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A brief PM conversation with Clash ensued, resulting in him sending me a complimentary copy of the book, and me promising a review. And here it is!
I obviously have an interest in RPG’s set in this time period, as I currently publish the Maelstrom RPG, set in Tudor England. My first comment is that OHMAS is a very different beast indeed.
The book itself is 234 pages long, and has plenty of colour art in, a mixture of original portraits and photoshopped art. There are also several full colour maps, which are also very nice. The bulk of the text is in a standard text and in a single column, with a very wide sidebar used for section titles. This does squash the text column into just over half of the page, and to my mind, gives the layout an unbalanced look. Aside from fancy fonts for chapter titles and two-tone tables, there is very little in the way of layout. Now don’t get me wrong, I like a nice clean, simple layout in my games, but this seems a bit…..unfinished I suppose. I know that this will not be news to the author, who has admitted as much in forum posts!
So if the layout is a bit disappointing, what about the content? I will break the review down into various sections:
Associations Characters Ruleset Magic Setting
As I said above, this game is very different from Maelstrom, a broadly historical game with a dash of the supernatural. OHMAS, set in England in the reign of Elizabeth the First, has the characters as Magical Agents of the Queen, defending the realm and people from supernatural threats. The game themes will be more apparent in the sections below…
Associations
The Agent characters all belong to, and work for, an Association. There are tables to randomly generate the available capital and type of association (Government, Church, Society, Private etc). Once these are determined, the party needs to purchase resources with the available capital, and extensive shopping lists of Property (could even include Gypsy Wagons , Warship or pocket dimension!), Guards, Agents, Transport, Apprentices, Arcane Library and lots more. Although the individual “items” on the lists are sparsely described, and this section is mainly tables, I think that having all of the characters bound in this way with defined resources would help party cohesion, especially important in this style of game.
Characters
Character generation uses a lifepath system. This involves first deciding on a character concept, and then choosing Mothers Milk skills, an Apprenticeship, a time as a Journeyman, and then a Profession. Characters may, if they wish, also choose a path, which imparts supernatural abilities.
There are various Stat generation options available, and a points-buy table for Intelligence, Magic and Lifestyle. As for the Lifepath part, this will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played a game like Traveller, with pre-requisites, imparted skills and promotions. There are 9 Apprentice templates, 20 Journeyman templates and 46 Professions. It is easy to see how this will create very individual characters, as well as flesh out background and personality. Characters may also choose a Path. There are 7 Paths, such as Hunter, Templar, Magus etc to choose from, and each provides bonuses to characteristics as well as special abilities. These special abilities could be spells, summoning, healing etc. It is fairly obvious that a character who is following a Path is much more powerful than one who has not, but then I suppose that the game is about these Path characters.
There are also 3 non-human character options. These seem to me to be fairly powerful, but also very intriguing. The options are Half-Angel, Immortals, and Changelings. These add bonus powers and statistics as well as some limitations, the most Important one being that they cannot be Path characters.
The character creation section provides a huge number of options, and I can already see some really interesting characters emerging from the text. The downside is that the process is only sketchily described and there is no real discussion about the implications of Paths and Options. I imagine that once the game has been played a few times, this process would be a lot clearer.
Ruleset
OHMAS uses the Starpool dice mechanic, also seen in the StarCluster RPG. This is a dice pool system using D20’s, using an attribute as a Target Number. There is a short chapter describing the dice mechanic, and I won’t go into any more detail here.
There is a 4 ½ page list of appropriate skills (all of the usual ones plus a few magical skills). Players can also choose descriptive Traits that add to appropriate skill tests. Thus a character who has the Argumentative Trait may well receive a bonus when bartering. This is also a nice idea, but is fairly briefly described.
This section all seems fairly standard RPG stuff.
Magic
All Magic uses MAG (Magic) points, which are burned to power effects. There are a range of effects, and 60 named spells, although there are no further descriptions. Admittedly most of the spell titles give a fair idea, but a Grimoire expansion would be a great idea.
Setting
For those not familiar with Elizabethan England, there is an impressive guide to the counties, and also a good summary of government and important personages. There is fairly limited information on day-to-day life, but this can of course be found with a little outside research. It might have been good to have a bibliography with some suggested reading.
Other Bits
There is also an adventure generator, with various random tables to create the basics of a mystery. A fairly comprehensive bestiary is included, with appropriate supernatural creatures. There is also a reasonably concise selection of equipment, as the game uses a generalised wealth system rather than an accurate accounting system.
Summary
OHMAS is a very interesting game. The layout and presentation is decent, but looks unfinished, but the core idea is very novel. Not exactly Fantasy, but also not Historical, this is a good, well written game with huge potential.
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