the perfect book if your having a crissis ,trying to decide between buying savant and sorcery, bone and ebony, and the book of three circles.buy this book and save your money on the other crap. yeah the other books got some cool smack on it, but this book has all three of those wraped in one book (minus the other cool smack..) it give the basic bull and none of the confusing junk to boot. buy the book, you know you want it ;) enjoy and happy shoppen.
Good Book, yet something is amiss Please forgive my spelling mistakes cause my english is not my native language. ;)
White and Black Treatsie is a good book lets be honest. Its not THE book, but it is a nice compendium of old spells and stuff. It has new fiction, new ideas of how to measure sorcery in a game and how it can be learned, from where, who started this and most important gives hints that sorcery is NOT something natural to Creation. Cause there is no Celestial Incarnae in charge of the Sorcery portfolio. Interesting.
Although the book has a plethora of many many spells and ideas of new ones it is somehow repetitive and the feeling that sorcery is something MIGHTY is lost.
In a game-level view, sorcery is supposed to be something powerful that could destroy minds, enslave gods, create new materials, raise war machines from essence itself, erode any spell or charm, and in short: do anything possible in the willworker mind, yet many spells are weak, simple, monotone and powerless in comparison to high-level Siderial Martial Art Charms.
So although the power-level is somehow vague and lost between Charms, Artifacts and Sorcery. The book is a good one. You must buy it, really. Has tons of ideas, created magic, sources and great fiction plus excellent illustrations.
A must have.
So another book on sorcery.... So...we are treated to yet another book upon sorcery (with Savant and Sorcerer behind us,the Book of Three Circles behind that,and the Book of Bone and Ebony,and countless other spells and the like mentioned in other books) which as always stated sorcery is one of the most useful and powerful tools that any exalt can make use of.
But why does it seem that it always repeats itself,I mean seriously...within this new volume all of the spells from pervious editions seem to have been repeated...we are treated to yet again a discourse on what it means to be a sorcerer,and while it does add in some new and interesting features (like absorption charms...which is what kept me from giving it a lower rating) all of the old repeating yet again is...I don't know...disappointing to say the least about a subject that is "suppose" to be near limitless.
One could say that they are doing this to simply educate those who have never played Exalted,but lets face it...if your picking up this book then chances are very high that you know exactly what Exalted is,and it has been around long enough now that I think we can safely assume that people who are picking up this book already play the game and know all about it. They also likely have the other books before hand and especially those who are interested in playing sorcerers in Exalted know all of this.
The book again is not a total lost...but the future of Exalted stands upon a precipice as I see it...it must move forward not only story-wise,mechanically wise,but also what is provided as new content and abilities must also move forward. The future of the books of sorcery I think should focus less upon what was...and move forward to what could be...new designs,new spells,and new objects of power should be the focus...not rehashing the old stuff that the majority of the people who pick up new Exalted books already know and have.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
