This book is part of a series of new Convention Books providing a look at the Technocracy in the new world of Mage Revised. With the Avatar Storms cutting the Technocracy off from its deep space outposts and the Ascension War on the back burner indefinitely, the Conventions must refocus to cope with a changed order.
For comparison purposes, I pulled the prior version of this book off my shelf and skimmed it. There's a massive change in tone. The original was a passionate expose' from a cyborg whose controlling AI had temporarily malfunctioned, giving us a window into a techo-dystopia where every human was assigned a binary number and enslaved by a Big Brother chip in his head. It was a world of mindless factories, lethal HITMarks, and immediate termination/reprogramming for the slightest incorrect thought. The new book is told from the perspective of an elder Virtual Adept who decides to change sides, disgusted with the "leet" punks who run his Tradition. If this new Iteration X had any more sweetness and light, it'd give you diabetes and burn out your retinas. (Don't worry, though, they can fix that.)
The new Iteration X is about empowering humanity. Before, they wanted you to be a drone in a factory. Now, if you work in a factory, it's not to destroy your self, but because it's better than subsistence farming. Emotions are not to be ignored, but to understood and bent to the end of giving humans complete control over their environment. There's still a chain of command, but that's more a matter of understanding that everyone has their specialization, as opposed to rewarding those who have chosen to become closer to the Machine.
The other big change is in their technology. HITMarks are gone. No stats for them, no talk about them except for derision. In theory, this is because they're just too Paradoxical anymore. The new big things are nanotechnology and power armor. All Iterators still end up having implants, but now they don't control and report on you; they just link you in to everyone else. As you can perhaps tell, all of this gives me mixed feelings. While I appreciate White Wolf moving away from the "Technology is evil" perspective, I wonder if they haven't gotten a little too positive. The book barely touches on all the ways in which Technocracy policies and an increasing drive towards high tech contribute to problems in society.
As far as the book itself, it's oriented towards allowing you to play an Iteration X character. We have the obligatory bit of beginning and ending fiction, fairly well written. The history of the Convention, written by that same bitter Virtual Adept, takes pains to complain about how the old Convention and its "machine cultists" were big jerks who barely understood what they were doing. Now, of course, the Avatar Storms have cut them off from Autocthonia (the Technocracy's ultimate machine-realm, home of the vaguely malevolent sentient Computer) and those same cultists, allowing younger, less rigid administrators to take control.
From there, we move into setting and game material to allow you to create characters and set up their base of operations. Groups are encouraged to play cabals consisting entirely of Iteration X mages --- since this is the We Build Stuff Convention, there's a wide variety of types possible. There's the usual rundown of Methodologies (sub-groups of the Convention), sample NPCs, and character templates (complete with LARP rules). The authors chose to introduce a new group, the Macrotechnologists: people who work on taking existing stuff like steel, cars, and planes and making them work orders of magnitude better. It's probably the most innovative concept in the book, and I like it. It fits in well with the new direction.
And then, of course, there's the toys. This is still the Technocracy. No more T-1000s, Cyber-Tooth Tigers, or hypersonic black helicopters. However, you can instead have roving cameras, PDAs that carry the Library of Congress, nanites in your blood to automatically heal you, or a ghost detection system (the new Iteration X is allowed to use Dimensional Science). If you just can't live without five dots of hardened Armor and a Big Effing Gun, have a Martinez Robust Hardsuit with Primium Plating and a Plasma Cannon. The toys are cool, and are actually very reasonable if one assumes that the Technocracy is 20 to 50 years ahead of Sleeper tech; I personally know people who are working on most of the things described in this book. My only gripe is that the authors have stretched reality a bit in determining what's coincidental. I don't care how much you disguise it as a hazmat suit, a suit of power armor is not part of the modern paradigm.
One thing that's not included here is a set of sample Rotes. Your options are to either use the old Convention Book or the Guide to the Technocracy. White Wolf is basically assuming you'll have the latter if you run a Technocrat campaign. Doesn't bother me, since I have both and encourage my players to make up their own damn spells anyway, but your mileage may vary.
In summary, this book is a good overview of a benevolent technological conspiracy to save humanity from itself and the remaining pesky Reality Deviants. I happen to be a graduate student at a major research university, and this book basically describes my professors and classmates, complete with the ivory tower attitude towards technology and society. If you're working with WW's new metaplot, you'll probably want it in order to understand the kindler, gentler Technocracy. Even if you aren't, I'd recommend picking this up and mixing it 50/50 with the older, dystopic version to create shades-of-grey games where neither Traditions nor Technocracy are clearly right or wrong.
Go to forum!
(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)