It took me slightly longer to read and thoroughly digest Heaven & Earth Game Master's Guide 2nd Ed and so, in the interests of brevity, I'll cut my normal introductory banter and jump straight into the analysis. H&EGMG consists of a two-part introduction, eight Chapters, and a five-part piece of flavor fiction entitled Angel Dust.
The Introduction is essentially the same as with the H&E Player's Guide, reprinting the short, sweet premise layout and adding further commentary on the use of modern horrors, the preeminence of subtlety as the key to this setting, and the fact that everything contained in this book is merely a suggestion. At this time, I would like to clarify a point that I was too vague on in my first review: in H&E, the end is quite seriously nigh. The forces of Heaven and Hell are gearing up for their final conflict, the ultimate decision as to whom is the true ruler of the universe, God or Lucifer, and the Earth is their battlefield and chessboard. Their pawns and prizes are humanity--the grocers, bakers, candlestick makers, college students, all-purpose office peons, FBI agents...in short, the PCs. For the most part, you're supposed to play regular human beings caught up in events waaaaaaay more important than most people can fully comprehend without suffering an aneurysm or being kept away from sharp objects for the rest of their lives. Bear in mind the advice of the sage, "Armageddon is averted by small actions--that's the way it was, that's the way it always has to be" and let us get on with the show...
The first three Chapters are given over to an examination of three major groups of supernatural antagonists in H&E, ghosts, spirits, and angels, fallen and otherwise.
Chapter One: Ghosts covers the specific nature of ghosts within the cosmology of the H&E universe and their abilities. In this world, there is no afterlife other than Heaven or Hell--all souls are dedicated, by one means or another, to one of those two extremes; there is no 'between state' for souls trapped between life and death. Ghosts are the emotional imprint left behind on the film of reality and come in four different types, each with a different level of interactivity. Some are nearly harmless; some are anything but...
Chapter Two: Spirits are likewise somewhat different than classic thought on spirits being, in H&E, conceptual entities--beings tied to one core concept, like love or hate or greed or compassion. The are, unlike the angels and demons they're sometimes mistaken for, the product of mortal metaphysical precepts both major and minor, and interact most closely with humans who exude an attraction to their concept. Murderers attract spirits tied to the ideas of killing, bloodshed, and violence; spirits feed on, and sometimes possess the flesh of, like-minded humans. As with ghosts, they come in at least four different types with varying levels of power.
Chapter Three: Angels and Demons makes one thing very clear at the beginning: none of them are in any way, shape, or form friends of humanity. They are the servants of God or Lucifer; all their goals, actions, and efforts are bent toward achieving the victory of one of them. They are subtle; they do not believe in gratuitously revealing themselves; they are capable of doing nearly anything they want in order to achieve their ends. Character creation rules are not included; a caveat, concerning the sparing use of angellic and demonic influences and appearances, is.
The next three chapters offer advice on GMing a Heaven&Earth production. These chapters will be more than useful for novice GMs.
Chapter Four: Game Mastering 101 offers the now-standard advice on how to be a Game Master, full stop. Facilitation, arbitration, and management of a characters, plots, and judgment calls are all included.
Chapter Five: Building Productions gives advice on the construction of an H&E story, including the different sort of episodic approaches that a GM might take, and paying particular attention to the very probable instance of character death. This section is nicely detailed and covers a wide variety of play options that might not always occur to all GMs.
Chapter Six: Injecting the Supernatural covers the use of H&E's major metastory element--the fact that the Apocalypse is lurking on the horizon--within productions, as well as the use of other supernatural elements, such as the mules, paranormals, and magicians first covered in the Player's Guide. Included is useful advice on handling PCs who meet the above classifications, and a selection of greater and lesser "secret societies" with varying degrees of supernatural knowledge.
Chapter Seven: Potter's Lake fleshes out the optional meta-setting introduced in the Player's Guide and Chapter Eight: Frankenstein's Apprentice is a murder-mystery style adventure set in that location. Potter's Lake is the small-town flashpoint of the Apocalypse, where supernatural forces are coalescing, and where the veneer of normality is very relative, indeed. The adventure is an easily customizable introduction to both the H&E world and to the setting of Potter's Lake.
Angel Dust, the five-part piece of flavor fiction, is at places engaging, chilling, and very flavorful, indeed, in addition to being well-written in a stripped down, flowing style.
THE GOOD: Part of what took me so long to finish this book is the fact that, at various points, I was forced to stop and stare blissfully into space thinking evil GM thoughts and chuckling cruelly until forced to stop by frightened onlookers. The atmosphere is very thick in this book, the story hooks liberally scattered throughout. The flavor text here is actually pretty good, outright inspiring in places, and the mechanical number-cunchiness kept to a bare minimum, which I personally appreciate. Game Mastering should not arise from charts and dice, but from a rich and engrossing setting that gives them plenty to work with while not hemming them into one solid story path. It has been written, in other reviews, that H&E is heavily metaplot oriented; this is not entirely true. The H&E Players' and GM's Guides contain all the information necessary to design and execute a production with or without the overarching metaplot and with or without the "game setting" of Potter's Lake. I didn't consider the inclusion of a metaplot, in this case, to be particularly jarring or intrusive, as it is only necessary to use one metastory element--the imminence of the Apocalypse--in order to play the game. It is, in fact, extremely flexible. Angel Dust brought an evil smile to my face, as did the Great Seal Council.
THE BAD: ...And sometimes, it's a little bit too vague. I got the distinct impression, while reading this book, that the authors were trying so hard to avoid forcing any rules interpretation on the prospective GM that they went a little overboard on the equivocation. Everyone knows they can customize the setting at will; it's perfectly okay to put things in completely concrete terms, too...
THE UGLY: Religious controversy. For the record: I don't think that H&E is meant to bash Christianity--in fact, if you want to really get into the analysis of it, H&E comes out pretty damn pro-Christianity, given that Iesau son of Mary is the one divine being solidly on the side of humanity in the midst of all this. I suppose if you're going to look for something to pick on, you can find it, but still, people...it's a game. And a generally solid and well-written one at that.
1. From Neil Gaiman's short story collection "Smoke and Mirrors."
2. "Angels are bastards who can't talk anything through." --Everything I Know I Learned From Angel Sanctuary
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