Vault Collection One

This is a review of Vault Collection One, currently available from RPGnow for $9.95.

Rating: 7 out of 10 golden apples.

There comes a time in every reviewers life when they experience a sense of déjà vu. Yes, as I began reading through this material, I could have sworn that I’d already reviewed this game. But I know I didn’t. In fact I’ve slowly been working my way through all the fine Ronin Arts products that were submitted to me for review- which has been quite an interesting experience, though this collection is perhaps the most fascinating of all- and I am pretty sure that I did not even read through this collection until I unzipped the archive for this review. And what a collection it is! Here is not just a collection of mere treasure items, not by a long shot, but rather something else entirely. It’s a role-playing game. But not your typical role-playing game. Now, how to put my first impressions into words...

After some thought I came up with an analogy that, for the life of me, I have no idea where came from. But here it is: Vault Collection One inspires the same sort of morbid curiosity as does that drunken uncle who always has your aunt running into the bathroom after him at family reunions. And not just because you might catch weird snippets of conversation like “No use your other pant leg!” or “We’re trying to get your clothes back on not take mine off!” Sure, people snicker, but everyone is thinking the same thing. Namely that they wish to be a fly on the wall in that bathroom to see first hand what is really going on! That’s sort of what my initial impression of the contents of Vault Collection One were like. Morbid curiosity wrapped in wonderment.

Ok, that’s about as terrible and inept an analogy as any, but it popped in my head unbidden and, as they say, misery loves company. Isn’t sharing great?

Speaking of which, remember that sense of déjà vu I mentioned above? Read on and all shall be revealed. Well, ok, maybe not all, but enough to cover this product. That and bad humor. Be warned, this review has been liberally sprinkled with droll humor.

After a recent mind numbing experience that was a desperate struggle to write a review that had me wrestling with what to say like some loincloth clad muscleman out of a bad sword and sandal movie for a product that shall remain nameless it was actually a pleasure to have to immerse myself in a richly detailed game and setting such as this one. Granted, under any other circumstance it would probably have been a headache, but that‘s only because there is a gignormous amount of material to read through and digest. Just take a look at what the Vault Collection includes: The Whispering Vault, Dangerous Prey, Smuggler’s Run, the Book of Hunts… that’s four separate PDFs to look over and review!

And what are these PDFs all about?

The Whispering Vault: This PDF is 139 pages of background information, core rules, and eerie illustrations presented in an eye-catching layout. The bulk of this review is based on a reading of this document. Quality Rating: 9

The Book of Hunts: 95-page “adventure anthology” for use with, what else, The Whispering Vault. Recreates the content of the print edition sans some illustrations. Verily a ripe abundance of ideas, adventure starters, and varied conceptualizations. Embarrassing bad resolution quality. Otherwise looks good. Quality Rating: 8

Dangerous Prey: 110 page sourcebook further expanding the world of The Whispering Vault with more powers, adventure hooks, and new shadows. Basically this is a core rules expansion. Looks very esoteric at a glance. Many gems in the rough here. Quality Rating: 8

Smuggler’s Run: 12-page adventure set in Chicago, Illinois. Viewing this PDF caused some sort of bizarre, and hopefully transient, errors that forced a reboot. Erring on the side of caution I have chosen not to view this PDF further. That said, based on my brief look, and the oddment of eerie illustrations aside, it seemed decent. Quality Rating: 4

The Game: This a horror game set in an alternative version of our contemporary world in which not everything is quite as it seems. Yet. . . It’s more than that.

There are two words that reviewers seldom use: 1) incomprehensible, mostly because few things that bad ever make it to print; and, 2) impossible, not because we have egos the size of a small moon but because even a hack can find something to write about a product. Well, dear friends, you are looking at a review that is coming close to using word #2. This role-playing game all but defies categorization. It is not remotely like D&D, or any other game you are likely to have played, which rules out any easy explanation by way of comparison. To say it is highly conceptual does it little justice, and is not very informative, yet it is.

If you don’t like to read more than a paragraph or two then be warned, this game will require players and GMs alike to dedicate at least a few hours to reading through the material to familiarize themselves with the underlying concepts. This is not a game you just pick up and play. Literacy required.

Setting and Premise: The premise of the game centers around a central theme, this being that there is far more to the world than what our mundane senses reveal to us. In this world there are the Unenlightened, mere mortals to whom the Unseen is never revealed, and the Enlightened, whose curiosity and desire to learn has directed them to explore the nature of the Unseen and, too often, led them into battle with the Unbidden. The Unbidden being entities “from the other side” that at best exist as but awkward shadows in our world, which is the Realm of Flesh.

Sound familiar? Did to me. Check out my review of Unbidden to see why.

System Mechanics: Essentially a Roll vs. TN system using an additive dice pool? In game terms players roll a Challenge Roll vs. Difficulty or an Attribute. Karma points may be spent to re-roll dice.

The section on combat had my eyes glazing over. If there was a point in there I couldn’t find it on the first page, and that’s as far as the average gamer’s interest is going to go before they are mumbling feck all. Seriously, any game in which you find yourself writing a line like: “We have chosen to abandon the cumbersome dogma of special case rules in favor of simple axioms that allow the players more latitude for dramatic interpretation.” or “The participants should use the results as cues to set the tempo for their improvisation”. Should be a cue to Mr. Editor that the document is in dire need of them to set about feazing the text so that one does not need to hire a camarilla to grangerize the documents into a coherent organon. (Yes, those are real words. Look them up.) In other words: keep it simple!

Basically combat is freeform with the GM being little more than a toothless referee who is admonished to “indulge their [the players] enthusiams” to the point that the rules- if you can call this paroxysm of player’s circle jerking their characters rules- as outlined virtually pointless. But then such is the nature of cumbersome dogma. Me thinks the designers took the edict to “do what thou wilt” a bit too far here. Say what you will about Orthodoxy but at least you always know precisely what is going on with it.

Character Creation: Character generation is a static point distribution between the player character’s four core attributes, these being Awareness, Insight, Presence, and Willpower. Once the set number of points have been distributed Disciplines are chosen, which are described as “special powers in the Realm of Flesh”. Next the player determines the number of Servitors available to their character, these being “phantoms of Essence” and are basically ethereal beings controlled by the character, though really their purpose is to provide access to yet more kewl powers. After you’ve determined who/what your character’s servitors are it is time to get down to “sculpting the vessel”, which in short is creating the physical manifestation of the character that will appear in the “realm of the flesh”. This requires the generation of three further physical attributes: Dexterity, Fortitude, and Strength. After all that is done it is time to pick your Skills. Then, you probably should double-check everything, because that’s it.

One day someone is going to write a role-playing game called Slave Girls of Sheba. It will be a laugh riot of a indulgent romp through light, fluffy, humorous, tongue-in-cheek, and quizzical genre spoofs poking fun at D&D and fantasy as a whole. This would be the polar opposite of that game. This role-playing game is dark, heavy, serious, straight faced, and is not the sort of thing you want to be poking fun at. Pointy sticks maybe, but you won’t be cracking many jokes while playing this game. If anything this is a game that requires you to think about the nature of reality, to question what you think you know to be fact, and explore the possibilities that reality, on the surface, may be an illusion. In that regard one could probably classify this as an expressionistic Gnostic RPG. I would not go that far, but I’d be surprised if no one has done so to date.

The main problem, as I see it, is that the text has a crammed feel. I could literally discern nothing at a glance. Not how conflict resolution worked, not how the combat system worked, nothing. Which means the material will likely require hours, instead of minutes, for the average gamer to figure out what is going on. Don’t get me wrong the documents are well laid out, neatly presented, and there are plenty of “boxed” comments provided. Problem is what appears in the boxes doesn’t explain what is going on with the rules so much as inundate the reader with a white noise of commentary. Which is bad because there is just too much to read here.

Negatives: The text feels crammed. Thus making it all seem too much for the newbie to this material to have to read, yet also somehow not enough. Seriously I wanted synopsis and overviews and summaries that laid out the point up front and in. . . Well you get the idea. Document resolution wasn’t the best it could have been for image quality in some of the PDFs, but it wasn’t a terrible eyesore either. Also, in some passages, the writing gets a bit dry and bland. Not plodding, mind, just a bit too over done and matter-of-fact. Like reading an article in a Scientific journal in which the author just drones on and on and on about minutia. After a point you just tune out. Oh, yeah, I also wanted extras. Like character sheets. Color me red and call me the Crimson Avenger, but you’ll never get me to admit that that last observation is due to my watching too many DVDs of. . . D’oh!

Positives: If ever you wanted to buy everything for a game line in one purchase this bundle comes about as close to achieving that goal for you, as you’re likely to find anywhere. Just about everything you need to start playing is here. Seriously this collection is like finding the DMG, PHB, MM, and maybe a few ancillary books bundled together for a bargain bin price. But the best positive I can think of is, based on the completeness of the material in the bundle, I’d go so far as to outright suggest buying this; assuming horror-suspense is your proverbial bag of tea. If not save your money for something that you really could use, like a haircut. No, seriously, you look like you could use one. *wink*

Copyright © 2004 C. Demetrius Morgan