Broken Compass What If?

CMON, the current owners of Broken Compass, have been slowly releasing the books in the second Broken Compass Kickstarter in pdf to drivethru. (When and if there will ever be a physical book reprint is unclear. There have been conflicting reports.) The latest of these is What If? It's a book of 14 "mini settings" adding to the pulp, pirates, and Verne style Voyages extraordinaires setting books already available. I've been anxious to get my hands on this book for some time as I knew it had rules adaptations for some genres I was interested in.

So, what's it got?

• Cosmic Horror for Lovecraftian stuff. It's got new rules for Madness. This one is a bit of an odd fit for BC as it's a game of cinematic action heroes, but they make a few suggestions to up the lethality.
• Space Opera is particularly geared toward a Star Warsian setting, giving rules for Energy (the Force) and succumbing to Darkness--and also for beam weapons that haven't appeared in any setting before.
• Gods and Men for Hercules and Xena style adventures. It would also work for things like the Clash of the Titans remake, and probably the Harryhausen Greek myth films or even Sword & Sandals movies. It has rules for Mythological Adventurers (demigods, exiled gods and the like).
• Good Boys, an animal adventures (typically pets) setting. It includes Animal Tags (which could be some use in creating nonhuman alien tags for a Space Opera game, now that I think about it)
• Fantasy Quest for D&Dish fantasy. It has the rudimentary magic system and rules for fantasy races. I'd choose it over D&D to play something like the Dungeons & Dragons movie! :D
• High School for stuff "kids on bikes" fare or stuff like The Faculty or a number of CW shows.
• Last on Earth, a post-apocalyptic setting. It has "Danger Clock" rules for impending doom.
• Black Light is a classic cyberpunk setting. It has rules for Grafts (cyberware).
• Toon City is for Who Framed Roger Rabbit? or Cool World type games, though you could probably ditch that angle and just use the rules for a toons game. In addition to toon characters it also gives rules for "stuffed" characters, so you come do Muppet movies, too.
• Urban Legends does X-Files or Warehouse 13 sort of stuff. It could probably also be used to set up a GvsE thing, too. There are rules for playing Supernatural entities.
• Leaving Wonderland has a narrower premise, I think, than the others. It's about trying to escape a weird, fantastical world like Alice in Wonderland or Labyrinth. There are rules for creating a random Wonderland.
• High Noon is an Old West setting. It's got Quick-draw Duel rules.

There are also guidelines for hacking the Broken Compass system, and a couple of adventure set ups.

While not all of these settings are things I see myself playing, all of them give rules that I could see myself kitbashing to make up other stuff. As such, this is a really useful book for BC fans. One caveat: in order for these settings to stay "mini" they reference material presented in the other, full setting books. If this is the only BC expansion you buy, you aren't going to be able to use it's contents to the fullest.