The Mort Sourcebook was the first (and last) sourcebook produced for SLA Industries during its stay as the property of Wizards of the Coast. This was before WotC decided to drop all their roleplaying lines in favour of developing card games. Full details can be found on Nightfall’s website (www.nightfall.co.uk). Before returning the SLA Industries intellectual property to Nightfall, Wizards apparently remarked that SLA was too dark for them to consider ever reviving the property as one of their game lines. The Mort Sourcebook unfortunately shows this reluctance of WotC to publish anything too dark.
The Mort Sourcebook describes various places across the face of the planet Mort, the capital of SLA Industries. Mort City is covered, as well as Meny (the primary on-planet Operative university) and Orienta (basically the equivalent of a SLA Hong Kong in feel). One of the chapters details the Shivers in greater detail (SLA Industries’ private police force) and another describes the premier nightclub on Mort, called The Pit. We also have several in-character descriptions of people and places, and the last pages of the sourcebook are dedicated to outlining several BPNs (missions) for the Operatives to do if the GM is feeling uninspired for a session.
Despite this wealth of information, the Mort Sourcebook seems to fall a little flat. After the great production that was the Karma sourcebook, the Mort Sourcebook has forgotten to “show, don’t tell”. Karma gave the reader a glimpse into SLA Industries through the eyepiece of a magazine, Mort almost reads like a textbook at times. Much of the sourcebook seems to have lost the subtlety of the previous books. Whereas the main rulebook and Karma would offer hints and clues that there were bigger secrets out there, the Mort Sourcebook often falls into the trap of saying “Something mysterious happened here, nyah nyah”.
The artwork, as is usual for a SLA Industries product, is on the whole above average with some incredible mood and inspiration-provoking pieces. Unfortunately the WotC influence has crept into the book again, and several other pieces have an anime feel to them, offering armour that seems almost mecha-like, and characters with big eyes and small mouths. This is fine for games dealing with that genre, but for a game of urban horror like SLA, it seems that Wizards were trying to lighten the game and ended up somewhere in the middle.
There is far less rules material in the Mort Sourcebook than there was even in Karma, and the placement of the statistics and rules just doesn’t often seem to work. For example, abbreviated stats for various Shiver weapons and armour is listed in the Shiver section, but these rules are generally reprints from previous books and listed in a way that is trying to capture the ‘advertisement’ feel of Karma, and failing miserably. To make matters worse, several items of equipment are listed or hinted at in passing but left completely undeveloped and the poor GM is left once again to make up the rules required for the items.
The tone of the review above may make it seem that I hate or at least strongly dislike the Mort Sourcebook, but I don’t. It does contain a lot of useful information that expands the SLA universe and gives the player and GM a stronger sense of how to relate to the setting. The information provided about Shivers can be invaluable and after reading about the Pit several of the players (and subsequently their characters) wanted to visit there, so we had some interesting sessions. The locations described do give the GM some new and interesting places to take their characters for a change of pace and to keep the setting fresh and original. It’s just that even with all this information and positive points, after the expectations set with Karma, the reader is left with a feeling that this book is informative, well worth the money and useful, but could have been a heck of a lot better.
So in conclusion, the Mort Sourcebook is a valuable addition to the library of any SLA GM, and players could gain some valuable insights into the world in which their characters live. It is worth it, but don’t start reading it expecting it to live up to the standards set by the SLA Industries rulebook and the Karma supplement. Take it for what it is: an attempt to expand the setting of Mort, hampered by WotC watering-down and too many production committees.
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