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Review of Anointed: Mantle of the Gods
Before going any further, I like to save people who will hate a game some time and recommend Who Shouldn’t Get This. Problem being, I really like this game line and wish it got more love than it does. So please consider taking a look anyway. That said, I suspect people who are wanting a robust mechanical system will be disappointed, as the game leans pretty far into having a fairly light mechanic. Smallish dice pools are also used, based on a “Stat+Skill” model. The biggest turn off I can see however is that players will really need to pick up two other books to really get the best use out of this book. At which point I should remind the reader that this is in fact a supplement, and shouldn’t be judged as a stand-alone game. Now that that is out of the way….
Chapter 1: The Old Sylph on the Mountain (8 pages) – Here we’re introduced to the various races of the setting (humans, the two types of Wood Nymphs, Undines, Gnomes, Sylphs, Salamanders, the two types of Giants, etc.) along with an overview of the different locales within the spirit realms. It also covers the difference between demons (which are beings who a place in the Well of Souls) and Leviathans (which are Gods and Demons who find power from terrorizing their worshippers and deniers alike). As a broad overview of the setting it’s okay, and you can only put so much in 8 pages. Unfortunately, as a supplemental book this chapter is largely redundant and not really needed.
Chapter 2: Anointed Character Creation (20 pages) – Now we’re getting to the good stuff. Before you can create a hero, you must create the tribe she came from, and before you can create a tribe you must create the God who founded the tribe. Creating a God is pretty minimalistic for the needs of this aspect of the game (the New God’s Handbook goes into greater depth). You create a concept of who your God is, create or choose domains (things the God has power over, consisting of one Primary and two secondary), and create or choose commandments (three restrictions the God places on his followers). For the tribe, you also create a concept and choose a tribal background (what occupations the tribe is especially skilled at and give your hero a mechanical bonus when doing).
To create a hero, you once again come up with a concept. Then you assign dice (specifically, a d6, d8, and d10) to your stats (Body: a measure of physical ability, Mind: a measure of intellectual ability, Spirit: a measure of will and personality). From those stats you’ll determine Defense (how hard it is to hit you) and Resistance (how hard you have to be hit to be hurt). All characters start with the same default Speed (a measure of how many “spaces” you can move) and the same default Health (which is not very much at all, making this a rather gritty fantasy setting). Next you choose from a list of skills, with one ranked d8, two ranked d6 and three at d4; plus the skill you got from your tribal background. But this is a role playing game, so where are the powers? We’ll get to them in more detail later, but for now choose a power listed as belonging to one of your god’s domains. As for the powers themselves, we’re talking everything from encasing foes in ice to creating light to creating an ally out of shadow. The only downside I see is that players are likely to want to start out with more than one power, but that’s something GMs could easily enough houserule.
Next up are Advantages and Disadvantages, with players taking up to three Advantages and an equal number of Disadvantages to balance them out. For the most part, they’re all pretty normal straightforward fantasy tropes, well worth taking for the bonuses and avoiding for the penalties. Although a few traits like “Visible Mutation” really stand out, and there’s a strong sense that your entire tribe shares in the same Advantages and Disadvantages as your character, which I really enjoyed (it helps flesh out a PCs tribe even further). To help players quickly get in the game, there are 6 pre-generated characters provided. The chapter finishes with information on gaining experience points, and how to use them to increase stats and the (rather small) Favor pool you use to activate your powers and do other things.
Chapter 3: Tasks and Skills (16 pages) – AMotG uses dice pools for skill resolution, with pools basically being a combination of the relevant Attribute and any dice from the relevant Skill. To quote the book’s examples: “hunting for game requires Mind and Tracking; intimidating a rival priest needs Spirit and Diplomacy; and stabbing a monster requires Body and Melee.” A target number is assigned (defaulting at 4 for average tasks, 3 for easy, and 10 for “nigh impossible”), and dice are rolled (each die that meets or beats the target is counted as a success). A single success is the bare minimum success, while four is a superb feat. Any modifiers to be assigned go to the single highest rolled die, increasing or decreasing the number rolled. Extended and resisted tasks are covered, as is teamwork and other basics.
Anointed do have a few other options though. They can spend as much of their divine Favor as they want to add an extra d12 to their pool, add a d12 as a modifier rather than an extra die, spend their Favor to boost another’s roll, or miraculously heal a wound. And should an Anointed roll a 12 on a Favor die, a genuine miracle occurs. The miracle itself is free form, but should be relevant to the roll; the sample text has a person being chased, but the PC’s miracle not only surrounds the target of the chase with a ring of fire (since the PC follows a fire god) to stop the target but also blinds the target with the light of the fire.
The rest of the chapter covers descriptions of the skills, typical applications of said skills, and so forth. Nothing too ground breaking here, and it all looks pretty thorough. There does however seem to be some incomplete mechanics for jumping, and I would’ve liked to see some mechanics for lifting and carrying weights (always handy in my fantasy games it would seem).
Finishing up the chapter is a rather unique (to me at least) mechanic for advancing skills: characters don’t raise their old dice, but instead purchase a new die that is higher than any previous dice they had. New skills start with a d4, and once a character reaches d12 in a skill they can purchase more d12s. As an example, someone with a d6 Melee would have to buy an additional d8, and if they wanted to improve Melee later they’d need to buy an additional d10. Since the lower dice aren’t lost, the system leans towards rewarding skilled characters who attempt easy tasks. Meanwhile, Anointed have Favor to throw around on extra dice and bonus modifiers for any roll, and that helps further hammer home just how much an advantage Anointed have over mere mortals.
Chapter 4: Powers (14 pages) – So Gods have domains, and within these domains Anointed start off able to use one power. Here we have 6 sample powers for each domain. Each power costs an amount of Favor to use, has a listed scale (how many/much it can affect), a range, duration, and a generic mechanic effect (e.g. the burn power does a Damage effect). The chapter also covers the universal powers of all Anointed, including their ability to see things “marked” by other Gods (including other Anointed I assume), as well as their ability to see and banish spiritual entities.
Even with 6 powers for 6 domains, that’s not a lot to play with really. Fortunately, AMotG takes the empowering step of giving a fairly decent little system for groups to create their own powers. It’s not as robust as a full-blown supers game like HERO or Mutants & Masterminds, and some players may be disappointed that it lacks a good system for creating enchanted artifacts, but overall I found it fairly refreshing after games like Scion: Hero and Exalted to play a game that allows people to define their own awesome powers for their characters. The system is simple and straightforward, and if a player doesn’t like the sample powers provided (or wants to invent new Domains) the system will accommodate them.
As a fun example, consider the following power: Armor 7, Scale: Self, Duration: Permanent. What this power does is give a starting character protection almost twice as good as plate, without any encumbrance penalty, that is always active, and still compatible with other armor besides. And while it would cost 12 Favor to cast the power, once cast the Favor would regenerate fairly quickly and the power would forever be active. Of course, that would be the character’s one starting power and other characters might have powers that could still penetrate their armor or ignore it altogether (such as a power that teleports enemies away). Attacks by an Anointed who simply spent Favor points might even be good enough to penetrate the Armor. The upside of course is that the character would find they are nearly resistant to all mundane damage. Things get really wild however when the character gains more Favor and Experience, and repurchases the power as a means to grant the same armor skin to other members of her tribe.
While some might see the system as easy to abuse, I find it suitably over the top and befitting a game of demigods wandering the earth.
Chapter 5: Combat (11 pages) – When it comes to chapters like this, I tend to focus on three questions: how lethal is combat intended to be, how much does the chapter cover, and how well is it all covered. Lethality is somewhat high, especially for mortal characters, and your best hope of surviving combat is to not get hit. The main cause is that characters can take so few wounds before risking unconsciousness and bleeding to death. In terms of what all the chapter covers, besides a fairly robust sampling of physical combat (including rules for how easy all those low tech weapons are to break in use), it also covers the standard range of environmental hazards. Disease, dehydration, poisons, starvation, heat, and cold are all handled in a simple yet effective enough manner. How well this all covered? I wish the system had more covering of things like tricks and taunting, as well as some stuff on “social conflicts” perhaps, and the damage system isn’t quite clear enough regarding what happens when a character has 0 wounds left but isn’t unconscious (it’s very clear about what happens to characters who lose consciousness from damage), but otherwise it’s surprisingly well done and comprehensive.
Finishing up the chapter is a collection of rules for weapons, armor, and shields.
Chapter 6: Trade and Equipment (14 pages) – Here we get an in depth look at trading with the non-human races (the first real information on them we’ve had since the intro fiction), lots of interesting information regarding the resources and trade goods of lands mentioned nowhere else in the book (not even on a map), and then all sorts of flavorful items and goods found within the setting along with prices to match. It adds on to existing information from other books in the line quite well. I just wish I felt like it didn’t give me partial information on things like trade routes for some of the continents.
Chapter 7: Braedon Rising (12 pages) – AMotG includes a “choose your own path” style adventure designed for a single player. As an introduction to the mechanics and feel of the game, and a way for GMs to gauge ideas as to how to stat out adversaries in the system, it’s not bad at all. It uses a built in timer mechanic that is interesting and adds a layer of challenge beyond the usual “you’ve run out of hit points”. I especially like that the pre-made character sheet came with a checklist so players could easily tick off what choices they’d made, and depending on what they do or don’t check players can see things in the story turn out differently. It’s a small step beyond the usual “go to page X if you chose A, or page Y if you choose B”, but a nice one that works well for a solo RPG adventure.
I was a bit disappointed that the only character sheet in the book is partially filled out for use in this adventure, but on the upside there’s a form-fillable version available for free download on the company website as of this writing.
Style: If 3 is average, 4 is good for the industry, and 5 is a product I want to loan to my non-gamer friends because it’s such a joy to simply read and look at, I’ll give AMotG a just over the line 4. There are typos, but what’s really irked me were the couple of missing rules I ran into (a Jumping table missing from page 38 being the worst, the other was a “roll stat+???” error in the adventure) and the lack of bookmarks in the PDF. Navigating it was a bit of a pain, although those with software that allows them modify their PDFs (e.g. put in bookmarks themselves) will have an easier time.
What raises the book in terms of style is that it looks and feels really good. The prose isn’t the best in the world, but it’s alright and conveys the atmosphere of the game well enough. The layout is quite attractive, with a comprehensive Table of Contents, and the interior art ranges from good to exceptional. Many pieces of art feature live models mixed in with traditional line drawings to good effect; somebody knows how to use their graphic editing software to be sure. The worst thing I can say is that a few pieces felt less like “bronze age demigods have adventures” and more like “attractive fantasy art that got rejected by D&D”. I’m not sure how much I should complain about it, but it was jarring when it happened. The cover though is possibly one of my favorite pieces of RPG art ever, and certainly my favorite RPG cover ever. It’s one of those pieces I feel like I could look at and always find something new in it.
Substance: Reading this book I had to remind myself “it’s a supplement, not a stand alone game”. What I thought were missing stats for animals was already covered in the Fate’s Guidebook, more information on the world was covered in the Fate’s Guidebook and the New Gods’ Handbook (although AMotG should’ve had trade route maps for more than one continent by golly!). And so on and so forth. At the same time, some things (most especially the intro fiction in Chapter 1) make me feel that the book was intended to be a stand-alone game at some point, but the final product is most definitely a supplement. So overall, I’ll give it a solid 4 for Substance. The only things I’d have liked to have seen would’ve been more mechanics for social combat (both literal and figurative), and more emphasis on the role of Anointed within their tribe, their world, and among each other. A sidebar on Anointed becoming gods in their own right could’ve been very interesting as well. It’s easy enough for me to fill in those gaps, but I wish the book had done a tad more of the work for me.
Conclusion: When New Gods of Mankind came out, I thought it was an ambitious, messy, incomplete train wreck. I also thought it was the only “god game” where I actually felt like I was playing a god, with its focus on issues of faith and building communities of worshippers while still feeling like a game of potent epic myth-worthy beings. Anointed fills in some of the gaps from earlier books in the line, adds new details, and brings a new perspective to the setting that begs to be played.
