rules under KO don't say that all shock is healed when a KO'd person wakes up, it says that shock damage is healed normally. If they're unable to keep these rules straight, what else might they have messed up?

Next are the Interaction rules, page 78 if you want to follow along. Let's start with the first thing in the section, the optional "Interactive Cap" rule. This is like the Damage Cap rule that I talked about above except that it applies to interactions instead of damage (duh!) Here the cap is that you cannot get more result points on an interaction attempt than your skill level.

Now obviously the first problem here is that unless a character is highly skilled he's never going to get the really good results because of his cap - of course if he's not highly skilled then its unlikely that he'll ever get that many result points in the first place so I suppose it balances out in the end. That's probably why the prognosticators at WEG confidently predict that "Many gamemasters will choose not to use the 'interactive cap' optional rules." Then why even bother printing it?

But let's say that you want to use the rule in your game, so you look at the example to see it in action. Bad move, the example is broken! It sets up a situation where the character is trying to persuade someone but due to modifiers the character will need to generate a +12 bonus value just to get a minimal success (0 result points) against the Difficulty Number of 22.

So what's the problem? The example goes on to say that since the character's Persuasion skill is only 10, she cannot succeed because she needs 12 result points and that's over her cap. Uh, I think someone needs to reread their own rules, there is a difference between "bonus value" and "result points" the last time I checked! To get 12 result points she would need to generate a +24 bonus value, a very big difference!

(Torg players may find the example doubly confusing because Masterbook changes the way persuasion and charm works; instead of giving the character an Attitude and then needing to match or exceed that on the persuasion/charm chart the Attitude now adds a modifier to their willpower - the result is the same, needing willpower+X to succeed, but the method getting there is different and the example did confuse me the first time I read it because of that.)

Okay, that out of the way we move on to the individual Interaction skills; intimidation, taunt, trick, maneuver, con, charm, persuasion, interrogation and hypnotism. Well, actually hypnotism isn't covered in this chapter, they just give it two paragraphs that basically say you can use it like interrogation and that you should go read its description in Chapter Four. For Torg people, con is described as "a long term version of trick" and that's really all they say about it here (and Chapter Four doesn't add much.)

For the most part I actually don't have many complaints about this section; most of the skills are the same as they are in Torg except for some extra descriptions on how success levels relate to the effect created and tables of modifiers for each of the skills. Both of those things are good. The description of stymie has been changed from Shatterzone and is actually a little nicer than being stymied in Torg (since there are two dice in MB and stymie only stops the first reroll, characters who are Up or spend a Hero/Drama card will get to reroll the second die, only the first is stopped.) There's even a nice bit under interrogation about dealing with players who say "my character would rather die than say anything!", a chronic problem with certain types of players.

So what problems do I have with this section beyond the Interactive Cap rule? Well, while I'm not real keen on charm and persuasion using different rules than the other interaction skills (which use success level to determine the effect, charm/persuasion is simply a Pass/Fail test) my main problem with it is that they've oversimplified things on top of that.

If you charm someone, regardless of their starting Attitude, they become "at least a friendly acquaintance". I much prefer Torgs method where you first have to reduce an Enemy to Hostile then Neutral and then to Friendly instead of being able to take an Enemy all the way down to Friendly or even Agreeable (Loyal in Torg) with one charm attempt! Also missing are any rules regarding the consequences of a failed charm or persuasion attempt.

Finally for charm and persuasion, I believe that the first entry on the charm modifiers chart belongs on the persuasion chart, since there's little point in charming an Agreeable target but it would certainly make sense for an Agreeable target to be easier to persuade than a target with some other Attitude.

Moving on to interrogation , several of the listed modifiers appear to overlap a bit and could be confusing in use. For example, "Target is resistant" says that the target may feel the requested information is important or precious to him - but wouldn't this fall under "Target feels information is important"? And while I'm on "Target feels information is important", why isn't there a description following its entry? Not important enough? 8-)

The description for interrogation mentions that failing on the attempt will make the target more resilient, or that a target may recover some strength and be harder to interrogate if the process is interrupted by something. But there are no modifiers listed for either of these situations; I suppose we could just bump the target up or down one level on the cooperation or importance scale but given that pretty much every paragraph in the description corresponds to a modifier it seems strange that these two do not.

Next we come to the section on Life Points. As someone on the mailing list noted some time ago, the section says that there are three uses for Life Points but there are really four, the fourth being that you can turn Life Points into Skill Points. What makes this omission even more noticable is that they even mention the fourth use, they just don't give it it's own heading.

About the only thing of note here is actually a good thing (gasp! 8-), the ability to negate Interaction result levels introduced in Shatterzone has been toned down from three levels to one level, much less abusive.

The next section is 'Time and Rounds'. Most of this section is fairly straightforward, about my only real complaint is that it seems too long, I think the necessary information could have been conveyed with less text.

One possible rules quibble, under Opportunity Actions it seems to suggest that characters don't get to go until after everyone has performed their action, including the other side. I've always assumed it meant that characters would wait and go after everyone else on their side but could still go before the other side gets to act.

One rules change of note, or at least a difference from how I do it in Torg, cards received for approved actions are given out at the very end of the round and players cannot put cards into their pool until the very end of the round. The most notable effect here is that even when the PCs have initiative the other side will get to take their actions before the players can put a card into their pool, which could be a significant difference (for example, a player with Opponent Fails in his hand has to wait until after his opponent takes his action before he can put the card into his pool even when he has the initiative.)

The example suggests that players must put cards into their pool before they receive cards for approved actions but the actual rule mentions it in the reverse order so I suppose it's still okay for characters to get their approved action card and then put it into their pool.

My, that was short and sweet, we're to the next section already, which is 'Movement'. I've already touched on some of the problems with the movement rules in my analysis of Chapter One, namely how the method of figuring out "simple" and "complex" movement rates produces some really unbelievable results. To put it briefly, while I agree that the Torg movement rules need some work, I'm not very pleased with how Masterbook handles it.

To briefly recap, during character creation you calculate your characters movement rates based off of your attributes. "Simple movement" is twice the movement value in meters per round and does not affect actions while "complex movement" is anything over that up to the non-pushing top speed (the value of the rate) and it imposes a penalty on any other actions performed that round. The problem quickly becomes apparent when we examine the movement rates for the average person (attributes of 8):

Yes, that's correct, average people can cover more ground swimming, climbing and jumping with their free simple movement than they can with complex movement! And simply by examining a slightly below average individual (with 7's instead of 8's) we can drop his ground rate to 5, which will make his simple and complex ground movement rates exactly the same, 10 meters a round! Did anyone playtest these rules?!?

Additional gripes about the movement rules, though these are based on the skill descriptions in Chapter Four and not on the rules here in Chapter Three: only running has any rules for long-duration use of the skill, which I guess means either characters can't swim or climb for long periods of time or they can do it without any risk of getting tired! (Long jumping falls into the same category with swim and climb but how often are you going to do long-duration jumping?)

Plus, running is apparently only used for pushing speed but with the other three skills characters have to make skill checks even when moving at their simple movement rate. But doesn't that make them complex movement actions, since by having to make a skill check it's turning anything else the characters does that round into a multi-action?

WEG also did not provide the formula from Torg (and maybe SZ, I forgot to check) that lets you quickly figure out how long it takes a character to travel X distance at Y movement speed (the value of X-Y gives you the time in rounds, the value of X-Y+5 gives you the time in seconds) or account for slowing down over long periods of exertion. This is a bothersome omission.

Next up in Chapter Three is 'Pushing', which is of course what characters do when they need to move a little bit faster or lift a bit more than they normally can lift. The main change that Masterbook makes from Torg is that the result points from a push are not added directly to the value being pushed but are instead read on the value chart and the measure is added to the measure of the pushed value.

This is actually something I like as I've always had a problem in Torg where one person in a chase situation can push for a +1 speed bonus and end up way, way, way out in front of the other person, and it just got worse with vehicles due to their higher speed values and the greater jumps between values. With Masterbook's method, a chase is actually going to be a chase instead of a one-round blowout where someone suddenly jumps ahead 40 meters or more in ten seconds.

Bust lest you think I'm going soft on Masterbook, there are problems with these rules. First off, the DN for a push is your base speed value modified by surface conditions and other things except for climbing, where the DN is based off of the surface conditions modified by your speed value and other things.

The discontinuity annoys me primarly because of two things - the base DNs for climbing are unreasonably high to begin with and on top of that pushing climbing speed raises the DN by +3, meaning that not only are characters more likely to fail a push, they're already most likely going to fail and fall even if they aren't trying to push their speed. And if they do succeed, they're going to be lucky to get anything more than an extra 1.5 meters a round (yippee, just moving right along! 8-)

I suspect it was done this way because there are already DNs provided for climbing and it would look rather silly to say that pushing climbing speed has a base DN of 3 with a +13 modifier for a rough surface, whereas saying it has a base DN of 13 with a +3 modifier for pushing looks a bit more reasonable. But it just doesn't match the way the other movement rates are handled especially since the long jumping limit value will always be the same as the climbing value (they use the same equation) but it's so ridiculously easy to double long jumping distance with an average roll while it's almost impossible with climbing.

Here's an example of how it works for long jumping: a character with straight 8's in his attributes will have an MRJ value of 2, meaning he can long jump 2.5 meters without pushing. Assuming optimal conditions for a long jump, his DN for pushing is 2, meaning unless he rolls poorly he is going to get at least six result points which is a +3 on the push table, equating to an extra four meters, totalling 6.5 meters (roughly 20 feet) for five shock points of fatigue.

Oh, excuse me - assuming optimal conditions would mean "unlimited landing area" which is a -1 to the DN, so his DN would only be 1 and he'd get at least seven result points on average, lowering his fatigue to four points of damage. If this were a competition jump then he'd have a limited landing area, which is a +2 to the DN for a 4, meaning that on average he'll only get four result points for an extra 2.5 meters, doubling his base distance, for three shock points.

Now make that man an athlete with a good Agility and the long jumping skill and it starts to get unbelievable (to me anyway, but I can't jump worth a damn so my perspective may be a bit biased). Let's say he has a 9 Agility and three adds in the skill for a skill value of 12. His MRJ is probably 3 (human max) meaning in a competition his DN is 5, so on average he'll get seven result points for a +3, which will let him double his jumping distance up to eight meters.

The world record in 1991 (the only source I have handy) was about 8.72 meters, meaning our competitor only needs one more result point to bust the record wide open, something he could easily do by getting one more skill add. Now consider what could be done by someone who's actually good at long jumping (remember, +3 adds is barely above the "beginner" level according to Chapter One) and you'll see how unrealistic this becomes.

Okay, I guess my rant about climbing turned into a rant about long jumping...one more thing about the long jump - they say that for settings with some level of realism there's a limit of 23 result points on a long jump push attempt, which translates to a +8, an extra forty meters distance. I'm glad they put in such a realistic limitation, I'd hate to have my Indiana Jones characters able to jump across a 50 meter chasm, 40 meters is just so much more believable. 8-) Y'know, maybe there was a reason the Speed Push column in Torg didn't go any higher than +2....

Moving along, there's the lifting push rules. Now first off I'm a bit annoyed by the fact that the lifting limit wasn't determined back in Chapter One along with all the other limits - maybe because it's not a form of movement it wasn't included. Secondly, it doesn't have one of those overly complicated formulas - oh wait, that's a good point! A characters lifting limit is simply their Strength value minus three.

Hm, wait a minute - if I play an Adrenalin card on my Strength does that mean my lifting limit automatically goes up too? Hm, I'm not sure I like that, it's too much of a freebie ("I don't need to push, I have an Adrenalin card!")

I am a bt concerned by there not being an across-the-board limit value (like the maximum values for the movement limits) but that may actually play in Masterbook's favor by making the rules generic enough to fit any genre.

Well, I think I've said enough about pushes for now, let's move on. The next section is 'Falling' and there's not really much for me to say here because the falling rules are essentially unchanged from Torg and Shatterzone and they only take up about a fifth of a page so there's not much to analyze anyway!

So we go on to 'Multi-Actions' which is mostly unchanged from Shatterzone, though noticeably different from Torg. Gone is the One on Many table, replaced by a simple -2 on the first action, -3 on the second, -4 on the third, and so on. This actually isn't so bad because it does avoid the Torg problem of having too many tasks having the same DN modifier (for example, if you do four actions in a round the third and fourth action have the same DN modifier.)

But the biggest change is that Masterbook ditches what I consider to be one of Torg 's most elegant mechanics, the use of one die roll to determine the success or failure of all actions attempted in one round. Some people will no doubt argue that it's more realistic to roll seperately for each action and while that may be true it just seems clunky and time-consuming to me.

Following 'Multi-Actions' is naturally enough 'Combined Actions'. As with the multi-action rule the Many-on-One modifiers are linear instead of logarithmic, which may seem more realistic but it's another case of one of Torg's nice, simple symmetric rule sets (using the value chart) out the window.

One change that I do not think works properly is that there is no longer a bonus figured into the skill attempt when several people are performing the same action (like shooting at the same target). This means that regardless of there being two or two hundred people shooting at the same target there is no difference in the odds of the target getting hit, all the table does is tell you if the roll was high enough for multiple people to have succeeded.

In terms of probabilities this does not sound right to me, especially in the situations they say the table will be used the most often, combat. If one character is being shot at by twenty other characters I would expect that his chances of getting hit is greater than if there were just one person shooting at him, but that is not the case here.

Perhaps we are intended to use the rules for coordinating actions in situations like this, though in my book twenty shocktroopers shooting at the same character are not coordinating their actions, they're just all shooting at the same target. Coordinating requires an extra effort and is an attempt to work in conjunction with other people, everyone shooting at some guy running across a field should not require any real coordination.

Of course using the coordination rules for a MoO is going to get complicated, because coordinating is a Multi-Action requiring everyone involved to make a coordination check and a skill check, with a bonus being applied to the highest skill check based on the number of people who successfully made the skill check - so we would have to first use the MoO to figure out the coordination successes (with no increased probability regardless of how many people attempt it), then we'd have to use the MoO again to figure out how many succeed at the skill check, which will then tell us the bonus we apply to the highest skill total to see how successful we were...er, wait a minute, we have to determine how many succeed before we can determine how many succeed...and then apply a bonus to that same skill total to determine how well they succeeded, which will determine how many of them succeeded...er, um.... I think I'll just stick with Torg's MoO system, thanks anyway.

As I mentioned above, coordinating actions requires everyone involved to make a coordination check and then a skill check; the coordination check is pretty much the same as in Torg but the requirement of the additional skill check is new and has the same problem as the MoO table of being linear, everyone who succeeds at the basic skill check adds +2 to the lead character's attempt (who is now just whoever generates the highest skill total, not the character with the best base skill.) So if those 200 shocktroopers all make their coordination roll and all successfully hit the target, that's a +400 to the skill total (and effectively to the damage total.)

Hey, we've found a way to physically kill a Darkness Device, we just get it into a Masterbook system and get 200 guys to shoot at it and it's history! Somehow I never equated 400 guys with guns as being more damaging than plunging through the heart of the sun....

And yes, we're at the very last section of Chapter Three, the end is not just in sight it's HERE!!!!!!!!! The last section of Chapter Three is 'The Value System', which basically explains (a real suprise here) the value system and how to use it. Nothing is different from Torg so I have nothing to say.

Torg, Masterbook, Shatterzone, West End Games, and WEG are trademarks of Purgatory Publishing. You can find out more about Torg at www.westendgames.com.