The Veil is a Powered By The Apocalypse (PbTA) role playing game where the emphasis is put on the emotions the playing characters are experiencing when acting to respond to the fiction. Characteristic of the PbTA games, in the Veil there are no preset adventure modules or pre-planned encounters and we play to find out based on the tools available for the Master of Cerimonies (PbTA for GM) and the players. Gameplay works more like a conversation rather than with turn-based rounds and the game engine kicks in when an action required by the player triggers moves either general to all player types or specific to a given character playbook. The MC never rolls dice and gets to intervene in very specific terms when the fiction demands it or when players roll a partial success or a fail.

What most impressed me about this game is the myriad of possibilities that the character playbooks deliver in terms of the existential and societal questions you can enquire. More than a set of cyberpunk heists to retrieve data from evil megacorps, this game has the tools to allow players to define what makes us human and aware by giving a purpose and an agenda to each of the character types. The use of emotion states (mad, peaceful, sad, joyful, scared, powerful) instead of ability stats (hot, cool, hard, weird, sharp) is a fundamental departure from the original Apocalypse World. This allows the players to better establish the intentions and positioning of their characters in the fiction with the aid of an emotion wheel covering 72 (!) possible emotions. The MC side of things is also well covered with detailed tools and game aids to pursue the questions the fiction demands.

The writing is clear and a great effort is made to explain the ideas behind the setting. A very good addition to the MC section is the suggestion of how the MC should interact with each of the character playbooks to fully engage the player and include the input of that playbook in the fiction.

On the slightly downside, I would like to have seen a more concise and schematic procedure list for the 1st session like other PbTA games (e.g. Apocalypse World, MASHED, Night Witches). Instead, there very few details in this chapter for the MC side of things and the description of the playbooks is included in here. Given that most likely only the MC is going to read this before the 1st session, more pointers to how to setup and carry out a successful 1st session should be in here and the playbook description elsewhere. Contrary to most opinions I've seen elsewhere, I find the art in the book sightly off putting. Although the visual artist has a good grip on colour technique and succeeds in setting the dark urban mood, the drawing of the human figure is not up to overall good standard of the book, with the characters portrayed in stiff poses and with clear errors of perspective and proportionality in human figure drawing.

The take home message: this is a great game for a mature audience interested in switching between fast-paced action and interpersonal and introspective existential questioning in a future probable where cybernetics and AI can deeply change how we perceive the world.

Movie night: Blade Runner, Ghost in the Machine, The Matrix, Mr Robot.