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I was the first person in my area to complain when the first D20 version Player's Handbook was released with only a handful of enchanted items and I had to wait a month to see the rest in the Dungeon Master's Guide and wait even longer until my favorite Artifacts were re-designed for future releases. I memorized the locations of the fetishes in my oWoD Werewolf sourcebooks and luxuriated in Talisman creation in all the versions of Mage. One of my favorite parts of Scion: Hero was the integral tie of Relics to divine powers. In short, I like magic items!
WOD: Reliquary begins with a series of superb essays and I was very happy to see writers given credit for the individual work. I can see each of their very individualistic writing styles very clearly defined. In many ways, this book is a great team effort and White Wolf really seems to have picked just the right folks to make WOD: Reliquary shine.
The first gem was a awesome list entitled “50 Details Implying a Relic's History”. Almost every item is pure gold to a Storyteller that wants to add a cool gizmo without being quite sure of what type of materials to use in its design. The write-ups include a ton of little details that capture all the senses. The author of this section, Jess Hartley, did a complete job in helping players visualize the goodies in their mind's eye.
Wood Ingham has two very good essays. One discusses the how very important it is to introduce relics in the proper setting. He does a quite excellent job of detailing how the ethic origins of a device are often a good clue as to where they are to be found and Ingham talks about everything from the storage of your plot devices in museums to collecting dust in private collections. The companion essay about how the law affects Treasure Hunters, who can very easily be lumped into the same category as professional thieves, grave robbers and common burglars. The two essays most certainly play off each other well and Ingham's attention to detail shows very intensely here. His writing style is crisp, informative and entertaining.
Matthew McFarland does an essay that should be required reading for anyone wanting to run a research-oriented treasure hunt. McFarland brings this sort of topic to life with some fresh new perspectives. The piece is very useful for a budding investigative campaign where brains can be more important than brawn, and therefore fits very well in WOD: Reliquary.
Justin Achilli did a nice section about the different styles possible in a variety of archeology or treasure hunting campaigns. His work very elegantly serves to use and expand upon the insight gained in the companion essays and demonstrates very well that this is a valid World of Darkness chronicle template. Achilli shows the reader just how the procurement of Relics can spice up any campaign or serve as a juicy side-trek for industrious characters.
About 50 Relics follow, each very detailed with a several page descriptions. Each Relic seems ready to drop right into existing campaigns with very little effort, having enough meat to satisfy players wanting a history and detail for their magical artifacts. Everything from a Hanjo Masamune katana to a copy of Shakespeare's Lost Play is shining here amongst the mystical goodies. The detailed Relics are good for more than just combat or providing bonuses, each can be a coveted and prized part of any character concept.
For a ST wanting to customize Relics for their own campaign or to design them whole-cloth, WOD: Reliquary provides a fairly robust workshop. The listed guidelines give plenty of options for creating everything from Swords of Destiny to magic carpets. I look forward to seeing a lot of forum fan activity in making new gizmos from the standards set forth in this book. Everything from the artifacts of Sci-Fi’s Lost Room to Supernatural’s Winchester is now possible with the relic creation rules. Readers can have fun designing something new to shock and excite both players and Storytellers alike. The series of new relic-creating and metal merits detailed here are guaranteed to lead to good times for alchemists, mad scientists and Cthulhu-esque investigators. The included series of pre-designed scenes for introducing relics into a game was not as interesting as the rest of the book, but it could come in handy for frantic and time-constrained STs.
The artwork was fresh and vivid, miles beyond the level I thought would appear in the book. It fit well with the accompanying text and flawlessly merged with the style of t distracting from the content and I hope all future White Wolf releases are equal to the level of art direction in this book.
WOD: Reliquary serves as very cool touchstone book for any WoD ST and I wholeheartedly recommend it for use with Werewolf and Vampire as well. It goes a long way toward showing that one does not need a Mage level Talisman standardized Werewolf fetish to provide players with interesting new tools and wondrous creations. This type of product is exactly why I keep returning to Storyteller games, year after year. Buy it when you can and it should not disappoint!
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