Just before I go nuts on RPGNow, does anyone have any opinions of this game?

The two complaints I've heard elsewhere were that a) the dice system makes PCs fail far too often, and b) fight get dull quickly, because although the game encourages the players to use weird supernatural weapons (I'm given to understand that "shooting chains out of your eyes" is mentioned), it doesn't provide very many for the players to choose from.

Ohhhhhh .... you're talking to a serious WV fan and practitioner here. I consider this to be one of the best games of the 1990s.

By now, I'm sure that you know that off-the-cuff comments such as you describe are largely the result of habit and neophobia encountering something new.

The Whispering Vault is an "effects first" game in the same sense as early Champions and Sorcerer. The ability "Rend" is a game mechanic; what it is in-game is a matter of interpretation and customization. I belong to the sector of role-players who consider this approach to be a wonderful boon, as opposed to the sector who'd really like to see Acid Spray, Eye-chains, LazerBlast, Freezing Ray, etc, etc, all listed over 20+ pages.

The dice system operates in tandem with the Karma system. [By "Karma," I do not mean the technical category as proposed by Tweet, but rather the metagame re-roll mechanic as it's named in the game.] Karma acquisition, husbanding, and spending play a major role in resolution in the game, especially since damage is frightfully damaging, and especially since group goals are a major element of play. Considering the dice system in isolation is frankly not very meaningful; it'd be like considering the dice in Hero Wars (Quest) without considering Hero Points.

Best,
Ron

I love the Whispering Vault.
My discovery of the game was the main cause of my love of rules-light games (before that, I was a BRP-guy like lots of French people).

I've recently revised my WV page, with lots of links : http://philippe.tromeur.free.fr/wv.htm

One of those links is a (freely available) Pyramid article about the initial design of the game : http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.cgi?470
Though it's a review / analysis of the 1993 pre-release version (the legendary "Black Book"), the system remained unchanged in the 1994 edition.

On rpg.net, I had a discussion about the difficulty of dice rolls ( http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=60305 ), I cut/paste the conclusion there :

"The article includes a probability chart for difficulties from 1 to 18, and rolling 1 to 20 dice (though the normal limit is 10 dice). I haven't verified, but the table looks OK.

Without any skill, a six-dice Attribute has got 71% to achieve a Routine task (difficulty 8), 54% to achieve an Easy task (10), 38% to achieve an Average task (12), 12% to achieve a Hard task (15), 6% to achieve a Very Hard task (18).

With a +2 Skill, the chances are better : 95% for a Routine task, 71% for an Easy task, 54% for an Average task, 12% for a Hard task, 7% for a Very Hard task

With a +6 Skill, the chances are still better : 100% for a Routine task, 100% for an Easy task, 95% for an Average task, 58% for a Hard task, 38% for a Very Hard task

The probabilities are not that bad ... but they need some explanations and warnings : the difficulty scale is obviously adapted to average Stalkers (most humans are barely able to achieve "Routine" tasks).

... and Pain Mothers are real badasses (Hard to attack, Hard to defend against, Armored ...), to be used sparingly, even if they're so cool that GM's have a tendancy to put them everywhere. They're almost unkillable by a single Stalker, unless extremely skilled, strong, powerful and/or lucky. The best way to get rid of them is Banishment (more than Very Hard, but it's a single task)."

And, by the way, I've run a game last week. Everything went fine.

Like I said on rpg.net, the PC's may be the powerful servants of the Primal Powers, but their foes are even more dangerous. They will have to burn lots of Karma to get rid of the Big Boss, and may fail.

The game is really more akin to Call of Cthulhu (BRP) than d20 or Nobilis, for that matter. PC's will almost certainly win the Hunt, but barely so.