2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
USEFUL RESOURCE, GREAT IDEAS, March 24, 2007
This review is from: Mage Boston Unveiled (World of Darkness: Mage) (Hardcover)
What do you need to run a Mage chronicle in the city of Boston? You probably want to know some of the highlights of the town, what's worth seeing and doing, the known history of the place. You might also want to know the secret history of the place, who the movers and shakers are, and what plots are going on. Maybe some secrets to show and tell.
BOSTON UNVEILED covers almost all of this. My only complaint, and the only omission from the book, is something of a tourist guide to the town; what is there to see and do. Although it is simple enough to google that information these days, I always appreciated that in my Cthulhu citybooks, and I really wish it had been included for those of us too lazy to look it up ourselves. Otherwise, BOSTON UNVEILED has got it all.
BOSTON begins with the secret history of the place (city and colony), what went on behind the Sleeper scenes, how power was gained and lost. It sets up the power structure and conflicts described in the next chapter, which takes up the bulk of the book. The Boston consilium is described, both the people and the protocols. All of the cabals in Boston are described (person by person) and how they interact with each other. This section also includes local Banishers, Seer groups, and Tremere. The neighborhoods are also described in terms of their magical potential.
By far the best section was on Story hooks - the other stuff. Many were good, but the story of The Prince of 100,000 Leaves blew my mind. A lot of the content of gaming books is somewhat arbitrary - you can make up the stats for your own cabal of mages, write your own consilium procedure, your own architecture, etc. But then you read something that is genius and that you could never have made something so good - it makes the whole book worth reading by itself. I refuse to spoil anything of the legend, except to say that it ties into the Salem Settlement hinted at in the core book.
There is also an adventure that is sort of interesting - a Nepalese spirit that consumes souls and then rebirths one of them. Don't know that I would run it, but the ideas are worth pilfering.
BOSTON UNVEILED is a great citybook, and of course you can always transplant all of the characters to a city of your choosing. The off the map stuff is by far the best content and definitely worth the purchase price for story ideas.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Boston Unveiled Review, March 25, 2009
This review is from: Mage Boston Unveiled (World of Darkness: Mage) (Hardcover)
Boston Unveiled is little more then a setting book for Mage the Awakening. Further more, if you have the Mage core book, Boston is covered in the appendix section of that book.
The maps and history section of this book don't do the setting justice to capture the imagination for the types of stories that can be told. And the rest of the book is just filled with pages and pages of existing cabals, either allies or antagonists.
It was a show on the history channel about the city of Boston and it's history during the Revolutionary War that inspired me to pick up this book. And to be honest, I think an ST would be better off reading other books about Boston and developing their own ideas then this book.
I just found this book woefully inadequate for a setting book.
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