Now I know that in the grander scheme of the world, there are games
like Wraithu and FATAL out there, and while they are weirder than todays game, they’re not games I own and they’re
never likely to be games that I own, and as such, disqualify themselves from
the running.
So with great cheer that I’m not putting up either of those games, I
present The Whole Hole…
Now it has to be said with a title like that, you have to wonder if
there’s some sort of parallel between the two aforementioned games and this
one, and in truth…
There probably is L
I picked up this game as an impulse purchase at Expo this year, it was
a quid in the bring and buy and it was colourful and curious with full colour
all the way through, what’s the worst that could happen…?
The book is a guide to Mutha Oith (say it out loud, you’ll get it…),
and in particular, the region of that planet called Keister Island…
The observant of you may already have figured out where this is going,
but bear with me a while longer, if only for the sake of finding out just how
much work was put into this. The system
used is Savage worlds, so it can be picked up by anyone with ease, and doesn’t take much to start. The problem with the world is that you feel
compelled to read all of it before you start playing, and while some of it is
laugh out loud funny (Temple of Smellemental Evil anyone?), some of it does
skirt the edge of the bowl with regards to how close it comes to being scatty.
Putting aside the concept that you’re on a world that’s the a*** of
some gigantic creature (that’d be Mutha Oith), there’s a ton of work gone into
the place descriptions, colourful (usually brown and green, with occasional
red…) characters and the world in general.
There’s a tiny section involving the sort of characters you could put in
the game and what they might do when they get there, but when I say tiny, it’s
an A5 book with 222 pages.
There are ten pages of rules…
While the setting may have been written as a bit of a joke, and it’ll
certainly never hit mainstream (no pun intended), it makes for an amusing read
for those times when everyone’s being all serious about their gaming, the
creature section alone is worth the price paid, with creatures ranging from “Some
kind of pink worm like thing with teeth on its face” (that’s the name on the
creature description) to the Spitting Image (which goes around licking things
and then absorbing their identities via the use of a magic picture frame) and
the Time Flies, which may or may not be real depending on how you see them.
The artwork is interesting…
I mean that…
And on the whole, while I can’t imagine anyone ever managing to run a
game out of the setting, I thought the same about FATAL (and I’ve run that),
Wraithu (and I’ve run that), and even Cyborg Commando (although that collapsed
before the first game ended), so it’s possible that someone out there might be
able to run a game of this, so if there’s anyone out there who thinks they can
manage it.
