Pyramid Review
The Magic Box (for Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Published by Eden Studios, Inc.
Written by John Snead with Timothy S. Brannan, Fiona Faria, Toos Holmes, Thom Marrion, Andy O'Hara, Andrew Peregrine, Justin VanKirk, and Jeremy Hunt
Illustrated by C. Brent Ferguson and Jon Hodgon
128-page color softcover; $27.00
The Magic Box is not, as the title might suggest, a guide to the magical arts and occult emporium run by Giles and Anya as seen in the series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Rather it is a sourcebook for all things magical in the Buffyverse and more specifically for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Roleplaying Game. It is the fifth release for the game and the first fully-fledged supplement after the game's core triumvirate -- the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Roleplaying Game corebook, Slayer's Handbook, and Monster Smackdown. This means that its format changes from hard to softback, though without almost any loss in terms of production values. (What lose there is only extends as far as a not-so-fine a quality paper stock and the reproduction of one two stills from the series not being quite as crisply as they should be.)
Since this is the magic supplement for Buffy the Vampire Slayer Roleplaying Game, Eden Studios picked the right man to author The Magic Box. John Snead has a number of magic systems and supplements for various RPGs to his credit, including The Dying Earth Roleplaying Game by Pelgrane Press, as well as contributing to Postmodern Magick for Atlas Games' Unknown Armie . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: July 25, 2003
Copyright © 2003 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.