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In Short

The Good: There’s a good deal of raw content here, and this game works especially well as a pickup game since it takes little work to learn rules or dig through the special items. The system will be conceptually familiar to many readers.

The Bad: No innovation. Not much suggestion on what to do with the game other than “fight demons.” For newcomers the text fails to really explain roleplaying, and for those familiar with RPGs the attempt is just wasted space. Since this is just rules, and nothing more than a very vaguely implied setting, many RPGs can already easily do what The Arsenal of Heaven sets out to do.

The Physical Thing

Under the Cover

Before I delve into the rules I want to talk about a few other aspects of the product. The first is the scope. The author suggests that Arsenal works just as well for an anime style game as it does for a more realistic game. I don’t think the mechanics and tone of the game really support that assertion, however. Arsenal seems pretty focused on delivering something between realistic but kick butt people and action heroes, which is a ways away from the sorts of feats and abilities seen in many anime.

Second, the author seems a little unsure on whether this is meant to be a book for newcomers to RPGs or not. Some very vanilla advice on running a game, and some very generic recommended sources of inspiration (e.g. Lord of the Rings soundtrack) fill up the last 10% of the book. I wish the author had stuck with the focus of the rest of the book, which is a barebones system for getting a specific type of new game off the ground.

With that out of the way, let’s delve into the system! The core resolution mechanic is a d6 dice pool of about five dice composed from a character’s Attribute + Skill, and each die that turns up a 4, 5, or 6 is a success. Four attributes are used – Brawn, Agility, Brains, Will – and Skills are player created. The game also makes use of Destiny Points (scene editing, rerolls, etc.), a player defined Virtue or Flaw (give bonus dice), and a few other mechanics (e.g. Initiative score).

Here’s an example starting character I built.

Example: Zack Miller grew up poor and tried to save money by buying clothes second hand. Little did he know that his life would change when he bought a slightly used pair of sneakers that turned out to be filled with wondrous power! Now he can soar through the sky, run extremely fast, and talk his way out of any trouble Attributes: Brawn 2, Agility 4, Brains 3, Will 1. Skills: Occupation(Teenager) 1, Thief 2, Fast Talk 3, Athletics 1. Goal: To have fun! Initiative: 3. Physical Resistance: 2. Mental Resistance: 1. Destiny: 1. Item: The Sandals of Hermes

If the example character above wanted to fast talk someone he would roll Will + Fast Talk for 4 dice. If the results were 1, 3, 4, 5 then he would score two successes. Difficulty is increased or decreased by adding or taking away dice, while number of successes determines how well a person performed. So, if it were a particular difficult person to fast talk two dice might have been removed for a total pool of just two dice.

Combat is also easy to handle. Players roll 1d6 + Initiative to determine when they act every round. If the total is over 10 they get two actions, if it’s below 1 they get zero actions. Since Initiative is based off Agility and Weapon Skill it adds even more importance to having these states at relatively high numbers. This isn’t a system where characters not focused on combat are likely to hold their own in battle.

Attack and Defence are simple opposed rolls, with extra Attack successes adding to the damage dealt by the weapon used. Health is represented in simple health levels with increasing penalties as the character grows more injured. Easy to explain, easy to run. The only downside is that any combat maneuvers beyond bare description will require some GM improvisation.

What fun is combat without some cool weapons and objects to bring into the fight? Arsenal brings in twenty pages of weapons, cauldrons, sandals, and all sorts of other enchanted items. Simple guidelines are provided for creating your own, but the research and attention to detail that went into preparing these weapons is very good. All items have a variety of stats that can be used any time the character is touching or in very close proximity to the item.

All items have a Goal and a Motivation (Good, Evil, Law, Chaos) and by acting in accordance with these the player and item become charged up such that the item functions even better. Many items provide simple Attribute and Skill bonuses, but a variety of unique powers are also present.

Example: The Sandals of Hermes Owner: Hermes. Alignment: Chaos. Goal: Play Tricks. Aura: Eloquence (bonus to persuasion). Speed: 60-140 mph running, increased Initiative. Flight. Boost Agility.

Consider the Sandals above. First, note that all of these items can manifest as modern day objects that are similar. So the sandals could easily be shoes, a cauldron could be a cooking pot, and a magic horse could be a motorcycle. The abilities that are particularly powerful, such as Flight, require the expenditure of Boons. These are a sort of item specific currency earned for acting in accordance with the item’s goals. So if my example character above is delivering messages or playing tricks on the enemy then I’ll be regularly earning boons to fuel my powers. The more mundane abilities, like Eloquence, may be on all the time.

A variety of different, specific powers exist in order to make objects as varied as Excalibur, The Skin of the Nemean Lion, and Hugin and Munin all unique and worthwhile. One of the more common abilities, though, is the ability to perform magic. Magic is handled just as any other Skill and is really left up to the GM to define beyond that.

Finally, demons serve as the main antagonist in Arsenal. A simple four page system for creating demons along with three pages of example demons should be plenty for a GM to quickly devise a few antagonists to throw into a game.

My Take

Ultimately, though, I think Arsenal’s biggest problem is that there are already a lot of game systems that can easily do what it’s striving to do. Some offer more rules, some more customization, but given how setting and system light Arsenal is it just doesn’t bring much to the table that any generic game can’t do except for the preexisting weapon write-ups. Nevertheless, if you want a simple and complete game that’s easy to run at a moment’s notice then you could do a lot worse than Arsenal.

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