Since its first publication in 1997, Blue Planet has earned wide acclaim for its deep, detailed, and realistic setting. The 2025 Recontact edition overhauls the game's presentation, bringing it to a new generation in two big volumes with evocative art and top-flight production values.
As in both previous editions, the year is 2199, and the water world of Poseidon is poised on a sociopolitical precipice, rife with narrative tension and storytelling potential. "Recontact" is the term used on the water world of Poseidon for the fateful day in 2165 when the UNSS Admiral Robert Perry entered orbit around the planet, "reestablishing contact" with Earth 69 years after the original colonists were abandoned. Now, just a few decades later, the colony planet faces ecological collapse from biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and climate change.
The 332-page Blue Planet Recontact Player's Guide describes Poseidon's two-century history of settlement, the genetically modified humans and cetaceans who thrive there, and the Incorporate States that have sent waves of new prospectors and opportunists to plunder the world for its life-extending mineral, Long John. The 120-page equipment section gives a huge range of high-tech hardware, wetware, and vehicles. The book includes extensive advice on the best ways to enjoy the game.
The character creation and rules systems take up just 40 pages of the 332-page Recontact Player's Guide. The new Synergy rules emphasize capable, goal-oriented characters who can change Poseidon and, more important, know what they want to change and why. You can play an unmodified human (a "monkey"), a genetically engineered aquaform water-breather or transhuman, or a cetacean. (Play a killer whale! With a rocket launcher!)
Characters have four Base Attributes (Cognition, Psyche, Coordination, Physique); optional custom-designed Focus Attributes such as Calculating, Deceptive, or Adorable; and up to eight freeform skill sets based on the character's expertise and personality. In ability tests, you roll one to three d10s against an attribute + skill target number. Your character also has unique Tags, Tracks, and Ties that represent current story situations, emotional or mental conditions, and relationships. These often lead to conflicts that drive your personal narrative.
Action scenes proceed in rounds of unspecified length, with each character getting one action per round. The initiative system, a pain point in Second Edition, has become in Recontact a smoother sequence of attribute rolls against Coordination or Cognition. Synergy combat remains realistically dangerous. Weapons hurt you bad, and yet your own pistol won't even puncture the thick hide of a lesser white sea serpent. Even with advanced medical tech, a serious wound can lay you up for weeks.
Learn much more at the April 2021 Kickstarter campaign page and the Biohazard Games website.
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