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The scope of Dark Hersey may be intimidating to some. In a universe of adventure, there’s a lot of potential to get caught up on filling out all the details. For some players, the details the GM puts into it aren’t as important as the ever vital player oriented question of, “What do I get to shoot?” To answer this eternal question, many game systems use a tome of monstrous adversaries.
These tomes often serve multiple functions. At their core, they provide a shooting gallery for the players to pit themselves against. The better ones, like Creatures Anathema, provide numerous glimpses into the setting. They provide another look into the standards that may not have shown through in previous volumes. They reveal long held bits that may be familiar to fans of the setting that came to the role playing game through different avenues and want to see how their favorites wind up here.
Part of this is providing a visual cue for your players. In those terms, like with previous books, Fantasy Flight Games comes through with the goods. Boasting some of the best art and layout in the RPG business, Creatures Anathema provides numerous full color illustrations. The full page pieces are perfect for pulling the book out and telling the players, “You see this.” While some would argue that RPGs are a thing of the imagination and that they’d prefer less glossy books with less or no illustrations, I’ve always found the opposite, that great illustrations help spur the imagination.
Creatures Anathema is broken up into seven chapters that provide ideas on how to use the concepts within and then specific entities. I’m not going to cover each and every creature. There are over fifty of them. Suffice it to say that you’ll be dealing with creatures whose mere presence entitles their home to the ominous title of death worlds, fighting against mad science, hunting down Xenos, fighting against the forces of Chaos and even hunting down those vermin that inhabit Hiveworlds. Sometimes these are unique individuals, other times an all purpose entry. When looking at chaos, not only do you get entities like the Astral Spectre, and Flesh Hounds of Khorne, you get a specific enemy, the Burning One. The Holy Ordo Malleus use Daemonhosts but sometimes, these people who’ve been bound with a daemon of the warp, escape. The Burning One is such an individual.
When looking at Chapter V, Xenos, there is a brief discussion on why you’d want to use Xenos in the campaign. In addition though, it provides not just the player’s view, that the Xenos are there to be exterminated, but that sometimes they cannot simply just be brushed away. That sometimes they have their own stories. That a good GM can bring those stories into the campaign and make the game more then simply shooting up the bad guys.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that mind you. In this case, the advanced culture of the Eldar shares space with Orks and even more impressively, Genestealers and Lictors. Yeah, those are the good old Tyranids there. Can you say, “Space Hulk”? The only bad thing about this is that they don’t go into a lot of detail in terms of the hybrid’s that are created through the Genestealer’s Kiss. These hybrid’s make for perfect infiltration units and are a potential gold mine of gaming goodness.
In addition to providing the stats and background for elder and orks, there’s information on the technology they use. After all, what’s the point of killing things if you can’t take their stuff. Now on one hand, Chapter II, Forbidden Science kind of hints around that. But what’s the fun of having all of these fun toys if you can’t use them. Sure, the Tech adept renegade may be a little mad. Sure, you need to fight off the half-man, half-machine obliviatges, sure, you need to beware of the vore-weapons… but who doesn’t want to use the weapons of the enemy, especially if they might… just mind (and don’t let the Inquisitors hear you) be better than your own? Such a concept isn’t unique to Warhammer 40K, a few others use it, but rarely it is used so well.
For Game Masters that are fine and dandy making up their own encounters and don’t need help with the crunch, the book provides plenty of other tools. There are numerous GM side bars throughout the book to help generate ideas and adventure seeds. There are numerous hand outs and notes from Inquisitor Felroth Gelt. The last chapter, Adversaries, is advice on using bad guys in the campaign and ends with some optional rules that help you beef up the run of the mill bad guys.
The only thing wrong with Creatures Anathema is that it’s too short. While a larger book may have meant a higher price, there is so much material that could’ve been added, that this one feels a little light. For example, the Genestealers and Tyranids in general could use a much larger section. The Eldar section, while having Dire Avengers, Rangers, and equipment, could’ve been expanded well out. Still, this isn’t the bestiary of 40K, it’s the bestiary of the Calixis Sector. Perhaps future transmissions will help fill those roles.
Between this and Disciples of the Dark Gods, GMs have campaign advice and enemies aplenty to throw at their players. For those who want to go deeper, who want their players to have moral struggles with wiping out the Xenos, with using alien technology, with fighting against their own people suffering form mutation, Creatures Anathema can make those combats mean more than merely blood and bone.
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