[RPG]: World of Darkness: Asylum, reviewed by C.W.Richeson (5/5)

[RPGnet Reviews]

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13269.phtml

Christopher W. Richeson's Summary:

If you want to incorporate an asylum into your <I>World of Darkness</I> Chronicle, or start a new one focused around an asylum, then you can't ask for a better resource than <I>Asylum</I>.

Go to the full review (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13269.phtml) for more information.

[Wood]

Thanks for the kind words, Christopher.

Am especially pleased you liked some of my bits (History of Bishopsgate; Girl From the Snow).

I actually found it terribly hard to write, since the book is very US-centric. I think at the time I decided that if I was going to write a history chapter, there was going to have to be something people could do with that stuff. A lot of RPG books have these fascinating setting histories, but don't address how that impacts the game.

Having said that, I thought that the whole Ancient Indian Burial Mounds Full of Evil thing was far too Stephen King, but then I thought, oh, sod it.

George Holochwost (last seen on Belial's Brood) wrote the stuff about the modern asylum, and drew the map. He deserves props for that.

Oh, and you may be interested to know that the Girl From the Snow was a homage to a song by the Arcade Fire (my other sections in ch4 were, if I remember right "The Quiet Man" and Charles Dexter Ward "homage" "The Man With the Damaged Face").


Now if I can only get the Wolf to send me my copies, so I can actually see how the book turned out.

[C.W.Richeson]

Interesting stuff, Wood, thanks for sharing! I'm always interested to hear about which authors worked on which part of the book and what their inspirations were.

[capnzapp]

This sounds interesting, so thanks for the review! :)

However, what I'm not clear on is how much adventure there really is? Is it adventure seeds only or complete scenarios?

Also, you say the supernatural connection isn't very strong. That's not necessarily a negative in my book! :)

But. If I were to ask you to judge how easy it would be to use this book outside of the vampires and werewolf setting - say, a Call of Cthulhu campaign (set in the modern time-frame, of course) - what would you say to that?

regards,
CapnZapp

[Wood]

This sounds interesting, so thanks for the review! :)

However, what I'm not clear on is how much adventure there really is? Is it adventure seeds only or complete scenarios?Chapter 3 has lots of seeds. I just looked at my draft, actually, and I think I got in something like fifty in my section alone. Chapter 4 has some more developed stuff, but not actual, structured scenarios, more detailed situations with guidelines on how to turn them into adventures.


But. If I were to ask you to judge how easy it would be to use this book outside of the vampires and werewolf setting - say, a Call of Cthulhu campaign (set in the modern time-frame, of course) - what would you say to that?

I cut my teeth on Call of Cthulhu. At least one of the things I wrote in this book is based directly on a Lovecraft story. A lot of the themes in Asylum are quintessentially Lovecraftian. And CWR is right - the main crossover with the supernatural characters games is in the appendix. Most of it suits Call of Cthulhu investigators down to the ground.

[C.W.Richeson]

Thanks, CapnZapp!

However, what I'm not clear on is how much adventure there really is? Is it adventure seeds only or complete scenarios?

It's more like a setting book. It has many, many adventure seeds but it's not a module and does not include an adventure.


But. If I were to ask you to judge how easy it would be to use this book outside of the vampires and werewolf setting - say, a Call of Cthulhu campaign (set in the modern time-frame, of course) - what would you say to that?


Obviously the mechanics portion of the book is tied to the World of Darkness system, and the Appendix focuses on World of Darkness-specific monsters. Other than that, there's only the occasional nod to any World of Darkness monsters. Since it was built with mortal characters in mind, I think it would work quite well with any other game. It's definitely a setting book first and World of Darkness supplement second.

[Crothian]

Great Review!!

I'm really liking this book. I'm using it with my Changeling the Dreaming game and it seems to work well for that.

[committed hero]

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