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I predict that by the time this review gets online, there will be at least nine reviews of both this, the new World of Darkness core rulebook, and of Vampire: The Requiem.
I haven't bought the Vampire book yet. That can wait for another day. I'm just concentrating on the corebook. I was debating whether or not to buy this, actually, but what swung it in the end was the price. Because the first print run is cheap - twelve pounds for a nice matte hardback with glossy pages and nice production values? That's the kind of price we were paying ten years ago. So I bought it.
Cut to the chase. Is it any good?
I like it. I really like it. It's beautifully designed, nicely written, and it stands alone. You don't actually need the Vampire book, or any of the other forthcoming core books for that matter, to run a game. It stands alone. More than that, it serves as a truly generic toolkit for running convincing horror games, real horror games. Generic horror games. There's none of the hokeyness that plagued every White Wolf horror game (in varying degrees, but Werewolf: The Apocalypse was by far the worst offender) from the beginning. This is real, good classically-tinged genre stuff. This is MR James. This is Arthur Machen. This is Stephen King. This is Ringu. Well, it's not, but it's got the feel of proper horror novels and movies.
Stop gibbering, Wood. This is supposed to be a review.
Sorry. Where was I? OK, yes, it's good. How is it good?
OK. well, although most of the text is rules-related, the actual rules and character generation stuff are in three two-page spreads at the front of the book. Everything is crystal clear. The organisation makes sense, and I've even been able to find stuff using the index, which is, as indexes go, adequate (not great. Adequate).
Clear organisation? An adequate index? Am I dreaming? No. And yes, there's the little blue paw print symbol on the back cover. Who would have thought it, eh?
The art is at the very least decent throughout the book. In some places, it's great. The photo on the cover is attractive and , well, it fits, you know? The layout, likewise, is good, and makes good use of typefaces to highlight different sections (although it does fall prey to ugly "fontsplurge" in one of the fictions, the one on p149). The editing is OK. There's one or two typos, but the book isn't plagued with them. When I compare the production values and look of this book with White Wolf's Dark Ages: Fae, a book that costs another $10, there's really no comparison. Everything about the way this book looks and feels is better.
The system
You generate a basic human character by spending points on three sets of characteristics (Social, Mental, Physical), and on three sets of skills, again Social, Physical and Mental. Skills and Attributes alike are rated from 1 to 5, and you represent them by filling in little rows of dots on the sheet next to the name of the trait in question.
To perform any task, you take two of the traits (usually an attribute and a skill) and add them together. You roll that many ten-sided dice, and you need to get 8 or more on at least one of them. If you get a ten on a die, you get to roll it again. Circumstances might add or subtract dice from your dice pool, but you always have to roll eights (a change from the old system, where both the numbers of dice rolled and the number needed could change, which was more mathematically nuanced, maybe, but also more complicated to run).
Combats are resolved by rolling your dice pool, adding dice for your weapon or any other circumstances, and subtracting dice for your opponent's defence, and rolling once. The number of successful dice you roll is the number of hits your target suffers.
And that's it. Just one roll for combat (those reading this familiar with the old WoD system will recognise that this is a significant change - in the old system, there were at least two, and usually three or more, rolls required to resolve any one attack - attack, parry/dodge, damage, soak). It sounds deadly, and it is. Combat involving ordinary human beings will be unpleasant and short. I suspect that Vampires and Werewolves will have a better chance of survival, but I doubt that the heroic combat manoeuvres of the old WoD (I mean, a werewolf martial art? I ask you...) are going to reappear. At least, I hope not.
The upshot of all this is, that this is a horror game. The designers have borne that in mind and made the game system feel nasty, while sacrificing none of the playability. And the beauty of it is that if you really want to import your old characters, there isn't actually that much conversion involved. The character sheet, notwithstanding some slightly different attributes, hasn't changed all that much. It's the way it's used that's changed.
Humans are still weak, and this time, they've left out the psychic powers, True Faith and hedge magic that every mortal player character ever used to have in WoD games. Ordinary humans are weak, and they die easily.
The background
Background? What background? This is our world, right here, right now. There may be, every so often, the feeling you're being watched, but in the end it's our world. The old "Gothic-Punk" world, with its "like our world but not really" fantasy ambience is gone. This is set in the real world, in the way that Call of Cthulhu (still the horror game to beat in terms of material, if not system) is set in the real world. There may be fantasy stuff in the background, but it's in the shadows of a world we recognise as our own.
The flavour text and short fiction peppered throughout the book emphasises that, as a succession of ordinary humans get driven mad, scared, sliced up, eaten and generally mistreated by creatures which are never described. It's good stuff, and it emphasises the lack of explanation these things have, the way that the shadow world of the monsters is an unknown. I really do hope that they stick to that.
Fear the Lin Carter effect: horror is made totally unscary, in my opinion, by the tendency to explain stuff. Do we really need to know every Vampiric lineage? Did we need to know about werewolf clan politics? Um, no. In the same way that Lin Carter's Cthulhu Mythos fiction emasculated the Mythos by including such things as Great Cthulhu's family tree, many of White Wolf's supplements gave up, in my opinion, on fear, preferring to stick to flashy powers and and mopey goth soap opera. This is just a tangent, though, and I'd advise you not to let it spoil the enjoyment of your review.
In the end, they keep within the literary and film confines of the genre, avoiding the temptation to embellish or add lame fantasy elements. The accusation has already been bandied around that White Wolf has given in to chliché, but actually, what they're trying to do is to tap into what the elements of horror are. This book is the proof of the adage that I try to get into every review at least once: namely that a well-worn idea done well can be so much more powerful and effective than a badly-done new idea. Good stuff.
There are plenty of plot hooks in the back of the book, some good-and-solid-but-strangely-familiar gamesmaster advice (if it isn't broke...) and some stats for stock NPCs and animals, followed by a bit about ghosts, meaning that you can run a game or two based on ghosthunting. Which is nice.
In the end, though, there isn't really quite enough to sustain a whole campaign only using this book. Not without a bit of work, anyway. But the way that this is presented, you can plug in any horror film or short story or novel. You may have to come up with most of the supernatural bits on your own, though.
Verdict?
5 for style: beautifully designed, well-written, nicely illustrated and cheap. 4 for substance: consistent in theme, clear in execution, enough to play a game on its own, but not quite wnough to sustain a campaign.
This is a good entry-level horror game. I wasn't sure if I was going to buy the Vampire book, but if it's as good as this, I'm sold. When I have the cash, or if I can score one to review from somewhere (that's a hint to the RPG.net editorial team. I know. It's shameless).
