Before going any further let me disclose that the following is a review of a free PDF file I received for review purposes.  That said, any bias I may have had should be countered by the fact that I also bought a physical copy at full price, and read the PDF before receiving my physical copy.  That out of the way, let the review begin.

First thing, if you are going to play in a Lesser Shades of Evil (LSoE) campaign, read no further.  This review is targeted for curious potential GMs, and will ruin pretty much all the mystery and surprise behind LSoE.  But if you’re a player and still reading this far, there’s not anything I can do to stop you.

Before the book even begins, we have a forward, credits, thank you page, a handy Table of Contents, and a page with that lovely warning in underlined italicized letters.  Seriously, if you’re going to play, reading the rest of this will ruin any surprise for you.

We start with Chapter 1: Introduction, a recollection of the history of the world as written by Lyra Kingsway.  The First Age of the world essentially ended with her father Ambrose discovering the secret of digital immortality, uploading a personality into a centralized computer and broadcasting that personality instantly to multiple bodies across the world.  Ambrose uplifted the rest of his family, and even their dog, and the lot of them proceeded to kill every last man, plant, and creature on the planet for the sake of Ambrose’s vision of a better world in the name of an All-Seeing god.  A world recreated by him, where the lands were scoured of all traces of the “tainted” past, and all life was recreated and improved by the Kingsways.  And once that was complete, Ambrose recreated humanity to serve the All-Seeing as Ambrose saw fit, beginning the Second Age with the Second Genesis.  From time to time, exceptionally moral individuals would be uplifted as well, turned into Angelions, and set to secretly watch over the affairs of mortals, passing judgment but never growing attached.  But despite the best efforts of his attempts to cleanse mankind of sin through eugenic pruning and breeding, it still existed.  His son, Corvus, disobeyed him, and fell in love with a woman, and had children with her, and uplifted her into an Angelion as well.  Ambrose destroyed the woman, driving Corvus to plot his revenge against his father and all the Kingsways.  For centuries Corvus would plot and build alliances and war bodies and dark artifacts.  The Second Age of the world essentially ended with the great war between Corvus and his allied Angelions, against the rest of the Kingsways and their Angelions.  Corvus defeated his father and siblings, renamed himself Ravencross, and now sets his sights on those Angelions who still refuse to serve him.  As introductory first-person narrative fiction goes, it’s engaging and informative, and quickly shows you that the most powerful beings in this game are inhuman at best, who shape and rule the world through hidden super-science.  This is important. 

Next we move into Chapter 2: Game Mechanics.  LSoE uses an original system, the Ascent System, for task resolution.  Using a pool of d6s, d10s, and d20s, players combine an Attribute with one of five fields of Mastery to come up with a Proficiency Level (PL), trying to roll higher than a target number.  If your PL is 8, you’d roll 8d6, counting each die separately and not totaled.  For every 3 points you roll over or under the target number you get an “added effect”, which adds to the degree of your success or failure.  If you roll the max on a d6, it’s called a “spill” and you get to roll a d10, keeping whichever die is higher.  You can not get further spills on spill dice however.  But you can trade in a d6 pool of 6 or more dice for a smaller number of d10s (the formula is X-5, with X being the number of d6s), and can trade in a pool of d10s for a smaller number of d20’s as well (X-10 in d6s, or Y-5 in d10s).  Also, there’s a sense of increasing magnitude the higher one goes; while there’s a substantial difference between 4 and 5 in an attribute, that difference is immensely greater when it’s from 4 to 7.  There’s a lot of other little rules and bits here and there, but nothing that really grabbed me.  Functional and loose enough, but a little bland I guess.  The main thing I did take away from this chapter was the idea of Masteries.  In a game about ancient faux-gods, it’s nice to just have broad overarching skill pools, rather than having to keep track of every single thing the character can do.  Instead of stats for Martial Arts, Athletics, Shooting, Artillery skills, and what not, you have a Mastery of Warfare.  This tells me the focus is more on how effective the character is in a general sense, rather than dwelling on tabulating all the specific skills an immortal would accumulate.

Every game prides itself on storytelling, and every game devotes a large chunk of its core rule to combat, as wonderfully summed up in this case with Chapter 3: When All Hell Breaks Loose.  How to hit, how to cause damage, how to avoid damage, how to heal damage.  An extension of the last chapter, combat in LSoE isn’t all that tactical.  Certainly less so than D&D 3.5 or Exalted.  This isn’t a bad thing though, and fits in nicely with the rest of the game’s design.  The chapter also introduces us to Powers.  Angelions, through their access to ancient super technology, can harness gravitational and electromagnetic energies to perform all sorts of feats.  Raising mountains as floating islands, incinerating cities with a single thought, creating illusions, and more.  The ability to control these energies isn’t inherent however, and requires the use of artifacts only Angelions can use, but it’s still quite impressive.  Further powers are mentioned to exist, but are to be described in the next supplement.

While the past two chapters on mechanics were merely “okay”, Chapter 4: A Legend is Born picks things back up.  Character creation is done on a point-buy system, and covers everything from:

·         Angelions, immortal beings, further divided into:

o   Dagonheirs (those who still faithfully seek to serve the All-Seeing, despite knowing the truth)

o   Sybas (those who now seek to indulge in the material world, while remaining free of Ravencross)

o   Phantomas (those who seem to seek merely to be left alone, and free of other Angelions and mortals alike)

o   Fell Princes (those who serve Ravencross by choice or enslavement, in a twisted feudal society)

·         Rogue Golems, sentient robots trying to survive despite being seen as “tainted” constructs

·         Archfiends, powerful creatures that are either slaves or slaves on the run

·         Fellkin, humanoid creatures like the Archfiends, only much, much weaker

·         Mortals, the default humans of the Second Age, close but not quite like normal humans

·         Awakened, humans who are both weaker and stronger than Mortals, and may not to be of the Second Age at all

After figuring out what you want to play, you purchase Mental Attributes (and Physical Attributes if not an Angelion), prioritize your Masteries (which consist of Deceit, Domination, Passions, War, and Wisdom), purchase Master Abilities (specializations within a Mastery), pick a Cardinal Nature (which boils down as lawful or chaotic, selfish or selfless), purchase an area to lord over if you want, buy some artifacts if you want, and design a body!  Really, there’s a lot of stuff in this chapter to digest.  Master Abilities really stand out; besides giving you bonuses to specific uses of Masteries (like a +2 bonus to crafting something), there are special abilities that only someone who prioritizes a relevant Mastery can pick.  For example, if you chose to focus on Wisdom, you can buy words and gestures that let you control a Second Age man, even kill him, by manipulating the triggers the good old Kingsways put in his genetic code.  And while those mastery abilities are cool, it’s the building of the body that really takes off!  Basically, you design an organism, any organism, that your Angelion will use as his starting body, by purchasing features from a series of lists.  You probably won’t get too weird in your designs since things like force fields and laser beams are more the domain of artifacts than bodies, but there’s still a lot of leeway.  Faeries, scorpion-men, giant worms, locusts, robots, little boys, and more are all ready to go, and decent guidelines are given on making your own.  Anything with a nervous system can be grown or “modified” to serve as an Angelion’s vessel, waiting in storage when not in use, all for a fee.  Either servitude to Ravencross or his crazed sister, or else ever increasing stacks of coin to independent Genomancers.  The concept of Trumps and Recognition and Notoriety are also mentioned here as character stats, but Recognition and Notoriety are given brief overviews with more information to be described in the next supplement.

Chapter 5: Items of Power covers items great and mundane.  Godshards are those artifacts created by the Kingsways, to help Angelions in the service in the name of the All-Seeing.  Black Artifacts are those items created by Corvus, and despite their styling and inventor, aren’t really any different from Godshards.  While several of the items are little more than batteries for Angelions’ powers, the greater and more powerful ones are given a history and a bit of fluff.  Considering that most of the beings who could make such items are either unwilling or unable to do so now, each is really made out to be an irreplaceable treasure.  Tainted artifacts are another story, and comprise items and technology from the First Age or recreated items that have since been banned by the clerics.  Used by mortals, especially Awakened, they help give otherwise mundane humans a slight edge in Angelion encounters, but usually not enough of one.  Machine guns, grenades, and printing presses are but the start, with hover belts, lasers, and power armor kept by the greatest of the Awakened.  My one problem with this chapter is that it doesn’t feel very GM or player friendly when it comes to the addition of new powerful artifacts to the game.  What do PCs need to make them?  How does a GM value a new artifact with totally new powers?  Is anything “non-genre” for this game in terms of artifact abilities?

Following that we have Chapter 6: Behind the Veil, or as I like to think of it “how do I run this game?”  Trumps are finally detailed; players can purchase White Trumps as a kind of “good things happen to me” narrative edit, while they can take Black Trumps as a GM “lets horrible things happen to me for a better story” excuse.  A player can only ever have 2 of each Trump at a time, and once spent, they have to be repurchased.  I like that White Trumps allow for more player control, but I have to wonder how good it is to assign a mechanical value that some might take as a limit on a GM’s powers.  Besides that there is quite a bit of useful advice on basing games around different characters besides Angelions, it also has a lot of information on the default LSoE campaign: you start as a human who becomes an Angelion.  There isn’t much generic info here for beginning GMs, but that just frees up space for all the LSoE-specific advice that is available.  That part of the chapter is a good inspirational one, to help you come up with some ideas.  Rules for advancement and the purchasing of new bodies is also given.  Also, at this point, the idea of “interim chapters” is explored.  Basically, between adventures, it’s assumed a span of time (usually 5 years) passes.  The time it takes to grow a new body, as well as the longevity of your current body (or bodies), starts to become more important.

Finally we have Chapter 7: the Second Age, coming in at about 100 pages.  A brief timeline is given, along with details on the homogenous Unconquered Lands (those lands not controlled by Ravencross).  Humans are multi-ethnic but not racist, because children are born of a random ethnicity.  All of mankind shares the One Tongue, with a priest-caste of clerics enforcing cultural purity.  Human technology is fairly primitive, with the printing press and gunpowder being considered heretical.  And everyone believes in the All-Seeing, and tries to root out sinners and sin from their community before they are punished for the transgressions of those in their midst.  In a lot of ways it feels almost like some silly little utopia.  Until you consider it is very much an artificial society created and maintained by murderous fanatical godlings, godlings that have had the humanity stamped out of them by the ancient Kingsways.  And now that the remaining Angelions are weakened and afraid of one another, human society begins to crumble apart.  But besides a fairly comprehensive cultural overview of the Unconquered Lands, we’re also given a brief travel guide to the world, with lots of room for GMs to play with.  We’re also given more detail on some of the various groups active in the Unconquered Lands, and how they operate.  A briefer treatment is given to the Fell Kingdoms, the part of the world controlled by Ravencross and his minions.  In a nutshell, you have 36 or so little kingdoms ruled by would-be tyrants and gods.  It’s here that GMs are really given free reign to tell the fantasy stories they want within LSoE.  One Fell Kingdom is a floating island, modeled after ancient Egypt, complete with an ibis-headed ruler called Thoth.  Another is a story book land, with emerald cities and unicorns.  A third is provided, a desert city ruled by insane twin Angelions trying to make their nightmares into reality.  A lot of detail, and a lot of neat ideas.  However, it seems as if every page has some reference to information to be described in the next supplement.  I like knowing that there are plans for future products, but it’s really jarring to go from reading something interesting to how there is more information to be described in the next supplement. 

Ok, so let’s see.  Rounding off the very end there’s an index for people who like them.  We also have a handy little two-page rules summary, a character sheet for personality and such, and a separate character sheet for bodies. 

For Style I’m going to give it a low 4.  The fiction is evocative, and from what I could tell in the PDF the original art is pretty good if pixilated.  Assuming the book has a better presentation of the art, I’ll make this a solid 4.  There’s also a piece at the very end, page 447, that is a beautiful portrait of a Slanneshi cultist from Warhammer.  I know the text certainly describes the character to a T, but I also know that the symbols on the guy’s tattoo and earring are from the Lord of Pleasure.  Not a complaint, just an observation.  It actually loses some points for occasional typos (my favorite was “Major Godhard”), and using a few pieces of art that looked like clip art of generic Victorian era characters.  It was good, but it didn’t say “Lesser Shades of Evil” any more than it said “Sears Catalog 1887” to me.  Even among the good art though, there wasn’t much outside of the Artifacts chapters and maybe a couple of other pieces that said “science fantasy”.

For Substance I’ll give it a low 5.  The Aspect System gets a 3; excepting the whole Mastery concept, there are plenty of other systems out there that can handle every other aspect of the game much better.  As a book to scour for system ideas, LSoE doesn’t have much to offer.  It works, but the basic system itself doesn’t excite me and pulls down my Substance portion of the review just enough to get it under 5. I went ahead and raised the score back up a bit though, when I consider that it really does handle a wide array of things besides simple dice rolling, like body creation and prices for creation of bodies and storage.  As a book to pillage for setting ideas, LSoE is excellent, and easily gets a 5 for Substance!  All of the basic premises of the game are explored in a fairly logical and complete manner, and provides for some interesting ideas in any game related to PC godlings.  To a very real extent, any setting problems the author may have missed when he was making it all up can be hand waved away as something the Kingsways missed when they were making it all up.  Anytime you see something that shouldn’t work work, you can justify it as due to the actions of the Angelions and not just the author’s fiat.  Because that to me is what LSoE is all about: giving stupid, flawed mortals the power and responsibility of a god.  What do you do with the power of an angel, given to you by your God?  What do you  do when you find out your faith is a lie?  Is the lie of a faith that gives you reason to go on, better than the truth that leaves you without purpose? 

As a Miscellaneous note, at several points in the book we are told that there are no evil characters in the game.  At several points in the book, it is clear that pretty much every Angelion at the start of the game is a self-appointed “judge, jury, and executioner” at best, and an insane sadistic egomaniac at worst.  To me, the title sums up what the book really feels like.  Every Angelion in this game seems genuinely and truly evil, but some are lesser shades of it.  Maybe now they value human life, but for centuries they killed and tormented people because they were told to do so.  Even Lyra Kingsway, leader of the “good guys” willingly helped kill every shred of life in the world as her morally self-righteous father dictated, and in her conviction doesn’t really show any remorse for it.  Corvus turned on his family out of selfish reasons really, and shows no sign of being more compassionate to the rest of humanity as he lets his favored followers kidnap, torture, and kill as they so desire.  Maybe there aren’t any evil characters in the game, but there certainly are a lot of self-serving tyrants.

Who shouldn’t get this?  People who want something that’s “pick-up and play” will probably be disappointed.  Character creation is engaging, but can take a while, especially for new players.  Likewise, the game really works best when all players are at roughly the same power level.  “I have a bow!” can be challenging to work with “I can set countries on fire!”  Likewise, people who are looking for a hard sci-fi in their games will be highly disappointed.  The super technology is literally a dues ex machina, and isn’t the focus of the game.  If Star Wars was too soft in the science department to enjoy, you’ll hate LSoE.

Who should get this?   I see it as a cross between the familial conflicts of the Chronicles of Amber, a lighter version of the theological questioning of the Kult RPG, and the techno-fantasy elements of Fading Suns.  But besides functioning well on its own, it could also be used in other games easily enough with some modifications.  In fact, the game could be transported as is into Fading Suns as an example of a frighteningly powerful Lost World.  It might also serve as an interesting world on Yggdrasil in Nobilis; how do one set of Nobles deal with a very different set?  In the end, those looking for something different, and thought out, could do a lot worse.