Review: Broken Earth

Broken Earth is a campaign setting at heart but its also a useful toolbox for running modern or post apocalyptic games.

What the book is what it says on the box. It depicts a campaign setting where the earth is, well, broke, most likely due to some kind of nuclear apocalypse. I went with Radiation Zombies. It goes partially into Kamandi-mode with races of intelligent apes and mutant freaks. It also assumes that psionics is the norm as opposed to magic.

Inside you'll find new archetypes, three new races, feats, mutation rules, some psionic powers, equipment and plenty of advice on how to run a Broken Earth campaign. If you're like me and you just want the crunch you can use for your own homebrew settings I could say, don't get the whole book, but get the Player's Guide which has a much smaller chunk of the book that's mostly crunch and player options. But that would be a disservice to the product, especially if you're a GM looking to buy. The setting and the various indexes and GM tools included are really handy, even outside of the specific setting inside.  Its mostly events and NPCs that can be placed into any similar setting and minor rules on handling the situations. This includes tables for random encounters and loot. The GM portion is just outright dense in material to use.  The only problem for me is that the specific campaign setting, despite having a lot of details scattered about is still rather vague so in a way you kind of have to run with it, meaning that you can be running Mad Max, Kamandi, Thundarr the Barbarian or Final Fantasy. It covers basic assumptions and has some organizations inside but really the transferable material is much more prevalent. I know I say that it's a 'problem' but if you're like me this is the best part of the book because I deal wit my own settings more often than I do written settings, especially when there aren't many prewritten adventures alongside.

The book also suggests using Anachronistic Adventures to round out the player options, and combined it does work really well, particularly the gear, I feel, fills in what Anachronistic Adventures leaves out.

Overall, if you want to run a post apocalyptic setting that's set on Earth or close to being Earth then I think this book is a must-have. Its just incredibly useful. If you just want some more crunch to add to the options in Anachronistic Adventures, then I would just get the Player's Guide. It's pure usefulness earns it 5 out of 5 stars.

You can find it over on Paizo.com here.