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The setting is not quite true to history. There have been some key events that have changed progress of society, enabling Witch Hunter to become the game the designers wanted. I guess its a similar approach to the one we took with Etherscope, just less dramatic. The world is little different from a historical one in its overall feel, but there have been a number of key changes to the politics and society, such as an early beginning to womens equality movements and some differences to colonial expansion (the Aztecs kicked Cortez out, for example). This is one aspect that has come under fire from some, but it is not something that I have a problem with. It's not a period of history I'm overly familiar with, but from my experience of writing Etherscope, I appreciate the skill that goes into this kind of alternative history and understand that I have to accept that it might not be precisely what I'd read up on Wikipedia. Overall I think the designers did a good job on the alternative history as it both creates the right theme for the game, but also (and IMO most importantly) a playable setting.
The setting also has plenty of variety of nasty for your witch hunter to hunt down, and they're all nasty beasts that deserve slaughtering. Practically every creature from myth or legend is potentially there for you to face, particularly if you also buy the expansion. There's even a very nice "threat" creation system that lets you put your own imagination to work. There's an entire secret history about the witch hunter's fight against the forces fo Satan, dating back to Solomon. I can't go into too much depth here because I'm playing rather than GMing, so its nice with a new game to limit my personal knowledge to what my character knows (an as he's an intellectual potato, that's not much).
The system, at first, seems a real shocker - not bad, just stolen from a other games, especially WoD. However, on a more indepth analysis the system has really grown on me and I now have a lot of time for it. I might even use it for a game of my own at some point. What at first seems to be an obvious hijack of the storyteller system is actually a blend of said system with elements from 7th sea, D20 and more. And I think they've picked the best bits from each system and blended them nicely into an overall whole that makes sense as a system. It certainly doesn't feel patched together, and there's enough difference from storyteller or any other system for it to not feel too grating to play. There are also some pretty unique aspects to the system too. A system for Damnation and True Faith, with sins that can be activated by the GM at crucial points (my character almost shot a bunch of drunk indian teeenagers for calling him a child murderer in one such instance) is a really nice addition, and is different from anything else out there and really captures both the morality issues of the setting and makes for a highly themed personality mechanic.Perhaps the best thing about teh system is the amount of distance there is for characer development. I've got my next 20 or so session's worth of XP preplanned. I think this is really quite incredible for a 1-5 scale point-buy system. I've known games of Trinity where once I've bought up my three psychic powers I've got nothing left do do with my XP, and when I've tried to use storyteller for mundane characters once I've got my 3 or 4 key skills up to 5 ranks I'm stuck. Witch Hunter has plenty of character development distance in it, with most characters only having 1 or 2 ranks in most skills when they start and plenty of room for improvement with their feats (they are feats, no matter what they're actually called), even a mundane huntsman like my character has plenty to do with their XP. There are also some fairly solid character archetypes which give the advantage of class-based systems, yet retain much of the freedom of point-buy - again not entirely original, but nicely applied for how this game works.
But perhaps the thing I like most about it, as a player, is how well supported the game is with pretty decent pre-written adventures. The Dark Providence living campaign also releases its adventures for free download shortly after they've been used at conventions, so when you have a lazy GM (sorry Rich ;) ) there's plenty of material to keep the game running for a long time. Not all these adventures are perfect, but many of the ones we've done so far have had us guessing, and some have even had some really surprising outcomes.
Overall its a good game. Not without its faults, but quite nicely playable and certainly very nicely flavoured! I think the biggest thing I can say to recommend it is that we've played it for a while now and I'm still hungry for more. I tend to be quite fickle when it comes to roleplaying games, prefering a finger-buffet approach of running and playing different games every 4-6 sessions. With Witch Hunter I want to keep playing it, I want to run it myself, and feel I could do so for a long time.
[Review first appeared at: webjam.com/the_black_orifice]
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