Дошел лишь до 75 страницы Мага 20... это великолепно. Просто великолепно.
Отличное начало с погружением в мир, четкими объяснениями всего и все, причем не отстранено, а в контексте отыгрыша. Нормальные ответы даже на самые сложные вопросы: консенсус, вульгарна и статичная магия, терминология.
2. Вернули лучшее, что было во второй редакции: много кроссовера и гибкую реальность с магическими зонами.
3. Будущее не определено и предлагаются варианты всех нам известных событий исправленной редакции, но с разными версиями. В любом случае пока нет ничего, что нам известно про третьей редакции, это может будет. а может и нет.
4. Арт идеально привязан тексту - додуматься соединить каждый аркан Таро в частью текста вышло просто превосходно.
5. Наверное. здесь лучшие описания Мира Тьмы 20
A Mage: The Ascension chronicle features tales of
heroism and atrocity. In this World of Darkness, hope is in
short supply. Nights seem darker and more sinister than our
own. Screams and gunshots echo through the streets. Gothic
cathedrals tower alongside neon Babylons of glass and steel.
Nightclubs shake to techno thunder while desperate souls seek
solace or oblivion. Drug wars and religious violence spill blood
with awful frequency. Legendary monsters hunt their prey,
even when such things are supposedly “impossible.” People
cower in front of TVs and computers, watching events from
an anesthetized distance. Churches host fanatic congregations
who pray for celestial deliverance, but such deliverance feels
very far away. Everything seems possible in this world, but the
strongest possibility is that everything is shit.
This setting hovers somewhere in between the end-of-anage
decadence of the 1990s and the desperate fury of our new
millennium; it can be as modern or archaic as you want it to be.
Its denizens might own iPhones or scrounge crack in burnt-out
neighborhoods. They probably do both. This World of Darkness
is both immediate and timeless – a dark satire of our own times.
И еще одно:
For many people in our darkened world, that
dream is a nightmare. Rats breed while children
starve. The rich have more money than God,
and the poor pray to get through another day
with food on the table and a roof over their
heads. Lots of people don’t have even that
much. Cruel laws and social indifference have
packed the streets with lost and homeless souls.
Ayn Rand’s philosophy of parasitic prosperity
reached its full poisonous bloom in this world.
Pundits and politicians tear nations apart for monetary gain.
Sure, we have our saints as well as our sinners, but all too often
they become martyrs, monsters, or both. The kindly priest
gropes boys in the silence of a rectory; girls sell virginity on the
Internet, disappearing in the night as predators take their fill.
There is wonder here, but it’s a shadow-sort of wonder – the
gleam of raindrops on a spider’s web.
Here’s our park – a patch of grass and trees stuck between
steel-glass towers whose lights dim the stars. Handfuls of gargoyles
and dead-hero statues rise up here and there, desecrated with
bird shit and graffiti. Furtive people dart between the shadows
seeking drugs and forbidden encounters. The grass gleams with
discarded needles and broken glass. Gang tags blaze across
the old stone walls. Here and there, occult designs hint at
more sinister things. Carved names glow against the tree bark;
cigarette embers shine against the dark. Lumpy shapes scatter
across the field; sleeping people? Corpses? Probably both. A
full moon shines through smoggy clouds. Stars struggle to
be seen. The closer light, however, comes from the wash of
windows and car headlights cutting through the dark. Broken
streetlamps leave patches of gloom. Odd figures loiter on the
edge of sight. Someone’s crying in that alley, but it’s best not
to find out why. Every morning, the city’s clean-up crews sort
the living from the dead.
On the fringes of those cities, suburbia sprawls. Peppered
with strip malls, strip clubs, McMansions, McTown Halls, fast food
franchises, mini-screened multiplexes, housing developments,
gated communities, and more gun shops, pawn shops, and sextoy
shops than you’d ever think were possible, this clapboard
wasteland is as slick and rotten as the American Dream. By the
light of reality TV, parents beat their kids, cheat on their spouses,
and drink or drug themselves insensible. Gangs creep through
the streets at night, rendering every park and playground into
a bad joke. Schools, decades old, crumble due to lack of funds.
Church marquees broadcast pious slogans to the endless cars
and empty cul-de-sacs.
It goes on like this across the continents: cities that are
too big, too old, or both; suburbs that promise everything and
give almost nothing; wilderness where the borders of so-called
civilization collapse and ancient secrets defy man’s dominion.
Empty ghost towns; factories staffed with child labor; war zones
and polluted smears. Is it any wonder, then, that folks spend
more time with TVs than with the world around them? When
you step outside your ring of safety, it’s a pretty scary world.