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Lesser Shades of Evil is a science-fantasy game published by Eos Press. Much to my surprise, I discovered after agreeing to review it that the author was a fellow Montrealer (i.e.: like me). He was nice enough to deliver my comp copy to me in person, and we took the time to chat a bit about his game. Before I go into the review proper, I’ll take a paragraph to put a bit of context concerning the making of this game, as it will no doubt factor into the review that follows.

Pierre Kakos, the author, has been working on this game for eight years. It is, basically, a labour of love. Does that make it a fantasy heartbreaker? I’ll answer that just a bit below. According to Pierre, the main influence of Lesser Shades of Evil is Talislanta, because it’s the game that whet his appetite for “different” fantasy games. It bears mentioning that those eight years of work were spent on creating the game from A to Z, including contracting artists and paying them hefty sums for the art featured in the book. In other words, once the game was done, the author went shopping for a publisher, and ultimately found one in Eos Press. Keep that fact in mind, because I’ll come back to it from time to time during the review.

So, is Lesser Shades of Evil (LSoE from now on) a fantasy heartbreaker? No, it’s not. While the mechanics do have a faint crunchy old-school vibe to them, they do no feel outdated nor clunky. As for the setting, I can’t stress enough how little LSoE is like D&D. I never had the chance to check out Talislanta, but I can say for certain that LSoE has more in common with Exalted than with the aforementioned grand-daddy of all RPGs. Namely, while Exalted and LSoE both have a very different setting and very different mechanics, they both go for “mythic” fantasy rather than for the tolkienesque fantasy tropes most games go for. So there you have it. Eight years spent does not a heartbreaker make. Or, you know, somesuch.

This said, the question remains : is LSoE worth your money and your time?

Style – An overall impression

Visually, LSoE is equally as impressive. The choice of font strikes a perfect balance between stylish and readable, and the outside of each page is surrounded by a pale border. The tables presented throughout the book are both well-presented and easy on the eyes. Each chapter, section, and subsection is clearly identified by headers of different sizes. Where LSoE really shines, however, are the illustrations. While I did not take the time to count them, I’m fairly certain that around two hundred illustrations are featured in the rulebook. Moreover, these illustrations are of very high quality, and most of them do an excellent job of defining the game visually. It bears mentioning that some rather well known artists are featured in LSoE, like Torstein Nordstrand, Martin McKenna, or Larry Elmore. The visual aspect of this book is very much the level of quality I expect from a major game company. When you consider that Pierre Kakos contracted and bought the images prior to actually finding a publisher, however, it makes the visual quality of LSoE even more impressive.

On the prose side, the author does well by his product. The flavour text peppered throughout the book is actually pretty good for an RPG once you get used to the tone, and the regular RPG-rulebook prose manages to be clear without feeling too dry. The best thing about the way LSoE is written, however, is how much the author goes out of his way to give you examples of how the rules work. As you’ll see further down, the game definitely qualifies as crunchy, so numerous descriptions of how the rules work are a big help. Finally, the game is relatively devoid of typos, which is always a big plus.

Substance – Chapter by chapter

The book jumps right in with Chapter One : Introduction. Although most of it is flavour text, it’s not the kind of flavour text you can skip. The first part of this chapter is basically a speech given by someone called Lyra Kingsway. Be warned : you will be confused at first. The speech begins in media res, with Lyra Kingsway revealing the truth about many things as a result of losing some kind of war… or something. Introducing the setting in this fashion is a risky move on the part of the author, because reading the first few pages can lead to the impression that the game is going to be a mess. This said, reading on is very much worth it. Somehow, it all works out. By the end of the “speech”, the author has managed to trace a detailed portrait of the setting and of its major players in a way that’s engaging and evocative.

Basically, the setting of LSoE is our own world, several thousand years removed from present time. At some point in the future, a man named Ambrose Kingsway discovered a way to turn the spirit of anyone into an immortal entity. Deciding to usher in a new era for the world, he turned himself and his whole family into immortals. The Kingsway family then proceeded to wreak havoc upon the world by possessing various world leaders and starting out wars. When the whole race was exterminated, they went on to restore the planet and create life anew – ushering in what is called the Second Age. The Kingsway spent the first centuries watching over the communities, and then created new immortals as the population grew beyond their capacity to watch over all. The duty of those immortals was simple: to punish the wicked and reward the just, be it through potions affecting fertility, staged streaks of luck, or regular justice. They did so by possessing the bodies of humans and animals, like the Kingsway did before them. Those immortals – called Angelions – are the default characters of LSoE; while it’s possible to play some other kinds of characters, the game’s very purpose is to tell the story of the Angelions. Anyhow. The rest of the story is fairly classic. Lusting for mortal joys and sorrows, one of the Kingsway children betrayed the family and started waging war. Due to the immense power of the Kingsway and the Angelions, the War of Ravencross (named after moniker taken by the treacherous Kingsway) sowed destruction across the world. In the end, the war is won by Ravencross, with the other Kingsway either dead, captured, or in exile. The Angelions, for their part, are left divided. Some have joined with Ravencross, others try to maintain order in the parts of the world which are not directly under the dominion of Ravencross, while yet others have left behind their caretaker duties in order to either wander the land or exploit mortals for their own enjoyment.

Once Lyra Kingsway’s speech is over, the end result is that you have a pretty good handle on the setting’s backstory. That’s when the second part of the first chapter comes in, and turns things on their head. Entitled “20 questions about Angelions”, this section addresses the “science” part of LSoE, which is after all a science-fantasy game. There, you learn that the spirit of Angelions is digitalized, and that they can only possess bodies which have been implanted with receptors attuned to the frequency of a specific Angelion. You also learn that the new genesis brought forth by the Kingsway was done by way of terraforming and bioengineering, and so on. It makes for an interesting contrast with the speech of Lyra Kingsway, which presents the setting from a pure “fantasy” perspective, with the Kingsway and the Angelions being akin to gods. Overall, when you put the two sections of the first chapter together, you get a setting that’s quite unique and has a lot of depth. Although your mileage may vary, I myself was reminded of Frank Herbert’s Dune cycle, and of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy video game series.

Chapter Two: Game Mechanics presents the game’s mechanics (unsurprisingly), which are named the Ascent system. At its core, Ascent is “a roll-over against a variable target number set by the GM” kind of system. What distinguish it from other systems of this type, however, are the rolling options offered. Depending on your final proficiency level (based on the sum of an attribute and a skill, most times), you can pick the number and “size” of dice you roll, based on a table. For instance, if my final proficiency level is 12, I can decide to either roll 12d6s, 7d10s, or 2d20s. Several aspects of the system can factor in your decision, such as the possibility of dice “spilling” (when you roll the maximum on a given dice, you can roll another dice of higher size), and the chances of “added effects”, which are bonuses to your action for each 3 points you roll above the target number. In any case, the end result is that you have to decide on whether you’ll play it safe or go for broke based on the target number the GM has set and the options available to you. A nice touch. Otherwise, you can expect the same usual task-resolution tropes from LSoE : opposed rolls, spending points to be extra-efficient, and so on. One thing that surprised me, however, is the appearance – in that second chapter – of rather extensive rules for creating and repairing things with the help of a research facility. The reason for their presence so soon in the book became clear as I read on. Those rules, which remind me in a good way of Ars Magica’s rules for lab work, are bound to come into play often, as they cover creating new bodies, possessing new bodies, using old artefacts, creating new items of power, and so on.

Next up is Chapter Three: When All Hell Breaks Loose, which deals with combat, healing, and all those things that usually appear in a chapter on combat. The game uses health points, with penalties imposed once the character has lost a certain amount of those health points. Lethality-wise, LSoE feels like it will most likely play out in a way that’s slightly cinematic, but not excessively so. In other words, a “normal” human or animal will probably be able to withstand a bit more damage than it could withstand in real life.

Also presented in the third chapter is a section on “powers.” These are not powers possessed by the characters per se, but are instead enclosed in artefacts or special realms. Basically, powers can be of three kinds: gravitational, electromagnetic, or divine (which combines both former kinds). The rules here strike a nice balance between the “preset list” approach (the best example being the spell list in D&D) and the “freeform use” approach (as featured in Tribe 8 or Nobilis, for instance). Each artefact has a power rating in one or both of the first two kinds of power, which represent how many power points of each kind are available per round. The rules presented in the section on powers give various effects that can be achieved with each kind, and provides extensive tables on how to set the cost in power points per round. While the mechanical effects themselves are somewhat set, the aesthetics are left for the players to decide. For instance, one effect possible with either gravitational or electromagnetic powers is “Hinder”, which makes a target harder to it. Were I to use hinder with gravitational power, I could state that small objects are flying all around, or that there is a wall of force before me, and so on. Likewise, I could use hinder with electromagnetic power, making my effect loud claps that affect concentration, or illusions that block the view, or small harmless sparks of electricity that sting enough to trigger twitches that affect accuracy. You get the picture. I find this whole section to be nicely done, as it gives you the aesthetical freedom of “freeform use” while providing enough structure to make sure that everyone has an idea of how the powers are likely to be used.

Chapter Four: A Legend is Born presents character creation, in all its crunchiness. LSoE is indeed a game that features a good deal of crunch, so your mileage may vary. However, I believe that the crunch is not only a design choice here, but is actually necessary in order to serve the basic premise of the game. I’ll come back to that further down. At its core, LSoE’s character creation is a very granular point based system. Points are spent on attributes, abilities, possessions and such, while points are gained back for disadvantages. One thing that is outside the point-based method is the choice of a cardinal nature, which is basically an alignment system. Thankfully, the fact that it is a sub-system (i.e.: not factored into how points are spent) means that you can do away with it in a matter of seconds, without the need for any tweaking. The chapter opens by offering various character types, each with their own point ratings. Within each type, a certain amount of points is dedicated to each aspect of the character. While there are no rules provided for creating characters outside of those types, it’s bloody obvious that you can: all you need to do is assign a number of points to the character, and spend them as you see fit instead of following the split distribution of a character type. When you consider the amount of numbers-crunching involved, however, the character types are a welcomed boon.

The character types are as follows, with the number of points dedicated to creating the character presented in parentheses. Dagonheirs (500 pts) are Angelions who remain faithful to the doctrine taught by the Kingsway. They are responsible for a community; they seek to guide it towards virtue and defend it against unfaithful Angelions and minions of Ravencross. Sybas (500 pts) are Angelions who have abandoned their faith in the doctrine, and are now only looking out for themselves and their own interests. They are also responsible for a community, but they are as likely to exploit it as they are likely to guide it according to their own morals, rather than the Kingsway doctrine. Phantomas (500 pts) are Angelions who have abandoned their obligation of guardianship in order to wander the land, be it because they have lost faith in the doctrine or because they’re just not sure anymore what they believe in. Fell Princes (500 pts) are Angelion minions of Ravencross, assigned to a specific Fell Kingdom, which is a realm under the direct control of Ravencross. Archfiends (400 pts) are abominations created either by Ravencross or by the Genomancer Guild, who are a group of people who manufacture special bodies for the Angelions (more on this later). Rogue Golems (400 pts) are robots with artificial intelligence that have managed to escape before they were destroyed at the end of the War of Ravencross. Awakened Mortals (300 pts) are normal people who have discovered that the Angelions are among them, and seek to free humanity of their influence by unearthing First Age artefacts to use in their war. Regular Mortals (100-300 pts) are just that – the normal inhabitants of the world, caught in a turmoil they do not understand, as they are unaware of the Angelions. Finally, Fellkins (100-300 pts) are creatures which are different from regular mortals in one way or another, but are still intelligent. Most of them come from the Fell Kingdoms.

While those characters are interesting, they suffer from what I like to call the “Star Wars syndrome.” In other words, if the players want to play more than one or two character types, it’s going to require some major deus ex machina of the “wink wink, nudge nudge, this is all part of the plot so bear with me” variety. Just ask anyone who ever wanted to play two droids, a wookie, a bounty hunter, a jedi knight, and a princess without any of them being main characters from the Star Wars movies – they’ll tell you. In any case, it’s not really a major flaw; it merely means that you’ll have to spend some more time to think about what brings these characters together.

Once a character type has been picked, the long process of character creation begins. Points will need to be spent on mind attributes, masteries (broad skills), master abilities (special skills accessible to those of a high enough broad skill level), weaknesses, bodies, traits, and possessions. Notice how I used the plural when I said bodies, there? That’s because Angelions can have more than one body under their control, although they can only control one at the time when the character is first created. Those bodies can be regular people or animal that have been bodysnatched and attuned to the Angelion, or manufactured bodies created by the Genomancers, tailored to the specific needs of the Angelions buying them. The creation of bodies is where the granularity of LSoE kicks into overdrive but serves the game extremely well. Using the point-based creation, you can create everything from an insect to a tarrasque-like creature, and everything in-between including slightly modified humans. While creating bodies can be a daunting task, the freedom it gives more than makes up for it. I guess, in a way, that makes up for the aforementioned “Star Wars syndrome” – the granularity of the system makes a group of five Dagonheirs anything but redundant, so everyone having the same character type isn’t so bad after all.

One thing annoyed me, however, as I read the character creation chapter. There is a short reference to something called “Legendary Abilities”, which are quickly relegated to the first supplement of the game. Given how games are often short-lived in the current market, I have a hard time getting excited when I’m told that something is going to be featured in a further supplement. If it’s important enough to be mentioned in the main rulebook, it should be explained and presented fully. If not, it shouldn’t be mentioned at all. Being told “this is going to be part of your character, but you’ll have to wait for another book (and buy it) to know what it’s all about” feels a bit like buying a game that’s incomplete. In the end, it’s no big deal because legendary abilities are powers of a higher order that characters can gain later on during a campaign, but it’s still a bit bothersome.

My only other gripe with this chapter is that two stats are mentioned without being explained – the anguish points, and the drama trumps. Since those are presented in a later chapter, it’s a minor flaw. Still, given the complexity of character creation, the last thing I need is more stats being mentioned but not being explained. This said, it’s my only gripe, and I can’t stress enough how much of an accomplishment that is. Overall, given its complexity, this long chapter could’ve been a hell of a mess. It’s not, and that’s a testament to the author’s thoroughness. Numerous examples are given, things are explained clearly. A huge amount of sample bodies have been provided, with the point values of every stat or trait of each body clearly outlined, to make it easy to just take a pre-generated body and alter it to your heart’s content instead of building one from scratch. The bottom line here is that LSoE is a very crunchy game; if you’re the kind of person who enjoys crunchy games, you’ll find that character creation is clearly presented and lets you use the full creative power of its crunch.

Chapter Five: Items of Power presents various, well, items of power. The minor ones can be purchased during character creation, while the others will possibly be encountered during play. Each is assigned a value in points. Those items range from mundane (regular weapons) to insanely powerful (like an aircraft called Venomhead), with potions and special tools in-between. Some are creations of the Second Age, while others are artefacts from the First Age that are used by the Awakened humans. The items present a nice variety – I half expected them to be a collection of “magic” weapons, but I was pleasantly surprised. The other cool thing is that, by that point in the book, the idea that the items appear magical but are really technological in nature has been well established, so each item can be framed as either with ease. There is one flaw in editing that is worth mentioning, sadly. The page on the “Pureblade”, a type of sword possessed by many Angelions, is incomplete. The background story of the pureblades is presented, and then there’s nothing else. As far as we’re concerned, they’re no different from regular swords. It’s rather unfortunate that an editing error had to befall one of the most common items of power in the setting.

The fifth chapter is also where the details regarding the Angelions’ essence is provided. When someone is turned into an Angelion, his or her body is ripped apart by nanites, and his or her brainwaves are stored into a globe that contains a transmitter. This orb is called an Essence, and if it is captured by the enemy, the Angelion is royally screwed. Since this item is possessed by all Angelions and is pretty much central to every character of this type, it’s fun to know the details, draped as they are in simple occult pseudo techno-babble. It’s also useful for the GM, because it gives clear guidelines on how you can screw with an Angelion once you’ve captured his or her essence.

Chapter Six: Beyond the Veil is the GM section of the book. After a few pages of classic GM advice (the kind you read in pretty much every game), the author proposes a few campaign ideas, with possible plot points for each character type. One campaign model – called the “Lesser Shades of Evil saga” – is a bit unusual. It advocates presenting the setting as standard fantasy, and having the players create mortal characters. Then, at some point, the PCs die and wake again, only to discover that they have become Angelions. They get to play a bit in the pre-war world, and then you play the war and its repercussions. While it’s an interesting proposal in theory, it feels like it’s going to be hard to pull off in practice. First off, it requires a lot of GM-players trust, as the basic premise is that the GM doesn’t tell the players the whole truth on what the game is going to be about. Second, it runs a risk of being railroad-ish, as the end goal is to play through a storyline that’s already set in stone by the game’s setting. Finally, as written, that campaign has moments of heavy exposition, including the speech spawning across two-thirds of the introduction chapter – needless to say, that might not be everyone’s cup of tea. The important part, though, is that most ideas provided in the sample campaigns can easily be plundered, picked about, re-engineered… so they’re still useful.

The rest of the chapter is dedicated to character development in a slew of different forms. Two of them are unusual enough that I’ll take some time to talk about them. First up: drama trumps. Available in two colors (black and white), drama trumps are an element the GM can use to have good things (in the case of white drama trumps) or bad things (in the case of black ones) happen to a character. Each color can be purchased (or traded-in for more points) during interim chapters. It’s a shame, however, that the rules explicitly state that only the GM can spend those drama points. In today’s RPG market, a lot of games have demonstrated the potential of giving more power to the players, and the drama trumps could’ve certainly qualified as a tool to give the players a bit more control over the storyline. The second interesting tidbit is the anguish points. Basically, whenever a character acts contrary to his Cardinal Nature, he gains one or more anguish points. Likewise, whenever he acts in accord to his Cardinal Nature, he loses some anguish points. Accumulated points have a small negative impact on experience points, and can be turned into weaknesses by the GM. What’s interesting about this mechanic is that it clarifies the role of the Cardinal Nature, which as I’ve said before is a lot like an alignment system. By quantifying the impact of not following your nature, and giving the player a way to shed the negative impact of not doing so later on in the game, LSoE dodges the whole “you can’t do that, it’s against your alignement” issue. Nicely done. This said, apart from those two elements, the rest of the chapter is very much what you’d expect from rules on character development – experience points, reputation, income, acquiring new items (or bodies).

The last chapter, called Chapter 7: The Second Age, deals with the game’s setting. It starts out by presenting the seven members of the Kingsway family, and then moves on to the geography and ecology of the land. It offers a version of the world’s history from the perspective of the mortals, and presents the traditions, laws, and groups to be found in mortal society. Here, an answer can be found to a question you might ask yourself about the Second Age : “why is society stuck in medieval-like mode?” The answer is as follows: the doctrine handed down by Ambrose Kingsway prohibits technological advances, lest the world be prey again to the horrors and destruction of the First Age. Nifty, logical, efficient. The book then proceeds to detail the traditions and day to day lives of the three main Angelion types (Dagonheir, Syba, Phantoma), and of the Awakened mortals. It also covers the mysterious Genomancer guild. It ends by describing the Fell Kingdoms as a whole, and provides three sample individual Fell Kingdoms. Overall, this last chapter does an excellent job of flashing out the details of a setting that already felt vivid and well-fleshed out before the chapter began.

Finally, the book ends with a two pages reference sheet for task resolution, and the character sheet, which is very beautiful. On the negative side, there are two spots for legendary abilities, which annoys me even more than a passing mention in the text, as it furthers my feeling of having a game that was left purposefully incomplete in-between my hands. Then again, it’s a minor nitpick – but far from me the idea to let that stop me from whining. On the positive side, however, the character sheet is split in two pages between body and mind. That means, essentially, that an Angelion character can have one “Mind character sheet” and as many “Body character sheets” as he or she has bodies at his or her disposal. It’s a small touch, but I think it puts an emphasis on the multiple bodies concept in a really nice way.

The Bottom Line

The prose and layout of LSoE would earn it a 3 in style – average but well executed. The illustrations, however, crank that rating up to 4, because they’re really beautiful and they set the tone of the game very well. Now here’s the kicker – the fact that Pierre Kakos assembled those images by himself before finding a publisher, contracting the artists and paying for their work and all, is an amazing accomplishment. I appreciate commitment, and taking such financial risks with a labour of love definitely fits the bill. The end product is a game that was created by one man who has set very high standards for creation. That’s style, in spades. So there: I give LSoE a rating of 5 in Style. For the record, if a known game company had supervised the visual aspect of this game from start to finish, it would’ve earned a 4.

The setting of LSoE is what really sets it apart, however. Between the setting which is fairly unique, and the multiple bodies gig which can create rather novel opportunities for roleplaying, LSoE creates a niche of its own. It offers something on the RPG market that is unlike anything else, and that’s a good thing. Its system feels solid, but not groundbreaking in any way. It is rather rules-heavy, but that heaviness serves the premise of the game well. In the end, LSoE is a cleanly designed game that falls squarely on the crunchy side of things, with a premise that’s very original. Thus, it earns a rating of 4 in Substance. If you’re not put off by crunchy systems and the premise feels interesting to you, LSoE is well worth your money.

Happy gaming,
Jocelyn

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