Couldn't wait for Christmas, so I got up early this morning, cleaned the two bathrooms, kitchen, living room, parlor, wash room, vacuumed the rugs, swept and mopped the floors, dusted, cleaned all the litter boxes and helped feed all the critters and then meekly asked the wife for the loot to get Gate 22! So now a few hours later and having forfeited one of my days off work and the wife having pity on my great sacrifice granted me a most glorious boon and so now I am in possession of a PDF copy of GATE 22, a most excellent first section of a huge three-part module for the Corporation RPG by James Norbury.

ALERT - CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!!

As is my wont, I went straight for the ‘crunch’ and first perused the NPC section in the back of the book and absolutely loved the new critters, droids, BIOs, gangs, and mutant humans which filled 18 pages. Here is a partial list of what you will find there: The Evolved, Sons of Leviathan - Cult of Machina, the Counter Robotics Drone, the Aldiek Primary & Gamma Strains, Aldiek Agents, Rager Drug Abusers, Shi Yuriko NPC Agents, Archid & Pitt-Cat BIOs.

Next I looked at the equipment section (7 pages) which had a number of cool gadgets, drugs, cybernetics and weapons (My personal favorites being the unique Quad Barrel shotgun and the prototype Psi-Net).

I then did a quick once over of the mod itself and was impressed with the descriptions, maps and inclusion of ‘side quests’ allowing Agents the chance of picking up additional cash, items and XP outside the main adventure.

I particularly liked the way each location description was preceded by ‘scene atmosphere setters’ which should aid in bringing areas to life for the Agents. These include the typically encountered Smells, Sounds, People and UIG presence in the area.

System-wise the author does away with those pesky, often out of context ‘read aloud text boxes’ which weigh the story down giving GMs maximum control of the dialogue and scene descriptions.

I will stop there as I don’t want to give away too much but I whole-heartily recommend this module and easily give it Five Stars!

For more Brutal Games Goodness be sure to check out the other Corporation RPG Books as each one brings to life new corporations, equipment, cybernetics, telepathics and NPCs making this one of the best well-rounded, open designed settings out there today.

Lee Smith, 31 year Gaming Veteran