Witch: Fated Soul 2e (Part 1)

Coming back from the afterlife stronger

Witch: Fated Souls is a game by Steffie de Vaan and Elizabeth Chaipraditku published by Angry Hamster Publishing. It benefited from a crowdfunding campaign.

1. Every Individual Component Is The Best

In our analysis, we consider every individual artistic element of a game the best; we don’t find bad or good useful. So, the Split/Party framework assumes it is the best art, best layout, best writing, best design. This is an acknowledgment that nobody makes “bad” art on purpose; any given element is the best art that could have been produced at that point, restricted by its material conditions and constraints of time and effort. This is also because saying something is good/bad art is the most useless criticism that can be given. In practical terms, this section is for things we will not touch on the review but merit acknowledgment.

Lhuzie

It is amazing how polished and gorgeous the second edition of Witch: Fated Soul is compared with the original edition, especially considering the material conditions allowed by their modest Kickstarter performance. Outstanding book all-around.

If you been reading me for any amount of time, you will know that I hate TTRPG Funko Pops. Either literal TTRPGs that are glorified TTRPG-Shaped Funko Pops, or TTRPGs that are sold on vibes and gimmicky, cheap, plastic “accessories”. As such, it was a welcomed surprise at how good the accessories of Witch: Fated Souls are. You get three physical representations of one of the three artifacts that players pick at character creation: a notebook that can stand as the grimoire that stores all learned magics, a Spirit Board to connect with other realms and witches, and a divinatory deck of cards. The last one, in particular, also comes with a zine and extra DIY cards, serving as a “mini-expansion” for the game. It was nice to find these accessories are as delightful as a helpful addition to my tables.

Brad

Witch 2e is a clean and focused layout and art direction that accomplishes being easily read and readable. It is a plain, clean, workhorse of a design philosophy.

2. Meet The Game At The Level It Is At

Each game comes with certain expectations and tone. To properly break it down, we have to meet the game at the level it is: not lament its choice of premise and wish it was something else, nor resent for not conforming with our politics, not letting “missed opportunities” stand in our way of applying the critical framework relentlessly. It also includes not working with the game as marketed or how it exists in our desires, but as it is.

Lhuzie 

The game is well-laid out and compact. It is easy to transport and consult, quite well organized and easy to read.

The game centers around witchcraft and Faustian deals with demons. Furthermore, there may be all sorts of nasty bargaining and self-destructive bargaining that happen over the course of the tug-of-war with your demon. The game has a specific tool for safety and comfort that excels at being something that integrates flawlessly with the normal procedures of playing Witch: Fated Souls.

Brad

Witch 2e has a wonderfully done internal safety tool mechanism as well as clear concise warning as to it’s nature.

3. Identify What The Game Says It Is About

Games are about things. Usually. Mostly. That is often the same thing they market themselves as. This often means to establish the relationship of the game with systems, mechanical frameworks, genre, etc. This is how games establish exceptions about the nature of play and establish a common space for creation.

Lhuzie

Witch: Fated Souls is about being trapped by a deal, having sold your soul to a demon for magical power. However, it is also about hope that your newfound magic and power can bring up a better world and you may still get your soul back.

Brad

Witch 2e is about being one of several different flavours of person who sold/traded/bartered away their soul to a demon for power, it is also about gaining more power through further modifcations to that deal as well ass all the other things you are now exposed to

4. Uncover What The Game Is REALLY About

What the game says it is about is not always what the game is about. This is where we look at all the weird interactions, examining the system that game creates, how the way mechanics interact with the text and art, how it exists in a given context, how well parts flow together or get in the way. This creates a much richer environment that the original design could ever imagine once a game hits the table.

Lhuzie

Witch: Fated Souls is a game about beating the demon that got your soul in exchange of magical power or be doomed trying.

The biggest problem of Witch: Fated Souls always been that it could only tell one story. Now, one should quickly recoil back and say “hold on, the best TTRPGs in this goddess-forsaken artform for the past two decades have been precisely those that lock-on and focus on telling a very specific story”. So yeah, should not be much of a problem, should not have been a problem for Witch: Fated Souls 1e… but it definitely was. I was not easy to describe why it was a problem: maybe it was the d20 engine that had a stink of “generic” and aimless in the mechanics when the narrative is meant so focused; maybe it was when said narrative framework and gamespace bounced between the witch-demon dance and trying to offer an “open-ended” experience more akin to World of Darkness and other urban fantasy. At some point having to beat each player’s would start to feel like a chore. Whatever what was, the result was a good game that suffered from not committing to the bit and turning what should have been its biggest strength.

Witch: Fated Souls 2e is a tour de force, knowing what it is about and delivering. You want to play a Faustian TTRPG? This is THE Faustian Deal TTRPG and every single mechanical and cybernetic dance within is about making it THE Faustian Deal TTRPG.

I could tell about how the engine of the game lays that path — and I will in the next part, — but the “how “that came to be would remain unclear unless one talks about Afterlife: Wandering Souls. And one cannot talk about Afterlife: Wandering Souls without talking about Wraith: The Oblivion.

Wraith was, in many ways the pinnacle of the 90s World of Darkness. Some of the best narrative, the best setting, the most melodrama, the best writing. Too bad it was unplayable. More than any other game, it included mechanics disruptive to play, the setting was too big and require players and their characters to be spinning too many plates, it was meta-geographic expansive when traveling was a struggle and properly appreciating the game would require it to be a constant, it was the worst implementation of a stick-mechanic of their entire library, etc. The tragedy of Wraith was ,that if it was a dozen different games, each would be an excellent focused slice of the afterlife of the World of Darkness. In fact, there is a reason why, anyone that has a found memory of Wraith, it is usually from one of the more focused sourcebooks/spin-offs.

Afterlife: Fated Souls had the difficult task of being about one thing and also communicating an afterlife as large — if not larger — in scope as Wraith. It required a system built from the scratch, ditching the awful d20s, and a player-facing narrative framework for its system’s engineering. The result was a game about dead stranded in a strange desert, clinging to fleeting memories, trying to find out who they were and where should they be. Because this is no cosmic afterlife designed for mortal souls, no Limbo or Hell: this desert-expanse is home to other peoples and cultures, humans being unusual beings that ended up stranded here after death. They are supposed to journey on, by venturing into pocket-realities created by memories of the dead. However, other dead humans go back, becoming a source of trouble to the locals and the other wandering souls…

All those lessons have been learned and applied to make Witch: Fated Souls the ultimate experience of getting your soul back from your personal demon. Every turning wheel advances the inevitable confrontation. So make sure you are ready.

Brad

Witch 2e is about how sometimes the only way out is through.

You are caught up in the web of this deal, of your obligations to help the others on their way out/through the ugliness that is about the reacquisition of your souls. You might wanna cry, you might wanna get stinking drunk and regret the fact that all of your life has come to this ugly point where you may have to fight multiple actual demons to recover this essential piece of you.

That doesn’t mean that you don’t have to, and it doesn’t mean you won’t.

You are gonna struggle, and trick and lie and cheat your way to reacquring your soul, and then with a mouth full of grit and a black eye you are gonna help your companions recover theirs. You are going to end this heist with a sackful of newly acquired powers and knowledge that you took from these bastards who thought they could beat you.

Because you won’t accept the other way.

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