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Mage: The Awakening Magical Traditions
One of the things I particularly missed from the Mage: The Awakening core book versus entire versions of Mage was the pulling in of real-world cultures, even if they were in a ridiculous over-the-top, badly-researched form. The Old World of Darkness felt like a world (albeit a crowded one, conspiracy-wise). The new one often reminds me of the “Points of Light” setting design used for D&D4E, where there are a bunch of interesting powers/items/creatures/setpieces that you can drop into the world of your choice. This book makes an attempt at making up that difference.
The first section gets a bit rambly, reiterating over and over that non-Atlantis magical traditions are just vague “pieces of the puzzle” of Atlantis, unless Atlantis wasn’t real and is just the best metaphor, unless all of the other traditions are just red herrings. I think I figured out something that annoys me about this series of books: They don’t really commit to anything. OWoD was perfectly happy to tell you something was definitive, only to tell you something else was definitive later and let you sort it out. NWoD won’t say anything definitive about anything! It’s all about Atlantis and everything must center on Atlantis…except Atlantis might not be real and the backstory might not have happened. Other stuff might have happened, but we won’t say anything about it. Uhh…make it up yourself!
Anyway, the meat of the book is the actual weaving of real-world traditions into the setting: Kabbalah, Taoism, Santeria, the Christian Templar cult, “New Age” Theosophy, Appalachian Hoodoo and psychedelic drug cults. The segments vary, but most of them give a bunch of history, then weave in how the mythology fits with Atlantis, how the magic system can sync up with the practices, and a bunch of story hooks and sample characters. Some of them are better than others—the drug cults section is definitely for that small but loyal player base who misses the Cult of Ecstasy members who used hallucinogens as foci; and the Santeria and Hoodoo sections remind me of essays attempting to suggest that not all Dreamspeakers had to be Native Americans.
I thought it interesting that they completely left out Christianity in a modern form, when the Christian influence in several of the smaller traditions was specifically cited as tie-ins to the Atlantis mythology. (An example is the Abyss as Hell; it’s the distance that sin puts between the Fallen man and the Supernal God.) Maybe this was the authors not wanting to rile up the moral guardians? Not wanting to look like they were pushing evangelical Christianity on an audience that wouldn’t appreciate it? (For that matter, you could use the same sort of fanwanking to tie Scientology into this system, too. Xenu is obviously a stand-in for the Exarchs who forced human to live in their non-Supernal state. And paradox is made of thetans!)
Overall: Do you play Mage: The Awakening and want to tie in real-world magical traditions? Then this book is for you. If you don’t, it probably isn’t.
The first section gets a bit rambly, reiterating over and over that non-Atlantis magical traditions are just vague “pieces of the puzzle” of Atlantis, unless Atlantis wasn’t real and is just the best metaphor, unless all of the other traditions are just red herrings. I think I figured out something that annoys me about this series of books: They don’t really commit to anything. OWoD was perfectly happy to tell you something was definitive, only to tell you something else was definitive later and let you sort it out. NWoD won’t say anything definitive about anything! It’s all about Atlantis and everything must center on Atlantis…except Atlantis might not be real and the backstory might not have happened. Other stuff might have happened, but we won’t say anything about it. Uhh…make it up yourself!
Anyway, the meat of the book is the actual weaving of real-world traditions into the setting: Kabbalah, Taoism, Santeria, the Christian Templar cult, “New Age” Theosophy, Appalachian Hoodoo and psychedelic drug cults. The segments vary, but most of them give a bunch of history, then weave in how the mythology fits with Atlantis, how the magic system can sync up with the practices, and a bunch of story hooks and sample characters. Some of them are better than others—the drug cults section is definitely for that small but loyal player base who misses the Cult of Ecstasy members who used hallucinogens as foci; and the Santeria and Hoodoo sections remind me of essays attempting to suggest that not all Dreamspeakers had to be Native Americans.
I thought it interesting that they completely left out Christianity in a modern form, when the Christian influence in several of the smaller traditions was specifically cited as tie-ins to the Atlantis mythology. (An example is the Abyss as Hell; it’s the distance that sin puts between the Fallen man and the Supernal God.) Maybe this was the authors not wanting to rile up the moral guardians? Not wanting to look like they were pushing evangelical Christianity on an audience that wouldn’t appreciate it? (For that matter, you could use the same sort of fanwanking to tie Scientology into this system, too. Xenu is obviously a stand-in for the Exarchs who forced human to live in their non-Supernal state. And paradox is made of thetans!)
Overall: Do you play Mage: The Awakening and want to tie in real-world magical traditions? Then this book is for you. If you don’t, it probably isn’t.