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The Book of Legions is a description of the various Legions of the Hierarchy - when you die, you're sorted into a particular Legion in the Hierarchy, depending on how you died. Old age? Legion of Iron. Spontaneous combustion? Legion of Paupers. Just was in the wrong place at the wrong time? Legion of Emerald.

So do you need it? Not really.

It's hard not to recommend this book, but the problem with it is that it just doesn't have enough to recommend it. Each Legion gets its own writeup - how it recruits, how it works together, how it dresses, and so forth, including a description of the Lord for each Legion. It's all good, solid background information. The only problem is that it has very little information that's of any practical use. Sure, it's nice to know that the Emerald Legion focuses on practicality over negative criticism - "Emeralds over Thorns" - but in practical terms, it doesn't really mean anything to the average player.

Or to the average GM, either. There's nothing in the Book of Legions that really sticks in the mind after you read it, unlike "The Book of Worlds" or "Doomslayers"; it's information, and then it's gone.

It lists the different factions in the Stygian Hierarchy; each Legion has its own Deathlord, who gets a couple of pages of description, and then the organization and politics of the Legion is described. They're mildly interesting - for example, the Legion of Fate gets all of its directions from the Ladies of Fate, and so they can be marginally more assured of their actions than other wraiths. But sections that detail the military organization don't do much. How do I involve a wraith in one of these battles, what with twenty things happening at once? It's good if you happening to be writing about that particular Legion; playing in it is entirely different.

What's good about it? Most of the Legions have something interesting about them. The Beggar Lord is getting more and more unstable; the Penitent Legion has a Seat of Succor to quiet the insane wraiths that it recruits, and it has war machines that have been warped out of the bodies of many wraiths; the Emerald Legion has its special values; that kind of thing. You could probably get some insight into Stygian society, and how the various Hierarchy higher-ups interact by reading through it. It's pretty thorough on the Deathlords as well, including descriptions of where they live.

But ultimately, The Book of Legions just isn't focused enough. Want to run a military campaign? What's it like being in the Stygian military? How are you given orders? There's twelve pages in the back about what it's like - "Small-Unit Tactics for Legionnaries" - which is what players will use. That's twelve pages out of 152. You could run a political campaign with the contents of the Book of Legions, but then it's not so much about the Legions; it's about the Deathlords, and how they run their empires.

I have the sneaking suspicion that I'm not giving this book a fair chance; something tells me that it may be filling in gaps for other Storytellers about the Hierarchy, or giving better ideas of how the Stygian legions fight hordes of Spectres, or what the composition of the Legions are like. But useful information for me and my players is pretty sparse, and I would strongly recommend looking through this book in detail before picking it up.

-Darren MacLennan

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)

The Book of Legions, for Wraith: The Oblivion
Author: Tim Akers, Ken Cliffe, Richard E. Dansky, Geoff Grabowski and others... Category: game Company/Publisher: White Wolf Publishing Cost: $18 Page count: 152 ISBN: 1-56504-652-8 Capsule Review by Darren MacLennan on 11/10/98. Genre tags: Modern_day Gothic	The Book of Legions is a description of the various Legions of the Hierarchy - when you die, you're sorted into a particular Legion in the Hierarchy, depending on how you died. Old age? Legion of Iron. Spontaneous combustion? Legion of Paupers. Just was in the wrong place at the wrong time? Legion of Emerald. So do you need it? Not really. It's hard not to recommend this book, but the problem with it is that it just doesn't have enough to recommend it. Each Legion gets its own writeup - how it recruits, how it works together, how it dresses, and so forth, including a description of the Lord for each Legion. It's all good, solid background information. The only problem is that it has very little information that's of any practical use. Sure, it's nice to know that the Emerald Legion focuses on practicality over negative criticism - "Emeralds over Thorns" - but in practical terms, it doesn't really mean anything to the average player. Or to the average GM, either. There's nothing in the Book of Legions that really sticks in the mind after you read it, unlike "The Book of Worlds" or "Doomslayers"; it's information, and then it's gone. It lists the different factions in the Stygian Hierarchy; each Legion has its own Deathlord, who gets a couple of pages of description, and then the organization and politics of the Legion is described. They're mildly interesting - for example, the Legion of Fate gets all of its directions from the Ladies of Fate, and so they can be marginally more assured of their actions than other wraiths. But sections that detail the military organization don't do much. How do I involve a wraith in one of these battles, what with twenty things happening at once? It's good if you happening to be writing about that particular Legion; playing in it is entirely different. What's good about it? Most of the Legions have something interesting about them. The Beggar Lord is getting more and more unstable; the Penitent Legion has a Seat of Succor to quiet the insane wraiths that it recruits, and it has war machines that have been warped out of the bodies of many wraiths; the Emerald Legion has its special values; that kind of thing. You could probably get some insight into Stygian society, and how the various Hierarchy higher-ups interact by reading through it. It's pretty thorough on the Deathlords as well, including descriptions of where they live. But ultimately, The Book of Legions just isn't focused enough. Want to run a military campaign? What's it like being in the Stygian military? How are you given orders? There's twelve pages in the back about what it's like - "Small-Unit Tactics for Legionnaries" - which is what players will use. That's twelve pages out of 152. You could run a political campaign with the contents of the Book of Legions, but then it's not so much about the Legions; it's about the Deathlords, and how they run their empires. I have the sneaking suspicion that I'm not giving this book a fair chance; something tells me that it may be filling in gaps for other Storytellers about the Hierarchy, or giving better ideas of how the Stygian legions fight hordes of Spectres, or what the composition of the Legions are like. But useful information for me and my players is pretty sparse, and I would strongly recommend looking through this book in detail before picking it up. -Darren MacLennan Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 2 (Sparse)

The Book of Legions, for Wraith: The Oblivion