CSI: Babylon. Sentinels of the Weave Review

Sentinels of the Weave is a little-known and not very big game. It’s appeared in one of the RPG digests and I would probably never notice if it wasn't for the logline — «CSI: Babylon». Those two words were enough to intrigue me. A mystical procedural drama in the atmosphere of ancient Babylon? Count me in! However, as I read the book, my enthusiasm turned first to skepticism, and then to perplexity. The authors keep their promises, but they do it... in an odd manner.

Important Note: This is a translation of the review that I originally wrote in Russian. You can still read it here if you want.

What is the game about?

The focus of the game is the enormous city of Elemin, whose image was inspired by the culture of ancient Mesopotamia. Clay building, bronze as the crown of metallurgical technologies, and slavery as part of the social structure. This city becomes the stage for stories about the investigation of crimes and mysterious incidents. The book describes this in a rather colorful, succinct manner.

The civil order of the metropolis Elemin is threatened. On the surface, things are still calm but underneath the streets, in the murky alleyways of the poor quarters and behind locked doors, strange cults and unnatural beings gather. The city guards receive so many testimonies of strange «magical» phenomena that they can no longer be dismissed. The servants of the primal forces are getting bolder. It is a time of great changes. Everything the Maharaja and the academics of the Weavers' guild have created may fall into chaos.

To protect the city from these new threats, the Weavers' guild has created the Sentinels. Taking on the role of one of Elemin's protectors against the unnatural, you and your fellow players will investigate crimes and mysteries with a connection to the mystical and the occult. The fate of civilization itself rests on your shoulders.

Setting

The book refers to Sumerian and Assyrian culture but borrows from them only the general aesthetics and specifics of names. Elemin's religion and beliefs are very unusual, and there are enough fantastic elements in the setting. For example, in addition to people, "reptids" live in the city — lizard-like folks who have a full set of civil rights and freedoms.

I liked the description of Elemin extremely. The authors describe in detail what factions operate here, how trade works, what citizens live in, and so on. At the same time, Elemin does not look like just a “regular” fantasy metropolis with a taste of Mesopotamia. Some aspects of its life look quite harsh by modern standards. For example, the city has a thriving institution of slavery, and the book explains in detail how it works: how a person can become a slave, what rights they lose, and what power their master has.

Another example is the laws and the prison system. Although the Elemin courts are (mostly) fair, the fundamental principle for their decisions is "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". There are no prisons in the city, and often the punishment for a crime is confiscation of property, burning out the stigma, sale into slavery, or exile. However, it does not seem that the authors try to uselessly darken the picture. All these elements are described in a neutral manner as an organic part of the life of Elemin.

Weavers' Guild

Among the many factions of Elemin, the Weavers’ Guild is worth mentioning separately, because it plays a key role in the setting. And not only because the players' characters belong to this organization. This is the oldest guild in the city, which is responsible for its development and prosperity — in the broadest sense.

At first glance, it seems that the Guild is engaged in literally every aspect of city life. Among the members of this organization, there are architects, scientists, mystics, doctors, warriors, and bureaucrats. Such an eclectic mix of competencies becomes clear when the meaning of the organization's name is revealed. The fact is that the Guild is trying to harness the power of the Weave and use it for Elemin’s benefit and prosperity.

The Weave is an ephemeral pattern of probabilistic threads linking the past and future. Every person, phenomenon, and event, no matter how insignificant they may seem, will find a place in this canvas of causal relations.

Guild members are able to see and influence the nodal points of the Weave. Urban architecture, economics, laws, and regulations are nothing more than tools in the hands of a skilled Weaver. So the Guild influences the very fate of Elemin and guides its development in the right direction.

Primordial Powers

Of course, if everything was so clear, there would be no need for heroes of the game. Where there is Order, there must be Chaos. In this world, Chaos is represented by three forces:

• The Void is the force representing the arrow of time – the static, eternal and unchanged. Void is also space itself – that which keeps matter from falling into itself, keeping the world stable.
• The Light is the emotional, dynamic and active, but also the destructive. Light is volatile, fleeting, beautiful, terrifying and unpredictable.
• The Primal is the primitive – the pure life forces. Basic animalistic drives, instincts and blind raw strength.

All of these forces are inherently hostile to each other. But the main thing is that their actions are destructive for Weave.

Sometimes the primordial forces influence the world through their daemonic manifestations, sometimes through human agents with special abilities. But almost always it leads to casualties, chaos, and riots. And then the player characters enter the stage.

Heroes of Elemi

Crimes related to primordial forces threaten not only the civil order of Elemin but also the entire Weave. To investigate them, the Weavers' Guild created the Sentinels.

Although the characters belong to the same organization, their backstories and talents can be quite different. As I've already mentioned, the Weavers' Guild does a lot of things, so a Sentinel can be either a mystic who specializes in forbidden cults or a fighter who has dedicated his life to improving martial arts. The book describes in detail the structure of the Guild and provides enough background information for the characters to choose from.

Mystical powers are also available to the heroes — and they can be connected not only with the Weave but also with primordial forces too. However, most of these abilities allow PCs to create only minor effects. For example, the hero can heal minor wounds, create small fires, hide in shadows, and so on.

In general, the roles of the characters are described quite well. The problem is that this is where the rule system comes into play.

Rules

In short: they are terrible. All my sympathies for Sentinels of the Weave fade when I try to read the rules of this game. They are inconsistent, unstructured, and don't fit the game's focus.

I don't see the point in disassembling each of the mechanics separately. Instead I'll just describe the basic dice roll mechanic:

1. When a character tries to do something risky, the player rolls two D20s: black and white. (Remember: this is important!)
2. To succeed, you need to get at least one die with a result lesser than the value of the chosen attribute.
3. The attribute’s value is a number from 5 to 13. In most cases. The ranges are different for different attributes.
4. The smallest of the values determines the outcome of the action, and the largest — is the scale of success or failure. For example: you need to make a Vigilant check with a rating of 10. If you got 4 and 12 that’s interpreted as "success 12", and if you rolled 12 and 14 that’s "failure 14".
5. The scale of success or failure only affects combat damage and post-battle recovery. How to interpret it in other situations is not clear.
6. In some cases, you need to roll not only less than the rating of the attribute but also higher than the particular threshold. For example, higher than 3, but less than 8.
7. In certain situations, the GM can add modifiers to the PC attribute's rating..
8. Remember, I said that it is necessary to roll black and white d20s and that this is important? It was a lie. The only situation in which the color of the dice is mentioned is combat again. The value on the white cube indicates whether the blow hit the body part covered by the armor or not. I have not found mentions of any other situations where the color of the dice would matter.

What surprises me most is that 80% of the rules are combat rules. The game is positioned as a detective, character roles are described with the investigations in mind, and the book gives a lot of source material for solid mysteries — but all rules are devoted to poking people with sharpened pieces of bronze. The only rule related to the investigation is that if the characters search for information in the right way in the right place, they get what they are looking for. That’s all.

But even the combat subsystem that is used here is poor and inconvenient. Perhaps this is part of the author's idea: the mechanics of battles look so bad, just so that players devote themselves entirely to the investigation. Like, you'd rather do anything to avoid a fight.

In general, this is the case when using any other rules system is guaranteed to give a better result. Savage Worlds, FATE, Year Zero, GUMSHOE — pick any of this list and you got a much more interesting game than the original.

Resume

It's been a long time since I've seen a game that evokes such conflicting emotions. Sentinels of the Weave describes an interesting, complex, and original setting that is great for detective adventures. The city's factions, character roles, and conflict system form the basis for exciting mystery stories. But the game is based on such an inconvenient and cumbersome ruleset that it discourages any desire to try Sentinels of the Weave in action.