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Overview
The Angel Roleplaying Game is a Cinematic Unisystem game, meaning it's a rules-lite adaptation of Eden Studios standard Unisystem. The main difference between the two is that, in normal Unisystem, damage is rolled like in d20; in Cinematic, damage is fixed based on the character's strength (usually) and weapon. A couple of character attributes like movement speed are also ignored in the Cinematic Unisystem, which rules that movement is as far as makes dramatic sense. This is definately not a tactical miniatures game.
The Book
The book is hardcover, with a cover picture of the character Angel standing in front of the Los Angeles skyline with sidekicks Cordelia, Wesley, and Gunn behind him, and the shadowy face of a vampire enemy in the top right corner. The book seems sturdy enough, although two versions (mine and a friends) arrived with dented corners. This shouldn't matter unless you're the type of person who likes to keep your books in nice condition - unlike myself, who simply drops my books in the nearest convenient spot.Every heading in the book is followed by a (usually humorous) quote from the show related to the heading. These quotes add a lot of flavor and make reading the book fun.
Introduction
The book opens with a brief introduction to roleplaying (which beats the one in the Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook v3.5 hands down. It follows with an introduction to the Angel show, and a summary of its first three seasons. The book doesn't cover anything past that point, which is a good thing for us Americans who are watching the show solely on DVD, as the American DVDs currently only go up to Season Three.
Character Creation
After the introductin, the book jumps right into character creation. It presents the basic concept of characters and covers the main difference between Angel and other rules-lite RPGs: there are two difference power levels for player characters, Champion and Investigator. Although the Investigator gets more Drama Points (points which add +10 to any die roll) than Champions, they are still a little bit less powerful than champions. This imbalance intentionally represents the difference in power on the show between, say, the street-fighter Gunn, who can stake vampires without batting an eye, and the detective Wesley, who has to be a lot more cautious. It also represents how less powerful characters like Wesley still pull off amazing feats occassionally by giving them extra drama points.The section then presents the ability scores, which are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Willpower, and Perception. These should be fairly familiar to anyone who's played d20 or any recent version of Dungeons and Dragons, the primary difference being that the function played by Wisdom in d20 has been split into Willpower and Perception, and there is no score which fills the role of Charisma.
Next, the book presents Qualities and Drawbacks, one of the most interesting parts of character creation. Qualities are generally beneficial things which can be purchased with the character points alotted by your character type (Champion or Investigator). Drawbacks are generally harmful things which give your character extra points to spend either on qualities or on skills. The interesting thing here is that most drawbacks are roleplaying problems, like depression, greed, or an obsessive sense of honor, like the character Angel. This helps solve the problem of people who are just in the game to make uber-characters and don't want to roleplay - they can make their characters, but the characters will have to be roleplayed! It also represents the "reality" of the show, where powerful characters like Angel also have some pretty powerful mental problems.
The book also has a section of supernatural abilities for one's character, if one wants to play a demon or vampire. These abilities seem a little bit comic-bookish, even for the show; Pyrokinesis, especially, has never been seen on the show and is, I feel, a little too flashy. Other abilities, however, such as psychic visions and regeneration, are not so flashy and fit in well.
Next come the skills. These are fairly simple - there are the weapons skills, like Getting Medieval, Gun Fu, and Kung Fu, and then there are other skills, like acrobatics, driving, and influencing people. These are used in conjunction with different ability scores depending on the task, so it is impossible to assign one modifier to a skill. For example, usually the Sports skill is used with Dexterity - but when it comes to running a marathon, Constitution is used.
Overall, character creation is a breeze. Despite a few oddities (like Strength and Constitution determining Life Points), the system is the best I've ever used. When you look at a d20 character sheet, you see at least two pages of the character's combat abilities. When you look at an Angel character sheet, you see a single, well-organized page which tells you about the character's combat maneuvers as well as his or her personality and history.
Combat
Combat in Angel is a bit more complex, but it holds with the "cinematic-ness" of the game and show. There are a series of combat maneuvers, from Punch and Sword, to Spin Kick, which depend on different skills and ability scores. These can be combined to create combos like "throw stake through heart", or, if your character has multiple actions per round from a high dexterity, "run up wall and stake through heart".There's no tactical movement in Angel. No grid or miniatures here. As the book itself points out, you're not playing a wargame. You're here to roleplay. Plausibility isn't to be worried about, nor is tactics. After all, the show's hero's conception of tactics is: "Here's the plan. We go in. I start hitting people hard in the face. See where it takes us."
As I mentioned above, damage is predetermined based on weapon and ability scores. The only time where it varies is with staking a vampire and some other specialized maneuvers. Staking a vamp does a lot more damage if doing more damage would cause it to be a killing blow. It's kind of complicated, but the book explains it well.
Overall Gameplay
Skill resolution in the Cinematic Unisystem is accomplished with a d10. For every two numbers over nine you roll, you get a success level - so any roll which is a nine or above succeeds, unless the task requires multiple success levels to acheive. Certain difficult tasks may assign penalties to the roll as well.Rolling is not neccesarry for the GM, or Director, unless the heroes are fighting a major antagonist. NPCs have a simplified character format which has an average roll. Although this takes some of the coolness out of combat, it also adds quite a bit, as combat goes a lot faster and the GM can focus on the storyline rather than on rolling for the enemies. Again, Angel is not a tactical game.
The book covers how to create storylines in the game. It recommends that the GM pre-create the player's characters, although I know many gaming groups would dislike that. In this way, the GM can plan elaborate story arcs like the ones seen on the show. The book covers how to run a campaign with episodes, so that one is effectively roleplaying a television show. This is the standard format for a campaign, or "series", although more traditional forms are also covered.
The book has chapters on how to create demonic monsters, as well as a chapter on creation organizations like Angel Investigations (the detective agency run by the heroes on the show) and Wolfram & Hart (the evil law firm that the heroes fight on the show).
Finally, the book finishes up with a hilarious section on how to talk like the characters on the show. As the book points out, players don't have rehearsals and teams of writers coming up with their dialogue; but with this section, one should be able to get a pretty good imitation. Plus, it's fun reading!
Book Layout
The book layout is good overall, although the drab green backgrounds get old after a while. But the quotes, the writing, and the overall classiness of the book beat that out easily. The writers amazingly imitate the writing style of series creator Joss Whedon, making the book a good read even if you don't play the game much.The only other criticism I have of Angel Roleplaying Game's style is that there are typos throughout the book, even on the back cover. This isn't incredibly distracting, though, and certainly isn't restricted to small companies like Eden Studios - from what I've heard and seen, Wizards of the Coast is just as bad in many cases. At least the Angel book seems not to have any rules typos.
Conclusions
After playing d20 for a long time, Angel is a refreshing, rules-lite change - and a faithful portrayal of Joss Whedon's great television show.The ruleset can be easily modified and leaves flexibility, rather than having rules for every possible situation. The design not only acknowledges power-gaming, but uses it to its advantage. And the overall game design is great.
The only major disappointment is the lack of templates like Slayer and Werewolf, which can be found in the companion Buffy the Vampire Slayer Roleplaying Game.
I heartily recommend the Angel Roleplaying Game to any GM or gaming group which wants a nice, quick, fun-to-play game - or to any fan of the Buffyverse television show.
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