The Good
- The New World of Darkness system. It's better than the old one especially with a few minor changes here and there.
- Crappy Groups No One Liked: Gone. The Technocracy(Totally gone), the Marauders(There's a schizophrenic in an expansion that is taught by what he claims are the voices in his head but it is left up to the ST how this work), the Nephandi(They're Awakened that fell off the wagon and have joined a 'Left-handed' legacy) - GONE. The Awakened are now organized like this: Your Path(You do not choose your path, your soul does, there are five), your Order(This is a club of like-minded Awakened that you join. There are 5 PC Orders and an NPC order), your Cabal(Your buddies), and your Legacy(Awakened PrCs, more on this in a bit).
- Spellcasting doesn't suck. Remember how in Old Mage you had to get more successes at higher target numbers in order to accomplish things? No more! The difficulty of a spell has nothing to do with how high a level an Arcana you're using and everything to do with just how dramatic what you're trying to do is. You can use Life 2 to turn a redwood tree into a giant swarm of locusts or you could use Life 4 to make a tiger obey your every command and both take just one net success at a target number of 8.
- There are no backgrounds that you have to take at char gen or you'll suck.
- Paradox was pimp-slapped hard. No longer must you quiver in fear of casting vulgar effects in public. A starting level Awakened can just throw a fireball at a group of Sleepers and laugh. He'd have a Paradox dice pool of 3 or 4. The ST would roll that and get one success. Then the Awakened could choose to just take it as a box of bashing damage that would go away in 15 minutes. He'd add one more die to the pool for every Vulgar effect he did in that scene. Equally importantly is that Paradox is no longer something your GM just makes up to fuck with you. There's a chart you follow that is based on the number of successes you roll. To compensate, there are much harsher social penalties for casting spells in public and the Wisdom(Humanity) penalties for attacking or killing people with magic are harsh.
- The setting is not about changing the world. It's suggested that it's much more likely the cabal will have some goal like "Make money" or "Kill the Seers of the Throne in our city" than "AWAKEN THE WORLD!"
- Legacies. Legacies are Mage PrCs you join. You can only join one Legacy. The flavor is that you 'sculpt your soul'. If you do you get some cool powers that are either always on or don't cause paradox when you use them. They're a great way to make characters unique and different, to add opposition, or a number of other things. You get more powers as your Gnosis(Arete) gets bigger.
- Crossover rules. Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage are all designed to work together seamlessly mechanically and kinda thematically. Automatic hatred is no longer the basic assumption of the World of Darkness. For example, it's suggested in the Werewolf book that if you're going on vacation you should get someone to watch your land, so why not ask the local vampire pack to watch your stuff? Or the Chicago citybook which a Mage, Vampire, OR Werewolf Storyteller could run.
- Archmastery. The base rules go up to 5 but all of the Arcana have effects that only an Archmaster could do. It's nice that STs have very vague guidelines for implementing Archmastery into their games until the Archmastery book comes out. It's more likely that White Wolf is going to issue some big, hard-backed Epic Level World of Darkness book for Vampires, Werewolves, and Mages.
- Speaking of Archmastery, high-end Mage effects were smacked on the nose. Running a game with a Master of one or more Arcana is no longer an exercise in futility because you're not supposed to be able to do ANYTHING you want with enough Arcana. A Master of Life can't permanently regenerate a finger nor could any Master conjure a nuclear bomb. Those are all examples of Archmastery(see above).
- You can actually use the Spirit arcana with the core book. This is an improvement over 3rd edition Mage which, uh, FORGOT everything to do with the Gauntlet and other realms.
The Bad
- The Backstory: You either hate it or don't care about it. It's a bunch of stuff about how magic was first organized on Atlantis and everyone believes this. Then they tried to build the Tower of Bab^h^h^hCelestial Tower to the Heavens and the world split apart into the Fallen, Supernal, and the Abyss etc, etc. You don't really care about this because it's something that only matters if its the entire focus of the campaign. If it is the focus of the campaign, then the Storyteller will need to make a lot of stuff up to make it work.
- Arcana: There are now 10 Arcana(aka spheres). They're the same nine you know and love, plus Death. Death sucks ass because it has no theme beyond "Hahahaha I AM EEEEEEEEEEEEVIL HEAR ME ROAR!". You can control shadows and darkness, make zombies, steal souls, attack ghosts, jump into a spirit world, make ectoplasm attack people - Really, nothing you couldn't do with other Arcana in Old Mage. The only reason it exists is that they have taken some features from other Arcana and put them into Death.
- Legacy Prereqs. Much like d20 PrCs they sometimes have prereqs with no connection to the Legacy itself and exist for no reason other than to force the PCs to waste experience points. What the hell do Brothers Grimm-style avenging cursing fairies have to do with the Space(Correspondence) Arcana?
- Errata. The game has been out for six months and we still don't have any official errata. We have some developer commentary but nothing concrete. There are some serious errors that need errata or clarification.
- Game-defining flavor being put into sourcebooks. The sourcebook Sanctum & Sigil completely changes a lot of the flavor dealing with cabals and requires a big retcon on your setting if you add it to an established game. I expect this pattern to continue with other sourcebooks.
- Disposable Sleepwalkers. No explanation given for where they come from, where they get their training at, how they're found, or anything at all. They're a tacked-on feature that doesn't have any of the flavor of the vampire or werewolf equivalent(Ghouls and Wolf-blooded).
- Organization. This isn't a criticism of Mage specifically but of the overall Vampire/Werewolf/Mage world. They're ALL organized in the exact same way. They all have five Orders, five Paths, legacies, and cabals. This is bland and flavorless.
- The Cleric Archer was kinda-sorta nerfed. You can create a really bad-ass character who buffs himself with magic, he just can't do anything with magic once he's done so.
The Ugly
- The Vulgar/Covert dichotomy is still inconsistent and requires a lot of GM arbitration. It needs to be replaced with some hard and fast rule like "If more Awakened than Sleepers see it it's covert. Otherwise it's vulgar" or "Any time you do magic within 100 feet of a Sleeper it's vulgar".
- Relatedly, you are now rewarded for having an NPC Frank Trollman follow your cabal around. He should be able to look at things other Awakened that you don't like do and say "Please, a normal human being is physically incapable of doing that" or "A car could never turn like that". Yes, whether something is vulgar or not depends on how gullible and educated the Sleeper is.
- Just about the most efficient way to undo Vulgar effects is to have a Sleeper with a Willpower of 10 stare at it.
- Creative Thaumaturgy(Making up Spell effects). Remember how every Sphere had two or three pages describing in detail what it could do? New Mage has two pages to cover what ALL Arcana are capable of, then 14+ pages of rotes for each Arcana.
- The Wisdom/Humanity system in Mage is total bullshit. I refuse to acknowledge any ethical system where stealing a candybar is WORSE than beating a man into a coma. Or that shooting someone is better than using Mind magic to make a man shoot someone. The entire thing must be scrapped and replaced.
