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First things first: The Magic Box isn't actually a box. But then it's named after a shop, which is a box on a technical level but not what I think of when I think "Box". Nor does it actually contain magic. No bunnies leapt out when it was opened. Instead it's a book, and about magic. The back cover blurb and links to other goodies (which I've spread throughout the review where appropriate) are available here.
The physical details: It's softcover (unlike previous rulebooks) and full colour (although the paper isn't shiny). It's 128 pages crammed with good stuff.
Alyson Hannigan as Willow is the character given pride of place on the cover, instead of Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy, as befits Willow's potentially world-destroying UberWitch status in later seasons of the show. The picture is of Normal Good Willow rather than World-Destroying Mad Willow, however, showing off her endearing smile rather than her alarming glare.
If you think I'm talking about Alyson Hannigan a lot, I'm justified. There are a lot of pictures of Willow in here.
Plus, y'know, she's really cute and all.
Fun fact: Alyson Hannigan will be namechecked twelve times in this review, including here.
Er... moving right along, we come to the part of the review we call The Breakdown Of Chapters, in which I describe what's in the book, chapter by chapter, to give you a feel for the subject matter and focus of the book, and to prove that I did get past that picture of Alyson Hannigan on the cover.
The Breakdown of Chapters
"And in ancient times, there were magics beyond our imagining within... do you have to eat crackers when I'm mythologising?"
Chapter One: the Witchy World (pages 4-25) begins with a picture of Alyson Hannigan as Willow, following two pictures of Alyson Hannigan as Willow on the frontispiece and credits page, and none on the contents. It also introduces the book, discusses some theories for the role of magic in the Buffyverse, and moves on to discuss Magical Organizations. These orders of magic-using characters, suitable for PCs to join or fight - or both - as appropriate, range from the straight from the series to the totally brand new. By the way, the brand new example screams Adventure Hook! louder than an old man coming into a tavern full of first-level fighters and rogues.
The chapter ends with a selection of magic-heavy Big Bads and Monsters of the Week, including World-Destroying Willow (Alyson Hannigan in a rather fetching all-black ensemble including a really nice jacket, with matching hair and eyes), unpopular Season Six villain Warren and, looking slightly underpowered in this company, that big green and brown guy that cloned Xander with a misfired magic wand.
"Oh good. You've become more powerful. This is not worrying at all..."
Chapter Two: The Magical You (pages 26-47) adds options for players to create and improve mystically-oriented characters. New Qualities, Drawbacks, background ideas and things like that. It's all good stuff, as good stuff goes, although there are the inevitable quibbles. Invisible being an expensive 10-point Quality when you can't turn it off seems a tad steep (all the powers of a Vampire Slayer only cost 16) and Demon-Trained being just a cheap 2-point Drawback doesn't reflect how many adventure hooks evil-minded Directors can draw from it. Thus, players should take it as a matter of course...
As regards the new archetypes, the Young Mystic, Young Inventor, AWOL Invisible Spy and Demon-Trained Witch all look balanced and interesting, although I'm doubtful about the mileage of a permanently invisible character and only the Demon-Trained Witch really comes trailing those evil plot hooks I mentioned above.
New and improved character sheets for Willow (again!), Tara, the magic-boosted Giles and Amy round out this chapter. Warning: big 1.9MB .pdf on Amy. Anyway, they're all very nice in a character sheets kind of way. Nothing leaps out as hideously wrong. Nice choice of photos.
"Sure I can do that. I'd EXPLODE, but I can do that. Any other options?"
Chapter Three: The Art Of The Arts (pages 48-63) is the rules and stuff chapter. "New rules, expanded rules, even some suggestions" as the intro puts it, next to the picture of Alyson Hannigan as Willow, this time doing something magical. It does indeed include rule and suggestions on a variety of topics. Group casting, magic addiction, boosting power by taking it from other sources, magical misfires and the creation of new spells.
Mr. Snead duly gives a "Canon Alert" for one suggestion of why bad spells bring trouble and good spells don't, and it's a pretty solid suggestion: that since magic may tap into extradimensional energy, the type and purpose of the magic determines which kind of dimension you tap into, and this sets up connections. Oddly enough it's rather like Resonance in Mage: The Ascension, which would also work as an explanation - that the magic itself just marks those who use it, and those using power for evil start to accumulate evil like pollution. Anyway, it works.
The "When Spells Go Wrong" section is another strong point in favour of Buffy as a dramatic game. It starts with "First off, how important was the spell to the plot?" There are options for emergency additions to flunked rolls (Willow's headaches and nosebleeds after a big spell may be the result of taking damage to boost a spell that would otherwise fail) and plenty of possibilities for the spell going "Yes, but..." if it's vital to the plot.
"So I do this, and shake this rattle, and then... oh. RUN!"
Chapter Four: Magics, Light And Dark (pages 64-87) is Your Basic Spellbook. Sixty-five spells taken from the first six seasons of the show (which they point out isn't all of them) and six new ones. If that seems like an imbalance, in all fairness the series selection includes such time-honoured classics as Teleportation, Glamour, Warding, Mental Communication, banishing illusions, finding monsters and making things go boom. It also includes details on Summoning, a selection of enchanted items (including a glaring misprint for the episode in which the Glove of Myhnegon appears) and a funny writeup for a spell to destroy the world.
"We wants it, my precious... Oh come on, you were all thinking it too!"
Chapter Five: Beyond Magic (pages 88-97) makes one wonder "isn't magic a pretty Beyond thing itself?" but anyway, it's about Superscience and Psychic Power, which are both paranormal rather than actually magical. That said, Superscience is rationalised here as a form of magic, which seems like an unnecessary rationalisation to me. After all, can't weird horror-movie science just be weird horror-movie science? It could certainly do with a Canon Alert warning, especially as the main examples are the Troika from Season Six, who know full well that they're using magic, just in a pseudoscientific way...
It also covers rules for creating enchanted items, which seem kind of "within magic" to me, but since the main creators of weird power objects were Superscientists, it slots in here.
"This is the monster? Maybe we should throw it back..."
Chapter Six: Orphan Trouble (pages 98-113) is a sample adventure which is fairly heavy on the magic.
Warning: SPOILERS. You now have five paragraphs to reach minimum safe distance.
Buuut it's not really as magic-aimed as "All A-buzz" from the Directors Screen, where a spell could be made largely essential, and entertainingly dangerous with it. Here it's really all about NPCs using magic, and one of the PCs casting one spell could be fairly handy towards the climax. There is a possible plot hook for a magic-wielding Cast Member who has so far kept her magic a secret from her parents, but really a character could be keeping anything odd secret (like being part of a group of school-age monster hunters, to pick a f'rinstance purely at random) and it would work just as well.
For those keeping track, it's the first entirely stand-alone adventure in any of the books, rather than continuing the Djinn storyline which was left on such a huge cliffhanger in Monster Smackdown. Still, it's nice that Mr. Snead points this out, suggesting possible Djinn involvement or alternatively that the Big Bad is taking a break after this, to ramp up tension. After all, the rise of the villain in Season 2 was immediately followed by Oz dealing with being a werewolf and Xander's love spell misfiring...
As for the quality of the Episode itself, it covers a pretty familiar "seemingly innocent home invader" storyline thoroughly and lets the Cast be suitably proactive in investigating it. My main concern is that its method of dropping the Monster Of The Week into the game is distinctly heavy-handed. A PC's relative dies suddenly... Stop me if you've heard this before. After this it's pretty smooth sailing, but the initial setup jars. Another concern is that it revolves around two Big-Time Magic NPCs, and we get an alternative motivation as a plot twist for one of them, but why not both? It could work either way.
It also commits a cardinal sin of horror-genre monster design. The monster is short. It isn't tiny, but it is short. And it doesn't have a horde of other short monsters to make up for this problem. Okay, this is really no big deal, but still, the threat being bigger than the threatened is one of the primal fear cues and here, well... "Who's a little fear demon?"
A short monster could be great in light-hearted adventures, but this one involves murder, revenge, a character's parents in mortal jeopardy, and other not-so-light elements. As a suggestion for fixing this, having a much larger monster violently burst out of a small illusory disguise is always good fun...
"We need a WHAT to dispel the HUH?"
The Appendix (pages 114-126) includes handy cheat sheets for magical invocations and ingredients, with a list of various pantheons by their particular interests and common ingredients by their usage (invoke Ogma to boost your grades and light a green candle for healing) and "Two Great Tastes..." which is seven pages of conversions for the powers and organisations from that other Eden Studios game, C. J. Carella's Witchcraft. It isn't excessively long, for those who aren't interested, but the brevity also means that some things aren't detailed enough to really be of much help without the original source. The Nomads being a group of travellers who include shapeshifters and help each other out doesn't tell me enough to really use them, for example.
After that, there's a fully functional index, a full-page advert for an assortment of recent Buffy tie-in books (the last picture of Alyson Hannigan as Willow in the book isn't very big, as a marker of this being a selection chosen for newness rather than tying into the magic subject) and then a spiffy Angel RPG advert. And then there's the back cover, featuring the blurb mentioned above and a picture of Emma Caulfield as Anya. Which is nice, but she's also in the background of the front cover and, looking through the book, I can only actually find her inside once. Huh. Odd.
In all...
Twenty-one pictures of Alyson Hannigan as Willow, including the book advert, not counting the twenty-four appearances in the footer of Chapter Four.
What was I talking about? Oh, right.
The Magic Box does its job really well. It's full of solid additions to the rules, good advice on using magic in the game for players and Directors alike, enough adventure hooks to fill the standalone episode quotient for a Season, and it's definitely worth looking at if you want to use a lot (or even a fair bit) of magic in a Buffy game. There's enough material in here to inspire a somewhat light-hearted game all about modern magic, in fact.
One more thing, though. It costs $27.00 US for a 128-page colour softcover. By comparison, Monster Smackdown cost $30.00 US for a 170-page colour hardback with glossy paper. I know that the fourth supplement sells less well than the third, but, well, ouch.
It's still reasonably good value, but it shows up what an incredible bargain the Buffy hardbacks are.
So, a thumbs up in general, but a bit more qualified than for the hardbacks.
Despite all those pictures of Alyson Hannigan as Willow.
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