Great review, I had been a little bit aware of this book but thought it was only spells, will check it out. Also always good to see fear and hunger references.
As a Call of Cthulhu Veteran that one plot line you mentioned around 6:20 is 100% a plot I could see. You'd definitely see it in Pulp Cthulhu for sure. I could see myself picking this up for a dcc horror one shot too. I definitely will put this on my list of books to look into.
I, sadly, cannot recommend this book. There are a couple of cool spells, sure. But way too often it's just flavor, and no substance. And they have a weird policy where they don't allow you to buy PDF only version if you are in Europe, which feels very cashgrabby. And I'm saying this from perspective of someone who was looking for "scary, dangerous, costly magic" system for my into the odd hack
@@wasabiburger3047 yeah, it's odd. And the contents are definitely more interesting for DMs than players, as most spells that are consistently useful essentially deal damage, but do so with some fucked up flavor. And I love that flavor, but mechanically it's not that interesting, or too niche. I'm still looking for a magic system and spellbook that's REALLY interesting to play with.
It is a purposefully vibe heavy over mechanics in the vein of Lost Page's other works i.e. Wonders and Wickedness. The PDF thing I'm pretty certain is related to some weird VATs thing but I know Paolo Greco has worked with people on this to try meet folks in the middle on these. Regardless I'm sorry it did not fit your table and I hope you do find something that you enjoy!
Hi, we now sell PDFs to the EU. We did not in the past because tax compliance with EU Digital Service regulations is complicated and expensive. Now that we sell PDFs to the EU we are overall losing money from EU PDF sales because of compliance expenses. Regarding the "flavour, no substance": writing a system agnostic book has its challenges. But all the spells have a very specific effect. It is not numeric, but it is concrete, even if it "merely" changes the narrative.
@@Tsojcanth wow, thanks! I did not expect reply from anyone involved. I will say - I think the spells are difficult to use in game (as in - they're very niche, most of them anyways). The items and monsters I found to be the coolest part personally.
Academics will see you casting a ritual and eating about 4Kgs of skin and say "His knowledge is unearned"
fr, it's the one reason I didn't go to uni
Great review, I had been a little bit aware of this book but thought it was only spells, will check it out. Also always good to see fear and hunger references.
I recently started playing the second one on stream and it makes me want to bang my head on a wall but it's weirdly fun. I need to get back to it lol
@@wasabiburger3047 Great game, once you learn some of the ways to get more powerful and things start to click into place it feels so good
6:12 There's nothing more arcane and occult than academic integrity
As a Call of Cthulhu Veteran that one plot line you mentioned around 6:20 is 100% a plot I could see. You'd definitely see it in Pulp Cthulhu for sure. I could see myself picking this up for a dcc horror one shot too. I definitely will put this on my list of books to look into.
It would work great in Pulp Cthulu, the spell flavor texts are purposefully written in a vaguely 1880-1920 type time.
Oooh, this book is curiously interesting
Thanks for the great review
I, sadly, cannot recommend this book. There are a couple of cool spells, sure. But way too often it's just flavor, and no substance. And they have a weird policy where they don't allow you to buy PDF only version if you are in Europe, which feels very cashgrabby. And I'm saying this from perspective of someone who was looking for "scary, dangerous, costly magic" system for my into the odd hack
Wow that PDF thing sounds super weird. What a weird choice.
@@wasabiburger3047 yeah, it's odd. And the contents are definitely more interesting for DMs than players, as most spells that are consistently useful essentially deal damage, but do so with some fucked up flavor. And I love that flavor, but mechanically it's not that interesting, or too niche. I'm still looking for a magic system and spellbook that's REALLY interesting to play with.
It is a purposefully vibe heavy over mechanics in the vein of Lost Page's other works i.e. Wonders and Wickedness. The PDF thing I'm pretty certain is related to some weird VATs thing but I know Paolo Greco has worked with people on this to try meet folks in the middle on these. Regardless I'm sorry it did not fit your table and I hope you do find something that you enjoy!
Hi, we now sell PDFs to the EU. We did not in the past because tax compliance with EU Digital Service regulations is complicated and expensive. Now that we sell PDFs to the EU we are overall losing money from EU PDF sales because of compliance expenses.
Regarding the "flavour, no substance": writing a system agnostic book has its challenges. But all the spells have a very specific effect. It is not numeric, but it is concrete, even if it "merely" changes the narrative.
@@Tsojcanth wow, thanks! I did not expect reply from anyone involved.
I will say - I think the spells are difficult to use in game (as in - they're very niche, most of them anyways). The items and monsters I found to be the coolest part personally.
Is this it's own rpg, or is this a system agnostic supplement?? Asking because I haven't heard of it before
system agnostic supplement
It is also related to the agnostic spell casting system used in Lost Pages’s other works but can be adapted to pretty much any d20-type system easily