The Clerics' Sourcebook
Sourcebook
Torg
West End
Games
[sterling]12.50 - ???pp
In theory, this book contains everything you need to know to run clerics in any
of the Cosms or realms of the Torg infiniverse. What this means
is that you get a run-down of the basic rules, then a section on the religions
of each cosm, then extensive lists of spells and rituals, followed by - and I
think this may be the first I've seen in a West End Games product - a
proper index, with page numbers and all. Don't start cheering yet, though - it
only references the entries in the spell lists, not those in the sections on
religions. God forbid we should actually be able to find everything we need in
one go.
There is a lot of overlap between the spells in this book and those in
the basic and "world" books. Some do appear to be new, but it's impossible to
be sure without access to all the books. There's also evidence to suggest that
the spell descriptions have simply been copied from the original manual to this
one. For instance, the ritual Call Giant Wasp goes straight into "...is
used every sixth Darooni cycle by the priestesses..." This was fine in the
context of the Land Below world-book, but is hardly enough explanation
in a general spell-list. In any case, this ritual is only available to only
one kind of player, so reproducing it here simply increases the amount of cross
checking people have to do. Me, I'm still waiting for the system that has
completely different clerical spells for each religion (or better, a system
that's totally independent of spell lists).
The other big gripe I have is the limited amount of space given to descriptions
of the actual religions. Each cosm gets about three heavily ilustrated pages
(Core Earth gets just over two, the Land Below/The Land Above and the
Cyberpapacy get a big six). These are then divided between however many
religions there are, and include complete spell lists. So you really aren't
going to get a huge amount of description of any one religion. The basic ideas
behind the various faiths are explained, but not, for example, the organisation
and hierarchy of the organised religions. This is true even for the
Cyberpapacy, which gets the most space. It's all very well to say that
a PC is most likely to be a heretic, or at least some kind of maverick, but
this approach gives the referee who wants to force some interaction with
organised religion very little to go on. Then again, you can always buy the
world books...
Overall: So, all in all, this is one of those books you probably can do without
- but won't, if you're a dedicated player, because there's always the chance
it'll have something you need buried somewhere in it.
Review by Liz Holliday
Product supplied by Hobbygames
