Its the post-apocalyptic tribal conflicts and mysteries of shows like The 100, crossed with the ecological science fiction horror of works like The War Against the Cthorr.Who Shouldnt Get This: I dont like trying to convince people to try something they know isnt for them, so let me just preface with some possible deal breakers. First of all, the initial investment is big. At the time of this writing, one hundred bucks big. Now thats for around 700 pages, full color, split between two hardback books and a slipcase, with easily some of the best art in the entire hobby. But for those used to buying everything at 30% off or more, the price tag is a painful pill to swallow. And theres lots of empty space; to some extent you need to go in thinking youre buying a coffee table book as much as a game (there is a game, and a good one, but still). Secondly, this is a game with super powered mutants but only as NPCs. People wanting to play characters with cool powers to bend minds and flesh and time (like the monstrous Psychonauts get) will be disappointed. PCs can be pretty competent to start, but not to that degree of inhuman power. Third, theres a bit of suspension of disbelief involved, in that technology and equipment are sitting around 500 years after the end of civilization, just waiting to be uncovered and used. Some of it makes sense in the setting, but I doubt thered be much in the way of useful ruins left after five centuries. Finally, theres a lot of themes in the game that might put people off, with racism, slavery and gender inequality being the big three. None of it is handled in a puerile or exploitative manner, nor is it universal (not everybody has gender defined roles or slaves for example), but these things do crop up. Honestly, if you can handle a game like Exalted or a movie like Fury Road, you should be fine. Still with me?Okay. Lets start with Book 01, Primal Punk Or, as I like to think of it, The Big Book of Mostly Player Friendly Setting Information.The Jackals Prophecy (10 pages) - Some numerological ramblings that may or may not mean anything. Okay, it probably does- mean something, and it helps get you in the headspace to think in terms of things like primitivism, survival, and mystery. But it could also just be empty rambling for all it matters in these two books. Lots of pretty art and experimentation. What is Degenesis (2 pages) A brief intro to the setting, an overview of the two books, and an even briefer intro to what a role-playing game is. This is a game of hope and despair, the conflicting priorities of human civilization, daring to ask how far our race has truly come since we climbed down from the trees. Pretty ambitious stuff. And, spoiler, it does a decent job at pulling it off.Chapter 01 Forward (28 pages) In the year 2073 an asteroid shower hit the earth, blasting the planets geography to the point that civilization collapsed. To give you an idea how bad it was, the English Channel is now replaced with solid earth, and the Earths axis was shifted such that the ruins of London are near the new arctic. In the long term however, it was the alien Primer carried by the asteroids that was much more threatening to man. DNA altering spores that threaten to not only replace humanity with Psychonauts (more on them later), but infect and transform all living organisms. And humans, being the creatures they are, discovered how to use the Primer to make tools, like narcotics that give a great high (while slowly transforming the user on a genetic level). And those infected organisms tend to be drawn to grow strange new geometries and fractal patterns, expanding and growing. Anyway, the rest of the chapter introduces the various Cultures, the primary Cults within the Cultures, and the regional flavors of Psychonauts. Also introduced are the Marauders, mad demon gods who meddle in the affairs of the people while pursuing unknowable goals. And while some would say the Marauders arent gods or demons, nobody can deny their ancient power.Chapter 02 Cultures (98 pages) Let me get this out of the way: the subject this chapter covers feels better titled Regions than Cultures. When you say culture, I think of things like languages, customs, belief systems, and so on. And here I felt what I got was a regional overview, looking at history, geography, and critters involved. A mostly pedantic gripe on my part, I admit, and the material is still useful and good, but I never felt like I was really getting a look at how- people lived in a day to day mundane manner. Granted, each Culture could easily merit its own sourcebook, but it still felt like it was missing something. I mean, at no point is it made clear if each of these Cultures even has their own languages or not (and book 02 never gives any systems for such, although it does say there are different languages in the world). Anyway.This chapter covers the known world of Europe and (to a lesser extent) Africa and the Mediterranean Sea.
- Borca Covering the rough area of Germany and Switzerland, Borca is an area of feuding religions and movements. Some bringing civilization, others seeking blood and power, all wielding clubs and steel.
- Franka With France and the British Isles, and some new land connecting them besides, this is a land where the Pheromancer Psychonauts have all but won. Still, some homo sapiens rise up from the swampy land, trying to reclaim their home.
- Hybrispania Spain, more and less, torn between the superior technology and might of the conquering Africans and the people who live there. Only the temporal manipulations of the Pregnoctic Psychonauts have kept the natives free for this long, but why?
- Purgare Italy, and its two large islands, provides the headquarters for the Anabaptists, a religious movement waging war against the Primer, Sepsis, and Psychonauts for mankinds soul.
- Balkhan Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, and so forth, torn between constant alliances and betrayals among the humans. Meanwhile, Dushani Psychonauts terraform the countryside, turning into a superior tool to channel their mastery of sound and vibration.
- Pollen Poland, frozen from the climate changes, filled with warring strains of mutant insects and translucent plants.
- Africa Blessed by the climate changes, Africa has become the new center of civilization for mankind. Rich and mighty, it moves North in hopes of profiting where and how it can from Europe. And while free of threats from Pyschonaut strains of humanity, alien plant life in the South continues to grow and consume.
Each of these sections gives a very broad overview of the land covered, with some detail on any cities or locations of note. Recent history, as well as history relevant to the current state of the region, is covered as well. Honestly, theres not a lot of detail or depth given to Africa in comparison to Europe (I mean, the entire continent is presented as one giant homogenous nation), but the chapter gives enough for playing in the ruins of Germany.
Chapter 03 Cults (166 pages) These are the major organizations to be found active in the new Europe. And while the different Cults (who are seemingly named more due to their secretive nature than necessarily any religious views) have strongholds in one region or another, they can all be found across the world, pursuing various agendas.
- Spitalians An army of soldier-doctors, fighting diseases and monsters with medicine and weapons.
- Chroniclers Technicians and engineers, who hide behind weaponized masks and create an economy around a currency they create for junk no one else can understand.
- Hellvetics High tech military guardians and maintainers of passes through the Alpines, who double as mercenary forces, while maintaining neutrality in their dealings.
- Judges They bring a brand of (secular) law and order to the wastelands, whether its wanted or not.
- Clanners Assorted bands of people, each too weak to count as a Cult, collectively too important to be ignored. (Clan generation is covered in more detail in the second book)
- Scrappers A vast organization of individuals who go out and find useful things still hidden in the ruins of the world to sell to others. Or keep for themselves.
- Neolibyans Ambassadors and merchants from Africa, frowned upon as weak by their fellow Africans until someone needs money and connections to get things done.
- Scourgers Warriors and slavers from Africa, who use the paramilitary armor and helmets of their 21st century ancestors as they seek conquest and glory.
- Anubians African mystics who have found power in the new flora of their homeland, and claim to trace their ancestry to the myths of ancient Egypt (and by ancient, I mean ancient-).
- Jehammedans Started as a new Abrahamic faith before the end of the world, they are goat herders and warriors. (They also have possibly the most in-depth presentation of a culture of all the cults, and they are also the main culprits of gender defined roles)
- Apocalyptics A continents spanning organization of criminals, engaged in every vice from trafficking in young children to dealing Burn. Whatever you want, theyll sell it if you can afford it.
- Anabaptists Post-apocalyptic Christian gnostic farmers, who defend themselves from the forces of the Demiurge with pitchforks and flamethrowers.
- Palers After centuries of inbreeding in the underground storage shelters of the ancients (whom they worship as demigods), the nearly blind albino people are coming back to the surface. With surprises the other Cults have never considered, they prepare to stake their place in the surface world.
Okay, so all the Cults are pretty interesting. None of them are presented as being either good or evil, although many (all?) of them are pretty self-centered and focused on their own survival. My only gripe is that while I dont see any reason most of them would have for hating one another, I also dont see any reason for most of them to work with one another. The three African Cults work well together, but not as well with Europeans. Palers dont work well with anyone else. And I dont see why some Cults (like the Chroniclers and Anabaptists for example) would want to go explore the world, rather than pursue work closer to home. I mean, these are neat and engaging groups, but Im not really clear how to make them work beyond okay, your respective bosses sent you out to be diplomats for your respective Cults by working together. Now, go have random adventures! It just seems like a lot of effort was made to create these organizations, and then not enough in terms of how theyd play together.
Chapter 04 History (26 pages) Heres where you get some spoilers of the setting. Honestly, I think it might have been better off in the second book, with something else taking its place. Most of the information is pretty common (if forgotten) knowledge of events leading up to the end. Humanity had reached a transhuman level of technology, with memetic engineering becoming more and more advanced, in part due to the computer network known as the Stream that everyone used. HIV became airborne, and the new HIV-E was resistant to the old treatments. And an organization known as the Recombination Group, led by Gerome Getrell, begins a series of preparations and plans to save the world from HIV-E, but their efforts seem more ambitious than simply that. The year the asteroids came was 2073. Yellowstone erupted, burying the Americas in ash. No one knows what Asia is like any more. Other stuff is covered in this chapter, but I wont go over it because spoilers.Anyway, rounding out this book is an index. Before I get into the second book, Id like to say that this tome alone is almost a perfect Players Information book for the game. Chapter 4 really probably does spoil too much, like what the Marauders are and what they want in the short term, but otherwise itd make a great game book or possibly even a coffee table book. Its simply that pretty and easy to get into.Book 02 Katharsys My alternative title: All the Rules, GM Tools, Mysteries, and Miscellaneous Stuff We Couldnt Fit in the Other Book. Keep in mind, there are a lot- of things going on in this book, and Im just going to give you an overview.
Chapter 05 Game Mechanics (16 pages) Degenesis Rebirth uses smallish pools of six-sided dice exclusively, with 4s and 5s being successes, and 6s being a success and a Trigger (i.e. a critical success). Pools are (generally) a combination of an Attribute and a skill. One success is considered sufficient for a routine success, while four are needed for difficult challenges. And if a player both rolls too few successes to accomplish a task and- more ones than successes, then the roll is considered a Botch (i.e. a critical failure). Anyway, all characters have six Attributes: Body (strength and stamina), Agility (manual and full body dexterity), Charisma (people just like you), Intellect (smarts), Psyche (willpower, both offensively and defensively), Instinct (all that knowledge you dont- get from being civilized). Each stat governs various skills, with some overlap to be found. A character with high Psyche and points in Domination can be an even match for someone who relies on Instinct and the Primal Skill. Likewise, a character with Instinct and Empathy can read others emotions as well as a person with Charisma and Expression. All the skills are listed with a way to use them actively and a way to use them reactively, as well as a way to use them in combination. Combination actions are where you roll one stat and skill, and then get to add Triggers to a related follow up roll if you succeed on the first; like combining Agility+Stealth with Body+Melee for an ambush. If you fail the first roll you dont get to do the second, but you can also pile up Triggers if youre lucky on one or the other (or both!).
Chapter 06 Character Creation (76 pages) Okay, so you have 10 points to divide between Attributes (starting Attributes begin with 1 point each), and Skills have 28 points to divvy up (Skills each start at 0). No more than 2 of these points can be spent on any single Skill or Attribute. Depending on the players choices for Culture and Cult, these maximums can be raised. Each Cult raises the maximum starting cap on 5 different skills. Each Culture does the same for 5 skills and 2 Attributes. And each Concept (think of them as personality archetypes loosely based on the Major Arcana of the Tarot) raises the cap for 1 attribute and 2 skills. Given that anyone can raise anything after character creation, and everyone has the same amount of points to build a character with, I find it fairly balanced (and assume the stereotypes it promotes within the various Cultures and Cults to be intentional).Characters also have 4 points to divide between six Backgrounds. Backgrounds are things like Allies, Resources, Secrets, and so forth. Theyre abstract ideas that dont constantly come up in play, and can be lost or gained only through role-playing. If youve played a White Wolf game with Backgrounds, the same idea is at work here.Okay, so now youve spent your points. What next? Well, now we see how good a member of your Cult you are. If you put points in the right places, you might be low-to-middle member of your organization, but more likely youre still pretty low in the ranks. Still, you gain the perks of whatever level you qualify in your group, along with any and all perks you gained from lower ranks. And yes, this does kind of encourage players to min-max the system earlier, but at the same time its not like theres a lot of room for poetic pacifists from Pollen among the Scourgers.Finally you pick a Potential. There are Cult-specific Potentials and common ones, but they all amount to fairly useful-but-mundane Feats (to steal a term from the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons). Handy to be able to use, but still no awesome powers for those still holding out hope its that kind of game. Okay thats not always entirely true, but Id rather groups find out for themselves the true limits of the respective Cults. Heres a hint though: dont be disappointed when your Chronicler membership doesnt give you a way to cheat Ammit and rise up after death, because Choniclers are more interested in using electricity as a weapon than in worshipping ancient Egyptian myths.
Chapter 07 Battle (16 pages) Death is part of the game, to quote the opening lines of the chapter. And yes, the system allows for quick and easy death. Even without the ancient weapons wielded by Marauders. Each character has three stats relevant to combat: Ego points (reflecting mental condition), Flesh Wounds (damage that doesnt really impact the character), and Trauma (damage that is serious, and starts applying penalties). Each is determined using different combinations of skills and Attributes, so that there is no single master stat used. Also of note, is that while Ego reflects the will to keep going on, you can also spend it as a boost for initiative and extra dice on your first action of the round. You dont have a lot of points, and wont want to do this often (even with the rules for catching a second wind regarding depleted Ego), but its an interesting idea. Healing and recovery are also covered, with Trauma requiring ten days per point to recover, and Ego and Flesh Wounds one day per point. Getting hurt is painful. And this chapter also covers almost all the ways you could die. The only things missing (and I may not have noticed it) are rules for starvation and dehydration. Also, there are no rules for bleeding out, which feels odd given how much the game and text stress the severity of Trauma. Otherwise its a good basic system, covering a few different types of combat maneuvers as well as a basic vehicular combat.
Chapter 08 Bazaar (68 pages) Gear is generally broken down by which Cult uses which items. Which makes sense as the Cults tend to be pretty protective about who gets to use their signature technologies. For example, Palers treasure their silenced submachine guns and mysterious Sun Discs, while Anabaptists are protective of their sacred Elysian oils and Spitfire flamethrowers. Not all gear is considered Cult Only property of course; just because Anabaptists use pitchforks in battle and have it listed in the gear section doesnt mean others cant or dont use pitchforks as weapons too. Still, what gear you carry can send a message to others. Anyway, things like services, vehicles, and weapon modifications are also covered. And you get some rough guidelines on how some things are manufactured, a broad view at trade and currencies, how Scrappers (and others) find salvage for sale or trade, and a little bit on ancient artifacts bought and sought by the Chronicles (and others).And of course there are mysteries revealed, with the big take home surprise (SPOILER!) being that there are six levels of technology in the game from I to VI, with our current (real world) Tech Level is only IV, and the world was getting destroyed soon after reaching Tech Level V. So how did Tech Level VI come about?
Chapter 09 Burn (10 pages) Mechanics on Sepsis, and all the ways it enters and corrupts a person. An infected tick spreads it to just one more human, a junkie buys Burn from Pollen off an Apocalyptic for a unique high (and boost of strength), spores in the air are inhaled. Sepsis is seemingly everywhere and inescapable. Okay, thats a bit bleaker than the reality. See, Sepsis is- frighteningly common, but in the early stages of infection it can be treated. And many Cults have ways to protect themselves from it, ranging from examinations and medicines to bathing areas in fire and poison. Other people have found ways to harness the Sepsis, such as the Spitalians who use infected Mollusks to detect other infected. And simply staying away from areas saturated with the Sepsis is often sufficient. But the Sepsis never stops trying to spread. Im betting this is sounding familiar to some of you out there who are used to seeing some sort of corruption mechanic in other games. The main thing different here however is that this corruption is actually an alien organism. Its something tangible that people can turn into a tool to help others, or a drug to enslave them, and sometimes both. And once the corruption is complete, the infected person isnt any more evil than a termite is evil. Theyre too removed from human sentience and awareness to really qualify as evil. But just as a termite will destroy your home, the Sepsis destroys everything and everyone it touches.
Chapter 10 From Hell (116 pages) Oh boy, heres the big chapter of goodies. It seems as if every page is dripping with ideas and story hooks and surprises. In the first book, Clans are all lumped together in one vague group. Here though we get a breakdown on some of the clans mentioned previously, along with guidelines on making new clans, and were presented with some clans that nobody knows anything about. We have savages, near-mindless savages, people fighting against the slavers from Africa, people maintaining a convoy of ancient trucks as they roam Europe, groups of bullfighters, groups of flagellants, and more. Each with their own agendas and secrets. And now I get it: Clans are like small-scale Cults, usually tied to a single area or agenda. The Clans here are just examples, filling in gaps in the stories of Cults and Cultures, with groups expected to add more to their own games. It works.Next is a small bestiary of sorts. Lots of animals, and people, mutated (or manufactured?) by the Primer, posing a threat to humanity. Want to know what happens when a person gets too much spore infection? They become a Leperos who seeks to spread a kind of Sepsis hive mind. Or maybe youd prefer something more mundane, like a super wolf/hyeana hybrid? What about trilobytes? Theyre in here, along with other creatures.Oh yeah, mammoths are back.And then there are the weirder things.Next up are secrets, secrets, and more secrets. I dont want to spoil things, so I wont tell you what it says about the machine men, or the Sleepers, or the Marauders. I will however say that there are multiple versions statted out for GMs to either use as is or refer to for inspiration. Then we get to the section on Homo Degenesis: the Psychonauts. Basically, across Europe there are 5 giant and specific spore fields. Each one generates its own type of Burn, attracts its own type of arthropodic vermin, and produces its own type of Psychonaut. Psychonauts were once born of humans, but they are their own offshoot of humanity now. And while the book offers example powers and variants for each strain of Pyschonaut, it also encourages GMs to invent their own.
- Biokinetics Found in Pollen, a Biokinetic can heal as fast almost as theyre wounded, grow weapons from their flesh, and boost their bodies to superhuman levels of ability that tear them open at the skin.
- Dushani Sound manipulators of Balkhan, they use their voices to sculpt the mountainsides around themselves, to better amplify their ability with sound, to better reculpt the land, to.
- Pheromancers Found in Franca, they carry hives of insects on and within themselves, to help them spread chemicals among humans. The exposed humans join the Pheromancer hive, happy to work as its expendable labor and guardians.
- Pregnoctics Hybrispanias strain of Psychonauts work with the Hybrispaniards, helping them deal with the Africans and in return the people of Hybrispania aid the Pregnoctics. How else do you cope with something that knows your future before you?
- Psychokinetics In Purgare, the Psychokinetics warp space and gravity and break physics as they move across the land, acting as angry storms in service to their own whims.
So yeah, lots of good stuff in this chapter.
Chapter 11 Telling the Story (20 pages) While mostly just a chapter to help new GMs learn how to structure an adventure and how to craft characters (and its pretty good advice for those wondering), theres also four pages of bigger story hook ideas. World changing story ideas, each of which could easily work as the basis of a campaign. More pieces of the mysteries of the setting can be found here.
Chapter 12 Into the Dust (16 pages) A sample adventure, not too generic, but small enough in scope that you could tweak it for use in other post-apocalyptic games easily enough.And then the book wraps up with a pretty good index. Now, if you go back and add up the pages I listed in my review, youll notice the numbers off compared to how many pages the book is supposed to have. Keep in mind there are lots of little vignettes and what not I didnt bother to list. The books really do come in at just over 700 pages. Okay, so what do I think of it all?Ill be honest, I skimmed through the first edition and contemplated it, but never took the plunge. Then I heard about a second edition, saw some of the art, and was hooked. Actually reading the books made me realize that this is something special. People do horrible things to survive, but theres still love and friendship as well. Even the various threats the Primer brings arent evil, but still threats to be dealt with. See, the world is definitely damaged and mankinds existence is in danger, but things arent hopeless. And its this unspoken hope that really sets the game apart from a lot of others out there.Now, having said that, I think theres a lot of big spaces in the books which beg for more information. Lack of details on the Psychovores and the Spore Wall effectively limit the game to Europe, Africa is so under detailed as to be useless, and lots of little bits and pieces in the setting beg for campaigns around them. The books never mention something as held back for a future product release; Degenesis has more class than that. And to be fair, you could easily spend another 700 pages filling in gaps and still have stuff untouched. Ultimately, theres enough material to support a good, long campaign in Europe, while giving groups information if they want to dabble a bit in Africa. As for people fearing a metaplot, a good GM can probably decipher many of the mysteries, while the game manages to set the seeds for a few future ones that feel minor in comparison to the stuff already revealed. So Im giving it a
just over the line 5 out of 5 for Substance. More stuff would be nice, but theres so much present already (seriously, every single page seems to have at least three different story hooks) I dont think a lower score would be fair.As for style. There are some typos, especially in the second book. Lots of empty space wasting paper. And the pictures of full frontal nudity with genitals on display (male and female) make the second book something you probably wont want to read on the bus (the first one isnt that explicit). Theres also that introductory piece of fiction (the Prophecy I mentioned back in the first book) that is too obscure for my brain. Its not a perfect product. But dang if it isnt a gorgeous one. Arts subjective, I get that, but the art is consistently at least above average in quality. And the full page spreads of people standing around that I normally loathe- in other games, actually work here. It captures the distinctive differences between Clans and Cults, showcasing the alien flavors of the Psychonauts, and really just helps to pull me into this world. My only wish would be for a Black Library style analysis of the clothing and gear worn in these full page spreads. But while that would offer more information, it would also risk hurting the presentation. And presentation is clearly a dominant thought throughout this work. I give this a
6 out of 5 for Style, because its so well done, it could easily work as a stand alone art book and should draw fans of post-apocalyptic worlds in with no effort. These are the kind of books Id want my non-gamer friends to look at.To sum it all up: Its good. And you should go get it. Product Summary
Name: Degenesis Rebirth
Publisher: SIXMOREVODKA
Author: Christian Gunther, Marko Djurdjevic
Category: RPG
Pages: 715
Horror, Near Future, Post-Apocalypse
View [ Printable Review ] Review Summary
Comped Capsule ReviewMarch 18, 2016 c80f0f1006
