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Lesser Shades of Evil (LSoE) comes to us, via EOS Press, from French author Pierre Kakos. He describes it as a work that "nearly did away with me completely" and, having finally read through the book, I can clearly see why. LSoE is rich game, with dense and detailed character creation, set in a gameworld that sprawls across thousands of years. It is not, by any means, meant for the casual gamer and if you are one of those people who likes light rules sets, you may not find much to your liking here.
Nevertheless, there is much here to enjoy. Kakos has built a world full of wonders and intrigue, old technology and new magic, and vibrant communities within old rotting kingdoms. LSoE is a fantasy/science-fiction game in the tradition of Fading Suns and Dune, but with a horror element that should not be overlooked.
The First Impressions
When I first opened my review copy of the PDF file, my very first thought was, "Whoa, this is pretty!". And it is. The pages are a warm sepia tone with art that seems very reminiscent of that found in the Castle Falkenstein of Fading Suns RPGs. The feel is almost Victorian. The text is never bland and often very florid and evocative. Here's a sample of the flavor text from the beginning of the book:
It is during that time that he met and won the heart of Elizabeth. I suspect she may have been of the scientists he kept correspondence with, for my mother was well-versed in the sciences. They married as people once did, under flowers and archways though they wed with no witness but silent fields of corn. Their love would not dull for more than three thousand years. How I envy them.
The book did seem cramped, though. Most pages are three columns wide and the text is small. That presented some difficulty to me reading the PDF from my computer screen. After a while, the lines and lines of text started to resemble battalions of ants marching down the page and it made reading the book a bit of an ordeal for me. I imagine that the dense typesetting, combined with the black on sepia color scheme, may present some reading difficulties in book form as well. LSoE could have used a bit more whitespace and some better page organization to give the text room to breathe so as not to cause the reader's brain to panic when it sees all those letters! I realize that doing so would push the book to well over 500 pages but the benefits of not having the reader's eyes cross from fatigue 30 pages into the book would be worth it.
Upon Further Review...
LSoE is no "beer and pretzels" game, not by a long shot. Anyone interested in running the game is going to need to spend some serious time with both the mechanics of the game and the history of the world in order to give their players even the smallest taste of what the game can offer them. Let's start with the setting first.
The book's introduction spends 30 pages introducing you to the history of the world, mostly through the eyes of one of the sminal NPCs, Lyra Kingway. Her narrative spans a bit over two millenia and explains the ongoing family intrigue into which your character will likely be thrust. On one side stands Lyra and on the other stands her brother Corvus Kingsway, also known as Ravencross. At this point, if you knew nothing else, you would have a game of courtly intrigue in the style of Amber of A Song of Ice and Fire. But there's a lot more.
For one thing, you're dead. Well, you're not exactly dead but your existence in this wonderful world is anchored in a small glowing orb about the size of a baseball. You and those like you, called Angelions, have had their essences distilled into those glowing orbs. The bad news is that...well...you're a glowing orb of soul energy. The good news is that your essence is then free to travel nearly anywhere and inhabit a certain number of "shells" called, oddly enough, "bodies".
As an aside, that struck me as humorous. In a game where the broad skills are called "masteries" and weaknesses are given categories such as "Burning Love" and "Haunting Fear", where an Angelion deprived of bodies must either hibernate (a thing called "dreamless sleep") or wander bodiless bereft of sensory input (something called "the silent wail"), simply calling your many shells "bodies" seemed incredibly incongruous. This is not a knock on Kakos, but it did make me laugh. Surely he could come up with one more evocative noun...just one! Okay...back to the backstory.
An Angelion can, and should, have several bodies which can either be human, animal, or one of many strange magical or old-tech creatures. These bodies are how the Angelion interacts with everyone else, including other Angelions and each Angelion can potentially control up to five bodies at the same time. So now, not only do you have a fantasy/sci-fi/horror game, but you also have a troupe game! Kakos has really laid on the layers of complexity for those who want to turn the gaming dial up to 11.
Now, you need not play Angelions. There is ample room in LSoe for you to play a simple mortal, a heroic mortal, or an Awakened human (one who knows about the Angelions, at least enough to know that there are forces beyond most folks' reckoning in play). In fact, there are some pretty good story reasons you might want to do so. Angelions are not the nicest people, historically. They play grand games of intrigue and squabble worse than pigeons after a single crust of bread. They tend to be decadent and treat the lesser forms of like, like mortals, as possions or pawns. They can dabble in the stuff of life itself (in the form of Angelion creations called Fellkin). They could make an excellent foe against which to crusade. The world of LSoE is ripe for a game of mortal uprising where you get to play the peasants and finally do away with the decadent Marie Antoinettes in their elaborate castle keeps.
I mentioned the element of horror earlier. There is plenty of horror to be had - both of the personal kind and the overt "scary things stalking you" kind. The court intrigue can be dialed to as high a level of suspense as you desire. Couple that with the grand Weaknesses each Angelion possesses and add the knowledge that, for all their power, they can be killed by a peasant with a hammer, and you have plenty of room to build tales of Angelions sliding into the abyss of personal destruction. If overt horror is more to your liking, there are always the Rogue Golems (mechanical creatures who have, over the centuries, achieved a twisted sentience), Archfiends (bioengineered creatures of war and destruction), and the Big Bad Himself, Ravencross (and his evil minions). Oh, and you can play Rogue Golems and Archfiends as PCs, if you wish. So you can actually experience the horror, or you can play the instrument of horror yourself, if you so choose.
Perhaps the most appealing horror element may come if you play a mortal, crusading against the depredations of the Angelions and their servants. See, Angelions can control many bodies but you, as a mortal PC, don't have a ready way to tell which person you meet might really be an Angelion body. The possibilities for truly scary and suspenseful stories are nearly infinite.
The ability to tell many types of stories with LSoE is the game's biggest strength, without a doubt. Unfortunately, that strength does come with a bit of a cost. That cost is a somewhat complex rule set and a very detailed character generation process.
"I'm Rolling What, Now...?"
The basic task resolution system in LSoE seems simple enough: take an attribute, add it to a skill (called a Mastery), apply any modifiers, and then roll dice. Easy-peasy, yes?
No. Here's the twist. That number you get after you've done your basic addition is called a Proficiency Level and it determines not only how many dice you will roll to beat the GM-set Goal Number but also what kind of dice you may roll.
If you're a bit knocked back by that, let me explain. LSoE uses three types of dice: d6, d10, and d20. Your Proficiency Level gives you a choice about what type of dice you may choose to roll and how many. For instance:
I am playing Leonus, an Angelion who has run afoul of a horrible beast. I want to kill the beast, so I pull my dagger and slash at it. I need to add my Finesse attribute and my War mastery together. Let's say that gives me a total of 8. I now consult the table to see my options. A Proficiency Level of 8 means I can either roll 8d6 or 3d10. If I had a Proficiency Level of 11, I could have three options: 11d6, 6d10, or 1d20!
Each die choice is called a "packet" and, at times, which packet you roll can be very important. In this game, only the number on the highest die counts and beating your Goal Number by more than 3 gives you extra dimensions to your successes.
The added complicator is the Spill. Every time you roll the highest value you can on a die, you get to roll one die of the next highest value (getting a 6 on a d6 means you get to roll a d10). So, it's possible, with Spills, to beat a Goal Number of 8, even if your'e only rolling d6s. Spills are also your most likely means of getting those extra effects to your successes.
What does all that mean? Well, it means that your die-rolling now has some strategic value as well. Do you opt for the greter potential of success or do you play it safe and roll the packet that's most likely to give you the number you want. Do you roll, hoping for spills, or do you play the conservative odds? It's potentially a very neat mechanic, but it can also bog down the game as players have to add another decision to the several decisions they're already having to make at the moment of a die roll. For a group of characters comfortable with the likely outcomes already, this may not be a problem. I imagine it will consume more time than some would like the first several times they play LSoE. Like any more complex rule, it provides more options but also can threaten the flow of the game.
So what about characters? I have to say that character building is not an easy nor quick process. You start by choosing a character type, which is both a template and a building guide in one. From there, you flesh out the PC by choosing your Mental, Cardinal Nature (your essential self - what motivates your actions), Weaknesses, Masteries, Physical Body (or Bodies, if you're an Angelion), Wealth and Possessions, Starting Traits, and anythign else you need to round things out (description, etc).
Character Generation is a point-buy system, so there's room for great variety in each Character Type. It also makes the process a bit more complicated because there are a lot of potential choices, especially when it comes to building Angelion Bodies. There are a few basic templates you can use either as-is or as something to modify to your liking, but if you go the Build It Yourself route with Bodies, be prepared to spend some time at it.
The Denouement
Lesser Shades of Evil is a big, big game in which a character can bestride the world like a colossus, or explore the meaning of his own existence with equal comfort. Though not touted as a horror game, the essential elements of good horror are here in abundance. Players who like evocative game worlds will absolutely love LSoE, as will those who love bigger, crunchier rulesets. There is something for everyone to like here, though I think it will take an uncommon individual to like it all.
I am not in love with the multiple dice packet choice (called the Ascent System). I think it adds a level of complexity that does give as much benefit as it might seem. Kakos is a dramatic writer whose turn of phrase serves him very well in the background and flavor text parts of the book That style of writing gets in the way, though, when it comes to rules. The crunchy parts of the game would have benefitted greatly from simpler terms (instead of Masteries, simply call them Skills or something similar instead of giving us a new word to learn) and some steamlining. Even then, though, it probably would be more complex than I prefer. others, however, will find it suits them just fine.
At nearly 50 dollars, it may be a bit too pricey to pick up just to have the background, but perhaps not. You can get a taste of the game for yourself on the Eos Press website.
In the end, Pierre Kakos can rest assured that his travails have borne a game that will find enthusiastic fans and more than a few people who will end up ditching the rules and loving the game world. A game author could do a whole lot worse.
