Over 60% of the world's population lives in Asia.
If you wondered why White Wolf was making a sourcebook for Asian magi when they already have the Akashic Brotherhood tradition book, that statistic alone should convince you. If the number of magi in a region is roughly proportional to the number of Sleepers (means "normal people" in mage-speak), then there should be more magi in Asia than in the entire rest of the world.
So, if it's any good, this book becomes required reading for a Mage campaign with any eastern influence whatsoever. The question now becomes, is it any good?
Normally I'm not a devotee of chapter-by-chapter analysis. However, Dragons of the East focuses on one specific topic per chapter, so I'll write this review that way.
Ancient Scrolls
This is the real-world history chapter. From what I know of history in that half of the world, they did a decent job of telling the stories of India, China, Tibet, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Japan. Unfortunately, the part about Korea is marred by one of the most horrible editing gaffes in the entire book, where some random passage about organic steel tigers (!?!?) shows up in the middle of the history section. Other than that, and a lack of information about the Phillipines, this chapter seems to be pretty solid.
What Dragons of the East does that few gaming books have managed to do is make each country look like a separate entity. It gives a much more solid ground to stand on when figuring out why some of the nations hate each other so much. Making nations look distinct can be pretty difficult when you're an outsider - I have to say that if I was from Asia, I doubt I could tell the difference between the U.S. and Canada except that Canada minds their own business.
Sutras
The other real-world chapter, this one is about Asian and Indian religions and philosophies. This is necessarily a quick skim of the major beliefs - after all, you can fill whole tomes with details about Indian religions alone. For each of the religions covered herein (Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Shinto) the book describes their beliefs, practices, a little history, and what sort of supernatural powers they would believe in. Very handy. Also pretty accurate, from what I remember from my Asian Religion classes.
The Lightning People
This, of course, is what most of the gamers have been waiting for.
First we get the mystic history of the world. Werewolf and KotE players will immediately start mapping things to their own cosmology, though not everything fits perfectly (and that's ok). There's a lot of terminology in this section, and it takes a while to get through.
Then we get mystical groups. The Akashics we all know and love from the main rules, their sects, and rotes. All familiar. NO, repeat, NO new rules for Do, which is fine by me since there are already 15 different versions of it floating around. An in-depth look at the Wu Lung and their rotes. For those who haven't picked up Mage in a while, the Wu Lung are magi who helped to rule China for a long, long time, and whose influence has faded so much that they had to actually join their ancient rivals the Akashics. The two groups are given equal space here, and both are given a good treatment
Then there's the Wu-Keng. Hoo-boy. A title from a sidebar sums it up for me: "So I'm a cross-dressing devil worshiper?" Very confusing, contradictory stuff, which most people will probably avoid, but which has some interesting bits to it.
Bounteous Diversity
This is basically the "everybody else" chapter. The influences on Asia of just about everyone in the White Wolf universe is described here, from other traditions to spirit creatures to the Kue-jin to mortal secret societies and government agencies. It might seem like this is a chapter that typifies the "no humans left" feeling in White Wolf... and then you realize that there are over three point five billion people in the region and suddenly tens of thousands of supernatural creatures seem like very few indeed.
One nice thing here is that the supernatural critters in Asia actually have some contact with each other. They aren't skipping down the street hand-in-hand, but they at least deal with each other in a civilized manner. This makes for much easier group dynamics when dealing with those rare mixed groups of adventurers.
Five Elemental Dragons
And you thought they just meant the Technocracy, huh? Nope - this is an entirely separate group of magi infiltrating the Technocracy. Now, I own the Technocracy book (did a review of it too) and this still seems a little weird to me... I would think the Union watches their back door more carefully than this... but it makes for an interesting story nonetheless. The Five Elemental Dragons seem to be quite a big group, with (I would guess) about as many magi as the rest of the traditions and crafts in Asia put together.
Like their Western counterparts, the Dragons concentrate on using machinery and technology to do things. Unlike the Technocratic Union, the Dragons see things in terms of chi and lifeforce. It's an "alternate science," more or less, not as flashy as the Sons of Ether but still with that eerie blend of mysticism and high technology. A very interesting group.
A Thousand....
... well, more like a dozen, really. Hyperbole strikes again. This chapter details a few items and places of magical power. Some of the places are obvious (the Great Wall, Hiroshima and Nagasaki), but most are a good reminder for westerners like me, who tend to forget a lot of their Chinese geography lessons. The items are all somewhat interesting, with most having more than one use.
Oh yeah, art 'n' stuff.
The art's not bad. It has a good amount of stylistic unity (because it's all drawn by two people), and fits the book well. Not all of it goes with the text next to it, though. It's not omnipresent - you can often go a few pages without seeing any art - but that's ok because what there is is pretty big, and you wouldn't want to take space away from the text. I do wish that the practice of putting "chicks in chainmail" on the front of books would go away, though. Is the purpose of that uniform to stun your opponents with its lack of practicality?
For the most part the book is laid out well. Most headers look like headers, though there are some places they're easy to miss. I would have traded one or two of the "general feel" drawings for a few smaller, more topical pieces (pictures of the artifacts, etc).
The end is not just the beginning
Dragons of the East has something very important to me: lots of good information. It also keeps away from any anime influence, which is fine by me. Substance gets a 5. The book can be pretty dense in places, but it's also readable. The layout and cover could have been a little better, but it's not bad. Style gets a 3. At least they avoided the "Page XX" table of contents that one recent book had. Ick.
The price tag is a little high for a 140-page book, but there's nothing else cheaper that provides the same info. If there were a cost-benefit category, the book would probably get a 3 (average), because it costs a lot but also has a lot of info. In summary, the book is worth picking up if you're running a Mage story in Asia or if you want a strong Asian influence.
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