The Pieces of Gestalt

Imagine a world in which personifications of concepts — Archetypes such as Winter, Death, and Determination — existed, having sprung to life in 1989.  Now imagine that, in this world, a fairly large number of these personifications, these living symbols, chose to put on colorful costumes and become superheroes and supervillains.  That’s the high concept of Scott Bennie’s campaign setting Gestalt: the Hero Within, which I was able to review thanks to Ed Healy of Atomic Array.

In some ways, this is not such a stretch for a superhero game.  As Bennie writes in his introduction to the first chapter, “[a]ll fiction deals in archetypes, [and] comic books apply these symbols more consciously than other fictional forms.”  The statement might be open for debate, but clearly comic books deal with archetypes.  Bennie intends for Gestalt to go one step further, though:  the characters are not making use of those archetypes; instead, the characters are the archetypes.  The Gestalt (Bennie’s name for such a living symbol) of Winter might have cold and ice powers, but he’s not just a guy with cold and ice powers — he’s a living representation of Winter.  The Gestalt of Murder isn’t just a common serial killer, or even an uncommon one — he’s Murder personified.

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Review: Player’s Handbook 2

The Player’s Handbook 2 has been out for a week or so now, with sneak previews running about a week before that in several roleplaying blogs, but I’ve got some musings about where it takes the game.  Before that, though, I offer my brief review:  It’s partly silly and mostly good.  Here’s a more specific rundown:

It’s got 5 new races, 8 new classes, and a bunch of new feats, magic items, rituals, and epic destinies.  (It’s also got a couple pages of errata, notably the new Stealth rules, but that’s not really the focus here.)  The classes include two divine, two arcane, and four primal, and, at least at first read, seem to compare reasonably to those in the first PHB, being neither too much stronger nor too much weaker in general.  The races are a mixed bag.  The content as a whole is a mix of new material and updated versions of old favorites.

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I Watch the Watchmen

Watched, rather.  And it was good.  Some spoilers below, though I’m not sure whether spoilers really apply to movies based on comics published more than two decades ago.

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Review: Imperium Chronicles

And now for something completely different.

A couple of months ago, I was given a copy of the Imperium Chronicles Basic Rules, along with a request that I review it.  After my experience with Dread, I was determined to play a session or two before offering any opinions.  Turns out it’s a busy time of year, but we’ve finally completed a short plot, so here’s my belated review.

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Review: Manual of the Planes

Back in my first-edition days, I really loved the Manual of the Planes.  I’m not entirely sure why, because I rarely staged any interplanar adventures at the time.  The odd trip to the Abyss, sure, but nothing I really needed that book for.  And it was a book stuffed full of small print detailing such regions as the Quasi- and Para-Elemental Planes of Dust or Vacuum.  I’m not sure I’ve ever spoken to anyone who used the Plane of Vacuum in a game.  But something about that book fascinated me.

Now the fourth-edition Manual of the Planes is out.  I’d planned to take a wait-and-see approach, but somehow I found myself ordering this one, too.  I’m still not sure how much of it I’ll use — I already had my own take on the 4e cosmology worked out for my game.  Yet I enjoyed reading it.

It’s pretty perverse, I guess.  Anyway, the review.

Manual of the Planes is a 160-page book, like Martial Power.  It feels too short — it could probably have used twice as many pages and hardly touched on everything, though.  With a subject this vast, with this many possibilities, it’s almost bound to feel too short, so I’ll try not to hold that against it too much.  Production values seem pretty good as far as I can tell, and its layout, font, and so forth are still hewing close to that of the core books.  I would like to commend whoever chose its cover, which is clearly a nod to the cover of that first-edition Manual I knew and loved.

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