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If you're a die-hard fan of Demon: the Fallen like I am, and practically had a heart attack when you saw that this was getting made, then let my words spare you the coronary: this thing's a bust. What we have here is a valiant, but ultimately slap-dash attempt to construct a translation guide that instead comes across as an incredibly one-sided and imbalanaced. It pains me to write this, as there are some solid things going on in the book, and some neat ideas in play, but Onyx Path simply didn't put in the effort necessary to make this what it needed to be. There is a lot to say, but I'll keep my critique to three main points.
1. Poor organization: The TG attempts to give fluid rules for porting characters between systems, but unfortunately ends up creating a slurry of information, where Descent info blends together with Fallen info, making it hard to keep the two separarate. In addition, there are some strange redundancies with some things, particularly Merits (Pacts are still list...
Rating: [2 of 5 Stars!] |
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Syndicate 4/5
Though I haven't yet read the Technocracy: Void Engineers, this is my favorite of the first edition Convention Books. The Syndicate is presented clearly, with the reasoning behind what they do and why they can't push to do more (such as abolish money and make everything free). It does a far better job pushing the Syndicate as a "good" guy than Iteration X, Progenitors and NWO did, though a big part of that might be that all three of those books praise the Nazis in some way, while this one takes credit for the one thing that Hitler did right (rebuilding the German economy) and then tries to take credit for undermining him, rather than saying things like that the camps were a great success for medical research.
It's still a first edition Technocracy book, though clearly by this point, the 2nd edition view of the Technocracy had started to take over, though it was still two years before Guite to the Technocracy was published. So it has some issues, like making the Synd...
Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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I honestly love this book. From the framing narrative of a Void Engineer giving their history to a bunch of Reality Deviants (one of each of the major types, in fact) including the reveal at the end bringing the whole thing into question and giving rise to a major chunk of the Nephandic Infiltration metaplot for the Technocracy. It's really a modern Convention Book with a nuanced view of the Technocracy and one that clearly internally, at least, has them as the heroes.
It contains decent mechanics for Voidships, and seems to be the place where the exploration of the galaxy is farthest along (at least, I don't believe later books suggest that they've gotten as far as this one claims they have.) In fact, if there's a flaw, it's because them having significant extrasolar exploration is a bit beyond belief, though they justify it by Kepler and Einstein having worked together to find a hole in Relativity (Newton, also a Void Engineer apparently, had been killed a few decades earlier).
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Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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Though I haven't yet read the Technocracy: Void Engineers, this is my favorite of the first edition Convention Books. The Syndicate is presented clearly, with the reasoning behind what they do and why they can't push to do more (such as abolish money and make everything free). It does a far better job pushing the Syndicate as a "good" guy than Iteration X, Progenitors and NWO did, though a big part of that might be that all three of those books praise the Nazis in some way, while this one takes credit for the one thing that Hitler did right (rebuilding the German economy) and then tries to take credit for undermining him, rather than saying things like that the camps were a great success for medical research.
It's still a first edition Technocracy book, though clearly by this point, the 2nd edition view of the Technocracy had started to take over, though it was still two years before Guite to the Technocracy was published. So it has some issues, like making the Syndicate and New Wor...
Rating: [4 of 5 Stars!] |
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SensibleCenobite's overall opinion of Hail Satan: A+/D+. Since we're in a cancel culture where Victorian commie mommies need to silence everyone, I'm going to give this product an A+. I honestly should give this a D+/C- {Even though I liked it}, since it's a bit vulgar in a childish way, but hey, that's freedom of speech now isn't it, and the Black Dog Studio warning label is on the front cover. I only paid fifty cents for this product and now it's one dollar, so it's worth a quick read to remind yourself you could at least do an equivalent job or better. This product is for you if you ever wanted to play a coterie of Baali vampires {Demon worshipers} that are still anti heroes at the end of the day. The coterie makes a deal with a demon to get revenge on their sire, and the demon agrees to give them their souls back if they kill their sire, the demon's old servant, in one weeks time. The players are given many options for their start rides {Something I don't see often}, such as a mo...
Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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Here are my reviews of the individual parts:
Progenitors 2/5
This book is...confused. It wants to simultaneously leave things to the interpretation of the ST by saying "maybe this is a Progenitor scheme!" but having the PROGENITORS say that is quite odd. The in character sections should know, or at least think they know, if their own organization was involved in large scale actions. It also has the nonsensical idea that the Progenitors are somehow killing Avatars on a mass scale, which would mean no more Progenitors.
The book has some good parts, the story that the basics of the Progenitors are conveyed through are the notes of a student, though a super-unsympathetic one, who seems on the verge of going MRA terrorist by the middle.
In general, it's an ok book, but it shows badly how early in Mage it was written, before much of the setting and details had been nailed down properly, and while it did some of the lifting to make the Technocracy more than a one-note black hat, i...
Rating: [3 of 5 Stars!] |
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This book fits into the cycle of first edition Technocracy books, and continues many of the trends that I dislike about early Mage. It depicts the New World Order, marking another Convention that is explicitly tied to the Nazis (through their "One World, One Truth, One Reality" slogan being similar to "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" as well as the Nazis speaking of a "New World Order" they would establish) and generally is fine for a purely antagonist oriented book, but is badly unsatisfying in the modern era with a complex Technocracy. It does have the advantage of pointing out some debates within the the Convention, and foresaw the somewhat "post-truth" era that we find ourselves in today.
Overall, it's a decent book, but best acquired in a bundle or in Technocracy Assembled, and not as essential as the longer, more detailed and more nuanced Revised book....
Rating: [3 of 5 Stars!] |
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