Good product, especially for people who're trying to port the World of Darkness to other settings whose native RPGs have kludgey or confusing game mechanics (like almost every Star Wars RPG that I've seen to date). This takes the grunt work out of the two hardest parts- spaceships and alien species.

I disagree with a previous reviewer about this needing more "examples of some of the concepts in action." Doing so would've simply created a canon setting, which is exactly what this product doesn't need.

Bumping it up from 4 to 5 stars because of the black-and-white interior. I'm really tired of color backgrounds and pictures in my RPG books.

Decent, overall, but a little too short. Not enough examples of some of the concepts in action.

The toolkit aspect of this book gives it the 3 stars all alone, but the last two stars just could not be earned without a bit more to spur the imagination.

Overall: worth 5 dollars, easily.

I've been a fan of White Wolf since the original Vampire released, and I'll admit from the outset that I think the company has been declining in quality ever since the "new" World of Darkness first reared its ugly head. Or even sooner.

And this book exemplifies a lot of what I've come to dislike about new White Wolf publications. I realize 5 bucks isn't much, but I basically feel like I paid to get a glimpse of a game designer's notebook. There's so much potential for a fully realized setting here that it sorta feels like the folks at White Wolf just didn't believe in the product and opted to try to make a buck off of a half (half? more like tenth) realized product. I grant some others' points that it is somewhat refreshing that we're given hints and gestures and then encouraged to make a world of our own. But to my mind one of the strengths of the old WoD was that it managed to provide you with tons of rich material that never, ever, limited what you could do with the world yourself.

In short I feel like this book boils down to a blog post titled "Hey, what if WoD was a space opera?" and then listed a couple ideas. Then it got designed and typeset and sold for too much. Blech.

Infinite Macabre is a toolkit book for doing Space Opera stories in the World of Darkness. The book contains a short section on the setting and brief rules on using spaceships, a long section on adapting each of the seven gamelines, and then a short section on making truly Alien races.

In the setting section, spaceships are described using the familiar five dot system, for size, weapons, armour and speed. There is also very simple rules for space combat. Apart from that, it attempts to define the setting. I say 'attempts' because the writer doesn't seem to understand basic astronomy. He refers to star systems as galaxies and writes about 'the Universe' in a way that suggests he doesn't know that stars collect in groups. Apart from that, the setting default is that faster-than-light (FTL) technology hasn't been developed yet, and instead there are these 'Stygian Gates' in every (by definition) interesting star system to allow interstellar travel. These Gates transit through the Underworld, seemingly for no other reason than to allow travel to be frightening and therefore 'interesting'.

That the writer of a Space Opera supplement starts by demonstrating his profound ignorance of space is quite disconcerting. Fortunately, it's actually irrelevant to the rest of the product. There is a lot of mention of space opera motifs such as Empires of Man and territorial control and such. I might be biased as a Trekker and Star Wars fan, but to me they made more sense if you ignore the "no FTL" default. After all, there is no point mapping territory, or even claiming it, if you can't reach it. Also, the writer inadvertantly created something cool with those Gates. In conventional sci fi, travel between galaxies is very rare. But in this setting, you can have regular if risky access to it.

The majority of the book is about the various gamelines, specifically sections on adapting them to a space setting, some story ideas, and 'new toy' rules for new abilities. Fortunately the writer knows the game rules much better than the rules of astrophysics. The adaption sections are good lists of the things you have to consider. Examples are probably best: Earth vampires are burnt by Earth's Sun, but what happens with other suns? Are they affected when not on a planet? Werewolf auspices are determined by Luna, but (again) what happens when Earth and its Moon are far away? There is also the issue of Fae Arcadia. Is it still an alternate plane, or is it now a planet in the normal Universe? You are given lots of options for dealing with these issues. The other gamelines are also dealt with, but their adaption is much easier and mostly consists of expanded possibilities. There are also guides for what the Vampire Clans, Werewolf Tribes, Mage Orders and such might be like in the expanded setting. For instance, the default setting is that the supernatural beings are not hidden, so you can have empires ruled openly by vampires or mages or others.

The final short but thorough section has the rules for creating a new character template, the outer-space Alien. The new traits allow for aliens as weird and non-humanoid as you can want. It also has brief write-ups for the standard American alien trinity, the Greys, the Nordics and the Reptoids. This section consists of 7 pages of this 30 page book, for anyone thinking of buying it to use these Aliens in an Earth-bound game.

Summary: This is a book full of useful advice for adapting the various gamelines. Werewolf struck me as the hardest to adapt and the least rewarding to do so. Working out how to adapt the Changeling Hedge is also complex, although Changeling would be a great source of weird aliens for other gamelines. The other gamelines are relatively easy.

A mostly well written and put together piece. I personally enjoyed how they gave you the tools to create your universe vs. actually doing it for you. And some of the solutions they provide for vampires and werewolves were stuff I would never have thought of myself.

The ship merit was nice...to a certain extent I came to the conclusion that they had to buy size before anything else because that is the one that's not so easily modifiable. The rest I can chock up to customization. Aside from that it makes it rather easy to create a NPC or military ships for a military campaign. Just translate dots to stats.

There was some incongruities about ship speed, the book goes on about traveling between galaxies and going 100,000 parsecs ((Without the use of the stygian gates)) but gave a ships speed of 5 less than 1/5th of lightspeed, a parsec being 3.3 lightyears, So any talk of galaxies I changed to systems.

Beyond that a very useful and well put together book and I enjoyed it thoroughly and really glad I pain the money to download it. Great for ideas people.

One of a pair of new Mirror Books. I felt this one was the much stronger of the two. More details, on what makes this sub-setting its own beast. I like the attention to detail on how shifting the current WOD into this sort of setting makes adjustments to those game lines. I wish that Bleeding Edge had been giving this sort of treatment. A Great addition to the WoD and Mirrors line.

The Infinite Macabre accomplishes what a roleplaying supplement should ideally provide. I find myself very giddy and eager to play the game. This is one of two science fiction-themed supplements to World of Darkness: Mirrors, material that had to be cut due to space constraints from their chapter entitled “Shards” which offered genre hacks for the World of Darkness system.

In many ways Mirrors accomplishes a task set forth in the World of Darkness core rulebook, which did away with the orthodox metaplot and then boosted further with Hunter: the Vigil which gave Storytellers a system to create any sort of monster antagonist, unbound to any of the core rulebook mythologies. Mirrors was essentially a toolbox of hacks for tweaking or altering the World of Darkness rules and setting into whatever sort of beast you would like. The Infinite Macabre sets out the framework for you to take your campaign into a far future space opera setting! It is a slim 30 pages long so instead of a fully-fleshed setting it gives you more suggestions, hints, and a few tools. At many points it reminds you of the central tenant of Mirrors, you are assumed to be more creative than the game designers (or at least you know your own tastes better than they do, and should rise to the challenge to create your own masterpiece).

Infinite Macabre starts off with a description of a dark space opera environment, giving many juicy details on how to provide the right mood and themes and locales to paint across your broad new canvas. Next is a simple spacecraft creation and combat section which is Merit-based, familiar to any Vampire player who has crafted a Haven, or Changeling who ever built a Hollow. These rules are simple and dirty, though I can see how they might let down a gamer who is more sci-fi than World of Darkness inclined; in Which Case one can make new rules, or import them from a more crunchy game system. Next is a discussion of Stygian Gates, which is a fine way to make your spacefaring campaign truly galactic. Think of them like the hyperspace gates in many science fiction franchises, but there is the intriguing hint that there is one Gate for every game line (a Vampire gate, a Hunter gate, etc.). This provides a great motivation to explore the Gates and explore their history and how they fit into the mythologies of the game lines. Chuck Wendig does a great job in painting these various space opera elements in a patina of horror, just as the World of Darkness is like our world but more monstrous.

The bulky abdomen of the book considers how the seven character types of the main game lines are changed via translation into a space opera genre. I really liked this section because it allows you to let your imagination run wild taking a concept to its ultimate conclusion. I was worried that this process would be problematic, but really it gives you a way to amplify aspects of the genre. For instance, how would your Mage react if he finds out the Five Watchtowers usually thought of as being metaphorical destinations are real and out there on different star systems situated in a vast pentacle shape? Your Changeling can enter the Hedge and explore a vast mad landscape, but now she can send the crew of a whole spaceship through and there is whole terrible worlds out there in an Arcadia as vast as galaxies. Lastly, there is a short section on creating your own aliens, rather like the monster creation system for use with Hunter (of which Wendig was chief designer). The system is versatile even if it is Spartan, but Wendig reminds us that Mirrors can be used here in case you need more tools or inspiration.

Space opera World of Darkness adds more to your options. It is like combining Buffy the Vampire Slayer with Firefly. Genetic splicing of Science Fiction and Horror are fairly firmly established so it shouldn’t be too strange to craft a World of Darkness tale off some distant nebulae and still have it feel like a White Wolf game.

There are drawbacks, because now you have to roll up your sleeves and create a whole new universe in a completely wide open sandbox but if you are the sort of gamer I am than that is less of a burden and more of a challenge and most of the fun and point of why we game. There are a few problems that should be addressed. On page 6 there is mentioned of a star chart table on page 10 which is missing. I have to say I am inspired to write a hundred new campaigns and roll up a thousand characters to inhabit them so The Infinite Macabre has accomplished its task!

This product has me as giddy as a school girl. Scifi is my favorite genre and the nWoD is one of my favorite systems. And This. Book. Rocks! I downloaded it as soon as I found it available and devoured it. It is filled with ideas and variations for all the different monsters in the WoD and shows how to create space ships! And space has gates! Of course, with their own, World of DARKness flavor. This book is amazing and has me jumping up and down. I'm crazy excited about this supplement. The rules for Other creation are excellent. You want to play an alien? Well, you can. And you can make the alien into pretty much anything you want, by choosing several qualities from a very comprehensive list. This supplement goes on the assumption that the veils of secrecy surrounding the monsters have been dropped, but even so, you could change things a bit to maintain that secrecy. True to it's Mirrors origins, this book is a toolkit of things. Take what you want, leave what you don't. I'm excited to play nWoD Space Opera!