Mage the Awakening: A Storytelling Game of Modern Sorcery Book

Man, I could have illustrated this book, myself and done a better job. Always sad to see an RP book with such flat, uninspiring illustrations when so many books have been improved and uplifted by the art within them. The writing is likewise awkward, especially when the author is trying to get poetic. The thing about White Wolf books is you really have to get the feel right in the flavor text, or the whole thing becomes quickly and long-windedly tedious. The rule set is alright, but I get somewhat tired of the cookie-cutter nature of the different World of Darkness settings. I think in terms of feel, I actually prefer the old Mage--it wasn't as streamlined or balanced, which was a problem, but it was often strange and wondrous and possessed a real complexity that allowed a lot of different play styles.

The single most important thing for a system based on story and character is that the world is varied enough that we can make a wide variety of characters, and fully-realized enough that it is a world that we would want to explore, a world where we can present many different ideas and scenarios. This setup all seemed too locked-down and small to really allow for that level of exploration.

I struggled trying to make a character in this rule set, because instead of being able to create the character I envisioned, I was forced to cut corners and fit him into the narrowness of the pregenerated system. The whole thing is so Western, so stuck in a very particular magical tradition that it becomes bothersome to try to construct anything that doesn't fit that standard. I feel like it might have been more effective to give the different Mage societies different cultural backgrounds and approaches to magic, instead of just going with 'the law mages, the nerd mages, the rebel mages, and druids who lack self-control'. If instead the branches had represented European, Asian, African, and Native American philosophical approaches to magic, it would have given the world a lot more depth and room for interpretation.

I mean, I'm sure they'll fill those in later with other sourcebooks, but to me that seems the wrong approach. The main book is the setting, so it should be grand and wide-spanning in its ideas, whereas later books can focus on one or another particular approach. By instead basing the setting on only one approach, the whole thing is limited from the get go.

Now of course, I can modify and re-interpret things to get them to fit conceptually, but as has been said many times before: if the player has to rewrite the setting and rules to make things work, that means the original game was flawed.