Witchcraft

CJ Carella's WitchCraft is now in its second incarnation, having burned up one of its nine lives on a failed foray from Myrmidon Press in 1996. It has been resurrected by Eden Studios, who seems to be competing with Atlas as the Company Who Breathes New Life Into Games Previously Dead. It seems to fill a niche as a hipper alternative to White Wolf's overburdened World of Darkness, which it fulfills quite well--how viable that niche is for the game may be another story.

First things first: For those who own the first edition, the revised Eden Studios WitchCraft, 2nd Edition main rulebook corrects typos, clarifies rules, smoothes the organization of the book, and adds several new features, including an index, a detailed table of contents, and appendices. Though there are a smattering of new rules, if you own the book already you should be fine.

Physically, the book is smaller than most 8 1/2" by 11" gaming books, with a good softcover illustration and uniformly decent layout throughout (though the cursive font for the game fiction is quite difficult, and there is far too much of it). It also makes one ask how a book that is smaller and paperback can go for $28.00 a copy? RPG prices have been rising, and most publishers have been pointing at increasing public demand for coffeetable-style art production quality--what's the excuse for WitchCraft, which has none of these qualities?

Being an inquisitive sort, I wrote to Eden and asked them. I got back an extremely well-written response that this book is competitively priced when compared with other small-press publications, especially considering WitchCraft's 160,000 word count. Looking at their list, I'm forced to concede that they're right--but looking overt WitchCraft some more I'm even more confused about the choice to go with an irregularly sized format. Didn't this save them money? If it did not, why did they do it? I have no answers. Also, a lot of those 160,000 words are taken up with game fiction, which I consider a blight on the industry and very poor for this book in particular.

Consider its digest size, this game should be cheaper than most, and make it part of its appeal. Priced at $18 it would be much easier to give a good review to the work based on content alone. Great game or not, publishers need to be held accountable by their public, and $28.00 is over the line for this particular product.

WitchCraft uses the "Unisystem" for task resolution, a fairly standard Skill + Attribute system, rolling a d10 for randomization--it will be very familiar to White Wolf players. Rolling a 10 or a 1 lets you add or subtract dice exponentially--very similar to 7th Sea though this also serves as the "botch" mechanic on a 1, which works a lot better than the World of Darkness game systems.

Unisystem makes a lot of hay about the fact that the game can be played diceless, using cards or just storytelling to work out results, but the reality is a bit disappointing: the card mechanic gets one page of exposition and is basically a warmed over version of Castle Falkenstein with no proper accounting for face cards--drawing one generates either a 1 or 10 result, so games played with this mechanic become very botch-filled rapidly. The narrative system is even briefer, and basically tells GMs to use the attributes to see who won, then adjust to taste. Eden, I can do that with any game--it's nice to include, but don't then claim that the Unisystem is an all-in-one system with or without dice.

This all sounds very critical, but aside from the claims of universality the game's system seems to be quite competent, if not inspired. The combats I played out seemed to work well, and the task system is fairly invisible in play. If you've done White Wolf, you won't have a problem--it's quite clean and easy to use.

It is unusual for me to address a game's rule system before its setting; with WitchCraft it makes sense, because I feel like I've seen this setting before. It's a modern day setting where players are witches, bast (cat shape-shifting people), spirits or other occult beings living beneath the surface of our normal life. Further, you're a member of an organization, the specific details of which you will be able to read about in a series of upcoming guidebooks. I know: it sounds like the World of Darkness from Vampire, Mage, et al. This can be forgiven, of course, if the groups involved are sufficiently inventive enough, and break or preconceptions about the occult the way Unknown Armies does in an overt way, or subvert them like Nephilim did.

WitchCraft does neither-- you can be a Wicce, or "good pagan person", a Sentinel or "bad Church-loving type", a Solitaire or "independent, be-what-you-want type" and so on. Even the groups that show some invention like the Cabal of Psyche don't have the juiciness of the sects in Vampire or Ars Magica--they just seem bland. Wile WitchCraft does a great job of cataloging all the obvious choices, it leaves behind any kind of real inventiveness--by giving people exactly what they were asking for, it fails to innovate.

The big metaplot concern in WitchCraft is the Time of the Reckoning, as the supernatural forces in the world are building and racing toward--so more demons, more Gifted and more magic is rushing into the world, making it harder and harder to hide the supernatural. Yes, this does sound a bit like the Masquerade from Vampire, but let it pass. One neat element I did enjoy is that mundane hatred 'jams' magic, but fear does not--explaining why witches are forced to hide, and giving more power to the mundanes in the setting, something the World of Darkness never does.

Finally, I have to comment on the "chicken soup" style of world design used here. If WitchCraft is intended to be an alternative to the World of Darkness, it makes sense for them to contain a great deal of variety in the setting, but make compelling design choices. Having "Mad Gods" in the setting that are so obviously poor imitations of the Lovecraftian Cthulhu mythos doesn't help, and a lot of the setting adheres to the "that's good...add that to the game" mentality.

The Verdict

If you can't stand White Wolf's World of Darkness but wish to play in a modern-day occult game that is aimed at covering all the themes, WitchCraft is a great place to start. But with an expensive price tag for ho-hum production values and a real absence of fresh ideas, I suspect many gamers would be able to cobble something together for themselves that works better. It remains to be seen if the supplements and other materials put out for WitchCraft improve on this mediocre rule book...and if occult fans will have the incentive to buy them.