Customer Reviews

Book of Shadows: Mage Players Guide

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is invaluable for the new lists of merits and flaws and the new abilities. Unlike some other White Wolf books, this book actually gives lists, not just a few new listings. I constantly refer to this book in character generation. Though some of the new abilities can really be covered by standard abilities, some of them are really helpful. Those and some of the merits and flaws even give me new ideas for characters. A great resource.

This is a good book which has a lot of information to make your character richer (merits and flaws, extra skills, more detailed information on each Tradition, the Technocracy and others, etc.). However, most of the sections in this book are beginning to show their age, as the information presented here has been revised and updated to much more practical information in several other Mage books. The section with the parables, though, is still one of my favorite Mage reads.

I've played mage for a few years now, before third edition graced the shelves, and I found that this book was not terribly helpful. While it had several high points, the extra skills included on a whole could be gained by taking a specialty in an already listed skill. The merit and flaw section was interesting, with the publication of revised and third edition, it's no longer needed. The expanded tradition sections, were helpful, but sense the publication of third edition, they are no longer up to date and to be honest, if you want to know about traditions The Traditions Gathered set of books is a far better resource. While The Book of shadows is an interesting read, it's definitely not a required resource for mage.

The book of shadows, which was written between the publishing of the 1st and second editions of Mage, is at this point slightly "behind the times," especially what with the release of Mage 3rd edition. Somewhere between irrelevant and necessary. Has some good basic material on the various Mage fringes, as well as a lot of expanded stuff for character creation.

This the the players guide for Mage the Ascension. Book of Shadows is written for the second edition of Mage but it also works with first edition, if your group is playing with Revised then there is other books you should get before this one as allot of information in this book is not applicable in Revised. However for first and second edition this book is a must as it gives you merits and flaws, more information on the various traditions, more in depth explanation on several of the often hard to understand areas of the metaphysics in Mage the Ascension, including information on Paradigms, Paradox and the Spheres. You will also find secondary skills here everything you need to play Mage the Ascension.

Now you can play the game with just the core book, but unlike in Revised first and second edition of Mage the Ascension do not include merits and flaws making character creation somewhat limited. Also this book give you more options to play with, like more information on how to play a member of the Technocracy, some information on Spirits and really there is allot of stuff in this book which you need for a Mage the Ascension game. This book is not useless to a Revised game either, however like I said there are some setting information between second edition and Revised which makes this book less useful than for a second ed game.

I love the art in this book. I have always preferred the art in earlier World of Darkness books, to me they are perfect to set the mood of the setting. Quality wise tis book is well bound and will land for many years even with frequent use, however the gold writing on the cover will wear off a bit after a while. My only complaint with this book is that like with nearly all White Wolf books this to have a problem with a not to good index. But all in all this is a great book for Mage the Ascension and I recommend it to everyone who likes the game.

I was very happy that my order came in pretty fast. It was packaged very well and I'm very happy with my purchase

Though an interesting book I found that much of the facts and historical references were poorly researched if researched at all. It appears that this is a useful playing tool but the facts are all wrong.