Gestalt: The Hero Within
Characters in comic books have typically been symbols of intangible concepts such as Heroism, Evil and Strength, in addition to mythological concepts like Elements, Seasons and the Sun. Utilizing that idea, Gestalt: The Hero Within by Blackwyrm Games creates a world in which those concepts come to life. Gestalt, a new supplement to Mutants and Masterminds, looks to be a very positive additional campaign setting. The idea of Gestalt is to let the players themselves adapt their characters to these common ideals. The term “Gestalt” comes from the German word to literally mean “form” and/or “shape”; the belief that a whole is more than the sum of its parts. There’s a lot of material to absorb in this book – at 344 pages, roughly 40 pages of that being “crunch”, the rest is purely background and setting, which I think is fantastic.
We already have all the rules we need for a superhero game in Mutants and Masterminds, so why spoil it with a lot more rules? I strongly recommend this to anyone looking for a setting for a Mutants and Masterminds game, but it doesn’t provide much for players simply looking for a few more elements to add to their game.
The book begins with a nine-page story giving a bit of the background of Gestalt from one new gestalt’s perspective, which was well written and well illustrated. This bears a separate mention: the art throughout this book is top-notch for a third-party publisher. Throughout Gestalt you consistently find good, sound artwork, with only a few weak links throughout, which can be expected in any RPG book.
The Character Creation chapter is fairly short, giving a few rules changes, including something that I found really intriguing: Dramatic Editing. With Dramatic Editing, you are able to take what your character symbolizes and use it to edit the GM’s story. The example they give is in an adventure where, when a wild animal was dying, the Animal Gestalt used their Dramatic Editing to add that the animal’s mate appears at its side in its final moments. These are simple changes that give players some ownership of the story. This is achieved through simple Power Level checks, so they’re easy to remember.
The rest of the book covers the history of Gestalt-Earth going back to 1989 when the first gestalts appeared and began taking to the skies, as well as both heroes and villains from across the world. The history is definitely worth a read, as it covers a ton of detail, including great battles in history, various superhero awards ceremonies, and more. It really reads like you’re reading over the history of a legitimate comic book universe, with issue after issue leaping off the page at you. Some of the villains are comic book cheesy, like the Anti-American, a flag-burning sociopath whose archenemy is America Man, while others are quite intriguing, like Hel, the Norse Goddess of Death Reborn.
Gestalt has another whole section covering extraterrestrials, the “gestalt dimension” and everyday life in the Gestalt-Universe, all of which contain zero new rules. I may be emphasizing this a little too much, but it bears repeating: this book is nearly 400 pages worth of setting, which, from what I’ve seen, is unheard of.
The last section of the book has a fairly comprehensive set of character statistics and back story for most of the heroes and villains mentioned previously, which would have been nice to see placed together with the write-ups earlier in the book, but I can see why they did so. There’s an introductory adventure like there is in most books of this kind, and then the book ends with a nicely assembled index.
With a well laid-out format and tons of background and information, Gestalt is a book that anyone looking for a new Mutants & Masterminds setting can get behind.
Want to learn more about Gestalt? Read on…
- Atomic Array: Episode 019: Gestalt
- Black Wyrm Games: Gestalt Sampler
- Black Wyrm Games: Gestalt Player’s Guide
- Game Cryer: Gestalt Review
- Mad Brew Labs: Super Human Roleplaying in the World of Heroes, Archetypes and Modern Myths
- Uncle Bear: Gestalt: A Mythic Supers Setting
- All Games Considered: The Hero Within
- A Butterfly Dreaming: The Pieces of Gestalt
- The Bone Scroll: ‘G’ is for Gestalt
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August 9th, 2009 at 19:25
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