My Life As A Gamer: Palladium's Guyver/Terminator Blend Has A Supplement

Remember what I said about tabletop RPGs being a lagging indicator? Palladium's Splicers is one; blend The Terminator with Bio-Booster Armor Guyver and sprinkle in some Noble House fuckery and that's this game right here. I've had the rulebook for years, so when this--the first supplement--came out I knew I'd get it sooner or later. It was part of the 2020 Grab Bag, and it's delivered on the promised shakeup of the base game.

And for those that don't know, Splicers takes place on a distant interstellar colony world where the planetary AI system went rogue and (of course) decided to Kill All Humans. To prevent using high tech weapons against it, the AI unleashed a nanoplague that makes all metal deadly to the touch of any living flesh; it does that T-1000 thing and attempts to kill you with living metal tentacles.

This lead to the collapse of Civilization and Mankind on that world, which also got cut off from the rest of the galaxy, so this is a wholly terrestrial game; no space action at all. Instead, you play a character that is able to use biological technology replacements--bio-weapons--that take the form of various sorts of powered armor or augmentations which lets you go toe-to-toe with the Machines of the AI.

The trick? The AI is actually AIs; there are multiple personae, with conflicting beliefs and objectives regarding Mankind, which makes fighting the Machines more difficult due to some places being false safe spaces under psuedo-benevolent AI control and others looking like one of the many scenes of post-Judgement Day Terminator. On the home front, Man is not united; it's split into Houses ruled by Warrior elites that have psuedo-Techpriest castes providing the wargear.

And, as is typical Palladium fare, there is a lot of broad-stroke information but sweet fuck-all for plug-and-play useability; Game Masters are expected to do a lot of rolling their own to make this game work, filling in the details that Palladium leaves blank.

No, the supplement doesn't really change that. It just adds a new--very hostile--AI persona ("Legion"), new toys and gear to play with, new hostiles to incinerate with your not-Guvyver's weapons, new rivals to play Diplomacy with, and yet more broad-stroke setting notes for you to work with when making this kit into something that actually works at the table.

And then there's the included campaign module. Remember what I said about The Mechanoid Invasion? What we have here is really a good outline for a Mil-SF novel series, and not a proper campaign module. While the results are not wholly pre-determined, the differences are so minor as to be irrelevant; you're along for the ride, again, and this has been a very persistent problem with Palladium's modules for decades- all due to a fundamental misunderstanding of what the medium is and how it works.

The problem is that the premise is good. The titular antagonist--Legion--is all about doing the Borg thing to both Man and Machine, making everyone and everything a drone in its hivemind. You get to play with all of the same fears that you get in a story like The Thing when players realize Legion can assimilate Splicers, you get Guyver-style action, and you get Terminator scenes of various sorts. The mistake is doing this in a narrative format, which is antithetical to what makes games work. You have to stop deciding what the result is; that's the players' problem, not the designer's. Just set up the board, determine Win and Loss Conditions, and GO.

This post is not about how to fix it; that's for another time. Neither is it about how to not make this mistake; ditto. This post is about whether or not you should get it, and the answer is: "Yes, but only at a steep discount, since you're looting it for playable bits and not the whole."

And yes, doing that as part of a Grab Bag is exactly that. You want one? Here you go.