Mage the Awakening by Kraig Blackwelder, Bill Bridges, Brian Campbell, Stephen Michae DiPesa, Samuel Inabinet, Steve Kenson, Malcolm Sheppard Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $18.00 You Save: $16.99 (49%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Mage the Awakening
Book Review: An absolutely AMAZING game about magic
Summary: 5 Stars
My friends and I just bought this game along with the World of Darkness roleplaying game and I had to get on amazon and review this. It has an absolutely gorgeous cover, this is one of the most beautiful books I own. It is also huge, over 400 pages of rules for how to play a modern day mage or sorcerer. You can set this game almost anywhere. I love urban fantasy novels like Sandman and Dresden Files and with this game I can play those kinds of stories. It is a bit dense but it is only because of the huge amount of detail for a roleplaying game.
You play a modern day wizard, you can be a nature mage, a scholar, a shapeshifting sorcerer or a warrior monk. I was reminded of the movie the Matrix, because it takes place in a modern setting and its about how magic can bend the rules of reality.
My group and I are going to all play mages belonging to the Adamantine Arrows (warrior mages) in search of supernatural creatures who hurt mankind. Also, one of the best things about this game is that the magic system is very flexible, it lets you cast spells on the fly or through formulas (called Rotes). Ive played Dungeons and Dragons and believe me, this game is not as simplistic as that game (no memorizing spells, you can cast them as often and as quickly as you like ALL the time).
The interior art is amazing, its by Michael Kaluta who has drawn many comics and book covers and he does ALL the artwork for this book. Gorgeous!!!
Book Review: Pricy, bad layout, needs supplements, but good start.
Summary: 2 Stars
Before I go into the bad, a few things on the good of the book:
The story about Atlantis I found neat, along with the Abyss and how Paradox works. I like the mechanics for magic, as well. The elements introduced are neat, such as the Banished and the Seers. But as a Mage I am a loner. I distrust other Mages and mortals push me away. Something small like this can easily be changed, though. The rest is a little more difficult.
Also, there is no central conflict. There are small conflicts here and there, but there are very limited amounts of plot hooks. The closest to a major plot consists of the Exarchs and Oracles, an ancient war of gods which might or might not have happened. They do give a bit on Boston, but what if I don't want to be in Boston?
The book spent far too much time on what spells I should cast. Give me the basics, and let me figure it out. A few rotes are neat, but 134 pages of a book about 400 pages (including the character sheet, index, ads, etc) is ridiculous. Especially when they could have spent it giving real plot hooks, more artifacts, or even more antagonists.
The antagonist section is also weak. They give mortals, other mages, and a few spirits, which are little more than modified ghosts from the core book. The storyteller must guess at vampires and werewolves, unless he feels compelled to buy the other supernatural books.
Outside of the cover, the book looks hideous and is difficult to read at times. The art isn't that great. The few times the art doesn't look bad, it has no borders and meshes in with the print. The borders on the sidebars are broken, so the sidebars have a tendency to mesh with the regular text. Sidebar fonts are done in gold print instead of black, but it is still more difficult to discern sidebars from normal text than it should be. If there are multiple sidebars close together, they start to mesh and then you don't have font differences to tell them apart. The subtitles are written in a gold cursive font, which is difficult to read.
The price is horribly high for the content. On top of that, the supplements, which they force you to buy if you want to have any idea of where White Wolf wants the story to go, are expensive. I ended up reading some cheap novels and doing some research on historical figures to come up with storylines.
In short, the price is ridiculous, the book is poorly laid out, there is no real conflict, there are few antagonists presented, and a lot of room was wasted on how one should cast magic. The origin of Mages sounds neat, and the mechanics are good. A nice buy if the price is a great deal lower.
Book Review: REVIEWER NEW TO WORLD OF DARKNESS
Summary: 4 Stars
I recently picked up MAGE: THE AWAKENING to try a new game with my friends. I know that there is considerable controversy over AWAKENING versus ASCENSION; I can't speak to that, since I never was able to read or play ASCENSION. I hope that no one will hold that against me as I try to put down my thoughts about this version of MAGE.
To put my summary at the beginning, I think it is a great game and well set in the World of Darkness. I wouldn't call it primarily a game of personal horror (like Vampire) so much as a game of magical exploration. The characters have a lot of power and influence over this world, but their ability to use it is limited and the ability to use it well is even more limited. I think it is well-balanced, dealing with problems essential to worlds with magic (like why don't wizards rule the world and humans are their slaves forever?) and also withthe moral degeneration that comes from using magic to manipulate others for your benefit. There are also system and mechanical flaws, such as insufficient immersion in the Mage world and a cumbersome system for using magic. There's also Atlantis, which I'll get to in a moment. Overall, I've enjoyed both reading and playing the system and look forward to exploring the MAGE world more deeply.
I think that any review of an expensive book should start with the book itself. This is a massive tome as far as RPGs go, weighing in at 400 pages. The cover is very beautiful, with gilt lettering and a sort of holographic foil overlaid. The sidebars and some headings have gold ink text, which gives the corebook the feel of actually being an exotic grimoire and speaks to high production quality. Unfortunately, the art is not of the same standard (I guess you have to cut costs somewhere). The style for all the artwork is pencil sketches, being nothing but brown lines. While the style is, I think, less impressive than full artwork, it is the actual subject matter that I find ugly. Yes, most of the people being drawn are just ugly. Oddly, the quality seems to go up toward the end of the book (the Tremere character and the Nemean are well drawn and representtheir concepts well), but particularly the signature characters either look intentionally ugly or as if they were drawn by someone who had never met a properly-proportioned human being. When the signature characters look like someone you'd rather avoid on the street than play, then the art is not achieving its purpose.
The first chapter is a surprisingly brief explanation of how people come to be mages, the society they live in, and the social groups they join. The backstory for MAGE is Atlantis, that it was once a center of magical power and was then overthrown by the working of hubris. The social groups from Atlantis continue on the magical traditions in a fallen world. The Supernal realms (the source of magic) and the Fallen world (where we live) are now separated by the Abyss, a hole in reality. Using the wrong kind of magic (the kind that tries to overwrite the natural laws of this world) invokes Paradox, which is the Abyss being let in to the Fallen world through magic. This section really, depsearately, needed more development. In Vampire, this covered half the book. I felt that the atmosphere was undeveloped, and I had no clear idea of what mages DO with their time (which is, again, better defined in the other core books). Also, I feel that using the myth of Atlantis came off poorly. When I think of "Atlantis", what comes to mind is some white guy with an afro, wearing colored sunglasses and a shirt hanging open, discussing the power of crystals and positive thinking. I guess you go to printing with the corebook you have, not the corebook you want, but the idea of Atlantis is so hackneyed at this point that I am surprised it is so fully integrated into the system. Rather than release an alternate mythologies book (like for Vampire and Werewolf), the company released RUINS OF THE SECRET TEMPLE to more fully flesh outt he idea, so I guess we will all just have to accept it.
The second chapter is character creation. Like the other game lines, MAGE: AWAKENING requires the core book WORLD OF DARKNESS for the basics of character creation and MAGE adds the rules to take a mortal and make him/her into a will-worker. I really like the concept; at this point, I own 4 game lines plus the mortals book and it would really bug me to have all the chargen info repeated very time. This chapter has a very good example of making a character and also includes the explanations for the different paths of magic. Each path is determined by the supernal realm to which the character Awakens and influences which powers he/she can buy cheaply and which ones come hard. The relam to which you awaken influences your personality so that it is worth discussing what kind of people walk each path. If you are interested in more information on these paths, they are explained in the book TOME OF THE WATCHTOWERS.
The real meat of the book comes in the third chapter, which takes up 150 pages, and is on the rules for magic. There are 2 kinds of magic in Mage: rotes and improvised. Rotes are similar to D&D spells, in that there is a defined effect at a certain power level (it is not Vancian magic, though, in the sense that rotes are more like abilities which sometimes require energy but never disappear from your mind and don't require daily memorization). The dice pool is large, so your character is more likely to succeed. Improvised magic can do whatever you want, but the dice pools are smaller and the risk of failure is higher. Successes from your dice pool can be split to affect more targets, continue working longer, or covering a larger area. This seems pretty complicated to me (keeping track of all the modifiers) and i would have preferred some system easier to memorize. The rules for Paradox and mitigating its effects are included as well. Each oft he 10 arcana are described, as well as the powers available at ranks 1-5. A lot of rote spells are listed, and of course if you cast an improvised spell, the list of rotes is a good benchmark for what you can accomplish. Some examples of spellcasting are also given. This section is absolutely necessary for knowing how to play a character and most players would benefit from studying this section in detail.
The last main chapter is on Storytelling hints. The themes of Mage are exploration of the worold and the self, and the lure of power versus the wisdom of how to use it. There are some examples given of play hooks and ways to draw characters into a story (if you know much about mythology, then most of these are familiar). There are some sample antagonists from rival groups to Mages, artifacts left over from the ancient world (typing that sentence made me think of Nausicaa and the valley of the Wind. hmmmm...), and servants of the Abyss. This chapter wasn't so helpful, but the Appendices are absolutely essential. The first is on the Spirit world. If you haven't read Werewolf, you absolutely must read this chapter to be able to understand how interactions with spirits work. The spirit world is an important part of the mage/Werewolf cosmology and an important hook for many Mage games (not to mention the entire sphere of Spirit). My only thought is that this section is important enough that it should have been earlier in the main text. The next appendix is legacies, which are ways for Mages to craft their own souls, gaining innate magic powers. I didn't find any of the legacies that exciting (see LEGACIES: THE SUBLIME for better ones) except for the Tremere. However, the idea itself is an interesting one and I am happy to make my own. Finally, there is a section detailing Boston as a signature city for Mage play. There are some jaw-dropping secrets hinted at, which I found worthy of buying the city book, BOSTON UNVEILED. It also has a lot of potential for working in my Cthulhu supplements
That's a lot of words, and I still haven't covered all of the interesting tidbits in MAGE: THE AWAKENING. I really enjoyed reading and playing Mage, and I guess my players have as well (since they are still coming back). The book certainly has some flaws, but I think many of them are compensated for in later supplements, making the game better over time. I find it pretty challenging as an entry into World of Darkness games because of the wide powers available to starting characters, but that is probably a plus to most people. I definitely recommend it to anyone playing magic in the modern day.
Book Review: Mage: The Awakening delivers a world of subtle magic and ancient mystery.
Summary: 4 Stars
Mage: The Awakening presents a world full of myth and mystery hidden just underneath the reality we know. Not only are there strange creatures about us, but there are whole other worlds - the Shadow, the Supernal Realm, the Astral Plane of our souls, and still others. Most importantly, there is magic capable of anything a dreamer can imagine. This is a world where a very few people have Awakened to the realization that magic is real, an ancient legacy lost to humanity, and that they can use it to realize their heart's fondest wish.
In Mage players take on the role of Awakened humans who have discovered that there's more to the world than they thought and who have inherited the ability to perform powerful magic. This magic normally has to be subtle, as the Abyss constantly reaches out to repress and twist magic. A large variety of themes and potential goals are present, but the largest one involves the corrupting nature of power. A robust magic system that involves both predetermined spells and freeform spellcasting is presented along with a plethora of mystical concepts.
Be advised that if you are a fan of the earlier Mage: The Ascension that this is not the same game, a reimagining of that game, or in any way derivative of that game. This game requires the World of Darkness corebook to play.
Book Review: Wrong Title
Summary: 2 Stars
Short and sweet: you cannot use this book alone to begin a "Mage: the Awakening" campaign. The "World of Darkness" handbook is required to generate a player character and get the majority if the game systems' rules of conduct and confluct. It should have been marketed as a suppliment instead of a starting book.