An odd one. Obviously this is a joke product and it's mildly amusing, so well done there. Worth a look, more for the pointers on creating your own conditions than for the humour.

What I find odd about this is mostly how inconsistent the cards are. There's some that are focused on metagame stuff, in a way which leaves me fairly cold, because my groups are quite happy to discuss that openly. A few of them seem pleasingly niche, but still potentially useful in a completely standard game and quite tropetastic, which is more what I was expecting ("Cornered by things that are smaller than you", for example). Others look have a tongue-in-cheek feel but would again work fine in a not-very-serious campaign, and then there's a couple of wild cards.

I don't have any problem with any of that, but I do feel the cards would have been more satisfying if they'd stuck with a consistent tone and theme for the conditions, because a stack of cards with the same kind of humour would have a cumulative effect, whereas this scattershot approach doesn't. Or you could even split it into two sets, one focused on horror/monster/WOD tropery and one on the jokier elements.

Also, and I appreciate this is a very minor gripe, but could they not have filled in the last four cards instead of leaving them blank? Surely White Wolf can come up with eighteen mildly amusing things?

It's a nice idea, I think it could have been executed better with a bit more focus, but it's a freebie April 1st throwaway so hey.

While this is an april fools joke, it still shows creative examples of how conditions can be used above and beyond the typical. Also, sometimes you are in a car, running out of fuel, risking breakdown, and being chased by monsters.

Originally released as a spoof product to 'celebrate' April Fool's Day 2014, this collection of 14 Condition cards proved to be popular enough to leave available. It's free to download the PDF so easy to check out, and even if you decide that you want actual cards you only need to pay a couple of dollars for them.

As you can imagine, most are pretty silly. But read them... they actually work. Perhaps your character has fallen ill/been knocked out or something - or you cannot make it to the game - apply the 'Extended Hiatus' Condition, and if you're there you can play a temporary character but any Beats you earn go to your regular character instead. If you are absent, tag another character: on your return your character gets the same number of Beats as the other character earned during your absence. Neat, huh?

There's a lot of a 'I didn't know I needed that' feel about them, things you might never have considered but once you see it there all neatly laid out (and you have stopped laughing) you start to see how you might be able to make use of them in your game. Others are less useful but could be used to effect - take 'Broke a Mirror on Friday the 13th' for example. Use this on a character who really screws up one thing. Under this Condition, the Storyteller can introduce one really scary thing from a past World of Darkness book to terrorise your character. The drawback for the Storyteller is, she has to convert its rules to be compliant with the God-Machine Chronicle rules up-date. Have a brawl or otherwise chase it off, resolve the Condition and get on with your life (or unlife if applicable).

Or perhaps you'd like the persistent Condition 'Monster Shares Your Hobby' - whenever you go to an event or practise your hobby in public, that darn monster turns up doing the same thing there as well. At least you'll know where to find him... but you can only resolve it by one of you dropping that particular pastime. And when you are feeling swamped, take the 'Extensive Collection of Conditions' Condition - replacing four other Conditions with it. Then you get to change a Virtue or a Vice in a sort of mid-life crisis.

Not as silly as you might expect, these are things that will make you go 'Hmmm'

wonderful, I love this book. The rules were fantastic . I intend to continue buying

Too specific. I might be able to use one or two of these things, but it is going to seem like a joke. How am I suppose to keep the dark, brooding atmosphere when the game can't even take itself seriously?

These are the sort of things that we needed to see in the so-called God-Machine Chronicle book (called that because that's the title). Why were they left out? Maybe they were too good, too useful, too important? No, it was due to Onyx Path wanting to charge me for them!

Oh wait... I got them for free? Um, maybe I should've given this more than five stars!