Mage is best played as an adventure campaign, and someone at White Wolf agrees with my opinion because this suppliment is all about taking Mage away from pointless, pretension navel-gazing and putting into the active, doing mode of the action/adventure game.
What does this book give you? If you've played "Hong Kong Action Theater" or "Feng Shui" (etc.) then all this will do is clue you in on the specific mood and themes needed to make your adventures mesh into Mage. If you're not well-versed in competant action/adventure gaming, then you're the folks who need this book. This is a damn good primer for staging and running action-movie campaigns, with much of the text tailored towards meshing such games with the gothic-punk aesthetic of the World of Darkness.
You learn a new term -- "Dark Adventure" -- which is a melding of the High Adventure aesthetic that gives us great films like "Hard Boiled" and the Low (Science) Fantasy that permeates the World of Darkness. Together, you're suppossed to get the feel of films like "The Crow", "The Terminator", "Dark City" and "The Matrix".
Amazing it may be, but this time the writers actually get that across.
Of course, they offer the usual range of variation. You can stick to the mean streets, go off into the Deep Umbra and everywhere inbetween. (If you needed that reminder, you shouldn't be playing Mage.) This gets better when the book delves into recent events and how the GM can use this to create plots, subplots, counter-plots and Yet Another Plot to Destroy Life, Liberty and Happiness As We Know It.
Thankfully, it doesn't delve much in the metaphysics. We can get our fill of that elsewhere.
The book offers plenty of alternate rules for cinematic combat, stock NPCs (such as the ever-popular cop) and dodging bullets. This, when coupled with the setting information, makes the book useful for those who don't need to be told how to stop acting like arthaus film snobs.
Yes, you should get this book. When you should get it depends upon your skill at action-adventure gaming; the less you do it, the sooner you should get the book!
Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 3 (Average)
