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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Handy Little Primer for Modern and Near Future RPGs,
This review is from: The BlackEagle/Blackeagle Operative's Kit /Tactics and Investigations Handbook (Millennium's End RPG) (Paperback)
This book is written in the style of a training manual from a private security corporation or organization (PSO). The private security company in the game forms the parent or patron group under which player characters (PCs) operate. The game in question is Millennium's End from Chameleon Eclectic and is a traditional pen-and-paper or tabletop role playing game (RPG).In some ways this game was ahead of its time in predicting the rise of PSOs in the 21st century. Many of us have read about groups like Blackwater based out of Atlanta, Georgia, USA which provides bodyguards to the US Department of State in Iraq. The designer of this fictional game world, and fictional company produced this real book to help fictional PCs who are new recruits and experienced operatives of the Blackeagle/Blackeagle Company handle themselves in a variety of circumstances. The original package came with the main training manual, an employee handbook, and a fictional employee newsletter. The newsletter is actually amusing with both intramural volleyball league scores and reports about operative cells being attacked overseas by a fictional Islamic terrorist organization. It offers a `slice-of-life' sample of what the RPG world was like for the PCs. It seems aimed at both the game referee or game master (GM) and the players to help them get in character. The employee handbook is actually similar to what you would receive at any modern company, with health care, life insurance, education and other details of what any employee would need to know. Again, this seems aimed at build the game world as a real place, against which the larger than life adventures of the PCs take place. These two parts of the packet, the newsletter and benefits book, help add depth to the game and make it seem more real. This tends to also make the game `gritty' and more realistic. The meat of the set, and any purchase you make should be the complete set, is the actual operations handbook. It has sections on investigations, records searches, building a legal case, tailing suspects, setting up safe houses, interrogations, raids, urban combat, rural combat, tactical movement, and other tidbits of action and adventure in an easily digestible format. The interior art is simple black and white diagrams of key portions of the primary text. The art is usually showing a key example from the text. The margins are very wide, so the book may seem a little thin, but my suspicion is it was designed to allow margin notes by actual users (in real life or in the fictional universe). None of the tactics or skills shown is secret. This is NOT a terrorist training manual; rather, it would be right at home alongside any of Tom Clancy's non-fiction books on the various service branches of the US Military. There are also a number of other non-fiction sources out there for much less than the above quoted price of US$191.00 (as of November 2006). However, this does have the advantage of simplicity and being on a number of different topics more in line with the typical PC group in an RPG. The author of this book has gone on to work for Wizards of the Coast on the D20 Modern line, and his style and thoroughness have remained consistent in those products as well.
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