Pyramid Review: XWF and Expose: Aberrants (for Aberrant)

Pyramid Review

Aberrant: XWF, by Rob Hatch

Expose: Aberrants, by Greg Stolze

24 pages each, $4.95 each

The latest sorcebook for Aberrant, XWF (short for Xtreme Warfare Federation) is a mini sourcebook (24 pages) detailing professional wrestling in the world of Aberrant. Now, if you don't like professional wrestling, I've got two... I mean, this likely won't interest you, even if you like Aberrant.

Me, I've always liked it (even in the dark years, when I wasn't watching any). The ideas in it make me tingle, even if the matches are fixed, the characters tend to verge on a number of rather nasty -isms, and the constant face/heel (good guy/bad guy) switches verge on the ridiculous.

Heck, I've even used this idea before, creating a Champions character who was a wrestler. Of course, that was a lot more four color than XWF is.

XWF does a good job translating professional wrestling into the world of Aberrant. It doesn't make it a central part of the world, but does make it interesting. There's also a fair bit of stuff on starting an XWF campaign. The federation is divided up into various "circles" which is there to keep wrestlers alive (not all novas are created equally), and statistics are given for the champs and number one contenders of each division.

It wraps up with a couple new combat maneuvers (wanna slap a piledriver on some jabroni? Go right ahead!). What it's missing is a few pages on constructing nova wrestlers & their characters (what backgrounds do . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: March 10, 2000

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