artesia well

It's been interesting reading Artesia the role-playing game which a friend lent me recently. Based on the comic of the same name, it has one of the things I am a sucker for – a comprehensive history which blends the cosmology with history. Not only does this give incredible depth to a campaign. ( I get maudling here; move along. ) Anyway the advantage of such a nice history is the possibility of playing mini-campaigns in each of the major eras in history simultaneously with the main campaign in the present. A sort of past-lives pastiche. I think it would be interesting, and something I've wanted to do since reading Nephilim. Anyway the rules are a pretty comprehensive version of the Fuzion system, with life-paths and everything. The magic looks interesting too, with a nice mixture of folk lore (peasant charms), hermetic lore (sorcery), and occult lore (sorcery using the darker aspects of existence), in addition to alchemy and potion-making, although I've yet to really look at the actual system, it looks quite workable. And the artwork is quite good, as you would expect from something sourced from a comic, although most seem set-pieces rather than extracts from the comic. (although the female armour seems to have a particular problem around the hips; I mean, while the gap between the scale mini-skirt and thigh-high steel leggings is distracting, it is probably less so to someone with whom you are fighting). All in all, a very high quality production. Which means I've probably got another contender for something to think about doing.