Infinite Worlds: Atlantropa describes an alternate history setting where some nutters actually went and dammed the Strait of Gibraltar. Its 20 pages long (24 if you count the title and index) and costs $7 as a .pdf.
The first eleven pages are the “History” chapter and provides detailed justification for why anyone would do something like this. It also sets up the factions that the book deals with in the next chapter. It does its primary job pretty well: the scenario certainly makes Atlantropa seem plausible enough. There isn’t much here that’s actionable in RPG session, though. I would have preferred if this part were a bit shorter and more space were devoted to things immediately useful in a game.
The second chapter, “The World of 2020” covers the present day. Basically, it’s the geopolitics of 1984, but with four countries instead of three. Europe and Africa are a complicated mess modeled on the EU; the western hemisphere and South Africa are a pre-cyberpunk corporate hellhole, while Communist China and the Soviets exist but are out of focus. The dam screwed up everything ecologically; terrorists have made frequent attempts against it for various reasons.
Unfortunately, the book doesn’t give much guidance on adventure hooks or where individual characters could fit into the setting. The latter is much more important than the former, because certain kinds of adventures are going to want certain kinds of characters. This isn’t to say the book provides no hooks – the third chapter has three (two of which interesting to me). However, the hooks provided are very small scale; the vast majority of the book’s content is high level political stuff that PCs in those kinds of small scale operations aren’t really going to interact with much.
The vendor blurb gives on potential adventure goal as “Save the Amazon Rain-forest,” and the book will tell you all the ways it’s in danger – basically, everything that’s hurting it in real life plus the absence of Saharan sands blowing over the Atlantic and feeding the jungle much-needed phosphorous. As far as actually saving it, though, you’re kind of on your own. The issues described are wide-ranging and systemic.
The rest of the book links brings in the Infinite Worlds factions and describes seven setting variations. In short: the Infinite Worlds factions aren’t doing anything interesting here. The setting variations each get a sentence or two, and a good chunk are boring Alternate History clichés like a “Man in High Castle Nazi Atlantropa,” an “Alexander Atlantropa,” and a “Georgian/Victorian steampunk Atlantropa.” At first glance one, “Aquarius-2” seems intriguing as a 70s New Age urban fantasy thing where the project messed with Europe’s ley lines, but if you read a bit further it’s basically just Shadowrun with modern technology instead of sci-fi gadgets. Or GURPS Technomancer with elves and hydroelectricity instead of furries and a-bombs, if you’re more familiar with that.
The other two that stand out are the “clock-punk” variations: a Muslim Spain fantasy version of the setting and a version where Hapsburg Spain hired Dutch engineers to build the dam; the Spanish consequently stay Europe’s dominate power.
The strength of the Infinite Worlds series line rests on the sheer variety of good ideas its books bring to the table. In my view, alternative cross-genre setting books out there such as BESM: Multiverse or Monte Cook’s The Strange aren’t worth getting because they don’t have any exciting, creative ideas in them. Infinite Worlds: Atlantropa has more than in those books, but not many more.
Get if you want a digestible, RPG friendly description of the ecological and topographic effects building a big wall between the Pillars of Heracles, or if you like the idea of a by-the-numbers dystopian-punk setting. Otherwise, I can’t really recommend it. I might use it once or twice in my current Infinite Worlds game, but I don’t see getting more than that out of it.
