This is a superhero game set during World War Two.
The characters are Allied soldiers fighting the Germans (did I need to specify
that?). The historical setting has been slightly altered to include the actions
of superheroes (called Talents) fighting in the ranks of all sides. The biggest
part of the book is a very detailed timeline of the war that includes most
important events, altered a bit to include superpower activities. A chapter
is devoted to life in the United States in the forties, describing such elements
as the media, the political arenas and the public sentiment, the popular mindset
of that time period in the USA. Another chapter describes some of the weaponry
used in WWII; the list is confined to personal firearms, land vehicles and
artillery. The book contains a lot of material concerning the creation and
realization of games and campaigns (in this instance the word is restored
to its military signification). A selection of objectives and situations are
described and can be used as the skeletons around which a GM designs gaming
events. A lot of friendly suggestions provide GMs with sound advice on running
a game.
The default setting of the game lets players create characters with a single or a few superpowers. The way the game works ties powers to the character's psychological makeup. Self-confidence is important to use superpowers and is reflected by the Will stat, which fluctuates during the game. The characters described in the rulebook provide examples of how the psychological buildup of a character is relevant to the first manifestation of the character's powers. The default setting is very likely to be deadly and generate high character turnover if the GM and the players are not careful. Characters are still generally vulnerable to weapons, and a fight between Talents often involves expending the will points that fuel their powers at a very fast rate, possibly depleting their reserves and rendering them unavailable for a while.
The character creation mechanism is very flexible. The powers that can be created include hyperstats (very high rating in stats such as coordination or brains), hyperskills (very high ratings in skills such as jumping or brawling) and miracles (anything else). Flaws can be taken to acquire more points during creation to improve certain aspects of a power at some cost.
Here are a few examples of Talents, the superheroes described in the book. The first "superman", Die Flieger, appeared in Germany; and can fly at supersonic speeds. A squad described in the campaign section has members who have the following powers: one of them can teleport clothes off someone, another who is scared of guns can see them through objects (like walls) while another one can fly but only at height under 40 ft. (he is afraid of heights). A woman can scream so loud she destroys almost anything, splitting metal, cracking stone and liquefying flesh. A nazi Talent can remove inertia from any object, living or otherwise, putting them out of synch with the earth's rotation and thus flinging them off into space.
The rules use pools of 10 sided dice to determine outcomes. A pool can never contain more than 10 dice. Any match (pairs, triples, etc.) indicates success and is called a set. The value of the matching numbers (height) indicates the degree of success and the quantity of matching numbers (width) indicates rapidity of execution. Usually, a pair of ones is enough to succeed at any task. Opposed tests are set against other characters' results. The GM can also require a minimum "height" for some particularly difficult tasks. In combat, the height of a set indicates the hit location; 10s mean a hit to the head and 1s indicate a hit to the left leg.
This set of rules has the unusual quality that all actions are rolled at once in a combat round. Here is what a combat round looks like:
All characters, from the least perceptive to the most, declare their actions. All characters roll their actions. The widest set (biggest quantity of matching dice) goes first, ties are resolved by the height of a set (highest numerical value of the dice). The actions are resolved. Any character that is hit removes a die from their matching sets, possibly losing actions if it reduces a set to a single die. This type of initiative resolving can make combat rounds pretty long and can involve throwing a lot of sets of dice since each NPC must roll his action before anything is resolved and all the results must be taken into account to determine the order in which actions take place. The way damage is calculated on each limb, the torso and the head can also complicate the act of keeping track of exactly what is happening, encouraging a lot of "winging" from the GM. Crafty GMs can find ways of circumventing the issue and Hobgoblynn Press provides Dice Rolling Software on their website. The complete rules of the game can be downloaded gratis on their website and I strongly suggest a visit through the link below. Although it is not explicitly stated because of license reasons, the manual also provides a complete d20 format of the game as an appendix, amended to reflect the specific characteristics of the game.
Godlike offers an innovative game system as well as a captivating background setting. It is a very interesting game. I particularly like the way superpowers are sometimes portrayed through a kink in the character's psyche.
