Brujería: códice de misterios

WitchCraft RPG

by C.J. Carella

Eden's first release is the long-awaited Mystery Codex, a sourcebook detailing new information on Covenants, new Invocations and Gifted powers, and new supernatural threats. The martial artists of the Secret Dragons, and the not-quite human Pariahs are presented. Rules are also provided for playing the Relentless Dead, Phantasms and Vampires as characters.

Credits:
C.J. Carella - Author/Designer
John M. Kahane - Additional Writing and Development
M. Alexander Jurkat - Additional Writing and Development/Editorial Director
John M. Kahane - Rules Editor and Playtest Coordinator/Copy Editing/Proofreading
Scott Maxwell - Copy Editing
George Vasilakos - Cover Artist/Design and Layout
Fred Hooper - Interior Artist
Heather J. McKinney - Interior Artist
rk post - Interior Artist
Dan Smith - Interior Artist

Genres: Role Playing Games, Fantasy, Urban Fantasy

224 pages, Paperback

First published May 5, 1999

About the author

C.J. discovered his obsession with making up crap and writing it down at the age of 6, when he wrote his first short story, back in the days when the Cold War was still on and the only mobile devices were the wrist watch and the walkie-talkie. He's been making up crap and writing it down for fun and profit ever since.

Reviews

[Timothy Pitkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cool new playable additions like I love the idea of playing a ghost which I don't think many games do so it is really cool. It also adds in other traditional horror theme player options like Vampire to play as.

[Max · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book in hope that it would increase my interest in WitchCraft, and instead it's pretty much cemented my decision to not use this game. Annoyingly, a fair bit of the material here is redundant to the core book I have, since it serves to update or expand on the first edition rules. Further, a lot of the metaphysics and character types weren't that interesting to me. I honestly don't really get the ideas behind the Phantasm (ghost that can briefly take on a physical form) or Relentless Dead (nearly unkillable undead monster) character concepts. I do get Vampyres, of course, but these are largely psychic vampires, which isn't my preferred form. There were a few interesting things about them, but overall I prefer the way White Wolf handles them. The Covenants had some potentially interesting aspects to them. The Storm Dragons felt a bit generic, and the text doesn't give me a good idea of how the House of Thanatos differs from the Necromancer group in the core book. On the other hand, the Iscariot's theme of redemption for past misdeeds is pretty cool, though the discussion of suicide is pretty weird, bordering on gross. The Pariahs and their associated power set are definitely the most interesting part of this book. I'm tempted to steal the concept to use in some other urban fantasy setting/system. Speaking of powers, I continue to be disappointed by the fact that everything other than magic gets shortchanged. The Storm Dragon mystic kung fu and Pariah powers only get a handful of pages each, even though the latter especially is a fascinating concept. Some of the stuff about the various realms of the dead was kinda interesting, but it just makes me want to check out Wraith. All in all, while the Unisystem seems to be perfectly functional, after reading the core book and the first supplement, I just can't say that I'm sold on WitchCraft's setting or system enough to actually ever use it, especially to run a game.