I bought this book primarily to get the updated Arts, as I always liked Infusion and Talecraft since they added a lot of flavor I felt was missing in the base rules. Here is a quick overview of what this book covers:
New playable Kith from around the world and info on their respective regions, Australia is covered in great detail!
A lot of support for politically focused games, but mostly focuses on concordia's parliament, and info that fleshes out/updates the shadow/black court for current times.
Neat rules/fluff about secret societies, including bans and boons associated with being part of one.
Rules that flesh out Chimera creation, playing one, and having chimerical companions.
The rules to playing a Siochain are more like the rules for becoming one, it reminded me of the V20 Gulconda rules for vampire, not the same but similar. These rules aren't really about making a starting character that is a Siochain but ending up with one.
Crafting is explained with more detail, but nothing really mechanical outside of the new art (infusion), and rules on how a characters voile can actually be relevant besides just fluff.
More example of treasures and wonders.
Playable Kith: Swan Maidens (not a fan of this Kith personally, if adolescent concepts of tragic romance and sexual angst is your thing then you will love them).
Updated Arts for Infusion and Talecraft: As the updated Arts were my main reason for buying this book, I just want to say that the updated Arts were an overall disappointment for me. Infusion has basically stayed the same, albeit it has been a bit more clarified. I was expecting something a bit more updated to help address how knockers/boggans/eshu who use the Infusion Art have dealt with the world becoming more digital since the 90's. Talecraft on the other hand is all over the place. A lot of it has changed, but flavor wise it's overall very similar. Some changes were good, like the new 2, 3, and arguably 4 dot levels bring Talecraft into being more useful while still keeping its flavor. On the other hand, the new dot 1 effect is just a more flavorful and less useful version of another Arts 1 dot effect, and I'm housrulling to replacing the new level 1 dot with the old "Flickering Firelight" effect from original talecraft as that was completely removed in the update and I always felt it made more sense to be a dot 1 effect to begin with (it is a 2 dot effect in old Talecraft). The level 5 dot is a very mixed bag, it will either be considered wildly overpowered or underpowered based on your ST/group, and generally I would have preferred an update that made the 5 dot effect temporarily create a chimera from a story/performance. Also, it smacked of trying to get a changeling to simulate being a really crappy mage IMO, with banality replacing paradox.
Overall it is an OK supplement, but not really essential, unless you are doing a very heavy political story or really want to play kith from the non-western world. This may change after they release the final version, but honestly I would be shocked if it did. 6/22/19
Rating: [3 of 5 Stars!] |