Most people agree that WFRP's Magic system is its weakest part. From a role-player's point of view, it suffers from four main defects. Firstly, all but a few spells are designed for combat. Magic manipulating social interaction or assisting investigative adventuring hardly exists in WFRP. Even the illusionists, who are usually supposed to be trickster mages, apparently use their spells merely to confuse their foes in combat. Obviously, this is Games Workshop's tabletop heritage. Secondly, and partly as a consequence of this battle-mindedness, the use of WFRP's spells is very narrowly predefined. Spells like Sounds, whose effects can be adapted to the situation, are sadly too few in number. Thus creative role-playing of wizard PCs is all but encouraged. Thirdly, many ingredients of higher-level spells tend to be so rare they hardly seem to exist, which either makes those spells useless or suggests the existence of High Fantasy magic shops and guilds stacked to the roof with giants' scalps. Fourthly, the system fails to distinguish clearly between the spell use of wizards and priests, although it is stated that the latter receive the gift of magic directly from their gods.

Given all those problems and the fact that after more than 10 years, we are still waiting for Realms of Sorcery to be published, the fan-based Arcanes Magiques certainly has the potential to fill a few gaps. 'Le Grimoire', the French WFRP fanzine, published this supplement as the first of a number of special issues. It features a cover in colour and 93 text pages. While the book's layout is rather patchy, sometimes making it rather difficult to notice when one article ends and another starts, the illustrations are of a very high quality.

The volume starts with two short articles on the Slann and the different planes of existence. Both issues are desperately in need of clarification, however the texts in Arcanes Magiques are too sketchy to do anything more than further blurring. A piece on immortality research follows, describing an herbalist, a doctor and a priestess of Morr finding ways and means to elude death. All of these are useful when read as adventure seeds, possibly spawning scenarios of the 'mad scientist' type. However, it is my opinion that the meaning of undeath have been stretched far enough in Something Rotten in Kislev.

Inevitably, given the name of the fanzine, there is a section on grimoires in the supplement. Le Grimoire's earlier issues tended to focus on underdeveloped parts of the Warhammer World such as the Southlands, Lustria or Araby, and consequently some of the grimoires described appear to be rather exotic to the Empire-based GM. Nevertheless it is nice to have grimoires described as more than just the most convenient way of learning new spells. These grimoires have a creator, a history, and - - more often than not - a will of their own. Thus the "Book of Tizzicato", the "Goblinomicon" or the "Deeds of the Trickster King" make not only powerful and potentially dangerous magical artefacts, but also inspiring material for adventures.

Following this, a lengthy text describes the trial against an allegedly heretical elementalist. The story is basically about how prejudiced people are against magic, and elementalist magic in particular, but it also details some differences between Druids and elementalists. Two magic careers, the Archemage and the Runemaster, are described after this, both providing some opportunities for very, very high-level characters. The ensuing bits on runes, wands and magical artefacts are again too short to provide any significant information, apart from the fact that WFRP is not in need of flashy new magic material.

The second half of Arcanes Magiques consists of a list of new spells for wizards, elementalists, necromancers, demonologists, illusionists, alchemists and clerics. Some of these can indeed fill the gaps I mentioned above: they are spells for players who prefer role-playing over the mere multiplying of combat. Simple, but effective spells like invisibility, projection of voice and image, charm, ventriloquism or manipulation of shadows. In other words, spells for the lowly wizard manipulating social situations, infiltrating or hiding in the Warhammer World's grim cities.

Furthermore, some of Le Grimoire's spells are desperately needed to fill logical gaps in WFRP's game world. Have you ever wondered, for instance, why there seem to be quite a lot of people possessed by daemons running about in The Enemy Within Campaign, even though there is no demonologist's spell for directing a daemon into a living human being? Arcanes Magiques fixes that. In fact, there is a number of spells in this volume which NPC mages in WFRP campaigns obviously take for granted, but which can never be learned by player characters, simply because they do not exist officially.

Other spells in the supplement spark that creative potential which the ones in the rulebook lack. "Illusory Illusion", for instance, gives an illusionist the opportunity to have something real look like an illusion. The spell has millions of possible uses and is guaranteed to entail some entertaining role-playing encounters. However, some spells in the list are not quite as ingenious as the one just mentioned. In fact, a few are merely slightly over-powered versions of spells from the rule-book, sometimes adapted for another race. Almost all spells for skaven, for example, seem to be warpstone-versions of ordinary battle magic spells.

Arcanes Magiques is certainly no substitute for the ever-forthcoming Realms of Sorcery. Le Grimoire are neither concerned with the faulty game mechanics, nor do they clarify the mangled magical background of the Warhammer World. As a source of inspiration for scenarios revolving around magical artefacts and wizards, and as a collection of spells ranging from rather useful to absolutely necessary, however, it is worth reading. (mw)