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chuckroThe utter nutjobs of the world, from the homeless drunk to the rabid fanboy to the 2nd Amendment crusader, are the people with the singular focus required to do magick, whether as Avatars of archetypal concepts or Adepts of reality-bending rituals. Changing the world destroys you, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
I feel like the author played Mage: The Ascension and thought, “These characters are not nearly broken and insane enough given what they’re doing.” So, you know the sanity meter used in Call of Cthulhu or the morality meter in most World of Darkness games? Instead of one, there are five of them, and both your personality and your skills are dependent on tracking your successful and failed rolls on them all. Also, each character has five relationships that further correspond to each sanity meter. It’s the sort of game that you can run with three, four players max because there’s so much bookkeeping.
Also, you want each of them to have the rulebook available, because there’s no particularly easy way to “cheat sheet” this game. The system runs on percentiles, and the book insists on describing what a crit or fumble does on each skill roll, despite the fact these each happen only 1% of the time. The rules are very complicated and loaded down with edge cases. There is a, and I’m not joking, “conflict gridiron” for any kind of extended conflict. There are a huge variety of available magical identities, though many of them require incredible focus for very situational rewards. However, this is NOT a combat game. If you want to be able to shoot a gun, you need to dedicate an aspect of your identity to that-- and that could otherwise be occupied with "can use magic". Combat is very easily and randomly deadly, especially for a system where character creation is as in-depth as this is.
(It’s trying very hard to be “different”, which…isn’t always great? Part of the reason D&D remains popular is that the core mechanics haven’t really changed much in decades, and everyone knows them. When you make everything run on new scales and with new focuses, you’re creating a very high barrier to entry.)
There's a lot of "shock value" material here. What I said about the 2nd Amendment crusaders? An entire school of magic is about toting around a loaded gun which you never actually fire; your magic is all social-engineering stuff. The character’s psychological damage comes first, and the superpowers only come from feeding it.
I backed the Kickstarter and ended up with three physical books, two additional splat pdfs, an in-universe novel, and half a dozen adventure pdfs. Generally paging through them didn’t reveal anything I’d immediately want to try to transplant into another system, but I’m sure something will eventually get used.
Overall: Though I have issues with the mechanics and presentation, my biggest hurdle is that it’s too damn dark for my gaming style. This game can be many things, but lighthearted is clearly not one of them—the skill system will make sure of that, if nothing else. There are clearly people for whom intensely-quantified emotional turmoil is the height of gaming, but none of them sit at my table.
I feel like the author played Mage: The Ascension and thought, “These characters are not nearly broken and insane enough given what they’re doing.” So, you know the sanity meter used in Call of Cthulhu or the morality meter in most World of Darkness games? Instead of one, there are five of them, and both your personality and your skills are dependent on tracking your successful and failed rolls on them all. Also, each character has five relationships that further correspond to each sanity meter. It’s the sort of game that you can run with three, four players max because there’s so much bookkeeping.
Also, you want each of them to have the rulebook available, because there’s no particularly easy way to “cheat sheet” this game. The system runs on percentiles, and the book insists on describing what a crit or fumble does on each skill roll, despite the fact these each happen only 1% of the time. The rules are very complicated and loaded down with edge cases. There is a, and I’m not joking, “conflict gridiron” for any kind of extended conflict. There are a huge variety of available magical identities, though many of them require incredible focus for very situational rewards. However, this is NOT a combat game. If you want to be able to shoot a gun, you need to dedicate an aspect of your identity to that-- and that could otherwise be occupied with "can use magic". Combat is very easily and randomly deadly, especially for a system where character creation is as in-depth as this is.
(It’s trying very hard to be “different”, which…isn’t always great? Part of the reason D&D remains popular is that the core mechanics haven’t really changed much in decades, and everyone knows them. When you make everything run on new scales and with new focuses, you’re creating a very high barrier to entry.)
There's a lot of "shock value" material here. What I said about the 2nd Amendment crusaders? An entire school of magic is about toting around a loaded gun which you never actually fire; your magic is all social-engineering stuff. The character’s psychological damage comes first, and the superpowers only come from feeding it.
I backed the Kickstarter and ended up with three physical books, two additional splat pdfs, an in-universe novel, and half a dozen adventure pdfs. Generally paging through them didn’t reveal anything I’d immediately want to try to transplant into another system, but I’m sure something will eventually get used.
Overall: Though I have issues with the mechanics and presentation, my biggest hurdle is that it’s too damn dark for my gaming style. This game can be many things, but lighthearted is clearly not one of them—the skill system will make sure of that, if nothing else. There are clearly people for whom intensely-quantified emotional turmoil is the height of gaming, but none of them sit at my table.
