I have to admit that I was hesitant to get Fall from Grace. This was due to the postings on White Wolf's message board by two individuals that have worked for the company for several years. The first individual hinted that in FFG an exceedingly bad fate was to befall Crusader17, my favorite character of the line. To be honest, I had fears that he would be making dirt angels after this book, and without him my interest in the Hunter line was sure to wain.
The second individual who posted about the book had a strange obsession with the word "shit" in his postings regarding the book. "Some deep shit happens in this book," "You won't believe the shit that occurs to established characters in this book," "There's some crazy shit in FFG," and other similar statements made me leery of the book. I find that books for which swear words are the only way to entice someone into reading them are usually not worth my time.
Finally, I got a copy of Fall from Grace. Interestingly enough, the fellow with the fondness for the word "shit" has no indication on the credits page that he was involved in this book in any way, be it as writer, artist, editor, or guy who spilled beer on the original manuscript; I wish White Wolf's message board didn't automatically delete older posts so I could link you to some of the lad's fecal ramblings. Still, my usual theory on the use of potty talk to promote poor books was somewhat right. Fall From Grace has some nice portions, but I don't think they're enough to warrant the $19.95 cover price.
The books starts out in a Hunter: Apocrypha-style layout, with a tale of Fyodor in the United Kingdom. Here we get hints at the three paths a Hunter may follow to obtain a Level 5 Edge, and we learn that Violin99 survived the events of the Hermit Creedbook. Sadly, we're not told what happened to him at the end of that tale, or what he's been doing since then. While a nice player handout, these pages don't contribute anything of import to the book, and could easily have been left out.
Last Crusade, the opening fiction for this book, is simply wonderful. Crusader17 finally goes hunting for Oracle, little miss "I sold my soul for kewl powerz.," and along the way C17 makes a deal with the Ministers (or the Messengers, maybe; more on that oddity later) for his very own can of holy whupass.
It's nigh-impossible for me to write about this story without spoiling it for you, and that's something I don't wish to do; the author pulled out all the stops on this one. His depiction of C17 as a man obsessed with doing the Lord's work to the point of being frightening is excellently counterbalanced by the little things he does that show he cares about his fellow man. Crusader is more than a one-dimensional, shoot-'em-all & let God sort them out character, and it really shows here. Amusingly, the amount of bullshit that Crusader has gone through in all the other Hunter books at the hands of his fellow Hunters seems to have been a test of his powers by the Ministers, if the rules chapter of this book is any indication. Crusader is not the only realistically portrayed character--all of the individuals that show up have believable, three-dimensional personalities. I know I say that a lot in my reviews for rpg.net, but I repeat myself because it's so damn rare that I can honestly say that about the books I read.
Some people have expressed disappointment with the end of the tale. Personally I can think of several explanations for the reason it ends as it does, and all of them seem consistent with the story. YMMV, however. I will admit that the depiction of C17's new Edge as some sort of "Handgun of limitless Holy Ammo" did seem a bit out of sorts with Hunter to me.
Introduction Here the purpose of the book is explained, and the three types of Level 5 Edges are defined. There are Divine Edges (received from the Ministers), Corrupt Edges (gotten by making a pact with a demon), and Independent (tapping the Messengers' power on your own). The recommend reading list is the first I've ever seen in a White Wolf book where it seemed as though the suggested items might be worth spending my time to track down.
Chapter 1 This chapter chronicles a Hunter who achieves a Level 5 Edge via the Independent route. I was disappointed by this chapter for several reasons. First, the tale is not told in chronological order, moving randomly through time and depicting various events, forcing you to piece together what is going on. While this can be an entertaining way of telling a story, the author goes overboard with it, and it became a tedious chore trying to keep everything straight. I found myself having to constantly flip back and forth between pages trying to understand what was going on, and I found the story wasn't worth the effort by the time I got through with it.
The other big problem with the chapter is that there's crazy, and there's CRAZY, and the author went with the latter choice in depicting the main Hunter of this story. As the chapter begins a lot of what the character says is near-meaningless babble, with words, phrases, and ideas thrown out at random. This stream of near-nonsense finally begins to become more coherent near the end of the tale (though since it's not told in chronological order it felt that in the jumps to the past and back in the last few pages the protagonist was suddenly more coherent for no reason), but by then it's too little, too late.
I have a friend who's an actor, and who has a tendency to harp about how great it is to play an insane character, because it doesn't matter what you say or do because you're playing a lunatic. I wonder if the author had a similar viewpoint regarding writing crazy characters. As it was, I found the babble not worth the effort to read through to get to the "meat" of the chapter, but did it anyway, just so I could write this review.
You owe me.
Finally, enough with the happy endings for kids! Once again, despite all the horrible things that happen to Hunters and adults, a bunch of children (tainted children, at that!) escape all the bad stuff and get a happy ending. In Moonstruck it was only implied the child survived despite all the horrible stuff going on, but in this tale the survival is confirmed, with werewolves once again being involved. This kind of "children are immune to the really bad stuff" always angers me when I see it on TV, and in a horror game like Hunter it only makes my rage worse.
All in all I don't see how this chapter could give a reader any insight in how to portray an independent Hunter.
Chapter 2 In this chapter we have another insane Hunter, only this time she is on the path to becoming gifted with a Divine Edge. Like the Hunter in the first chapter the woman who stars here is a few fries short of a happy meal, but the author doesn't go into a giant amount of rambling to show the character is nuts; instead we're shown her madness by her viewpoints and opinions, though a few cringeworthy bits of randomness do sneak in. This chapter had a handful of flaws that made me hate it. Before going into detail on that I freely admit that some of these dislikes come from my personal, never-going-to-get-rid-of-them biases, so you may be more forgiving than I. With that out of the way I'll begin numbering my complaints, starting with:
1. What is it with the spirits of aborted children (or creatures pretending to be them) showing up in so many horror stories? And why is it that the spirits are always benevolent, and that the mothers of the aborted children always accept them? I'm pretty sure if I was the ghost of an aborted baby I'd be pretty pissed about missing my chance of living on Earth, and be driven to revenge (or at the least, really snotty toward) against my mother. Whenever I see a story like this I always feel like it's an excuse that it's okay to abort babies, because they'll have a better time wherever the souls of aborted babies go than they would have on Earth. Or, to paraphrase an old issue of "What The--?!" "...dead babies-but it's okay, because they would have grown up to have sucky lives anyway."
2. The Hunter of this tale was sexually abused as a teen, and has an unhealthy fixation on sex as a result. I accept that, as I once dated a woman who had been sexually abused & who had a similar fixation. However, at one point we discover the imbued encountered a mage near-death in an alleyway, and healed him back to normal. That's okay, but immediately afterward she mounts the guy and has sex with him, and there's sure as hell no consent on the part of the mage!
Strangely, I'm not upset with the fact that she has relations with the mage against his will; an incident with the aforementioned woman I dated made me more than willing to believe that some victims of sexual abuse will become as bad as their abusers. I'm upset by the fact that the mage, after being raped by the Hunter, apparently makes NO effort to track her down, let alone seek justice/revenge against her. It's a very small portion of the chapter, but it read like a bad porno fantasy & I felt it offensive.
3. Just like the use of the spirits of aborted children, this chapter also uses the overused "telling a rapist you forgive him will cause the rapist to kill himself" shtick. This is something that upsets me off every time I see it, again stemming from a woman I dated & the things she went through. Why so many authors feel that "forgiveness results in suicide" for rapists is beyond me.
4. Last time I checked slicing your hamstrings with a knife to inflict an injury so grievous you can't walk usually results in an individual bleeding to death. Apparently humans in the WoD are made of sterner stuff than real people, as not only does the character survive, but is able to escape the scene of the carnage she causes.
Now, if you don't have the same hang-ups as I do you may be able to find some use out of this chapter. I'm afraid I did not.
Chapter 3 Now this chapter is hilarious, and I mean that in a good way. The story mixes seriousness with tongue-in-cheek humor as legendary Hunter Rigger111 talks directly to us about his current adventures even as the demon he's sold his soul to is speaking to him. Several long-time Hunters die in this tale, and another goes to the dark side, which is something most Hunter fans thought she would do, though not in the way it's depicted in this book.
I'm not sure where to begin in praising this tale. The humor is great, a mix of Preacher-esque black humor with some rip-downs on Hunter; some of the latter I'm embarrassed to say I never thought of (such as Hunter Code being angel gang tags) and others I couldn't believe WW would allow to be published (such as mocking the reasoning of some Mercy-based Hunters from previous books).
The characters in this tale are also given a great deal of personality. Rigger is a three-dimensional character, whose hatreds and actions make perfect sense after you learn all he's gone through. The Hunters who meet their final fate are also portrayed in keeping with how they've acted in previous books, and even Rigger's demon master has interesting dialogue, even if he is a beast from the pit that must be destroyed.
The story of the chapter is also interesting, giving a good view of what it's like to be a corrupt Hunter; unlike the previous two chapters, you could actually learn something valuable on running an extremist Hunter from this chapter.
There are a few flaws in this chapter, though they are minor. At times the demon that owns Rigger interrupts his narrative to the reader as though he knows Rigger is breaking the fourth wall to speak with us, and at other times it's as though the demon has no idea Rigger is speaking to us. There's also a bit involving a vampire who apparently is a pop superstar on VH1----I'm not joking about that, sadly. Also, much of Rigger's rage stems from one particular vampire, yet from the text I get the impression that he never killed the vampire in question, nor even attempted to go after her, which was very confusing. All in all, though, this chapter is a good read.
Chapter 4 is the rules portion of this book. I was surprised by how much I was disappointed by this chapter. A lot of my problems came from little things that should have been caught in editing, or by apparent attitudes on the part of the author that made me wonder what style of Hunter game he's been playing. In no particular order:
- In some parts of the chapter (p88, for example) it sounds as though the author sees Hunters with Derangements as uber-toughs, who just play lip-service to insanities & spend Willpower to ignore their effects. The author also seems to think that players get to choose exactly what Derangements they develop at higher Virtue ratings, without the Storyteller having a say in it (p89). Later on in the book the author seems to have misread the bit in the Hunter rulebook about risking Conviction to gain a point only once per scene, and only in situations that move the story along & make sense; at one point he/she seems to feel that a Hunter can risk Conviction any old time they feel like on a roll, with the end result being a near-continuous source of Conviction.
- The author actually suggests role-playing a character's Derangements OUT OF CHARACTER on page 93! It's even suggested that you start doing this as soon as you enter the place you plan to game at, but BEFORE you sit down and actually start gaming!
-In a bit I found rather offensive, the author felt the need to tell us "Being deranged does not mean your character automatically loses his fashion sense or can suddenly do complex math problems in his head." Nice to know whoever wrote that felt his readers were ignorant fucks who have no respect/compassion/understanding for the mentally ill.
- The author seems to skip around on the subject of the Messengers and the Ministers. Sometimes they're referred to as being the same thing, while other times the Ministers are described as though they are of a higher level of being than the Messengers.
There is a small portion of the chapter devoted to different types of mental problems, and I have to say the author did an excellent job in this section in describing them. I showed it to one of my players, who has a degree in psychology & works with the mentally ill on a daily basis, and he said it perhaps the best treatment of mental illness in a WW book that he's ever read.
After this coverage of each faction of extreme Hunters begins, starting with those of the divine path. The writer did an excellent job detailing the path a Hunter must follow & the ordeals he must go through to win the favor of the Ministers and be gifted with a divine edge. I am a bit perplexed as to the "benefits" & "drawback" of being a divine extremist, as they are shown in game terms. My biggest gripe comes regarding divine Hunters & Derangements. When a Hunter become gifted with a divine Edge he chooses one Derangement he suffers from as his primary Derangement. He may no longer spend Willpower to alleviate the effects of the Derangement but he is healed of ALL other Derangements he suffers from (which would be a minimum of four for a Hunter who meets the prerequisites for having a Level Five Edge). There is an in-game explanation for why this occurs, which I can somewhat accept, but I can't help feeling this benefit was introduced to placate those players who have complained that by the time a Hunter reaches ten in a Virtue his Derangements render him near-unplayable.
The write up of corrupt edges and their demon suppliers are good for the most part. I have to admit to some confusion about this chapter after reading the Demon fiction anthology and skimming over the D:TF rulebook; while the latter two books make it sound as though there are good demons and bad demons, those who gift Hunters with Edges are evil with a capital E, with no exceptions. I can accept the idea that only evil demons can empower Messengers, or perhaps that the demons who gift Hunters with Corrupt Edges are those demons known as the Earthbound. I just wish that White Wolf had put that fact into print, to shut up all the WW munchkin players who've feel that they should be able to play a Hunter gifted with a Level Five Edge by a benevolent demon, and thus avoid all the limitations and problems presented in FFG.
I'm also disturbed by the casual mention that demons can gift Hunters with the ability to raise the dead---no stats for it thankfully.
The Independents are also well-written, with some of their rules being adapted from some optional bits originally presented in the Hunter Player's Guide. Finally, the book rounds out with write-ups of one extremist from each type, one of whom was created from this book, and two characters who have appeared in previous releases.
I'd be negligent if I didn't mention the art in this book. The artists (both cover and interior) did some excellent pieces for this books, with only one or two pieces that seemed odd (or, in one case, made me laugh out loud).
While having its good points, I can't really recommend purchasing Fall From Grace at its cover price. If it were on sale, or you can convince someone to buy it for you as a gift of the holiday of your choice, I recommend it. Otherwise save your pennies for now.
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