I’ve long been a fan of the old
Mummy supplements printed for
Vampire: the Masquerade, the second edition especially. There were a very interesting take on an old myth, and presented a new and distinct type of supernatural resident for the
World of Darkness. Their tight-knit, almost dysfunctional family nature only increased their appeal. They were certainly not suited for any game, but they did open up some interesting possibilities.
When White Wolf announced that they would be revising Mummy and re-releasing it as Mummy: the Resurrection as it’s own sub-game line, I was rather skeptical. As much as I enjoyed the property and would like to see more material for it, it was not something that could support its own broad game, at least not without some significant changes. What White Wolf ended up releasing actually did support groups of a reasonable size and broadened the game structure quite a bit, but to do so they have to make radical changes throughout the game. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on what kind of game you are looking for when you read Mummy: the Resurrection.
This new edition follows the format set down in Kindred of the East and followed up on in Wraith: the Great War. It’s not meant to be a stand alone game, requiring the use of another central White Wolf game line to provide the core rules. It only addresses those rules that are new or have changed specifically for the title monsters, mummies (i.e. the Reborn). As such, it tries to walk a careful balance between providing enough information to enable fast play and reprinting too much. Mummy: the Resurrection does pull this balancing act of better than Wraith: the Great War, but it still has a faint feeling of wasted space in the introduction of some new Abilities and traits.
The basic concept of Mummy: the Resurrection only seems to borrow sparingly from the previous two supplements. The Great Maelstrom in the Underworld has done a great job of shredding and nearly killing almost all mummy spirits. Osiris, the father and nominal leader of all mummies, awakens from his ancient slumber in the netherworld to protect his children and servants. Not only does he shelter them from the storm, but he provides them with a new Spell of Life (the old spell used to create mummies just up and stops working one day). Powered by Osiris spreading himself through the Web of Faith (web of connected holy sites in the Middle East for those who haven’t followed Mage), this new Spell is even better than the last. Now, instead of reanimating their own bodies, fragments of the souls of mummies seek out new individuals who have just died and had some sort of “hole” in their soul. They look for a person with a deep flaw (extremely shy, greedy, reckless – whatever) and join with them, repairing that hole. Then they return that person to life, offering them a second chance in return for joining in the fight for Ma’at, or universal Justice and Balance.
It is this central new idea bolted onto the Mummy property that is easily the books greatest weakness. These soul fragments (which can be categorized depending on what kind of soul flaws they repair) give rise to completely uninspiring splats, completely with special powers, restrictions and their own path of mummy magic. While they are not what might be called the standard White Wolf splat groups, they are no less pedestrian. Beyond that, however, Osiris’ present in the Web of Faith requires every mummy to make a mad dash for the Middle East upon being reanimated. Unless they arrive within 70 days to complete the ritual of rebirth, they crumble and die again. And this is on top of abandoning the idea of playing an individual who has watched the evolution of society for the last few thousand years. The new edition has turned from a much more interesting concept to instead focus on something much more common and much less interesting.
The new rules themselves are varied in their quality. Some of the changes to how mummies work, such as the inclusion of Ba and Ka as Backgrounds (making it easier to incorporate a mummy into a mixed game with other supernatural creatures), are quite nice. Now, instead of having to survive in the Underworld long enough to gain enough Ba energy (instead of experience) to revive his corpse, a mummy has to wait an amount of time determined by the strength of his Ba. The higher your Ba Background, the faster you can reanimate your body. This eliminates the question of what to do if the one mummy in the party dies, the Storyteller does not have to stop the game and run a short side-game with the now wraith-like mummy. It is an interesting idea and really does allow for a wider use of mummy characters, although I would have preferred some optional rules on how to incorporate the old method of rebirth into a Mummy game.
Other rules are much more questionable. The Reborn have their own new Temper trait, Balance, which is a mixture of Humanity and Arete, in a way. It reflects the code of Ma’at that mummies are supposed to uphold and, of course, it provides a cap to the amount of power a mummy can wield. Only through strict adherence to the code and repeated quests to the Judges of Ma’at (effectively thematically unified Seekings, for Mage players) can you increase your Balance score. Break the code and your score drops. Despite interesting notes, such as the necessity to abstain from all violence at high levels of Ma’at and an interesting collection of Judges, Balance falls completely flat. It is yet another code of honor and metaphysical imperatives in a White Wolf game. Instead of the humane and remarkably free game that the previous editions of Mummy were, this new one borrows a chapter from Werewolf and effectively forces all mummies into a war against Apophis (we might as well be honest and just call it the the Wyrm). The fight against Apophis and his servants was present in previous editions, but it was far from the only option nor was it so overpoweringly presented.
The appendix that details the immortals from other cultures is similarly mixed. While it is nice to actually have some information on other Reborn and the South American mummies of Incan heritage are interesting, they are also subject to sometimes crippling flaws and the Chinese immortals are painfully uninteresting. Perhaps more space could have been used to do them justice, but there simply is none. If White Wolf had felt that splats were necessary for Mummy, I think that they would have done better to take the different types of mummies and implement them as such.
Visually, Mummy was disappointing again. Normally, I quite love the artwork of Christopher Shy, but his continued presentation of similar looking photoshopped groups of people standing around are beginning to leave me cold. The other notable photoshop artist, Larry Snelly, provided the splash pages that made me snicker ever time I flipped past them. Again, normally I quite enjoyed his work, being most familiar with him from his illustrations for the Vampire: the Eternal Struggle collectible card game, but his work here is surprisingly poor. Anthony Trabbold and Drew Tucker provided their usual selection of nice, solid artwork, but they were not common enough to save the book from being visually bland.
Ultimately, the quality of game you find in Mummy: the Resurrection depends on what kind of game you are looking for in it. I had very much enjoyed the older editions of the Mummy intellectual property. The small number of mummies combined with the fact that each had lived so long that they all knew each other intimately had always appealed to me. I had also enjoyed the fact that most mummies had already come into their power, that a story about a mummy wasn’t any sort of metaphor for puberty or some ‘coming of age’ tale like nearly all White Wolf games. I liked the established nature of mummies, and their established connection to each other and the world around them. That degree of interconnectedness is something that is absent from most other World of Darkness games and completely missing from this new edition of Mummy. Instead, we have another game about normal people who are suddenly changed, given a second chance and sent out to fight for the forces of Justice and Good. My image of the World of Darkness did not need an entire new race of wandering do-gooders to intrude upon it, especially not in this form.
If you want a game with the same moral high-ground as Werewolf: the Apocalypse, but without the gore or the question of how to defeat the embodiment of hate and violence with hate and violence, then Mummy: the Resurrection might be right up your alley. As it is, it’s a game about being given a second chance, having your character flaws fixed for you, and being turned out into the world to wander the globe righting wrongs and fighting injustice. If that is not the kind of game you want, then you are likely to be face with the same reaction I had – desperately trying to find something of interest in this 200-odd page hardcover.
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