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I shall cover the contents of this 224 page noir omnibus in descending order of my enthusiasm...
The Setting
Where else do monstrous mobsters and warlock scientists rub elbows with hardboiled detectives, femme fatales, and honest Joes just tryin' to make a buck? Rob Vaux does a phenomenal job of blending noir's staple tropes with the more fantastical elements that gamers crave. All told, EoM devotes over 100 pages to in-character descriptions of its fascinating people and places.
The United Commonwealth, a shadowy reflection of the post-war USA, has a city for every noir book or movie you'd care to recreate. Did you love Gangs of New York? The mean streets of New Eden are perfect. If L.A. Confidential is more your style, look no further than the sunny shores of Paradiso. Central City stands in for Chicago, complete with powerful mobsters and crooked unions. Terminus does the same for New Orleans, as Nova Roma does for Washington D.C.
The real peach is Gateway, a port city which combines San Francisco and Seattle into one, delicious slice of noir. Fully detailed in an appendix, Gateway's foggy environs include enough locales, NPCs, and plot hooks to fuel several campaigns. (The setting chapter provides a tour of the entire Commonwealth, but the other five cities will get their due in future supplements.)
I'd like to delve into the world's intriguing backstory, but I also need to keep this review concise. See the EoM website for an excerpt that explains things far better than I ever could.
Science As Magic
My second favorite thing about EoM is Rob Vaux's and Ree Soesbee's unique approach to magic. The laws of physics, just like the laws of man, can be bent and broken... if you know them inside and out. Warlocks are scientists who, through years of study and force of will, have discovered the loopholes in reality. They can suspend the force of gravity, alter the kinetic energy of objects in motion, change the tensile strength of materials, generate electricity, and warp magnetic fields.
Though the concept is gold, I found the execution a bit lacking. The game mechanics portray each "Scientific Skill" as a single trick: strengthen or weaken the relevant force. I would rather have seen a freeform approach that allowed players more leeway to improvise effects.
A concerted propaganda campaign has criminalized warlocks and their craft (but not regular science that plays by the rules). The author really drives home the paranoia, which struck a sour chord with me. For a noir game, I would have expected magic as a metaphor for Prohibition, where the government tried to enforce an unpopular law. Instead, magic comes across as Communism during the Red Scare; warlocks can't even trust their closest friends not to turn them in when the chips are down.
Of course, these are both personal preferences. If crunchy mechanics and paranoia are to your liking, then EoM with hit all the right notes.
Mechanics
Kevin Millard's core mechanic is a thing of beauty. Characters have a pretty standard set of Stats and Skills, but they're not nested or added together as you'd expect. Players roll two dice to resolve actions, then add one to their stat and one to their skill. This creates four possible outcomes: complete success, total failure, a partial success by skill, and a partial success by raw talent. One roll, four potential outcomes, and a pleasing degree of narrative control.
The skill descriptions and the chapter on combat take this innovative mechanic and drag it back through standard RPG territory. Rather than providing example partial successes for each skill and combat action, it may have been better to explain solely through the examples of play. I think the core mechanic will really shine when players have to justify their rolls within the context of a specific narrative. Robbed of any context, it's difficult to offer good examples.
I'd put EoM on par with Unisystem or Storyteller in terms of its mechanical complexity. That should be fine for most gamers and, to be honest, folks like me are always free to ignore the rules we don't like. Those who want more crunch have a harder time seasoning to taste, so I can't really hold this against EoM.
GM Advice & Genre Emulation
Ironically, I wanted to see more rules for genre emulation. The author spends multiple chapters advising GMs and players on how to create noir characters, maintain a noir atmosphere, and build scenarios around noir themes. It's all excellent advice, but little of it is evident in the mechanics or character creation rules.
For example, there's a mechanic for "luck dice" that players can add to a normal roll. Why players don't earn these dice for genre-appropriate contributions is quite beyond my comprehension. (See Midway City's "sugar" for a masterful implementation.)
The chapter on character creation starts off with a page and half of concept questions like "What is your character's greatest desire" and "Does you character have a code by which he lives," but players are given no support in bringing those ideas to the table. Games like Unknown Armies and Dogs in the Vineyard have aptly demonstrated the power of encoding psychology and relationships in the character sheet. EoM really misses the boat in this regard.
Finally, I would have liked to see some pre-generated PCs or templates, a la Shadowrun or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They would have given time-starved players a way to jump right into the game. There are plenty of NPCs in the setting chapters, which provide ample inspiration, but no indication of whether or not their stat blocks conform to the character creation rules.
Production Values
I've only seen an electronic copy (must wait until Gen Con to snag a dead tree edition), but the layout and page design are superb. Nate Barnes has done a great job with the interior design. The art ranges from pretty good to pretty sweet; I doubt even people who are into game art will complain.
My only organizational nits are as follows. First, the author states that the character creation and game mechanics sections were placed at the beginning for ease of reference. I'd think they would be best served in the middle, so the book would lie flat. Second, I was a little miffed that all the rich, meaty goodness of Gateway was sequestered in an appendix. It deserves to be front and center.
The Verdict
The Edge of Midnight is a classy game of crime, magic, brutality, and intrigue. The rich setting and full-flavored writing earn it a Style of 5. Missed opportunities in an otherwise swanky rules set drop its Substance to 4. When I run it, I'll probably ditch everything but the core mechanic, borrow the "sugar" rules from Midway City, restructure the Science Skills to make magic more freeform, and have myself one helluva good time.
Will EoM finally bring popular success to one of the most under-appreciated genres in role-playing? If it doesn't, I can't imagine what will.
