Taiga (1997)

European version, edition 4.2

From the back of the book:

NO LAWS, NO SOCIETY, NO HOPE
You are not protected by any laws. Killing you is not a crime.
Calling the police is of no use, even if the phones were working.
Their job is to protect the real people from the likes of you.
You do not exist in official records.
Authorities could not care less if you starve to death.
If you are sighted where the ordinary people live, you'll be shot.
Of every 100 people in the world, 94 share your fate.

The doom of Humanity lies not in the atomic weapons or wars of ideas. It comes cloaked in hunger, disease and pollution. It comes when the Earth is too poisoned to sustain us all.

The rich and powerful have walled themselves off the world and live in their computer-controlled gardens, while outside the electric fences there are no laws, society or hope. Only immense mazes of decaying towns and hastily built beggar huts.
Beyond them lies the wilderness, where small communities here and there clench their teeth to defend themselves from the bandit hordes that rule the roads and bartertowns of the world. Mutants are hiding in the desolate reaches of the world and in the cities organized crime is trying to establish a society of its own.
Small kingdoms are founded on heaps of trash, only to be toppled by barbarian hordes on wheels.

This is the world of Taiga
Where people, plagued with mutations and new diseases, roam the dying world, searching for the peace and the future that is no longer there.

2039 will be the happiest new year yet!

User comment on the Foreward to this version

(Foreward by Ville Vuorela)
Vuorela states that European version 4.2 differs from earlier versions of Taiga by having been given more thorough proofreading, being printed on high-quality paper, having a different layout and including more illustrations.

However, one of the most obvious changes for players of earlier versions is the removal of cybertech from the game. In Vuorela's words "Taiga is not a cyberpunk game. Earlier versions did include rules for using and implanting cybernetics into characters, but they have been removed from this version because they attracted too much attention and disrupted the lotek-atmosphere of the game."

From page 159 of this version, the following future products were listed (in the following order) but as they don't appear on the Burger Games website, they have most likely gone unpublished: -
VTV102 Taiga: Supplement
VTV102 Roadgang Encyclopedia
VTV110 Taiga: Radical
VTV120 Taiga: Big Blue
VTV130 Taiga: Raider!
VTV103 Legacy Of The Golden Horde

The publisher, Burger Games, describes Taiga as: - "Nasty roleplaying game of a bleak future torn between totalitarianism and anarchy. Set in Central Asia of 2039.
Characters are wasteland bandits trying to survive by raiding government transports and agricultural settlements. Some dream of a better future or a revolt against the ruling government but most are just counting the days by the number of rounds left in their gun."