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Author Topic: Immortal - The Invisible War  (Read 2219 times)

Roguish

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Immortal - The Invisible War
« on: April 27, 2020, 08:21:37 AM »

Omega

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Immortal - The Invisible War
« Reply #1 on: April 27, 2020, 09:36:00 AM »
Oh hey this. I had the old promotional for it. There was a thread here some time ago that touched on it. Its a pretty obscure RPG despite its frequent advertising in various gaming mags.

David Johansen

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Immortal - The Invisible War
« Reply #2 on: April 27, 2020, 09:47:47 AM »
I remember a big full colour ad in Dragon.  It was like someone combined the re-name everything approach from Dangerous Journeys, the narrativist elitism of Vampire the Masquerade, and the unreadable colour presentation of a teen beat magazine.

edit*Which reminds me, Timeship did the renaming and arrogance first and probably, not better, more worser maybe?
« Last Edit: April 27, 2020, 01:58:03 PM by David Johansen »
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Omega

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Immortal - The Invisible War
« Reply #3 on: April 27, 2020, 10:01:14 AM »
Quote from: David Johansen;1128022
I remember a big full colour ad in Dragon.  It was like someone combined the re-name everything approach from Dangerous Journeys, the narrativist elitism of Vampire the Masquerade, and the unreadable colour presentation of a teen beat magazine.

Lets not forget the photo art for most if not all the ads.

Brendan

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Immortal - The Invisible War
« Reply #4 on: April 27, 2020, 01:53:36 PM »
Oh yeah!  I was an early adopter when I "discovered" them at LA's Strategicon.  I sucked up all their books when they were first printed and ran a 10 person game with a core group of friends and an expanding roster of acquaintances when I was in my early 20s.  It went over like gangbusters.  I don't think it aged particularly well, but it had some very interesting ideas and could probably be tuned up and revamped.  It most definitely fell into the White Wolf Vampire-Werewolf-Mage cultural taste bucket.  For all that, it had an interesting take while still relying on well known pop-culture tropes.  It took the self-indulgent "My PC is my idealized self" thing and just RAN with it, which surprisingly made it kinda work.

One of the major issues was that the core book spent too much time on the PCs and the setting and very little time explaining how to play or what the hell the PCs were supposed to... you know... do after their initial awakening.  Sadly my Immortal books were sacrificed with much of my then collection during a very regrettable phase in my late 20s when I wanted to be "taken seriously".  Probably the hardest part to revamp without it turning into major cringe was the concept of the himsati as an actual form the PC could take, rather than a kind of totemic animal.  The tension between immortal and human society would need to be addressed as well.  It was never taken all that seriously in the books, which wasted too much time drifting into martial arts action and meta-plot railroading towards the end.  Isn't that, sadly, the trap for so many publishers?

remial

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Immortal - The Invisible War
« Reply #5 on: April 27, 2020, 08:44:34 PM »
I'm still trying to decide which was worse, was it the multiple fonts on every page, or that every page was laid out using every photoshop filter they had, making it impossible to read?

Second edition, according to one of my friends, was slightly better because they blew all the budget getting Claudia Christian to be their poster girl. Apparently they made the 1st edition metaplot a dream that the immortals got caught in.
there is a third edition that is free to download, that is apparently supposed to be good, but I haven't read it.

Spinachcat

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« Reply #6 on: April 27, 2020, 10:32:54 PM »
Quote from: Brendan;1128049
Oh yeah!  I was an early adopter when I "discovered" them at LA's Strategicon.

Did you run demos at Strategicon? Because that's how I discovered the game. It was fun and I received the core book as a convention tournament prize. I didn't run it, but I played in about a dozen con games before the game just vanished. I remember liking Immortal more than Vampire tabletop, but not as much as Palladium's Nightbane.

Roguish

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Immortal - The Invisible War
« Reply #7 on: April 27, 2020, 11:29:23 PM »
Quote from: Brendan;1128049
It took the self-indulgent "My PC is my idealized self" thing and just RAN with it, which surprisingly made it kinda work.

That's what I liked about it. I never got to play it though. I was the only one in my circles who had the core book.

Here's a balanced review of it:
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/8257/roleplaying-games/rpgnet-reviews-immortal-the-invisible-war

Brendan

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Immortal - The Invisible War
« Reply #8 on: April 28, 2020, 12:36:37 AM »
Quote from: Spinachcat;1128102
Did you run demos at Strategicon? Because that's how I discovered the game. It was fun and I received the core book as a convention tournament prize. I didn't run it, but I played in about a dozen con games before the game just vanished. I remember liking Immortal more than Vampire tabletop, but not as much as Palladium's Nightbane.

No, sadly I did not.  Although I think I ran a pickup game outside one year.  I was pretty low on sleep at that point :)   Played a fair amount of Vampire too, but was never exposed to Nightbane.   You're right that it pretty much just disappeared.  I had one adventure they published with a CD of scene music.  I wish I still had all those books - as ridiculous as the over the top CG art and un-necessary glossy pagers were.

Quote from: Roguish;1128108
That's what I liked about it. I never got to play it though. I was the only one in my circles who had the core book.

Here's a balanced review of it:
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/8257/roleplaying-games/rpgnet-reviews-immortal-the-invisible-war

Nice, thanks for the link.  It's a fair review.  Also, I just found a new copy for less than $10.  Did I order it? Of course!  Will I ever run it again?  Ehhh... not so sure.   Reading the article has reminded me of all the things I just plain ignored when running the game.   Maybe I'll make a blog post or a video about how I would change it if I were in charge of a new edition or something.  

Anyway, thanks for the post man - what a trip down memory lane.

Manic Modron

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Immortal - The Invisible War
« Reply #9 on: April 28, 2020, 05:42:54 PM »
Did that one have a spot where it tells you you need seven or eight dice of specific colors, but you don't have to roll more than one at a time so who gives a shit what colors they are?

Brendan

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Immortal - The Invisible War
« Reply #10 on: April 28, 2020, 07:37:45 PM »
Quote from: Manic Modron;1128170
Did that one have a spot where it tells you you need seven or eight dice of specific colors, but you don't have to roll more than one at a time so who gives a shit what colors they are?

Yeah and they sold a custom die pack for that.  It was one of the first with a custom figure for a number, I believe.  But you could run it with any old D10 set.  There were situations where having different colored dice could speed up play or simplify it, as you could roll against several basic attributes at once.   It's been 20+ years so my memory is a little fuzzy, but as the review linked above points out, the mechanical system was actually quite fast, elegant, and well integrated with the setting.  It was just a little too over-styled and poorly organized.

BoxCrayonTales

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« Reply #11 on: April 28, 2020, 09:29:17 PM »
The website is still up, but I don't know for how long. The index page went missing sometime in the last few weeks. http://invisiblewar.com/main.html

The author is apparently AWOL or something, and there's no community for it anywhere I can find.

remial

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Immortal - The Invisible War
« Reply #12 on: April 29, 2020, 03:09:07 AM »
I still have my copy of the first edition core book, but all the pages fell out of it, because the glue they used to bind it was crap.  I also, somewhere, have (or had) a photocopy of an adventure that was published in one of those old quarterly game order books that game stores would get.  the books had product numbers and brief descriptions of all the games they distributed, and one had like a 10 page adventure in the back to act as kind of an ad for the game.

From what I can remember, the PCs were part of a large group of newly awakened Immortals that was mostly made up of NPCs, and one of them, a Peri (one of the 'clans' that was made up of weapons) was killing other Immortals because he was remembering flashbacks of being Jack the Ripper's knife or something.

grodog

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Immortal - The Invisible War
« Reply #13 on: May 02, 2020, 12:13:16 AM »
Quote from: Roguish;1128017
Has anyone here played Immortal?


I played in the 1990s and knew some of the publishers.  We played one or two campaigns, and they were fun---very much a part of the mid- to late-1990s zeitgeist.

Quote from: remial;1128097
there is a third edition that is free to download, that is apparently supposed to be good, but I haven't read it.


Hadn't heard about this version, will dig around for it.  Thanks!

Allan.
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BoxCrayonTales

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Immortal - The Invisible War
« Reply #14 on: May 02, 2020, 07:02:06 PM »
Quote from: grodog;1128584
I played in the 1990s and knew some of the publishers.  We played one or two campaigns, and they were fun---very much a part of the mid- to late-1990s zeitgeist.



Hadn't heard about this version, will dig around for it.  Thanks!

Allan.


The link is here: http://invisiblewar.com/main.html