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That which has been written by Dishaw does fit into the dark world of Lovecraft and the warped sense of H.P.Lovecraft’s story-telling style.
At the outset let me explain that this is not a game for children; or a game for those of nervous dispositions. You need a strong stomach to be able to get through a session as Gamesmaster of a player because of the focus on the evil and disgusting.
The players are fiends, working for a (seeming) ultimate god-like creature called Satanis. Sithis is trapped in the fiend home plane of K’thana and so cannot reach the mortal plane of Earth where mortals live, as he knows that. Because the barriers of reality are being weakened somehow; Satanis has sent out other fiends to conquer the mortal world in his name; to expand the Empire of Satanis. The PC’s are placed in this world as these other fiends skirmishing into the mortal world when able (and so normally this makes up for the combat portions of the gaming sessions) whilst the plane of K’thana makes up for the social and etiquette sections which are needed to be able to create fleshed out NPCs as well as re-occurring friends and foes for future sessions.
EoS is able to create very distinguished and exciting Foes and Allies for the Fiend-PC’s. You would imagine that in such a hellish plane as K’thana most beings there are alike but with the help from this core EoS book you can really populate the game world with not only variety but useful and interesting NPCs. At lower levels the PCs may find themselves in trouble by being found by a policeman; but by a quick use of skills and abilities a player can for example use their fears or weaknesses against themselves or create a nightmare to await them.
The rules seem to work well and they were balanced together. This game does fit closer to a freeform game; this campaign setting has a way of the players being able to affect any part the game through what EOS calls a player’s level of Social Standing (or SS) in the world of K’thana and the target number of what is needed to be rolled on a D6 to change the story is reduced. This may seem an odd rule to include but it really does help the Gamesmaster instead of hindering him by always having the players totally involved in the story-line and can help stop GM’s from “leading their players by the nose”. At times this can be very refreshing indeed at time when playing with a dead flat storyline; the players can help influence and spice it up a bit.
To play this game a Gamesmaster will need to find a specialised group to play it with though; as many will feel unhappy playing a role-playing game as totally evil beings and being rewarded for doing vile acts.
In such games as Call of Cthulu you are normally playing normal humans with choices and then it is up to the player to decide where the character goes and how he acts and what kind of alignment. In EoS you can only play characters whom are fiends; and so are by definition esoterically evil.
This does fill a niche in the market concerning RPG Cthulu-esque games. You play the real bad guys here, don't expect to have a character with any virtues.
You definitely need a mature group to play the game and as a precaution I would slap a big 'For Mature Audiences Only' sticker onto it. Maybe even have it sold under an 18 label. There are no pictures at this time in this book apart from the two glossy covers with paintings and this leaves the book a tad spartan in this regard but this helps focus on the rules and what the author is trying to tell you and that is how to tell a good story in this specific setting.
The background of the campaign setting and the concepts of the three separate worlds are very detailed and how they interact to each other is also well described. Creatures can travel from one of these world-planes through a variety of different ways but it in doing so it can be quite chaotic and so destination on either side can be very unpredictable.
The rules system works well on the test runs which I have done with this rules set. Not as detailed as many of the D20 campaign settings for example; but this has been done to leave open to the Gamesmaster and not being restricted by definite rules and hence restricting what you allow the players to do.
In summary then; I enjoy the Book as a whole with the rules shining through but it was not really my kind of thing with the PC's playing the pure evil beasties.
Even in Vampire; The Masquerade the good/evil divide is chosen by the players and not by the setting. To some this can be very disconcerting; especially to a new player but after a while you can begin to understand that the story and what you as a player do is the important thing and you as a player as well as the Gamesmaster can make a session of EoS as much yours as it is his.
If you can handle the thought of playing the most disgusting of characters;fiends who hunt and slaughter mortals then this is for you. If not then this is maybe not for you.
I would expect fans of WOTC's "Book of Vile Darkness" would also enjoy this book.
I am looking forward to other books by Dishaw; to write about the other less focused on sides of the Lovecraft stories would really be appreciated by this reviewer.
