Finally got this! Am always looking at ways of improving my Chronicle designs, so this book of course appealed to me very much!
The Good. Such a nice, straightforward format and approach, covering all kinds of bases. Lots of excellent considerations and rules of thumb, including expansion on how to design a fictional city. The random methods of giving characters secrets and relationships remind me a bit of D&D back in the day, which is fine and no doubt can be very useful. I suspect the vast majority of Storytellers and STV writers would find this very useful in all sorts of ways, with the random detail generating systems automatically creating some startling and wonderful background details.
The Not-Great I do think too little time and ink goes towards what might be called the creative aspects of storytelling, relying on formula without offering a guide about how to let secrets and stories emerge from the characters themselves. Likewise I would have like far more about how to integrate Theme and Mood, as well as a breakdown of what mortal institutions actually hold the key to power.
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