by Enantiodromos@aol.com

Sleeper: Huddling in Listless Ignorance.

This book is a revision of Mage: The Ascension, 2nd Edition. It has a handful of useful clarifications on the working of spheres, and a new game mechanic for resonance. That’s all I have good to say about it– if you don’t like to read open criticism, stop reading here.

Mage Revised asserts that the Ascension War is over, and that magic is dying. (Why didn’t they retitle the game: "Sleeper: Huddling in Listless Ignorance" ??) To me, it’s a no-brainer that Mage is about magic, not about whether-or-not-there-is-magic. The crucial premise of Mage is "Many Magics in the Modern World, one of them being Science." Not only is the premise "Magic is dying" totally inappropriate to the genre of Willworkers, it’s also incredibly tired and lame– it makes Mage a cheap imitation of the fragile-dream feel of Changeling. Magic cannot die, any more than reality can die.

What can die, however, is the great majority of Mage Masters. The developers decided that Mage: Revised should have very few Masters. Forgetting for the moment that the wise, powerful elder is a staple of this genre, this isn’t so bad. But instead of simply writing them out of the revised setting, they trumped up a "natural disaster" in order to kill off most Masters. Pretty as you please.

There’s no real discussion of the Technocracy, Nephandi, Marauders, or the Umbra in the revised book. These materials were in 2nd edition. They were left out of revised.

Game mechanics changed. Now, one gets very nearly as much paradox from successful vulgar magic as from botched vulgar magic– mages will be half-hoping for simple failure when they try to shape reality. Talk about undermining a Willworker’s self-confidence!

Also, nowadays, the greater your Arete, the harder it is to get into the Umbra. Someone explained this to me as the "metaphysical blip" theory of Arete. Sort of like Arete is some kind of energy one stores up, in order to muscle reality around! So, in Revised, Arete goes from insight to "power." From an in-character perspective, this makes no sense at all. It is, however, how they "explain" the deaths of most of the Masters, who had very high Aretes and were "caught off guard" by this sudden change in a fundamental structure of reality. Wouldn’t you be?

One cannot help but wonder why Mage: Revised is so unconscionably awful. There is a reason, and it’s not that the developers are Evil, per se. Before the revision, Mage was a game of high-stakes epic adventure. Higher stakes by far than any other World of Darkness game line. Mage players’ characters were powerful, and Mages as a whole defined reality itself. The scope of the game was tremendous, challenging, and rewarding.

Mage: Revised was developed in order to minimize the Mage game and Mage players into the world of White Wolf’s more profitable "Vampire: The Masquerade" line– profitability is the reason for all the changes. Magic itself was crippled, the majority of living Masters were eliminated, and easy access to the umbra cut off, so that the wide world of Mage is a little less scary and incomprehensible to the average vampire– because, apparently, the highest level of creativity gamers can rise to is "Superman vs The Hulk." Words cannot express my contempt. When will we stop debasing everything in the name of short-term profit?

by Anarch

And so ended another exhausting night…

It isn’t an easy existence, being a ghoul. Despite the stories that you heard, despite the tales of Kindred who fell in love with mortals and took them under wing to love and to cherish, it is not an existence of ease.

Being a ghoul does not mean you are loved and cherished. It means that you are a servant. No. Even less than that~ you are a slave. You are there to be commanded. Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not raise eyes or voice. Do not disobey.

You are a constant food supply, kept on hand. Blood on the hoof. Be prepared to tilt your head aside and offer yourself willingly. Be prepared to be ignored, abused and degraded. Be prepared to be the brunt of their jokes and the subject of their whims. Be prepared to be neglected or cast aside or even killed, should the mood fit your domitor.

Do it for fear. Do it for obedience. Do it for this sick, perverse, twisted love that makes your heart beat faster and faster when you see them at a distance; this illness that makes you tremble when you feel their gaze upon you, this loss of hope and degradation that makes your insides whisper and quiver as you pray that they will look favorably upon your non-existent self. Oh god, please let them see me. Let them know me. Let these evil, dark creatures desire me.

No task is too menial for a ghoul. A ghoul is a food source, a concubine, a gopher and a bodyguard. To know that they rely upon you is some small gratification until you realize how easily you can be replaced. The world is seething with blinded fools who want to love these creatures. These dark Gods of the night. These Kindred.

I know these things because I long. I love and I linger and I long for that which slips through my fingers like tiny grains of sand. Respect. Adoration. Acknowledgement… and yet I am formless and faceless to them. I am without substance and without meaning. With every night that passes, I learn more and more that I am no longer myself. I am no longer Christian Delaney.

I am a ghoul. Nothing more.

~from the journal of Christian S. Delaney, Camarilla ghoul

by daedaleus@lycos.com

"The Shadows are whispering again. They have followed me here, it seems. Even here…"

Throughout history terrible secrets have been hidden, only to be unearthed by brave, and sometimes, unwitting souls. And when kindred are involved their own history is a secret that is sought at great risk. Elders rally their young and clans martial their forces in search of a glimpse of truth.

In the case of Fra Niccolo giovanni, his own scholastic skills are in the service of his esteemed uncle. A humble monk, Niccolo, seeks knowledge, or more blatantly; he hungers to know. The taste of forgotten secrets and hidden lore sets upon the tip of his tongue maddening him with their bitter-sweet delight.

It is Niccolo who discovers an archaic tome. To his astonishment it is seemingly written by Caine himself, and obtains commentary by truly ancient kindred scholars. Unlike any other account it details from a view none other could, being the account of Caine himself.

The Erciyes Fragments is a delicious read. Like a fine wine you can wet your lips on it and the taste will linger on your tongue. The elders commentary replace separate annotation & explanation (as in the book of nod the revelations of the dark mother, the black labyrinth chronicles, etc.), making it much easier to read without shuffling through pages and check each notation. All in all it’s as if it’s three books in one. Just for the story of Niccolo it’s worth every penny. Included is the tales of caine in his own view as it were and the elders themselves own commentary blend in as if they were their own tale. The ending alone I won’t spoil but for the record it’s positively delightful. Even for readers unfamiliar with the world of darkness this is a wondrous and spellbinding book. The version of events detailed will un-doubtedly give most pause to think.

Enjoy the book, Delight in it’s exquisite horror, and Revel in the thought of how things could possibly be… If it truly were a World of Darkness…

I hope you find my humble service acceptable.
Daedaleus

by lerkanama@aol.com

Picture with me a young boy, just hitting his fifteenth year when he picks up a book that inspires his little brain to a great new level of fun.  An avid fan of the former monolith of RPGs, he picks up Vampire: the Masquerade Second Edition and enjoys it.  He and his friends eat it up, enjoying their pizza-and-Coke filled game sessions that are ritualistic in their natures.  So, after a while they decide to try out Werewolf.

The same occurs for our young boy.  He loves it, he becomes the storyteller of the small band.  And then he notices something, a slight trend, but he ignores it.   The trend is that the Malkavian became the Metis Get of Fenris, peaceful Gangrel became the Child of Gaia and the fun-loving Brujah becomes the fun-lovinger(bare with me on the word, it fits) Fianna.  They play, they love it, they have all sorts of fun, their ritual continues.

A year or three has passed and the coterie/pack has moved on to Mage, the Malkavin/Metis Get of Fenris becomes a Son of Ether only after 30 minutes of bitching about not being a Marauder, the peaceful Gangrel/Child of Gaia becomes a Dreamspeaker, the fun-loving-ing Brujah, Fianna, becomes a Cultist of Ecstasy.

Then it’s Changeling where the Malkavian/Metis Get of Fenris/Son of Ether became a Pooka, the peaceful Gangrel/Child of Gaia/Dreamspeaker became the Eshu and the fun-lover Brujah/Fianna/Cultist of Ecstasy became the Satyr.

The point to this long-winded and confusing introduction is that as the World of Darkness, while imaginative in itself, does not have a spark of imagination.  While setting is wonderfully crafted and written, the clan/tribe/tradition/kith are simply regurgitated and slapped down on a new book.

This problem is in a way a blessing, but it’s mostly a gross liability.  The only good thing is that the brain dead twits who have no concept of original characters can play the essential same thing through any system.  The gross liability is that brain dead twists with no concept of original characters play the essential same thing through any system.  This lack of thought leads to stagnation, apathy, dislike.

I appreciate everything White Wolf has done for us and brought us, but to create a bland character creation system(which is also very similar through the books) and then market it over and over and over and over and over is just lewd.  It exemplifies the quantity over quality theory that keeps movie sequels coming like men in a peep show booth.

-Jodoyushi Victim on a Hot Tin Roof
lerkanama@aol.com