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4.0 out of 5 stars
a different slice of roleplaying the supernatural, 6 Nov 2003
By A Customer
Palladium are a roleplaying game manufacturer that seem to have a love-hate relationship with gamers at large- many simply dismiss their products as exercises in big guns, whilst ignoring the wealth of creativity and promotion of communication and imagination within all of them. BtS tends to ignore the big-guns issue altogether and has enormous potential and resources for the referee.BtS is a big book and contains a wealth of information, it is also complete as bought: having to the best of my knowledge only one supplement published for it (Boxed Nightmares, a book of scenarios and hints on running the game). The premise of the game is the typical one that the player characters are investiators into the supernatural in one form or another- which is of course a tangible and very real threat in the game world. The characters are generally all psychic in one form or another: there are several variants, from healers and sensitives to the odd psi-mechanics and all-purpose latent psychics. These are all dealt with in the palladium house system as character classes that level-up to improve. Each class is very different from the others providing a wealth of abilities to use in the game. The game system is palladium's house rules: fast moving, easily customised and relatively realistic (especially when combined with elements of their Contemporary Weapons book). Psi powers are dealt with in a convinving fashion that mirror the stories of such things in the real world: if a story exists in a collection of `mysterious world' type events then this game will be able to reproduce it. Magic is similar, using a modified form of Palladium's magic that emphasises ritual and preparation. No set magical beliefs or practices are detailed as they are assumed to be peripheral to the enchantments themselves- any such detail can be researched or added by the gamemaster when writing scenarios. Characters are considerably weaker than in most palladium games, which generally emulate comic books in one form or another. The big advantage these people have is not their ability to deliver a flying reverse turning kick, but to actually be able to see those invisible entities, or psionically track horror across a city. Caution is a must, although the lethality factor is not as great as Call of Cthulhu- characters in BtS can get in a scrape and live to fight another day, if they're lucky. The game has a wealth of imaginative background material, much of it drawn from real-world places and events. All of this is nicely presented and a great kick-start to creating adventures. A number of supernatural horrors are presented ranging from the small and horrible (parasitic brain-eating worms), to the traditional (zombies and vampires) to the bizarre (boschala, who when the creatures meet meld into one bigger multi-faceted thing until they reach critical mass and explode into two new boschala!). All of which easily form a scenario in their own right. Guidelines to presenting the game abound and emphasise it is more about atmosphere and implication than out and out carnage (although it will happily run either sort of horror). The rules also include a variant system for running hapless `victims' as seen in the majority of horror movies- ideal for running comedy scooby doo games! Overall this is a superb game that I have run for many years in conjunction with Cthulhu- the two are an excellent complement to each other, the latter being grossly nihilistic and oppressive and BtS offering a little more variety and being more cinematic. The game is fast moving, highly malleable and easily run in any number of styles- an excellent alternate horror game for those who are fed up of continually having charcaters lose their marbles, or don't want to play depressed undead goths lurking on street corners: a great, fun RPG of horror.
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