The Manipulative Player's Guide to Sympathetic Magic
By Julie Ann Dawson
Bards and Sages product number BAS115444
7-page PDF, $1.00
I found myself having to take a business flight not long ago, and wanted something short to review on the plane that wouldn't require me to flip through any of the core rulebooks. Looking through the small pile of PDFs that had been sent my way recently, I printed out a couple of short works by Bards and Sages. The first of them is
The Manipulative Player's Guide to Sympathetic Magic.
At only 7 pages long (one of those the front cover and another the OGL at the back), it's not surprising that there isn't a whole lot of artwork in this project. The cover consists of a pair of mirror-image green-and-yellow cartoon snakes crawling around red borders. On page 6 (you'll have to just count the pages, as there are no page numbers in the PDF) there's a black-and-white piece of clip art of a demon, possibly of Aztec or Incan origin. And that's it. The art is neither spectacular nor credited, but to tell you the truth, in a work of this size I really wasn't expecting much in the way of artwork, so the book gets no strikes against it for the artwork.
No, the major strikes against it come from the proofreading and editing jobs that were allegedly done. Actually, even that isn't exactly true; since the entire credits section is the "By Julie Ann Dawson" on the front cover, Bards and Sages isn't even alleging that any proofreading or editing was ever performed. And it shows. I can get all picky and complain about the fact that standard d20 conventions are ignored (like not capitalizing spell names, which she does, but always capitalizing skill names and the names of languages, which she doesn't do), but even if I ignore those, there are plenty of other places where out-and-out mistakes are evident. Most of these are simple typos; interestingly enough, in all cases the misspelled or misused word ends up spelling a completely different word, leading me to believe that Julie trusts her spellchecker implicitly as a proofreader. Here are some notable examples:
- "affect" is not the same as "effect"
- "causes" is not the same as "caused"
- "dolls" is not the same as "doll"
- "embedding" is not the same as "embedded"
- "hear" is not the same as "heart"
- "its" is not the same as "it's"
- "rank" is not the same as "ranks"
- "suppose" is not the same as "supposed"
She also likes capitalizing the occasional common noun, like Dragon or Demon, or, for that matter, Sympathetic Magic. Now, for all I know Bards and Sages is a one-woman production, but I think Julie would do better to at least let a friend with a good grasp of the rules of the English language read over her manuscript before she releases it for purchase. Even whjen we're only talking about a single dollar, it would certainly help give the appearance of a polished, professional product, rather than a first draft.
Okay, with that gripe out of the way, let's examine the content of
The Manipulative Player's Guide to Sympathetic Magic. The whole concept is one of mind over matter, basically conning people into thinking that you have magical powers, such as the ability to put a hex on people, or even to exorcize a demon from the victim it's currently inhabiting. The mechanics she comes up with seem reasonable, and even with only 5 pages of content she manages to provide several examples of the mechanic in use. I also really enjoy her writing style; it's very informal but easy to read - almost like she's in the room with you chatting about sympathetic magic, or at least typing it to you in a chat room or on a messageboard. (In fact, she even employs a ";)" symbol once.) She uses examples from her own high school experiences in explaining the concept of sympathetic magic; I'll bet Julie would have been a really fun person to know in her high school! (I have to credit her with having found a very creative way to stand up against bullies.)
Anyway, getting back to sympathetic magic, the mechanic boils down to a feat allowing you to Bluff your way into getting your target to believe (by beating his Sense Motive check) that you have "hexed" him, and his own powers of belief will cause him to react to your "curse." Julie uses some nice flavor to garnish the concept, suggesting the power of rhyme and recommending keeping an "out" for the "curse" to be broken. All in all, it's a nice little concept, and while it's not necessarily one that you could build a character around, it makes for a handy trick to be able to pull out when needed.
A better presentation might have put
The Manipulative Player's Guide to Sympathetic Magic in the "4 (Good)" range; as it stands, I'm going to go with a "3 (Average)." However, as is my habit when reviewing PDFs, I compiled a list of errors and will pass them on to Bards and Sages, with the hope that the PDF can be easily updated. I hope to see good things from Julie in the future; she's got the talent, now she just needs to polish her work up a bit before releasing it to the public.
