A Quick Look at a Big Book: The Hidden Isle

 

Hot on the heels of my previous review (of the down and dirty game of criminals, Swyvers) comes another look at an even bigger book! This time, the tarot-based Forged in the Dark game The Hidden Isle with design and writing by Daniel Adams and James Patton, and art by Eliot Baum and Viv Tanner, published by the Austrian Causa Creations under their Sefirot brand. Evolved from the background lore of their previous board game offering, Sefirot, the game revolves around around Agents from the fictional Dioscoria, the titular Hidden Isle. The book is 190 pages of content, roughly A4 sized, and full of beautiful art.

Set in what is ostensibly our real world with a dash of magic (inspired by the real beliefs of people at the time) on top, players take the role of agents sent by the Dioscorian government to meddle in the affairs of the rest of the world. Dioscoria itself is presented as a bit of an imperfect utopia: a multicultural haven of enlightenment and tolerance in an otherwise cruel and oppressive world, evoking thoughts of D&D's Radiant Citadel. I can imagine that this is an appealing fantasy for people more oppressed than myself, but it skews a little bit too far into saccharine wish-fulfilment for my tastes, even as it includes references to a secret cabal (The Cabinet of Extremis) breaking the rules of Dioscoria for its own good (reminiscent of Star Trek's Section 31). The game's fiction justifies Dioscoria's covert interventionism through the fact that it is much more progressive than the rest of the world, and can therefore do whatever it wants to promote its ideals. I am sure that this is written with the best of intentions, but the idea of interfering in other societies just because you feel that you are more enlightened than them always balances on the edge of feeling a little iffy for me. This is one of a couple of tonal issues that the game hasn't quite squared: Dioscorian values are very strongly against killing, using it only as a last resort, and the game offers optional rules for feeling bad about your killings after the mission, and yet most classes have explicitly murderous abilities, and the description of the Hunter class in particular begins with "Hunters do not fight their prey: they simply kill it." That doesn't really feel like it matches up with the general guideline that "agents should not stoop to murder or causing serious injury except as a last resort," which is provided in the game's introduction. It feels like there is some internal discord in the concept of Dioscoria: the game wants to present them as unambiguously the good guy, and a haven for all oppressed identities, and at the same time inject a little bit of shades of grey. Rather than trying to have their cake and eat it too, I think the game's setting would have benefited from choosing either or: take the moral high ground, or let a little bit more of the world's dirt into Dioscoria.

Okay, that's enough griping for now about a book that I actually really liked. Possibly the most excited I have been by reading a big book since The Worm (I probably should have led with that, but I can do whatever I want), coincidentally another big book RPG powered by Tarot. The book is full of gorgeous art, but the thing that has truly won me over is the challenge resolution system. Based in the Forged in the Dark framework, but substituting the dice for tarot cards, a higher skill level or favourable circumstance lets you draw more cards to oppose the GM's (here called Seer) draw, with the seer drawing more cards for more difficult challenges. Both parties choose which of the drawn cards to play, with the higher valued card winning the challenge, except for the twist that the suit associated with the skill being used is the trump, and thus beats all other suits. A nifty side effect here is that limited amount of "dice-fudging" is actually fully sanctioned here: there is no rule that says that the player or GM has to choose their strongest card.

This is coupled with a cool set of classes, each with a flavourful set of abilities. Chunky enough to feel satisfying, yet not overwhelmingly complex (though it would have been nice to have a character sheet in the book itself, there were many references to it, but I had to download one to see what was going on). Perhaps this mimics Blades in the Dark: I should probably get around to actually reading that, so I am not reduced to guesswork about its contents. The characters also have vices, virtues, burdens, and ideals, which can all be invoked in play for benefits. I like this mechanical incentive to lean into role-playing your character traits. Play is structured into very distinct phases: a pre-mission downtime, a divinatory tarot draw, the actual mission, and a post-mission evaluation and XP award. Some of this feels very prescriptive and board-gamey, perhaps betraying the designers previous experience? I'm not sure how I feel about it, as I imagine I would prefer a more freeform roleplaying experience, but I will withhold judgement until I have actually tried it. One thing I do feel this framework lacks is guidance for what to do if a mission runs too long, and has to be broken up into multiple sessions. The fiction of the downtime phase relies on the Agents being back in Dioscoria, and the divination serves both as a "let's get in the game zone" ritual, as well as a mechanical purpose by awarding Vision cards (representing divinatory premonitions that the players can use, further leaning into the symbolism of tarot). It would therefore feel wrong to entirely skip this phase. I am sure that I could figure something out, but suggestions would have been appreciated. The rules also offer GM-less and solo modes, and while the solo mode does have special rules taking into account the fact that you are only a single agent rather than a group (and the fictional conceit that you are working alone because you are working for The Cabinet of Extremis), the advice for the GM-less mode is largely that you should just share the usual GM duties, and the solo mode has a series of spark tables and guidelines for using them. I am sure this works well for seasoned solo-gamers, but for novices, I would probably start my solo gaming careers somewhere with a bit more scaffolding.

  The rules are followed by roughly 65 pages of setting information - set in the real world "plus change", 25 pages are dedicated to describing Dioscoria, with the remaining 40 covering five great cities of the era (the game is explicitly set in 1562), London, Lisbon, Venice, Konstantiniyye (Constantinople/Istanbul), and Qazvin. With many descriptions of the various districts and points of interest on the island of Dioscoria, it would have been nice to have an annotated map in the addition to the (beautiful) artistic one currently in the book. The rest of the cities are real, so the book presents several links to websites for resources regarding each of these. This is very useful, even if I personally don't like the stylistic choice of putting links in a physical book, but I worry that these links will not work in perpetuity, and not being hosted by the game's authors, there is nothing they can do about it. The city descriptions are good, offering a nice set of detail to set adventures there, but to me, I think each could have been improved by a handful of example NPCs that the characters could meet, the closest thing being a selection of common and important figures in the cities, as well as a list of common names (for which separating them by gender would have been useful for the cultures less familiar to me).

Finally, the book contains a short bestiary, as well as a set of tables and guides to help interpret tarot draws. I really appreciate the latter, as it helps lean into the symbolism of the tarot cards, giving them utility beyond a simple dice or poker card replacement. You could probably port a bunch of this into The Worm, if you would be so inclined. 

All in all, I really liked reading this book, and I am excited to try out its systems. I think this review may come off more negative than intended, because in reality, I think the bones of the system seem extremely cool. I don't think it would be a particularly interesting read if I just said that over and over, though. My feelings after reading this are very positive, and even if I don't end up actually playing it anytime soon, I know I will be hacking it and borrowing its mechanics.