The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Now I lay me down to sleep I pray John Tynes my soul to keep

Oh, there's just no beating around the bush. I don't love this game! Don't get me wrong. I want to love it so much. There are so many things about it that are so right. But then there are so many things about it that are so, so wrong.

Anyone familiar with my style of reviewing will know that I banter a lot, but in this instance I think I'll pass on it. You see, there's just no getting around the way I waited for this game, I longed for this game, and now this game has let me down. Cut to the chase.

PRESENTATION

Okay. The art isn't to my liking. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but this beholder doesn't like this art. Art isn't all there is to presentation, of course. The style of the writing is very good. It does what the writers obviously wanted to do. Just through the voice of the text, one can feel what the game is supposed to be about. Dark'n'gritty.

SETTING

This is the high and the low point of the game for me. I love this background, I just want more of it. We're given around twenty-five pages of setting information, and then it was on with the show.

Everyone else whose done a review of this game has, no doubt, already told you what it's about. Magick is real. There are 333 cosmic Archetypes to be filled up in the Statosphere before the world begins again. You can become one, or you can become an Avatar for an Archetype that already exists. Or you can just try to get temporal power for yourself before the world ends. Then there are the other players in the game, Alex Abel and his New Inquisition, the Naked Goddess cult, etc etc. Unfortunately, one or two paragraphs on each of these is -not- enough. Maybe I'm greedy. Or maybe I'm just used to White Wolf giving me lots of purty setting material, even in their main books. Either way, I was a slight bit disappointed here.

RULES

Ugh. This is where the game falls apart. Well, in my opinion this is where the game falls apart. It's percentile based. The closer you get to your skill, the better you do. If you get a match, you do especially well or especially poorly. I don't mind that in the slighest. Flip-flops, hunches and cherries, though. These sorta get to me.

Some skills are 'obsession' skills. If you're a magician, magick is your obsession skill. If you're a fighter, fighting is your obsession skill. If you're a photographer, photography may be your obsession skill. Whatever your obsession skill is, you can flip-flop. That is, if you roll a 45, you can make it a 54. I think that this was probably just added to make up for the fact that even if you play Ansel Adams, you can't start with Photography above 55%. This ability to flip-flop your obsession skill makes a 55% more like an 80%.

Then, if magick or fighting are your obsession skills, you get cherries. This means that if you get a success and a match (22, 33, 44...) you get some special result. If you get a match and a failure, you get some ugly and special result. Now for the magick, this almost makes sense. You're bending reality, so you end up bending it more than you wanted and giving yourself a little bonus on your next roll. With straight-up fighting though, the cherries make little sense. You hit someone and get a matched success, you might get them in a death grip. Didn't want to get them in a death grip? Okay, then you knock them down. Didn't want to knock them down? Then get rid of the cherry system and just double their damage when they get a matched pair. Ta dah.

Hunches mean that they can make a roll now, and use it for their next action. What's the point? Well, if the roll well, they can save it for an action and know that they have an insured success. If they roll poorly, they can do something stupid and fail at it instead of failing at something important. It's an addition that I don't really think needs to be there, but one that, if you really dig it, can certainly fit into any game.

MAGICK

I don't care for the magick system, either. Some other reviews have compared it to Mage, with a lot of disparaging remarks toward that other game. Mage is a great game. This magick system is not meant to be at all like mage. Which is good, cos if it was, Mage would -so- kick its ass. A quick summary:

There are numerous different magickal schools, but there are three different levels of magick. Minor, significant and major. To do a minor spell you need a minor charge, a significant spell a significant charge, a major spell a major charge. Pretty easy. How you get charges depends on your school. There are three different kinds of spells. Rituals, which anyone from any school can learn, formula spells and random spells. Formula spells are like rotes from Mage or formula spells from Ars Magica, while random spells are spontaneous magick worked off the cuff. Each school of magick tells what kind of random spells can be performed.

Charges are difficult to get. I don't mind that. What I do mind is that they're much more difficult for some people than for others. A Cliomancer (history magician) has to go to some place peripheral to a famous person or event to get a minor charge. A Dipsomancer (boozerhound) takes a slug of whiskey. Then there are some charges that don't really make sense. Like for Pornomancy (use your imagination), you have to have sex in a way similar to the Naked Goddess. As if, somehow, sex magick was never performed before the Naked Goddess ascended. Or for Dipsomancers, you need to drink from a glass owned by a famous person to get a significant charge. Why? Historical significance is the Cliomancer's domain, not a Dipsomancer's.

The fact that getting a major charge is a difficult task does not bother me in the slightest. I could see an entire game based around the idea of trying to find a rare cask of beer, or a site no one had visited in years.

Then there are the schools of magick themselves. I like them, but I don't like them. Some of them aren't very clearly defined. Clearly defined? Magick? ANATHEMA! No, really. Pornomancy gives you some domination over lust and desire and sensuality and etc etc, so what exactly does Dipsomancy give you? Its spells are a hodge-podge of spiritual manipulation (which I don't mind, spirits and spirits and all) telekinesis and soul drinking. And then under the domain of random magick, it says that Dipsomancy allows for flashy effects. I donno. It's like they changed writers right in the middle there.

Then the worst part. The power of the magick you can perform depends wholly on what sort of charges you have. A powerful magician is one who got to Graceland first last tuesday, not one who has studied his art for twenty years. Your magick score is based on a percentile, but someone with 30% in Pornomancy can perform any spell that someone with 70% can. Yes, the 30% guy will have a much smaller chance of it succeeding, but that isn't the point. There should be a limit on the magick available. Arete. Arts/Forms. Hell, even class level. There should be something which makes a more skilled magician more powerful than a less skilled magician, other than the roll of the dice. Access to better spells, to better innate abilities. I donno. I just know that in my game, this is all gonna be changed.

Oh, and the governing attribute for magick is based on Soul, which is like how compassionate, charasmatic and deep your character is. Don't care for that, either.

MADNESS

Yes, they've taken CoC's Sanity to the next level. There are five different kinds of madness. Violence, the Unnatural, Helplessness, Isolation and Self. If you fail a check for any of them, you walk one step closer to madness. If you succeed, you become more hardened, but also more callous. Callous people aren't popular, because they tend to spook folks. There are numerous in-game penalties for being callous, but any good RPer is more gonna worry about the fact that his callous PC is now a real bastard to be around.

I like this. I really, really like this. Only one problem; it's based on the Mind stat. So smart people are more apt to become cold and distant, or something like that.

I understand that they wanted to make a stat light game, but if you're going to toss in extra stats that are based on other stats, you need the other stat to make some actual sense. Rant done. Apologies to the women and children.

OVERALL

Overall, it's a game with a lot of style, but whose substance needs a little work. A lot of work, really. I'm probably going to buy the next books for this game. I do want to just absolutely adore it. Right now though, I just can't.

I will say that John Tynes is still one of the best adventure and sourcebook writers working in the industry today. I hope that he doesn't stop working on Delta Green and other Pagan projects to work wholly on UA.

Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 3 (Average)