We had our first session yesterday and I am now ready to give my two cents about this book. When I first saw that The Veil was on Kickstarter, much good feelings got into me. The Cyberpunk genre was always calling out for me, but the only option I had in my bookshelf was Shadowrun 5, a game for which I don't have all the MIT certificates required to run a few games. A new era was finally about to start.

1. The Setting: I must say that at first, it was a little confusing because I really tought that a setting was more or so already included in the book. It must have been discussed while the campaign was running, but to be fair, I didn't really followed all the multiples threads on KS and on G+ to get the devellopements. There is a little exemple within the MC section to explain what a game based on Neuromancer's setting would like, but that's pretty much it. After the shock, I came to understand that The Veil is actually a toolbox in which me and my player could forge (or... cyberforge I guess) the exact type of cyberpunk world we wanted to explore. My players got a little confused by this aspect, but quickly got into it. It was easy to just pick elements from Blade Runner/Soldier, Ghost in the Shell, Brinks and, believe it or not, some elements from the Super Mario Bros. movie and just create a world in which everybody was comfortable to play.

2. The playbooks: Here's what I think is the best part of this game. All playbooks from the core book (and the coming Cascade book) are openly design and/or based on classic character/thrope from the extended cyberpunk genre. When you start reading one, you immediatly get what's the jazz around it and begin having ideas about what you could do. The job the authors did creating thoses that my players really got a hard time choosing what they would play (personnaly, The Empath and the Catabolist would have been my dilemma). It brought a lot of excitement around the table and that's always a plus in my book. Where I must use one of my Hold is about how they appear in the book. Well, they do not. A chapter of the book covers in details the elements/moves of each playbooks but the only reference you can get to validate how those manifest in the book is a really small picture on which it is hard to properly read the info. Knowing that Urban Shadows kinda did the same thing and that the playbooks were are online in a separeted PDF, I did some probing and managed to get them easily.

3. The editing Ok. I lied. I did followed a little bit the updates regarding the developpments. Samjoko Publishing had a little confusion with their printer, but to be fair, even if a few things sometime appear a little weird in the book such as having reference to pages in the book looking like an hyperlink on a web page (underlined and blue), but the rest of the job is well done. It breath, it is easy to read and even if there is to glossary at the end, the index in the begining does a great job helping people to get where is what. The book is not much flooded by illustrations, but I saw this as a choice going toward quality instead of quantity, which is always better in my opinion. To fill the blank, a clever use of citations was done which helps setting an overall tone around the cyberpunk genre.

4. Understandability This is were my review will aquired the " messy " tag. When it comes to explain the specific concept of the playbooks, moves and such, everythhing is close to flawlessly done. There is always an exemple to put you in context and get what's the jist of the said move/playbook option. Hell, you even sometime get two examples which is always welcome! The only thing my player didn't really got and for which we had to houserule was about the Interface in the cybernetics part of the playbooks. We came to a conclusion in which it was the way you access the Veil and the Digiscape, but we may be wrong. Now, where it lacks a few good things when it come to understand how to play this (in my opinion), is when it comes to the generals. At some points, the authors seems to take for granted that the reader will have red the original Apokalypse Book. As an exemple, the Executive playbook has an option in which the board for which he or she works is also a threat of the Cult type, which does not appear in the book (but probably does in the basic Apocalypse book). Also, creating threats can be sometime a little hard and a few good exemples of threats could be welcomed for Apocalypse noobs as we are. Altough, it is far from being a deal breaker. Just take for granted that you may have to interpret a few details in order to run your game.

In conclusion, The Veil is a good book and I recommand it. It brings very good ressources to play the game the way you want. Those who have been fans of Urban Shadows should definitively have a look to The Veil since a lot of good points from it were used to write this RPG. I personnaly look foward to read Cascade since I know the authors will manage to bring to a ever better level (and who knows, perhaps get their 5 stars!). Thanks for this game and now, if you could please excuse me, I have some Giri to keep track and some threat to create for next week.