If anyone reading this review is familiar with Mage, this opening explanation can be skipped. If not, Mage is White Wolf's modern conspiracy/horror game centered on modern-day users of magic. In contrast to the other modern-day horror lines using the standard "World of Darkness," Mage always stood out and played poorly with the other games, in large part because the idea of being able to change reality clashed on a fundamental level with the brooding horror built into the other game lines (Vampire, Werewolf, Wraith, etc.) After all, why feel horror, despair, and angst if you have the power to alter things at the fundamental level?
Thus, the Hollow Ones were born in an alchemical wedding, an attempt to ground the innate optimism of Mage in the quiet shadow of the World of Darkness. It was always an uneasy marriage, and most scoffed at the union and it's bastard brood, claiming that the true purpose of the Hollow Ones was to make Mage palatable to the Goth subculture in which White Wolf had been born and nurtured. It would certainly appear that way to anyone who was introduced to Mage by their gamer friends as opposed to their Goth friends. After all, there simply weren't many gamers who intermingled with Goths until White Wolf bridged the gap. Hence, little appreciation for the subculture among a sizeable chunk of Mage purchasers.
Most of the people I've talked to and gamed with for Mage regard the Hollow Ones as a joke, a marketing ploy to a segment of humanity that loathes being marketed to, and something bordering on accidental self-parody and camp. In fact, several Mage ST's I know dropped the Hollow Ones altogether, simply rendering them Orphans, while others tried to flesh out their near-monotypical "gloom-cookie-cutter" role into something closer to human. Despite several supplements aimed toward this latter goal, White Wolf itself never succeeded in explaining how the Hollow Ones as a Tradition (no matter how loosely defined) were vital to the Mage cosmos.
This book came so close. I hope it's not White Wolf's last word on the subject. Because they almost made me love the cynical, self-absorbed, pretentious little sh*ts, almost made me understand them. Almost.
WHAT WENT RIGHT
To understand why I'm disappointed with this supplement, you first have to understand that I simply would not have bothered to review it if there was nothing worthwhile to hold my interest. There are diamonds in the dross, but only just enough to make me feel cheated, to make me long for what could have been.
Until this supplement, I could never get a handle on what motivated the Hollow Ones, I admit it. If the world was indeed that depressing, that pointless, then why not either A)do something about it instead of melodramatically whining and wallowing, or B)end it all, either by suicide or joining the Nephandi and euthanizing the universe? I was one of those Mage players mentioned above who didn't listen to goth music, nor appreciate goth fashion, and didn't see the point to goth mages. I had no frame of reference and therefore no handle on what makes them tick. From what I've seen and heard, I was never alone in missing their point.
But I get it, now. Did you know that the single most important and common trait in the Hollow One community, the one thing that unites them above everything else and makes all their little pieces fall into place, is a desire for Romance? Not angst, not nihilism, not gallows humor (which are symptoms of the disease), but a craving for greatness, majestic heights and abysmal lows, a sense of magic mixed into reality, and the feeling that what one does and how one goes about doing it actually matters: these are what drive the Hollow Ones to "act out" and revolt against the dull, the confining, the banal. This is why they act like they're always on-stage, and why they're so damn miserable all the time; the world is simply bigger than they are, and woefully unconcerned about them, and has no qualms about letting them down. They do care, and care deeply, but they feel constantly disappointed, with no one left but themselves to trust. And that makes sense, and makes them human instead of a walking stereotype. That's the missing piece that makes the puzzle.
Of course, I'm sure all the above is more than obvious to some people. But until this supplement came along, I found no evidence of this motivation in any White Wolf supplement or game fiction. I also never saw it explicitly expressed anywhere why they reject Traditions and Technocracy so vehemently: having learned about magic the hard way, they truly believe that the dogma spouted by both groups shortcuts and cheapens the growth necessary to be truly Awakened. True wisdom cannot be appreciated or used effectively by someone who hasn't experienced it and doesn't care to experience it. Mass Ascension is impossible, because what enlightens one muddies the water for another, and personal Ascension (to the Hollow Ones) sounds like glorified escapism. This was another missing piece that poor fools like me needed a map to, another one that White Wolf never successfully provided.
Having found all of this out, and realizing that the puzzle was at last complete, I was all set up for White Wolf to dazzle me with the new and unexpected ways that one could stretch and play with this mindset, and awe me with the true diversity of the Hollow Ones, diversity their stifled and stilted Traditionalist rivals could never dream existed. Boy, was I in for a letdown!
WHAT WENT WRONG
Having set this epiphany up, White Wolf strangles it in its cradle by telling us that Hollow Ones should not be just a "gloom-cookie-cutter" stereotype, but failing to show us how a player could make a Hollow One not locatable on the Neil Gaiman-Anne Rice-James O. Barr-Tim Burton chart. In doing so, they fail the "Chupp test," their own informal way of measuring how useful a supplement is. It simply asks, "Does this supplement inspire me to want to play a member of this Tradition/Convention/Craft? Does it give me interesting takes on how someone could make this character a little different?" This supplement fails, despite a promising start and some other promising ideas scattered throughout the book.
To illustrate this, I coan think of no better example than the Hollow One Templates, or example characters. Yes, the Templates. The only time White Wolf ever did Templates right in Mage was in the original Order of Hermes Tradbook, where they reduced the template to a single paragraph, not wasting space with where to fill in the dots, or microbigraphy, or pictures. Would that they did so in this book.
It's not just that the templates as written violate one of the cardinal rules of Mage rather consistently. (Six of the eight templates have Sphere ratings higher than their Arete should allow, unless White Wolf has rescinded that rule.)It's also that the templates, and the gaming resources listed in the back of the book, have precious little to offer anyone looking to vary the Hollow Ones beyond the Gaiman-Rice-Burton-Barr scale. Hell, most of the templates practically admit they were "influenced by" the above, except for one that admits its roots lie in Hellblazer. *groan* And did we really need to mention The Crow in the resources? Wasn't it already painfully obvious? Kudos for mentioning Grant Morrison's Invisibles and works on chaos magick, but much more was necessary. What about a few works by Rimbaud or some works on Existentialist philosophy?
Why not throw in a few non-Traditional Hollow Ones? What about a rapper a la Eminem or Rage Against the Machine, who uses a non-Goth music form to communicate the ugliness of life and forments rebellion? Or a Hollow One influenced by Phillip K. Dick and William S. Burroughs instead of Keats and Shelley? Or a Hollower whose influence stems from the gangsters, flappers, hipsters and swingers of Prohibition? Why does the "Reality Warrior" template have to model himself after Neo from The Matrix? If he prefers understatement and simple black clothes, why doesn't he model himself after Johnny Cash's 'Man in Black,' or Hank Williams, or the folk music from the Depression Era? Hell, why not have a Southern-Gothic/cowboy influenced Hollow One, who shows up as The Man with No Name and puts right what was wrong, only to amble on into the sunset when it's all over? It does fit the Romantic mindset. Why not a template, or at least more information, for the punk-influenced Social Terrorists and the Voudoun Gangstas, two other gems quickly washed away in the tide of Poe and Rimbaud, with nought to show but a few sketchy, broadly-drawn paragraphs? Why not an investigator/underground promoter of urban legends, an excellent idea mentioned elsewhere in the book but not given nearly enough room to grow? And if we must stick to Goth stereotypes, why not mention the excellent movies Donnie Darko or Waking Life or Ghost World as ways to get into the heads of Hollow Ones without playing to stereotype? Or at the very least, point people in the direction of Jhonen Vasquez, Voltaire, and Roman Dirge so that they know it's okay for a "gloom-cookie" to have a friggin' sense of humor, fer Chrissakes! I suppose I should be grateful for White wolf finally admitting that there are Hollow Ones over thirty, but I see nothing that tells me if there are Hollow Ones who are black, Hispanic, Arabic, Greek, or more than a Caucasian phenomenon except for a brief mention of Voudoun Gangstas.
And, of course, there are the typical most-used rotes lists and artwork, which is decent but not grabbing, and the game fiction, which has a few bright spots but other than that wastes space. Par for the course, but less than I hoped for. The Revised Akashic Brotherhood acquainted me more thoroughly with the Tradition than previous works had, and passed the "Chupp test" for me. This one left me spinning my wheels. I should buy a supplement to be inspired by the brilliant twists and ideas contained therein, not "inspired" by frustration at seeing glimmers of good ideas left to sit unused.
So I rated the artwork Average, because it fit the mood but wasn't inspiring. The content was Sparse, because there easily could have been more and better. NOTE TO WHITE WOLF: You have milked the Goth tit dry. In fact, it is now dessicated and like unto beef jerky in it's consistency. If you want people to stop pegging you with the angsty, "gloom-cookie-cutter" label, it is time for you to move on.
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(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)