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Review: Tribes of Mother Night |  |
My opinions of Tribes of Mother Night, by Better Mousetrap Games.
I was pretty excited about getting to read through Tribes of Mother Night, by Better Mousetrap Games. The setting sounded interesting, and it used the F20 System, a variation of the d20 System that I wasn't familiar with. That said, I'll tell you a little bit about Tribes of Mother Night. It's a fantasy setting, complete with magic and monsters, and revolves around the interactions between two peoples, the Haeloti and the Ehkaet. The Haeloti are a numerous people, and are named after Haelot, the sun god; they more-or-less run things, in one fashion or another. The Ehkaet, by contrast, are a nomadic people who have the unique ability to assume animal form. The two groups aren't overly fond of each other (and, beyond that, Haeloti of different countries tend not to be overly fond of each other), and that's where the conflict comes in.
As I've said, it's an interesting-sounding setting; however, the book, itself, doesn't really do justice to what it could have been. For one thing, the text (at least, so far as the setting, itself, is concerned) is peppered with clichés, spelling errors, and muddy language, and generally reads as if it were written by a middle-school student who didn't bother to have it proofread or edited. In addition, the text often jumps from subject to subject without any kind of transition, and the author doesn't even break the text up into chapters (to be fair, there is a fairly exhaustive table of contents). Not only that, but much, much more could have been done to flesh the setting out. As it is, the Ehkaet are very clearly the misunderstood, downtrodden protagonists, while the Haeloti are the authoritarian, corrupt, and prejudice-ruled bad guys. It's interesting that, for a game that uses prejudice as a central theme, so many stereotypes permeate the setting. All of these things combine to make a rather unprofessional-seeming product that isn't exactly easy to digest, or really particularly interesting to read.
Worth mentioning, also, is the section dealing with the F20 System, itself. I found no egregious flaws with the system, though it does seem as though some skills are far more useful than others, even though they all cost the same number of Option Points to purchase (Running, for example, seems far more widely applicable than Art Appreciation). What really struck me about this section of the text, however, was the fact that the writing was so much better, and that there seemed to be a number of references to things found only in modern-day Earth, not in a low-tech fantasy setting. There were numerous references to concepts like the Olympics, SWAT officers, the CIA, and even Wal-Mart, and these seemed pretty anachronistic given the setting. Further, this is the only fantasy setting I've seen in which weapons like brass knuckles and police batons are given stats. In short, it seems as though the entire section on the F20 System was lifted from another text and pasted whole cloth into Tribes of Mother Night, with very little consideration given to internal consistency (though, thankfully, there were no modern firearms on the weapons list).
What I Liked: The F20 System seems interesting and somewhat flexible, though far more complex than the standard d20 System. In addition, the core concepts of the setting, itself, have a fair amount of potential.
What I Didn't Like: Sadly, that potential is never realized. Far more effort is put into detailing the world's creation myth than into detailing the state of the world and its peoples. The writing is some of the least professional I've seen in a published product, and the entire text lacks any real degree of polish.
