Pyramid Review: Brave New World

Pyramid Review

Brave New World

Published by Pinnacle Entertainment

Written by Matt Forbeck

224 pages, $30.00

[Editor's Note: Within a span of 24 hours or so, I received no less than three reviews of Pinnacle's new superhero RPG, Brave New World. Choosing among them proved difficult, as they all had excellent points to make. So I have combined parts of all three into a single review. Hope you find it informative.]

Justin Mohareb

I'm pretty much disappointed by Brave New World. The setting is its strongest component. In it, America is a nation ruled by a despot: John Fitzgerald Kennedy. After superhumans assassinated his wife in Dallas in 1963, JFK instituted martial law and basically set himself up as President for life, with his enforcer the superpowered Alpha, Superior.

The setting pits the fascistic American state against the defenders of liberty in the USA. The world is in chaos because Superior's disappearance in 1976 (along with most of the other Alphas on the planet) caused a bit of a destabilization of the sociopolitical landscape.

BNW's world has oodles of mood to it. The one flaw with it is there doesn't seem to be a lot of beef in that gravy. We're told how America is (an oppressed state under martial law), but we're not given a lot of the dope. Are there curfews? Are there shortages of food? Is ID required at major intersections? Three major American cities (Atlanta, Chicago, and San Francisco) have been destroyed, so I'd assume that there have been some changes . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: October 1, 1999

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