The Book of Madness: Whispers Without, Chaos Within (Mage)

Rating:
Summary: Know Chaos within - give birth to lots of screwed up stars!
Review: Like the Technocracy, the main Mage rules do little to explain why the Fallen Ones or the Mad Ones are supposed to be feared and hunted by the Archmages or even the majority of ranking mages in Traditional or Technocratic circles. Aside from the Nephandi having evil powers and the Marauders being almost completely immune to the limiting effects of Paradox, they simply functioned as human-sized dragons in Mage, good for destroying large chunks of real estate or frightening small children.

With this book, we now have information about running and playing these kinds of characters that turns them into actual characters, rather than scary set-pieces. You didn't just sell your soul to a Hermetic mage gone bad, you sold it to Jodi Blake, with a distinctive style all her own. And so on.

I recommend this book as a starting place for any storyteller (or, heaven forbid, a player) who wants to include one or more of these folks in a Mage game.

Rating:
Summary: Very informative
Review: The Book of Madness is a first edition look at the major antagonists of mages, the Nephandi, Marauders, cults, and various umbrood. It is outdated because a lot of the mechanics have been reprinted in Mage 2nd Edition. However, information regarding culture, beliefs, and practices were abundant. This book really broke the anagonistic groups down so that storytellers can come up with more unique antagonists rather than relying on the cardboard-cutout villians with badass powers who are bad simply because they are. The book explains the reasons why they are badasses and what they believe in.

Rating:
Summary: A good book desperately in need of a 2nd edition
Review: The Book of Madness was out of print for a while, but White Wolf did a new print run of it in early '99. The book doesn't need a reprint, it needs a revision. I'll get to that.

The Book of Madness is all about the mages' strangest, wildest adversaries: The Nephandi and the Marauders, the two other forces in the Ascension War besides the Traditions and the Technocracy, along with a bunch of spirits, the demons of the Astral Umbra, Paradox spirits, and a chapter on the Umbrood in general, plus a small selections of Mythic beasts. All of it is fairly good, but none of it, except possibly the section on Paradox, was long enough for my taste. Much of the material on here was intergrated into the second edition of Mage, like the rules for Umbrood, more details about the Nephandi and Marauders, and some of the clarifications of Paradox. The lack of quantity of the material and its outdatedness are the book's two main flaws, but they're enough. Personally, I think they either need to revise and expand the Book of Madness, or, preferably, there needs to be a volume detailing both the Nephandi and the Marauders in more detail, giving some history of the two sects, and then a separate book of Umbrood, Astral demons, and Paradox spirits. But I'm just blue-skying here. This is one of those books that is all storyteller resources and nothing players would benefit from, and while not essential for running a campaign, it would definitely help if you wished to include any of the forces described within.

Rating:
Summary: Madness and Evil etc.
Review: This is THE most useful Mage sourcebook there is. Get it at the same time you pick up 2nd edition Mage and you'll be away. It explains (in fact theorises about) the nature of paradox, spirits, marauders, nephandi and so on, and gives handy hints on how to flesh them out into plausible adversaries rather than monsters to magick to death. It is excellently written and well thought out, typically Phil Brucato (who is by the way the most worthwhile member of White Wolf by a mile) and will improve your chronicle. Trust me (as Jodi Blake might say)