I got my copy of the Ogre Book, Second Edition (OBSE) the other day. First thing I did was to flip through the contents: how much of this do I already have from the original Ogre Book and the healthy Ogre web page? Well, to be honest the very first thing I did was look for my two cartoons, so let me start this review by admitting my bias, and then try and help you decide if you need this book.
You need this book.
Physically, the book itself is beautiful. The crisp black borders and fantastic cover give the high-energy feel of the Last War without being garish. I've always appreciated the "hard scifi" feel of Ogre, as opposed to the outlandish vehicles and artwork in most sci-fi wargames. Much of the art comes from the original Ogre Book, from GURPS Ogre, or Winchell Chung's web page, but for those who don't have the first edition and don't roleplay, there's plenty of good drawings.
The contents break down as follows:
But how much is new? My count may differ from the official, but I saw seventeen articles from the first edition, five things which had been on the web previously, and thirteen new items. Some of these were articles from The Space Gamer from the eighties, and some have never been published before.
Highlights: Steve Jackson expands Garth Getgen's Kill The Howitzer excercise into a full-fledged scenario, David Pulver's discussion of present-day trends in combat doctrine that could lead to Ogres, rules for Ogre Squash, and Ken Hite's four alternate histories, where Ogre appear in Roman, Napoleonic, American Civil War, or Cold War times!
It would be easy to have too much fiction. You only need so much to set the stage, more than that just fills time and pages. The Ogre Book gives you enough to bring the game to life, to justify the scenarios and explain the tactics, but its not a book of dressed up replays.
There are not too many cartoons. That would be easy to do, I've seen many over the years. Only a few are here, some others are in the Murphy's Rules Book.
The three shortcomings are relatively small. First, there is not a lot of new art, most has been published in GURPS Ogre, or on the web. But since a lot of boardgamers aren't roleplayers and the first edition is hard to find, its probably a good thing they can get it here. Second, it would have been nice to have the original publication dates for the articles; there are brief introductions to each article, but they don't always mention when they first appeared, and things have changed over the years. I'm really picking nits here, but the third shortcoming is the typos. While we've come to expect horrendous typos, omissions, and contradictions from game companies, SJ Games has lived up to a higher standard, so its noticable that there are formatting tags visible in the table of contents, and the introduction refers to a present day MLRS tank with a 3mm crew. Nothing you can't live with, but if I didn't mention it you might think I am biased.
So what do you get if you buy this book? At twenty dollars, you're basically forgoing another game to buy it, so it needs to deliver. But buying the most games is not the goal, it's getting the most enjoyment out of your gaming hours (and dollars). The scenarios in this book are well worth playing, and most have proven replay value. Whether you prefer mostly HVYs or mostly GEVs, you'll find an article here that will make you want to try some new things. You'll re-think some things about the game, and you'll want to play. That's as good, or better, than a new game.
Finally, I have to commend Steve Jackson Games for not removing material from their web page when they included it in this book. Other companies have put some free things on their web page, and then later removed them when they included them in a compilation. I think its very cool of them to leave it there for those who haven't bought the book... yet.
Andrew Walters