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The Good: The magic system is well done, with a lot of attention paid to what beings can accomplish what goals. The occasional bits of setting information are interesting and practical, with an attitude that even though this world has magic things have turned out generally the same as our world.
The Bad: Mutants are simply an odd thing to include in the setting, as fire blasts and other super powers serve as an odd contrast to binding spirits and gaining their strength. Considering that the book almost exclusively focuses on magic and magical practitioners, the inclusion of mutants with super powers seems especially odd but can be easily ignored by those who don't care for it.
The Physical Thing
At $24.99 this 156 page black and white softcover showcases similar production values as Arc Dream's other works. CG-style artwork does a good job of illustrating the ideas and entities presented here, and while I'd like to have better images of all the spirits I find what's here to be acceptable for the price point. The editing and formatting are both well done, in terms of both grammatical considerations and matters of flow and wording.Under the Cover
Grim War posits a setting where magic is real and where some people are born with the innate gift of super abilities, but where history has largely remained the same up to the modern day. Super abilities are very direct in nature, with energy blasts and super strength being perfectly normal abilities, but without any access to telepathy, mental powers, and abstract powers. Those are solely the domain of magic, which seeks to manipulate spirits to bargain for their intervention in the world. Together these two character types cover all of the potential super powers a group might need, though the way they go about using these powers is very different. Spellcasters require setup time to bargain for anything they intend to use on the spot. They have more versatility, depending on the number of spirits known, but when there's no time to plan they're no more powerful than a normal person. Mutants always have access to their super powers, but their super powers are their super powers. They can only be as creative as super speed or plasma bursts will allow.The vast majority of the product focuses in on the magic users and how they go about summoning aid. Several new Skills are introduced specifically for these characters: Conjure (demon summoning), Invocation (archon summoning), Spellcraft (theoretical magical knowledge), and Spiritwise (streetwise for spirits). While I'm not as keen on the split between Spellcraft and Spiritwise in the setting, especially since spellcraft inherently focuses around spirits, I do like the idea of the way characters go about bargaining with demons and archons being so incredibly different that two skills exist. Demons exist to destroy a concept while archons exist to support a concept. This doesn't make one good or evil necessarily, as the book points out with various examples of archons of horrible concepts and demons of equally bad things. It does play into the general feel of the entity, and this is reflected in the many demons and archons presented throughout the book.
A simple system for spirital combat is included which does a great job of illustrating the importance of the spirit world and the role of sorcerers in the setting. Being able to engage a spirit on its own terms and banish from the area (or bind it for your own use) or exercise it from a person's body is enormously useful in a setting where these entities actively work to support or destroy their patron concepts. While Ghostbusters does come to mind, I think Grim War is better suited to subtle maneuvering between organizations. Banishing a useful opposing spirit while encroaching on one of their operations could be a big deal, and a cloak-and-dagger feel could easily be accomplished within this setting.
Archons, demons, and ghosts occupy about twenty three pages of the text, which serves both as a sort of grimoire for spellcasters and a bestiary of foes for the GM. The entities occupy a nice mix of concepts, and several stood out to me as being particularly fun to center a character around. What's more, support for creating spells based off these entities is also provided with detailed examples. This removes any initial confusion as to how exactly a game makes use of second circle demons and instead shows the players directly. Considering that Grim War takes a step away from a more traditional Wild Talents game in its use of sorcery, this is an excellent way to clearly spell out what play is meant to be like.
A variety of different organizations, secretive and otherwise, are also detailed here and there's a clear desire to have the PCs involved in at least one of them. In a world of sorcery and super powers these ideological power brokers are constantly fighting against one another for subtle control over their areas of influence. This battle has excellent synergy with how demons and archons already behave, and in this reviewer's opinion a campaign focused on the subtle machinations between these groups could be enormous fun given the already existing emphasis on careful planning and tool use native to the sorcery system.
My Take
Grim War does a great job of taking the very flexible Wild Talents 2nd system and limiting it to tell darkly shaded stories of modern day adventure. While I do think the existing organizations could be expanded upon, the framework here is solid especially in that it provides a group with plenty of suggestions and then gets out of the way to let them do their own thing. I do wish there was additional setting discussion, as the majority of the book is consumed by mechanical additions, but then again the whole point of the book is to present a world just like ours with only slight changes to add a bit more wonder. On the whole I recommend Grim War to those who want a dark modern campaign driven by Wild Talents where the PCs are exceptional but far from super powers.Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.
