Customer Reviews

*OP Guide to the Traditions (Mage: The Ascension)

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Here we are, with the sourcebook for the "Traditions". it is a well-written, high-quality piece, without any doubt, in line with other good publications of "Mage: the Ascension". It sets the Traditions in the new millenium, a chapter deals with what means being a tradition mage, from an inside perspective. Then the book narrates the history of the world from the Traditionpoint of view. Both these part I found most interesting and well-done since dialogues are well written and clever and characters giving explanations have their definite point of view and peculiarities. Then there is also a not-so-fundamental but overall useful section that deals with Chantry politics and new backgrounds, skills, talismans and some strange places (nodes and so on) are described. To wrap up the whole bunch, it is a good and enjoyable manual, surely worth reading, but it is not comparable to the "Guide to the Technocracy", which re-framed the usual antagonists and gave them purpose and a clear identity. There is no revolution here, neither astoundish insights or new veiws. It does a good work exploring the inside of the tradition "as a whole" but I found "Tradition books" a lot more useful. If you are really interested in some background details and inner workings, this book does its job well, otherwise do not consider it.

Okay, so the Reckoning has come and gone. This book provides a lot of additional backgrounds and information of the Traditions, some on the Crafts, and A LOT on specific factions in the Council. It brings things up to speed and makes thing seem a little more modern. Also, it has some new backgrounds, traits, and cool stuff. If you play Mage, you need it.

After reading Guide to the Technocracy and being totally impressed, I expected nothing less for the Guide to the Traditions. Instead of a smooth flowing book with well-organized facts about the Traditions, I got a big book filled with a ton of unnecessary details. It was true that the information was in the book, but one has to wade through a tidal wave of in-character fiction to get to them.

The book did have some useful information, if you're patient enough to get to them. The detailed history of the Traditions was a fascinating read but nothing new. Most of the main points were in the core book and if you've read all the Tradition books, you've heard it all before from 9 different points of view. Another good thing about the book was that it stressed the need for the Traditions to adapt to the modern era and described a handful of cliques that did just that. One of the best sections in the book was the section on paradigms. It will really help new players grasp the most important concept for a mage.

In terms of things I didn't like, the book was just too lengthy. The introduction of adversarial backgrounds was neat but I didn't think they were necessary. Those were things that should be handled with role-playing rather than experience and freebie points.

So is this book worthy of purchase? For Mage storytellers and players who want to collect everything in the series the answer is yes. For casual gamers I would say no if you already have the core book and perhaps the Storyteller's Companion. If you also have Mage Sorcerer's Crusade and a handful of 2nd and Revised edition Tradition books than this book will not be worth it. If you love the Traditions and need to know about the structure and general practices than this book might be helpful.

After reading Guide to the Technocracy and being totally impressed, I expected nothing less for the Guide to the Traditions. Instead of a smooth flowing book with well-organized facts about the Traditions, I got a big book filled with a ton of unnecessary details. It was true that the information was in the book, but one has to wade through a tidal wave of in-character fiction to get to them.

The book did have some useful information, if you're patient enough to get to them. The detailed history of the Traditions was a fascinating read but nothing new. Most of the main points were in the core book and if you've read all the Tradition books, you've heard it all before from 9 different points of view. Another good thing about the book was that it stressed the need for the Traditions to adapt to the modern era and described a handful of cliques that did just that. One of the best sections in the book was the section on paradigms. It will really help new players grasp the most important concept for a mage.

In terms of things I didn't like, the book was just too lengthy. The introduction of adversarial backgrounds was neat but I didn't think they were necessary. Those were things that should be handled with role-playing rather than experience and freebie points.

So is this book worthy of purchase? For Mage storytellers and players who want to collect everything in the series the answer is yes. For casual gamers I would say no if you already have the core book and perhaps the Storyteller's Companion. If you also have Mage Sorcerer's Crusade and a handful of 2nd and Revised edition Tradition books than this book will not be worth it. If you love the Traditions and need to know about the structure and general practices than this book might be helpful.

This book, is very good, don't get me wrong. It is longer then the mage core book infact and most of this is in-character information. This is slightly annoying because of the amount of information one needs to wade through.

The book is organized into a few key sections. One details paradigms, new tradition factions and even pan-trandition groups. Another chapter has "crunchy" stuff, like wonders and new backgrounds. An interesting thing about the Wonders is their are things called Tradition swords. Each one has a magical ability that makes it a very powerful weapon.

The most noted chapter though is the history chapter. It is giant! It has information on different time periods and regions. Most notable is that if they were talking about Vikings they'd give examples of traditions who have people with Viking related paradigms. I'd call this info overload.

This book is very good.... but well... it's way to much useless information hiding important things. White-Wolf could have used it's writting space better.