We discussed the rules, now let’s talk about the fluff in the second episode of Immortal: The Invisible War. Just what is a Darkle, and what Femmes it? And shouldn’t the Tautha really be the Tuatha? Probably!
System Mastery
Jef and Jon review roleplaying games, Star Wars novels and anything else that crosses their paths.
System Mastery 
Pedantry! Pedantry! Co-emperors was totally a thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_the_Four_Tetrarchs
Holy hell, was this a slog to listen through, I can barely imagine what it’s like to read through it. All these overly flowery and pretentious terms became a confusing and exhausting mess after about 45 minutes in that I fell asleep and had to go back and restart the podcast at the last thing I remembered.
I can’t remember, but is this the game that Babylon 5’s Claudia Christian endorsed and actually GMed at one point?
I think it was a later edition, and that instead of running it, she played a role in some convention LARP or something. But basically yes.
‘Horror RPG’, huh? I don’t think that tag is normally used that way.
It sounds like there’s almost enough material in this damn book for a part 3; even after going through at an incredibly brisk pace, it felt like you were struggling to sum up everything in a mere two episodes. I still don’t know quite what’s going on, but I don’t think even reading the book would help with that.
Thank you for struggling through Immortal: Invisible War: City of Violence. Also something was said about spies; I don’t know if you cull from these comments for your Afterthoughts, but just in case, who is your favorite spy, and why is it not Harriet, Bond, or the Spy from TF2?
So, I listened to this with great interest, because back in the 90’s my gaming circle played this game obsessively. Everything you said about the book and the rules is correct. The rules were wonky (we ignored a lot of them), the terminology was deliberately obtuse, and the setting was so broad that most aspects were touched upon but not explained in any meaningful way. To make matters worse, when supplemental material was published for the game, the answers to the big mysteries of the game were dribbled out in small doses so that EVEN THE GM DIDN’T KNOW THE TRUTHS ABOUT THE GAME WORLD HE WAS RUNNING. It was like Lost in rpg format.
Still, we totally loved the game. The original campaign spawned at least 3 other copycat campaigns. The allure of playing mysterious ancient mythical creatures who had famous historical figures living inside your head was too great. Plus, the barely explained setting meant that you could literally make up whatever you wanted to as a GM and nobody would question you. One GM put the Femme Darkle into an honest to god Arnold Schwartzenegger Terminator body, and who were we to say that was wrong?
I am also surprised that you didn’t touch on the obvious fact that the game was inspired by Highlander. I think it was created as a way to make the Highlander mythology make sense (Why do they use swords? Because Immortals heal almost immediately from any ranged weapon damage. Why is cutting off their head the only way to kill them? Because it separates the brain in their head from the Vox in their throat. What is the Quickening? It is the spill of Free Immaculum that occurs when you behead another Immortal that you can soak up and use yourself.) but then Ran Ackles just sort of kept running with it too long after settling those basic questions.
Danger Wings, Seattle’s second favorite Heavy Metal Paul McCartney cover band.