Pyramid Pick
Aberrant
Published by White Wolf
Written by Robert Hatch, et al.
$24.95 ($29.99 hardback)
Aberrant is the second non-World of Darkness game produced by White Wolf. Set over 100 years before the previously released Trinity, Aberrant finds the players in the role of "novas," men and women possessed of superhuman powers and abilities. These powers originate an extra part to the nova brain called the Mazarin-Rashoud Node that enables a nova to manipulate quantum energies, such as electromagnetism, gravity, and strong and weak nuclear forces.The book begins with full-color section devoted to the background of the game in the form of flavor text. This nicely done section includes an interview with the first publicly known nova, a timeline from March 1998 to July 2008 (the official starting point for the series), reports, news clippings, memos and so forth. All of these media serve the same end: to give a sense of the novas' powers and how society reacts to them. An obvious theme throughout Aberrant is whether superhuman abilities isolate novas from the "baseline" world.
Project Utopia exists for that very reason. The Project studies nova powers and thereby assists them in coming to grips with them. The Project also employs novas to improve the quality of life on Earth through a variety of endeavors, including Team Tomorrow, a nova force that solves world problems. Project Utopia's goal is to show humanity that novas are humans too, albeit ones with incredible powers. . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: July 9, 1999
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