Can't Sleep, Clown Will Eat Me

I'm up late thinking about the events of the weekend and thought that I might dispense with the usual pseudo-news and give you a little straight talk.

First, if you look to your right you'll see the cover art for the Mage rulebook. We just recently got this in and the picture here is pretty nice. Let me tell you something though. This only gives you the barest inkling about how cool this cover really is. There are transparent effects and some sort of metallics... and the overall effect is intense beauty. This cover is a true work of art. Best of all, it doesn't stop there. All throughout the book there is a vision for the look of the book that one rarely sees in the RPG industry. I even had a look to see who it that was responsible for the cover (unfortunately at this hour I cannot remember his name). I've never CARED who did layout on a book before and this time I was moved to look it up. That says something.

The interior art is all consistently good... and consistent. In most RPGs you get a mish-mash of styles. Essentially it's art from whoever was available and managed to get the work done on time and on budget. Not so in the Mage book. It all has a certain feel to it (in addition to the consistent quality mentioned earlier). Only WOTC seems to hit this mark and only on their core books. On top of all of that our layout includes a nice touch of gold metallic in the text that is not garish but actually adds to the feel of otherworldliness of the text.

I wasn't that interested in getting the game. I'm not a big fan of the World of Darkness overall but I want to own this book if only because of the overall quality of it. Something about the look and feel of it says "buy me now, you won't regret it" and when a book can say that to me I suppose that I should listen.