This is the best game in White Wolf's game universe. I have never played a game with so many possibilities. This book is the core rulebook for Mage the Ascension Second Edition. The book contains everything you need to understand the Mage universe. Every aspect of the game is elaborated on fully or contains enough information for you to come up with the rest of the details. The book focuses on the Traditions but there is also a good amount of information on the Technocratic Union, Marauders, and Nephandi for you to use. The worlds beyond the Gauntlet and Horizon are also touched on along with sample umbrood. With this book any game is possible. You want to play a fireball-chucking mage? No problem. How about a hacker from the Matrix? There's a Tradition available just for that. Want to play a tough martial artist who can catch bullets? There are rules for that too. This is a great book that can stand alone without supplements, unlike its revised edition.

I really do wish they'd reprint it! Mage 2nd edition has potential! Stories can *happen* in it! It's not a bunch of gaming execs trying to squeeze a few bucks out of Vampire and Werewolf players so they can have stupid little duels to prove which kind of supernatural PC is tougher, unlike some more recent stuff! Mage 2nd edition is the *total* modern fantasy game!

Let's face it, in the World of Darkness, hope is all too rare. Vampires are abberations of the natural order whose agelessness serves only to illustrate the beauty of death. Werewolves are fighting a losing battle against the Wyrm, the spirit of active destruction. Wraiths are dead souls wishing for Oblivion. Hunters are angsty mortals with nary a clue about their benefactors' identities ... but they kill the Outsiders anyway. (Changelings I don't know, sorry.)

And among all this chaos ... the Mage stands tall, looking to Ascend.

Oh, it's not all fuzzy bunnies, being a Mage. There's pain, and death, and the rest of the World of Darkness to contend with. But Mages have something to fight for other than survival. They have ideals. (Perhaps morbid ideals, but nobody ever said morbid is wrong ...) They have dreams. And, in the World of Darkness as in our own world, the perception of reality shapes reality itself. (Okay, I play too many Malkavians in Vampire. So sue me.) This is what it means to be a Mage.

It would take far more space than I have here to explain the worldview behind Mage. Suffice it to say that Mage (at least Second Edition) is positive in outlook, with a scope that encourages the imagination. This setting focuses on wonder, pain, and Ascension to a higher state. The group Storyteller will either love this game or hate it: love because of the openness of a magic system that's actually -realistic- (okay, you Christians are probably laughing at me now - oh well), or hatred because you've just spent twenty hours of preparation on Umbral Lords and now your players just want to use the spirit world to break into a Technocracy stronghold.

When I read this book for the first time, it was almost a spiritual experience. This is what a magical RPG is supposed to be like, in my view. However, hack-n-slashers can wreak havock on the system, mainly through over-use of Forces. I find that taking Forces away entirely is the best way to deal with this nuisance ... although with a group of powermongers, perhaps Werewolf would be a better game for you.

Warning: Revised Mage takes all the wonder and hope out of the setting and leaves you with the same old gloom and croon of the rest of the World of Darkness. The developers certainly did a wonderful job of making sure that the backstory fit the rest of the WoD, but I'm rather sorry to see hope go. (Life is painful enough without vicarously living through a rotting pile of bones, IMHO.) So, I proudly recommend Mage: The Ascension Second Edition to the Real Roleplayers and Loonies out there, Revised Mage to the Real Men among you (heaven help us all), and Harvard to the Munchkins that exist like worms at the heart of every gaming group...