Pyramid Review
Gear Krieg: The Roleplaying Game
Published by Dream Pod 9
Written by James Maliszewski & Chris Steward
Illustrated by Kieran J. Yanner, John Wu, & Marc Ouellette
208 pages; $32.95
Every once in a while you get a thematic trend in RPGs, and with the sixtieth anniversary of the USA's entry into World War II fast approaching, guess what? 2001's big theme is The Big One. Not since FASA's Behind Enemy Lines has there been a WWII RPG, but standby for an onslaught! Pinnacle has promised us Weird Wars -- World War II and horror for the d20 system; Pagan Publishing has Godlike in the works, a dark game that combines WWII and superheroes; and Steve Jackson Games have a whole line planned for GURPS, which will play it "straight." First out of the gate with a preemptive strike is Dream Pod 9 with their fourth RPG, a companion to their WWII and 'mecha' miniatures system, Gear Krieg.
Gear Krieg: The Roleplaying Game is described as the game of "two fisted pulp role playing in a world at war!" It is set in 1941, in the early part of the war prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The setting in the game is ours, but with a number of additions that give it the feel of the pulps and what it calls "Superscience!" For the main conflict between the Allied and Axis forces, this is the addition of machines known as walkers. These are essentially armored cars that come with both legs and wheels, and are thus capable of on- and off-road travel. The Nazis . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: July 13, 2001
Copyright © 2001 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.