Promethean: The Created is to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein what Vampire: The Requiem is to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It takes the base concept and expands it tremendously to change it into a complete role-playing game.

What I love about Promethean is this opportunity to play a creature who’s nature is so intertwined with Alchemy, all this time trying to perform the ultimate Chrysopeia, to transmute themselves from Lead to Gold, to become fully Human.

The game does a great job, like Vampire did before it, to grab some myths and legends out there and re-interpret them using the game’s background. Caryatids, Golems, Frankenstein monsters, Dismembered Shamans, mummies... they're all there with a twist that heightens the integrity and variety of the whole.

You are a composite artificial creature of Alchemy trying to become human. Your "Azoth", or Inner Flame, is unnatural. You shouldn’t be alive, pal, and Mother Nature takes care to remind you of that. That’s called the Disquiet. That means that if you stay anywhere for too long the land, plants, life start to die around you, and people, animals, other supernatural beings feel like they want to shun you, push you away and finally, hurt you. Remember Victor Frankenstein’s monster pursued by the angry mob, the windmill burning? Well, that’s Disquiet at work right there.

All in all, Promethean is a great game, very different from other NWoD titles (since it relies a lot on character cooperation), genuinely new and well worth a try.

While other books in the New World of Darkness series have revisited previous subjects (vampires, werewolves and mages) this game line takes a new turn - creatures which are not alive but created. Think Frankenstein's monster... Whether you intend to use such beings as 'monsters' for other World of Darkness characters to combat, or wish to dive in and play them yourself, there is plenty of scope here.

The book opens with a gripping and atmospheric transcript of interviews between a police psychiatrist and someone who is, in fact, a Promethean, one of the created. Beautifully put together as a mix of typed and hand-written notes, complete with marginal doodles, you are sucked in to the story before you know it.

Scene set, the Introduction explains the underlying concept of the game. As Frankenstein's monster was brought to life by a bolt of lightning, each of the Created has a spark within them that provides the semblance of life but brings its own problems including mental instability while due to their nature they cause a feeling of disquiet in mortal creatures, and can even cause vegetation to be blighted if they stay in the same place too long. Thus a culture of lonely, wandering individuals has developed; and in their wanderings, many seek to become truly human. This is the ultimate goal, but naturally many routes to this state exist (or are believed to exist).

Overall, this is a fascinating concept which, with the right players, ought to make for an excellent and memorable gaming experience. When is it my turn to GM again?

Read the full review at http://www.rpg-resource.org.uk/