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Introduction

One of the first things that strikes me about Angel is that it was a show without a rudder. From season to season it struggled trying to define what kind of a series it wanted to be. This means that a game of the series faces a bit of a challenge when it comes to identifying what, precisely, Angel is about.

The game opts to take the themes set up in the first season, for the most part, and goes with that while drawing on some of the elements of the second and third seasons. It utilises the Cinematic Unisystem, which I find to be a much better iteration of Unisystem as it doesn't suffer from some of the odd quirks that mar the more detailed mechanic. Remarkably, with Angel, the cinematic system becomes a lot more flexible than it's option-heavy parent.

Layout and Design Taking on the more traditional sized hardback roleplaying book, Angel has an attractive cover depicting David Boreanaz/Angel with the rest of the AI crew faces in the background against an LA cityscape. This cover is quite indicative of the quality within the book, which is filled with very attractive photos from the series.

Overall, the layout of Angel is fantastic. The use of colour to distinguish individual chapters is great, along with effective use of text boxes, white space and headings to help ensure that everything is easy to find. Best of all, all the character generation elements are in the character creation chapter and not spread out across the book.

Angel utilises the same light conversational tone that Buffy had, and reminds me of the appealing "developer talking to reader about the game" tone that Unknown Armies second edition had. I can't stress how good I find this when reviewing games. Tone is everything, and it really helps to sell a game to me. If I read a book and it gets me all excited and willing to play, then the author has done a good job. Many games take a very technical manual tone, and I find that it leaves me thinking "yeah, good game. But I just don't want to play it." This is a hobby and is founded on the idea of having fun/entertainment. It is vital for a product to be able to communicate that in its tone as well as rules.

At the back of the book is a well managed index and comprehensive glossary of terms. Also is the obligatory "-speak" chapter that helps you mimic that distinctive patois of the Angel/Buffy universe.

The only layout problem I had was the lack of reference sheets at the back for character creation and maneuvers that was so handy in Buffy.

Setting

Angel is a vampire, once the dark and menacing machiavellian mastermind, Angelus. For those familiar with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you know the basic story here already, so skip to the next paragraph. Angelus was created by a vampire known as Darlav and the two ramapaged across Europe until Angelus drank the blood of a gypsy princess. Cursed by the gypsies, his soul was restored. Overcome with guilt, Angelus became Angel. He moped around for a century or two before being drawn to Sunnydale in America, where he fell in love with a vampire slayer. Things didn't work out - she being a teenager and all while he was considerably older - and he moved to LA to fight evil.

Up to date?

So the series Angel is essentially about how Angel is tapped by the Powers that Be to protect the innocent and become their champion on Earth. He does this by setting up a private investigation firm the hunts out the supernatural and helps restore the balance - the idea being that he can regain his humanity if he manages to redeem himself.

Eventually he draws a number of others to him who in turn aid his battle against the forces of evil.

Yep, that's it. The LA that is presented is one that is full of supernatural beasties that many people are aware of, but choose to pretend don't exist. In a further piece of satire, the forces of darkness have legal representation in the form of the monolithic legal firm Wolfram and Hart.

As the series progressed it was revealed that pretty much everyone in the ensemble case were Champions chosen to help Angel in his battle, a prophecy became involved and much soap-opera like twists become the norm.

System

Unlike it's parent system, Cinematic just uses that. There are no odd complications, armour and damage are fixed values that all operate off the results of that single roll. By getting rid of these odd bits and pieces of rules the game manages to become heck of a lot more sensible in its resolutions.

All actions that players take are simply altered by modifiers to the result of this roll making the job of GMing a breeze, as to be able to measure the difficulty you can simply apply the necessary modifiers.

Now another GM-friendly alteration that I like is borrowed from the fantastic Whispering Vault roleplaying game. NPCs' stats are listed with difficulty numbers rather than stats. This means that the GM is unlikely to ever need roll a die in the game. Instead the players need to beat the NPC's relevant score. Furthermore, a handy table is provided to show how to work out the difficulties, meaning that if a random NPC somehow gets involved in a conflict the GM can pull out the necessary numbers on the spot rather than have to preprepare every little detail. A boon to play.

Oddly enough, when I first used this the game became remarkably frustrating and dull until I realised the full potential of such a mechanic. Now we have had a number of sessions of our OMNI Investigations game and each session has been a veritable blast to play.

Organisations

The rules are very similar to those in Spycraft 2.0, although much simpler in execution. Each level of influence or resources is given a rating that represents what the organisation can offer members. It is at this point that the first flaw in the design theory arises. It's a small one that really relates to how Eden made a couple of bad calls regarding the direction of the series. In the television series, Angel Investigations gets more and more influential until they are handed Wolfram and Hart by their enemies.

The system assumes that characters of large organisations wont be controllers but low-level workers. This is somewhat counter to anything suggested in the series.

Supernatural Qualities

While this system is not comprehensive - Werewolves, for example, take a little fiddling of the qualities to make as do many types of psychic characters - it has more than enough to provide dozens of different types of demons and monsters. This is better than the Buffy RPG which provides no such mechanic.

GM and Player Support

Players aren't left out either, with a player friendly overview of Angel's Los Angeles, the guide to Angelspeak and examples of the characters from the series provided with stats. Of course the series has since shown some of these templates to be inaccurate... particularly regarding Angel's stats not matching the feats performed on the show.

Also, as later episodes have shown, the Champion/Investigator divide the game chooses to use is not accurate - by the end of the fourth season all the characters are shown to be Champions and of equal value.

Drama is the thing

Angel divides characters into three types - Champions, Investigators and Veterans. Champions and Veterans start with more trait and skill points, while Veterans and Investigators start with more Drama Points.

Drama Points can be spent on various stunts that allow characters to get lucky hits, dodge danger, survive fatal attacks and generally break the rules of the game. Of course villains get drama points too...

Thoughts

It would have been nice to see the reference sheets that were in Buffy as looking up maneuvers is a bit of a pain. The assumptions made about a couple of the characters were also a little annoying, but I'm splitting hairs at this point...

Conclusion

I loved this book, and look forward to future games of OMNI Investigations where we will have all manner of fun. This is Eden at their best.

Should I buy this book?: If you've been looking for a managable light system thatcaptures the feel of television shows, Angel is hard to pass up. If you want something that does cinematic combat well, it might be a bit too light, but otherwise a great system. Buy it now.

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