The Inside Scoop on Gaming

There are some things about Heaven & Earth that are going to alienate more than a few people, so I'm going to get them out of the way up front.

First, the game is diceless. A deck of playing cards is involved, but only for special plot contrivances.

Second, H&E messes with traditional RPG structure. It recommends letting each player run a stable of characters, similar to how Ars Magica does it, only here PCs are ranked by importance to the plot instead of by power level. It also includes a system for devising symbolism and subplots for every game session, and even suggests groups blur the GM/player divide and let different people handle plot and description in mid-session.

Third, most of the game background will only be revealed bit by bit over the course of the game's supplements. If none of that sounds too bad to you, there's a good chance you'll like H&E.

Superficial stuff first; the layout is decent if not terribly inspiring, but on the up side it's usually not difficult to read. What little art there is consists of computer-altered photographs, and while none of it's as tacky as some of the stuff from Immortal, none of it is as good as Christopher Shy's late output either. For the most part I thought the art was a little ugly but not really off-putting, considering that I wasn't buying this for art anyway. It does have both a table of contents and a short index. Too many typos; maybe one every 5-10 pages. It doesn't hinder my understanding any but it looks a little unprofessional.

H&E is another modern-occult game, although a lot lower-key than most of the current crop. Surrealism and hints of the fantastic intruding into the real world seems to be the way of it, as opposed to plopping characters directly into the midst of a bizarre new reality. Handling dream logic without being arbitrary or opaque is key. PCs are by and large normal people, and the default setting is a small town that's a little weird around the edges. If you've seen Twin Peaks you know the feel; in fact, the game as a whole is almost derivative of TP-- not to the point of plagiarism, but it's a very strong influence; there are quite a few places where it felt like Phythyon was trying to reverse-engineer what made TP work. However, I do feel this is a worthwhile goal, so I can't really fault him doing it.

I'm hesitant to spoil the basic theme behind the supernatural shenanigans to prospective players, but since they've done it anyway, you can look here. It's nothing devastatingly original, but the way it's handled is good on the whole (and the idea behind the third side is one I haven't seen before).

The rules themselves seem serviceable at best; this is one of those newfangled storytelling games, so the rules are just there to keep the game from totally slipping into just swapping stories. Twelve stats, each rated from 1-5 and split up between four Spheres (rather than duplicate effort I refer you here). The Sphere with the most points in its stats is considered Dominant, and all difficulties for skill tests based on that category are lower. However, the Sphere opposing that Sphere is Subordinate and all of its difficulties are higher. For example, if your character had higher Body stats than anything else Body would be Dominant and Soul would be Subordinate. Characteristics (also rated 1-5, with a few exceptions) combine skills and advantages/disadvantages; this is more or less akin to Over the Edge and Unknown Armies in that if it can be described, it's fair game. To perform an action, total the stat in ! ! question and any applicable characteristic (a relevant skill or any modifiers from appropriate flaws or advantages). If the result is higher than the difficulty, the character succeeds (go here for a few more specifics).

Now, I normally tend towards loose game mechanics myself, but a 1-5 scale seems overly coarse to me, especially for a diceless game. Still, the difficulties seem appropriately weighted, and the Dominant/Subordinate thing adds more color to characters in a contest involving otherwise identical stats.

So far I've mainly been griping, but there are a lot of things I like a lot about this game. The most intriguing bit is the way cheat-the-game points (call 'em Force Points, Willpower, Karma, or whatever) are handled. Phythyon comes right out and calls 'em Destiny Points, the idea being that the forces of fate (that is, the players running the game) want events to be bent in a certain way or for a particular character to have a particular skill (yup, they double as experience points). However, spending Destiny does not automatically grant success; look here for more. There are also interesting provisions for characters to actually gamble with Fate (the GM) to change the past. Destiny is gained by either saving points during character creation (so the character literally has unrealized potential waiting to be tapped) or by pursuing personal goals in-game (Bob's whole life is just preparation for that bank heist, and every! ! petty crime nudges him closer), and spending it more than once for a specific thing becomes prohibitively expensive fast. The whole Destiny thing adds an interesting focus to the metagame and encourages story structure; sounds good to me.

The cards do more than potentially save characters from themselves; GMs should draw a hand to determine the interesting subplot event or complication that happens in tonight's game, who it happens to, and whether it's a fate that must be, or might be. Each card has a meaning attached to it and grants a special bonus or hindrance to the affected character that session (for example, Four of Diamonds means that fate is out to get that PC for some reason, so she's incapable of using Destiny positively and her Soul stats suffer). I like all this stuff. It may be gimmicky, but it's a gimmick I haven't seen before, and I'm the type that enjoys random stimuli to jog my thought processes when I brainstorm.

The supernatural tropes are well-handled and provide interesting frameworks to build characters or games around (and yes, there is a critter that corresponds very closely to BOB). They're not too innovative, but they're interesting, which is all I ask for. Still, the "secret truths" do feel a little thin so far; the basic setup lends itself to a lot of concepts, but I can't help but feel the underlying metaphysics are a little more limited than they could be. I'm sure Phythyon has a lot more tricks up his sleeve, but what you see on the web page is all he's saying for now, literally; this link contains the entirety of the book's exploration of the metaphysics.

The text is studded with asides and sidebars telling how things worked out in playtest; I'm a sucker for design tidbits and a conversational authorial voice, so I'm not going to say that's a bad thing. Each chapter begins with a few pages of fiction, and I'd have to say that while it could have been written better (more next paragraph), it does set the mood very well while still being an interesting story in its own right. The default setting of Potter's Mill is adequately sketched out and has a lot of plot hooks and background details I wouldn't have thought of offhand (which is, again, why I buy these books). The intro scenario, while good, seems to railroad the subsequent campaign a bit, because it assumes players will be creating characters to fit particular archetypes (I don't mean Leader and Trickster, this is stuff like Local College Seminarian Secretly In Love With The Murder Victim and Out Of Town FBI Agent Specializing In Occult Crimes). This is a little annoying! ! , because I like the scenario enough to use (a rare occurrence) and I think it shows off the game's strengths, but I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to run it without using the suggested characters.

In closing, I don't think this book is for everyone, but those who aren't predisposed to dislike it will probably find things of interest. Whether or not it's $30 worth of interesting is debateable, but it's satisfyingly thick and I think several of its ideas deserve to be looked at. The idea of the progressive reveal bothers me (I've yet to see an RPG metaplot I thought was worth dragging out past two or three books), but I'm willing to get the next book (the Potter's Lake setting book) based on the stuff in here.

A note on my ratings... While there is nothing actually wrong with the writing content or style (which is what I usually base Style on unless the layout is strikingly good or horrid), the author still needs to work on it some, as it's a bit stilted in places and on occasion game concepts were conveyed a little unclearly (whether or not the cards dealt to characters at game's start affect them in play, and some of the details of the supernatural powers, especially spellcasting). There's definite room for improvement, and I only give this a 2 because I'm positive Phythyon is capable of a 4. If there was a 10 point scale I'd give this a 5 or 6, with the capacity for a 7.

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Heaven & Earth
Author: John Phythyon Jr. Category: game Company/Publisher: Guardians of Order (was Event Horizon Productions) Line: Heaven And Earth Cost: $29.95 US Page count: 306 ISBN: n/a Capsule Review by Joe Iglesias on 05/04/99. Genre tags: Modern_day Horror Diceless	There are some things about Heaven & Earth that are going to alienate more than a few people, so I'm going to get them out of the way up front. First, the game is diceless. A deck of playing cards is involved, but only for special plot contrivances. Second, H&E messes with traditional RPG structure. It recommends letting each player run a stable of characters, similar to how Ars Magica does it, only here PCs are ranked by importance to the plot instead of by power level. It also includes a system for devising symbolism and subplots for every game session, and even suggests groups blur the GM/player divide and let different people handle plot and description in mid-session. Third, most of the game background will only be revealed bit by bit over the course of the game's supplements. If none of that sounds too bad to you, there's a good chance you'll like H&E. Superficial stuff first; the layout is decent if not terribly inspiring, but on the up side it's usually not difficult to read. What little art there is consists of computer-altered photographs, and while none of it's as tacky as some of the stuff from Immortal, none of it is as good as Christopher Shy's late output either. For the most part I thought the art was a little ugly but not really off-putting, considering that I wasn't buying this for art anyway. It does have both a table of contents and a short index. Too many typos; maybe one every 5-10 pages. It doesn't hinder my understanding any but it looks a little unprofessional. H&E is another modern-occult game, although a lot lower-key than most of the current crop. Surrealism and hints of the fantastic intruding into the real world seems to be the way of it, as opposed to plopping characters directly into the midst of a bizarre new reality. Handling dream logic without being arbitrary or opaque is key. PCs are by and large normal people, and the default setting is a small town that's a little weird around the edges. If you've seen Twin Peaks you know the feel; in fact, the game as a whole is almost derivative of TP-- not to the point of plagiarism, but it's a very strong influence; there are quite a few places where it felt like Phythyon was trying to reverse-engineer what made TP work. However, I do feel this is a worthwhile goal, so I can't really fault him doing it. I'm hesitant to spoil the basic theme behind the supernatural shenanigans to prospective players, but since they've done it anyway, you can look here. It's nothing devastatingly original, but the way it's handled is good on the whole (and the idea behind the third side is one I haven't seen before). The rules themselves seem serviceable at best; this is one of those newfangled storytelling games, so the rules are just there to keep the game from totally slipping into just swapping stories. Twelve stats, each rated from 1-5 and split up between four Spheres (rather than duplicate effort I refer you here). The Sphere with the most points in its stats is considered Dominant, and all difficulties for skill tests based on that category are lower. However, the Sphere opposing that Sphere is Subordinate and all of its difficulties are higher. For example, if your character had higher Body stats than anything else Body would be Dominant and Soul would be Subordinate. Characteristics (also rated 1-5, with a few exceptions) combine skills and advantages/disadvantages; this is more or less akin to Over the Edge and Unknown Armies in that if it can be described, it's fair game. To perform an action, total the stat in ! ! question and any applicable characteristic (a relevant skill or any modifiers from appropriate flaws or advantages). If the result is higher than the difficulty, the character succeeds (go here for a few more specifics). Now, I normally tend towards loose game mechanics myself, but a 1-5 scale seems overly coarse to me, especially for a diceless game. Still, the difficulties seem appropriately weighted, and the Dominant/Subordinate thing adds more color to characters in a contest involving otherwise identical stats. So far I've mainly been griping, but there are a lot of things I like a lot about this game. The most intriguing bit is the way cheat-the-game points (call 'em Force Points, Willpower, Karma, or whatever) are handled. Phythyon comes right out and calls 'em Destiny Points, the idea being that the forces of fate (that is, the players running the game) want events to be bent in a certain way or for a particular character to have a particular skill (yup, they double as experience points). However, spending Destiny does not automatically grant success; look here for more. There are also interesting provisions for characters to actually gamble with Fate (the GM) to change the past. Destiny is gained by either saving points during character creation (so the character literally has unrealized potential waiting to be tapped) or by pursuing personal goals in-game (Bob's whole life is just preparation for that bank heist, and every! ! petty crime nudges him closer), and spending it more than once for a specific thing becomes prohibitively expensive fast. The whole Destiny thing adds an interesting focus to the metagame and encourages story structure; sounds good to me. The cards do more than potentially save characters from themselves; GMs should draw a hand to determine the interesting subplot event or complication that happens in tonight's game, who it happens to, and whether it's a fate that must be, or might be. Each card has a meaning attached to it and grants a special bonus or hindrance to the affected character that session (for example, Four of Diamonds means that fate is out to get that PC for some reason, so she's incapable of using Destiny positively and her Soul stats suffer). I like all this stuff. It may be gimmicky, but it's a gimmick I haven't seen before, and I'm the type that enjoys random stimuli to jog my thought processes when I brainstorm. The supernatural tropes are well-handled and provide interesting frameworks to build characters or games around (and yes, there is a critter that corresponds very closely to BOB). They're not too innovative, but they're interesting, which is all I ask for. Still, the "secret truths" do feel a little thin so far; the basic setup lends itself to a lot of concepts, but I can't help but feel the underlying metaphysics are a little more limited than they could be. I'm sure Phythyon has a lot more tricks up his sleeve, but what you see on the web page is all he's saying for now, literally; this link contains the entirety of the book's exploration of the metaphysics. The text is studded with asides and sidebars telling how things worked out in playtest; I'm a sucker for design tidbits and a conversational authorial voice, so I'm not going to say that's a bad thing. Each chapter begins with a few pages of fiction, and I'd have to say that while it could have been written better (more next paragraph), it does set the mood very well while still being an interesting story in its own right. The default setting of Potter's Mill is adequately sketched out and has a lot of plot hooks and background details I wouldn't have thought of offhand (which is, again, why I buy these books). The intro scenario, while good, seems to railroad the subsequent campaign a bit, because it assumes players will be creating characters to fit particular archetypes (I don't mean Leader and Trickster, this is stuff like Local College Seminarian Secretly In Love With The Murder Victim and Out Of Town FBI Agent Specializing In Occult Crimes). This is a little annoying! ! , because I like the scenario enough to use (a rare occurrence) and I think it shows off the game's strengths, but I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to run it without using the suggested characters. In closing, I don't think this book is for everyone, but those who aren't predisposed to dislike it will probably find things of interest. Whether or not it's $30 worth of interesting is debateable, but it's satisfyingly thick and I think several of its ideas deserve to be looked at. The idea of the progressive reveal bothers me (I've yet to see an RPG metaplot I thought was worth dragging out past two or three books), but I'm willing to get the next book (the Potter's Lake setting book) based on the stuff in here. A note on my ratings... While there is nothing actually wrong with the writing content or style (which is what I usually base Style on unless the layout is strikingly good or horrid), the author still needs to work on it some, as it's a bit stilted in places and on occasion game concepts were conveyed a little unclearly (whether or not the cards dealt to characters at game's start affect them in play, and some of the details of the supernatural powers, especially spellcasting). There's definite room for improvement, and I only give this a 2 because I'm positive Phythyon is capable of a 4. If there was a 10 point scale I'd give this a 5 or 6, with the capacity for a 7. Style: 2 (Needs Work) Substance: 4 (Meaty)