by Grant Hill

Fantastic Worlds, from Rattrap Productions, is neatly summarised by its subtitle “pulp action in the far reaches of space”. Although the rules are self-contained, they do use a modified version of the .45 Adventure rule system, also from Rattrap Productions. Fantastic Worlds is written by Marc Andersen, and there is a demo version that includes an exclusive scenario available to download. Rattrap provided a copy of the PDF version of the rules for this review, which is available for download at a price of $12.00 US. Printed versions of the rulebook are also available at a price of $18.00 US.

First Impressions

The Fantastic Worlds PDF is 130 pages long, with the covers in colour and the contents black and white. The style of the layout should be familiar to anyone that has read a Rattrap book in the past, the text is presented in a single column with a banner running down the side of the page displaying an illustration of a space scene (a star, a planet and a moon if my basic grasp of cosmology is correct). There are a couple of extra illustrations breaking up the rules, these are reasonably well done and capture the pulp Sci-Fi feel well so I wouldn’t have minded seeing a few more of them. There are also some photographs of miniatures used both as diagrams to clarify rules and as artwork. Personally I would have liked to see some colour used within the rules, especially in the photographs, but I guess Rattrap wanted to keep the PDF consistent with the printed version and it helps keep costs down for those wanting to print the PDF. One advantage of the PDF is that there is no issue regarding the size of the font, you can simply zoom in to reach a size that you’re comfortable with. Almost all of the text is on a white background, again ensuring legibility and perhaps suggesting you could print it on cheap wood pulp paper.

The book is broken down into several sections:

• Main rules (19 pages)
• Character creation (42 pages)
• Equipment and skills (12 pages)
• Scenarios (4 pages)
• Campaigns (4 pages)
• Experience (6 pages)

The book is then rounded out with sample scenarios, markers and blank character sheets.

Fantastic Worlds also includes a few short story sections featuring one of the adventures of the heroic Kip Kincaid. Once again this fits the pulp Sci-Fi bill and helps set the scene for some “pulp action in the far reaches of space”.

The Rules

The rules are based on those introduced in .45 Adventure and will be familiar to those that have played Rattrap games in the past. Readers who find themselves in that category may want to simply skim-read this section until experience is discussed. The rules allow each player to micro-manage individual characters that are usually grouped together into teams, with games often played with a handful of models per side.

Page sample. Click to enlarge

All of the dice mechanics in Fantastic Worlds are d10 based, with two types of test: unopposed and opposed. In the former, a die is rolled, the relevant characteristic stat is added and if the result is equal to or greater than ten the action is a success. Modifiers can also be applied to the roll to represent the difficulty of the action, for example a particularly heroic action may suffer a -3 penalty. Although this may sound like it has the potential to be cumbersome and difficult, the rules do a great job of explaining it along with some good guidelines of what action deserves each level of modifier. This also means the rules are not over-engineered by attempting to set down rules for every type of action you can imagine. Opposed rolls are utilised, as you may have expected, when your character is attempting to outdo an opponent, in this case each player rolls a d10, adds the relevant stat, and the highest total is the victor.

The stat categories for a character are summarised as:

• Grade – how “heroic” the character is
• Brains – intelligence
• Brawn – physical strength
• Guts – bravery and morale
• Ray Gun – shooting and throwing
• Blade – close combat
• Dodge – reflexes
• Speed – movement on the ground
• Flight – movement in the air
• Flight/Dodge – reflexes while flying
• Weapon Strength – amount of damage a weapon inflicts
• Defensive rating – armour value specific to a damage location

A characters stat chart also includes a list of damage locations, each of which has several wound levels. As the character takes damage, wound levels are marked off and this may lead to reductions in stats or other location specific penalties. Some locations have fewer wound levels than others, for example it may take six points of damage in the legs to reduce a character to crawling, yet three points of damage in the head would render the same character unconscious.

Fantastic Worlds art sample

Character creation and scenario selection will be covered later in the review, so let’s crack on with the in-game rules. Each turn starts with every player rolling a d10 to decide who takes the initiative. The player who wins gets to activate any one of their models first, before play alternates between characters depending on their Dodge level. The highest Dodge level characters are activated, in initiative order, before the next highest Dodge level, and so on. When activated a character can usually only take a single action, such as Move, Shoot, Close Combat. Some actions combine two single actions, such as Move & Shoot, but this leads to large negative modifiers (-5 in this case). One action that is handled slightly differently to the others is the Wait, in which a character delays their action to use it as a response to the actions of an opposing character. Think of it as an upgraded overwatch.

Players choosing the move action can move their miniature up to their Speed stat in inches. At this point the rules indicate that the recommended board size is 24 x 24” and that players may want to adjust these distances if they want to play on larger boards. The rules covering terrain effects seem purposefully brief, essentially suggesting that players should agree before the game begins what movement penalties the terrain should have. Some suggestions of effects are also provided as part of the creating scenarios guidelines. Height of terrain is covered by a levels mechanism, that is again decided before play starts, e.g. a large hill may be level 2 while normal ground level is level 0. Rules for climbing, flight and falling are all based on this levels system and seem to cover most situations I could think of in the pulp Sci-Fi context. As a brief illustration, it takes two actions to climb a single level and above ground level Dodge tests are required in order to move. Failing the test means the character falls and takes damage based on how many levels they fall. The abstraction of terrain into levels also allows some flexibility in the scenery employed; a cliff that is only 15 cm tall can represent a huge level 4 structure that could equate to a 100 m drop for your characters.

As usual, combat is divided into close combat and ranged combat with similar mechanisms for both. A weapons chart is provided that covers generic classes of weapons ranging from fists and blades, through crossbows to ray guns. Weapons have four possible ranges (close combat, short range, medium range and long range), although most ranged weapons have the close combat section of the chart crossed out and most close combat weapons can only be used in close combat or thrown at short range. Each range band is then divided into three stats: the range for that weapon within that range band, a to hit (TH) modifier and a weapon strength (WS). Taking the example of an improvised club, it has a close combat range of 1”, a TH of 0 and a WS of Brawn + 1. It also has a short (thrown) range of 3”, a TH of -2 and again a WS of Brawn + 1. Ranged fire is resolved as an opposed roll between the shooters Ray Gun stat and the targets Dodge, with modifiers for cover, height differences etc. and if the shooter wins he hits the target. Close combat is very similar only with the Blade stats used for both characters, the margin of victory matters in this case as different effects are produced depending on how badly (or not) you beat your opponent. These effects range from pushing the opponent back to knocking them over. There are additional combat rules that cover most common situations for detailed skirmish combats, such as disarming your opponent, combats with multiple participants from both sides and combat when one or both parties are flying.

Damage is resolved via the damage boxes mentioned earlier, each location has set values that correspond to the outcome of d10 roll. For example rolling a three may result in the damage being applied to the legs, depending on the actual character hit. If the WS of the attacker is equal to or greater than the defensive rating (DR) of the location hit then one box is marked off in the location (moving left to right). It is still possible to damage an opponent who has a higher DR than your weapons WS, but the defender gets a type of saving throw in the form of an unopposed test that adds the difference between the DR and WS. Multiple wounds are caused by having a WS that is double or triple the defenders DR.

As mentioned previously, the damage boxes also indicate a reduction in stats or more serious types of injury that are applied to the character as they take damage (see the example damage boxes above). If the character falls unconscious (a particular type of damage box), then obviously they can do little until they come round again. Although the procedure for a character regaining consciousness is covered in the rules, it wasn’t immediately obvious when the test (Brains -1) should be taken. We applied a bit of common sense to come to the conclusion that a character would do this when they are activated. When a model regains consciousness they also have to make a Guts test or suffer the effects of panic, where they flee from the table.

The main body of the in game rules are rounded out by rules covering vehicles and mounts. Being pulp Sci-Fi the vehicle rules tend to assume some sort of anti-gravity system for vehicles, although it shouldn’t be much work to adapt these for “primitive” wheeled machines. In keeping with the rest of the game the vehicle rules are pretty generic, with different classes that cover fast manoeuvrable machines through to heavily armoured but slow moving tank-like vehicles. Movement of vehicles is covered by several stats that also take some account of momentum, they have a movement from standstill rating, acceleration, deceleration, a minimum speed and a maximum speed. Interestingly vehicles activate at a different time to their pilots as the vehicles use their current Speed as their Dodge stat for activation while the pilot acts at their normal Dodge level. There are rules covering vehicles going out of control, characters jumping from moving vehicles and for vehicles crashing. When anti-grav vehicles take sufficient damage (they have a hull strength and number of wounds) they start to fall towards the ground, resulting in eventual crash damage. Mounts are again very generic, with small, medium and large variations, and add an additional stat line to the models character sheet. The model uses the mounts Dodge and Speed, and if the model is hit in the legs there is a 50% chance that the damage is applied to the mount instead. Mounts that take damage will also try to throw their riders, with a Brawn test made to avoid hitting the deck.

The rules governing character creation then follow. Characters are split into different Grades: 3, 2 or 1. Grade 3 represents the most heroic and Grade 1 are more like grunts. Teams can be balanced by having the same number of grade points, but Rattrap do point out that a single Grade 3 might not be equivalent to three Grade 1 characters. It was nice to see that there is a “Red shirt rule” that makes it easier to play a scenario that requires loads of Grade 1 cannon fodder by allowing them to be amalgamated onto a single character sheet. This reduces the book keeping involved in generating and running a small army of basic troops or wave of creatures. The character creation process is quite involved, an archetype is chosen (with many examples such as Star Commander, Mad Scientist and Amazon provided in the rule book) that provides the basic character sheet, before customisations are applied in the form of attribute points. Each archetype has a set number of attribute points to spend that can be used to increase stats or buy additional equipment and skills. A list of physical features for aliens (at least those species that seem alien to humans) are also provided, each giving both advantages and disadvantages. Each character also has a Virtues and Flaws number and although there is a list of possible items, it’s not totally clear what to do with them until the section on robots is read.

Character sample. Click to enlarge

Robots, which can only be included in a team if one of the characters has the robotics skill, are treated much like other characters, again there are multiple archetypes provided and robots may take specific flaws, such as “poor reflexes” which reduces its Dodge by 2, to increase its number of attributes (we assumed this is how the Virtues and Flaws worked for biological characters). Robots have to remain close to their master to remain fully under control, and damage to vital parts can also force a roll on the “Robot Out of Control” chart. As you might expect, this can lead to your robot doing some random movements/attacks or even falling under the control of your opponent.

The section on creating your own scenarios is reasonably brief for what some people will find a difficult topic. The tips included do seem to be valuable though. Scenarios in Fantastic Worlds, certainly those that are included in the book, tend to use “encounter markers” that can represent any number of things from monsters, to clues that the characters are searching for, some good suggestions for possible encounters and how to use the markers are provided. For example, an encounter marker could represent a clue that the teams need to accomplish their mission. The clue could then be obtained by moving to the marker and passing some sort of test, perhaps a Brains test to simulate the team solving a puzzle, which provides them with the location of the item they are looking for. Closely associated is the information on campaigns, again this is quite brief but covers most of the salient points and passes on some worthwhile tips.

Experience

The next section is one that may be new to existing Rattrap players, experience. This allows characters to progress, in a fashion reminiscent of a role-playing game, over the course of a campaign. At the end of a game each team is awarded a number of two different types of experience points, Heroic experience and Reputation experience. While Heroic experience is used to advance a character, Reputation is used to purchase equipment and replace Grade 1 models. Guidelines for how many experience points of each type to award for various actions are provided, for example the team earns 4 Heroic points for taking part in the game and victory in the scenario gives 5 points. To increase an ability (or add a new one) costs 5 Heroic experience points, but there are a couple of conditions that go along with this. Firstly, a character cannot go beyond the maximum ability level for their archetype, and secondly the character must then pass a Brains stat test. The character can also attempt to jump to a new archetype (e.g. from a Grade 1 archetype to a Grade 2) for 20 points, again requiring a Brains test. Permanent injuries also make an entrance into the game, with severe damage taken in one game meaning a character may have to sit out a set number of games or maybe even lose a limb. Although resolving this appears to be complicated at first glance, there is a clear path through a set of tables to guide you through resolving this damage.

Included in Fantastic Worlds is a set of pre-designed scenarios, along with pre-generated characters, that can be used to get you up and playing straight away. As these scenarios were used in the testing of the game for the current review, they will be covered in the next section.

In Play

Although the Fantastic Worlds rules covered all of the situations that came up during our testing, they remained easy to get the hang of without too much referring to the book. A large part of this is thanks to the game using only two different dice mechanics and including largely generic rules for modifiers depending on how heroic the action is that the players are attempting. In my experience generic rules can often turn out to be dull when put into practice, but this was not a problem for Fantastic Worlds. Perhaps this is down to the game being so scenario driven, it is more like you’re taking part in an unfolding story and the rules facilitate this instead of getting in the way with reams of tables trying to account for every possible situation with its own set of requisites and modifiers. One slight downside is that there were occasionally lengthy discussions about whether an action was simply difficult (giving a -1 penalty to the test) or should be classified as heroic (-3). As a group we decided that one player would decide how heroic an action was for a full game, and a different player would decide for the next. If still in doubt, we ruled on the side of the “good guys”, this is pulp story telling after all.

As the rules are designed in a streamlined manner the pace of play is pretty fast, just like you’d imagine it would be from reading an old pulp novel or comic, and the alternating turn sequence allows quick reactions to the opponents move and stops players getting too bored while the opponent hogs the action. This feeling that you’re part of the story is further enhanced by combat being resolved by opposed rolls, which again keeps all players interested in what’s happening. The pace of the rules mean that a scenario is generally over pretty quickly and often I found that games would finish after around 30 min to 1 hour, depending on how many and how complicated the scenario events are. The plus side to this is that a larger multi-part scenario can easily fit into a single evenings gaming session.

Action shot

There are three scenarios included with the Fantastic Worlds book:

• Peril of the Mystery Ship
  two teams race to the wreckage of a crashed rocket ship. The contents of the ship are then revealed as one of three random encounters: a rebellious Queen, the plans for a massive ray cannon or the survivor of an alien attack.
• The Robin Hood of Regallus VII
  a solo-play scenario where the team of a master thief must find a way past advanced security robots to break into a safe.
• Malice in the Palace
  a three chapter scenario surrounding the assassination of the alien King. Kip Kincaid needs to find out who did it and fast…

At first this doesn’t seem like many scenarios, but Malice in the Palace is essentially three inter-linked scenarios so it may best to think of it as five, still more scenarios would always be welcome. My group got through these pretty quickly so it would be great to see some kind of Fantastic Worlds scenario book in the not too distant future (pun in no way intended). Otherwise, it’s up to the players to think of their own. I was recently inspired by some of Bob Olley’s psychic mutant scrunts to create one of my own scenarios, only to discover the one thing that seems to be missing from Fantastic Worlds; there are no rules for psionics or other mind-powers that fit so neatly into the background material (although they are rumoured to be included in an upcoming expansion).

Experience or some form of character advancement was an oft-cited request by players of other Rattrap systems, playing the same character over several adventures without them progressing at all was sometimes a little frustrating. The rules introduced in Fantastic Worlds address this in a relatively straightforward way: do things well, earn points, make the characters better. It also seems to be reasonably well balanced, despite my best efforts to turn Kip Kincaid into Superman his advancement is always reigned in by the limits of his archetype. The permanent injuries are also a balancing factor, you should have seen the look on my face when Mad Doc Brown, the stranded Star Command specialist who had risen to be the mad scientist leader of the planet Zob XIV, suffered permanent brain damage from a sneaky attack by a Grade 1 Alien. Resolving character advancement does take time, especially when you have a potentially long list of advancements, recruitment and equipment upgrades to choose from, so it’s worth remembering to budget for it when planning a gaming session as it’s far better to resolve it straight after play has finished rather than try to remember what you did last week.

Conclusions

As mentioned earlier, Fantastic Worlds was provided for review as the PDF version. I personally find that this distribution method has a number of advantages and disadvantages. On the negative side, printing out the PDF would potentially be more expensive than buying a printed copy when you factor in the cost of paper, ink/toner and some sort of binding, yet I find it reasonably difficult to read long documents on a computer and having to keep my laptop within easy reach during play isn’t particularly convenient. This would potentially be less of an issue if you had a PDA/smartphone or similar that is capable of reading PDFs. This is balanced out somewhat by the fact that you can search the PDF for the game term you are looking for, making rule checks very quick and easy. There is also instant satisfaction in that you receive your rules within moments of purchasing and this can be a big plus if there is no distributor in your country. I think the important thing here is that Rattrap offers the choice, and you can select the medium that best suits your own needs. Both versions of the rules are priced very competitively, in fact at $12 or $18 including all the rules and enough scenarios to keep you occupied for a couple of gaming sessions I would go so far as to call them a bargain.

Many people reading this review will have realised that Fantastic Worlds shares many characteristics with role-playing games: detailed rules, character creation and advancement, and it focuses on detailed scenarios that are part of a story telling process. These elements aren’t as strong as they are in a pure RPG and it still retains a miniatures game feel with a fast pace to the game and no need to fully play out every interaction between characters. Additionally, each player still controls several different models within their team.

Obviously this is a game that requires involved scenarios, and while those included in the book do an excellent job of recreating a pulp Sci-Fi story you will soon be wanting more. Creating detailed and fun scenarios (and the characters to go along with it) is a time consuming process, you can easily expect to spend more time getting the scenario ready than actually playing it. This isn’t necessarily a criticism, simply a statement of the type of game this is. Although some people will take enjoyment from crafting their own pulp situation and getting it ready for play, if this doesn’t sound like something you or anyone in your gaming group is going to want to do then this probably isn’t the game for you.

Away from the issue of the investment in time required for further scenarios, the fast and generic rules are a lot of fun. They provide a simple framework before getting out of the way and letting you get on with the adventure. If you’re the type of gamer that likes detailed and involved rules then you’re not going to find them here. However, if you want to play pulp Sci-Fi as a fun story resolution experience and don’t mind the extra work in preparing scenarios and creating characters then you really should look no further.

If you’re interested in Fantastic Worlds then I’d like to suggest you download the aforementioned demo version of the rules and try out “The Lost City of Nasdith” scenario, it’ll give you a taster of what to expect and, best of all, it’s free.

Pros

• Fun rules that cover a wide range of situations without bogging down
• Fantastic price
• Experience rules for character advancement
• Three pre-generated scenarios included

Cons

• Creating scenarios/characters requires a large investment of time
• More scenarios would attract more players
• No rules for psionics or other mind-powers
• Generic/vague rules might not be for everyone