Transformers Roleplaying Game: The Enigma of Combination review—Join together!

The Enigma of Combination sourcebook for the Transformers Roleplaying Game brings with it a whole host of features. This 120-page book is divided into 5 chapters. You’re getting:

• 4 new Influences.
• 3 new Origins. One for each of the original 6 Roles and 2 for the Mode Master Role.
• 8 new focuses.
• New General Perks. There is also a section here about how combining Transformers works.
• Some roleplay stuff and campaign seeds.

As always with Renegade Game Studios, the artwork is stellar in this supplement, and I feel like it’s much better in this book than in the Transformers Core Rulebook. I really appreciate the cohesion of this supplement. The book itself is gorgeous, too, and very sturdy. Although it’s on the smaller side, I didn’t mind either. There is absolutely no filler in this book.

What are Combiners and how are the rules?

The first chapter of this book breaks down what Combiners are and how they fit into the Transformers universes. Combiners are two or more Cybertronians that fuse and combine their Sparks. They’re broken up into a couple of groups:

• Gestalts: Typically giant and made up of 4-6 bots.
• Bonded Masters: These guys are about the size of an ordinary Cybertronian but they have a little bot that makes up the body.

To create a Combiner you have to have access to the Transformers Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, the process is pretty straightforward. If you want to play a Gestalt there are a series of perks you have to take that are already present in the sourcebook, such as Gestalt Combiner and Matched Combiner General Perk.

Combiners get a whole host of upgrades to their damage, health, and size. Once you combine you will also be using your highest Essence Scores, have a revamped look, and be as slow as possible. Here’s the deal, I love the rules for Combiners and how Renegade structured them. Any issue that I had with the layout of the rules for the Transformers Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook is completely gone in this supplement.

There is a section in this portion of the rules about fighting Combiners that I absolutely love. You can choose to attack the Combiner as a whole or single out a piece of it and damage a single target: Both options are extremely fluid in play and we had a lot of fun trying them out.

New Influences

You get a few new Influences in this sourcebook they are:

• Binary Bonded
• Morale Boosted
• Titanspark
• Gestalt Member

They might not stand out just yet but these Influences are so fun to use it’s not even funny. We had a great deal of fun with the Morale Influence which makes your character a walking source of inspiration for your team by allowing you to remove the Frightened or Impaired condition from your allies when you give speeches! We did use this during our testing of the book and it creates some awesome roleplaying moments.

My only issue with this section is that the options are kind of smushed together. If you’re not paying careful attention to what you’re reading a few of the Influences merge and the whole chapter cuts right into the new Origins. My issue with the blank space found in the Influence chapter of the core rulebook is gone here, everything is jam-packed with words or images. While this is sometimes detrimental to the flow of these specific chapters, I would rather have this over blank space.

New Origins

The 3 new Origins are:

• Charger
• Pillar
• Speaker

The new Origins in this sourcebook are truly awesome because not only do they add to the roleplaying possibilities, but they also have mechanical benefits that are on point with the Origin name. For example, Charger has an Origin Benefit that lets them be one size larger when Pushing or Shoving an opponent. These new options work fantastically with the new Influences as well. We put Speaker and Moral Booster together to create a bot that stands out as the speaker of the group not just in roleplay but in skill as well.

New Roles

The new Role Focuses are:

• New Analyst Focus: Hub.
• New Field Commander Focus: Team Leader.
• New Gunner Focus: Cannoneer
• New Modemaster Focuses: Bonded Master and Component Ace.
• New Scientist Focus: Counselor.
• New Scout Focus: Surveyor.
• New Warrior Focus: Pugilist.

We really enjoyed these new Role Focuses because they each feel thematically appropriate and blend into the base game well. Our Scout was having a field day with the Surveyor Focus in particular because he finally felt like he was scouting while we were playing. This Focus makes you faster, allows you to get a better understanding of the land your Transformer is operating on and much more. It feels better to play than the options present in the core rulebook.

Final Thoughts

There is a lot of love put into this sourcebook and it seeps throughout the pages in a way that I love. This time, it feels like the Transformers property was given the love and care it deserves, nothing in this sourcebook feels like it was added last minute to fill the pages.

The Armory chapter is one that I particularly like because it reads like they thought of everything when putting together the new rules. There are rules for upscaling weapons for characters who are a larger size. The rules are well written and although we didn’t get a chance to use them I appreciate that the option is present. There are new weapon traits and weapons as well, my group was partial to liking the new Assault Claw and Cluster Grenade. A whole section in the equipment chapter is dedicated to Cybertronian Artifacts. I didn’t get to use these while we were playing they’re pretty cool and offer a few unique gameplay benefits.

One chapter that I got a lot of use out of is the Threats and Allies chapter towards the back of the book. In this chapter, you get over 24 different options for new threats and allies which made setting up the campaign hooks in the final chapter much easier. Each of the options presented in this chapter are easy to implement into any campaign too, I know this because I put a few of the options in our longer campaign. My only nitpick is that I wish there was more artwork for each of the options.

Finally, the last section which deals with adding Combiners to your campaign is superb. There are rules for adding them to pre-existing campaigns and tips and tricks for making them work in your game as well as advice for making sure each player is part of the conversation around how their Combiner will look. The campaign seeds aren’t bad either and make for a quick and easy start to the new rules.

Although I have a few issues with this book, such as some of the chapters having no clear cut-off point and some of the artwork standing out as subpar, there is a lot to love in this sourcebook too. We were introduced to an element of the Transformers lore that we had never heard of before and thoroughly enjoyed our time with this sourcebook and will be using it again in the future.

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