Welcome to Poseiden, 2199 AD

Prepare for a compelling journey into humanity’s future on a distant planet where life is hard and dying is easy. A world where GEO Marshals enforce the peace and wired mercs patrol deep waters in deadly fighter subs. A place where corporate greed and human desperation ravage an alien ecology, threatening to plunge humanity into a war of survival with an ancient legacy.

Welcome to the world of Blue Planet

Whether you are new to the Blue Planet universe or a veteran moderator, this book contains information vital to running exciting and effective adventures on the new frontier.

Regional maps and descriptions detailing the topography and history of the most

heavily colonized region on Poseidon - the Pacifica Archipelago

Key maps and detailed descriptions of more than twenty colonial, Incorporate, and native settlements

Classified information on Incorporate, GEO, and native activities on Poseidon

Dossiers on more than a dozen of the planet's most famous and infamous personalities

Biological survey data on the planet's wondrous but often-deadly indigenous lifeforms

Revealing biological and cultural information on Poseidon's aborigines

- From the Blue Planet V2 Moderator's Guide -

The Moderators Guide is the second book you will need to run Blue Planet V2 properly. It’s another hardback masterpiece with great cover art and loads of great gaming ideas. It’s basically one of those books, which is full of stuff the players either don’t really need to know or shouldn’t know, not just yet anyway. After all it’s so much more fun to let the players point and laugh at the ugly monkey, all the while blissfully unaware that 3 other ugly monkey’s are having a good look through their kit and eating the shiny bits. The book has been very well written and laid out, with each section giving you information on relevant subjects and detailing the planets colourful background.

There are four chapters making up the book, which take you on an entertaining journey through the ins and outs of Blue Planet. There is also the standard foreword telling you about how great it is to be a moderator if you do it properly. One of the best things about this book are the maps… no I’m serious take my word for it. They help to give your players a feeling of the size and scale of the islands their on, and it shows them how far away they are from the nearest source of help, which is always good for those isolation adventures.

The first chapter is about the actual planet your on (in the game). It starts out by zooming right out to give you a bit of background on the Serpentis System. We are then taken to Poseidon, which is the watery Earth-like planet that the game is set on.

The rest of this mammoth chapter deals with the islands and the major cities, towns, villages and settlements on each one. Each of the places visited are described in detail with information on the local economy, the population, the history, the geography, the allegiance and the general mood. There is also a bit at the end of each of the descriptions telling us about assorted NPC’s who can be found at each location and it tells us a bit about what there up to and why. These NPC’s are worth introducing to your players as they will more than likely have various missions to offer and will certainly help you out if you ever run dry in the story department.

"Pay attention, here comes the science." Yes I know it was better coming from Jennifer Aniston, but what does she know about roleplaying? NOTHING, unless Brad Pitt’s a sneaky AD&D fan of course. This is a reference to a shampoo advert with Jennifer Aniston in, just incase you we’re wondering. Anyway back to the point.

Chapter two is used to give you some factual information on how things work when you’re messing about in the water. It has sections on things like breathing underwater and tells you how your senses will be affected when you’re below the waves. It also has a few examples of the kind of beasts you could come across as you tour the islands. These have been thought out well and can be used to give your islands a bit more life, their also good to stamp out any thoughts the players may have about their position at the top of the food chain.

Chapter three, Aliens, and they sure aren’t from the film. This chapter is about some of the sneaky stuff that nobody but the moderator should read. If the players stray into this section then may they suffer the wrath of evil flying chimps with spears. I’m not going to go into any detail over this bit. I think it will be sufficient to say that the moderator should read this part of the book a couple of times to make sure they understand what’s going on. It would be a shame to waste an idea this good.

The final chapter tells you a bit about what happened to Earth and why. It then goes on to tell you about the major factions in the game. The Global Ecology Organisation (GEO) is like the UN, it was set-up to help sort things out on Earth and is now policing Poseidon. The Corporations are also covered in this section. These are all huge businesses, some are well behaved and even considerate to the planet, others are complete git's and are here to make money regardless of the consequences.

To sum it all up, If you have the Players Guide and you plan on running a Blue Planet Game then you should splash out on this book to. It’s stuffed full of interesting ideas for storylines and has loads of information to help along any gaming ideas you may have.

This book was well worth the read and looks good to boot.

Reviewed By Jon Simpson