[HoE] Hell on Earth Radiation Screen, my $0.02

[Allan Seyberth <darious@darious.com>]

	The Hell on Earth Radiation Screen is the gamemaster screen for,  well,
Hell on Earth the post-apocalypse RPG from Pinnacle.  The Radiation Screen
comes in two parts.  The first is a 3-fold double sided and laminated
screen.  The side facing the players is in color and has tables for
weapons, armor, combat modifiers, damage, and a few other basic charts.
The middle section is filled with cover art.  On the inside you lose the
ranged weapons and armor, but gain the tables for fear, harrowed, movement
and a few others. It's in black and white with no artwork.  The adventure
is 48 pages in a 8.5x11 inch booklet.  It is in black and white, contains a
fair selection of artwork and maps, and has an easier to read and photocopy
HoE character sheet in the back

_Major Strengths_ 

	I thought the strongest part of the whole thing was the thought and detail
that went into the adventure.  It had almost everything that I as a
gamemaster look for in a canned adventure:  Detailed maps, appropriate
artwork that relates to the scenes, NPC motivations, intelligent NPCs, good
background and story elements, sections on what to do if the PCs derail the
plot at key points, and excellent detail all around.  
	One thing that particularly impressed me was the tactics used by the bad
guys in the first part of the adventure.  They are ruthless and
intelligent, but not overwhelmingly so.  The feel I got was that they had
set themselves up as strongly as possible given the limited time they had.
A group of PCs will have a tough time with them if they elect for a
straight up approach.

_Major Weaknesses_ 

	The screen itself has one major failing.  It's hard to read.  PEG used a
texture to simulate the look of a weathered piece of sheet metal, and the
black ink tends to disappear into the "tarnish" marks.  Combine that with a
fairly small font size and certain words and numbers just tend to vanish
into the background on the player's side.  The visibility is worse on the
black and white GMs side, where you don't have the contrast of color to
help.  I'll be printing out my own charts and paper clipping them to the
inside of the screen.
	Pinnacle had a similar problem with it's Deadlands GM screen, and I was
disappointed that they didn't prevent the same problems with this one.

_Strengths_ 

	That's not to say that the screen is worthless.  It fulfills the other two
functions of a screen, which is to protect the information and die rolls of
the GM, and it adds a good element of atmosphere to the gaming table.  It
is a quality screen and happens to look cool.
	It is made out of a heavy cardstock and is laminated on the player's side,
which will be useful in keeping it alive in the face of the inevitable soda
deluge.  It is heavy enough to not knock over under the impact of several
dice being rolled.  I used a handful - around 15 - of dice and rolled them
several times behind the screen where they would hit the bottom of the
screen in an "average" roll situation, the screen stood tall each time.

	Another strength is the $15 price tag.  Normally, Pinnacle products are on
the expensive side, balanced by a high quality standard that usually makes
compensates for the extra $5 or so bucks.  This time they kept the best of
both worlds, high quality and a decent price.  (I was honestly expecting
this to cost closer to $18). 

_Weaknesses_ 

	As for the adventure, I had only one real problem with it  - it suffers
from a friendly NPC who directs the storyline more then the PCs do.   The
start of the adventure is when the PCs are introduced to this NPC when he
is in need of help, and the rest of the adventure is the PCs following the
NPC around as the NPC lives up to his heroic nature.
	There is some room for PC importance, but all to often the plot is
forwarded by an action or "suggestion" of this guy.  
-------------------------------------------------
	I think that this is a great product - for the price.  Break it down into
it's two parts, and consider that your are paying $10 for a well thought
out adventure and $5 for a good looking screen to protect the GMs notes and
die rolls and the Radiation Screen comes out to be a "Very Good Buy.",
despite the lack of legibility of the screen.  
-------------------
Allan Seyberth
darious@darious.com

Why did the chicken cross the road:

Homer Simpson:
     "ummhuhuh, chicken..."