This article originally appeared in Pyramid #30
Blue Planet
Published by Biohazard Games
Written by Jeffery Barber, Greg Benage,
John Snead & Jason Werner
$27.95
When I first picked up a copy of Blue Planet, I was mesmerized by the cover. It has the same strange and soothing attraction of looking into a fish bowl. To my delight, the cover art accurately represents the beauty and depth of the world inside.
The game is set almost exclusively on the planet Poseidon, the surface of which is 97% ocean. Poseidon was discovered in 2080 A.D., then colonized by an elite team of researchers genetically adapted for an amphibious life, as well as 500 sentient cetaceans (dolphins). Their planned resupply mission never came, aborted because of a manmade "Blight" ravaging Earth crops.
To handle the resulting famine, the United Nations created a Global Ecology Organization (GEO) to enforce compliance with Blight countermeasures. The U.N. also granted several firms legal status as "Incorporate States," allowing them to govern themselves independently. When the crisis ended, Earth reestablished contact with the colonists on Poseidon, first for research purposes, then in a rush for territory after scientists discovered a substance called Long John, which can extend a person's life considerably.
In current game time (2199 A.D.), the population of Poseidon has reached 1.8 million, comprising the original colonists' offspring (the natives), Incorporate employees, GEO administrative and peacekeeping personnel, sentient dolphins and killer . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: May 1, 1998
Copyright © 1998 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.
