Pyramid Review
Virtual: A Hidden War Rages (for the d20 System)
Published by Fantasy Flight Games
Written by Travis Stout
Cover by Scott Schomburg
Illustrated by David Griffith, Brian Hagan, Scott Schomburg, & Tyler Walpoe
64-page perfect bound book; $14.95
The third of Fantasy Flight Games' Horizon titles is very different from the previous entries in the line. Where the genres of Redline -- High Speed Road Duels In A Post-Apocalyptic Future took you into a near post-apocalyptic future, and Grimm: Adventures In A World Of Twisted Fairy Tales into the land of twisted childhood fairy tales, Virtual takes you right inside your computer and through to the connections beyond. The inspiration for this supplement's genre is obvious -- the 1982 Disney film, Tron. It also differs from the other two games in the nature of its endgame. In Redline, the campaign came to an end when the characters mutated too far and melted into a mutagenic sludge, and in Grimm when the heroism of the children enabled them to escape the dark lands of the Brothers Grimm. In Virtual, the campaign comes to an end in the form of the silent and disruptive wave of an Electro Magnetic Pulse caused by a nuclear detonation.
Unknown to the real world of the Users or User Space, nuclear annihilation is only three weeks away at the hands of a rogue nation. Fortunately, in the virtual world of Program Space, where a minute in User Space equals a whole day, self-aware programs have six months to learn of the impending catastrophe, . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: June 11, 2004
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