 Goto [ Index ] |
Firstly, I will state my biases.
I hold a masters degree in history, and am a doctoral level student in Religion, who has for some years lectured in religious and cultural history. I have published albeit many years ago on archaeology, and one of my academic specialities is actual Dark Age Britain. I have published a few historical articles on 13th century England for a popular audience, and my web site is full of material on 13th century monasticism, East Anglian Saints, and 13th century British Folklore. I have recently completed running a three year very intense campaign (using another rpg system) dealing with English Politics, and especially the battle between Church and Throne, 1210 - 1225. I am pedantic, academic, and tied to a high history, high myth model - that is I am happy to consult archives for probate records to discover what we can find out about the contents os a house in say Bury St Edmunds in the period in question, and mythic elements in my games tend to have to be based on real folklore or weirdness from the monastic annals. I read medieval town charters as a hobby... I am therefore never going to be satisfied. The fact I rate this book so highly shows just how good it actually is!
A Very Big Warning!
If you are planning to buy this book because you are interested in Dark Age Britain, forget it. It is almost useless. The book is set in 1230, and while it covers the history of the kingdoms, it is a book about Medieval not Dark Age Britain. The difference between the two is like publishing an RPG supplement for Vampire describing modern 2004 Boston, and calling it Vampire 1776: The American War of Independence - same gap as 1230 from end of Dark Age- or Jamestown for that matter. In fact the difference between the start of the Dark Ages and this books setting is the same as the difference between the setting and us!
If you don't know the difference between the Dark Ages and Middle Ages, you probably won't enjoy this supplement anyway, as it has a great deal of historical and political material on 13th Century Britain. Borrow clichés from Hollywood and make it up - no one will mind as long as the game is fun. Honest - I'm a real life boring historian, and I don't mind, and if anyone else does call me and I'll come round and lecture them on 13th Century Forest Law and Verdurers till they plead for sweet anachronism - OK?
The whole Dark Ages misnomer was because Dark Ages sounds better than Vampire: The Medieval or Vampire Middle Ages, though the latter sounds like it has potential for a sitcom about a group of forty something vamps hitting a mid-unlife crisis. All of the books in the range are set in 1230,just ten years after the current canonical setting for Ars Magica 4th Edition. I'll mention that again later...
The Map
OK, all good historical settings need a map. This one has a map, and quite a good one. The border of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire is wrong for the period, but it just describes a little bump around Newmarket and Exning instead of that wiggly bit. Hereford puzzles me - it appears to be in completely wrong place - I think that is still Gloucestershire, and Herefordshire should be where Shropshire is, which pushes Shropshire north in to Cheshire as marked. I could be wrong, but I have no doubt that Herefordshire then as now bordered Worcestershire - the Malverns being the border as is stated in the supplement later! The Cambridgeshire / Norfolk border is also a bit dubious - all of the Fens are placed in Norfolk as far as I can see, whereas historically they have generally been subject to Cambridgeshire. I spent three months reconstructing the topography of the pre-drainage Fens and river courses for my game, I am allowed to be picky!
Ok, now to the failings of the map. There are no diocesan boundaries, which would have been invaluable. The map has no scale slightly irritating! While a few major towns are marked their choice does not seem proportionate to either their political importance or population in 1230. The lack of any terrain on the map renders it useless for planning journeys or adventures, and the lack of roads and navigable rivers really makes it for information only for people who have no idea about British political organisation.
As good maps of England in this period are few, this is a major oversight, a missed opportunity. The map in Heirs to Merlin and excellent Ars Magica supplement covering England and Wales in the same period in exhaustive detail and almost completely usable with the Dark Ages range is better, despite having some incredible cartographic howlers - but it does show terrain and roads. I am not convinced by the political map of Wales, and Ireland I know too little about to comment accurately.
I think here the authors were victims of White Wolf's house style. Throughout the book this becomes more and more apparent. What is desperately needed here is a large fold out map, showing stuff like roads, towns, mountains, forests and ports. Illustrated with the heraldry of the era I would not have minded paying a couple of pounds more, for a poster sized item which would have made this an almost perfect supplement.
No room! No room!
The book opens with an interesting little note. The material delivered was to big for the page count allocated for the book, so some of it is available from the White Wolf website. I think this is a bit of a shame - the authors deserved to have it all in the book, and the ridiculous page limitation, large font, broad white margins and way too much art - ranging from the mediocre to the inspiring, but personal tastes vary - has severely restricted the authors. This book should have been a hardback, twice the word count, to cover the topic well. The authors deserved it, and I am amazed the Line Editor did not realise this.
You can download the additional material at the White Wolf website under RPG GAMES > DARK AGES.
It is labelled Dark Ages: Britain Casualties!
It contains some excellent material, including stuff on the Channel Isles, Vampire Clans, Fey etc, etc. Oddly some of this material IS in the book despite the claims it is not! Do download it anyway just to get a flavour of how good the book is at its best, as some of the really interesting stuff ended up here on the cutting room floor so to speak.
The Prelude: One City, Many Souls
A short piece of introductory fiction which is truer to the way the game is likely to be played than the actual supplement. The supplement shows an Ars Magica style emphasis on historicity - but here we see a witch very unhistorically grabbed by a mob. It is technically heretical to believe in witchcraft in 1230, and although the World of Darkness no doubt varies on this, it is jarring when one considers the accuracy of most of the book. Also it is stated the condemned girl will be led to the fire: not in England she won't be. Witches were NEVER burned in England, they were hanged. As far as I recall there were witchcraft statutes in Anglo-Saxon Law but they are not recorded in Common Law at this time, and I'm certain that the Canon Courts did not have the right of High Justice. Maybe someone can correct me on this?
Anyway a serviceable piece of fiction dealing with all four games protagonists set in Winchester. For once, enough said.
Introduction
Straightforward, good explanation of the authors choices and ideas. Explains this book is compatible with DA:Mage, DA:Inquisitor, DA: Werewolf and DA:Vampire. The Fae are not covered, and indeed are not really mentioned - then again, how many authentic 13th century Faerie beliefs are there? Well maybe curious in Scotland and Ireland sections not mentioned more... There is an explicit warning that Crossover Campaigns in the World of Darkness are a bad idea. I've seen that said many times, but few groups seem to play heed to it...
There is a brief list of source material - much of which is not really that useful, at least from the sources I have read. A lot of it deals with real Dark Age not Medieval history, which is just perverse. I am tempted to provide a proper bibliography, but instead will just point out the obvious sources for Britain 1230 which are completely neglected here - the primary sources, The Monastic Chronicles. Probably the easiest two to come to grips with widely translated and available on the web free are The Chronicle of Matthew Paris, a monk of St Albans, and the The Chronicle of Jocelyn of Brakelond, Bury St Edmunds. For a game dealing with Wales or Ireland, read Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) whose book on Wales and one on Ireland are available in inexpensive editions from Penguin Books.
About the same price as this supplement will buy you both his detailed descriptions of places, politics, folklore and topography. Those four are pretty much a must - but there are plenty more surviving accounts. I am less familiar with Scottish sources but suspect there are a good many, written by people living a the time and full of period flavour. Most are as readable as most modern novels, and some more so!
At this point I must mention Heirs to Merlin by David Chart again. It is a truly first rate account of the Order of Hermes in England and Wales, and while only a single chapter is dedicated to Hermetic Politics and NPCs (the whole book is statless) it has eight chapters covering life in towns ,life in villages, politics, major personalities, mundane vassalage, the Church, laws and legal rights, etc in incredible detail. It makes the England of 1230 look the strange place it would be to us today. It is a book to buy for any player whose character would be from Medieval England or Wales, and hand to them, so they really understand what their character wears, what they can buy, who they marry and how, what colours they can wear, what their legal rights are, how to pay taxes, and much more. It is truly indispensable.
Heirs to Merlin covers almost exactly the same territory as this book (it does not cover Ireland or Scotland), in the same period. It actually gives a far better overview of social, economic cultural and political history 1220. I would rate it 5 for substance. So why am I still pleased with Dark Ages: Britain? Because for some reason the two books complement each other perfectly. DA: Britain feels like an RPG book - it provides NPC stats, plot ideas, and metaplot stuff. However one almost feels as if the writers had HtM in front of them as they wrote and said "don't bother about mundane life - this book already covers that!" or "we don't have to explain the Barons - this book does that well!". My recommendation is that to run a game set in the period which captures the real feel of the times, you need both books. If I could only buy one, with my personal taste for history and period colour in my games, I'm afraid it would be Heirs - but I am really pleased I own both.
Chapter One- History of the Isles
An enjoyable mythic history, well written. It draws very lightly from the 'historians' of the period, but not to the same extent as Heirs to Merlin does. It is first rate stuff- I can't see how it will be that useful in a game, but it is certainly a source of great plot ideas. I was also amused to read the account of the struggle over Glastonbury - first described in Isle of the Mighty - this book by the way is far superior to that modern era Changeling/Mage supplement. While some of the history is a little, er contentious, and other bits are glossed rather glibly, it is actually one of the finest overviews for an rpg I have seen. Bear in mind coming from me this is high praise. I was startled, amazed and shocked to find that the authors for example suggest an archeologically and historically accurate assimilation model of Romano-British take over by the Saxons rather than the fire and massacre model popular in historical writings right up to the 1960's and still orthodox in the 80's when I was writing on the era. Ok I would not recommend my students based their essays on this history, but it's pretty credible and with oodles of fun WoD back myth written in, showing a great understanding of the existing WoD canon. I like it. There is not much on Welsh, Irish and Scottish history here though in comparison, but what there is, is pretty good.
The lack of information on the collapse of the Angevin Empire and how Britain stands in the context of European politics is really quite criminal though, but I supposed this may be covered in Dark Ages: Europe which I have not seen yet.
The collection of letters however rather depressed me. I just did not get much from them. Staying with a narrative voice rather than dropping to first person would definitely have been the way to go here. An explanation of the Magna Carta or a link to a site detailing it's text would have been far more useful. The Universities letter really does not give you any idea of how a 1230 university functioned - students arrive at the age of 14, their are no University buildings, masters hire rooms to teach, the structure of a degree (trivium and quadrivium) is not mentioned, and most importantly there is no mention of the Benefit of Clergy, a right which caused the Town/Gown riots. Basically students were lay members of clerical orders, and were not subject to the King's justice, but rather liable to trial by Canon Law. Therefore students could not be hanged, and carrying swords and getting drunk, raping and abusing locals, were a rather awful menace. A lynching of a student accused of rape in 1209 led to the exodus to Cambridge (the townsfolk of Oxford got the wrong student, and several days of rioting and armed clashes and house burnings followed).
The letters on Chronicles and Sagas are in fact well done, and refers the attentive reader to several of the very interesting sources I have already mentioned in my discussion of the bibliographic shortcomings. In fact, I do like the letters - I would just have prepared a more narrative approach - I did not find this approach brought history to life for me. I am an academic, so I suppose I would have preferred actual quotes from writers living in the 1230s to give me a good overview. It is NOT hard to find this material, and awful lot of which is available copyright free on the web. Why these authors are not more extensively used is beyond me... they have an earthy vibrancy which the fictional letters lack...
One annoying typo has the Marcher Lord de Braose rendered as de Barose twice, though it is correct throughout the rest of the book.
Chapter Two: The Lands and The People
This chapter is a sort of brief cultural and geographical guide to the British Isles. Being a resident of those Isles, I rather expected to find this superfluous. I was pleasantly surprised...
2:1 The Races
OK, here we run in to all kinds of issues. The races described here are all important in the context of Dark Age Britain. Unfortunately this book is not designed to cover Dark Age Britain, despite the title, but the Britain of 1230. So while this is excellent well written stuff, mainly free of neo-Celtic romanticism and all the usual tosh about heroic Saxon warriors etc etc, it is sadly not really relevant to the game setting. I suppose it is because Werewolf does have a lot of emphasis on racial groups and race/cultures, like a 19th century historian in the emphasis on racial mythology. And no I am not interested in starting a flame war, and no I am not saying Werewolf is racialist - so stop writing that angry post right now!
We will start in Scotland. The Caledonians or Broch Builders, long since extinct are briefly noted as such. One of the truly mysterious peoples of Britain, it would have been nice to see some more on them. The Picts get a good section - but they have been culturally and racially submerged in to the Scots (who came from Ireland - confused? - you will be!) for a couple of centuries. However worth mentioning for their importance in the Werewolf Mythos, but the Pictish language and culture is 200 years extinct. The biggest cultural clash in Scotland is between the highlanders (no tartans, no clans, no bagpipes - ok?) and the lowlanders who are effectively following a French feudal model, but this is not really dwelt on. The Norse presence is mentioned though, and it is a shame there is so little on the Isles and the Norse control of large areas of modern day off shore Scotland. Perhaps this will follow in the Scandinavian supplement?
The section on the Celts is ok, but tends to fail to note the fact there was not one Celtic people but rather at least two major waves of migration, and if my memory serves me right some had a predisposition to blonde hair! I will leave a detailed discussion of the cultural and racial differences of Brythonic and Gaelic Celts to others - it is touched on in the book.
If we are going to be picky about Celts, well the Angles Saxons and Jutes make up the Anglo-Saxons, who are listed next. Where exactly can one find an Anglo-Saxon by 1230? 1230 has seen the creation of a new people, the English, including both Anglo-Saxon and Celt, and plenty of Dane too. The Norse get a mention - but apart from in (what is today) Scotland they are now really just part of the great mix. A comparison with the modern day USA does not seem unreasonable. The danger of the idea of the English as Anglo-Saxon in this period is it sets us up for Victorian romances about Anglo-Saxon yeomen battling Norman oppressors, which have no place whatsoever in a 13th century context. The next group described, the Normans, comprise the nobility of Britain post-1066, but there is little discussion of how intermarriage with Saxon Earls and Thegns had legitimised land claims, and while French is the courtly language and administrative language of Britain, by 1230 it is actually beginning to slip to English in courtly use, and ecclesiastical Latin has really become the language of crown administration and Law.
In short, these racial groupings give an idea of Britain as a place which was filled with racial and class conflict, which does not accurately reflect the period or setting. If the game was set in the Dark Ages, fair enough - but not really in the spirit of 1230
2:2 Status and Society
Four pages dealing with law, currency, rulers and social classes. A bias towards England here, and generally so vague as to be not very useful - but might be handy if history is not your strong point. Buy Heirs to Merlin if you actually want to portray England or Wales in 1230 properly in terms of day to day life, justice, food, administration etc. Of course if you are running a heroic chronicle, and background history does not interest your players, this is fine. Make it up and don't sweat the details. However after learning quite a bit about the history that gets us to 1230, it seems a crying shame not to describe what life was actually like then.
2:3 The Places of England
A useful and interesting gazetteer packed full of great stuff. As far as I know very accurate, with just a few curious omissions - why not give the ruling Earl for each county in 1230? Why not mention Huntingdonshire is the demesne of the brother of the King of Scotland? A list of the cathedrals, great abbeys and castles would have been useful. And it can be misleading - yes Suffolk is hilly - but almost everyone in Britain would say it was flat, as 300' in undulating land in the south of the county is about as high as it gets- just one example. However packed with medieval history and fun stuff. With a decent map (I know where St Ives is - but how many readers will?) it could have been superb. Excellent stuff!
2.4 The Places of Wales
Half a page. I know welsh history can be difficult, but Gerald of Wales travels could have easily expanded this to the size of the section of England. I think the native Welsh WoD fan may feel slighted, and considering the conflict about to break out between England and Wales in 1230 and the fact this is a particularly fascinating bit of Welsh history, I am disappointed. I'm Danish, so I will leave the complains to any Welsh readers of this review. :)
2.5 The Places of Scotland
Four pages, woefully underdone. I think the English model should have been adopted for Wales and Scotland and Ireland. What is here is good. Perhaps the page limit is what caused this issue?
2.6 The Places of Ireland
Four pages. It is free of Celtic romanticism, but also rather free of actual detail on the Celts beyond the Pale, or the triumphs of the Irish during the real Dark Ages. Good stuff, I would have like to have seen a lot more. Ireland really deserves a separate treatment though, as does the Norse part of Scotland, but this light treatment is intriguing. Again Gerald of Wales' Journey through Ireland could have provided the base for a detailed gazetteer as was done with England. By the way, I think the Celtic Church even in Ireland is largely submerged by the Roman model by 1230, but hey, if it makes for a better game...
2.7 Faith In the British Isles
About 9 pages, generally interesting and well written. This review has gone on long enough already without further need for discussion, but would have liked to see say a map and details of a sample Celtic monastery, a description of Welsh monastic practice, and a few notes on the Rule of St Benedict, etc - that is ways in which to use monasteries in your games. It'll give the storyteller ideas, but leave them to do a lot of the research work to find what they need to represent the actual places in play. St. Edmund, Patron Saint of the English, feast day November 20th should certainly have got a mention. As this is exactly the sort of material I have covered on my website, I think I am biased towards liking this bit of the book!
The section on the Jews is woefully short, and not very useful. Shame as their story in this period in Britain is fascinating.
Chapter Three: The Hidden Isles
Now we get in to the bit which probably most people are interested in: the details of the setting for each of the four Dark Age games. Vampires get six pages, naming major players, outlining methods of administration and rule, briefly mentioning factions and plots. It is worthy but not overly exciting to my mind, but I confess to not being a Vampire player. However Vampire is a game of politics, and this sets the scene nicely for a long chronicle of political manoeuvres, all the time trying to stay below the radar of Mithras and his network of spies and informants, as for a character to openly oppose him, unless in a witty and amusing manner which earns his respect, is certain death. This would lead to a paranoid game of manipulation of nobles, bishops and human pawns, with little actual bloodshed or cainite on cainite violence as far as I can see. It is a blasted shame that the way in which feudal law and obligation and the various types of court case under Common Law, or the very different Scottish Law, are not dealt with here, as hiring lawyers and arguing over land holdings and rights and feudal obligations are almost certainly key to this style of chronicle. Trying to gain control of the Court, and then considering how to manipulate the Archbishop and French King in to a position where the newly established peace can be overthrown in England is vital stuff. The Welsh situation cried out for manipulation, and the rise of a unified Wales under a nationalist leader to expel the English, and their is also plenty of room for a return of Baronial plotting - Simon de Montfort will soon make his play fro Parliament, and almost overthrow the King. Vampires have plenty to sink their fangs in to, but these ideas are not outlined in the book, which is mainly, X rules Y, and hates z, but is allied with A, B, and C. 6 pages are on English Vampires, one on Ireland, three quarters of a page on Scotland and a good page on Wales. England and Wales are clearly favoured as Vampire settings.
Moving on, Mages. England gets a page and a half of fairly densely written notes on the complicated politics of the English Magi. The Tremere are here, and that is keeping the Order of Hermes busy. The Valdearmen and the A-i-B are not really suited for England, having no presence there. The Messianic Voices are caught up in the conflict (? what conflict ?) between the Roman and the Celtic Church. Wales gets a page, mainly noting important NPC's, but with some interesting stuff - a conflict between the Messianic Voices and the Old Faith, etc, etc. It does not really, like the rest of this chapter, mesh with the actual history so carefully created in the rest of the book. Ireland gets half a page on Mages, and I shall pass on to Scotland which gets an entire page and actually is where i will probably set my DA: Mage game. It is one of the few places in Europe where the Valdaemen do not feel hopelessly anachronistic - in the windswept Orkneys it is not hard to imagine a secret runic tradition continuing in to the medieval era.
So on to Inquisitors. Having come so far with me I hope you will forgive the humble reviewer when he reveals he has not read, or even purchased DA: Inquisitor yet. Since reading this handbook, I have decided to set this aright as soon as possible, as it sounds like a real gem of a game. It is not well treated here - England 2 pages, Scotland similar, dealing with Damburrow Pit and all that implies, Ireland and Wales under half a page each. What is written is however good, and one can of course use the material on all the supernatural denizens in your DA: Inquisitor game, so oddly enough this system actually gets more material that is useful than any of the other three, if you follow.
And finally, the Werewolves. The Fianna, Fenrir and Silver Fangs hold all the caerns in the British Isles, though other tribes are present. This section deals with an important area in the background of Werewolf, and Damburrow Pit - though there is only a single boxed section on the Pit, and it offers three alternatives to the Black Spiral Hive for Inquisitor games. A section then outlines each Garou Tribe in the Isles - a paragraph each, before proceeding to the political overview. There is a page and a half of detailed political background for England - sound, but nothing a storyteller could not invent for himself, and as mentioned before, with Caerns and Tribes all strongly affiliated to one of the racial groupings of Britain in a way long anachronistic in mundane society, which has become homogenous, cosmopolitan and to an extent multi-cultural. Here Roman Werewolves fight with Saxon werewolves while Celtic Werewolves, Danish werewolves and Norman French Werewolves look on. You get the idea?
OK, I've seen Werewolves in Scotland... sorry, I meant London. Ok, bad jokes aside, half a page on the White Howlers now the Spiral Dancers, and the whole pit thing. Sadly no metaplot revelations I could see, in fact very little new at all. I found this really quite bizarre. I expected to learn more about this key event in WoD history, and instead was offered a delicately warmed over mash I had at breakfast. So on to Wales - all quarter of a page on it - Pure bred Celts hate English and long for freedom but leaders are dodgy - sub-Braveheart stuff- next - we move to Ireland. At about three pages, including two septs, actually probably the best of the Werewolf material. I like Werewolf, but none of this really worked for me. Shame, good ideas, not enough space for author to do much with them.
There is a brief bit on ghosts, Fae and demons, but any good website on Haunted Britain or British Folklore can easily extend to to several hundred pages of eminently gameable material. In fact all rather better than the WoD stuff we have seen tacked on in this chapter.
Chapter Four: Liars, Sinners, Zealots and Beasts
Game stats for all four lines for important and interesting NPC's. Six vampires, seven magi, seven Inquisitors and seven Werewolves. OK I probably miscounted - it may well be seven vampires too!
Chapter Five - Storytelling
And here we finally see several of the observations in this review explained and justified. The supernaturals of Britain are seen as inherently conservative - makes sense for Vampires certainly, and a chronicle which spans the entirety of British History through the eyes of a Vampire is easy to construct with this sourcebook. It seems the supernaturals stand against the prevailing development of 'Englishness' and the feudal hegemony, clinging instead to racial and cultural divisions which mundane society is rapidly losing sight of. While there is conflict in 1230, it is really between nascent Nation states not between racial groupings, and as the supplement makes clear, none of the nations is in anyway culturally unified, so it is a high level political struggle not a folk movement. Hence the constant betrayals, sell outs and alliances between say Welsh Leaders and the English Throne, and the same is true everywhere else. Dynastic politics and power are far more important that racial concepts for mundanes - and while England for example exists as a political unity, there is a world of difference between the reality faced by a Cornish Miner, a Strathclyder Merchant, an East Anglian Priest and a London fish merchant. The same applies to Wales, Scotland and Ireland -arguably more so...
What this emphasis on playing a character from one racial and cultural tradition does give is a sense of the history and complexity of the ideology of Englishness, and the weird mixture which is Britishness. England is completely dominant in the text - one never really gains a strong sense of Scotland, and while Wales is treated well, distinctive Welsh voices and ideologies are perhaps not strongly stated - however - is there really any more difference between a Welshman and a man from say Shropshire, and a Londoner and a woman from Licolnshire? Some might say not. The Irish material in the book is interesting, but Ireland deserves it's own treatment, as does Scotland and the Norse fringe. Too often one feels that the Irish beyond the Pale, the Highland Scottish, and the Norse lands are just seen as barbarians, or the Other. They really need to be looke dat in detail to contrast with the feudal traditions of England, South Wales and Southern Scotland which are seen as normative in the book.
The book concludes with a few mythic places - a web search could provide heaps more, as the heritage of magical and mystical Britain is very very well represented on the web- and a short adventure, Fall of the Rebel Angels just seven pages but nicely done and usable with any of the four systems.
Conclusion
A fine supplement, which I enjoyed reading and will make use of in my games, and a worthy read in it's own right. Highly recommended to WoD players, with some great historical material, but perhaps a little disappointing for those who like crunchy hardware stuff - no new rules or clans/traditions/tribes or Roads etc. If you want to run a canonical World of Darkness game and like history buy it - if you just want history and a feel for the period to use in your game, and want detailed stuff on law, customs, food, clothing or any other aspect of medieval British life there are better roleplaying supplements already out there, but adding this one to you collection is still a good idea.
I hope my brief overview has not done a disservice to an interesting supplement, considerably better than any other WoD sourcebook I have seen so far.
CJ, January 2004. .
Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.
