[Review] Mind's Eye Theater: Quick Start Rules

The Mind's Eye Theatre Introductory Kit is yet another in a long line of free, simplified introductions to various White Wolf games, this one concentrating on the Vampire live action roleplaying (LARP) rules. I've played a wide variety of MET games in my day, so I was interested in what White Wolf was doing to help ease new players into the hobby.

Let me say, from the outset, for something that is free, it's very, very nice. It's the same small, portable size as other Mind's Eye Theatre books, it runs to 32 pages, and it's packed with stuff. In some ways, it's even better than the MET Journal, which it resembles in size. I'm not in the habit of looking a gift horse in the mouth. However, I tried to evaluate it in terms of trying to introduce someone to the hobby, without any guidance from more experienced players, if, say, the pamphlet had been left at a club or something, which, from the opening essay, seemed (to me) to be the aim. I also looked at it in terms of introducing an experienced roleplayer, but non-Vampire player who had never LARPed, to Mind's Eye Theatre.

Suffice it to say it does an okay job of the latter, but a bad job of the former. I was, frankly, disappointed.

The book opens with a two page essay on roleplaying (more like one page, when you consider how small the pages are). It makes the typical comparison to childhood make-believe and the less typical comparison to "How to Host a Murder" parties. (That reminded me of the 1st edition of Mind's Eye Theatre, which came in a box like a "How to Host a Murder" party.)

Perhaps I am underestimating the ability of a potential new roleplayer to understand the author, but I found the essay confusing. (If someone has done an empirical test – handing the pamphlet to someone who's interested in vampires but never played a roleplaying game – please let me know.) It's like a movie, with no script? But you aren't allowed to touch each other or use props that look like real guns? (The "Only Rules That Matter" for MET follow the essay, which include such things as "No Touching" and "No Weapons" which make sense to long-time LARPers but in my opinion might make less sense to people who've never experienced the way a ton of people in black yelling at each other about Antediluvians affect the authorities.) And what's a Ventrue? (The only example of play in the essay is replete with Vampire-specific terminology that hasn't been introduced to the reader yet.) All and all, this essay could have used another couple pages of explanation, and in my opinion is a failure at what seems to be its goal, explaining roleplaying and LARPing to people unfamiliar to the concept. A tabletop roleplayer would have an easier time of it, as it explains the "you are your character" concept of LARPing tolerably well, as long as you're clear on, say, what a "character" means in this context.

After this essay and the "Only Rules That Matter" bit, there's a tolerably good explanation of the difference between White Wolf vampires and the vampires of fiction and myth. It's only problem is it sets out all the myths, true and false (from a White Wolf Perspective), about vampires in bold type, without saying that they're not all true at first. It's a touch surprising and jarring (again, trying to imagine myself unfamiliar with White Wolf vampires) after a couple of paragraphs will a bold statement and an explanation of that statement ("Vampires are immortal" and "Vampires require the blood of the living to survive") to have a bold statement and then the refutation of that statement ("Vampires are repelled by garlic and running water" is false in White Wolf's universe). In fact, if I had just skimmed this section, reading the first couple bold bits and their explanations, and then just the bold bits for the rest, I could have easily gotten an incorrect impression about how Vampires work in the World of Darkness. This is bad even for the experienced roleplayer being introduced to Vampire and the LARP.

After this is, arguably, the best part of the book. In a few short pages, the Embrace (becoming a vampire) is explained, as well as White Wolf's mythology surrounding vampires and their actions throughout the ages, clearly and concisely explaining Antediluvians, the Jyhad, the Traditions, the Camarilla, the Sabbat, the 13 Clans, and other concepts specific to White Wolf's world. These six little pages make the book salvageable as a tool, especially since it's free. They're excellent for introducing a new roleplayer to the background, and I don't imagine anyone getting confused by any of it, though I can imagine wanting a little more explanation. If I were to nit-pick, I would say it would be nice to know how the average, Camarilla vampire "lives" in the modern days, a sort of "slice of undeath" thing, but that's really a personal preference. All the basics are covered here, in just enough detail.

The next section, which goes over character creation, disciplines (vampiric powers), and basic mechanics, is where things begin to seriously begin to go south. It uses a simplified version of the MET rules, but in my opinion, for a new roleplayer, it's all in the wrong order. The highly dense Disciplines section (9 pages out of 32) talks a lot about Social Challenges and so on, but Challenges are not explained until much, much later, on page 28! Now, someone who's roleplayed before is better off here; rulebooks that require you to skip around, and use concepts before they're explained, are unfortunately almost a tradition in roleplaying. Heck, as an experienced roleplayer, I still get confused when books do that, and I hate having to hunt for a term that the author should have introduced before using. Also, the Disciplines refer to things not in the book; for example, one of the Tremere disciplines allow one to determine Generation, but Generation is a term not used in this book, which simplifies by making all PCs 13th Generation Neonates, without mentioning the Generation part. Also, there formatting of the section on Blood, Health, and Damage is such that it looks like it's part of the last Discipline listed, and I almost missed that section because of it; a minor glitch when one is used to the errors that crop up in RPGs, but a potentially serious problem if this is the first roleplaying material someone is exposed to. "Spend Blood to use this power? But where does it talk about that? Let's go play the Buffy board game instead."

All of the bases are covered in the back of the book, including basic mechanics, and are explained tolerably well, once you know where to look. (And let's face it, MET's rock-paper-scissors mechanics aren't that complicated to begin with.) All in all, I would have put the rules in the exact reverse order the author put them in, explaining everything and then explaining character generation.

One scant page is given to scenario suggestions (one-paragraph adventure seeds) and then the book ends. I would have rather they'd left out the adventure seeds and used that page to extend the essay on roleplaying, or for white space to better organize the rules section.

So, to sum up: As a handout for a Vampire game, I give the pamphlet a B-, mostly because it's free. As an introduction to roleplaying, I give it a C-; it's free, and it covers everything, but it's confusing. And that grade is also mostly because it's free. There are better introductions to role-playing available on the Internet, and they're free too.