World War II Heroes – Players Guide

Game: World War II Heroes – Players Guide
Publisher: SteelMagic Studios
Series: d20: Modern
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 7th, August 2004
Reviewer’s Rating: 5/10   [ Perfectly acceptable ]
Total Score: 5
Average Score: 5.00

World War II Heroes is a d20 Modern PDF from SteelMagic Studios. At the time of this review and at RPGNow, there’s a discount of nearly %50. World War II Heroes is good value for money, but I find it a little too long. The portrait-size version is 134 pages and, as you would expect, the wide-size version is less than that at 99 pages. Why might that be too long? It’s a little too much. I like the history of this time, but the minutia of military detail can be overwhelming. I think I’d rather have a series of PDFs I could collect, pick, or choose from. SteelMagic could publish more little bits, and I could custom-buy PDFs to suit the battles and missions I want to roleplay through. The graphics aren’t oppressive either; printing isn’t too bad, so it is just a matter of picking a shape to fit you. Mind you the PDF does use background colours for decoration and so you may need to tinker with printing set-ups to cope with that.

In the introduction, we’re told we can create soldiers in any major nation involved in the conflict. We can’t, really. Oh… I suppose you can play an American soldier currently fighting in any of the countries or continents, or, say, a Russian native who’s wound up in the American army somehow… but, essentially you’re playing an American soldier.

The supplement introduces three new abilities. We have discipline, guts and leadership. Guts may sound awfully like willpower to you, and, in fact, in the description of guts, SteelMagic studios even uses the word “willing”. It’s a measure of how willing you are to do something which requires guts. Hmm. The success of details like this depends very much on the gaming group. The groups I tend to play with are rules light and story fast, so don’t need the extra county bits. Other gamers like to safely quantify and gauge important elements in the game. We’re told that World War II Heroes tries to be as realistic as possible. This is a d20 Modern game, though; this is a system where you can get better at listening by practising. Or, to be fair, you don’t have to practise at all. You can improve your listening by becoming an old and experienced artilleryman. Ultra-realism might be a problem.

The PDF uses a simple layout; three columns, with fairly tightly packed text (just about right) and coloured headers and footers. There are black and white photographs scattered throughout, which do succeed in adding that extra dose of authenticity. They’re black and white on purpose, I think, for uniformity. Even the American version of the Lord Kitchener recruitment poster is in black and white, not the usual red, white and blue. There are splashes of colour, however, as you read on down to division badges and rank badges.

The Recruit Class – American only – has one level. It makes sense. You have to start as a recruit, but you’re not a recruit for very long. I hadn’t seen the class system work so well before. After that, you can move on to become either a Ranger, Infantry or one of the Airborne. It is kinda a shame that there is this American bias – half the war is over by the time you can play a member of the US army engaged in mainland conflict. On the other hand, the PDF is large enough already, and the gaming market has its financial power (therefore product viability) in the States.

It’s all about training in the army (and this is an army product, airforce and navy aren’t covered). You need to bare with World War II Heroes now and then, let them make their point and then explain why. There’s a change in the Weapon Qualification rules. You know, qualify in a specific weapon rather than weapon type. You might qualify for the M1903A0 Springfield 1903 Bolt-action rile, for example, rather than just a rifle. The penalty for using a weapon you’re unfamiliar with has been reduced from -4 to -2, though. I wouldn’t say I liked this at first – but then you have to read about the drop from -4 to -2 elsewhere. Then, after discovering the stat change, too, I was won around. I believe many soldiers learn to re-load their weapons by watching and repeating. I can see how a rifle with a different style of clip or safety which works differently would be a thorn in the side. It’s not just about weapon qualification; the basic training package includes physical, combat, and military training. In the advanced training, the section includes the airborne / ranger school, engineer school, jump school, medic school, officer candidate school, sniper school and support weapons school.

As you would expect for a d20 supplement, there are plenty of new skills and feats. This supplement isn’t quite as “modern” as d20 modern, so a few skills have been edited and changed.

Much of the PDF is spent on equipment, weapons and stats – but World War II Heroes has plenty to say about the actual events and battles in the war. As a rather nice touch, the game proffers scenarios and adventures based on actual historical events. Backing this up, we’ve information on medals and awards. The Purple Heart – I discover -is awarded to people who get wounded on a mission. Heh. I thought it was for bravery or something! There’s some advice for the GMs on the tricky matter of running small-scale battles, and there is a touch of advice for GMs on the much more challenging matter of running large-scale battles. It’s so tricky, in fact, that SteelMagic Studios takes the sensible approach and encourages GMs to fudge it, concentrating instead on atmosphere (both in the game and by rolling dice and going “Hmmm. What’s your Defence?” in the metagame). There’s advice on how to handle mortar shelling and machine gun nests – again, you’ve got to fudge it and kill the NPCs first. If you’re re-creating the actual battlefield, then PCs are as likely to die as a random dice roll might indicate. I do wonder whether SteelMagic considered introducing a Luck attribute to the game too.

Navigating the PDF isn’t as easy as it could be. World War II Heroes isn’t a candidate on my to-print list. My few test pages were hard enough on the printer. The internal bookmarks don’t work (at least on my copy of Adobe, there could always be software problems on my end), and on the wide-screen version, the page numbers on the table of contents don’t actually match the page numbers. SteelMagic must have produced the portrait version first and then converted the game to the wide version.

I suspect World War II Heroes will appeal to gamers who like World War II as a game setting. I think the PDF could do with a little bit more spit and polish. Bookmarks should work. The typo under the very first photograph stands out a mile. Realism was a goal for this supplement, and I think that was a tough ambition to have. SteelMagic has done quite well there. World War II Heroes for d20 Modern is accurate, and I do think it’ll help a GM conjure up battlefield atmosphere or the tension of all-important secret missions and raids. It is a shame that the introduction might lead you to believe you’re getting more than just the American army here, but it’s understandable why that’s not the case.