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Graphics & Layout
Artesia comes as a 352-page full-color, hardcover rulebook.The pages are glossy, the binding seems solid, and overall the book is beautiful to look at. Mark Smylie comes at this game from a graphical perspective, thanks to his previous work on the three Artesia graphic novels, and it shows.
The first part of the book, covering the history and background of the Known World, reads like a coffee-table book. It's full of sidebars and well-labeled pictures, which together provide a great overview of the Known World in a relatively approachable manner.
The rest of the book doesn't quite reach the graphical heights of these first 70 or so pages, but they're all well-done and generally above the quality of most RPG layout, especially that from a small indie company. Tables are generally colored and easy to read. Important words in text are bolded. The various maps scattered throughout the book (and in the adventure at the end) are very well done and show the benefits of having an artist as a designer.
Ease of Use
Unfortunately Artesia falls down in the category of usability. I had quite a bit of problem using the book during actual gameplay.
This is largely due to the lack of indices or references anywhere in the book. There isn't a main index for the rules, nor are there individual indices for the skills, gifts, or bindings, none of which appear in exact alphabetical order (due to sectioning). My gamemastering was also encumbered by the lack of a succinct skill reference, combat reference, or more importantly a couple of page reference sheet on the Arcana experience system.
There were some individual elements that definitely improved usability, including some of the layout work noted above. Also the individual Arcana pages, which list 22 ways that people can gain experience, were quite easy to use on a one-on-one basis, since they're each carefully laid out on individual pages. Clearly, there was desire to make the game easy to use; I just hope that some of the missing references and indices appear on the web site before long.
(Though it's somewhat separate from the RPG book, it's worth noting that thus far the publisher is doing a great job of supporting the game with online downloads. I printed off a 20-page NPC pack for use with playing the first adventure, and it was very nice having all the NPCs laid out on printer paper that I could scribble on during the game.
Trueness to The Known World
Because Mark Smylie is both the author of the original Artesia comics and the designer of this RPG, by default the vision of the Known World shown in this game is the correct one.
Beyond that, as someone who's read the comics and the RPG both, I feel like they do provide a good, coherent whole. In some ways the RPG has illuminated the background of the comics for me; I feel like I have a better handle on the Middle Kingdoms (where the RPG is initially centered) now than I did after reading almost 600 pages of comics.
Adding up all of these elements of Style: the beauty of the Artesia art and graphical layout is top-rate (particularly for the background & Arcana sections). Some work was done to improve usability through good layout, but still there are a lot of missing indices and references that would have made the game easier to play. Finally, the gamebook evocatively captures the background of the Artesia comic books, and does a lot more to flesh it out and make it playable than I would have expected. Despite usability qualms, Artesia: Adventures in the Known World still earns a full "5" out of "5" for Style.
The Game System
When talking about an RPG system, I break it into its mechanical cores: the character modeling & the task resolution.
Modeling the Character
The Character Model: Characters are modeled on a pretty common four-part system in Artesia: characteristics, skills, gifts (advantages), and binding (disadvantages). Each is built on a theoretical 10-point scale. Any can go higher in value, but 1-10 is the norm, with 5 an average for characteristics.
Characteristics. What's truly notably about the characteristics is that there's a total of 15, split into three broad categories: body, mind, and spirit. That generally seems like a pretty intimidating number to me.
There are also a few derived characteristics. First you get a category attribute for each (body, mind, and spirit) which is a sort of "hit points" for that category. Move is the other secondary characteristic (and one that took me a bit of searching to find the definition for, last time I played).
Skills. Besides normal skills, you also have specialities, which are subskills which can be added to the main skill when appropriate.
Gifts. These are advantages, but they're mostly big, flashy, magical advantages which really give a feel of high magic to the world. They're divided into a few categories: aura, voice, mask, touch, and personal gifts, and there are some very coherent rules for their general usage which nicely ties them together, so that they don't feel chaotic & scattered like many advantage systems do.
Bindings. These are disadvantages, but they're mostly emotional disadvantages like "awe", "vanity", and even "love". Again, there's a neat, coherent system for using bindings. They're broadly divided into "active" and "dormant" bindings, and they just act as minuses to appropriate characteristics when they're activated. It's an interesting variant to other games like Pendragon which instead try and encourage the roleplaying of emotional traits.
Character Creation: Artesia uses the "LifePath" system for character creation, apparently developed by R. Talsorian. The idea is that you don't just randomly roll up a character, but instead develop him through several years, like you did those old Traveller characters.
The system can be quite extensive and very book-heavy, so plan to spend a full gaming session on putting characters together for your group, as you'll probably have to do them one-by-one.
Generally, you start your character off with standard characteristics (5 across the board) and a set of standard skills. You'll then figure out what culture you're from, what your social standing is, and what your probable occupation is (based upon those of your parents).A variety of factors (familial lineage, birth signs, omens, childhood) may then change some of your basic characteristics. At this stage you'll also learn who your family is and what they think of you (using an extensive reputation system).
Then you go through your character's adult years one-by-one, starting with age 15. Each year you decide upon your current occupation, and then determine if there were any special events that year. The process will give you training points to put into your skills and arcana points, which can go into skills, characteristics, gifts, or bindings.
Notably missing from the character creation system is any good correlation with the magic system. You can start with the main magic skills, but there's no way to actually get spells in character creation; instead it's left in the gamemaster's hands, with few guidelines.
The system is generally extremely evocative, pretty clear, and pretty straightforward except for this final problem. The Liefpath system also generates many, many plot hooks which a gamemaster can use during play.
Character Advancement: Artesia uses a very original system for experience called arcana points. The base idea is that you get arcana points as you take certain actions during the game, and then those points can be used for buying related skills, improving related characteristics, buying related gifts, or reducing appropriate bindings. The arcana are thematically linked to the "Book of Dooms" which describes the creation of the world.
For example "Justice", the ninth arcana, is about jugement. So you get 1AP if you counsel someone who feels guilty, 2 if you engage in reasoned deliveration over a judgement or verdict, 5 if you stand in judgement over an act of your own, etc. (There are more than a dozen possible awards for each arcana.)
Then those Justice points can be spent on the following:
Characteristics: Strength, Reason, ConvictionSkills: Awareness, Follow, Hand-to-Hand, Inquiry, Local Expert, Melee, Persuasion, Streetwise, Track, Watch
Gifts: Aura of Truth, Implacable Mask, See Guilt, Sense Lies, Wrathful Visage
Removing Bindings: Anger, Grief, Guilt, Hate
As you might be able to tell from this one example, the arcanas create feedback loops. If you're judgemental and you gain Justice arcana points, you then gain skills and gifts which might help you better judge in the future.
On the one hand the Arcana system is a wholely original and interesting way to reward actual actions in a game, not just beating up monsters and taking their loot.
On the other hand the arcana are not simple to administer. With 22 arcana there are somewhat over 250 arcana reward suggestions given in the rulebook. When playing I tried to give them out as appropriate during the game, and even made myself a crib sheet for the game, but except in very obvious cases it wasn't practical. Perhaps that might improve with more play, but I'm not sure.
What did work for me, however, was simply running through the 22 pages of the arcana at the end of each playing session, and talking with the players about whether anyone had earned each reward. It took maybe 15 minutes a session, and was actually a nice coda to the day's gaming.
On the whole I think I like the arcana, though they're a very challenging experience mechanism.
Task Resolution
Tasks: The task resolution system in Artesia is very simple. You determine a difficulty for a task, which gives you a target number. A player then rolls a d10, and adds a skill and a characteristic, trying to reach that target.
The system is very loose about which characteric should be used on any task, adding a lot more variability to the game, but again making it more challenging for gamemasters.
Contested tasks work just the same, except a "defender" creates the target number for the task with his own die roll.
Cap Skills. Artesia also uses a unique system called "CAP skills". The idea is that if you are engaging in a task that takes two skills, one of them may be a CAP skill, which limits the level of the other skill. For example if you are doing anything on horseback, your Riding skill acts as a CAP. If I had a Hand-to-Hand skill of 5 and a Riding skill of 2, and I was fighting from horseback, I'd fight with a skill of 2.
I've actually seen many games which have that exact rule, but only for horseback riding. Artesia expands it. If you are trying to be stealthy at some action, your Stealth skill acts as a CAP. Likewise, language acts as a CAP when you're trying to communicate. It's a very elegant system that covers a lot of special cases in other RPGs.
Relationships: Artesia maintains a simple, but consistent & mechanical system of personal relationships. For any recurring character you can create a relationship with them. They can be anything from an "enemy" to a "follower" or a "worshipper". These relationship levels have specific effects on various tasks. There's also a specific set of rules for changing your relationship with someone.
You'll start off with an extensive set of relationships, mostly with family, thanks to the thorough character creation system.
Combat: This is a special type of task resolution, though mainly that means that it has a lot of specific task definitions: for attacking, defending, grappling, etc.
Overall, the system is quite extensive, with room for a few different types of defense, and lots of fancy maneuvers, but players can use or ignore as much of it as they want. We used pretty simple combat in our first couple of battles, but I suspect people would move onto fancier stuff once they knew the system better.
The wounding system starts out relatively simple. Hits are taken to the body characteristic. However, there's also a hit location system and the opportunity to take grievous wounds. I particularly like the grievous wound rules, which give you the opportunity to take temporary or permanent characteristic damage. They're pretty simple, and generally fit in with the "bindings" used elsewhere in the game system by the fact that they just reduce characteristics. However they also add a lot of color to a battle.
Overall, Artesia is one of the nastier combat systems I've seen, but in a manner that heavily wounds characters, rather than killing them, instilling a fear of combat without creating a high mortality campaign.
Magic: The basic magic system of Artesia is very open ended, in a way that reminds me of Ars Magica. You can know various magical "principles", which are unshaped magic that can be used in various ways. For example, an Incantation of Seeing allows you to see many normally hidden & magical things. Alternatively, you might know a shaped form of magic. For the Incantation of Seeing this could be a "Folk Chart to See into the Otherworld", a "Hermetic Spell to See the Enchantments Borne Upon a Man", etc.
The system is overall clever, but feels a bit poorly integrated into the gamesystem as a whole. There are no guidelines for what type of magics people can start with, or how common magical principles are versus shaped magic. When preparing my game I had to play this my ear.
There are also specific rules for a few subsystems of magic, including: enchanting with runes, making potions, alchemy, and divination. This was all too much for me to try and get into in a first few sessions of Artesia. I feel like there might be some really nice depth here, but currently it's a bit scattered.
I did, however, get a chance to try the divination system.It allows two types of divination: gleanings (finding out something far away) and foretellings (looking into the future). The foretelling system is clever and has simple, good mechanics, much as the rest of this game. If you make a foretelling, you find out that something good or bad will happen with regard to the topic of your foretelling, and then you (and possibly compatriots) take an appropriate bonus or penalty on tasks related to that topic. It's one of those "I can't believe no one thought of this before" elements that really stands out in this game system.
Religion: The Artesia comic book listed RuneQuest as one of its influences, and thus it's not too surprising to find a strong religion system in Artesia as well.
The religions in general center on two topics: rites, which can earn you invocation points, and invocations ,which allow you to spend them for benefits. The actual system is tied into the magic system, but it's pretty simple: you use a prayer and you spend some of your points, and then you get an appropriate bonus.
Again I felt a bit at sea with this system in character creation, because there's no guidelines for whether players start off with invocation points or the appropriate prayers.
The Game Design
On the whole, there's a lot to like in the game design for the Artesia: Adventures in the Known World RPG.
The biggest thing that Artesia has going for it is elegance and simplicity of mechanics. Invocation points turn into skill bonuses. To hit rolls turn into damage. Movement turns into miles walked. There's no conversions and no complex task charts.
The care with which the system has been created is really obvious when you look at the details. As I've already noted I think the CAP skills and the foretelling system are two examples of excellent game mechanics which I can't believe aren't in wider use. They really underline the excellent game design of this RPG.
Going hand-in-hand with this is the fact that the RPG is simultaneously very open-ended and very challenging to Gamemaster. You have a lot of freedom to mix and match skills and characteristics as appropriate, and likewise you give out experience in a very unusual and innovative way that's also very GM-intensive. Artesia is a game that I would in no way suggest a novice gamemaster try and undertake.
As I mentioned a few times above, some of the game systems don't feel well integrated, particularly the various magic systems, but that's a problem that I hope to conquer as I become more comfortable with the game.
I played Artesia for four weeks prior to writing this review: one week and a little more for character creation, then three weeks for an initial adventure. I found the system challenging and rewarding at the same time, and as the weeks clicked by I did become more comfortable with the system. My players liked it too, and after we finished our fourth week of play, we decided to hang onto as a regular game for our group (which I'll be alternating with the other game I'm currently running, Stormbringer, ironically another game listed as one of Mark Smylie's influences).
That speaks as much about the good game design as anything else: my players and I are going to keep playing.
Content: The Rest of the Book
Besides the game system, Artesia: Adventures in the Known World also includes: 32 pages on "A History of the Known World"; 28 pages on "The Known World Today"; 20 pages describing the other dimensions of the Known World; a 24-page "Bestiary of the Known World"; and a 38-page adventure "The Witch's Price".
The various backgrounds on the Known World are at the same time very interesting and informative, yet barely scratch the surface of the gameworld. I actually passed around my Artesia Annual #2 as a better introduction to the Known World, because it comes in more better-sized and more substantive chunks, while Artesia Annual #3 has a more thorough (but less interesting) history of the world.
The info on the other dimensions contains some very useful notes on multiple, overlapping dimensions, but also some great info on death and what happens afterward, which went a long way toward helping to portray religions correctly in my game.
The adventure, "The Witch's Price", was, like the game system in general, very challenging. It's an extremely character-driven adventure that's mostly about who you meet and what you do with them, not about events. There's a very small task, and a couple of set encounters within that task, but most of the adventure is spent describing a town, the people there, and the general situation in one corner of the world. I was largely overwhelmed by the adventure, though I managed to run it without appearing too much so.
However, beyond its single (3-week) run, the adventure is going to be extremely useful because it gives me a very strong basis from which to create a campaign. When I finished with the main Artesia rules I didn't feel like I had a good handle on what the world felt like or how to run adventures there, but the adventure provided sufficiently deep insight to help me get along, at least until the first sourcebook for the game comes out.
On the whole, Artesia: Adventures in the Known World is well designed with great, if challenging, mechanics. I've given it a "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
Artesia: Adventures in the Known World, based on Mark Smylie's Artesia comics (and written by Mark Smylie himself) starts out with a well-developed, and deep game world. Smylie supplements that with a solid game system that's well though-out and elegant. The game is also very challenging to run--novice Gamemasters need not apply--but if you feel competent to do so, expect to enjoy an interesting and innovative game.
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