The Inside Scoop on Gaming

The worst of White Wolf's formulaic books are the faction books. There's plenty to condemn about the Clanbooks, Tribebooks and Kithbooks. However, none are so insulting as the Tradition and Technocracy books for Mage. It's not that the content is shoddy or ill-researched. The problem is that there is precious little content at all!

The Verbena Tradition book is a prime example of this all-fluff, no-meat affliction that all of Mage's faction books suffer from. The first clue is that the hard data sits at the bottom of a pool of fiction, forcing the reader to wade through page after page of weak work to get at the nuggets of information. This is not appropriate for any RPG suppliment; the first rule of any technical manual is to inform the reader, and make no mistake- this book, as with all RPG books, is a technical manual and must be treated as such.

The second clue is that the existing information, when condensed, takes up less than one of the book's chapters. All of the options, rotes, foci, etc. can fit into a couple of pages. The important historical information fits into a single page. The rest is a lot of garbage that plays at being competant fiction. At least the artwork doesn't conflict too harshly with the text.

The third and final clue is that it takes a lot of skimming to find all of this stuff, then it takes more to remember where it is. It's not a good thing to say, but this book really needs a revision- along with most of its companion volumes- and the organization is what makes this abundantly clear. The schtick of following the Wheel of the Year is neat and all, but that's not what I got this book for. I wanted plenty of cold, hard, objective data about the Verbena and what I got was a mass of crap that didn't tell me squat. Don't waste your money.

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 1 (I Wasted My Money)

Tradition Book: Verbena
Author: Nicky Rea, Sam Chupp and Lucian Dark Category: game Company/Publisher: White Wolf Game Studio Cost: $10 (US) Page count: 96 pages ISBN: 1-56504-128-3 Playtest Review by Bradford C. Walker on 08/11/98. Genre tags: none	The worst of White Wolf's formulaic books are the faction books. There's plenty to condemn about the Clanbooks, Tribebooks and Kithbooks. However, none are so insulting as the Tradition and Technocracy books for Mage. It's not that the content is shoddy or ill-researched. The problem is that there is precious little content at all! The Verbena Tradition book is a prime example of this all-fluff, no-meat affliction that all of Mage's faction books suffer from. The first clue is that the hard data sits at the bottom of a pool of fiction, forcing the reader to wade through page after page of weak work to get at the nuggets of information. This is not appropriate for any RPG suppliment; the first rule of any technical manual is to inform the reader, and make no mistake- this book, as with all RPG books, is a technical manual and must be treated as such. The second clue is that the existing information, when condensed, takes up less than one of the book's chapters. All of the options, rotes, foci, etc. can fit into a couple of pages. The important historical information fits into a single page. The rest is a lot of garbage that plays at being competant fiction. At least the artwork doesn't conflict too harshly with the text. The third and final clue is that it takes a lot of skimming to find all of this stuff, then it takes more to remember where it is. It's not a good thing to say, but this book really needs a revision- along with most of its companion volumes- and the organization is what makes this abundantly clear. The schtick of following the Wheel of the Year is neat and all, but that's not what I got this book for. I wanted plenty of cold, hard, objective data about the Verbena and what I got was a mass of crap that didn't tell me squat. Don't waste your money. Style: 2 (Needs Work) Substance: 1 (I Wasted My Money)

Tradition Book: Verbena