I have decided to dig out this book, considered by some the scarcest and most valuable of the Indiana Jones RPG books, which I purchased back when I was young and willing to buy anything related to Indiana Jones. That was one movie and a lifetime ago.
Case in point.
This book came out in 1996 and was released for West End Games under the MasterBook system, but during the changeover to the d6 system. This almost made me put it back in the box, because I was pretty sure I no longer own the MasterBook system. I thought I sold it or gave it away or something years ago, because it was rubbish. Then I dug deeper into the box.
Oh dark gods, I forgot there were cards.
Like Basic Role Playing, MasterBook is generic system used as the common game engine for five licensed properties: Indiana Jones, Bloodshadows, Tank Girl, Species, and Necroscope. That's....I don't know. That's just a lot to take in.
Mechanically, it falls somewhere post-AD&D and GURPS. That's not actually very helpful, is it? It's got a lot of procedural character generation, quite a bit of multiplication and division in the formulas, you pick options from tables, you roll dice and consult a table to see what bonus you get to add to your skill/attribute rating and compare that with the Difficulty Number, then based on that you consult Success Chart.
At this point you're probably wondering about the cards. Every player is dealt $TEXAS cards at the beginning of a session, which they can play whenever they're not in combat. Some of these work like Action Points in Eberron, giving you temporary but significant bonuses to various actions; others are subplot cards that act like Clue points in Bookhounds, modifying the story somewhat by throwing a twist into the plot. So, for example, if you play the Romance card, your character attracts a romantic interest with an NPC. And if you or someone else play the Campaign card on top of that, the subplot becomes permanent.
You can see what's going on here, right? I don't have to spell it out for you? It's a generically too damn complicated system made by people that thought consulting tables and charts to see what your dice roll means was de rigueur. It isn't a skeleton of a decent game system with lots of fiddly bits, it is ALL FIDDLY BITS. It's the worst parts of Shadowrun.
That is now the sum fucking total I want to discuss the MasterBook system until/unless it's relevant for the book. There's a bunch of "Special Effects" which represent different forms of magic, super-science, faith, etc. in the game, but to be completely honest the World of Indiana Jones tends to do its own thing with all of those, because different people were writing different books and nobody really wanted to use the standard SFX (or maybe didn't know how they worked; I would believe either).
So! Artifacts.
I've actually given considerable thought to getting one of those fertility idol facsimiles. Because it would look cool on the shelf.
Unlike a lot of games, you're on fairly solid ground mucking about with artifacts in Indiana Jones. Raiders of the Lost Ark involved the Ark of the Covenant (and, as a warm-up, the Headpiece of Ra); Temple of Doom had the remains of Mujaji and the Sankara Stones; Last Crusade had the Holy Grail; and there was no fourth movie! Really, all of the Indiana Jones movies and most of the derivative properties were based on action archaeologist traipsing throughout the world, stealing shit which may or may not have magical powers.
Normally in RPGs when you hear the word "artifact," you're thinking of something like this:
And, indeed, most books along this line are "big collection of magical items." But Indiana Jones Artifacts is a little different because it deals mainly with real-world or historical artifacts, albeit with a few twists. The books is divvied up into an Introduction, five chapters (Africa, The Americas, Asia, Europe, and The Middle East) and in appendix on how to convert MasterBook stats into d6 stats, just in case you want to convert some of this crap to work as Force artifacts in West End's terrible Star Wars RPG.
LucasFilm Ltd., you have chosen...poorly.
So I'm going to cover the Introduction, and call it a night. We'll get to actual artifacts tomorrow.
The production team for this book was five people. Two guys wrote it, then one get edited it and wrote some more stuff. Two guys did the black-and-white interior illustrations, and three people are credited with "maps and diagrams. This was all done in some way early layout software, which means you have kind of a sparse but workable two-column format. Game information is contained in shaded boxes, game fluff and hand-drawn illustrations are in these little computer-generate boxes made to look like torn leaves from a lined-paper notebook with tanned edges. It's not great - it sure as hell looks dated, even by the bizarre reality that was 1996 - but it is, maybe amazingly, very readable. I can't actually complain about the format. The art isn't great by any shakes, but then you're talking about hand-drawn black-and-white sketches of peaches and swords and shit reproduced on computer-generated notebook paper.
The Introduction is a whopping three pages long - well, two and a half, because the first page is half taken up by the title "Introduction" floating in an endless white field. Maybe two pages if you take out the two little notebook pages full of fluff text floating around. Definitely less than 1k total words.
The About This Book is fairly straight forward. Refreshingly so.
Each artifact entry is divvied up into two sections, often with no break between them, though the shaded portions are "game master" information and deal with stats and suchlike. The player's portion has:The bulk of this book comes from the log/journal of an unknown archaeologist. While much of the journal is unreadable due to stains, tears, and wear, the salvageable portions provide useful information about the artifacts of the world at the time of Indiana Jones. Certain pages of this journal appear throughout this book, including personal notes on the progress of the archaeologist's journey, sketches of the detailed artifacts, and maps leading to secret stores of treasure.
Value: What the artifact will sell for in 1930s dollars.
Mystical: Yes/No. Whether or not the artifact is associated with any supernatural powers or phenomena.
Last Known Location: 'nuff said
Description: ditto
History: same
Rumors and Legends: Fun stuff.
The gamemaster section includes Powers (what it says on the tin), Wanted By (the parties and groups interested in the artifact) and Adventure Ideas (tin).
This is actually a rather neat and straightforward format, the kind of thing I'd like to see more actual artifacts display. D&D sort of lost its way in this regard, caring more about the powers of the artifacts and their supposed indestructibility than giving the GM or players any material to help them track the fuckers down or expand on their history and lore a little.
The first little notebook entry describes this as "the Smithsonian's Artifact Template AZ/490.1" and goes on to say:
While I understand the need for such standardization, I maintain the belief that the artifacts I og herein will oftentimes defy such categorization.
These term papers still haven't been graded.
The rest of the introduction is some GM pep-talk on using artifacts and this book in their campaign (i.e. start point - go fetch! or end point - We've got it, come on!)
She thought she'd found a prize![/img]
Best part of this section, the end:
There is only one tenet to keep in mind if you want to run a successful Indiana Jones game: Make sure everyone (including yourself) has fun!
This is followed by the understandable but weaksauce part:
The artifacts presented here are not meant to remain in the hands of the characters. Just like Indiana Jones never retained possession of the Ark of the Covenant, the Sankara Stone, or the Holy Grail, so the player characters should in some way be coerced or forced to give up their finds.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the thematic point of this bit. The players of the World of Indiana Jones aren't intended to be AD&D "heroes" gathering magic bling. Indiana Jones does not collect the Infinity Stones and rule the Universe.
That said, it feels like an artificial limitation. Because in pulp stories, pulp heroes tend to gain and lose magic artifacts, or maybe entrust them to other people to guard (it belongs in a museum!), but losing the artifact and/or getting it back usually becomes the subject of the next adventure. Granted, World of Indiana Jones caters to fairly narrow definition of pulp hero. It's a very small step sideways from here to the Call of Cthulhu setting.
And to cap off this Introduction, the Final Note:
Unless otherwise stated, the artifacts contained herein are fictional. They were created from the rumors, legends, and myths of the world. Though some of these artifacts may have existed, their powers and abilities are unsubstantiated.
This is basically a project memo that says "Hey guys, we need a gigantic cover-our-ass statement right here."
Next up: Africa!
Some things gain something in the translation.