I've been a fan of Ubiquity powered games since discovering Hollow Earth Expedition and Leagues of Adventure. The simply d2 dicepool system that it employs and the innovative "take the average" mechanic makes for fast and smooth gameplay without loosing granularity in the mechanics. Initially I was skeptical about using a game that powered pulp adventures so perfectly for horror but the excellent Leagues of Gothic Horror put paid to that fear and I've been impressed by the versatility of the system.

Quantum Black was initially not a game that I was particularly interested in and I didn't back the original Kickstarter. I backed it's first expansion (Dark Designs) partly out of a desire for completionism of Ubiquity games and partly because I thought it would be useful for modern gear, etc for when I regularly hack HEX into different eras. On reading the corebook though I was really impressed by both the mechanical tweaks to allow for horror to really affect the characters and for the world itself and I now find myself really looking forward to running the game.

The setting is near future and provides a way to give missions to players (they all work for the shadowy Quantum Black organisation) without giving them legal authority or carte blanche to go in guns blazing. Horror is often about setting up tension within the players and this sense of needing to complete a mission, stop the horrors and their minions and yet avoid detection by the authorities or upset their employers does that before the group even know what it is they are supposed to be investigating. It also lends itself to both one shots and also episodic campaign play without needing to railroad players which is definitely a positive in my book.

The revised version of Quantum Black contains the same content as the original release, but in a leaner, cleaner layout which is signigicantly better to read on screen, and to my eyes at least, looks much better.

The game itself is the first game licensing Exile Games' Ubiquity Roleplaying System to be set in the modern era, and offers a fine array of gear and tech to live up to that. Characters will need it if they are to survive the horrors the concept of the game will pit them against.

In the vein of beloved games like Beyond the Supernatural, and Delta Green, Quantum Black posits that the things that go bump in the night are not just stories. The conceit of the game has characters working for Quantum Integrated Technologies, and they may draw from a variety of skill sets to earn their paycheques, be that in invesitgative, combat, or thaumaturgical capacities.

The game revises and expands on the Horror and Sanity mechanics present in Hollow Earth Expedition and Leagues of Gothic Horror, to make it a focal point of a visceral horror game, without assuming or requiring that characters will fall prey to it as a core part of play. Characters will be strongly affected by what they experience and do, but may prove to be able to tough it out in the end.

Quantum Black will enable GMs looking to provide a very fast-paced game dealing with uncovering conspiracies, horrors, and getting in the way of plots and creatures familiar to Lovecraft fans. Ubiquity is quick to pick up, flexible and powerful in play, and in this game will let players enjoy sessions which feel like (among other things... such as The Thing) the X-files, Millennium, or with some alteration of dates, Stranger Things.