Pyramid Review
Access Denied
Published by Biohazard Games
Written by Jeffrey Barber and Greg Benage
$15.95
When it comes to Game Master Screens, I'm really of two minds. My first instinct is that they tend to be overpriced for what they offer, but I also like how a lot of information can be consolidated into a single place.But for the richly detailed Blue Planet (a May 1998 Pyramid Pick), I was willing to pay nearly $16 for the simple tri-fold screen and 28-page booklet that make up Access Denied.
Truth be told, the screen is very nice. Three 11" x 8.5" pages of coated cardstock are filled on the "players' side" with full-color geographic maps of the main land masses/settlements of Pacifica Archipelago. The maps are rendered as satellite images, complete with clouds obscuring bits of open water. One annoyance is that the scale of the maps varies from image to image, but this is not a serious problem. For detail, you are going to want the maps from the main book or the Archipelago supplement.
The GM's side of things rounds up the usual GM-screen items: weapon and skill tables, hand-to-hand combat, damage effects, hit location, various difficulty modifiers, etc. It also includes some nice extras, such as a quick reference for NPCs and a 30-hour clock for keeping time on Poseidon.
The accompanying booklet helps round out the package. It includes 11 pages of adventure seeds (28 in all) that run the gamut from corporate espionage to mysteries to aborigine resistance . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: December 3, 1999
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