Recently, over the course of the last several months I got to take part in a playtest, as both a playtester and a peer reviewer. I'm not sure how much of a "peer" I qualify as. I'm not the one with with dozens of articles under their belt, nor am I the one who wrote a game that turns the standard role playing convention of "attack strangers and take their stuff" and turns it on it's head with "be nice to people, and maybe you'll get your soul back, because it's hell on earth being Dead Inside". I'm not the one who got nominated for an Origin award.

Sometimes I turn my powers of bitchiness nitpickiness to good, and he, chadu gave me the chance to do that with the playtest and review for Truth and Justice.

I love superheros, there's something about the idea that just strikes a cord in my soul. What I really love to do, is to tweak the genre, to look at it through another lens. Superheros in WWII? Boorah! Supers in Sumeria? Sweet! Samurai Supers? Oh my yes... and of course, Pirate Supers, to a very different Carribean was where I took sbloss, karjack, cmdr_zoom, and kireishojo in our playtest, and they want to go back.

I've played a fair number of supers games over the years, and run a game or 5 in my time. They all had one flaw - I could simulate the powers but I couldn't get the flow down... the feel of it. That's where T&J comes in. It isn't about accurately reproducing the speed of a car travelling at 45mph towards Superguy as he stands on the freeway, and how much damage that car is going to do and take from the impact. It's about the fact that Superguy's best friend is behind the wheel, because that's the way it happens in the books is what's important. This is the first game I've read where capturing the feel and flow, making it so you're playing a superhero and not a damage dealing machine, is what's important.

Reading the rules... it was a rush. I had ideas, lots of ideas, probably more than I'll ever have time to run. Giant Robots? Slight tweak, and away we go, perhaps tell the story of a certain land where Chaos and Order strive amidst the balance, or just about anything else for that matter. Sbloss has a long running game involving a certain Moon based Sailor, and damn, if T&J wouldn't be the perfect system for when she picks up the game again. To many ideas, those are the problems I like to have.

So, if you like "mad, beautiful ideas"* (and if you're reading my journal, I think it's a given you do), hi thee hence to RPGnow (or wait till it's at E23 if that's what floats your boat) and pick up a copy.
And while you're there, you can read about a certain Biomechanic in Dial S for Superhumans. My own little contribution to the game.

*As chadu would say.

Go on, get! What are you waiting for?!? That file won't download itself.