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New World of Darkness
Mage: The Awakening
The Power to Remake the World
In an age long gone, mortals dethroned the gods and seized the heavens for their own. And for it, they were flung down into the world of clay, their minds clouded by ignorance. Only a bare few remember their birthright - the power of magic. If they cannot claim the heavens, they will make their own kingdoms on Earth.
A Storytelling Game of Modern Sorcery
* Provides everything you need to tell your own stories in the occult world of the Awakened, including details of the various orders and paths of magic, and many secrets of the World of Darkness. Requires the World of Darkness rulebook for play.
*Presents the most comprehensive and freeform magic system ever achieved in gaming, allowing characters to cast nearly any spell imaginable.
* Features Boston as a fully fleshed-out, ready-to-play setting.
* Features artwork by the acclaimed Michael Kaluta.
In an age long gone, mortals dethroned the gods and seized the heavens for their own. And for it, they were flung down into the world of clay, their minds clouded by ignorance. Only a bare few remember their birthright - the power of magic. If they cannot claim the heavens, they will make their own kingdoms on Earth.
A Storytelling Game of Modern Sorcery
* Provides everything you need to tell your own stories in the occult world of the Awakened, including details of the various orders and paths of magic, and many secrets of the World of Darkness. Requires the World of Darkness rulebook for play.
*Presents the most comprehensive and freeform magic system ever achieved in gaming, allowing characters to cast nearly any spell imaginable.
* Features Boston as a fully fleshed-out, ready-to-play setting.
* Features artwork by the acclaimed Michael Kaluta.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published August 29, 2005
12 people are currently reading
177 people want to read
About the author
Bill Bridges
124 books57 followersBill Bridges is a writer and game designer, most known for developing White Wolf’s World of Darkness setting and the Fading Suns science-fiction universe.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
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May 5, 2015I bought this for H when he was feeling down because he enjoys mocking White Wolf games.
It is terribly shiny.
Of course we have not played it once.
It is terribly shiny.
Of course we have not played it once.
April 6, 2015
Man, I could have illustrated this book, myself and done a better job. Always sad to see an RP book with such flat, uninspiring illustrations when so many books have been improved and uplifted by the art within them. The writing is likewise awkward, especially when the author is trying to get poetic. The thing about White Wolf books is you really have to get the feel right in the flavor text, or the whole thing becomes quickly and long-windedly tedious. The rule set is alright, but I get somewhat tired of the cookie-cutter nature of the different World of Darkness settings. I think in terms of feel, I actually prefer the old Mage--it wasn't as streamlined or balanced, which was a problem, but it was often strange and wondrous and possessed a real complexity that allowed a lot of different play styles.
The single most important thing for a system based on story and character is that the world is varied enough that we can make a wide variety of characters, and fully-realized enough that it is a world that we would want to explore, a world where we can present many different ideas and scenarios. This setup all seemed too locked-down and small to really allow for that level of exploration.
I struggled trying to make a character in this rule set, because instead of being able to create the character I envisioned, I was forced to cut corners and fit him into the narrowness of the pregenerated system. The whole thing is so Western, so stuck in a very particular magical tradition that it becomes bothersome to try to construct anything that doesn't fit that standard. I feel like it might have been more effective to give the different Mage societies different cultural backgrounds and approaches to magic, instead of just going with 'the law mages, the nerd mages, the rebel mages, and druids who lack self-control'. If instead the branches had represented European, Asian, African, and Native American philosophical approaches to magic, it would have given the world a lot more depth and room for interpretation.
I mean, I'm sure they'll fill those in later with other sourcebooks, but to me that seems the wrong approach. The main book is the setting, so it should be grand and wide-spanning in its ideas, whereas later books can focus on one or another particular approach. By instead basing the setting on only one approach, the whole thing is limited from the get go.
Now of course, I can modify and re-interpret things to get them to fit conceptually, but as has been said many times before: if the player has to rewrite the setting and rules to make things work, that means the original game was flawed.
The single most important thing for a system based on story and character is that the world is varied enough that we can make a wide variety of characters, and fully-realized enough that it is a world that we would want to explore, a world where we can present many different ideas and scenarios. This setup all seemed too locked-down and small to really allow for that level of exploration.
I struggled trying to make a character in this rule set, because instead of being able to create the character I envisioned, I was forced to cut corners and fit him into the narrowness of the pregenerated system. The whole thing is so Western, so stuck in a very particular magical tradition that it becomes bothersome to try to construct anything that doesn't fit that standard. I feel like it might have been more effective to give the different Mage societies different cultural backgrounds and approaches to magic, instead of just going with 'the law mages, the nerd mages, the rebel mages, and druids who lack self-control'. If instead the branches had represented European, Asian, African, and Native American philosophical approaches to magic, it would have given the world a lot more depth and room for interpretation.
I mean, I'm sure they'll fill those in later with other sourcebooks, but to me that seems the wrong approach. The main book is the setting, so it should be grand and wide-spanning in its ideas, whereas later books can focus on one or another particular approach. By instead basing the setting on only one approach, the whole thing is limited from the get go.
Now of course, I can modify and re-interpret things to get them to fit conceptually, but as has been said many times before: if the player has to rewrite the setting and rules to make things work, that means the original game was flawed.
September 2, 2009
Better and more streamlined than the original Mage the Ascension, this version is more adaptable to different situations. I don't like buying adventures for my games, so I write them myself. And I don't run a game that's anything like White Wolf's meta-plot. Mage the Awakening and the World of Darkness rules (and a little Werewolf and Promethean from time-to-time) work perfectly with what I'm doing.
May 16, 2016
Short review: pretty but dumb, and vastly inferior to Mage the Ascension, both in its narrative and its scope. A reductive, generic reboot of one of the most open-ended, mind-blowing RPG systems ever released.
Long review: As a longtime World of Darkness roleplayer and former Camarilla Domain ST, I'm familiar with both the Old and New World of Darkness books, and can appreciate the differences between the systems. The "NWoD," generally speaking, is geared toward cross-venue play, and is much more balanced than the "OWoD" when it comes to keeping its various supernatural monsters roughly equal in power to each other and interchangeable in what are called "splat" games that mash up various supernaturals. Where it falls through, usually, is on the level of background and the richness of the game's supporting narrative, and Mage: The Awakening is probably the worst offender of the bunch.
As a parallel core book to Vampire: The Requiem, this volume doesn't really show its flaws. It's an absolutely gorgeous book; it holds nothing back in terms of the beauty of both the interior and exterior, though the heading font in its shiny gold cursive is notoriously hard to read. Where the book completely fails is as a replacement for Mage: the Ascension, an absolutely open-ended and open-minded RPG that allowed for all kinds of magical paradigms. You could play a Mage who was a scholar of lost Atlantis, or an ascetic monk, or a technomancer, or a crazy steampunk science-mage, or a shamanistic Druid, or an agent of divine power, or just about about other paradigm you could get your head around. If you wanted to play a Hollywood stuntman whose only form of doing magic was through absurd feats of reality-bending heroism that everyone but you knew were impossible, it was possible under the old system. The strength of Mage was always its limitless potential in creative hands.
In Mage: the Awakening, everybody is an Atlantean mage. Period. Everybody's got the same paradigm, and shares the same monolithic background: the flexibility of the old magic system is likewise hamstrung into an absurd and redundant set of rotes that basically all amount to the same thing. Every Arcanum/Sphere gives you a sensing spell at level 1, a cursory protection spell at Level 2--and worse yet, all of the spheres seem to function exactly the same way. There's really very little difference in how you play the powers of a Time mage versus a Life mage, which just seems strange to me. So many of the decisions about magic seem arbitrary, counter-intuitive, and in direct opposition to the free-thinking of Ascension Mage. The arbitrariness with which the systems of blood potency, vitae, and and other basic rule functions are just ported straight over from NWoD does make for a very blendable system, but underscores just how much this game functions as a knock-off of the Vampire rewrite, how little new content is added other than a change of vocabulary, and how weak the book is in terms of capturing the open-endedness of old sphere magic. The game may as well be a book designed for sorcerers or hedge wizards, since that's basically how their powers work now. If they'd called it "Sorcerer," in the OWoD sense, it'd be a lot easier to accept these less dynamic and creative willworkers. But the truly freeform mages of the OWoD are gone without a huge amount of house-ruling.
This is absolutely a book for NWoD completists, for people who want something pretty on a gaming shelf they never open, and for people running a crossover game with other NWoD properties who must unfortunately use these mages to maintain game balance. Otherwise, in almost every case, you're better off with Mage: the Ascension, either the old books (if you can find them) or the new M20 ones through Onyx Path.
Long review: As a longtime World of Darkness roleplayer and former Camarilla Domain ST, I'm familiar with both the Old and New World of Darkness books, and can appreciate the differences between the systems. The "NWoD," generally speaking, is geared toward cross-venue play, and is much more balanced than the "OWoD" when it comes to keeping its various supernatural monsters roughly equal in power to each other and interchangeable in what are called "splat" games that mash up various supernaturals. Where it falls through, usually, is on the level of background and the richness of the game's supporting narrative, and Mage: The Awakening is probably the worst offender of the bunch.
As a parallel core book to Vampire: The Requiem, this volume doesn't really show its flaws. It's an absolutely gorgeous book; it holds nothing back in terms of the beauty of both the interior and exterior, though the heading font in its shiny gold cursive is notoriously hard to read. Where the book completely fails is as a replacement for Mage: the Ascension, an absolutely open-ended and open-minded RPG that allowed for all kinds of magical paradigms. You could play a Mage who was a scholar of lost Atlantis, or an ascetic monk, or a technomancer, or a crazy steampunk science-mage, or a shamanistic Druid, or an agent of divine power, or just about about other paradigm you could get your head around. If you wanted to play a Hollywood stuntman whose only form of doing magic was through absurd feats of reality-bending heroism that everyone but you knew were impossible, it was possible under the old system. The strength of Mage was always its limitless potential in creative hands.
In Mage: the Awakening, everybody is an Atlantean mage. Period. Everybody's got the same paradigm, and shares the same monolithic background: the flexibility of the old magic system is likewise hamstrung into an absurd and redundant set of rotes that basically all amount to the same thing. Every Arcanum/Sphere gives you a sensing spell at level 1, a cursory protection spell at Level 2--and worse yet, all of the spheres seem to function exactly the same way. There's really very little difference in how you play the powers of a Time mage versus a Life mage, which just seems strange to me. So many of the decisions about magic seem arbitrary, counter-intuitive, and in direct opposition to the free-thinking of Ascension Mage. The arbitrariness with which the systems of blood potency, vitae, and and other basic rule functions are just ported straight over from NWoD does make for a very blendable system, but underscores just how much this game functions as a knock-off of the Vampire rewrite, how little new content is added other than a change of vocabulary, and how weak the book is in terms of capturing the open-endedness of old sphere magic. The game may as well be a book designed for sorcerers or hedge wizards, since that's basically how their powers work now. If they'd called it "Sorcerer," in the OWoD sense, it'd be a lot easier to accept these less dynamic and creative willworkers. But the truly freeform mages of the OWoD are gone without a huge amount of house-ruling.
This is absolutely a book for NWoD completists, for people who want something pretty on a gaming shelf they never open, and for people running a crossover game with other NWoD properties who must unfortunately use these mages to maintain game balance. Otherwise, in almost every case, you're better off with Mage: the Ascension, either the old books (if you can find them) or the new M20 ones through Onyx Path.
October 3, 2012
Definitely an advanced game, but one that provides plenty of options and pleasure to gamers willing to deal with the complicated rules. The early plot elements have somewhat been overturned, usually for the better, by later books, but the world it creates is still plenty of fun to play with and play in. Highly recommend for advanced gamers who don't mind a challenge.
February 14, 2011
Not only a amazing game book, but also a fantastic esoteric theory.
If you want a good and free-style kind of game, or just wanna know what the hell those guys were talking about with that "this is not the reality" theme in Matrix, read this book right now!!!
If you want a good and free-style kind of game, or just wanna know what the hell those guys were talking about with that "this is not the reality" theme in Matrix, read this book right now!!!
March 3, 2019
One of the best books for the world of Darkness setting that I have ever used. I had a lot of fun playing this game many years ago but don't get the chance to do so anymore and am really sad about that.
November 8, 2018
Le livre de base de l'édition Awakening du jeu de rôles "Mage", où les joueurs peuvent incarner de véritables mages dans un monde contemporain proche du notre.
September 4, 2021
Explores Victorian gnosticism, Lovecraftian horror, and themes of hubris. To actually play this, readers will need to digest five books in addition to this one:
* The Tome of the Mysteries
* Astral Realms
* Seers of the Throne
* Imperial Mysteries
* Left-Hand Path
That's a lot of pages, but the cost of entry is worth it.
* The Tome of the Mysteries
* Astral Realms
* Seers of the Throne
* Imperial Mysteries
* Left-Hand Path
That's a lot of pages, but the cost of entry is worth it.
April 10, 2013
Ultimately, the admitedly excellent mechanical improvements and clarifications could not overcome the weak story elements. A poor follow up to Mage: The Ascension
March 13, 2015
I love the world-building that went into MtA-- it's hard to run though. Requires players patient enough to sit through the rules, but creative enough to think outside the box and fill in the gaps in the rules.
October 26, 2013
This is my favorite tabletop RPG by my favorite gaming publisher of all time. That-there is a lot of favorite.
January 20, 2013
The system can mesh with other world of darkness games without creating too much of an unbalanced effect.
March 6, 2013
Good rules and concepts for things like paradox and spellcasting. But the back story while interpretable as a mere metaphor is kinda discouraging.
May 12, 2010
A very good game, just not quite as good as its predecessor.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews