What other role-playing system allows you the pure joy of adventure and occult intrigue in 1890's Victorian England. This book is a blast! Both as a sourcebook of occult intrigue, and as a book of scenarios.
The book is divided about half and half between source material and scenario material. It includes a healthy assortment of new spells and abilities built around the Golden Dawn's occult curriculum, though I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't even more information about this notorious societyäyet the information that is here is well-rounded and very well suited to gaming purposes.
If you, or I, want more information there is an extensive bibliography for looking up new material.
The four scenarios are first rate, and within them players get to encounter such luminaries as W.B. Yeats, Dr. William Wynn Westcott, Gaston Leroux, Aleister Crowley, a certain violinist, and maybe even a phantom. These are well designed scenarios, which have a lot of advice for keepers running players with the kind of occult powers, and divinatory abilities (tarot readings), which players might possess.
The new abilities described within this book are a nice change of pace from the typical sanity blasting, and disgusting Cthulhu spells. However, these spells and abilities are dangerous in their own right.
This book also makes a nice sourcebook for the Nephilim game from Chaosium. It nicely fleshes out a bit of occult history, that is covered within Nephilim, but in nowhere near as much detail. All in all,this book gets a solid "A."
Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)
