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Abyss is a roleplaying game with a cool concept. It takes place in the Hell described in Dante's famous poem Inferno. Players roleplay demons, which begin as lowly sergeant class and ultimately work for the Archfiends. All this takes place in Hell, which is divided into nine circles, of the topmost being the somewhat familiar Limbo. So far, this seemed pretty interesting to me, so I bought the game.

There is an old cliché that one should never judge a book by its cover. This is especially true with Abyss. The cover was done by Brom, an artist who is probably most familiar to players as the guy who did a lot of art for TSR's Dark Sun campaign setting. Brom is an excellent artist. I would imagine he is also expensive, so I figured if Global Games (the makers of this game) could afford his services, they must be doing well as a company and thus making decent products. Remember that I came to this conclusion based solely on the book's cover.

Even if one glances through it, it doesn't look bad--at least not initially. The art--which is a mishmash of styles--is overall not too bad. The page layouts are all right, but they are not particularly pleasant to look at. I found reading the Italics-type font they used especially difficult, and they used it for pages at a time. The biggest problem I have with the layout is that there are a lot of gray screens behind the text, and many of them are so dark they make the text difficult to read. The book is also not well bound. Mine, which has barely been used, has pages falling apart despite the fact cover itself is in pristine condition.

Abyss uses six-sided dice for everything, making it nice and universal. Unfortunately, this is the only simple thing about the whole game. The initial explanations about character creation and how to play the game are overloaded with terminology and, after reading just one page, overwhelming. Characters are created using Soul Points, and skills, attributes, and so forth are "purchased" using them. Sixteen character archetypes are provided as templates for quicker character creation as well, since there are no character classes.

There are two major problems with character creation. The first is that the book never explains exactly how a character is made from beginning to end. I kept reading but never understood how to make a character! Among other things, I never knew how many Soul Points to use. I thought perhaps I had missed something and that the book did explain how to make a character, so I had several people read it. No one found it. The second major problem with the character creation system is that is spread out across so many sections, but maybe that is just an extension of the first problem.

Figuring that maybe I could patch a character together using an archetype, I moved on to read about the combat system. Now, I should mention Global Games has another game called Inferno out on the market that is a warplaying game that takes place in Dante's Inferno, and that Abyss is basically the roleplaying extension of that game. Thus the combat rules for Abyss are based on those of Inferno. And that is the worst mistake of them all. I've never played or read the rules of Inferno, but if they are anything like the combat rules for this game, I doubt anyone plays it!

For each combat turn, each player has a number of Action Points, which are spent to do anything, like swing a sword or cast a spell. The trouble is, characters might have up to 15 or more Action Points per combat turn, and these points might allow a character to perform three or four actions. With this sort of system, a single turn can take a half-hour or more! And here is one of my greatest criticisms of this game: complicated combat rules are fine for warplaying games, but the for roleplaying games they need to be kept simple. The key word here is "roleplaying," and if players are spending all their time in combat, they have little left for the roleplaying part of the process.

A gaming storeowner once told me that what sells a roleplaying game is not the game mechanics (those can always be corrected in the second edition, he said) but rather the concept itself. After all, games like Deadlands and Vampire: the Masquerade had cool concepts but not the best systems in the world. Overall I would have to agree with this, but Abyss is the exception to the rule. It is a really cool concept but the system of game mechanics is so awkward and the book is so badly written (in terms of explaining things rather than actual grammar) that it is completely unplayable! Don't waste your money on this game--assuming it is even still in print. I bought it last year and would have put in a review then had I known about RPG.NET.

There are worse things on the market, but they have come out of basements and startup companies that folded three months later.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 1 (I Wasted My Money)

Abyss
Author: Marco Pecota & Wes Johnson with Decius, Steve Patterson Category: game Company/Publisher: Global Games Cost: $25.00 Page count: 160 ISBN: 1-896983-00-6 Capsule Review by Mark Strecker on 10/20/98. Genre tags: Fantasy Horror	Abyss is a roleplaying game with a cool concept. It takes place in the Hell described in Dante's famous poem Inferno. Players roleplay demons, which begin as lowly sergeant class and ultimately work for the Archfiends. All this takes place in Hell, which is divided into nine circles, of the topmost being the somewhat familiar Limbo. So far, this seemed pretty interesting to me, so I bought the game. There is an old cliché that one should never judge a book by its cover. This is especially true with Abyss. The cover was done by Brom, an artist who is probably most familiar to players as the guy who did a lot of art for TSR's Dark Sun campaign setting. Brom is an excellent artist. I would imagine he is also expensive, so I figured if Global Games (the makers of this game) could afford his services, they must be doing well as a company and thus making decent products. Remember that I came to this conclusion based solely on the book's cover. Even if one glances through it, it doesn't look bad--at least not initially. The art--which is a mishmash of styles--is overall not too bad. The page layouts are all right, but they are not particularly pleasant to look at. I found reading the Italics-type font they used especially difficult, and they used it for pages at a time. The biggest problem I have with the layout is that there are a lot of gray screens behind the text, and many of them are so dark they make the text difficult to read. The book is also not well bound. Mine, which has barely been used, has pages falling apart despite the fact cover itself is in pristine condition. Abyss uses six-sided dice for everything, making it nice and universal. Unfortunately, this is the only simple thing about the whole game. The initial explanations about character creation and how to play the game are overloaded with terminology and, after reading just one page, overwhelming. Characters are created using Soul Points, and skills, attributes, and so forth are "purchased" using them. Sixteen character archetypes are provided as templates for quicker character creation as well, since there are no character classes. There are two major problems with character creation. The first is that the book never explains exactly how a character is made from beginning to end. I kept reading but never understood how to make a character! Among other things, I never knew how many Soul Points to use. I thought perhaps I had missed something and that the book did explain how to make a character, so I had several people read it. No one found it. The second major problem with the character creation system is that is spread out across so many sections, but maybe that is just an extension of the first problem. Figuring that maybe I could patch a character together using an archetype, I moved on to read about the combat system. Now, I should mention Global Games has another game called Inferno out on the market that is a warplaying game that takes place in Dante's Inferno, and that Abyss is basically the roleplaying extension of that game. Thus the combat rules for Abyss are based on those of Inferno. And that is the worst mistake of them all. I've never played or read the rules of Inferno, but if they are anything like the combat rules for this game, I doubt anyone plays it! For each combat turn, each player has a number of Action Points, which are spent to do anything, like swing a sword or cast a spell. The trouble is, characters might have up to 15 or more Action Points per combat turn, and these points might allow a character to perform three or four actions. With this sort of system, a single turn can take a half-hour or more! And here is one of my greatest criticisms of this game: complicated combat rules are fine for warplaying games, but the for roleplaying games they need to be kept simple. The key word here is "roleplaying," and if players are spending all their time in combat, they have little left for the roleplaying part of the process. A gaming storeowner once told me that what sells a roleplaying game is not the game mechanics (those can always be corrected in the second edition, he said) but rather the concept itself. After all, games like Deadlands and Vampire: the Masquerade had cool concepts but not the best systems in the world. Overall I would have to agree with this, but Abyss is the exception to the rule. It is a really cool concept but the system of game mechanics is so awkward and the book is so badly written (in terms of explaining things rather than actual grammar) that it is completely unplayable! Don't waste your money on this game--assuming it is even still in print. I bought it last year and would have put in a review then had I known about RPG.NET. There are worse things on the market, but they have come out of basements and startup companies that folded three months later. Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 1 (I Wasted My Money)