Reviews for Wonders of the Lost Age: The Books of Sorcery, Vol 1

The average rating for Wonders of the Lost Age: The Books of Sorcery, Vol 1 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-10-13 00:00:00 Shaun Coleman Wonders of the Lost Age isn't as average as the three stars I gave it might imply. It's actually a pretty good book, and most of the problems I have with it aren't with the book itself, but what it did to the Exalted line and the mood it conveys. This was one of the first books published for the second edition, right after the corebook and the Storytellers Companion, so it did a lot to set the tone of the line. And the tone of Wonders of the Lost Age is that sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology; that Autochthon is the originator of anything more advanced than a sharpened stick; that the Solars were able to maintain the First Age because they could use Wyld Shaping Technique to just create anything they wanted out of pure chaos, making any kind of hunt for components pointless; that Dragon-Blooded barely count as Exalted, and mortals are beneath contempt, reducing the value of any given person in Creation to what color they glow when they start yelling battle cries; and that the First Age was a sci-fi utopia, which would culminate in Dreams of the First Age's depiction as "the modern developed world but with Essence!" None of those are ideas I like. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with Final Exalted Fantasy--like anyone who played video games from a certain time, I thought the opening of Final Fantasy VI was great--but talking about motonic physics and Essence circuitry and Repair ratings and power armor and cloaking devices and--shudder--"animating intelligences" removes any sense of wonder magical items would normally inspire. And since a sense of wonder is already really hard to cultivate in RPGs where everything has to be statted out and described, it doesn't need to use the language of modern technology to further erode it. A friend described Wonders of the Lost Age as an excellent supplement for a game that's almost-but-not-quite Exalted, and at least for me, I think that sums it up pretty well. Airships are great, but the transportation chapter's word count is mostly airships. Where are the cloud leashes that let the sailor control a storm cloud, using lightning bolts as artillery weapons and deploying squads of troops by letting them ride the lightning? Why is all the powerful armor bulky suits of power armor, and where are the sets of chainmail bikinis, courtly robes suitable for a tea ceremony, and suits of articulated steel, which are all equally puissant because their creators didn't need to sacrifice aesthetics for power? Where are the ranged weapons that turn weather against their targets, or cause the earth to swallow them up, or set up a series of improbable coincidences that lead to their death, rather than being magical guns? One of my favorite parts of Storm Breaking is when the protagonists are exploring the buried weapons of mass destruction in Urtho's tower, and they have a really hard time analyzing them because the monstrously powerful superweapons take forms like a weird sculpture of ice that doesn't melt or chip no matter what, or a cat's cradle of string, crystal, and animal skulls. That's the kind of design I would have liked more of from the unfathomable weapons of the First Age Solars. The actual content of the book, divorced from those concerns, is mostly pretty good. If you are one of the people who liked the magitech aesthetic than you'll find plenty to love in here, and even there, the only place where magitech is overwhelming are in weapons, armor, and transport. There's plenty of neat aspects elsewhere, like the Gates of Auspicious Passage and how they stopped being used during the Shogunate because sometimes travelers wouldn't come out the other end or would come out changed. Or how sometimes self-aware automata who had been active for long enough would have destinies assigned to them by the pattern spiders, and no one is quite sure why or what it means. All of that is great. I also love the chapter headings. I know it's a bit opaque for people who are new to the game, but "Purview of the Crimson Panoply" is a way better title than "Weapons and Armor." There are two major mechanical problems that immediately leap out at me. The first is that the book continues the tradition of Craft proliferation, with Craft (Genesis), Craft (Magitech), and Craft (First Age Weaponry) all mentioned, including a sidebar about how the mundane Craft skill isn't good enough to deal with artifacts. Not only does this totally devalue mundane crafts if artificers need high Lore and Occult and a specialized Craft skill, why are Magitech and First Age Weapons separate skills? Should there be a Craft (Automata) too? It's not quite as silly as first edition's Craft (War), but I really don't see the problem with requiring Craft (Fire) to forge an orichalcum sword and Occult and Lore on top of that to make an artifact. The second is warstriders. Namely that mechanically, there's no reason to ever use one. Warstriders look cool, and they give huge bonuses to soak and damage, but damage is really easy for an Exalt to come by and soak usually isn't enough to protect a character from the variety of terrible things that can happen to them--and even a warstrider's high soak is relatively easy to overcome. Furthermore, warstriders penalize Accuracy and defense, both of which are much better than pure damage and soak. Most of the time, entering a warstrider is worse than staying out on foot. Not to mention that they take a ton of Essence to attune, all of which is better used on a Perfect Defense for the inevitable Creation-Slaying Oblivion Kick or Your-Soul-Falls-Off Strike. If there were stipulations that the penalties only applied to things smaller than the warstrider, or if warstriders had their own health that attackers would have to burn through to get to the wearer, then that would give warstriders a niche as siege weapons or armor of choice to fight huge monsters, but as written they're pointless and that means the entire end of the book is wasted. So Wonders of the Lost Age is an amazing supplement for a game with a certain kind of mood and theme, but it tends to warp any other game toward those themes. If you love the idea of Dragon-Blooded sentai teams in matching power armor sneaking into the citadels of their enemies, or dueling airship battles, this is the book for you. But if you want a less technological look to your fantasy, you won't find it here.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-07-15 00:00:00 Petr Handl The signature artifacts of Exalted (Daiklaves, basic hearthstones, etc.) are found in the core book, so I wouldn't say this is an essential sourcebook for the game, but I think it's one that new players will gravitate to early on if they have access to it. There are a lot of interesting items here, either to use outright or to inspire other designs. Three or four items from the book have found their way into the campaign I'm currently playing in after only a few sessions. This is a book that every Exalted Storyteller is going to want to add to their collection eventually, if only for inspiration, and is one that players should probably consider getting.