If you loved White Wolf's World of Darkness, but had problems with the world and metaplot that they created, then The Everlasting may be the game for you.
This is the third book for the Everlasting. The other two, The Book of the Unliving and The Book of the Light have been reviewed on this site.
The premise of The Everlasting is you play an immortal. There are many types of immortals, from vampires and ghouls to angels and demigod to gargoyles and djinn to even dragons and elves. This book gives descriptions of all the Everlasting that are basically spiritual in nature. Specifically, gargoyles, manitou, the possessed, and djinn. Each race is given their own motivations and themes, along with their take on the world and how they feel about all of the others in the world.
One thing that is very nice about the way this game is set up, the author assumes that you are going to want to play a mixed game. Steven Brown once worked for White Wolf (among his credits are the Player's guide to the Sabbat and the Storyteller's Guide to the Sabbat). It is pretty obvious that he did not like the whole concept that White Wolf had of putting all these different supernaturals in the same world, and then assuming that people would not want to play a mixed game with them. Hence in this game, he not only makes the rules consistent from book to book (a 4 strength and 3 computer means the same thing whether you are a Manitou or an Angel), he shows how and why these things would work with each other. He also gives ideas on what a campaign in which all of the players are only one type of creature (an all vampire campaign would be very different from an all gargoyle game).
The first part of the book is the Setting and System. The setting is basically glossed over, but gives enough background to get you knowledgeable enough to get into the specifics of the world later in the book. The best part about it is, the GM is given license over the entire world. The only metaplot feature is "The Demons have invaded. The only things in the world powerful enough to stop them are The Everlasting, who have spent the last several thousand years fighting each other. If they can't work together, everyone will die." However, the vast majority of this particular book doesn't even deal with the invasion. It is spattered in every chapter, but there is very little sense of urgency about it. Everyone has their own problems, and most the spirits are busy with their own lives.
The system is very much like White Wolf, but there are some vast improvements. For example, skills do not give extra dice. They lower difficulty. The way that the system is handled, you roll your stat in dice (if you are using a dexterity based skill, you roll a number of dice equal to your dexterity). The GM gives a base difficulty and what skill you are using. The difficulty is determined by subtracting the skill from the difficulty. This means that the more skilled you are, the lower the difficulty, reducing one of the problems with the White Wolf system of "talent over skill" (A professional computer programmer who has a two intelligence and a two in computers has fewer dice, and therefore less chance of success than someone who is extremely intelligent (4 INT) but can only turn the computer on and boot windows (1 computer)).
There are three other nice things about the system for this game. One is that there are multiple versions. If you like the White Wolf like system, great. If not, how about percentiles very similar to Chaosium's Call of Cthulu? Still not your thing? How about completely diceless? No? How about a card based system using either normal playing cards or Tarot cards (this is the games base system). Still not satisfied? Here's the next nice part about the system, if you don't like it, use what you do like. One of the things the author states is that he didn't write the book for the system, or even for the world. If you want to run the game is GURPS, HERO, d20, whatever system you want, go right ahead. This is your campaign. He's in it for the creatures and the stories. The third nice thing about the systm is that it is rather simple once you get the hang of it. If you have played White Wolf before, it isn't too different to be confusing, but it is different enough to get rid of many of what I considered to be some of the more annoying features of the game.
This is not to say that there aren't flaws. There are some hugely obvious problems with the system of the book. First, it is incomplete. The magic section details how magic works and show how to create spontaneous effects and spells. It also states that there is ritual magic and that ritual magic can be extremely powerful. However, the rules for ritual magic will be published in a supplement. This means that someday, in the future, your magic wielding character will suddenly get more abilities, although you don't know when, or what it will be good for.
Another thing is that there are no skill descriptions as it pertains to level. How much better is someone with a drive score of 3 vs. 1? It never states any ranges for beginner, intermediate, or expert. Without a lot of play time (and a statistical computer program), one wouldn't even begin to figure it out.
Another problem is the powers. Each type of creature gets starting powers, which are always the same. But they can also buy more powers with experience and with points at character creation to make the character more distinctive. There is a section at the end of every chapter showing some sample powers and their costs. They even state that these are just samples. But there is nothing that describes how these powers are created and how to create new ones. This comes later in a book called the Codex of Immortality. Of course this book may be years away.
The last problem isn't as much a game mechanic, but something related to it, the character sheet. Many people have complained about the new (and old) D&D character sheets and how bad they are. This one takes the cake. Not to say that it isn't attractive. These sheets are really pretty to look at. The problem is that they simply aren't fuctional. The statistics (called aspects), Aptitudes (groups of skills), and Distinctions (similar to backgrounds) are shown in concentric circles with the logo for the book in the middle. Although very nice to look at, it makes it very difficult to actually read. While the aspects do not need a lot of description other than a number, each Aptitude has 7 skills attached to it, and each can potentially have a score. There is another section below the stat wheel for skills, but when you try to make a roll, if you have a score in the Aptitude and a skill, you add them together for your total skill level (so if you have a 3 eloquence (skill) and a 5 influence (aptitude) your total skill is 8). It makes it very difficult to put this together when the skills and aptitudes are in different places. The worst part is that the skills section is very small, considering there are 70 skills, and that the author obviously knew that because there is another section for additional skills on the back of the sheet!
Next comes the descriptions of the different types of Everlasting. This being the Book of Spirits, all of these are somehow spiritual in nature. Each section is very well detailed, giving lexicon in the margins of the first part of the chapter with the meat of the creatures in the main body. The art is very good, and is well placed, so it adds to the feel of the book.
All of the types of creatures are very interesting as well. Gargoyles are celestial entities that were imprisoned in Simulacrums. They can never escape these shells, for when one body is destroyed, they simply get transfered to another body. The interesting part about these guys is that since they are spirits trapped in inanimate objects, they cannot actually feel anything. The world is like a movie to them. The only time they feel anything is when they feed. Gargoyles feed on the sins of mortals (and immortals). They then pass on "the curse of absolution" where the sinner is punished for their sins. Because this is the only sensation the gargoyle feels, they become corrupted. Once they become too corrupt and evil, the other gargoyles must destroy the tainted one, who then inhabits a new, non-corrupted "body."
Manitou is basically Werewolf the Apocolypse done right. The Manitou are shapeshifters who worship Gaia and are protecting her from her enemies. Sound familiar? That is where the similarity stops. Manitou are animal spirits that merge with human hosts to become shapeshifters. They are not protecting the earth from greedy megacorporations or even other, evil spirits. The world is being invaded by horrors straight out of Lovecraft. If the Manitou fail, the world will be terraformed into the semblance of their foul dimension. Gaia isn't dying from pollution, she's being eaten alive by Cthulu and his minions. This chapter is one of the best written of the entire book, making a concept so similar to that of another game actually work so much better and more understandably that in my opinion it puts Werewolf to shame.
Then there are the Possessed. These things are nigh impossible to play. So much so that the author even says it himself at the end of the chapter. Basically there are two types of possessing spirits, one is good, one is evil. So far, so good. Here comes the hard part. The evil spirits only possess good people and the good spirits only possess evil people. Now comes the REALLY hard part. If the good spririts succeed in turning the evil person good, or the evil spirit succeeds in turning the good person evil, the soul of the person is consumed by the spirit, which KILLS the host. So, the spirit has to only subtly manipulate the host in order to get things done or it has to start over with a new host. Obviously, this one isn't for the faint of heart. Of course the good guys (so to speak) are fighting the bad guys (so to speak) in a genocidal war.
Then there are the djinn. The djinn are completely outside the realm of reality that we call our own. They live in a city that has one half always in day and the other half eternally in night. However, djinn are not entirely spiritual. They are half flesh, half spirit. They can come to Earth and do things. They can go completely to the spirit world and do things. They have their own forms of magic, their own technology, and their own mythology. They list all different types of djinn from marids and efrit to serim and nasnas.
There is also a chapter on Abominations. These are the things that Manitou are up against. Here is another very interesting part about this book. The first part of the chapter says that it is not complete, and that if you want more information, you should go out and buy Chaosium's Call of Cthulu game, and even praises it for how well done it is! Visionary Entertainment, as far as I know, has no connection whatsoever to Chaosium. He is writing about things that are from Lovecraft, who, again as far as I know, didn't give exclusive rights to all of his ideas to Chaosium. There are not a lot of companies out there that would have done this. Most would have come up with their own Lovecraftian game and sold as many as they could. Even fewer would actually plug another company's game. The really amazing part about it is that he then gives a decent writeup of the Elder Lords and Great Old Ones in the chapter (though not nearly as complete as CoC).
The only real problems with these chapters is that there are quite a few formating errors, including words becoming italisized for no apparant reason, lots of typos, and once in a while a word will be missing. This is very distracting, but not so bad as to make it unreadable.
The last part of the book is supposed to be how to make you a better player, GM, and the advanced rules. This section gives more complete descriptions of the skills (like what the difference between Eloquence and Persuasion are), the magic rules (discussed above), and some information on the other Everlasting. It also gives information on some of the other dimensions and realities of the games, such as the Dreamlands, the Asta, and others. Where the sections are complete, they are okay. The world information is better, in general, than the system information.
The very last chapter I would have left out. It gives ideas on how you can meditate and have lucid dreaming, and several other concepts that really don't add to the game at all. I would much rather have had rules for ritual magic and how to create and cost new powers than opening ceremonies for the game. The fortunate part about this chapter is that it is much shorter than in the two previous books.
In all, this is a fantastic book. The best part about this book is that it gives a lot of information, but it doesn't define everything. For example, there are about a dozen different "clans" of manitou. The three most important are detailed in this book. The other ones are left to you. For the Gargoyles, the ritual that can be used to actually destroy the spirit if the Gargoyle is believed to be lost. It never says that there aren't people or things out there that know or could discover the ritual.
The primary problem is that this book is best as a sourcebook for a generic system. The system is nice, but it is so incomplete as to make it almost unplayable. Perhaps they will release some of their sourcebooks to make it possible, but I am not holding my breath. If you can find a suitable system (I play my game in HERO, GURPS would probably work, d20 couldn't handle the power level), you are in for a treat. If you have a lot of time to fill in the holes, this system has the potential to be better than White Wolf's. The magic rules, while incomplete, are very interesting.
Visionary Entertainment has advertised for some artists for their last primary book, the Book of the Fantastical. I am hoping that this book has at the very least more of the same.
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