Though this product has a lot of potential, it also has a lot of flaws, and with the rather steep price of $5 for 12 pages, I can't recommend it. The four characters contained aren't terrible, though they're fairly one-note. The K'llashaa is probably the most interesting of the four, but even she is fairly shallow for an RMC. Moreover, there's numerous typos and spelling errors, though I get the impression that English isn't the writer's native language (by things like "quantum physician" instead of "quantum physicist"). The mechanics, specifically the stat blocks, suggest that the writer is not fully familiar with the rules of Mage: the Ascension. Two of the characters have Spheres at 5 with Arete of 4, and one has the sphere of "Space." If it were priced lower, I'd be able to recommend it, but at the least it requires some editing.

I had forgotten that Mage books could be fun. So many of the books in the M20 line have been unrelenting misery porn and hopelessness (reaching the peak with Book of the Fallen) that this is just a breath of fresh air. A quick Chapter by Chapter review below:

This is really the main place where the book acts like the fun police, reminding you that money corrupts and all sorts of bad things. But...it's like 2 pages.

The main thrust of this chapter is to describe how the various factions view money and how it influences them. It has a little scolding, but also a bunch of great ideas, like Akashayana Action Accountants.

This chapter is a little thin, mostly it's on talking about where wealth comes from and adding some new Archetypes (and how wealth impacts old ones) and new Merits and Flaws.

Here's where the good shit really gets going. This book contains 27 Rotes, 3 for each Sphere, and they're split up to be useful. One of them is a 1-2 dot rote, one a 3-4, and one a 5, so whatever power level you're playing at there's something for you. And they're generally creative and fun. It's hard to pick a favorite, but Company in a Box has to be mine. Just...create a Primal Venture from nothing, but over time, you can make it real. Including turning people you created into real people with normal lives integrated into society. It's a wonderful plot hook in the form of a Master of Prime (read Primal Utility) rote. The chapter also includes some Focus elements, most of which are good, though I dispute the description of Cryptocurrency in the early version I've got for technical reasons.

An interesting chapter on what groups of super wealthy mages are up to, many of which cut across faction, because at Resources 6, a Progenitor and a Hermetic may have more in common than they do with the hoi polloi of the Union and Traditions.

Wonders. So many Wonders, and they're ridiculous and over the top in all the right ways. A painting made by cutting up ten masterpieces. A tactical war cloud. A Wonder that makes making Wonders easier. It's all here. I had to stop several times to show something to people, because this chapter is just...well, to be a bit on the nose, solid gold.

Suggestions for how to handle the sort of wealth this book talks about in your game. How characters can acquire it, what makes it worth opening this box, plot hooks, etc.

Overall, a solid book that I can't recommend enough, especially to counter the "Nephandi are everywhere and they've already won so what's the point?" feeling that many people have complained about throughout M20.

There's a lot of good material for roleplaying in this book. The general distinctions between Archmasters, Exemplars, and Oracles, the discussion of how to maintain your humanity or at least something resembling sanity when long-lived, all of that's great. There's a few awkward places where it contradicts itself (in at least one case within a single paragraph) but overall it's solid. The book's greatest weakness is the Archspheres, which are not well thought out, and include some levels that actually do nothing, from the mechanics.

Overall, a solid book, and if the archspheres were redone the book would be a good thing to update for the current edition.

This is, without a doubt, the best resource for Marauders in Mage. It's also the second best for Nephandi and Infernalists, only beaten by Infernalism: the Path of Screams. However, the Umbrood chapter is...bad. It contradicts basically everything ever written about Umbrood/Spirits in WoD prior to this (and after it), it's almost entirely epistolary to allow the "unreliable narrator" excuse whereas nothing else in the book is. It's greatest crime, though, is a mechanics-free section titled "Umbrood Systems." Read for Chapters 1-3, ignore Chapter 4. Chapter 5 is ok.

Though there are a few minor snags in the layout work, the inclusion of a form for correction makes that an easy to ignore issue. Otherwise, this book is excellent, and I recommend it to everyone.

It is an in-depth look at a specific Norse practitioner, explaining both how to do Norse magick (through the Focus system, Rotes and Wonders) and generally attempting to make the Focus system more concrete. By focusing on this one character, it gets very concrete with how her magick works and includes several allies (and given the topic, they're arguably a part of how the magic works as well).

Overall, it's a very good product that does useful things, and I hope to see more like it.

The Technomancer's Toybox is exactly what it claims to be and nothing more: a listing of a large collection of technological talismans for Mage. It's frame of a website selling them is a bit offputting at times considering that these objects are unique or rare enough that such a thing shouldn't exist in the setting, but overall, it introduces a lot of novel devices. These devices run the gamut from the utterly useless to the hopelessly obsolete (the book is over 20 years old and covering tech!) to the wonderfully innovative and flavorful set pieces at the high end in some places. Overall, a useful book, but one to use cautiously and with an eye towards modernization.

This book is very much a mixed bag. On the plus side, it is in many ways the most useful primarily-Mage book for dealing with Spirits. Chapter 3 has a lot of useful things in it, regarding what's in the Umbra, how spirits relate to each other and to mages, etc. It has the clearest delineation of the different levels of spirit (Gaffling, Jaggling, Incarna, Celestine) that I've seen in a Mage book as well. The appendix has some useful things, many of the rotes are good, the fetishes and talens provide a fun contrast to the usual lists of talismans, and even some of the merits and flaws are interesting.

And then there's chapters 1 and 2. These chapters are largely terrible. They seem to be trying to distance shamanism from the Dreamspeakers so hard that they end up sounding like Euthanatoi and occasionally Ecstatics, and the Dreamspeakers just wouldn't qualify. There are a lot of strange choices in the writing, including making the viewpoint character a Jewish kid being introduced to worship of the orishas, which has its own problems. On top of all that, almost every bit of history of cultural discussion is factually incorrect. Claims like the middle east not having indigenous shamanistic practices (there exist books titled things like "Recovering the Shamanic in Judaism" by respected rabbis) and the discussion of Africa has a distressing sense of Noble Savage to it.

In general, the book ends up mixed, and the first two chapters on Shamanism in practice are mostly negative, but the discussion of spirits and the Umbra is one of the clearer ones in the game line, despite there being two entire books dedicated solely to the Umbra.

There are many things to like about this book. It's a ground eye view of the game of mage, all about how to play and storytell Apprentice and Initiate characters. All of the rotes in the book are an appropriate level, it's full of good material on Awakenings, Seekings, and the early phases of the life cycle of a mage. All in all, it's a good book to have if you're interested in focusing on this phase.

That said, I HATE the framing conceit. It's set up like a collection of booklets for new apprentices to help them figure things out, and it has two fundamental flaws. One is that because it has a specific perspective rather than an omniscient third person view, there are weird gaps that it would be really useful for the book to fill. Example: in the section on initiations where it discusses what each Tradition does, it includes this quote "I can’t say too much, since the Order keeps a lot of its material secret." The second issue I have with it is that the presentation is somewhat nonsensical: an apprentice just starting out would have no plausible way to obtain this document, and one that could obtain it would already have a mentor.

This review is based on the backer copy of Book of the Fallen. As such, it will ignore minor issues likely to be corrected, such as spelling and grammar or incorrect sphere ratings, and will instead focus on broader themes and things sufficiently interwoven that they cannot be changed in any significant way.

It is with a heavy heart that I say that this book is a failure. It is far from Brucato's best writing and though he warned people it would be offensive, the implication was that the offense would be at the actions of the Nephandi, not at the writing's implications. Unfortunately, rather than taking a route wherein the Nephandi are described as antisemitic and incorrect, or that there are many many ways that things can be views, this book took the route that the Nephandic paradigm relies on Jewish mysticism, that that mysticism has objective truth, and, in the light of other books, that this malevolent version of Kabbalah is the only objective truth in Reality. More details on the problem will appear below.

Let's start with the content warning. This is a good thing, though the "we handle such subject matter with maturity and sensitivity" applies certainly only to non-Jews, and not necessarily to all of them, but I can't speak on traditions that I don't know. It also overstates somewhat how graphic the whole thing is. While it does describe the atrocities involved, it's often at a higher level, avoiding truly graphic descriptions, which is good.

This section starts by asserting that this isn't a Player's Guide to the Nephandi. That is wildly incorrect, as this book can hardly be interpreted as anything BUT a player's guide. Many of the things that follow are fundamentally unnecessary unless stories are told from a Nephandic point of view, in which case they are players. For one simple example, non-Nephandic PCs will never once see what a Nephandic Seeking is like, and so describing them is not necessary if this isn't a player's guide.

The rest of the section, though, describes some real-world encounters with evil that Brucato has had, and is easily one of the strongest, and most graphic and difficult to read (due to the intended effects, at least) sections of the book.

This is one of the best chapters of the book. It contextualizes Nephandi as abusers and as ultimately selfish, as opposed to the Traditions, Technocracy or Crafts who, though they have selfish elements, in theory strive towards some common good for some group of people. However, the first sign that worried me about the content was in the Lexicon section. I expected "qlippothic" and "qlippoth" or the like, as those have been attached to the Nephandi from the beginning, but the sheer number of Hebrew terms worried me, with terms like Daath (more commonly da'at in modern transliteration) and the Tree of Knowledge with the ten qlippoth associated with it (rather than just being a term used to refer to the Spheres, marking Nephandic methods as "empty/dead shells"). At best this paints the Nephandi as basically all being Hermetics, but at worst (and it was at least somewhat worse) it paints them as Jewish, and the last thing the world needs is a game book that identifies world-destroying levels of selfishness, greed and evil with Jews.

This is one of the stronger chapters. It is an in-character chapter, which means that errors of the authors can easily be attributed to the speaker, and nothing said is 100% certain, especially as it is coming from the mouth of a Nephandus. So, it's much, much more forgiving of other problems, but oddly, this chapter avoids much of the worst of it. The narrator attempts to sell the Nephandic worldview to the reader, and does a decent job of it, but a careful reader will see the cracks in the arguments, the areas where the speaker is ignorant but pretending knowledge, but it does require that that attention is given. I strongly suspect that this was somehow both the easiest and hardest chapter to write: easiest because it flows, it's a rant, a manifesto, and the reader can believe that this is just a lecture some evil bastard is giving. The hardest because it would really require inhabiting the mind of the speaker to make it flow like that, and this effort is appreciated and impressive

The sidebars point out weaknesses in the arguments, reminding the reader that the Nephandi can't be trusted. The argument starts with "The world is awful" and continues with "We are beyond morality." It also explains the Nephandic view of Descent, as becoming one with the Absolute, either through the annihilation of Reality or through becoming an embodiment of it and the god of their own universe. One fun piece of irony here is that for such a selfish world view, the ending of the path involves the ultimate negation of the self, either actual nonexistence or transformation into something fully unrecognizable as the original being.

The two takeaways here are the Lex Praedatorius, or the Law of Predation, which is the backbone of the Nephandic worldview, and sums up to "kill or be killed" in many ways. The speaker builds it up as this profound truth when the reader should be able to see that it's an empty statement of someone who has given up on humanity, and the laziest of philosophical points. The continued "It sounds good on the surface but doesn't stand up to scrutiny" facet of the Nephandic worldview is great and mimics the fact that they can be tempting and offer power, but it's a poison that hollows out the tempted.

For all the issues I have with Jewish mysticism and beliefs being brought into this book, the Leviathan aspect here doesn't bother me. The Nephandus is speaking in-character, for one thing, and for another, Leviathan is mostly as described: it's a giant sea monster that is promised to be slaughtered and served at the end of time. From there, it departs strongly, but the core is used correctly, even if the Nephandus is putting a particular spin on things, as a Nephandus would.

Unfortunately, we get more "Daath" mentioned in the sidebar about Cauls. We'll get into that more in Chapter Four.

The opening fiction of this chapter is bad. For all the mentions of "avoid cartoon evil" it's downright cartoonish to describe some random people (who we know nothing of their paradigm and scant little about their motivation) butchering others in a way that allows them to put their eyes in a bag but somehow they still see out of them and are grinning after being cut to pieces while still alive. Aside from being gratuitous, it requires such over-the-top effort to even attempt this in the setting that it really comes off as trying too hard. I found myself rolling my eyes more than being horrified.

This chapter continues from Chapter 1, but here, as in the rest of the book, the tone of an objective game book is taken rather than an in-character tone. This is important, as the issues that come up would be bad but less so if they came from a specific character, rather than the authors of the book. It starts with talking about how to the Nephandi, Light is the problem and Darkness was already extant before it was injured by the Light, and then proceeds with some ruminations on the nature of evil and the various sorts of evil in the world. One sidebar is the first (of far too many) mention of Jung in the book, and, for those who are even slightly up to date on psychology, it's well-known that Jungian archetypes are pretty much considered pseudoscientific nonsense in the modern world, taken as seriously by psychologist as the Zodiac is by astronomers. This comes back in Chapter Four (you'll hear problems "come back in Chapter Four" many times in this review) but we don't address it again except to say that this concept of Jung's is not actually particularly coherent, is obsolete, to be generous, and is overused in this book when other, more accurate descriptions of psychology would do the trick.

A side issue, the discussion of Sociopathy, Narcissism, Psychopathy, and the Fallen is ok for establishing how terms are used in the book and acknowledges that their usage isn't perfect. It's an ok sidebar, but it always seems strange when a sidebar is a page and a half long, and that it should have been more smoothly integrated into the text somehow or edited down substantially.

The chapter next dwells on Descent, again, reiterating and expanding on what was in Chapter One. (Honestly, Chapter One is the most useful chapter in the book and could easily be used while ignoring the rest of it and taking it as a viewpoint among the Fallen.) Here is really where the discussion of the qlippoth goes downhill and starts bringing in the Tree of Knowledge in ways that are frankly bizarre and antithetical to the real source material for it, but which is treated as an accurate description of that material by the book, with nary a sidebar in sight to say "This is a Nephandic interpretation of a real-world belief system, and contains many inaccuracies" or the like. Aside from this, which is mostly ignorable, the section is a good expansion of the discussion in Chapter One.

Next, we get a description of the path of Descent, and it dwells a bit more on the qlippoth. Here's the closest to a disclaimer: "Although the modern concept of this reputed Tree of Knowledge comes from heretical applications of medieval Jewish mysticism (as well as from later occult practitioners who claimed the concept without being themselves Jewish)" however, it goes on to say that these things have reality. It does suggest that this is because occultists poured energy into the concepts, but if that were the case, then truly divergent interpretations of whatever is underlying this would have to be included, instead of making Nephandi Evil Hermetics and/or Jews. After this is a bit more discussion, mostly good.

Nephandic "awakening" is discussed, both in the sense of walking into the Cauls and turning barabbus. Interestingly, this book suggests much more strongly than either Book of Madness that widderslaintes, those born with Avatars that had gone through the Cauls in a previous life, are not automatically Nephandi, but must enter the Cauls themselves, and can turn away from the path, though with difficulty. As for barabbi, it gives reasons for members of literally every group in the world of Mage to turn. Next, Nephandic avatars are discussed, with nearly random and unnecessary mention of Daath, and the Fallen interpretation of the Avatar Essences are fine inasmuch as they don't discuss the qlippothic realms (again, more in Chapter Four on these).

The chapter closes with a frank discussion of abuse tactics that's quite strong, and clearly owes much to Bancroft's excellent "Why Does He Do That?"

The opening of this chapter shows that the authors have done their homework, referencing Nick Land's execrable "The Dark Enlightenment" manifesto, and then proceeds with some non-cartoon evil, as it involves completely believable levels of brutality from mercenary companies.

The main thrust of this chapter is Nephandic factions, and so the review will be brief. Most of the factions are quite solid, though some involve interesting changes from the previous manifestations (for one thing, the K'llashaa seem less likely to just die horribly a week after joining than they used to). Jodi Blake makes her only appearance in the book as a famous Infernalist who seems to have turned away from Descent (which might make her an Inverted Oracle? The term Oracle has changed meaning a few times, after all.) Of the classical three faction, the only one that I take real issue with are the Malfeans, who now specifically are tied to the Wyrm, rather than to abstract representations of destruction and decay, which I feel is much stronger. Then again, I am also one of the people who prefer to keep Werewolf cosmology out of Mage and force it to be subject to the same "reality is subjective" rules as other things, which is quite hard to do in many cases.

The new groups are in general quite good, though I'm disappointed in the writeup for the Heralds of Basilisk. For one, here is one of the places where the Fallen start to take on Villain Sue properties, where they seem to be better than everyone else at their specialties (leading me to question how they haven't won yet with that and with millions of unsuspecting people doing their bidding every day. Reality should have ended by now) but also it would be substantially stronger with a more accurate description of both what a "basilisk" is in this context and what Roko's Basilisk, the one referenced, actually is, which is quite different from the "What if a godlike Artificial Intelligence was to come into existence, and it was evil?" description in the sections.

To put it simply, a "basilisk" is any concept that will cause you harm by just being made aware of it ("you look at it and it hurts you"). Roko's Basilisk is an argument popular in certain circles (which has many flaws but that's not the point here) that is a godlike artificial intelligence ever comes into existence, even if it is benevolent and trying to minimize suffering, then it will STILL have an incentive to torture people alive now in extreme ways (essentially creating hell) in order to encourage modern humans to work hard to bring it into existence, so that it can alleviate far more suffering that it causes. This fits better with the Nephandic "existence is pain, nothing we can do can stop it, except ending it all" ethos visible throughout this book (and in several Final Fantasy villains). It's fundamentally an argument that even a benevolent god will not remove all suffering but instead will inflict immense amounts of it.

Aside from the HOBs and a bit with the Malfeans, though, the factions in this section are well thought-out and coherent and will make good antagonists for many games.

And now, we've reached the shitshow.

The lesser problem with this chapter is that there is SO MUCH JUNG. I explained why Jung is not a good basis above, so I won't reiterate it, but there's just a lot of it, starting with the opening quote.

So, onto the cultural stuff that is the true nightmare of this book. It starts with a brief sidebar acknowledging that they used real-world beliefs here, and then acknowledge that you don’t really need this chapter to run a game. So, this chapter is something that could be cut, that the players will never see unless PC Nephandi are permitted, and yet, it wasn’t cut. Honestly, before the section “The Qlippoth: Plumbing the Nightside” it’s mostly a lot of “some mages use dark practices without being Fallen” and “Carl Jung said” sorts of things, but this section is really where I want to focus my energy.

From the beginning, it treats the qlippoth as worlds that are truly believed to exist by large fractions of mages. For one thing, no non-Kabbalist believes much of anything about qlippoth, because non-Kabbalists don’t even know the word in any real way. We also get a bit more of the “everyone knows a little, but the Nephandi understand this is a deeper way than anyone else” suggestions that 1) they have objective reality and 2) the Nephandi are the best.

It’s really hard to focus on any specific errors, bizarre statements or disrespectful treatment of these concepts because the entire chapter is almost nothing but that. It does truly introduce objective reality into Mage: the Qlippoth are real and meaningful, which implies the Sephirot are, which implies that the Kabbalistic paradigm is true. “In Mage terms, the Qlippoth is essential to the Nephandic Path. Even if a Fallen mage does not herself believe in Kabbalah or view her Path through such occult philosophies, the essence of these forbidden shells forms an intrinsic element of her journey from Awakening to Descent.” There is also discussion of Nephandic Seekings, again, something that is fully unnecessary unless stories are being told from the point of view of Nephandi, and as something that is supposedly not a player’s guide to Nephandi, the inclusion of so many such things is suspect. It includes what sorts of things the Nephandus will learn from each of the Qlippoth.

There is a sidebar titled “Metaphysical Canon” which I reproduce here that disputes all of this, but with the quotes above, it’s quite clear that this sidebar has no bite, especially given that a staggering 15 pages or almost 7% of the entire text, is devoted just to this section describing the Qlippoth as the foundation of the Fallen in terms of Jewish mysticism, i.e., the Kabbalah.

> Does this section mean that Mage’s world ultimately follows mystic Jewish monotheism, with all the requisite demons and myths? No. Metaphysics are never a one-size-fits-all proposition, especially not in a game world where subjective reality is the foundation of the game. Although the Qlippoth emanations do exist in a metaphysical sense, at least as far as the Fallen are concerned, they can be viewed through any number of philosophical lenses, most of which — like some divine kaleidoscope, shift and change depending on who’s looking at them and from which perspective. This section explores a small slice of the Qlippoth as Fallen mages see it. The ultimate reality is, as always in Mage, elusive and unique. Every Mage player or Storyteller will view these elements differently. The ultimate reality is yours, not ours, to decide.

The book then spends less than one full page on the qlippothic spheres, pointing out that the main difference between the standard ones and these is intent, and then we’re on to “Daath and the Cauls” and the Qlippothic Domains. It continues to treat Daath (da’at) oddly, and almost wholly in a negative way, which is very much not how it is perceived by actual Kabbalists, but then, the Tree of Knowledge is entirely different than the thing that this book describes as though it could be identified with it.

The book goes on to describe this Tree of Knowledge as consisting of 10 realms, one for each of the qlippoth, connected by tunnels which would correspond to the paths in the Tree of Life. This again cements the Tree as derived from Jewish mysticism as being a real and objective part of Reality. Rather than describe how bad the descriptions of the qlippothic realms are compared to what Jewish mysticism suggest they should be, in the description of Thagirion, this appears as one of the rulers of the Realm (and remember, this is JEWISH mysticism that is being drawn from, in theory): “Sorath, the Sun Demon, “the Adversary of the Lamb” and an embodiment of human wickedness and opposition to the Christ-self”

Finally, we finish Chapter Four with a discussion of the Black Diamond and can move on.

This chapter focuses on game mechanics to handle Nephandic characters (totally not a player’s guide) including merits and flaws, infernal investments (mostly for their cultists), rotes and wonders. While some of them look like they’d be fun (Qlippothic Radiance would lend itself to great flashy climactic scenes where the Nephandi has been hidden for the rest of the story) they do largely feel like they’re balanced for players. After all, they have normal freebie point costs associated with them. This is more jarring because Wonders in this chapter are not given costs (despite the costs being relatively simple to calculate from the mechanics) to discourage player characters from having them.

The Infernal Investments are basically completely unbalanced. In some cases, they are entirely broken. As an example, “Object of Affection” is a 7-point pact, which does make it quite costly. However, it’s also a win button for an unscrupulous (as all of them are) Nephandus with a cult that they can force to commit crimes and make pacts. The person who gets it picks another person, and now that person “loves” them. Though it is mentioned that magick and faith could both break the control, there’s no resistance possible. So, any Nephandus with a decent cult and a cabal after them should just force their cult to bond the mages of that cabal in this way, and problem solved. Though the book does indicate not to do this to PCs (under the “violations of the character without player consent are super bad” discussions) this falls into that category of “powers that break the setting if they’re actually available” even if it never appears in a game. That said, “Regeneration” as a 9-point investment seems overprices for what it is, being considerably weaker than many of the lower level investments.

The next section is on Focus for Nephandi, Paradigm, Practice and Instrument, as well as higher level organizing principles. It falls into the trap of mistaking a rabbinical SATIRE as a rabbinical legend, claiming “In all forms, Lilithianism reveres the First Woman who — according to rabbinical legend — was created equal to Adam, refused to be his inferior, rebelled against God’s dominion” which is an oft repeated error (and indicates a lack of research, as the Alphabet of ben Sirach is not subtle about being a satire, for instance it is full of masturbation puns and fart jokes).

The paradigms themselves are mostly fine, though nothing terribly out of the ordinary and several of them (as well as practices) are just evil versions of things that exist, and I question whether they really need to be separated out. Is Infernal Science that is science plus evil really different enough from Hypertech to deserve a separate discussion? Would it not have been more useful to go through the already existing paradigms and practices and explain, in brief, how they get twisted by Nephandi?

The most interesting bit of this section is the part on hypersigils and egregores, which actually adds something to the game.

The rotes in the next section are badly over-written, to the point where clarity is lost. Each entry should be cut by almost 50%, for example, we have 75% of a page on “Beautify or Deform” which amounts to “Better Body” but evil, and Better Body is well enough understood that it’s been in Mage since 1e. On the other hand, the rotes are flavorful, but much of that flavor would come out better with shorter, more tightly written descriptions.

Finally, we get to evil books and wonders. Though I’ve heard others complain about full pages on books that don’t really exist, that doesn’t bother me. While I do think many of these entries needed editing, it’s more that the prose got a bit purple in this section than due to length. If there had been more editing but then more content, that would have been excellent. In fact, this would be a great place for in-character writing, with “quotes” from the books that could be found, and those can get as purple as desired. After books come the wonders, which aren’t given costs in order to discourage player use, which as I said, left me unimpressed. This section really dragged, and I found myself unable to focus on many of them, but among the wonders are big-ass swords, slave collars, a whip that causes its target to be unable to use a safe word in BDSM (and thus useless outside of sexualized roleplay with a Nephandus, something few groups are likely to engage in) and a few others.

This chapter feels to me like it should have been combined with Chapter Three. It’s got a lot of good things in it, and both of them involve factions and examples. Here, it starts with cults and other Nephandus-led but mostly Sleeper groups, including evil clothing companies, a shoe company that’s a front for online harassment, an evil nightclub, and an organization for corrupt cops, each with a template attached to it.

It moves on to less mundane allies of the Nephandi, such as evil spirits, companions, familiars and a bit on fomori. It covers some basic goetic demons, and honestly gets a bit immature and trivializes them somewhat, especially with Stolas, whose description includes “He’s a demonic owl with a fucking crown, and thus he’s cooler than you will ever be.” The memetic entities section covers Baphomet, the Basilisk (which I discussed above) and “Zagglaaw” who is recognizable to the Creepypasta crowd as an analogue of Zalgo. And then there’s three Paradox spirits (called nightmares) that tend to torment the Fallen. The true heroes of the book.

The most interesting section is the “Fallen Magi” section, and of all the pieces, this is the one that belongs in Chapter 3 the most. Some of them are useful and have clear horror movie inspirations (the Caller), while others (like Garrick Browne) barely hang together as a character concept and definitely needed rewrites (or could have been cobbled together from multiple versions of the character or multiple characters). Jane Daugherty is one of the more interesting Nephandi, being a K’llashaa who manages regular human contact without being caught, and the Reids are quite interesting, and left me wondering if they had any tie to Charles Reid from Technocracy: Progenitors, though the surname is likely random, there aren’t that many name collisions that are coincidental in the World of Darkness.

Aaaaaand, this chapter is the player’s guide. It says it isn’t, but it is, and cements that impression of the book as a whole. It starts out strongly with a description of the cycle of violence and different sorts of abuse, it talks about how children can’t abuse adults (though in the discussion of why no Widderslainte children, it only mentions that but ignores the possibility of children abusing other children).

Finally, instead of at the beginning, a brief recommended reading section happens, specifically on recovery from abuse with 8 references. This sidebar is far too small, and the lack of a more in-depth section for other resources both on portraying and recovering from abuse is a serious flaw in this book. It is also right in a section on ST and Player responsibilities for playing with these themes safely.

And then, the book gives up pretense with a section “Nephandi as Protagonists” though it does protest a bit “We warned you” rather than avoiding making a player’s guide. It has a few hints and tips, a bunch of questions that the players should ask about their characters and then it asks if Nephandi can be redeemed.

The chapter (and the core of the book) ends with Nephandic metaplot options. They’re mostly good options, and fit the M20 model of not picking a metaplot but giving a tool kit. They include a fractured Nephandi model and various models where the Nephandi control another faction. The final part of the section is on Nephandi win scenarios, and I feel that this section needed to cite Ascension several times. After all, the ELE section (extinction level event) feels a lot like “The Earth Will Shake” with an asteroid about to hit Earth, and the section on Those Who Dwell Beyond The Stars is “Hell on Earth” which also ends with the Spitting From the Heart of Hell scenario, leaving only The Hungry God in this book as not having any tie to the final book of the original Mage line.

The book ends on a call to action to stand against the evils of the world. Important words to end on, and well written.

This book could have been far worse, but it could have been much better. Between the bizarre decision to make the universe objectively Kabbalistic, but for a bizarre version of Kabbalah, which leaves quite a bit of an antisemitic stench on the book (after all, the secret evil masters of the world being Kabbalists plays into MANY old antisemitic canards and beliefs that are still active to this day), the cartoonish evil that kept coming up, and the insistence that it isn’t a player’s guide while including things that would never be useful outside of one, the book ended up being mostly a negative for me. The parts that are good are worth keeping but disentangling them from the bad parts is a lot of effort, and unless someone has very specific reasons, I’d recommend skipping this book. If it could be given a proper editing pass, removing most of the gratuitous things mentioned above, and likely cut down to more like 130-140 pages, the book would be very strong and a proper successor to both versions of the Book of Madness and to Infernalism: the Path of Screams but as it stands it is not.

The quickstart is an interesting product. It provides a quick overview of the setting and greatly simplified mechanics, and if that were all, it'd be easily forgettable. What's interesting about it is how many good ideas in it for picking up Mage and getting a game going quickly are here but not in any core book. The most notable example are the bonuses to specific tasks for each Tradition, which, while not balanced per se, provide a real feeling of "Oh, you're from this group. You really are the best around at task X" which is nice, and can easily be imported into a full Mage game.

This book, sadly, isn't very good. The best part of it is the list of rotes (many of which are out of date and need work to use for modern editions) along with the sphere handouts (similar), but the rest is at best pointless and at worst absurd. Two noteworthy examples: In the write-up of the Seattle setting the Chantry under "Pike's [sic] Place Market" has access to 20 points of Quintessence a Day via 4 nodes, causing them to average being 35 point Nodes, which must be among the most powerful on the planet, but they're not discussed as being of global importance. Another bit is "The archetypal Nephandus is a woman" which, while yes it is then mentioned to be "more to do with the witch-harlot stereotype than with real membership or power" it was a bizarre thing to encounter.

In general, this book consists of cut material from Mage 2e, and it's very, very clear why most of it was cut.

Oddly, this is far and away the most optimistic World of Darkness book I've read. Sure, the forces of the Wyrm are powerful, even overwhelming. But the recurring theme seems to be "they can be beaten, if people get their act together." Half of them could be solved in minutes if the Garou could work with the Awakened to deal with them, for example. It goes into detail on the Urge Wyrms and the Maeljin Incarnae (including how to destroy them), then talks about Pentex (and all of its internal strife), then there's Tribebook: Black Spiral Dancer (they're a mess, it's almost confusing how they're still around), then other stuff (again, a chaotic mess that shouldn't be able to work together), and finally toys.

Overall, it's a great book, and can be adapted to other World of Darkness games as well as Werewolf, and somehow turns out to be optimistic (we can win!) and pessimistic (but we'll never get our shit together) at the same time.

This book was a substantial expansion and update of World of Darkness: Sorcerer, but had many problems that the previous edition lacked. First, the good: the powers were updated nicely, including some Paths being made substantially more useful without, in general, being overpowered. The Fellowships were good, and including psychic powers and Fellowships made the book seem more complete. There were, however, some bad things as well. Much of the ST advice is generic to the point of recommending that the best way to have a lower power game is to give out less XP. The Merits and Flaws section was mostly lackluster, with two standout bad merits: Blood Magic which gives no benefit whatsoever as written and Struggling Awake, which allows a sorcerer to use Forces 5 one time in ten (they are, in fact, the same price). Another odd thing was that there were not one but two factions of nasty sorcerers whose entire Fellowship was founded on hating Jews, which was a bit uncomfortable, though one was largely broken. And another big piece of bad advice was that a mage could possibly have numina, a thing that is implicitly declared impossible in other books.

Overall, it's a good book with some weird aspects that are best ignored or require fixing, a solid update of World of Darkness: Sorcerer to Revised Edition.

I started rereading this to prepare for a game (that I didn't end up running). I remember loving this book when it came out, but now I found that though it was broadly good, so many little things about it grated on me that in the end reading it wasn't entirely pleasant. I'll start with the good: all three groups described have character. They're a mix of good and bad, something that in many ways M20 has forgotten about the Batini, Taftani and Djinni, and their intersections are all fraught, perfect for stimulating plot in a game.

The bad, unfortunately, starts with a common problem with Mage books: the IC/OOC divide is often hard to detect, so things that only make sense to be coming from an in-character perspective are written in an omniscient narrator voice, and vice versa. As an example, after a long section describing how the Batini use the Mind sphere to "guide" recruits towards the correct conclusions, there's a sidebar stating that this isn't brainwashing because it's not exactly like what the NWO does. Instead, it's like the brainwashing that a real-world cult does. The history in the book is laughably inaccurate (to the point of claiming Solomon built a city to act as a trading hub between the Roman and Persian empires), the Batini section on Kabbalah is all sorts of terrible (and the section on Kabbalistic books is...something else, entirely ascribing to mages books that exist and are sacred in the real world), and then a multitude of minor gripes.

Overall, the book is good, and if you want to go into depth on the Ahl-i-Batin and Taftani, it's a must have, and the Djinni as described here are more interesting than their portrayal in Gods and Monsters.

Mage first Edition is quite a game book. I will openly say that I'm just not a fan of it, and that if this was the first Mage book I'd seen, I wouldn't be neck-deep in the game to this day.

That said, about half of this book worked. Unfortunately, it was the underdeveloped half. The rest included things like the Technocracy interrupting their REM sleep so they wouldn't dream, the Void Engineers being Fae-touched and wanting to kill space, and the generally overwhelming nature of the Technocracy against the much less gray than later Traditions.

What did work though were things like study points (they dropped from Mage and now Mage is known as an XP sinkhole because it was balanced assuming them), the basic premise of a war for reality, and the mechanical effects of various foci (which could have been brought back in M20 with the Instruments, but weren't).

Overall, it's a playable game, but not one I'd want to play, and I'm glad that Mage Revised was my first Mage book.