Plenilunio

Among RPG players, everyone knows Luis Royo. Or rather, failing to know his name, everyone has at least already seen his illustrations, reused ad nauseam by many hobby practitioners on forums across the web. If the artist has always been close to "geek culture" on account of his activity and his style, who would have believed that one day, he would start publishing his own role-playing game?

---

---

And yet it is done. "Plenilunio" is here. We are talking about a role-playing game born from the transmedia project "Malefic Time", composed of a metal album, a comic book, novels, sculptures, a manga and other illustration collections. The Royos - father and son, since Romulo Royo is co-piloting the project and is very far from disgracing himself - worked for a good ten years on this project, which came to fruition in 2014. Today, French-speaking RPG players can finally discover Plenilunio, published in Molière's language by éditions Sans-Détour.

The transmedia aspect is not necessarily reassuring for the role-playing game's integrity, since the latter ultimately boils down to a side product. To support this fear, one can cite a relatively similar case: the very likable "Anima Project" and its role-playing game "Anima: Beyond Fantasy", which despite everyone's enthusiasm never truly reached its full potential. Despite the first encouraging returns, will the Royos' baby suffer the same fate? Failing to pronounce myself on the future of the "Plenilunio" line, I offer you a first opinion on the core book, after an initial reading.

---

The form

Given the people at the helm, one was entitled to expect a careful layout. And it is a success: Plenilunio comes in the shape of a beautiful 220-page color book, which gives pride of place to the Royos' illustrations. The book's quality does not rest solely on its images: studied margins and airy text make the reading genuinely pleasant. In short, the layout truly holds up.

The French version, on the other hand, did not benefit from the same care. In the translators' defense, I imagine the very colloquial tone unfairly gave me the impression that the text was of lesser quality. Consequently, I was particularly attentive to mistakes and convoluted sentence structures - far more than for other books with more traditional prose. But even without this excess of zeal, the fact remains that there was material to work with: the cover and its "Plenilunio - Le Jeu de rôles" set the tone. The text would truly have benefited from a few proofreadings, and one can only hope for a reprint correcting the most glaring errors.

The substance

220 pages and airy text. Yes, Plenilunio's core book does not contain that much text. That does not prevent it from being quite complete: from an explanation of what a role-playing game is, to GM advice for novice GMs, via a scenario creation utility based on the tarot, not to mention a scenario and a campaign hook... everything is there! Beginners are even particularly pampered thanks to the numerous tips scattered across the chapters, aimed at both sides of the table.

System

Plenilunio's system is of the light kind. Truth be told, I have rarely encountered a complete role-playing game endowed with such a light system. Character creation should be doable in five minutes, stopwatch in hand. Plenilunio's PCs are defined by 7 characteristics, one specialty (a kind of meta-skill) for each of them, a Destiny, Gifts and that is all. This expeditive process will probably not encourage players to grow attached to, or develop, their character, so one will have to count on a good upfront introduction to compensate.

Once in play, Plenilunio remains classic and offers a success-based system. On a roll, each characteristic point gives one die (six-sided). Results of 4 to 5 count as successes. Sixes count double, provided the character performing the action has an adequate specialty. Depending on the action's difficulty, the GM rolls a certain number of dice whose successes cancel out the other side's. An action ends in a success when at least one success remains on the players' side.

Good point: the game mechanics do not get lost in a multitude of useless options. Unfortunately, a system can be quick to explain, but heavy to use. In Plenilunio's case, every action entails two dice rolls. Even challenges (actions against objects with no will of their own, like climbing a mountain) do not involve a fixed difficulty and require two rolls. Not only do the players never really know what they will have to fight against (bashing down a wooden door can prove incredibly hard, if luck is on the wrong side), but one must systematically sort through two wheelbarrows of dice before knowing an action's result. Let us wager the game would gain fluidity by limiting the number of rolls.

It is in its handling of Destiny that the game system stands out from the competition. Destiny is an important concept in Plenilunio's universe (and in Malefic Time in general): either you accept it and it smiles upon you, or you resist it and end up alone. This principle is felt in the game's mechanics, thanks to a "destiny points" counter. At creation, each character is assigned a vague destiny by their player and the GM. When said character reaches 10 Destiny points, they fulfill their quest and conclude their story (and their player creates a new character). Destiny determines the number of the character's fortune points, which in turn influence the supernatural Gifts they can call upon. Not only is this aspect of the system in line with the game's concept, but it brings a real ludic added value through its "risk-reward" component.

Universe

Let us talk a bit about Plenilunio's universe and, beyond that, about Malefic Time's. We are in 2033, after nearly fifteen years of globalized decadence for humanity. No real explosion or natural catastrophe, just Man's madness that ended up prevailing. Well, that is if we neglect the sudden appearance of supernatural beings in our society: "winged ones" (for the most part), separated into two distinct groups one can compare to angels and demons. These meddle little in human affairs, too busy with their own war, incomprehensible to mortals' eyes. Amid the turmoil, Luz - the omnipresent heroine of the novels - will be the object of destiny and bring about a change of era, the transition from order, obedience and light to darkness, rebellion and wildness. You will have understood: Plenilunio is an apocalyptic game with a prophetic bent (but not post-apocalyptic, since the worst is yet to come). To paraphrase the authors, the game's characteristic theme is Destiny and how we apprehend it, then various secondary subjects, among which the feeling of an imminent catastrophe and the place of women. On this last point, the game subscribes quite a bit to the man/woman dichotomy, where the masculine strongly sticks to the Yang while the feminine corresponds to the Yin. Sexuality is also on the menu, even if nothing in the book really helps understand how the authors intend to make use of it during play. As for the PCs, they are "pioneers", humans destined to alter the balance and to hasten - or slow down - the end of times on account of their exceptional destiny. A destiny that will be decided by the player and the GM.

Here are indeed some beautiful themes to develop. Yet overall, what emerges from Plenilunio is a powerful impression of a B-Series universe, not always subtle and even less original. The trick of fascist Angels and mean-but-honest Demons has been done to us thousands of times: I fear it will scare away the fans of tribal and prophetic post-apocalyptic settings (yes, Tribe 8 fans, I am thinking of you). Despite this failure of inspiration, the universe is described well enough to make one want to try it one day.

Luz's place is an interesting subject. Making an emblematic hero cohabit with protagonists born from the players' imagination always proves difficult: the predominance of a hero-NPC is not necessarily a bad thing, but it will take quite a bit of finesse to bring Luz into a group without her appearing as The Divine Child that the scenario must protect at all costs. We all know how much the GMs' darlings weigh on the group's nerves, when the group does not simply try to massacre them in a gesture of pure defiance.

As for the scenario offered in the book, it really limits itself to the bare essentials: in four pages, it propels the players into the action and will no doubt require quite a few touch-ups to be truly usable. It is followed by a campaign proposal, leading the characters to get their hands on a mythical object that must end up in Luz's - a roundabout way of having them take part in the major events, even if one will have to go much further than that to avoid relegating them to the role of mere behind-the-curtain butlers.

---

As I conclude, I would say this first reading rather reassured me. With this simple core book, one can envision anything from an enjoyable one-shot to a small campaign in the Plenilunio / Malefic Time universe. And if the latter clearly will not win the originality prize, it will probably satisfy the tables looking above all for entertainment rather than a scenario of incomparable philosophical depth. And who knows: with Royo's illustrations plastered on the walls, with the right soundtrack and the right state of mind around the table, perhaps the themes dear to the game's designers could even emerge in the players' heads!

I am eager to test all this.