The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Okay, this is the last review I'll subject you to this week. Okay? Promise.

The Wyrm, ladies and gents, is just about the coolest entity that you can have for an opponent. It's spiritual, it's subtle, it corrupts from within, it feeds upon the anger and negativity that are innate to all humans. It starts vicious cycles where people fall into traps of despair and seek power to get out, only to find the power brought corruption, which leads to further despair and the quest for further power to battle the consequences of the despair, which leads to further corruption and so on.

Now, then. According to Freak Legions, the minions of the Wyrm are almost exclusively a bunch of mutated, super-powered geeks that devolve so quickly that they barely have time to savour the thrill of dancing the spiral before they become absolutely worthless. There are veritable -legions- of these geeks (hence the name of the book), all of them hiding in the shadows, faciliating the apocalypse.

Let me get this straight. There are thousands, nay millions of these radioactive monsters that don't resemble anything remotely human shambling along the face of the planet. My question, simply, is WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO HIDE THESE GUYS?

I mean, really. White Wolf goes -on- and -on- about how subtle the Wyrm is. How subtle is some drooling, pustulating, barely articulate creature that vomits black sludge and periodically loses large hunks of flesh due to inner-decay? And how /effective/ is said creature?

Yes, I want to take over the world through manipulation, stealth, guile and most importantly, enticement. I want to be enticing so these people let me into their souls and allow me to corrupt them. I shall take my VOMITTING, GIBBERING,SHAMBLING MINNIONS THAT SMELL LIKE TOXIC WASTE AND ATTEMPT TO CHAIN THESE HUMANS TO MY WILL BY SHOWING THEM HOW DESIRABLE SERVING ME WILL BE!!! HA HA HA HA!!! DON'T YOU DESIRE THIS, LITTLE HUMAN???

Christ. Now I understand why the Garou are so pissed off. There's really nothing for them to do. They're sitting there, saying to themselves, "Well...we thought we had some sort of worthy opponent. I mean, every other preternatural species does. But...um...I think our guy is kinda hoist by his own petard. Let's just go out and beat up on the technocracy or something. Oh wait, the Glasswalkers wouldn't like that. Shit. Anyone here know how to play Gin?"

It's like the cartoonist behind 'The Brother's Grimm' (remember that one? before your time, probably) was somehow given Godlike power and then, inexplicably, decided to try and take over the world. I can see conversations between /him/ and other evil entities.

SET: "My master plan is working. Drugs and corruption are everywhere. Mothers give their children depressants or stimulants because doctors TELL them to. I am winning."

GIOVANNI: "As for myself, the temporal power I have accrued is unrivaled by any other criminal master-mind. The second strike shall begin...soon."

WYRM: "My turn? Can I speak?"

NEPHANDI OVERLORD: "If...you must."

WYRM: "OKAY! Here's my plan! I've got this /eighty foot tall/ glowing monster that is really strong but loses a significant portion of his brain everytime he takes a shit. I'm going to unleash him on the unsuspecting villagers in that town below, have him terrorize them mercilessly, then after he consumes enough of them and has several bowel movements his brain will rot away and he'll wind up lying gracelessly in a ditch somewhere, smelling like six tons of horeshit. And his putrefying, catatonic frame shall serve as an emblem of how -cool- I am and how -wonderful- it would be to serve me."

SET: "Can we kill him?"

GIOVANNI: "No. White Wolf, for some arcane reason, has given him powers beyond our ken and, for further unknown reasons, we actually serve him in an oblique fashion."

SET: "..."

GIOVANNI: "Such is the nature of the Wyrm."

Okay, enough sarcasm.

The book focuses on the nature of the fomor. There are many different sorts of fomor, ranging from those that (ooooh) hide in shadows and slurk around but have no social skills whatsoever to those that wear hockey masks and use chainsaws to those that get intitiated in 'Wyrm frats' or whatever and get really strong and big but can't string three words together without blowing fuses in their brains.

While it provides an amusing catalogue of freaks and it does have a somewhat cool system for generating and balancing powers (i.e. for every power you take, you have to take a taint to balance it, so the stronger your character is, the weaker he is, or something like that.) And there is -one- cool 'character class', namely the ferectoi. They're fomor who are /born/ with banes inside them, instead of having them forced into them over the course of their life and they're just wicked cool because they're...detached and inhuman and very, very evil.

In fact, if -all- the servitors of the Wyrm were like the ferectoi, then I'd probably be writing a lot more on this book and villifying it a lot less. But I can't, in good conscience, give a very substantial summary of what this book contains because, well, there's the danger that people might run out and buy it. The character generation, aside from the power and taints, is standard mortal. The background history on fomor and explainations of -what- the fomor are seeking to accomplish is extremely barren. The underlying philosophy of the Wyrm is -rarely- touched upon and when it is, it's just so damn hyperbolic and extreme that it hardly merits notice. "Yes, we are the Wyrm. We are EVIL." That sort of thing.

Storyteller games are cool, but sometimes the designers just get a little off focus and a little out of control. The idea of a corrupting, evil entity was cool to begin with, but once the focus got out of whack and the designers took it to an extreme, it ceased to be an antagonist and became a -parody- of what an antagonist should be.

In my contention, it'd be so much better if the corruption of the Wyrm's minions -wasn't- physical but moral. Physical corruptions tend to hinder one's ability to blend in. Plus, being the moron I am who sees things very simplistically, I tend to get this message from the book: "If your body is weak, crippled and unpleasant to look at, you are evil. If you are mentally deranged, you are evil. If you look like a monster, you probably are one. Dress in black, smoke cloves, talk about the Earth Mother and avoid getting a job and you will be GOOD." I'm moronic, I know, so I probably lost the intellectual subtext amongst all the pictures of violent, pustulating monsters and all the screaming passages on how corruption invariably lead to the 'inability to take a shit without corroding the toliet bowl'. (Yes, that quote was drastically taken out of context, but I had to throw one in there just to prove that I read the damn thing.)

As a suggestion, I'd say that Wyrm creatures should be a bit...less...obvious if they're going to be serving a subtle force of corruption. I'd also suggest that the corruption manifest more along the lines of conflicts of morality. Killing becomes so much easier when you serve the Wyrm. It becomes -easier- to rationalize your actions. (and, as a logical corollary, it becomes easier to -explain- your actions to others and perhaps convince them that you're in the right.) Bottom line: It was a good premise. They got carried away. This book is a blatant illustration of what happens when the focus is lost and a single facet of a multifarious concept is pursued to the extreme. There's your moral. What? Not good enough? Eat a fortune cookie.

Style: 1 (Unintelligible)
Substance: 1 (I Wasted My Money)

What do you think?

Visit the above forum to let us know!

Freak Legions
Author: Hey! Look! Elvis! Category: game Company/Publisher: Blackdog Games Line: Storyteller Capsule Review by Charlie Merchant on 02/11/00. Genre tags: Horror Gothic	Okay, this is the last review I'll subject you to this week. Okay? Promise. The Wyrm, ladies and gents, is just about the coolest entity that you can have for an opponent. It's spiritual, it's subtle, it corrupts from within, it feeds upon the anger and negativity that are innate to all humans. It starts vicious cycles where people fall into traps of despair and seek power to get out, only to find the power brought corruption, which leads to further despair and the quest for further power to battle the consequences of the despair, which leads to further corruption and so on. Now, then. According to Freak Legions, the minions of the Wyrm are almost exclusively a bunch of mutated, super-powered geeks that devolve so quickly that they barely have time to savour the thrill of dancing the spiral before they become absolutely worthless. There are veritable -legions- of these geeks (hence the name of the book), all of them hiding in the shadows, faciliating the apocalypse. Let me get this straight. There are thousands, nay millions of these radioactive monsters that don't resemble anything remotely human shambling along the face of the planet. My question, simply, is WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO HIDE THESE GUYS? I mean, really. White Wolf goes -on- and -on- about how subtle the Wyrm is. How subtle is some drooling, pustulating, barely articulate creature that vomits black sludge and periodically loses large hunks of flesh due to inner-decay? And how /effective/ is said creature? Yes, I want to take over the world through manipulation, stealth, guile and most importantly, enticement. I want to be enticing so these people let me into their souls and allow me to corrupt them. I shall take my VOMITTING, GIBBERING,SHAMBLING MINNIONS THAT SMELL LIKE TOXIC WASTE AND ATTEMPT TO CHAIN THESE HUMANS TO MY WILL BY SHOWING THEM HOW DESIRABLE SERVING ME WILL BE!!! HA HA HA HA!!! DON'T YOU DESIRE THIS, LITTLE HUMAN??? Christ. Now I understand why the Garou are so pissed off. There's really nothing for them to do. They're sitting there, saying to themselves, "Well...we thought we had some sort of worthy opponent. I mean, every other preternatural species does. But...um...I think our guy is kinda hoist by his own petard. Let's just go out and beat up on the technocracy or something. Oh wait, the Glasswalkers wouldn't like that. Shit. Anyone here know how to play Gin?" It's like the cartoonist behind 'The Brother's Grimm' (remember that one? before your time, probably) was somehow given Godlike power and then, inexplicably, decided to try and take over the world. I can see conversations between /him/ and other evil entities. SET: "My master plan is working. Drugs and corruption are everywhere. Mothers give their children depressants or stimulants because doctors TELL them to. I am winning." GIOVANNI: "As for myself, the temporal power I have accrued is unrivaled by any other criminal master-mind. The second strike shall begin...soon." WYRM: "My turn? Can I speak?" NEPHANDI OVERLORD: "If...you must." WYRM: "OKAY! Here's my plan! I've got this /eighty foot tall/ glowing monster that is really strong but loses a significant portion of his brain everytime he takes a shit. I'm going to unleash him on the unsuspecting villagers in that town below, have him terrorize them mercilessly, then after he consumes enough of them and has several bowel movements his brain will rot away and he'll wind up lying gracelessly in a ditch somewhere, smelling like six tons of horeshit. And his putrefying, catatonic frame shall serve as an emblem of how -cool- I am and how -wonderful- it would be to serve me." SET: "Can we kill him?" GIOVANNI: "No. White Wolf, for some arcane reason, has given him powers beyond our ken and, for further unknown reasons, we actually serve him in an oblique fashion." SET: "..." GIOVANNI: "Such is the nature of the Wyrm." Okay, enough sarcasm. The book focuses on the nature of the fomor. There are many different sorts of fomor, ranging from those that (ooooh) hide in shadows and slurk around but have no social skills whatsoever to those that wear hockey masks and use chainsaws to those that get intitiated in 'Wyrm frats' or whatever and get really strong and big but can't string three words together without blowing fuses in their brains. While it provides an amusing catalogue of freaks and it does have a somewhat cool system for generating and balancing powers (i.e. for every power you take, you have to take a taint to balance it, so the stronger your character is, the weaker he is, or something like that.) And there is -one- cool 'character class', namely the ferectoi. They're fomor who are /born/ with banes inside them, instead of having them forced into them over the course of their life and they're just wicked cool because they're...detached and inhuman and very, very evil. In fact, if -all- the servitors of the Wyrm were like the ferectoi, then I'd probably be writing a lot more on this book and villifying it a lot less. But I can't, in good conscience, give a very substantial summary of what this book contains because, well, there's the danger that people might run out and buy it. The character generation, aside from the power and taints, is standard mortal. The background history on fomor and explainations of -what- the fomor are seeking to accomplish is extremely barren. The underlying philosophy of the Wyrm is -rarely- touched upon and when it is, it's just so damn hyperbolic and extreme that it hardly merits notice. "Yes, we are the Wyrm. We are EVIL." That sort of thing. Storyteller games are cool, but sometimes the designers just get a little off focus and a little out of control. The idea of a corrupting, evil entity was cool to begin with, but once the focus got out of whack and the designers took it to an extreme, it ceased to be an antagonist and became a -parody- of what an antagonist should be. In my contention, it'd be so much better if the corruption of the Wyrm's minions -wasn't- physical but moral. Physical corruptions tend to hinder one's ability to blend in. Plus, being the moron I am who sees things very simplistically, I tend to get this message from the book: "If your body is weak, crippled and unpleasant to look at, you are evil. If you are mentally deranged, you are evil. If you look like a monster, you probably are one. Dress in black, smoke cloves, talk about the Earth Mother and avoid getting a job and you will be GOOD." I'm moronic, I know, so I probably lost the intellectual subtext amongst all the pictures of violent, pustulating monsters and all the screaming passages on how corruption invariably lead to the 'inability to take a shit without corroding the toliet bowl'. (Yes, that quote was drastically taken out of context, but I had to throw one in there just to prove that I read the damn thing.) As a suggestion, I'd say that Wyrm creatures should be a bit...less...obvious if they're going to be serving a subtle force of corruption. I'd also suggest that the corruption manifest more along the lines of conflicts of morality. Killing becomes so much easier when you serve the Wyrm. It becomes -easier- to rationalize your actions. (and, as a logical corollary, it becomes easier to -explain- your actions to others and perhaps convince them that you're in the right.) Bottom line: It was a good premise. They got carried away. This book is a blatant illustration of what happens when the focus is lost and a single facet of a multifarious concept is pursued to the extreme. There's your moral. What? Not good enough? Eat a fortune cookie. Style: 1 (Unintelligible) Substance: 1 (I Wasted My Money) What do you think? Visit the above forum to let us know!