Judgement Day

A longtime fan of Mage: The Ascension, I was worried that I wouldn't like the Judgment Day line of books. After all not only does it mark an end to a phenomenal World of Darkness, but had the potential of being rushed and not fully thought out. Thankfully this isn't the case with the Judgment Day: Mage. If you've been playing in a Mage: The Ascension game for a while and you're thinking of playing a Judgment Day scenario for whatever reason, this book might have exactly what you're looking for. At the very least (since it doesn't touch upon material that would satisfy fans of each of the Traditions), it will help you construct your own End Times tale. One of the most difficult things about making an End Times book (or playing in a World of Darkness game that encompasses many Traditions and or White Wolf game systems), is that there's a hell of a lot of depth that might elude the average player without all the source material. On that note, Judgment Day: Mage is an excellent resource, providing End Time tales that encompass a multitude of Tradition back-story. For instance, say you didn't know anything about the Golden Chalice or the Realm of Entropy in relation to problems the Euthanatos have had in their history, you would figure understanding such material presented in an End Times book would be confusing... right? Nope. Swiftly the Judgment Day: Mage book covers it all. Again though, one big downside to the book is that it wasn't able to encompass all the histories for all the Traditions in it (or at least provide End Time scenarios for each one). Sure that would have suited die-hard Mage: The Ascension fans but in truth it makes sense: damn shy of releasing a book that's over a thousand pages, this is the next best thing. Taken for what it is Judgment Day: Mage is an excellent addition to your White Wolf library. The production value is to be as expected (if not a little less than one would expect from a book that brings with it an end to their favorite game system), and the writing it top notch. Now if you ever play a Judgment Day campaign is something entirely different (as I've found playing pre-Judgment Day to be much more fun, something I think most Mage fans have in common), and yet Judgment Day: Mage provides the reader with an interesting bunch of interpretations on the End Times and fun story ideas to experiment with.

First, a minor clarification: this is the *third* book of a trilogy. The series goes: Gehenna, the Final Night (Vampire the Masquerade): by Ari Marmell. The Last Battle (Werewolf: Time of Judgement): by Bill Bridges. Judgement Day (Mage): by Bruce Baugh. The book cover says "book three of three", but does not list the other two, which is annoying. Even though the books are only loosely connected, I like to read a series in order, and bought the third without realizing I was missing two others. The previous are not required to understand this one, but there are occasional references to events in the other books. Judgement Day is a story of the End of the Universe, from the point of view of three different mages (and one occasional narrator character). They cover the major types from Mage: the Ascension: One from the Technocracy, an organization devoted to reason, logic, science, and the total subjugation of any type of disorderly behavior. They use magic, but generally treat it using a scientific framework (for instance, they refer to vampires as hematovores, who have a viral disease that gives them apparently supernation powers). One was a shaman, a member of the Nine Traditions, a more counter-cultural group who opposes the Technocracy, when they're not too busy squabbling among themselves. The last was an Independent, basically consisting of 'none of the above', people who have Awakened to the spirit world, but don't choose to belong (or even know about) the two major groups. I thought the story was excellent. I would have rated it four and a half stars (but just discovered that's not an option), only because the Independent mage spent a lot of her time in the world of Shades (not sure of White Wolf's exact name for it), the afterlife where human souls battle for power. I never cared for that part of the World of Darkness, generally preferring the Mage or Vampire stories. But otherwise there is nothing I would have wanted to see changed. The stories are somewhat disjointed, as the previous reviewer said, simply because it's told from three different people's viewpoints, which is fundamental to the story. I didn't find it tough reading, as each section had the person's name, telling you whose viewpoint it was. And I thought the finale was outstanding, and read it more than once. The ending did not specifically refer to Christian beliefs (which may be why the previous reviewer refers to 'chickening out'), but I think the whole point of the story is: there are three protagonists, all of whom have wildly different concepts of the power and structure behind the Universe, yet discover that the underlying Reality is far outside their limited framework. The implication is that none of the current major world religions are "correct", but simply a crude attempt at describing the indescribable, making sense of something that's just too big for mortals to comprehend. It's a major challenge, describing both how and why the Universe ends, given th