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Degentrification
Publisher: White Wolf
by Charles S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/10/2019 00:45:36

The first thing the reader notices is that the formatting is absolutely bare bones: black text on white, with no border or art. It could use copyediting (things such as "united states" and "hermetics" without capitalization occur, for example, but even then also "Verbena" so it is inconsistent) and if you aren't into books that revel in being gross for the sake of grossness, this is absolutely not a supplement for you. Characters in this scenario flout the various rules of secrecy that make the World of Darkness function, and it plays in stereotypes. It's only the loosest framework for a story, and ends very abruptly as well.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Degentrification
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A Breakdown of Order: The Alchemist’s Schism One Page Jumpstart
Publisher: White Wolf
by Charles S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/10/2019 00:32:24

This is a very good jumpstart, with lots of good ideas. However, there are five pages of content (1 steup, 1 plot hooks, 3 for characters). It covers the brief period where the Solificati are part of the Order of Reason, but looking for a way out. There's a minor formatting issue with the columns on page 5, but this has no impact on the content, which is high quality and covers different factions of mages as well as the other night-folk and how they might interact with this plot, if you happen to be, say, running Werewolf in the late Middle Ages or (very) early Renaissance.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
A Breakdown of Order: The Alchemist’s Schism One Page Jumpstart
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Dark Ages: Mage
Publisher: White Wolf
by Charles S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/04/2019 03:06:29

Dark Ages Mage is the first book in my attempt to review the entire Mage line before the 20th Anniversary Edition comes out. Mostly, it's my way of keeping sane while I wait. This is going to be an interesting one, because I never actually got around to reading Dark Ages ANYTHING before, and I've heard many times that Mage and Fae are both things of beauty. As for why I'm starting here, I'm going in "chronological order" based one when the book is set, with the assumption that the books under Mage: the Ascension were all set in the years they were written. So, Dark Ages first, then Sorcerer's Crusade, and then on to Ascension, with the big restriction that, of course, I don't actually HAVE every book.

The book starts out with a nice little piece of fiction involving a treacherous nobleman and how his treachery leads to the formation of a cabal. The fiction is well-written and kept hold of me (something that's often been a problem with my attempts to read the fiction in Mage books before) and served as a good lead in to the book.

Chapter 1: Magic and the Medieval focuses on the myths, legends and superstitions of Medieval life. I can't speak for too much in the way of authenticity, except when speaking of the Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah and Gematria) which is handled quite well. In general, White Wolf seemed to handle Judaism much better than it did some other cultures (also look on to Charnel Houses of Europe from the Wraith line for another excellent example) and I'm hoping that Mage 20 handles the mysticism comparably well, and from what Brucato has said on Facebook, we can expect this level of accuracy across the board.

Chapter 2: Mystic Fellowships goes into detail on the six major factions of mages of the era: the Ahl-i-Batin, the Messianic Voices, the Old Faith, the Order of Hermes, the Spirit-Talkers and the Valdaermen. Each of them gets six full pages of exposition! The biggest issue I have is that these six pages aren't equal. The Ahl-i-Batin schools get a sidebar discussing what they're about. The Houses of Hermes, however, aren't even listed by name, only Tremere (now a Clan) and Quaesitor are given even a specific mention! The impression it really gives me is that they're afraid of Ars Magica in some way, even though the Dark Medieval and Mythic Europe are radically different in tone, and the Houses will not be the same across the two games, plus, many WoD players won't have the Ars Magica books to fill this gap. The real strength, though, is the Valdaermen, a Norse group of magi, who mix some bits of Cultist and Verbena mythology, with one of the most boastful stereotypes of another faction I've read in their opinions on the Order, which I'll not quote, so that people have to get the book to read it.

Chapter 3: Characters is pretty much what you expect. It's a solid description of character creation with some basic stats included. It's short, because it can offload most of the work to Dark Ages: Vampire, but overall, it was passable, and set up:

Chapter 4: Magic. Here's the real meat of the book, the magic system is fundamentally different from Ascension's. Each Mystic Fellowship has a Foundation, which is analogous to Arete and informs how they think about magic and four Pillars which are their mystical knowledge. While this system has many benefits, and makes it VERY clear how different the fellowships ARE, it has a downside: it's not very expandable. The Sphere system can just be adopted by any mage, and you change the paradigm, whether they're a Tradition mage or Orphan or anything in between. The Pillars need to be worked out in detail for any other mystical fellowship. This is in part because for high levels of the Foundation, there are always on game mechanical benefits, but it does make it harder to expand the system.

Chapter 5: Magical Lands is a mystic geography covering Britain, Scandinavia, Italy, Spain, Eastern Europe and more. It covers many specific crays (nodes in Ascension terms) and also Hedge mages, such as the Rosselini and Giovanni families from Vampire: the Masquerade, as well as dealings with the Fae (in Britain, including King Arthur) and a rather large expansion on the Valdaermen.

Chapter 6: Creatures and Talismans starts out strong with Dragons, and then moves on to Unicorns, Fae, some undead, the Umbra...all in all, a strong chapter with a good toolbox even for rare creatures and items that survive to the present day.

Chapter 7: Storytelling does what it sets out to go: give the ST some help getting things going. It discusses theme, mood, some setting material and plot hooks.

Overall, Dark Ages: Mage surprised me. I wasn't expecting to like the book as much as I did, and if I'd gone through it before, when I ran a story for a Hermetic where they went back in time to the Dark Ages, I might have used Dark Ages rather than Ars Magica, save for the fact that the Hermetics only appear at low resolution in the book for some reason.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Dark Ages: Mage
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Damned and Deceived
Publisher: White Wolf
by Charles S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/04/2019 03:05:29

There just isn't much content to this book. It was passably written, but as a game supplement, lacking in meat, similar to Saviors and Destroyers. It was several chapters of three ongoing stories (which were largely fine as fiction) followed by some very basic mechanics. A very small fraction was anything other than fiction about specific characters.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
Damned and Deceived
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Demon Players Guide
Publisher: White Wolf
by Charles S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/04/2019 03:05:10

This is far and away the best Demon book I've read so far (and I only have a couple more remaining). It contains lots of information adding depth to the game. From the detailed advice for creating a Demon PC, through detailing the creation of, impact of, use of, and examples of relics. Reading through, I had no serious objections to the content, both flavor and mechanics. It all was well-written and balanced.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Demon Players Guide
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Demon Storytellers Companion
Publisher: White Wolf
by Charles S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/04/2019 03:04:48

More than bad, this book is nearly useless. It is divided into five chapters. The first one "Dark Gods" focuses on the Earthbound and makes the Christian basis of the book all the more painfully evident by first claiming that most ancient religions were engineered by Demons (though it only mentions old world ones, primarily middle eastern and european, in fact), and that Christianity was a "special" religion that was particularly bad for the Earthbound.

Chapter 2 was far and away the best chapter, which information about the factions and how to use them in a game, along with some signature characters for each one

Chapter 3 was about the bigger demons left behind and how to bring them into the world and what happens then. It was ok, but nothing special. Chapter 4 was about the Underworld (call the Spirit Realm throughout Demon, which makes me wonder to what extent Demons realize that there Middle and High Umbrae even exist) and it introduces a nice source of confusion: a Slayer named Charon.

Chapter 5 discusses demon interactions with other supernaturals (Vampires, Mages, Werewolves and Hunters) as well as some random animals have stats. It didn't really add anything new for handling interactions, my recommendation is to actually just use the core books of the other games and ignore this chapter.

Chapter 2 is the main saving grace, and if you can pick it up cheaply, that might be worth something (It's also far and away the longest chapter, filling out about 1/2 the book) but the rest of it is best left on the shelf.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
Demon Storytellers Companion
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City of Angels (Demon)
Publisher: White Wolf
by Charles S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/04/2019 03:04:26

Of the demon books I've read so far, this is far and away the worst. And it doesn't even spend much time on history compared to the others! So far, it's had some really shitty editing (identical sentences appearing in several places, some minor grammatical issues) but, as always with demon, the number on issue is cultural insensitivity. Though in this case, it's not even something related to demons! It's just referring to a group of black people as "blacks" (specifically a "gang of blacks" which is actually SO MUCH WORSE)

The rest of the book is mostly just piles of characters and a bit of structure for the local Fallen. There are really only two things of significance in the book: metaplot involving Lucifer (though some of that falls to some of the published fiction) and the structure of the Infernal Court. The latter is the only real saving grace of the book, putting in the political structure that the Fallen would generally fall into in print and in detail. This piece is near essential for Demon players and STs, though the rest of the book can safely be ignored if you aren't running your game in Los Angeles, and even then, may not be of great value.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
City of Angels (Demon)
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Houses of the Fallen
Publisher: White Wolf
by Charles S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/04/2019 03:03:51

This is far and away the best supplement in the Demon line. Very detailed descriptions of each House (a full chapter for each) mixed nicely with mechanics in the form of relics and rituals. Overall, it's a very strong book, and one of only three that I would actually recommend that a player or ST for Demon pick up.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Houses of the Fallen
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Demon: The Fallen
Publisher: White Wolf
by Charles S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/04/2019 03:03:29

I have a soft spot for this book, but it has not held up so well over the years. Perhaps the issue is more that society and the hobby have moved on. There's still a lot to like, and this game would benefit greatly from a 20th anniversary edition to clean up the warts.

Honestly, the largest problem is the general disrespect it has for the source material it draws from. While I would never go after it for imperfectly fitting any particular angelology, but basically ignoring all of them and naming the seven Houses of the Fallen after gods and sacred/mythic animals from various ancient traditions is not great. Plus, the Hebrew was horrific, to the point of being mildly offensive, calling the angels "elohim" as though that was a plural term and not in active use in a real world minority religion (especially given that "malakim" is a perfectly good word for them, and is used in a specific angelic name in the book, most of which are also terrible). Oh, and of course, it does include an offhand remark that "severely autistic people" are less fully human. That...needs to be excised.

However, when viewing it as a Milton-esque exercise it succeeds quite well when you get past those trappings. The Factions are all logical responses to the trauma of the rebellion and time in hell, and it combines themes from Vampire, Mage and Changeling in generally creative ways. The mechanics are solid and will need minimal updating for compatibility with 20th anniversary rules.

But the cultural insensitivity issues and the lack of research into the mythology that they're building on are sticking points. If the book were being written today, more research, more care with languages, better choice of proper nouns (even just using names for demons from different traditions instead of just gods, like calling one House Sheydim would not bother me, as an example) and of course, not putting "severely autistic" people into the same category as people who are comatose, braindead, and who've had their souls snuffed out.

So, a good game, but running it in a way that avoids these problems would take significant work.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Demon: The Fallen
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Earthbound
Publisher: White Wolf
by Charles S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/04/2019 03:02:21

Like every other Demon book, it's hard to give this one a rating. The stuff talking about modern nights is fine, the mechanics are mostly solid. However, when it goes into the history, it's awful to the point of being offensive.

First, the good: the book explains who the Earthbound are, WHAT they are, and gives solid mechanics for using them, even if it hints in the direction of Earthbound PCs, which...that's not a good idea. But the powers make sense thematically, the change from Virtues to Urges is interesting, and the details about the Apocalyptic Form of an Earthbound are particularly useful for running a game.

The bad, though, consists of a continued insistence that basically all human religions (with small exceptions that I will get to) are lies created by the Earthbound for them to gather Faith. The exceptions are the Abrahamic religions, which are handled ridiculously poorly, to the point of talking about Lucifer taking a special interest in the ancient Israelites and...we've been murdered for being the "Synagogue of Satan" as Revelation calls us. So I'm not happy about that bit. And otherwise, Christianity and Islam apparently, with a little bit from Buddhism, are what took the Earthbound off the board for hundreds of years. The game continues to be unable to make up its mind if it likes Christianity or hates it, and also continues to handle Judaism extremely poorly (in addition to the above, it acts like Judaism is a large-scale influential religion rather than an oppressed minority constantly on the brink of being destroyed, as well as some weirdness involving Solomon). I can't say much about its portrayal of Islam because it barely does it at all.

Overall, it's a very "meh" book, as are many Demon books, because though the good parts are quite good, the bad parts counterbalance that thoroughly.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Earthbound
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Fear to Tread
Publisher: White Wolf
by Charles S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/04/2019 03:01:50

This is a perfectly serviceable book. Because it is so focused on the three stories that make up the chronicle it contains, there's not much room for the issues that have plagued the rest of the demon line.

I personally found the stories a bit lackluster, but they are perfectly functional for an ST running a game in Los Angeles using the City of Angels sourcebook. It attempts to make the book helpful but not required and doesn't entirely succeed.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Fear to Tread
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Saviors and Destroyers
Publisher: White Wolf
by Charles S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/04/2019 03:01:20

Off to a bad start with a narrative from the point of view of a religious Jew that just feels off (including definitions of terms that a religious Jew would never feel the need to define to another religious Jew, but probably it is just an artifact of writing for a non-Jewish audience, though none of the authors appear to be Jewish). I focus on this narrative because I can see the "did not do the research" signs in it, though the other two seem to focus less on minorities. This insensitivity and lack of research have plagued the Demon line, and is often the cause of books coming off as racist, ableist, etc, when they are not intended that way.

Aside from this, though, there is the issue of a lack of content. For a book about demon hunters, there's very little general material about demon hunters and even less mechanics. The vast majority of the book is taken up by the fiction, leaving very little room for the promised content. And worse, what's there is lackluster, and I would recommend Arcanum or Hunters Hunted instead, by a large amount.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
Saviors and Destroyers
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World of Darkness: Sorcerer
Publisher: White Wolf
by Charles S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/31/2019 16:12:30

This book is...fine. The bulk of it, the part focused on the numina and mechanics is good, though it is, of course, old and has been updated in later books to fit more recent mechanics. The organizations are interesting, but there's not much information on how Sorcerers fit in with Mage (except for a nice discussion of the mechanics of having a sorcerer Awaken or be Embraced) and particularly little mention of scientific sorcerers except for one UFO cult, certainly no mention of their use with the Technocracy. The book is good for what it is, but a lot of it has been superseded by more recent books that have done it better.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
World of Darkness: Sorcerer
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Werewolf The Wild West
Publisher: White Wolf
by Charles S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/21/2019 16:00:30

Overall, Werewolf: the Wild West has a lot of missed opportunities and a few strange choices made, but is generally a solid book, despite these flaws.

First, the good: the opening fiction is excellent. It has a very strong Canterbury Tales vibe to it, and I was a bit disappointed that after the opening the characters in it were never mentioned again, when they would have been great running examples. Another nice thing was that it actually mentioned the Native Tribes working with Dreamspeaker Kinfolk! This actually tries (though doesn't super-well) to address one of my running criticisms of Werewolf. The other truly excellent thing is Storm-Eater/The Storm Umbra, creating a unique environment for gameplay.

Now, the bad: there's a LOT of Noble Savage in this book. A painful amount. The claim that the Weaver and Wyrm were basically absent from pre-Colombian America is bad. For one, Cahokia, the Incas and Aztecs, the Iroquois Confederation (not pre-Colombian, but more-or-less pre-contact), the Dine, and others all existed and were complex societies, indicating the Weaver (hell, Teotihuacan was one of the largest cities on the planet) and as for the Wyrm, you have all sorts of awful things going on. They even mention a "web of power" that bound Storm-Eater, which screams Weaver (and could tie into the cosmology). Another bad point on this is that there was no direct mention of the Trail of Tears, somehow!

Other than that, my complaints are mostly minor: grammatical and layout errors exist, some aspects of Werewolf cosmology make no sense, etc.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Werewolf The Wild West
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Ascension's Right Hand
Publisher: White Wolf
by Charles S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/01/2019 04:40:27

This book fits into the frame of the Vampire supplement Ghouls and the Werewolf supplement Kinfolk. Somehow, in the minds of most, it hasn't become as iconic, and people out in the wild need to constantly be reminded that it exists. I recommend it regularly, and it's a solid book, though largely superseded in ways that the others haven't been.

The sections covering mundane allies and companions for mages has been largely subsumed into Gods and Monsters, as have the sections on Familiars, though it has valuable discussions of how the various factions handle these things differently. The discussion of more aware allies sits in the Sorcerer books, which present many more varieties of Numina.

Honestly, the main problem is that the book is dated. An update to it would be essential reading for running a Mage game.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Ascension's Right Hand
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