The Unbidden Shows the Consequences of Magic Beyond Control
In White Wolf’s Mage: The Awakening, the characters control magic. But do they really? In The Unbidden, we find proof that magic is a force of nature, and tapping into it can lead to disaster and tragedy.
The Unbidden follows White Wolf’s formula for a “book of antagonists.” And of course, I don’t mean to say that it is “formulaic” in the derogatory sense — I’ve mentioned elsewhere that following a successful formula is a great way to give a line of RPG books consistency and make them more useful. This is one of those. The formula, in this case, is a list of NPCs, creatures, places and a few strange artifacts. Each entry gets a full background, description, a list of secrets for the players to learn (or not learn), rumors that could lead to intrigue, and a box full of plot hooks so you can easily attach something to your World of Darkness campaign.
This book is heavy on fluff, which brings the usual World of Darkness bonus into play: you could use these characters with any modern horror system easily, and put most of them into a horror-tinged fantasy RPG with a little tweaking. I know I say this about just about every WoD book, but it’s really true (and I practice what I preach — I’ll have a cool example to write about just as soon as my D&D campaign players get to experience it first).
The emphasis on story doesn’t mean you’ll find no crunchy rules material in The Unbidden. Every entry also has a stat section. Storytellers couldn’t really ask for more.
This isn’t just a random collection of bad guys, though. There’s an underlying theme to The Unbidden — Magic is Dangerous. It’s so powerful and unpredictable that it can easily spiral out of control. Awakened humans understand just enough of it to get themselves into trouble, really. Using any kind of powerful magic could easily lead to a horrific Castle Bravo effect.
Random historical aside: Castle Bravo was a hydrogen bomb test conducted at Bikini Atoll in 1954 by the U.S. The yield of the blast was about three times greater than expected, and a sudden change in the wind caused a huge amount of fallout to contaminate U.S. personnel, lots of Pacific islanders and the crew of a Japanese boat. It’s really pretty terrifying to consider that we were messing with something as powerful as nuclear weapons, but were still clueless enough about what we were doing to screw up that badly.
Anyway, magic in the Awakening is a lot like Castle Bravo. Instead of huge explosions, you get five-winged brain damaged black angels hurtling people to whatever psychotic fate she’s decreed for them, or fanatical religious cults armed with insane prophecies, or the “angel” Metathron cast out of Arcadia (WoD crossover!) and leaving meaningless tragedy in his wake. Or sometimes you might just get a huge explosion. Who knows? Also, there’s an evil cell phone that’s powered by fear.
The art is excellent black and white, with a depiction of each antagonist. Yet another quality release from White Wolf. You can grab a copy from Robot Viking sponsor TrollandToad.com today.
Related posts:
- The Testament of Longinus: an Eerie Vampire Bible
- Armory Reloaded Cranks Up the Violence in the World of Darkness
- Hunter: the Vigil Campaigns Go Modular with Collection of Horrors
- Seers of the Throne is a Haunting Blueprint for Immortality
- Horror Recognition Guide Provides Nightmare Fuel for Storytellers
January 29th, 2010 12:43 AM
Just something about a brain damaged angel…
… it ain’t right. Makes me think of something you’d see on South Park.
January 29th, 2010 11:27 AM
World of Darkness has a habit of crossing the line where you didn’t even know there was a line. Check out the Armory Reloaded review for another excellent example.
January 29th, 2010 4:20 PM
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I’m offended by a brain damaged angel. It just isn’t right! But I read that other review like ya said, ’cause I was veeery curious, and now I wanna play Armory Reloaded. It sounds like a Hell of a lot more fun than trying to play All Flesh Must Be Eaten with my brother as the ZM. It would be awesome to punch out some zombies with like… cursed brass knuckles, or something.
And I agree; post apocalyptica (Is that a word?) will always be cool.
January 29th, 2010 7:09 PM
I’ve never met an angel who wasn’t a little brain damaged.
Also, my cellphone is powered by fear. I make outgoing calls with hope though. With hope.
January 29th, 2010 10:14 PM
I like this. It sounds kinda like Dark Heresy’s Psychic system. Screw up your roll and there’s demons crawling out of your brain.