Mage: the Awakening Second Edition is the third of the Big Three games to be reissued with the Chronicles of Darkness / God-Machine rules mechanic. It presents the same setting as the first edition - five Paths, the familiar Orders from the first edition, Watchtowers, the Supernal, the Abyss - but between First and Second Edition, many changes have been made.

Mages are all about Mage Sight, Obsessions, chasing down Mysteries and balancing politics with Gnosis, while trying to stave off degeneration btought about through Acts of Hubris which erode their Wisdom. Spellcasting still risks Paradox and the Abyss, but there is a major change - the separation of Covert and Vulgar magic, a holdover from Mage: the Ascension, has been done away with. The Paradox rules have been changed, and all of the trappings such as rote mudras, tools, gestures, High Speech and so on are collectively called Yantras.

The first edition caused contention in some fan circles, particularly such aspects as the art and the Atlantis monomyth. This game has incredible full-colour art, the monomyth has been de-emphasised and there is an overall fresh new approach to the game which has managed to balance elements from the first edition with newer elements, sustailably replaced new rules to replace unworkable older rules, and at the same time rewritten vast swathes of the setting yet at the same time keep the general shape of the first edition setting in a recognisable form.

This new version of Mage: the Awakening has struck gold. I recommend it to all fans of Mage. And to those who want to know what it is like to be one of the Awakened, Second Edition is the one you should definitely be playing.

The latest Chronicles of Darkness core rulebook to come from the Ontx Path Publishing studio, and the first to be released after the name change to Chronicles of Darkness from World of Darkness, Beast: the Primordial is about monsters, and their purpose in a hideously overcrowded world.

Using the new game mechanics introduced in The God-Machine Chronicle and later released as The World of Darkness, Second Edition and later still as The Chronicles of Darkness, Beast: the Primordial is literally about monsters in human form, and the lessons they have to teach humanity.

Features:-

• The core back story is that Lilith, the Mother of Monsters, birthed all of the big horrifying creatures - the giants, gorgons, gryphons, Krakens and shadowy beast which lurk in the dark - and that these creatures dwell in a distant part of the Astral called The Primordial Dream. Some people have nightmares of these creatures all their lives, until one day they are given a choice: give in, assume your first best destiny, or eat a blue pill. Those who accept are Devoured by their monsters, called Horrors. When they wake up, they are human no more, but rather Beasts. Their whole existence is about causing nightmares, teaching lessons and feeding off fear and pain.
• Every Beast has a Lair, in which their Horror, their monstrous soul, dwells.
• Beasts are always hungry. They can only be fed through preying on people, or punishing wrongdoers and so on. They can walk in people's nightmares and growing their Legend, so that their power can grow through telling and retelling of their stories like Grendel and the Kraken.
• The enemies of the Beasts are Heroes; deluded individuals who rejected the call to become Beasts but who, instead, chose to become hunters and killers of Beasts.
• This game is designed for crossover play with any and all of the other ChoD likes, from the blue book to Vampire: the Requiem all the way up to Demon: the Descent. However, it can be used on its own.

I did not know what to think when the name of this game first appeared. I did wonder whether Onyx Path had run out of steam or something. However, the game surprised me and greatly exceeded my expectations. So far, I have only scratched the surface; but already, several story ideas have formed, and as a Storyteller this is usually a very good sign, promising much for the game.

I look forward to running Beast: the Primordial, the second new game to emerge which does not have an Old World of Darkness counterpart (the first being Promethean: the Created of course) and seeing how the players like playing these brand new types of monsters.

After almost nine years, the World of Darkness core rules are given a makeover, and a considerable makeover it is.

Already, I see some interesting new game mechanic rules for this game, which actually provide new opportunities for dramatic play. Changes at all levels - chargen, Specialities, a system that replaces Vices and Virtues, a replacement system - Integrity - that replaces Morality, and Merits have been entirely rewritten both in terms of their new mechanics but also incorporating Merits from WoD supplements such as Dogs Of War and Second Sight, and also Merits from the Hunter: the Vigil core rulebook. Two Merits I wrote for Dogs of War appear in this sourcebook.

Breaking Points are a mechanic which replaces Sins, just as Integrity replaces Morality and the new Virtues and Vices replace the older ones. One cannot help but compare the new rules mechanic with the Hunter "Code" revised Morality system in the Hunter: the Vigil core rulebook. Indeed, the Integrity rules can replace that whole section and fit in seamlessly with the Hunter: the Vigil core rules.

Revisions for Vampire: the Requiem are in the offing with the forthcoming Strix Chronicle - but I can see White Wolf having to come up with new rules revisions for every single one of the games, probably requiring sourcebooks which are the equivalent of Blood And Smoke for Werewolf: the Forsaken, Mage: the Awakening, Promethean: the Created, Changeling: the Lost, Hunter: the Vigil, Geist: the Sin-Eaters and Mummy: the Curse. I suspect the new Demon will come charging out of the stables with the new rules incorporated into the core rulebook and likely won't need a new sourcebook.

Still, with this rules supplement - which is more like a deep core revision - there are liable to be a lot of hornet's nests kicked over when the fans realise how deep these changes go. And I really cannot see Onyx Path going very far down the road now without having to rewrite the core rulebook to incorporate these new changes. I smell a New World of Darkness II in the future ...

This sourcebook, not to mention the full Chronicle sourcebook, ought to make the next few years as interesting for the World of Darkness line as the Time of Judgement line did back in 2004 for the old game and the countdown to the then-new one.

A solid book, well thought-out and focusing on magic, blood, life force, power, sacrifice and heredity.

I haven't seen so much emphasis on blood since the Vampire: the Requiem Players Guide "The Blood." Only the powerful yet dangerous blood magics of Shadowrun come close to the feel of this book.

The illustrations and book are all in black and white. A shame. It seriously needed to have red-tinged colour interior art.

Each chapter focuses on one aspect of blood magic: in the first, the role and nature of sacrifice and some common sacrificial methods and techniques of sacrifice are discussed.

The next chapter discusses bloody miracles - Divine blood magic, including new and very powerful blood-themed spells such as Purify Blood, Sense Blood, Rain of Blood and Vampiric Touch. The chapter has a very heavy South American Aztec emphasis.

The Blood Sorcery chapter answers a lot of questions raised on the Mongoose fora about what a Grimoire is - is it just a single leather-bound book, or a whole tradition or methodology. The answer is: the latter. A Grimoire could be an oral tradition passed down through memory, precepts written on the walls of a chapter of the sorcerous order or anything, really, as long as they represent a body of knowledge. This chapter discusses the use of blood rather than Magic Points in sorcery, giving sorcery a suitably dark reputation.

The spells listed, such as Abjure Life, Clone, Enslave, Switch Body and Torment are the least horrifying possibilities listed for such dark sorceries.

The next chapter introduces yet another way of looking at magic. Concert casting; enchanting using the Enchant skill; summoning of entities such as demons; these new skills are thrown into this chapter.

The book rounds off with a thorough discussion of how blood magic can be incorporated into a fantasy setting, looking at pulp fantasy, swords & sorcery, high fantasy and other genres, and a list of inspirational sources.

If you want really powerful magic in your game - the sort of magic that has a hundred people chanting, and suddenly the skies over a whole kingdom are bleeding and raining blood - this is your book.

Highly recommended.

A supplement fully compatible with RuneQuest and Legend, Renaissance uses a setting contemporaneous with the Renaissance period in Europe.

This document is the SRD for the game, and contains complete rules to run the game, from character generation to equipment lists, game engine, combat mechanic and two forms of magic - alchemy and witchcraft.

Set in the Age of Black Powder and sail, you create characters who are of their age - drawing from recognisable social backgrounds ranging from peasants through to the middle classes, all the way up to the gentry and nobility. Professions, from Agitator and Alchemist through Journalists (yes, really, you can play a middle class journalist in this game!) to the likes of Watchman and Witch, are covered.

The setting feels familiar - more contemporary than other Basic Roleplaying-style settings, with black powder weapons, recognisable institutions such as Oxford University and things like currencies in Pounds, Shillings and Pence rather than Silver Pieces and Copper Pieces.

In its feel, the setting and game feel strongly like a similar game, White Wolf's old game Mage: the Sorcerer's Crusade, which was set in a similar time of progress and adventure.

You can use the SRD on its own, port the setting whole cloth into Legend or simply poach the Alchemy and black powder rules for your Legend game. Ditto, you can bring in the Divine Magic rules from Legend and have your Renaissance witch characters dedicate POW in literal Pacts with deadly infernal forces. In any case, I highly commend this useful document.

Excellent supplement to the Legend Core Rulebook. Due to space and cost considerations, Mongoose had to leave the Spirit Magic section out of the core rulebook. However with the release of Legend they kindly packaged the section, incorporating the "Shamanism for Fun and Prophets" article from Signs & Portents Magazine 89, and released it under the OGL.

If you check the Legend Core Rulebook, you'll find that it still mentions "four kinds of magic." Spirit Magic is the fourth kind, making this book essential to Legend, particularly if you want to give your shaman characters spirit magic with real bite to it, a match for any of the other magic types - Common Magic, Divine Magic and Sorcery.

I do more than recommend it - you will need it.

Highly recommended. The recently-updated version includes Chaos features and rules for ogres, though it comes at a smaller file size and the covers, sans the covers of the Legend Spirit Magic book.

One thing I wished they could have done - a "build your own monster" chapter. All, perhaps, in good time.

This book contains everything you need to know about the inhabitants of that area to Spinward and Coreward of the Third Imperium - the Zhodani.

As with other Mongoose Traveller Alien Modules, Mongoose Traveller Alien Module 4 (MTAM4) has a familiar structure: opening with uniquely Zhodani careers and character generation, then an article on the more advanced psionic Talents the Zhodani have developed, followed by articles on the Zhodani, the race, their history, and the present and immediate future for the Consulate - specifically the forthcoming Fifth Frontier War.

A glossary of Zhodani terms allows Referees and players to add an exotic atmosphere to their Zhodani games, and the equipment list focuses on psi-gear, glosses over augments and drugs, then goes on to look at Zhodani combat armour and Zhodani bots, then vehicles and ultimately Zhodani spacecraft - with some really beautiful illustrations showcasing Zhodani spacecraft design.

Encounter tables, reaction tables, Patrons, animals, NPCs all follow, with an article on Zhodani worlds and a detailed look at Ziafrplians Sector (a step to the left and one step Coreward of the Spinward Marches) follow, concluding with sections on adventuring in Ziafrplians and an article on Zhodani Campaigns.

In all, a thorough and comprehensive look at the mysterious Masters of Mind, including elements which newcomers would be likely to be surprised about - the Core Expeditions, and how they come about; also the phenomenon known among Traveller grognards as "The Empress Wave," and an NPC minor race called the Addaxur.

If you're already familiar with the Zhodani from previous articles, a lot of this material won't surprise you - but then, this material was written for people who have never run the Zhodani before, and would not know what to expect of them, so this book will be full of pleasant surprises to them.

It is to those newcomers to Traveller, who have no previous material on the Zhodani to compare, that I recommend this book. MTAM4 and the Mongoose Traveller are all you need to play Zhodani campaigns effectively.

The title, "Evil Acts," misleads a little. You expect some sort of game of treachery - then you discover that the term refers to the Acts of "The Tempest," the William Shakespeare play around which this scenario centres.

The game comes with partially-generated potential PCs, and some NPC characters essential to the game - Prospero, Miranda, Ariel, an evil entity called Sycorax, and so on. All actors playing the roles of the characters in the play. All wizards or supernatural entities that pass for human.

The story goes that Prospero, sensing that his magic and age have conspired to start tearing his soul apart, seeks to use the enactment of this play as a ritual to allow him to "break his staff" and abjure his rough magic once and for all, without killing him. However, asl always, things do not go as planned - so the player characters have to do something to make sure that they do.

After all, the play's the thing, wherein we'll catch the conscience of the King ...

A solid, yet light hearted, introduction to The Dresden Files RPG. In terms of ite presentation, the article looks solid and stylish, with the whole book looking like an occult investigator's case notes dossier, and nice, clean line art throughout.

Overall, a good way to start the game, if you want a pre-generated adventure to use as your first story for the game.

A good, solid introduction to the core mechanics of Shadowrun v 4.0 in 24 pages, covering basic character generation, tests, combat and the basics of magic in the Awakened World.

Pre-generated characters include Bounty Hunter, Hacker, Street Samurai and Combat Mage, covering as many bases as possible.

Spell casting, Augmented Reality and a combat scenario set in a Seattle streetsde Stuffer Shack follow, with a chest sheet and advertisement for further SR4 products such as the Sixth World Almanac and Runner's Toolkit, as well as for the Shadowrun website.

A good, tight but limited product. A taster, as it were, to get the reader to open up to the much wider range of possibilities available in the basic Shadowrun 4 core rulebook and supplements.

This product comes in the form of a zip file containing the ten Secrets of the Ancients chapters, along with the introductory "Secrets of Secrets" chapter summarising the plot of the adventure.

Over the course of the last few months, Mongoose had sporadically published each chapter of this adventure on their website. This is the first time they were made available as a single package; they are otherwise available, all separately, on their website, also for free.

What is this adventure about? Basically, the plot of this story follows the plot of the Classic Traveller scenario "Secret of The Ancients," where the characters receive a MacGuffin which leads them to an Ancient city inside a gas giant's atmosphere, and thence to an Ancient spaceship and a journey beyond any living experience, to meet an impossible being who has an incredible story to tell them.

Well, I say it follows the plot "closely." In some ways, anyone who has had to sit through the original scenario may find that this revisioning has a lot more going for it (for instance, the chapter titled "The Secret," which gives away the actual secret, was originally effectively what is known in the writing trade as a "Mary Sue" - Marc Miller's invulnerable superbeing, Grandfather, delivered a monologue to the characters that turned out to be so boring that he walked off halfway through his own screed, leaving it to his android understudy to finish for him.

In this version, the characters have less of a sense of being railroaded through to a long monologue, and more of a sense of having to make choices, and following through on those choices and their consequences.

In this version, it promises, at least one actual Ancient dies in the course of the telling. At one point players get to run a game with an unheard-of scope: that of Ancients themselves, told in the form of a flashback chapter where they are Ancients. And the end game chapter comes to a point where the characters can make a decision which could affect the entire known universe, for good or bad.

I am definitely commending this scenario, although I must say that this is not a good entry-level game for complete newcomers to Traveller. Definitely for players who have had some experience of the game and setting.

I posted a review of this item on the Shadownessence forum, where I described this as the kind of form for which the World of Darkness core rulebook was designed.

This adventure showcases and highlights the best aspects of the World of Darkness Core Rulebook, a book I have reviewed elsewhere, and provided a very effective horror game for my players.

I commend this adventure as a perfect accompaniment to, and first newbie adventure for, the World of Darkness Core Rulebook.

This item came in the form of a zip file, holding the sound files along with a PDF describing each file. Basically, you play these instrumental MP3 tracks during a game for atmosphere. That's it.

I quite enjoyed the different moods each of these tracks conveyed. I actually ran them through my personal MP3 player before the game. They made the long wait for a bus quite an experience.

The big blue book that rebooted a franchise.

This core element of White Wolf's World of Darkness revisioning, published in August 2004, provides a central set of basic rules applicable across all of White Wolf's new World of Darkness games, from Vampire: the Masquerade through to Geist: the Sin-Eaters, their last core game.

This book covers all of the basic rules, from character generation and development to task resolution, combat and basic Storytelling. All the World of Darkness core game supernatural types, from Kindred vampires, Uratha werewolves, Awakened mages, beleaguered Prometheans, anxious Changelings and paranoid Vigilant hunters through to morbid Sin-Eaters, have the same general attributes, such as Intelligence, Stamina and Composure, divided up into three categories - Mental, Physical and Social - and the same general skills, from Academics through to Streetwise, again divided up into the same three categories of Mental, Physical and Social.

These basic rules cover the computing of common characteristics from the Attributes, such as initiative, speed, health and perception rolls. The basic Morality characteristic is defined, along with the Virtues and Vices which remain the same across all the games.

From the opening fiction pieces by Rick Chillot, this core rulebook lays out the basic setting premise for the World of Darkness: that in the shadows of this world, otherwise very much like our own, darker shadows move and occasionally prey upon ordinary people.

Now, while lacking in actual monsters to fight other than a basic outline of ghosts, this book does manage to set the scene very effectively. And while later books allow players to become the dark creatures, or to take up the fight against them in the case of hunters, all the games that followed required the base rules in this book for everything from the creation of a mortal character in whom to base the supernatural template, through to the design of NPCs and Storytelling unique to each of the branch games.

As the root of all the World of Darkness games, this book is absolutely crucial.