CJ Carella's Witchcraft | Rules Breakdown
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CJ Carella's Witchcraft | Retro RPG
• CJ Carella's Witchcraf...
The Price of Freedom | Rules Breakdown
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Description: CJ Carella's WitchCraft, or more informally WitchCraft (ISBN 978-1891153402), is a modern horror role-playing game published by Eden Studios, Inc. It is based on the Unisystem game system and had been previously published by Myrmidon Press. In both cases it was designed and written by C. J. Carella. WitchCraft was the first RPG to use the Unisystem game system.
Player characters can take on the role of various types of magic-using humans known as the "Gifted". Other characters can be "Lesser Gifted" (less magically capable, but have more mundane skills), the "Mundane" (non-magical humans) or even various supernatural races such as Vampires, Spirits, or Bast (intelligent shape-shifting cats). There are several different associations (called Covenants) described in the main rulebook, and several more in the supplements. Some of the Covenants, such as the divinely inspired Sentinels, fight centuries-long battles, both in open war and more subtle battles of intrigue and magic. Other Covenants, such as the Rosicrucians and Cabal of Psyche are mutual aid societies, but even these neutral societies are being drawn into the fight to stop or delay the "Reckoning". Precisely what the Reckoning is no one can say, but more and more Gifted and Supernatural beings are rising with every passing year, and what is at stake may well be the whole of reality.
WitchCraft draws heavily on modern Neo-Paganism and its practices, with the caveat that while it does this, it in no way espouses one belief system over the other. WitchCraft features a creator deity, although the exact nature of the creator is left undefined. The WitchCraft setting includes dreamworlds, fae creatures, versions of werecreatures and vampires and many other things inspired by a wide range of mythology.
WitchCraft, like all Unisystem games, is quite dangerous in combat, and as such the game promotes more of a thinking approach to problem solving than some other RPGs. The magic system breaks into several types of metaphysical arts including Magic, Seer (psychic) powers, Necromancy, Divine Miracles, and others which are defined in supplements.
Many comparisons have been drawn between WitchCraft and the World of Darkness games, in particular Mage. Both games feature magic using creatures in a horror influenced contemporary setting, though there are many differences. The system used in Eden's Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG is heavily modeled after WitchCraft. The Buffy core book even gives advice on how to convert Buffy characters to WitchCraft characters.
I enjoy the way the Unisystem games can be blended together. I have so far been unsuccessful at running my dream game, but one of these days I’ll combine Witchcraft, Army of Darkness, Conspiracy X, and Terra Primate to set magical secret agent mage apemen against the reptilian overlords and their deadite hordes. Maybe I’ll throw in a slayer or witch by working Buffy in.
I need to finish off my collection of Unisystem games, as even if I don't fancy running some of them, they're packed with great ideas, which indeed could be incorporated into some kind of Unisystem Megagame.
How about the metaphysics though? I've only just discovered Carella's Witchcraft and it's amazing theme-wise, and the Unisystem is pretty easy to use. My confusion really is in how to roll for invocations -- do you use Essence Channeling as the skill or the level of the Invocation they've learned?
I really like the themes around WitchCraft and how "scientific" its depictin of magic is; the UniSystem is great and even when showing a bit of age it remains flexible yet solid enough. About the Metaphysics question you asked: for spellcasting you roll the skill level of your Invocation with the Willpower attribute. Essence Channeling determines how much Essence you can gather in one turn, which will make you cast the spell faster or slower depending on how much Essence it requires. Even mundande characters that don't have Essence Channeling could cast spells by gathering Essence from other sources other than themselves, such as the ambient, times and places of power and storage devices, or even through group magic - given they have the time and resources to use symbols and make rituals - but in the end of gathering the Essence, the roll would still remain the Invocation skill level and the Willpower attribute.
Thank you so much
This is such an underapreciated game
Don't know why, because it's got all of the appeal of the World of Darkness, but a more tightly packaged game. Sad it wasn't more successful.
@@RPGGamer the thing i am sad about is how it ended up leaving it's world incomplete
From the core rulebook it had been promising more information about basically everything and seeing this promises now that i know they won't happen makes me sad
@@anyoneatall3488 Actually there's quite a few books in the setting. Mystery Codex, Abomination Codex, Book of Hod. There were more books on the horizon before it cancelled, but there's definitely quite other books out there.
What about spell casting and rituals?
For these Rules Breakdowns I really only cover the absolute basics, so magic is outside these. I may get around to doing Magic in future videos, but that's a while off.