Pyramid Review
Weird War II: Blood on the Rhine (for d20)
Published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group
Written by John R. Hopler, with additional material from Shane Lacy Hensley and Rob Lusk
Illustrated by Chris Appel, Michael Colasante, and Richard Pollard
Edited by Shane Hensley and Jackie Unger
192 page softcover; black and white illustrations; $25.00
Weird Wars II: Blood on the Rhine is one of the first entries in a new generation of d20 books, one that tries to stretch the rules of d20 into a new game that works from different set of heroic assumptions. Surprisingly, it's not the rules that trip up the product, but the limitations of marketing to Dungeons and Dragons fans.
If you're familiar with Pinnacle's Deadlands and Deadlands: Hell on Earth games, you have a pretty good idea of the approach Pinnacle is taking to Weird War II. Pinnacle specializes in taking a historical setting, adding magic and some alternate history twists, then spicing things up with a saucy attitude. Weird War II follows the same approach, but with more real history and a slightly more serious tone.
The game is set in June 1944, shortly after D-Day. As far as the world and the player characters know, World War II has progressed exactly as it did in our world. (The first couple of chapters provide an excellent summary of the events and important historical figures involved in the war.) The Allies are advancing through Europe, and Hitler is throwing everything the Third Reich has into stopping them. What the world . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: September 21, 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.