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The EoM system is interesting and somewhat unique. Using 2d10, players normally make both an Attribute and a Skill roll to resolve a task. If both rolls succeed, the task succeeds. If only one succeeds it’s a partial success – there’s some sort of complication. If neither succeeds, that’s a failure. This is the heart of the system, and it provides an interesting change of pace.
If you’re looking for a mystery filled noir setting with magic using scientists, strange goblin-like creatures, and all the wonderful trappings of noir then this is a fine choice. Unfortunately, long winded writing, a weak mystery, and a lack of content for the price prevent EoM from reaching its potential.
The Physical Thing
This 224 page black and white hardcover showcases average production values for its $39.99 price tag. The art is flavorful and evokes a noir atmosphere, but there isn’t enough of it and many of the pieces are small. The few maps presented are of low quality and are generally unhelpful. The editing is good, a bit above average though there are still occasional mistakes. A detailed index, table of contents, and the reprinting of all the necessary charts at the end of the product makes it easy to navigate.Unfortunately, I often felt like the writer was trying to stretch out content by using as many words to describe something as possible. At times this was interesting and flavorful, but most topics would eventually become boring. Combined with reprinted charts and an excessively long Player and GM advice section there’s just not that much real content here.
The Ideas
The Edge of Midnight has a unique setting similar to that of the late 1940s and early 1950s United States. The big differences are that magic exists, in the form of highly educated scientists who have found loopholes in the universe, magical beings called gaunts have become the ultimate persecuted minority, and everything has a different name. More importantly, the setting has a compelling secret that the player characters are at least somewhat interested in investigating.Five years ago a great war against a group of upstart warlocks was ended by the Commonwealth when they unleashed a powerful magical attack – the White Light – on the home of these warlocks. In many ways this is similar to the end of World War II, but with a magical focus. No one can remember what happened before the Light. History books don’t extend back before it, records of debates over laws don’t exist, there simply is no history.
Magic use, which involves highly educated physicists bending the laws of the universe, has been connected to gauntism. Gauntism began around the time of the war, and its appearance in the Commonwealth was one of several reasons the people decided to take a stand against the growing threat of foreign warlock rule. A person afflicted with gauntism, over two weeks, loses their hair, their skin becomes thick and pale, their face becomes monstrous, and they develop significant amounts of additional muscle. They also steal the energy from everything around them – living things die, buildings break down, and colors fade. It is generally believed that gaunts are created through magic use, that the universe is equalizing the energy used by magic by taking it from a living person, and as it happens gaunts and warlocks have an instinctual hatred for one another.
Today, a few gaunts, warlocks, detectives, femme fatales, crooked cops, and others band together. They do it to watch out for their interests, to right some wrongs, and most of all to try and figure out what’s wrong with the world.
Under the Cover
This product begins with a simple Introduction explaining the very basics of the EoM world.Chapter One Character Creation 28 pages.
EoM jumps straight into character creation, so lets get to it! The first step is to come up with a Character Concept.
Example: I want to play an older female lawyer who also practices magic – a strange character for the setting, but women tend to have more education and power in EoM than they did in our late 40s America. Her name is Eva Sinclair, she’s 62 and works as a defense attorney – often doing work for the underworld. A licensed practitioner of magic, Eva is always playing a delicate balancing game with the police, district attorney’s office, and the underworld.
Next, players buy Attributes for their characters. EoM uses six Attributes – Brains (general intelligence), Brawn (strength), Build (constitution), Gut (intuition), Moxie (social ability, charisma), and Smoothness (agility, dexterity). Almost every roll in this game is going to involve an Attribute and Skill roll concurrently, so Attributes are very important. Players have 30 points to spend, and Attributes range from 1 (horrible) to 8 (well beyond professional) at character creation.
Example: While Eva is older, she’s still fit. I’m going to give her a Brawn of 3 (slightly below average), Build of 4 (average), and Smoothness of 4 (average). A Moxie of 7 (a little more than a politician) seems appropriate for this character. A Brains of 6 and a Gut of 6 round out my magic using defense attorney.
Players get 35 points to distribute among Skills. Skills range from 0 to 5 at character creation and given the dual rolling nature (both Attribute and Skill roll needs to succeed) of the game they’re very important. Skills in EoM tend to be pretty specific, and the catch all knowledge skill, Lore, has to be taken with a specialization.
The resolution mechanic for just about everything in the game involves rolling Attribute +1d10 and Skill +1d10. Each of the rolls must beat the difficulty. If only one does, it’s a partial success. If neither succeed, it’s a failure. The Skills section discusses potential results for Partial successes, and it does a good job of conveying how this works.
Example: Lore: Law 5, Bureaucracy 5, Fast Talk 5, and Intimidation 3 all come to mind for my lawyer. She’s going to be a Kineticist, so I buy 5 points in the Kinetics science. Puzzles 4, Perception 4, Etiquette 1, and Streetwise 1 round out the character. I go ahead and put 2 points in Firearms just in case she gets in a scrap.
Players then purchase Backgrounds. Everyone gets three Backgrounds, and they cover a wide range of packaged abilities. From Magical Aptitude to Lucky to Gaunt, the Backgrounds provide potent support for the character. The Backgrounds can also be used for significant Attribute increases. A player could, if they wanted, begin with +6 points to Attributes which would be an enormous boost. Gaunt characters may also buy extra bonuses, such as Enhanced Teeth and Sinewy Joints.
Example: I purchase Magical Aptitude right off (which lets me spend those skill points on the Kinetics skill, and other magical skills if I wanted). Magic License is also important – Eva is one of the few people in the city who can legally use her magic. I decide to buy Wise as well. Wise gives my character +2 Gut and allows me to re-roll a single die every session.
Professions influence a character’s starting wealth, and offer a minor bonus to buying skills later. Every player chooses one Profession for their character, or they can skip this step and begin play with 10 Experience points. The XP is far, far more desirable. For 10 XP a character could have two more Backgrounds at character creation. That’s more than 4 extra points of Attributes, an enormous increase in character power.
Example: I decide to go with the Investigator profession. While it’s not quite right for the trial lawyer (White Collar Worker is a closer fit) I imagine, the Investigator may automatically learn one piece of useful information about one NPC once per session. I think this makes sense for a clever lawyer.
Players spend starting money on personal gear next. Every character begins with 20 x Brains in dollars to spend, modifier by Profession where appropriate. The gear list is pretty sparse, but other than a good firearm and a pack of cigarettes a noir character doesn’t need much anyway.
Example: My character has 6 x 20 or $120 dollars to spend. I choose to buy a Small Revolver for $60 and spend the rest on clothes, a little bit of ammo, and other appropriate gear.
Players then choose Languages. Everyone starts out with one Language at level 3 (Read/Write is one level, speak with accent, and speak without accent are the other two). Skill points are spent on any additional languages. Since the only setting for the game is the Commonwealth, and English is by far the dominant language there, other languages probably aren’t a big deal. I feel like Languages should have been dealt with in the Skills section instead of here.
Finally, characters receive 3 Luck Dice at the start of every adventure. These dice may be used to add to a roll, subtract from an enemy’s roll, regain consciousness, or ask for inspiration from the GM.
I’m going to go ahead and deal with the derived values introduced in Chapter 3 here as well. Vigor is the equivalent of hit points or health. Every character has Build x 5 Vigor (20 for my character).
Here’s my final character:
Eva Sinclair, Defense Attorney.
Attributes: Brawn 3, Build 4, Smoothness 4, Moxie 7, Brains 6, Gut 8.
Skills: Lore: Law 5, Bureaucracy 5, Fast Talk 5, Kinetics 5, Puzzles 4, Perception 4, Intimidation 3, Firearms 2, Etiquette 1, Streetwise 1.
Backgrounds: Magical Aptitude, Magic License, Wise.
Profession: Investigator
Other: Language (English), Vigor 20, Luck Dice 3.
Chapter Two Combat and Damage 10 pages.
Combat is simple and easy to handle in EoM. Standard cyclical rounds are used, with Gut determining initiative and ties rolling off. The system assumes a character stands still and fires a weapon. If the character does anything else – including speaking – that adds a +2 to the Difficulty of all actions for the round and delays the character’s initiative.
Partial successes in combat (just Skill or Attribute succeeding) result in half damage. The Target Number of an attack is equal to the opponent’s Smoothness, which represents dodging, taking cover, and turning a lethal blow into a graze. Vigor, the hit points system for this game, is unusual. Every time a character suffers their Vigor in damage they take a Wound. Wounds reduce a character’s Brawn, Build, and Smoothness by 1 so a character can normally suffer a number of Wounds equal to their lowest physical Attribute – at that point they’re either paralyzed or dead. This can be a little strange in play, as an attack that deals 19 damage against a character with Vigor 20 is just a graze, while a subsequent punch for 1 point of damage inflicts a Wound (and resets Vigor back to 20, the normal max value). Most weapons do quite a bit of damage (such as 6d10 for a shotgun) while Brawling attacks do a fair bit less (1d10+Brawn).
Example: Eva has decided to kill a corrupt prosecutor who wont cut a deal for warlocks. Fortunately for us, the Prosecutor has the exact same stats! Since they have the same Guts they each roll 1d10 – Eva wins and goes first. She is using a small Revolver which does 4d10 damage and invokers he Firearms skill. I roll 1d10 + Firearms (2) for a total of 6 which is higher than my Target Number of 4 (the Prosecutor’s Smoothness). I roll 1d10 + Smoothness (4) and get a total of 8, another success. The Prosecutor suffers the full damage of my attack. I roll 4d10 and get 22, an average result. The Prosecutor suffers a Wound (-1 to all Physical Attributes) and has 20-2 or 18 Vigor left until he suffers another Wound. Normally, characters could Dodge attacks by declaring a Dodge as a Simple Action which increases the Target Number of the Attack Action by 2. That probably would have been a good idea for characters above, since it’s normally pretty easy to hit someone unless they’re taking actions to avoid it.
Initiative, Attack (opponent might use a defense action of some sort), possibly Simple Action. It’s a simple, easy to use system. The only thing that shakes it up is that about a page of Combat Maneuvers are listed that a character with the appropriate prerequisites Grapple, Disarm, Leap Up, and other simple Maneuvers are available.
Both Blunt and Lethal damage are used in EoM, and a player will need to keep track of both of them. As you would imagine, Blunt damage ultimately results in unconsciousness while Lethal results in death. Simple rules for Fire, Electricity, Poison, Drowning, and all the standard sources of injury are included as well.
Chapter Three Magic 14 pages.
Magic in EoM arises from educated scientists exploiting the loopholes in reality. Anyone can learn it, and if magic wasn’t feared and warlocks persecuted perhaps it would be subject of study at university. This chapter begins by discussing specific rules for magic. Among others, magic requires line of sight, all effects must occur in the warlock’s presence (so no enchantment), and only one magical effect can be generated per warlock at a given time. The Target Number for magic use is the Level of Effect +3, and charts are provided for every discipline to determine what Level of Effect the Warlock is going for.
Partial Success with magic use is exceptionally dangerous, and in many cases the effect can harm the warlock and the environment. A partial success is worse than a failure in many circumstances. The other major rule with magic is that all magic does does Level -3 in d10s in damage to living targets, and Level in d10s x (1, 2, or 3) against inanimate objects. This makes magic very good at destroying things, but a poor substitute to a gun in combat.
Finally, magic use can lead to addiction, magical scarring, and even death for those that overuse it. Most warlocks will only use powerful effects once every few days at most, and even minor effects result in a need to let themselves “cool down” before using more magic. While magic is neat, and has the potential to destroy an entire city block at its highest potency, I would generally consider it to be much less powerful than magic in other settings. The weird magical effects that occur from addiction seem very out of place given that magic is normally physics based.
The magical sciences are Electricity, Gravity, Kinetics, Magnetism, Tensile Energy (molecular bonds, makes things strong or disintegrate them), and Thermal Energy. Effects levels range from 1 to 10, which means the Target Number will range from 4 to 13. Low level effects are very mundane. Destroy paper, set fire to oily rags, that kind of stuff. By around level 5 the Warlock is exercising some real power. Pull a gun out of an enemy’s hand, run at 17mph, and reinforce an oak door. By level 10 the character can work substantial power in a small area, though hitting a TN of 13 is going to be risky even for a character with incredible capabilities.
Chapter Four The World 36 pages.
This chapter lays out a lot of the information discussed above in The Ideas. No one remembers back past 5 years, nor do textbooks or other resources extend back. Warlocks are feared and hated, gaunts are persecuted, and corruption is absolutely everywhere. The primary, and only, setting for EoM is the Commonwealth – a nation similar in shape and attitude to the United States of the late 40s and early 50s.
The chapter does a good job of conveying the arts, entertainment, and culture of a noir setting. Baseball and boxing are the two big sports that really interest folk (gaunts have their own boxing league, since they tend to kill human opponents). Movie theatres are big, and most folk with some cash go see a film from time to time. The police tend to be very corrupt, and most folk who can afford it are likely to turn to a private detective to handle their problems (unless they were famous or rich to start with). Crime is ever present throughout all levels of society.
The chapter goes on to describe four major cities in the Commonwealth. Each city has a general description follow by two fleshed out locations and two major NPCs. Short stat blocks for the NPCs and for typical encounters in the locations (cops, bellhops, assembly line workers, etc.) are all presented as well. The locations are extremely flavorful, and the NPCs are interesting – any one of them could walk through a detective’s door with a sad story and request for aid, and in terms of providing GM support and plot hooks this chapter does an excellent job. The only down side is that the city descriptions tend to be bland, and there’s little that really differentiates the cities. If I were to use the default setting, I would take all the locations and NPCs from these example cities and put them in the big example city at the end of the product.
Chapter Five Warlocks 20 pages.
Magic is illegal in the Commonwealth. You see, around the time of the War the people had begun to make a connection between magic use and gauntism. When the Order of Nu seized power in a foreign nation and attempted to spread the influence of magic, the Commonwealth entered the War. Things went poorly, and eventually the Commonwealth recruited a group of nine warlocks to build a powerful weapon. This ultimately led to the White Light, which destroyed the capital of the Order of Nu and wiped out the ambitious cabal. It was hoped that with the Order of Nu destroyed gauntism would slow down, or maybe even halt, as many people believed it could be traced to the works of the Order.
This did not occur. Between the incredible power of magic displayed in the War and the continuing spread of gauntism, the Commonwealth decided the only prudent course of action was to declare magic illegal. A few practicioners are licensed to use magic, though they are carefully regulated, and local governments field “Crystal Ball Squads” which are magic using police that investigate magical crimes and deal with other warlocks.
Today, most warlocks are criminals. They face harsh punishments should they be found out, so most are pushed further into the underworld. Flame flinging gangsters and robbers who disintegrate the locking mechanism in a vault can earn a hefty fee and curry much favor in the underworld, though they’re leading very risky lives. The smartest and best of the warlocks infrequently use their abilities and make sure that it’s worth it every time they bend the laws of the world.
This chapter discusses all of that as well as a few other topics specific to warlock characters such as physics, education, magic inhibiting drugs, and the legal system. The chapter wraps up with a brief discuss of several different organizations of warlocks.
Chapter Six Gaunts 14 pages.
No one knows why gauntism infects those it does. What is known is that it begins with headaches and, over a two week period, a completely normal person turns into a monster. All their hair falls out, their skin becomes grey or white, their nose becomes a sunken cavity, their teeth elongate, and they substantially grow in size and muscle. Their diet changes so the only thing they can eat is raw meat and the occasional raw vegetables, making them ill dinner company for most folk. Most lose their memories, and those that retain memories only remember bits and pieces of who they once were. As if all of that wasn’t bad enough, their bodies start draining the existence out of everything around them. People grow sick, materials decay, and machines break down.
Perhaps if it was just a horrible appearance gaunts could continue to find a place in society. However, their strange draining effect makes it impossible. They would slowly kill their human colleagues while destroying the place where they worked, whether they wanted to or not. Because of this they have become the true minority. Women and racial minorities face little discrimination in the setting, partially because of their increased positions in society during the War but largely because gaunts have filled that spot.
The best job a gaunt can hope for is to belong to the police force. Because of their strange draining abilities, Gaunts are unable to use magic but can sense it. This makes them useful for tracking down and dealing with warlocks. That they feel actual pain from magic use and have a natural hatred of warlocks is just icing on the cake. Other than being a cop, however, gaunts are lucky to get physical labor. The richest gaunts may own restraints that serve gaunts or perform well in prize fights, but these people are very rare.
Chapter Seven Player Characters 8 pages.
There’s a lot of very particular advice in this chapter and the next which comes off as a little preachy about how RPGs should be played. The most useful parts here involve considerations for bringing out a noir feel. The biggest one is that players should be prepared to not always win in noir. Sometimes the bad guy gets away and horrible things happen, that’s just a part of it. Additionally, violence is brutal and ugly. Players should keep in mind that when a fight breaks out it could be the end for their character and play accordingly.
The other major topic here, and the binding glue for the PC group, is The Few. The Few have had some sort of odd experience related to the mystery of what happened five years ago. They’ve encountered objects that seem too real, they have strange memories that are more detailed than those of more folk, and unlike everyone else in the world they realize that something is just plain wrong. They find one another and, together, work to unravel the mystery of what has happened to the world.
Chapter Eight Game Mastering 16 pages.
The author clearly has one idea of how GMing should be performed. The GM should cheat frequently, whenever it adds a bit of fun. The GM needs to keep an eye out for munchkins and other problem players, and the GM should never allow die rolls to find clues for an investigation. I strongly disliked the advice, but it may be your cup of tea. It takes up about half of the chapter, with another quarter composed of general advice on how to structure a campaign. A lot of focus (too much for me) is placed on gaunts and warlocks. While they are an interesting and unusual part of the setting, I would have liked to see more attention paid to detective agencies.
The rest of the chapter focuses on the noir genre. Corruption, shades of grey, isolation, cynicism – the chapter offers good advice on creating a noir mood and playing to theme. While I wish there was more discussion of the noir period and the noir feel, this part of the chapter is more than adequate to help anyone create a fun mood for EoM.
Chapter Nine The Whole Damn Mess 10 pages.
This chapter reveals all of the setting secrets. If you don’t want to know what’s really going on in EoM, then please stop reading.
In our world, the place you and I dwell in, things go missing. Old books disappear from the library, mementos are misplaced and never found again, and sometimes people just vanish – never to be heard from again. When these things disappeared throughout history, whether it was over the Bermuda Triangle or in a couch, they ended up in a sort of shadow dimension. The detonation of the first atomic bomb in 1945 sent energy into this other dimension that gave it form and life. In that one moment a whole new reality was created.
That’s about all there is to it. The Few are recent arrivals, people that disappeared within the last couple of years before the bomb test, and they have retained a bit more of themselves than everyone else. The reason the setting has little information on cities is because there are only five. The reason the Commonwealth is the only nation is because it’s the only nation – there is no other part of the world. History began five years ago, so there are no earlier volumes of information. The only clues to all of this are the occasional surviving memories of The Few and the rare book or newspaper that survived its journey into this other world.
There is no escape. If the characters learn all of this it doesn’t really have any meaning. They’ll figure out that warlocks can break the laws of physics because laws just aren’t as solid here. They may conclude that magic draws off the essence of other living beings and gaunts are the result of that, though most folk believe that already. The big secret of the setting is not unlike discovering the character was trapped in a snow globe all along.
If you like this, then great. The Edge of Midnight may be the game for you. If you don’t like it, the author has provided several alternatives (though the above version is canon for future products). In the first, Last Exit Before Hell, a dying man’s spirit is thrown into a realm of nothingness where he creates the Commonwealth with his mind and pulls souls out of purgatory to populate it. The downside here is that Last Exit doesn’t quite synch up with The Few.
Land of Dreams and Nightmares suggests that the Commonwealth is a dream, fed by our sleeping fears and negative emotions. The Few are dreamers who became lost in the dream realm and forgot themselves. If they one day figure out what’s going on they may be able to return to their real bodies and escape this bleak and dreary realm.
Quantum Stumble involves a time traveler going into the past and really screwing things up on accident. He somehow alters physics to make it more flexible and changes history so that the world is an entirely different place. The world outside the Commonwealth is plagued by storms destroying reality, and the time traveler is working furiously in a hidden apartment to undo the evil he has wrought. While neat, this variant also doesn’t work well with The Few.
Finally, Beyond the Stars assumes that aliens abducted a lot of people, wiped their minds, and put them in a space station that is actually the Commonwealth. Magic use is actually humans taping into the aliens mental powers, so sometimes the aliens have to suck a human dry to recharge (thereby creating a gaunt). The Few are people who are resistance to the mind wipes and are working towards the truth, so the aliens take control of other humans (such as politicians and the like) to use them to wipe out The Few. This setting makes little sense and, while a neat idea, seems like it would be exceptionally unrewarding to discover.
Appendix One Gateway 32 pages.
Gateway is a good sized example setting and it’s quite useful. The city is really just a collection of 19 major locations, each of which gets about a quarter of a page worth of description. Every one of these locations is interesting and well written. I could easily create several adventures around each one, and upon reading them I immediately started thinking up NPCs to live there. The book goes further, however, and provides a lot more NPC stat blocks here. From fencers of goods and common thugs to mob bosses and other powerful NPCs, there’s an excellent mix of characters for a GM to use.
The first third is a list of locations with a few stat blocks, the second third is a list of NPCs with lengthy bios, and the last third provides a variety of example campaign ideas. These are all well thought out, and several adventure hooks are provided as well to help the GM get a solid idea for how to start off an Edge of Midnight campaign. On the whole this may be the best chapter in the whole book, and I could easily run several campaigns with it.
Appendix Two Inspiration 10 pages.
This is 10 pages of inspirational material. No commentary is provided to explain why any of it is inspirational or why you should try it out. It’s just a 10 page list of media that includes such odd choices as all three Law & Order series. Still, there are a lot of helpful suggestions on this list and reading it did help me think “ah, right, that’s a good source for noir elements.”
Appendix Three Miscellaneous 15 pages.
A variety of simple NPC stats, a detailed Index, and all the previous charts are presented here for ease of reference.
My Take
There’s a real gem of a game here. The resolution system is interesting and simple, combat seems gritty but not prohibitively lethal, and the game has a lot of cool ideas. Warlocks, in particular, are all kinds of cool. Physicists who have learned the secrets to breaking the laws of the universe? Awesome! Gaunts offer a lot of fun roleplay potential since they mix demi-human status, being a powerless minority, being socially rejected, and being physically powerful together. More than either of those, however, it’s a game that really gets noir. Who doesn’t want to play a detective, mobster, femme fatale, or corrupt cop with good intentions? This is a game that gets me excited, and I could easily prepare a dozen characters and a half dozen campaign pitches without even trying.Unfortunately, the real guts of this product could be distilled down to 100 pages with little loss in content. The writing tends to be long winded and many ideas are rehashed again and again. While this is good for key concepts, it’s excessive in The Edge of Midnight. Additionally, the focus on the warlocks and gaunts is somewhat overdone. More attention should have been paid to detectives, mobsters, and the goings on of the criminal underworld generally. Finally, while I can’t verify this with actual play I feel like the core system could be very frustrating for some players. Partial successes seem like they are quite common, and the magic system puts up substantial barriers for relatively mundane effects.
If you’re looking for a noir setting with a dash of magic and mystery, give The Edge of Midnight a try.
