THE END.

(...Admittedly, a confusing sentence with which to begin a review)

Storytime
(feel free to skip to the next section if you don't want to hear the background of this game)

Tyranny Games' The End and I go way, way back. I can't recall what year in the mid-90s it was, but the then Scapegoat Games made a lot of murmurs with their GenCon ad proclaiming "The End is Coming... This Year to GenCon". They were booted out of GenCon for pushing a game with religious themes, which was against some sort of bylaw that TSR was adhering to back in those days, and forced to march around outside wearing people-placards (you know, the kind that crazy people have in movies that take place in New York) screaming "The End is HERE!". Nothing was brought against the release of the Christian-themed CCG Redemption (which was giving out free "Plague of Flies" cards), and eyebrows were only raised slightly at the Kult booth even though the following exchanges were taking place in that corner (and I swear I'm not making this up):

"Hey, is this that game that has the spell 'Fetal Perversion?'?"
"It sure is! Are you interest..."
"Oh, SWEET!!! Give me TWO!" (customer pays and runs off laughing)

For some reason, though, people had it out for the Tyranny Games crew. A small, eccentric group of folks who released a game that dwelled on the Apocalypse and was bound to offend a lot of people. So, of course, I wanted to score a copy, and bad.

Luckily, I somehow managed to get a copy of this game, but the interesting thing is, I can't for the life of me recall how. This is actually a strange thing for me, as I can go into my 100 die dice bag and rattle off roughly when and where I acquired each of them. I can't for the life of me recall how I managed to score a copy of this game, although I think it did have something to do with the GenCon that they were booted from. Strange.

Anyway, I really wasn't expecting much in the game, but I was extremely impressed when I read through it. Even though I thought the rules were easily replaceable,the background and storyline of the game were both enticing to me, as well as compelling: And this is very unusual, considering that I have absolutely no interest in games with religious issues at their core (the closest I'll go before simply losing interest is Star Wars). The "Fall Lineup" advertised in the back of the book seemed like a list of must-haves for the setting, and I planned on getting them all.

But they didn't come out. I was to later find out on a chat board that the Man with the Plan for this game, Joseph Donka, was stricken with cancer shortly after the release of The End, and the line had been effectively canceled. Well, miraculously, Mr. Donka's cancer went into remission and, like a sappy after-school TV special, the Tyranny Games group got back on their feet and pushed again to rewrite and re-release The End. The underground fans of the game have waited seven years for the release of this game, and now the Lost Souls limited edition of The End is out.

The End: The Lost Souls Edition

I purchased two copies of this game (one locally and the other from the Tyranny Games' Website), and was surprised when it arrived: It was much... smaller... than I expected. Rather than the standard 8.5x11, this one was at a 6x9 size. I'm all for finding new and interesting medium with which to push out the RPG experience, but it still took me off-guard. Right when my natural American instinct was beginning to register the possibility of being gypped, I quickly noticed two things: First, it was very thick (300 pages). Second, upon closer inspection, I realized that it looks like a bible. Same kind of plasticy-leathery cover, same golden, stylistic letters, and the same yellowish pages (like White Wolf's Adventure). This, I thought, was pretty risqu�E (especially as a d20 game- There are many small-press publishers that refuse to publish in anything other than the standard 8.5x11, as they assume gamers will pass up anything of smaller/larger, or unusual, dimensions) and totally groovy overall- They even named the chapters in the book after books of the Bible.

The cover, black, is embedded with the raised figure of the Hexagram of the Seven Seals of the Apocalypse. We can tell that this mark is the Hexagram of the Seven Seals of the Apocalypse, because it actually says so in fine lettering on the bottom of the cover. To be honest, I thought that this was a little weak. RPG covers, to me, evoke a sense of the setting by design, not words. It'd be like writing "This is The Fireman" on the cover of Aberrant, or "A Bunch of Solar Exalted" on the covers of those games... or, to go back to the style the book was supposed to emulate, writing "The Holy Cross of the Crucifixion" on the cover of a King James Bible. A small point, though, and easily forgotten.

The first chapter, the Book of Chronicles, is a 20-page narrative in the form of diary entries of one of the main background characters of the game, Harry Leibewitz (note to previous The End owners: The story appears to be taken straight from the first book). Harry becomes a scavenger and roams the country, writing down his experiences in the various groups, communes and cities he comes across. I'm fairly anti-narration when it comes to RPGs, as most gaming fiction tends to drag on if it's in the same style for more than one full page (as opposed to, say, Aberrant or Trinity, which mixes various styles to convey a single narrative). However, the story here was highly entertaining to me. Not only was it a great piece of "candy fiction", it really did convey what I imagined to be the feel of the setting: Dark, a little bleak, a little more bleak, and finally quite hopeful.

The second chapter, the Book of Revelation, details the background of the game. The storyline of the game is easy to grasp: It's the year 2006, and the Apocalypse has come and gone, leaving behind survivors that were never really either good or evil in life. The premise of the game is interesting; That the words of the Bible that state: "The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth" were a warning, and not words of encouragement. Here, the Meek (and this word will pop up a lot, as it applies to ALL the humans on the planet) are the ones that didn't choose sides in the Final Days. It's like the thematic opposite of the Stephen King thriller The Stand, where only the super-good and the super-evil survive the holocaust.

I'm a big fan of the post-apocalypse setting, mostly because I love to read people's ideas of what the Final Days would be like. Most games allude to a forgotten war. The game Blue Planet goes into exquisite detail about the environmental problems that befall the poor planet Earth. The End pulls no punches here, going into vivid detail (20 pages of light, but engaging, reading, including narration as well as fake newspaper clips, interviews and the like) about the end of the world and how it comes to pass in light of the Seven Seals of the Apocalypse.

The last part of the Book of Revelation is an extensive Q&A that helps the players and GMs understand the nature of the world of The End, and it is a very welcome addition to the game. They give straight answers to questions that creep up often in reading this game, and although they say that they put it in to stop the flow of mail to their office, It's invaluable to understanding the setting: Questions like "How do people get into Heaven?", "What environmental changes have occurred?", "Do other Gods exist?", and finally, "What's the point?", a critical question for this game. Finally, the chapter ends with an extensive lexicon. Again, in most games that offer a lexicon I tend to gloss over it or ignore it, as most of the words in the game can be figured out easily in context (if they appear in the book at all), but there were a few cool notables in this section: Namely "John Galt", a "derogatory term for a leader of a colony". It's a jab at Ayn Rand, interesting enough since the world as presented in The End is pretty much a Libertarian Fantasyland. With Occult Magic.

The next section, the Book of Kings, is basically the campaign guide to the Earth (America, actually) as appears in The End, and it's quite a long (50 pages) section. It talks about wildlife and basic society, then it goes on a tour of several American regions and the major colonies that exist. Each colony's description follows a pattern: First an "outsider's quote" to generate a quick snapshot of the community ("These people are nuts", etc.); then a quick breakdown of population, leader, government type, etc.; then a "XYZ's Story", Where XYZ is the name of one of the main colony founders; Then a "The Founding", wherein the story f the founding of the community continues; Then sections on threats to the commune, daily life, commodities that the colony needs, a who's who of the colony (two or so NPCs with no stats listed); and finally a report of how the colony gets along with others. In some areas there's a lot of physical/combative struggle between colonies, and others are falling apart from within. Others seem to be doing OK, given the circumstances (they aren't ALL going to Hell. Then again, they can't go to Hell if they tried). The writing in this section is engaging: even though this section is relatively long, I had no trouble staying concentrated through it, as I found very few descriptions dry or boring (since the town descriptions began with the story of a person, it was a great tie-in that . Then again, when you think about it, they did have seven years to polish up their writing.

The next section is the Book of Genesis, and as you can guess, it deals with character generation. The rules never seemed to be a big part of this game, as most of the NPCs, etc. are listed in story terms instead of stats, feats and skills, but they make their grand entrance here. The End was (re)built with the d20 system. For you D&D and d20 neighsayers, this is a good time to have a chuckle at the irony of a game that focuses on those cast out by God that uses the d20 system. To be honest, I'm not really a big fan of d20 at all (namely because of all the "career-planning" involved), and I really didn't know what to expect when I read the rules sections (note: The book from this point on, save the last section, is almost entirely dominated by "rules" That's roughly slightly less than one half of the book). After reading through the rules, I was really impressed by them. In fact, although from the start I was thinking of using the Fudge or Risus system to handle the game when I come around to run it with my group (in a few months, after our current campaign), after reading through Tyranny's interpretation of the d20 rules, combined with my group's familiarity, I'm probably going to stick with the rules as written. That's saying a lot, as I even stick to "seat of your pants" rules systems like BESM and Fudge when I run schlock fantasy.

First, there's only one core class in The End (similar to Call of Cthulhu), and that's The Meek. At least, I had heard this for months. However, as I was giving the book an initial flip-though before I read through it, I came upon level tables for "Shaman", "Thug", and others. I was confused, until I realized that the initial claim still stood; but the game features several prestige classes as well.

The Meek- The Meek roll d2 for hitpoints... But their starting HP is their Constitution score. This freaked me out a little (I don't know if other games like CoC do this as well), because I had actually ran a few low-fantasy AD&D 2E games this way years ago. In this game, Constitution is on par with "survivability". They start out with (5 Int modifier)x4 skill points at first level. The start off with feats like "Survivor" (this interesting mechanic allows the player to reroll one of their die rolls per adventure, giving it a -2 to 2 as they see fit), Sin (not so much a feat as a description of what kept them out of Heaven), and Soul ( 2 to all Will saves). From that point, the characters can grow to take on the rolls of one of the "Reborn Classes" which are the eight Prestige Classes of the setting: Anarchist, Digger, Physician, Preacher, Restorer, Scientist, Shaman and Thug.

Looking at the Reborn Classes, I find them very fitting for the setting. However, I really don't see why they didn't rewrite the Reborn Classes into classes of their own. After all, how I picture the game, most of the characters will probably fall into the above roles anyway. To me, it'd be like rewriting the D&D Player's Handbook to have one class, the "Guy" (or have each class be based on race, like "Elf", "Dwarf", etc.), and from there make all the core classes into Prestige Classes. Thinking back, though, all of the Reborn classes have the same skill point progression, as well as the same HP progression (with the exception of the Thug, which uses d4), so it may have been easier that way. It may also be easier to take care of the rules for "everyday NPCs". Make Jenny in the corner of the tavern into a "2nd level meek", or the leader of the colony into a "6th level meek").

As Prestige Classes go, these are quite interesting. Each class gets about 4-5 special powers for that class (above and beyond the special feats that those classes may be entitled to). Whereas the powers of traditional D&D Prestige Classes always seem to have something to do with combat (it may just be me, though), a lot of the abilities of the Reborn Classes are story-based: The ability to protect materials from rotting; the ability to find small, useful items; the ability to resist temptation to not act anymore (called Ennui, addressed later). I don't know if the classes are "balanced" in relation to each other (they seem to be on paper), but they are certainly balanced when you look at their effectiveness and roles in a The End story.

The Book of Acts rewrites, or retells, a lot of the core D&D Player's Handbook, and serves as the chapter on skills and feats. How to make skill checks and ability checks is addressed here (pulled right from the PHB, but it's nice in the fact that it's detailed enough that you can leave your PHB at home and game solely with this book. Next is the skill list: Many d20 games I've seen write their skill section like, "Animal Empathy: Same as in the Player's Handbook", or, "Disguise: Same as in the PHB with the following exceptions: XYZ". This book rewrites the skill section from scratch. You may find this terribly redundant if you bring your PHB to every d20 gaming session, but I thought that this is remarkable: I can truly leave my PHB at home, as I need only this hand-sized book to play the game AND navigate difficult rules questions.

There were some goodies in the skills and feats sections. The skills Gather Information, Diplomacy, Bluff, Innuendo and Sense Motive all come underscored with the one-lined italicized commentary, "I don't want to role-play". I thought that was cute, and not too distracting.

The next section, the Book of Lamentations, contains the rules for the background of The End that don't fall under combat. Ennui, The Blues, magic, disease, and the statistics of animals and the few monsters/angels of the setting.

Ennui is the "sanity" of The End. Instead of going insane from witnessing Elder Horrors, though, Ennui reflects the sort of humanistic de-attachment that you can experience when you're isolated and alone (think the crazy trader from Waterworld or Leo-baby from The Beach). It's triggered when you're near death, witness the supernatural, or are tempted by sin. Ennui checks, when they occur, are modified mainly by their attachment to other people and rolled at a difficulty of 6. If you fail a check Beginning Ennui for all characters is 25-Wisdom. Once you go up to 25, you go la-la. Effects of failing Ennui are up to the character and GM depending on the situation: they choose effects from a list of categories that include Delusion, Ability Reduction, Withdrawal, Lethargy and several others.

Magic, in The End, is handled solely as feats. No spell lists, no Xth level spells per level, just rituals that the Reborn Class The Shaman can take as feats. There are 14 rituals in this rulebook. Each ritual involves gaining of Ennui (possibly permanently if the spell is powerful), and often takes a lot of time to perform (1-2 hours being the norm, with some taking up to a day). Some of the rituals allow the target to see in the dark, gain unnatural favor in another's eyes, allow nature to retake an area quickly, cause storms, or become possessed and gain temporary abilities. No fireballs or magic missiles here, they've all got that "Occult Feel" which definitely keeps the magic system in line with the setting.

There's also another class of feat magic open to all characters where the players are expected to discover it over time (through advancement) called "Word of God" magic. The way they work reminds me just a little bit of the old WEG Star Wars rules on The Force: You have these "Words of God", like Love, Water, Fire, Darkness, Decay, and so on (aside: How about a "Nacho Cheese" Word of God?). To learn and use them, though, you must first take the three "Word of God Feats": Comprehension, Manipulation and Control. You use Comprehension to actually learn the Word of God when you experience it, and the other two to do things with that force. THey're very powerful, though, and when I thought that they might throw off a campaign, I realized that if you followed the feet progression "by the book", it won't be until around level 10 that you can get or use these feats effectively anyway. Also, learning just one or two Word of God feats is a rare thing, and if your group goes that route doing so might be the zenith of a series of adventures.

The Blues is the effect in the world of The End wherein man-made things rot away much faster. They break easier when hit, they rot faster when left alone, etc. The reasoning behind this is that Mother Nature is back with a vengeance, reclaiming the land from civilization faster than imagined. It's also a cool way to mix nature/trees with cityscapes without setting the year of the game dozens or hundreds of years after the apocalyptic event.

The next section is the Book of Numbers, and it's the combat section of the book. Hit points are handled in the same way as they are in D&D 3E. The non-health section of this chapter focuses on firearms. The game emulates recoil, and several types of weapons (auto, shotgun, etc.). Unfortunately, I find combat sections of any RPG pretty boring, and even though others love the simulation involved in combat rules (and are expecting me to say more on the issue), I'm afraid that I can't comment at this time. No matter how much I claimed that the writers of The End are great with the written word, this section comes off as cold and dry as the combat section of the PHB. I simply cannot get excited (or read through with any level of interest) sections on "fully automatic weapons capable of 50-round bursts", range penalties reduced by telescopic sites, or the effects of muzzle flash at night.

For me, guns are very powerful literary devices in the context of this game and probably should have been left as such. While the writers embellished on the dangers of firearms, and provide a set of rules to emulate the gritty feel of the setting, I'd just as soon throw it all away and use "off the cuff" modifiers. For me, this was the slowest section of the book (far more so than other rules sections), and if I were to suggest rewriting any given section, it would be this one, with the suggestion that they make a "seat of your pants/Lite" fire combat optional rules system. Otherwise, going through this book is like running on foot at 80mph on a huge endorphin high, only to slam into a wall; The book totally picks up after this point, but if you are determined to read the chapters in order, the jarring effect of this section is immense.

Whoever wrote Chapter Eight, the Book of Judges, deserves some sort of Role Playing Design award, if not endless fellatio by beautiful admiring fans (or cute asian girls in hip-hop wear, depending on their tastes). This is the most useful section in the book for The End GMs. Furthermore, it's probably the best GMs section/introduction to any RPG that I've ever read. What's addressed here? Almost everything:

*How to set the scope of your own The End game.
*Themes to emphasize in the game (Man vs Nature, Ideology vs Ideology, etc.), and how to emphasize them.
*How to set the mood of your The End game, with detailed examples written in a conversational tone.
*How to deal with issues of Setting and Game Pace.
*How to introduce your players to the The End game.
*How to handle experience and rewards.
*Issues of combat realism, as well as playtest notes to help you get ready for problems and issues that you may have in your own game (preemptive, documented support? Genius!)
*How to run themes of Scarcity in the game, and how to handle Ennui.
*Finally, source material to get you into the feel of the game.

The last section of the book, the Book of Apocrypha, is a combination of an NPC Roster and Plot Hooks section. A few NPCs are treated over the course of three to five pages. It's got the stat/rule breakdown for each of the characters (some of them, like the Voodoo Queen or Rev. Tommy Thrillkill, are penned in as possible antagonists), but instead of just a simple history, the character is vividly described over several pages, complete with character background, role-playing notes, and ways to bring the NPC into a game.

The book is wrapped up with a small index, a list of the art contributors and art index, blurbs about The End books in the works, and finally a very simple (which appeals to me) character sheet.

The Flaws?

It's obvious that I really enjoyed my reading of this book, and it's very easy to overlook the bad parts of the game in light of all of its excellent qualities. If I were forced to bring up something, anything, to say about this book so that I don't look like a shill or a gibbering fanboy (because I'm giving this game a 4/5, and thought that I'd like to qualify those remarks), I'd offer the following:

1) The book's unusual size threw me at first, then I quickly grew to like it. However, I later noticed that the boo, since it's smaller, is more susceptible to bending. I'm not one to go out of my way to protect the RPGs I own that I don't plan on selling at some point on ebay (and I'm definitely not selling this game), but I was disappointed that already the white company sticker on the back cover of the book shows creases, and the back cover "bounces" about an inch off the last page of the book from reading it (and I'm usually careful about initial damage on books, at least until I reach that "oh well, I'm used to it now" phase).

2) The combat section: Deadly, painful and brutal. That's the influence of the system on the game world. Add "dry" to the list, and it would be a list of this section's effects on me as I read it. It really stood out from the rest of the book, as the rest was easy to read and somewhat "juicy", especially the campaign sections, character generation and magic/Ennui sections.

The End?

After reading this book, I've decided to pursue this series of games. The background is just that much fun to read, and this is actually one of those games that I know I'm going to play soon (not a read, scan for ideas, and place on shelf buy).

That's probably the one thing I have to say about this game. Given the nature of the background and story behind the game, the writers have gone way beyond most game designers to make their game accessible to people with mild interest. The Q&A section and the GMs section are shining examples on how to bring a game down to the player and get them excited about it and involved from the start, rather than just writing the game and expecting the player to read and want to become involved with the game. If only the writers of some of my other favorite games, especially Blue Planet, could introduce games like the writers behind The End.