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C.J. Carella's Witchcraft
Authors: C.J. Carella, M. Alexander Jurkat, and John M. Kahane
Price: $35.00
Publisher: Eden Studios Inc. www.edenstudios.net
Size: 320 Pages
ISDN: 1-891153-40-2
Okay, let's get this over with: You'll see a lot of reviews of Witchcraft that say things like "This is what Mage should have been." "Like Mage but with a simpler system." And so on. But the only similarities between Mage and Witchcraft is they're both games about magic in the modern world. The similarities end there, and Witchcraft deserves to be considered on its own merits, not compared to the World of Darkness, but Witchcraft is another animal entirely. Sure, there are power groups, but they aren't the same as the Mage "splats", they're actual organizations with logical goals and aims: More than just styles.
So, then, what is Witchcraft about?
The basic idea behind Witchcraft is that magic has always been with us. Belief may wax and wane, and distort our perception of the supernatural, but the supernatural is not affected by our belief. It simply is, as it always has been. Literally occult means "hidden", and so it is in the world of Witchcraft: the supernatural lies below the surface of a world seemingly not unlike our own, hidden in the darkness.
Magic is the ability to manipulate Essence, the basic building block of reality, which pervades everything. Magicians can manipulate the Pure Essence to change the world. Unlike common energy, however, Essence, being the One Power that controls everything, has emotions, attitudes, and resonance. It can be good or evil, angry or gentle.
But time moves in cycles, and the next cycle is coming. While magic is not affected by belief, it waxes and wanes according to its own timetable, and it is starting to wax forth. More and more people are being born with the ability to sense the flow of Essence. Simulataneously, dark things and dangerous bright things, from vampires to demons to horrors from beyond time and space to inscrutable angels of light, are on the move. The player characters can influence the next cycle: There is darkness and danger, but there is hope. The player characters can determine if the next cycle is one of darkness and damnation or one of gentleness and light. Now is the crux, and everything the Gifted do is important.
[Perhaps you can see, now, why I do not like to think of this game in the terms of Mage. There is much more hope than the World of Darkness ever had, and it is not a matter of "battling paradigms", but a matter of the choices the PCs make while magic is on the rise and the world is in flux.]
So, okay, what sort of characters can one play? Well, the "standard" character type is the Gifted, those who can sense and manipulate Essence. However, one's choices are more open than that, which is one of the things I like about Witchcraft: The non-Gifted are a viable character alternative. One can play a "Mundane" that has been sucked into the world of the occult. To make up for their inability to sense Essence (which is a big disadvantage in the game), Mundanes get more points to spend on attributes and skills, making them very above-average characters in their own right. One can also play "Lesser Gifted", those with only a touch of the Gift, sort of halfway between a Mundane and a "standard" Gifted, with the ability to sense Essence but with less supernatural powers and more mundane skills. There is also the option to play the Bast, feline shapeshifters (for all of those with a cat-girl fetish), though people interested in playing supernatural creatures in the world of Witchcraft are referred to the supplements. The basic game focuses on the Gifted, and is a complete, stand-alone game within that focus. There is plenty to do without having to accomodate that player who whines about not being able to play an vampire.
Gifted can be "Solitaries", working Magick on their own, or they can belong to one of the organizations, the different "Covenants". I'll go into the Covenants in more detail when I talk about the differnt types of magic.
What is the system like? It's the "Unisystem", used in most of Eden's games. It's pretty simple. Roll a d10, add your attribute and skill. The GM adds or subtracts and bonuses or penalties due to circumstances. If the result is a 9 or higher, you succeed. The higher the total value, the more successful you are -- or, in the case of a roll less than 9, the less horribly you failed. Very simple.
Of course, there are wrinkles. If you roll a 10, you roll again, subtract 5 from the second roll, and add the result to your total roll if the result is higher than zero. IF another 10 is rolled, your total is 15 (10 plus (10 - 5) = 15) and you get to roll and add again. It's a little odd, but it allows one to have open-ended rolls without things getting too out of hand when you roll very well. This also works in reverse: If you roll a 1, you roll again and five from the roll, and if the result is negative, you use that instead of 1. And if you roll another 1, the roll can be even more negative...
If you don't like re-rolling andsubtracting 5 in order to do the open-ended roll, there's an optional rule where instead of adding/subtracting a d10-5, you add or subtract a d6-1 when you roll a 10 or 1, continuing the open-end roll when you roll a 6. This actually increases the chances of amazingly good or bad rolls, but not so much so that it's a big problem.
If you really hate the sound of this system, there is a set of rules for using Tarot cards instead on the Witchcraft web site.
Attributes and skills are pretty common fare, varying on a sort of 1-5 scale. If you've played anything from Storyteller to GURPS, you should have no problems here. A score of 2 in an attibute is human average, and 5 is practical human maximum, tho PCs, being very exceptional, can go beyond 5 -- tho buying attributes beyond 5 cost a more, and human characters are not allowed to go beyond 6. For skills, 2 or 3 represents competence, but you can buy them as high as you like... Tho, once again, anything beyond 5 is very expensive.
One also gets so many points to buy "Qualities and Drawbacks". Think "Merits and Flaws" or "Advantages and Disadvantages" and you'll know what you're in for here. Interestingly, being a talented artist (with the Artistic Talent Quality) gives a character more Essence, because artists have "strong souls."
Also, like many games with horrific themes, there is a fear table, though the Gifted find it easier to deal with scary things (another area where Mundanes are penalized, so buy up that Willpower for your Mundane character). Terror can cause a character to lose Essence, so it's still something the Gifted need to worry about. The mechanic is pretty simple, being based on the standard d10 roll, and while it forces characters to show the fear they should be exhibiting, it isn't onerous or too intrusive, like the mechanics in Deadlands or Call of Cthulhu. After all, if the PCs are going to be able to affect the next cycle, they'll need to face down some of the horrors that have come out of the shadows since the recent spike in magickal activity.
Combat is interesting. There is an assumption that combat is not fun, and that it is difficult, even for people like police officers or soldiers, to remain cool under fire, and that once someone gets the drop on you and starts shooting, the best you can do is duck. Firefights are fast, furious, and characters can be expected to make mistakes and perhaps run at the wrong time. Players who are used to having absolute control over their characters during combat might find the rules a bit frustrating. However, it presents a view of combat rarely seen in RPGs: Not just deadly, but brief and disturbing periods of pants-wetting terror and chaos. While one could quibble about the realism of the system, and the damage is system is a touch awkward (it uses d4s and d8s, which are used nowhere else in the game), it's interesting to those who want players to dread combat without neccessarily making sure a PC dies every time someone fires a gun.
Fine, then, but what about magic? After all, that's what the game is about, right? Well, there are four different types of magic. Each works very differently, game-mechanically speaking. All of them involve drawing upon and using Essence, but there the similarity ends. The different "syles" aren't the same system dressed up with different special effects. They are each very distinct.
The most "standard" form of magic comes in the form Invocations. These are spells in the most traditional sense, which can do things like bring good luck, summon a blast of fire, see at a distance, or create a gate to the Otherworld. One must channel Essence into a form, summoning the energy, focusing the energy, and then dismissing it. Something can go wrong in all of these steps. Non-Gifted can dampen an effect, but it is not a simple matter of their disbelief: It is a matter of their emotions. Hatred and and rage can negatively affect a casting, while if the Magician can induce fear, that implicitly validates the Magician's power (people do not fear what they don't believe in, even a little bit), and allows the magic to come forth. Rituals can be used to increase the amount of Essence available, and doing certain kinds of rituals during an appropriate time of the year or at a place of power can increase the Essence available even more.
Invocations are generally used by Wicce and the Rosicrucians. The Wicce Covenant are nature-loving priestesses and priests. If you're familiar with the real-life religion of Wicca, you should have the general idea. Wicce gain a bonus to defensive Invocations, and offensive magics directed at them are more likely to backlash. The Rosicrucians, on the other hand, are Hermetic magicians that seek to use their Incokations to increase the power of their Brotherhood, and thefore themselves. They gain a bonus to restraining, banishing, or imprisoning spirits and other supernaturals. Both groups use Invocations, but in very different ways. It is the most flexible form of magic in the game.
The other type of magic is The Sight. It is a greater awareness of the supernatural and Essence. Think ESP. Those Gifted with the Sight can see into the past and future, see at a distance, communicate with and dominate the minds of other, and engage in pyrokenesis or telekenesis, depending on what power they buy. It is more of a natural talent than something that is learned, like Invocations, and so it works differently.
Various Covenants are known to exhibit the Sight. The Wicce often do, as well as the Sentinels and the Twilight Order (see below). But the seriously Seer-oriented Covenant is the Cabal of the Psyche, which is sort of a mutual protection society for those who exhibit the Sight, protecting them against the fear and prejudice of the mundane world. Members of the Cabal gain more powers than most Seers. Contact with other Seers caused them to manifest their powers more strongly.
The third kind of magic is Necromancy. Forget about zombies. This is Necromancy in the more historical sense: Talking to the dead. Necromantic powers allow one to talk to and compel the spirits of the dead, or allow them to possess the body of the Medium. Though there is a very high-level power that lets you kill someone outright. Being a Medium is halfway beteen being a master of Invocations and a Seer. The rituals are more formal than what a seer has to do, but more informal than an Invocation, relying to a certain extent on natural talent.
While the Wicce sometimes know about Necromancy, the Covenent made mostly of Mediums (Necromancers) is the ominous-sounding Twilight Order. However, their main focus is protecting the living from the dead, and appeasing and laying to rest the restless spirits, as well as stopping those who would seek to exploit the dead. Naturally the members of the Order get a bonus to Necromantic rituals.
The final type of magic isn't considered to be magic at all by those who practice it. We are talking about Divine Inspiration, Miracles given to Gifted who have great faith in the Creator, which can be understood by the Gifted in precise doctrinal terms or more vaguely, so long as their faith is pure. Unlike other forms of magic, the Miracles the Inpired can do can disappear at any time, should the character lose their Faith. As difficult as it is to remain holy, the Miracles are impressive, from Excorcism to the Strength of Ten to the ability to lay on hands and heal the sick and ailing.
The Covenant for the Inspired is the Sentinels, holy warriors that fight the occult, particularly supernatural monsters. 'Nuff said. They gain a bonus to resist metaphysical attack.
Naturally, any and all of these powers are available to "Solitaries", who discover their Gift on their own. They gain a small bonus to one particular Gifted Art (i.e. one type of power), but their real advantage is their flexibility.
Add into everything I've mentioned so far a lot of detail on various supernatural creatures, and you have a very interesting and focused game, yet with a lot of options for the players.
Tho I usually don't care about art, I should probably mention that the high price for the game, aside from the large amount of material one gets, is the fact that the game is a solid hardcover with excellent black-and-white art by the likes of Dan "Smif" Smith and rk Post. Even without the solid cover and the art, it's worth the money for a complete, stand-alone game of modern magick.
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