Pyramid Review
d20 Apocalypse
Published by Wizards of the Coast
Designed by Eric Cagle, Darrin Drader, Charles Ryan, & Owen K.C. Stephens
Edited by Tammie Webb Ryan
Art & Graphics by Dave Johnson, Kalman Andrasofszky, Grafiksismik, Inc., Karl Kerschl, Ramon Perez, Chris Trevas, Dee Barnett, & Kate Irwin
96-page full-color softcover; $19.95
As they progress through different genres, it seems the Wizards of the Coast are refining their focus into ever-smaller chunks of roleplaying. Their d20 System books went through fantasy and Modern, then spun off a smaller Future reference. Now they've lopped off a still-tinier slice called d20 Apocalypse.
d20 Future covered the after-the-holocaust setting in brief -- covered a number of things briefly, in fact -- but only grazed several targets in favor of tools needed to build one's own futuristic campaign from the ground up. You'd think that would mean that, with a whole book given over to the apocalypse, there'd be room for the in-depth material missing from the parent volume. And you'd be wrong.
This book is the roleplaying equivalent of a drive-by shooting. It comes in low, strafes some pretty specific marks, and moves on with little explanation. To be fair, the subjects it touches on are important to most campaigns set after Man's fall. There's some stuff about rebuilding things, vehicles specifically, and it glosses over the details. It forgoes whether you've found the right Chevrolet distributor cap in favor of generic considerations . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: September 16, 2005
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