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Afterward I confronted the player who had been the ringleader of the PC on PC carnage. He explained that he had read the Demon rulebook and some of the novels, and that while there had been mention of people escaping from being thralls, there was no system or advice on how a Storyteller should handle those attempting to break a pact. Therefore he decided to start the inter-party battle, in the hopes that I would just declare the entire session as never having happened, bringing back the characters that were killed while those who made pacts would be free of them.
While his explanation reminded me that I seem to attract players from the shallow end of the gene pool, he did have a point. At that time thralls were pretty screwed once they made a pact, with no visible way out. So when Damned & Deceived was announced I made it a point to obtain a copy, just to find out how a thrall could break a pact, and the rules system that it would follow. Having read the book I must say that it is an excellent primer on what it means to be a thrall, but when it comes to the rules section there is a good measure of disappointment.
Fans of the Hunter line may feel a sense of deja vu as they read the first three chapters of the book, as they are the tales of three different individuals who become thralls, each one done in its own unique font. Each tale is serialized in each chapter, and rather than reviewing each chapter I will just review each tale as a whole.
The first story, Falling Stars, is the weakest of the stories. It has a good premise, following a fellow who encounters a less-than-sane demon and enters into a pact with her, which either results in his own madness or the occasional loss of control of mind and body to the demon. Unfortunately, that main premise is also the story's greatest weakness. In order to show the loss of control or awareness by the main character the story skips around and leaves bits out to show the loss of control the protagonist undergoes. During these skips many important events are left out, leading to the reader wondering what the heck is going on. Some of these areas of missing time are never explained, and when areas of missing time are explained often the reader is still left to wonder what happened.
There's also some other problems with the story, concerning the mundane aspects of the story, mostly related to his job as a teacher and what he would or wouldn't do or know. I'm sure this is one of those things that could be easily explained away with a line of text, but such a line wasn't there, leaving me to be confused.. By the end of reading this story I was left with little insight on how to run a thrall.
The next story, Siren Song, is a lot better. It's the story of a middle-aged divorcee who enters into a pact, and it's good on a number of levels. First, the author breaks the unwritten rule of White Wolf has followed for so many years that for a person to be accepting of the supernatural they must be an outcast or member of a race that has a strong history of belief in the supernatural. Here the main character comes from a mainstream religious background which allows her to accept the supernatural without being a religious fanatic or malcontent who wants to get back at society. It's a refreshing change.
Another nice thing about it is the way the author presents the main character. At first she seems to be a nice-enough woman, one who has become bitter, having experienced the kind of problems that most people dismiss as cliches. But as the story progresses more and more of her personality comes through, and we find that she's not a nice person by any means, performing heinous acts that go beyond the "I'm working for a demon" excuse, and into the "I would have done this anyway if I'd gotten the chance, even if a demon hadn't come along." The revelation of her true character is well-done, and makes sense; told as the story is in the form of a diary she keeps, it makes sense for her to portray herself as the innocent, and it's only as she records her actions and her attitudes about them that she slips and we see what she's really like.
However, the decision to tell the story in the form of a diary does hurt the story. The diary is written as though the character is writing about events that occurred some time ago, yet each section is dated on the day each entry is written. I do not understand why someone writing a lengthy account of what's happened to them to keep their thoughts straight would bother to date it each time they picked up from the last time they stopped writing in it; wouldn't one lengthy tale be better? Also, while written as a diary, at time the author slips into directly addressing the reader, breaking the illusion that it is a diary. Finally, the last lines of the story are very bad. When I was a kid I read many bad stories which were to have been written diaries by a character, with the last few lines being written as the protagonist was being eaten alive or drawn into another dimension. I felt like I was rereading those old stories as I read the final lines of the tale, as the main character is able to write "Oh God not again God no please stop hurts hurts h" as she experiences something that, earlier in the tale, gave her horrible agony and knocked her out near-instantly. Considering she says each episode is worst than the last I doubt she's built up a tolerance. I imagine the diary format was done to help the story fit into the splitting of the stories among the chapters, but it would have been far better to have dropped the diary format and given it its own chapter.
In the end the story gives a good look at how an amoral person can become a thrall, and how doing so has its own benefits and drawbacks.
The final tale, entitled "The Good Soldier," is an excellent story, being both an enjoyable read and a fine example of how a demon/thrall relationship might work. The protagonist of the story is an ex-soldier, whose career was cut short by an accident long before he ever got to the battlefield, and who now lives his life at the bottom of a bottle to forget what he's lost and what he's become.
It's a near-perfect tale, quickly letting the reader understand the protagonist's viewpoints and motivations, all of which are realistic and believable. The demon of the story is also well-detailed, having a personality as three-dimensional as the thrall, and is an excellent example for Storytellers needing aid in how to portray NPC demons in an all-thrall campaign. I've only two complaints about the story, one of which is a bit of dramatic license the author takes at one point, your tolerance of which will depend on how much you can deal with unlikely coincidences in a story. The other problem involves the bond between demon and thrall, as one aspect of it is never clearly explained in the story, which is a problem, as part of the story hinges on it. I thought perhaps it was referring to something newly introduced in the rules section of the book, but such was not the case, and I can find no rules for it in the main book. As it is, I suggest the reader assume that the demon in the story reaches a high rating of Torment and just likes to screw with his thralls to explain the odd empathy the demon and thrall develop in the story.
Chapter Four is the first rules chapter for the book, and outlines the creation of Thrall characters. It's the usual 6/4/3 and 11/7/4 spread normally found for mortals in World of Darkness games, with added rules for being pawns of demons. Some new Natures and Demeanors are introduced, and two new Backgrounds, Attentive Master and Exposure, representing how much your master is involved in your life and your pre-thralling exposure to the supernatural, respectively.
It should be noted that even if a player spends all his Freebie Points (even those from Flaws) on Faith, he can still not start with a value of 5 in it. I'm not sure why the authors felt thralls shouldn't be allowed to start at their maximum Faith value, but that's how it is.
Virtues work differently for Thralls than demons, with the scores given the number of dice rolls to feel guilty after a sin and thus not lose Willpower; for Thralls Willpower sets the gauge for their moral conduct, and inappropriate behavior results in the permanent loss of Willpower points.
Unfortunately, there are some problematic rules here, which I think are an error that could have been avoided with a little bit more careful editing. When a Thrall reaches 3 Willpower they gain a temporary derangement, and gain another for each additional point they lose. That would be fine, but halfway through the paragraph describing this problem it suddenly starts talking as though it is when temporary Willpower reaches 3 that Derangements come about, and even acts as though characters with a Willpower score of 0 still gain Willpower points somehow!
Rounding out this chapter is a discussion on powers and abilities that a demon can bestow on a thrall. While well-written for the most part, when it comes to the examples of tailored enchantments that can be bestowed by a pact things get problematic. Several of the powers are not given game stats, with the Storyteller left to figure out systems on how they would work in play. Some powers mimic one another yet have different rules systems, such as one pain-reducing power which flat-out halves all wound penalties, while another requires a Willpower roll against a difficulty of 8, with each success reducing penalties by one; whether that means it reduces one negative die per success or the character is just treated as though he were injured one level less on the damage chart per success is not explained. And some of the powers are the kind of thing that if you made a pact with a demon for you'd be beaten to death by other thralls for being so stupid, such as the ability to always remember people's names or be able to change what your tattoos look like. In short, the examples are not that helpful for the most part.
Chapter Five is the Storyteller's section for dealing with and running Thralls. It does its job well, discussing both what might make a person wish to be a thrall, and how to work potential thralls into a campaign. Coverage is also given to problem areas such as rebellious thralls, overtly-dependant thralls, or how the relationship may be strained by a demon gaining Torment. I was especially impressed at the explanation on how a character's Faith potential doesn't necessarily translate into religious faith, giving such examples as beliefs in ideals or self as possible sources of high Faith ratings that a demon can tap into.
The chapter's not perfect, though. One sidebar seems to ignore the aforementioned idea of non-religious faith, expressing the idea that increasing a Faith score after character creation can only happen if a Thrall develops more faith solely in his demonic master. The big disappointment, however, comes from the section on how to break a pact, outside of killing the demon the pact has been made with.
Is there a mystical ritual that can break a pact? Not here.
Can another demon break a pact for you? Nope.
Is there some sort of mystical artifact that can save a Thrall? Nope.
So, what then is the secret of salvation? The answer is...religious faith! Yup, honest, devout conversion to a religion can save a Thrall's soul.
Now, I'd be cool with that, but what about those Thralls who are truly religious and made a pact because they believe the demons are truly God/Allah/whatever's servants, or have somehow worked in their pact with a demon into their system of belief, which they still follow faithfully? Examples of such have appeared in previous Demon releases, and they seem to have not accidentally slipped out of their pacts. Given the hints in previous releases of mortals with rituals which give them measures of power over demons, not to mention all the other supernaturals running around the WoD, I was very disappointed that this was the only method of escaping a pact given in the book. I know that none of my players would have their characters take such an escape route, and I'm not sure how many gamers would enjoy multiple sessions in which they role-play their characters conversion to a new faith (In tonight's scenario David's character goes to his adult CCD class, while Larue goes to First Communion, uncomfortable with the fact he's thirty years older than the first graders with him).
Rounding out the book are some sample thralls to drop into a campaign. There's nothing noteworthy here, save that I've never seen a character who had question marks for their stats before.
I can't forget to mention the artwork of the book. There is an exceptionally high level of quality when it comes to the art, with each piece well-done. I was very happy to see that the pieces which are supposed to represent scenes from the text actually match up to what they're depicting, with no characters being shown as the wrong race or gender, as seems to happen in many books in recent years. Another nice touch was that while many of the pictures are filled with varying shades of greys and blacks, none of the pictures have been rendered incomprehensible when printed in the book, as has happened in other White Wolf releases.
In the end I recommend Damned & Deceived if you're looking for advice on how to run thralls, either as PCs or NPCs. But if you're looking for a rules toolkit for Thralls I recommend saving your money and sticking with the information in the Demon rulebook.
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