Pyramid Review: Wasteland (for Obsidian RPG)

Pyramid Review

Wasteland (a supplement for the Obsidian RPG)

Published by Apophis Consortium

Written by Micah Skarita, Fav Harnish, Brian Bradley, Tim Akers, and Mike Slivka

208 pages, $20.00

Obsidian is an almost fascinating game idea plagued by countless typographic errors, layout mistakes, and general amateurish writing and editing. Wasteland, the first supplement for the game, is a marked improvement over what has come before, but still far from perfect.

Obsidian takes place in our future, after Hell has consumed a large portion of the Earth and the "civilized" survivors of humanity live in a city called "The Zone." If you think of Judge Dredd you won't be far off. The best overview you can read if you aren't familiar with Obsidian is this review by Derek Guder on rpg.net. Outside the city is where Wasteland takes place: a devastated, desert-like environment where Hell has started to take over completely. It's another big "kewl" element to the entire game world and is explained in fairly good detail in chapter one.

Appearance

A 208-page softcover book with a beautiful cover by Christopher Shy and excellent print quality, the first hurdle a customer has to leap is the poor cover design. The title is in a "battered typewriter" font colored black on a very dark red background making it disappear almost completely. The text along the bottom of the cover, reading "A Supplement for Obsidian," is even more difficult to read. The back cover text is set in . . .

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



Article publication date: April 28, 2000

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