World of Darkness Second Sight Book

One of the benefits of the unified approach of the New World of Darkness is that it creates the conceptual space necessary to have unified rules for magicians who aren't Mages, unlike the Old World of Darkness's scattering of sorcerers and benandanti and hedge wizards and whatever else was out there. Second Sight sets out to translate urban legends and popular mythology about magic, psychic powers, and Lovecraftiana into the nWoD context, and I think it does a pretty good job.

The first part of the book sets the tone for the rest of it. This is not a book about cool powers and how awesome your character will be once you get that fifth dot of Pyrokinesis. It's about how superpowers ruin your life. Sure, there's plenty of times we wish that we could read someone else's mind so we would know what they were thinking, but would we really want to? What if it was uncontrollable? What if you had the power to change people's emotions--would you ever be sure that any of your friends really liked you, or that your SO really loved you, or would you worry that you had somehow influenced them? What if you could see the dead and they refused to leave you alone because they were desperate for someone to resolve their unfinished business? What if you could see the future and everything you saw was horrible? And that's not even getting into the obvious problems caused by pyrokinesis.

It's not the same as being a vampire or a werewolf, but the ability to command others' minds, summon and bind spirits, or kill people with your brain definitely sets one apart from what are obstensibly their fellow humans. The tone here actually reminds me a lot of Hunter: The Reckoning, in its focus on what happens to normal people who can suddenly do extraordinary things that they may wish they couldn't do. It concentrates mostly on psychic powers rather than the other supernatural abilities covered in the book, but that makes sense with the message they're going for. Typically, psychic powers are something one is born with rather than something acquired through study, unlike hedge wizardry or those who call out to the Darkness Beyond the Stars.

The actual psychic powers are pretty standard and drawn from popular mythology about what psychics can do. Reading minds, seeing the future or the past, getting impressions from objects, move objects without touching them, heal others, and so on. There are some oddities--cyrokinesis is a single power, but the ability to control fire is divided into "pyrokinesis," "pyrokinetic immunity," "pyrokinetic shaping," and "thermokinesis"--but overall it's serviceable, especially since most psychics are going to have 1-3 powers max.

Thermokinesis is incredibly broken at any level past one dot, though. If you read the power, it says:When Thermokinesis is used, a victim suffers a -1 penalty to Dexterity, Strength and Wits (and consequently, a -1 penalty to Initiative and possibly Defense, and a -2 penalty to Speed) for every fi ve degrees of temperature increase for the duration of the thermokinetic effect. If any of the victim's Dexterity, Strength or Wits is reduced to zero by a thermokinetic attack, the victim is immobilized due to heat prostration. If a victim's body temperature is increased by 15 degrees or more, he suffers a point of lethal damage per turn spent subjected to the thermokinetic attack.Thermokinesis ••••• increases the temperature by 25 degrees per success, so a single success kills any mortal in 2 rounds and incapacitates them instantly. It is a 5-dot merit, but it's something to watch out for.

The next chapter is about minor magic, practiced by people the game calls thaumaturges. There are six varities: Apostles of the Dark One, Ceremonial Magicians, Hedge Witches, Shamans, Taoist Alchemists, and Voudoun. It's not the best variety--some of those groups are inextricably culturally linked, while others aren't--but it works well enough. Each tradition also has access to different rituals. Taoist alchemists, as one might expect, are good at alchemy, both in the mundane sense of turning lead into gold and in the spiritual sense of refining and purifying the soul. Shamans are great at summoning, talking with, and placating spirits, while ceremonial magicians can manipulate destiny and luck to make what they want come to pass.

Something I haven't mentioned yet is that there are rules for disbelief. Psychics and thaumaturges don't have to worry about Paradox like mages do, but their powers are still affected by the belief of those around them. Lifting a rock with your mind in front of a group of people who sincerely believe it will work is far easier than performing it under laboratory conditions in front of a bunch of people who think that so-called "psychic powers" are just something invented by sci-fi writers who wanted a way to put magic in their stories but keep the science veneer.

The last content chapter is called "Reality-Bending Horrors," and since I think Lovecraft and [$concept] are two great tastes that taste great together, I really like this chapter. Since Second Sight is a World of Darkness book, though, the majority of the chapter is not about Eughwh'qqarth the Devourer or whatever, it's about the people. What makes someone decide that calling The Wind That Howls Between the Stars to destroy the world is a good idea? Why would a person be willing to throw away their humanity in pursuit of power? Revenge? Hatred? Disregard of the consequences? Someone who wanted to fight fire with fire and ended up getting burned? It repeatedly focuses on the fact that fighting The Void Without and Within isn't actually all that exciting, because yet another "the world is ending!" plot gets old really quickly, and in a horror game you can get a lot more mileage out of a normal person doing horrific things for what were probably once understandable reasons.

The actual powers are mind-shattered and tentacle-filled, but they're mostly sketched in broad strokes and are customizable. They also all have required offerings that would make them distasteful at the least to anyone who isn't already insane.

The last chapter is an adventure that breaks the rules given within, because "The Power" that's described isn't part of any of the existing systems. That's okay, though, both because the nWoD always leaves conceptual space open for things no one understands and because the adventure is about the theme. What happens when an ordinary person sudden gains the ability to see the horrific crimes others will commit and punish them for them. Is it moral to harm--and possible kill--others for something they haven't done? What happens if you're 90% sure you have the right person? 80% sure? 50% sure? What happens when you get the wrong person, the original murder you saw still happens, and now two innocents are dead? What do you do about the original person who has this ability, and who is apparently contagious? It's not really about supernatural abilities at all as much as how people deal with power, and I think it's a great thematic close to the book.

I wouldn't say that Second Sight is necessary, because not everyone wants to give the protagonists supernatural powers even in a White Wolf game, but it is very good. It accomplishes its purpose really well, and I recommend it for anyone who wants to add a more occult dimension to their nWoD games.