Okay, I'm usually wary of a game that proclaims itself as belonging to someone. But following my "Hunter" review I found a lot of people swearing by various deities that C.J. Carella's WitchCraft was a superior game. Not that I actually knew exactly who C.J. Carella is (Although he's apparently famous). It wasn't until later that I made the RIFTS connection. So, being a case of "World Famous in America" I accepted that this may be worth a look at.
Appearances aren't everything...
On initial inspection the book is beautiful. The art on the cover is evocative and beautifully executed, promising quite a bit. The back contains the obligatory blurb about how this is the best game ever blah blah blah. All in all, the packaging of this game is fantastic - just looking at it made me want to buy it. (Yes, I am a bit of an impulse buyer... ask me one day about how I got burnt with "Legacy: War of the Ages.") This level of quality continues throughout the book, which really helps to capture the feel of the game. Although some of the art in the book is questionable in regards to its relevance to the game this is forgivable - hey, White Wolf have been doing it for years... "Montreal by Night" anyone?
There is a rather gratuitous use of differing fonts for titles - especially in the magic section, but overall the entire book of shadows feel is quite cool. But what about the game?
Setting the pace...
Firstly, WitchCraft has a cool take on the whole "armageddon" schtick - while being gothic, its also very hopeful. The game has a kind of The Craft meets Charmed meets Call of Cthulhu meets Hunter: The Reckoning meets In Nomine feel. Pretty broad. This is both WC's strength and, in a way, its weakness. For one, it tries to take on too much. While dealing with Cthuloid beasties the Gifted, WC's term for witches and Warlocks, also have to deal with a technocracy type conspiracy that seems to have been put in as an afterthought. Adding to their troubles are the inquisition type factions and the battle between Heaven and Hell.
I can't help but feel that the game should have focused on one or two initial elements. There is too much that is briefly touched on and simply not enough detail about anything that is actually interesting. The Covenants (re: Traditions) are all fairly unimaginative and some are just plain boring. I often have to fight the urge to draw parallels with Mage here - because WC definitely feels like someone's attempt at recreating Mage but adding Hunters as another faction.
System
What is it with Eden and oddly designed game systems? Conspiracy X has the most bizarre system I have come across - and the Unisystem is almost as strange. While it initially seems to be the usual Stat Skill based system, it quickly spirals into a morass of odd and apparently arbitrary rules systems for certain circumstances.
For example, the System uses a D10 for most rolls - except damage, which is odd. Why suddenly start introducing two other dice types when one could have sufficed?
Anyway, when a 10 is rolled, the player rerolls the die and subtracts five adding the remainder to the 10. Weird. It could've worked just fine by dividing by two or any other method - the system kind of makes it pointless to reroll at all. Rolling 1 leads to the same kind of unusual book-keeping.
Then there is the magic system itself. Quite frankly it is uneccesarily obtuse at points - trying valiantly to do occult science justice I assume - Rather than have a unified magic system each form has wildly different rules. The Invocations are divided in a manner similar to Mage's Spheres (drawing that comparison again) but once again seems to be arbitrarily allocated. Obviously Mr Carella is not very educated in Wiccan and Western Hermetic traditions. It just feels that he couldn't decide on wether to have a spell list or have elements that players combine, so he kind of went for both. The other forms of magic - Psionics, Necromancy and Divine powers - are all equally clunky to use.
Other Considerations
This is not a game that you can pick up and play. It requires a lot of reading and preparation to play. The Unisystem is fine, but seems a bit indecisive and has annoying little rules that slow down the flow of gameplay. When we ran our first game the players kept having to stop and ask if they had rolled correctly. The magic system reminds me of Star Wars D20 - a hodge podge of rules that don't actually fit together properly. This was very irritating, especially when we got into a magic duel between a psionic and an Invocation focused witch. It became somewhat confused and frustrating - especially when the GM had to continue referring to the book only to find that it was next to impossible to find the rules he wanted.
At the end of the day I have to say that WitchCraft is a great idea - and if we'd had the patience to sit down and fully understand the rules and setting then maybe we'd have found the game more fun. Unfortunately the Unisystem is a case of a generic system being used in a game that needed a setting specific system. Personally I felt that Mage handled magic in a superior manner and Hunter: The Reckoning does divine gifts of power more accurately than WC. As for the argument that the Unisystem has a better structure to create mortals compared to the "empowered" I would dispute that. Less points, less dots, it's all the same in the end. Quite frankly, I wasn't that impressed by this game. It has a lot of promise and the fiction is some of the best I have seen in a roleplaying supplement - it really helped to capture the atmosphere in a way that the actual game writing failed to do.
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