The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Warning !

This review is about the French version of the Over The Edge (which is, strangely enough, written in the French language) surreal Roleplaying game and its differences with the US game.
I will mostly talk about those differences, but not really about the essence of the system and the background (there are other very interesting reviews on this site).

Physical Aspect : Art

The cover is very interesting. It looks a bit like the cover of the US first ed : a man in a tuxedo and a well-dressed woman near the edge of a cliff. On the cover of Conspirations, it looks like the ground just opened before their feet : the woman is nearly falling down and the man is holding her by the hand for her not to fall (or jump) down. They're in the middle of a pentacle (cut in half by the hole, and still crumbling down), nearby there's a suitcase containing lots of dollar bills, some papers and a gun. There's blood on the floor like if a corpse was dragged to the hole/cliff. We see two lights down the gap, like two eyes (or the lights of a car). The man is looking at the sky, horrified.
It's a very mysterious and beautiful cover, drawn by Andreas Martens (aka Andreas), a very famous Belgian / German / Breton artist well-known for his mysterious heroes (Rork the psionic "alien", Crowmell Stone the lovecraftian detective, Capricorne the "pulp" adventurer).
link : http://www.dossier-andreas.net/

The interior art is marvellous too, entirely drawn by Pierre Le Pivain, who previously illustrated French RPGs such as the second edition of Cyber Age or the third edition of Berlin XVIII. His style is very dynamic : full of black / white constrasts, sometimes sketchy but always realistic and striking. His style can be compared to Ron Spencer's, if you want a famous american example. I like it a lot.

Some graphic elements (the logo depicting a kind of demonic skull with a beautiful woman's face as his forehead) are from Denis Grrr, a french painter famous for his sick "gothic" art, and a frequent collaborator to RPG books (INS/MV, Dark Earth, Vermine, Conspiracy X ...)
link : http://www.d-grrr.com (not recommended for a younger audience).

Globally, the art is more X-filesque than the US edition (normal, considering that Conspirations came out in 1995, right in the middle of the X-file craze) : black suits and mirrorshades, strange lights, warped bodies, etc.

Physical Aspect : Contents

Conspirations is a 160-page black-and-white book. The excellent translation is done by Tristan Lhomme (who says it's one of his best works, and I completely agree) and the very good French scenario was written by Stéphane Bura.

It does not contain all the text of the US edition :

No detailed description of the barrios (those will appear in the Al-Amarja French supplement)

The three scenarios of the US edition have been removed (which is a good idea, IMHO)

The third metaplot (the game within the game) has been removed too

The conversion notes (for Nightlife, To Challenge Tomorrow, Bureau 13, CORPS and maybe another one I can't remember) have been removed as well. Dave Nalle and Greg Porter are credited, anyway (I guess it's a mistake, I doubt they've done something else than conversions notes).

The book is based on OTE first edition : of course the few things which were added in 2nd ed are absent (the society interaction table, reference to supplements ...)

There are some new things

new (or modified) details : see the following paragraphs

an original scenario has been added

I will not detail all the things which have been changed / displaced, but, to summarise, I can say that the French publisher has tried to make this basic book more "generic" and less focused on Al-Amarja (though it is still the place to go).

Here is a short table of contents for the book :

on the fold of the front cover : a short biography of Jonathan Tweet

page 5 : Table of contents

pages 6-9 : Introduction (same as the US version, plus a paragraph of the translator, explaining his editorial choices)

pages 10-45 : Système de Jeu (exact translation of the Player's Rules)

pages 46-57 : Background (a global description of what really goes on in the world, and the main global conspiracies)

pages 58-73 : Pouvoirs (Fringe Powers and Magic)

pages 74-81 : Sciences (Drugs and Fringe Tech)

pages 82-113 : Survol (the 11 pages about Al-Amarja, plus the descriptions of the main local conspiratory groups and people, without their game stats)

pages 114-134 : Maîtrise et Secrets (GM advice the two major plots)

pages 135-147 : Scénario (Par le Menu, see below)

pages 148-157 : PNJ (the game stats of the GMC's described previously, plus generic ones)

page 159 : A beautiful character sheet

on the fold of the back cover : suggestions of books to read, films to watch, etc.

Setting Differences

The most important difference between Conspirations and Over The Edge is the location of Al-Amarja. In the US version, the island is somewhere between Malta and Sicily. In the French version, it's right in the midddle of the Bermuda Triangle. The French publisher explained that they wanted to choose an exotic location for the island, not a place right off our coast. This location also explains some absurdities of the setting (the fact that the Island is culturally american) but it brings new absurdities as well (what are all of these Arabs and Vikings doing there ?). Al-Amarja is an absurd place anyway, so here we go !

Of course, the history of the island is changed to fit the new location : Monique d'Aubainne liberated the island from the Spanish, not the Italian. They have also added some nice elements to the Pharaoh metaplot (like Christopher Colombus landing on Al-Amarja, guided by a Glug agent) and useless but funny ideas :

Al-Amarja has got butterfly farms, which explains why probability is disturbed

people wear garrotes as ties (and not a noose like in the US version because Spanish criminals used to be strangled, not hanged).

Also, of course, more adequate French terms are sometimes replacing american ones. For example, The Edge (the city) is translated as Vertige (Vertigo), a decision I love.

Par le Menu (The French Scenario)

The scenario included in the book is excellent.

I won't tell the complete story, but I give away some elements :

It is designed to allow foreign people to go to Al-Amarja, at a party set up by Sir Arthur Compton (yeah !). They have a good reason for it (they know their minds have been manipulated, and want to know why).

Many groups are involved : Arthur Compton, several factions of Movers, Merlin (from the Arthurian legend, somewhat), an Ogre (with an interesting theory about their infinite hunger) and a Psychovore ... and more (Kergillians ...)

It involves mental manipulation and artificial memories (ala Total Recall) of which the PC's are victims. You may fear that this manipulation will annoy the PCs, but the scenario flows remarkably well (with some strangeness) and the manipulation is only evident in the last part of the scenario, when they realise lots of previous elements were wrong.

Despite the X-Filisation of the game, this scenario is still "mundane" in appareance, though very strange things happen.

You must be warned : the author has added some useless fantasy elements (like the presence of an alien not important for the scenario, satellite spies, etc.) : personally, I felt I had to cut away some of those elements from the scenario, but they're not that important.

Globally

The main book for Conspirations is far more beautiful and better organised than the original (though the separation of GMC's descriptions and their stats is kind of annoying).
I remember that, when OTE came out, I was really repulsed by its aspect ; on the opposite, the art of the French version was the main reason for me to buy the book. Leaving the description of Al-Amarja (and minor GMC's) out of the book was of course primarily a commercial decision, but the choice of this contents is well-done (I GMed a 5-session campaign basing myself on this book alone, and I never felt lost, lacking ideas and missing something ... except a map of the Island !).

There are no notable typoes, except the fact that they apparently hesitated between three titles : the game was first advertised as Al Amarja, which still appears on the logo drawn by Denis Grrr, and in one or two instances the game is named Vertigo in the text.
Personally, I would have prefered Al-Amarja over Vertigo or Conspirations. Maybe the explanation of this late title change lies in the delicate period (in summer '95 France suffered from a series of bomb attacks organised by extremist-islamic terrorists) and they decided not to publish a controversial book with an arabic name ... but that's just my personal paranoid interpretation.

Past Future

Conspirations was not really successful in France. After the main book, a screen was published (including two original scenarios) and a supplement too : Al-Amarja (containing the rest of the US text, some bits from the US supplements, original bits and three original scenarios). By the way, Al-Amarja was one of the worst-edited books ever to came out in French RPG history, which didn't help the sales.

Sometimes, we hear rumours of an original French supplement to be published for the game, but we've seen nothing new since 1996 ...

So what ?

If you already own Over The Edge, Conspirations is still interesting for its excellent scenario and beautiful art, but the differences are not big enough to be a worthy investment unless you're a collector, or some other reason (French-speaking players, etc.).

If you want to discover the OTE system, and you're not interested in the thorough description of a city, you might consider investing in Conspirations, a beautiful, well written and complete RPG, instead of the more detailed Over The Edge ... it's your choice.

And, of course, you have to buy the book if you can't read English, but then, why are you reading this review ??