A beautifully produced solo, journaling RPG, a real artifact. I'm not sure where I first heard mention of it but I know that it was reading a review in Wyrd Science and then coming across The Magus which is clearly (and admittedly) inspired by it, that made me take the plunge and shell out (I think the postal costs alone might have been $20!).
First up - I did not finish it, I spent 3 sessions playing and guiltily abandoned it last night - I did enjoy it though, the ideas are great and the execution beautiful.
It is a clever game, with the fiction, theme and rules beautifully intertwined. Like The Magus you roll 2 dice subtracting one from the other (d6 from d10) then move back or forwards that many passages and deal with what you find, creating an experience from your interpretation of it. That experience is written into one of 5 memories - each of which can hold 3 experiences, the idea being that a memory is a sort of themed set of experiences. You can have a diary to retain one extra memory, but otherwise you have to erase a remembered experience to accommodate a new one. This is such a brilliant idea that cuts straight to the heart of much that is really interesting about vampires; guilt and immortality.
The other rules are fairly simple. You start out by defining your character with a number of formative experiences each tied to 3 mortals, resources and skills which you also define. The passages will tell you to gain and lose from among these traits and all ends badly for you if you reach a point and have nothing more to lose. And that is essentially that, it’s pretty elegant.
Initially I had the same minor gripe as I have with English Eerie and The Magus too, namely that I would have liked some random tables or something to give me a hand create a character, spark some ideas to get me going. In the end I did like my flavourful local character (a Monk at the run down St Pauls, Jarrow, 1048AD) but I still had that is-this-good-enough/am-i-doing-it-right anxiety.
So why did I stop? Too much work, too much history I don’t know. Making up stuff which is going to be remotely correct across a long stretch of time is just intimidating. I really enjoyed the start of my story in England, but once I’m heading into 12th Century Uzbekistan, what then? I should probably just not get too hung up and go for it, but knowing its still early days and how lacking my historical knowledge is until we hit the 18th Century, and that mostly just Europe is just, jeez.
I may well go back to it sometime, although writing this reminds me how much I enjoyed The Magus - which is less demanding and easier to get to grips with, the whole random words to create your spells from was an easily engaging proposition. The other thing is the passage of time. I did not really have a feel for how much time should be passing and this again was a cause of anxiety, some strong pointers on this would have helped a lot, giving me more license to invent.
The official website is here.
