The Fine Artist's Guide to Marketing and Self-Promotion: Innovative Techniques to Build Your Career as an Artist

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Do You Want To Know How To Sell Your Art?

Making a Living as an Artist- The Real Deal

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The Fine Artist's Guide to Marketing and Self-Promotion: Innovative Techniques to Build Your Career as an Artist
Julius Vitali
Manufacturer: Allworth Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1581152817

Book Description

This book is an innovative guide to understanding and implementing the possibilities for self-promotion and marketing available to fine artists. With an emphasis on which strategies work and which don't, the author explains ingenious and not commonly thought of ways fine artists can become visible and establish a reputation, even on a small budget.

Customer Reviews:

Good information.......2006-08-28

I am a artist and bought this book to get more information on better ways to market and promote my work. This books offers very useful advice that is easy to understand and follow. If you are looking for ways to promote yourself and market your work this is a must read.

Do You Want To Know How To Sell Your Art?.......2004-06-15

As I am married to an artist, I can well appreciate the immense difficulties artists face when they are endeavoring to sell their art- work.
It is with this in mind that I decided to read and review Julius Vitali's updated edition of The Fine Artist's Guide To Marketing And Self Promotion.

Vitali's question in his introduction- how do fine artists create a reputation and career that will ultimately allow commercial galleries to sell their work- sets the tone of this extremely informative book.
We often hear the common complaint of artists that they have been rejected so many times that they might as well throw in the towel and forget about selling their work. A simple reply to the artist would be to persist and don't be discouraged. However, unfortunately this is not enough.
They must realize, as Vitali points out, there are other factors contributing to making an artist known, such as knowing about publicity, marketing, a clear and articulated aesthetic vision, networking, timeliness, and yes, a certain amount of luck.

Vitali deals with all of these elements in his eleven chapters that clearly point the artist in the right direction. In addition, the reader is also provided with brief profiles of thirteen successful artists, who have implemented to a lesser or greater degree many of Vitali's guidelines. When I was growing up my parents always told me that you learn from the best not the worst. In other words, find out why certain individuals are successful and learn from them. This is basically Vitali's motive for including these thirteen profiles, wherein the reader may be able to implement some of what worked for these artists.

There is also no shortage of interesting advice scattered throughout the book. As examples, did you know that making personal contact with magazines and newspapers is the most effective way to achieve success with these publications; be careful if you exhibit in the same area and repeatedly send media releases, this may turn off reports and reviewers; that more people listen to radio than ever before and this is an excellent opportunity to be known.

In addition to receiving some excellent tips as to how to market and sell yourself, the author provides timely resources pertaining to grants for individuals and special projects, corporate support for the arts, exhibiting your art professionally in a variety of venues, assembling a résumé, portfolio, and letters of recommendation.
A useful appendix at the back of the book deals with digital resources, Internet security and other related Internet topics, useful software, printers, ink and paper, and publishing.

Julius Vitali is a well- known international artist who has exhibited all over the globe, and his work appears in numerous public and private collections.
Artists who will devote the time to thoroughly read and probably re-read chapters that are most appropriate to their situation have the most to gain from Vitali's advice.

Norm Goldman Editor of Bookpleasures.com

Making a Living as an Artist- The Real Deal.......2004-05-20

My copy of "The Fine Artist's Guide to Marketing and Self-Promotion" by Julius Vitali could not have arrived at a better time. I needed to approach numerous manufacturers to evaluate state-of-the-art video equipment for my own book project. The chapter on corporate support for the arts provided the right combination of factual information and inspiration that let me know I could anticipate a 75% favorable response to a request for product support.

This book prepares beginners for a life of living off one's own wits as an artist.It contains reasonably priced, low and high tech ways to promote your art on your own. It's required reading for anyone seriously planning on making a career in the arts. Art professors would do their students a big favor by making this book a required text.

Julius Vitali encourages artists to think of themselves as small business entrepreneurs, like painters of the Renaissance who ran their studios as businesses. In this revised edition, there are important chapters on running a home business efficiently, using media to get your work into the public eye, Internet marketing and making a career in Europe. Other chapters contain helpful strategies for exhibiting, grant writing, assembling a résumé and portfolio. I've been making a living as an artist for more than 25 years and this book taught me a lot of new strategies and unorthodox methods for marketing and self-promotion. It contains realistic information that could only be acquired from successful daily practice. Why start from scratch when you can get this type of help?

Making a career in the arts takes an aggressive approach to selling. Julius Vitali shows it can be done and how anyone can do it with straightforward, no-nonsense advice.

Helpful and practical information.......2001-12-13

The marketing and promotional tips offered in this book are practical and geared toward the profesional artist. Artists who seek a career in the world of fine art and developing a reputation are strongly encouraged to read this book. The advice is both easy to understand and will prepare the artist for the real world, not small-time futility.

Getting the Word Out: The Artist's Guide to Self-Promotion

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Getting the Word Out: The Artist's Guide to Self-Promotion
The Editors of Art Calendar Magazine
Manufacturer: The Lyons Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1558217304

Book Description

Unless an artist learns to promote his or her own self, promotion of one's work often goes undone - often after an immense amount of effort has gone into making of art. Getting the Word Out offers dozens of practical and effective ways in which an artist can obtain more exposure - through self-promotion. There are chapters on such subjects as: brochures and catalogs; getting your artwork into magazines; getting press coverage; getting onto radio and TV; speaking in public; traditional slide portfolios; videos; CD-ROM and other computerized documentation; organizing a panel discussion; artists' sourcebooks: are they for you?; creating a network of dealers; working with art consultants; publishing a book; publishing posters, notecards, and other multiples; using billboards, ride-alongs, and other alternative media; print advertising; and much more. In addition, there are revealing interviews with art professionals that will answer thousands of questions of importance to all working artists. (6 X 9, 288 pages, b&w photos)

Book Description

With Field Guide to Current Training Videos, managers can learn about the content and merit of more than 120 training videos as reviewed by a carefully selected group of trainers and consultants responsible for assessing video within their own organizations. Each review summarizes and evaluates the content of the video, describes its most appropriate audience and use, succinctly rates the video along a number of dimensions (e.g., entertainment value, production quality, and portrayal of women/minorities), and contains biographical information about the reviewer.

Book Description

"Film noir" evokes memories of stylish, cynical, black-and-white movies from the 1940s and 1950s--melodramas about private eyes, femmes fatales, criminal gangs, and lovers on the run. In More Than Night, James Naremore discusses these pictures, but he also shows that the central term is more complex and paradoxical than we realize. Film noir refers both to an important cinematic legacy and to an idea we have projected onto the past.
This lively, wide-ranging cultural history offers an original approach to the subject, as well as new production information and fresh commentary on scores of films, including such classics as Double Indemnity, The Third Man, and Out of the Past, and such "neo noirs" as Chinatown, Pulp Fiction, and Devil in a Blue Dress. Naremore discusses film noir as a term in criticism; as an expression of artistic modernism; as a symptom of Hollywood censorship and politics in the 1940s; as a market strategy; as an evolving style; as a cinema about races and nationalities; and as an idea that circulates across all the information technologies. Interdisciplinary in approach, this book has valuable things to say not only about film and television, but also about modern literature, the fine arts, and popular culture in general. In a field where much of what has been published is superficial and derivative, Naremore's work is certain to be received as a definitive treatment.

Customer Reviews:

Scholarly Analysis of Film Noir as an Idea, not a Category........2005-04-11

In his Introduction, author James Naremore proposes an alternative title for his book: "Seven Ways of Looking at Film Noir". That's an accurate description of this book's contents, as each chapter explores a different angle on film noir. But to leave it at that would be misleading. "More Than Night" is a scholarly analysis of "film noir" as an idea formed ex post facto that continues to resonate through contemporary media. In other words, it is less about a particular group of films than it is about a "discourse", to use Mr. Naremore's word. Some chapters do contain discussions of particular films, themes, and styles. Naremore takes the view that films that are considered noir do not really have traits in common, so cannot be categorized in terms of style or genre-style hybrid as most film theorists do. One consequence of this approach is that Naremore considers more films to be noir than most people would. Whether one agrees with the author's premise or not, the breadth of scholarship in "More Than Night" is impressive, and even longtime noir aficionados are likely to learn something.

Chapter 1 gives us an account of "The History of an Idea", starting with a history of the intellectual and cinematic climate in France from which the idea of film noir emerged in the mid-1940s. How the new crop of American crime films were interpreted by surrealist and existentialist schools of thought. This chapter continues through Paul Schrader's 1972 essay, "Notes on Film Noir". Notice that Naremore considers the "First Age of Film Noir" to be 1946-1959, as the idea was born in 1946, although many noir films were made before then.

Chapter 2, "Modernism and Blood Melodrama", explains that the hard-boiled school of literature was an outgrowth of modernism, which combined with what Graham Greene called "blood melodrama" films to create film noir. Includes 3 detailed case studies: the writings of Dashiell Hammett, Graham Greene, and an analysis of Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder's adaptation of James M. Cain's "Double Indemnity".

Chapter 3, "From Dark Films to Black Lists", talks about the impact of the Production Code and challenges the idea that film noirs are basically apolitical by discussing some social-problem noirs and demonstrating that some artists tried to inject politics into their films during the black list years. Chapter 4, "Low is High", addresses the "complex relationship between economics, reception, and cultural prestige" by providing an interesting detailed study of the distinctions -and lack of distinctions- between A, B, and intermediate films of the 1940s and 1950s. The economics of modern low-budget direct-to-video thrillers is also discussed.

Chapter 5, "Old Is New", makes that point that classic film noir is actually stylistically rather heterogeneous. It discusses the style of John Alton, the low-key lighting of "Out of the Past", and the appeal of black-and-white photography. The nostalgic style of "Chinatown" and the new approaches of "The Long Goodbye" and "Pulp Fiction" are analyzed, as noir style made the transition from black-and-white to color.

Chapter 6, "The Other Side of the Street", starts off by discussing film noir's representations of women and homosexuals and moves on to explorations of racial and ethnic themes. There are sections on Asia -images of Asian characters and Asian cinema, Latin America -to which classic characters fled for freedom, and Africa -black protest novels, hard-boiled fiction, and black characters in crime films. Chapter 7, "The Noir Mediascape", explores the "circulation and transformation of noir motifs" through the media: movies, comics, television, literature, in the past and present. This chapter includes the most extensive discussion of neo-noir in the book.

There is a great deal of valuable information and provocative opinion in "More Than Night". I'm giving it 4 stars, because I think the book is disingenuous on one crucial point. Mr. Naremore chooses to view film noir as something undefinable, as an idea, not a category -as "film noir", as opposed to film noir. "Film noir", the idea, the discourse, certainly exists. There is more evidence of that in popular culture than anyone could identify. But sometimes, primarily in chapters 1 and 3, the author takes issue with film theorists who believe that film noir is also a group of films that can and should be identified and described despite the fact that the group has fuzzy borders. The problem with this is that these two schools of thought can't realistically debate, because their purposes are different. The result is that, when Naremore tries to discredit some of the widely held views of film noir, he can only do so by misrepresenting or misapplying them. In any case, "More Than Night" isn't light reading or an introductory text, but it is a knowledgeable, opinionated, and often insightful book for noir buffs, students, and professors.

black-and-white photography and melodramatic danger.......2000-04-09

As James Naremore notes in the introductory chapters to this book, the term "noir" has become, for film crticism and academia in general, as amorphic, uncertain and dangerous a term as the films themselves; like Jane Greer in "Out of the Past," moving in and out of the shadows as she strolls into that Mexican barroom, noir seems to occupy several levels of meaning at once (as stylistic movement, historical marker, theoretical battleground and space of nostalgic recuperation), and every new piece of data and analysis added to the voluminous corpus of work that exists seems to simultaneously cast light and shadow onto its form. How wonderful, then, that we have a critic as graceful, piercing, and generous as James Naremore writing on the genre. One of the best American writers on film-- and certainly one of the best academics writing on any subject-- Naremore brings to noir the qualities anyone familiar with such previous works as The Films of Vincente Minnelli or The Magic World of Orson Welles will recognize-- intelligence, accessibility, thoroughness and an abiding love of the subject matter. He does a good job of sharing with the reader the insights and breakthroughs of psychoanalytic and feminist readings of the films, while offering his own (often different) readings and new historical connections (quick quiz to anyone who thinks they know everything about noir-- who is Boris Vian? And why does Naremore think he's the key figure in noir's history?), as well as updating and expanding the boundaries of the form to include such works as L.A. Confidential and John Woo's The Killer. And as always, he writes in a voice that wraps around the reader like a cloud of cigarette smoke, as stylish, rich and alluring as the films under discussion.

More Than Night: Film Noir and Its Contexts.(Review): An article from: Cineaste

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More Than Night: Film Noir and Its Contexts.(Review): An article from: Cineaste
Paul Arthur
Manufacturer: Cineaste Publishers, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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ASIN: B00098RVMS
Release Date: 2005-07-28

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Cineaste, published by Cineaste Publishers, Inc. on March 22, 1999. The length of the article is 1752 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: More Than Night: Film Noir and Its Contexts.(Review)
Author: Paul Arthur
Publication: Cineaste (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 1999
Publisher: Cineaste Publishers, Inc.
Volume: 24 Issue: 2-3 Page: 91(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

A collection of classic writings on the Man in Black, Johnny Cash, by a stellar list of music writers, including Ralph Gleason, Robert Johnson, Nick Tosches, Alanna Nash, Jon Pareles, and Ben Ratliff.

Johnny Cash is bigger than life, surrounded by myths and legends, a notoriously hard-drinking, hard-drugging man who sings searing songs of death, loss, God, and work. Since his debut in 1955, he has come to embody country music as well as the spirit of defiance and rebellion that drives rock, and has garnered an immense audience along the way, selling more than fifty million albums and winning ten Grammy awards. He is universally acknowledged as one of the musical giants of the century.

In Ring of Fire, some of our best music writers consider Cash decade by decade in a collection of thirty-two classic articles and essays. They follow him from his birth in 1932 to his meteoric rise to fame in the late '60s and early '70s, through his two-decade slump and his musical resurgence in the 1990s, through the phenomenal new albums he has made in the face of his recently diagnosed nerve disease. Ring of Fire takes the Reader format and transforms it into the best kind of biography: complex, insightful, and multifaceted.

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Ring of Fire : The Johnny Cash Reader
Michael Streissguth
Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OSWX9O

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Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Reader
Johnny] Streissguth, Michael [Cash
Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000M0TZMM

Book Description

The Power to Remake the World
In an age long gone, mortals dethroned the gods and seized the heavens for their own. And for it, they were flung down into the world of clay, their minds clouded by ignorance. Only a bare few remember their birthright -- the power of magic. If they cannot claim the heavens, they will make their own kingdoms on Earth.

A Storytelling Game of Modern Sorcery
* Provides everything you need to tell your own stories in the occult world of the Awakened, including details of the various orders and paths of magic, and many secrets of the World of Darkness.
* Presents the most comprehensive and freeform magic system ever achieved in gaming, allowing characters to cast nearly any spell imaginable.
* Features Boston as a fully fleshed-out, ready-to-play setting
* Features artwork by the acclaimed Michael William Kaluta

Customer Reviews:

It used to be such a cool game..........2007-08-12

I've always liked the Storyteller game system used in the World of Darkness. Back in college I had a lot of fun playing Mage using the old system, which was full of great concepts and fun ideas. I picked up the new book after I started playing in a World of Darkness campaign, optimistic about the changes they've made. Wow, what a disappointment.

I agree with many of the other critical reviews here. The 9 Traditions from the old book were far more interesting and evocative than the rather generic Paths and Orders offered in this book. The consensual reality of the old game was far inspired than the dull myth of Atlantis that they wheel out for the new version. Basically they've gotten rid of everything I really loved and replaced it with ideas that feel plain in comparison.

The book has very high production value and a cool cover, but that doesn't overcome the fact that the book is poorly organized, confusing, and overwritten.

That said, it's still a good game system and still a lot of fun to play. Given the choice, I'd rather play the old Mage, but I imagine new players to the game will enjoy this quite a bit.

An absolutely AMAZING game about magic.......2007-07-04

My friends and I just bought this game along with the World of Darkness roleplaying game and I had to get on amazon and review this. It has an absolutely gorgeous cover, this is one of the most beautiful books I own. It is also huge, over 400 pages of rules for how to play a modern day mage or sorcerer. You can set this game almost anywhere. I love urban fantasy novels like Sandman and Dresden Files and with this game I can play those kinds of stories. It is a bit dense but it is only because of the huge amount of detail for a roleplaying game.

You play a modern day wizard, you can be a nature mage, a scholar, a shapeshifting sorcerer or a warrior monk. I was reminded of the movie the Matrix, because it takes place in a modern setting and its about how magic can bend the rules of reality.

My group and I are going to all play mages belonging to the Adamantine Arrows (warrior mages) in search of supernatural creatures who hurt mankind. Also, one of the best things about this game is that the magic system is very flexible, it lets you cast spells on the fly or through formulas (called Rotes). Ive played Dungeons and Dragons and believe me, this game is not as simplistic as that game (no memorizing spells, you can cast them as often and as quickly as you like ALL the time).

The interior art is amazing, its by Michael Kaluta who has drawn many comics and book covers and he does ALL the artwork for this book. Gorgeous!!!

Pricy, bad layout, needs supplements, but good start........2007-04-26

Before I go into the bad, a few things on the good of the book:

The story about Atlantis I found neat, along with the Abyss and how Paradox works. I like the mechanics for magic, as well. The elements introduced are neat, such as the Banished and the Seers. But as a Mage I am a loner. I distrust other Mages and mortals push me away. Something small like this can easily be changed, though. The rest is a little more difficult.

Also, there is no central conflict. There are small conflicts here and there, but there are very limited amounts of plot hooks. The closest to a major plot consists of the Exarchs and Oracles, an ancient war of gods which might or might not have happened. They do give a bit on Boston, but what if I don't want to be in Boston?

The book spent far too much time on what spells I should cast. Give me the basics, and let me figure it out. A few rotes are neat, but 134 pages of a book about 400 pages (including the character sheet, index, ads, etc) is ridiculous. Especially when they could have spent it giving real plot hooks, more artifacts, or even more antagonists.

The antagonist section is also weak. They give mortals, other mages, and a few spirits, which are little more than modified ghosts from the core book. The storyteller must guess at vampires and werewolves, unless he feels compelled to buy the other supernatural books.

Outside of the cover, the book looks hideous and is difficult to read at times. The art isn't that great. The few times the art doesn't look bad, it has no borders and meshes in with the print. The borders on the sidebars are broken, so the sidebars have a tendency to mesh with the regular text. Sidebar fonts are done in gold print instead of black, but it is still more difficult to discern sidebars from normal text than it should be. If there are multiple sidebars close together, they start to mesh and then you don't have font differences to tell them apart. The subtitles are written in a gold cursive font, which is difficult to read.

The price is horribly high for the content. On top of that, the supplements, which they force you to buy if you want to have any idea of where White Wolf wants the story to go, are expensive. I ended up reading some cheap novels and doing some research on historical figures to come up with storylines.

In short, the price is ridiculous, the book is poorly laid out, there is no real conflict, there are few antagonists presented, and a lot of room was wasted on how one should cast magic. The origin of Mages sounds neat, and the mechanics are good. A nice buy if the price is a great deal lower.

REVIEWER NEW TO WORLD OF DARKNESS.......2007-01-28

I recently picked up MAGE: THE AWAKENING to try a new game with my friends. I know that there is considerable controversy over AWAKENING versus ASCENSION; I can't speak to that, since I never was able to read or play ASCENSION. I hope that no one will hold that against me as I try to put down my thoughts about this version of MAGE.

To put my summary at the beginning, I think it is a great game and well set in the World of Darkness. I wouldn't call it primarily a game of personal horror (like Vampire) so much as a game of magical exploration. The characters have a lot of power and influence over this world, but their ability to use it is limited and the ability to use it well is even more limited. I think it is well-balanced, dealing with problems essential to worlds with magic (like why don't wizards rule the world and humans are their slaves forever?) and also withthe moral degeneration that comes from using magic to manipulate others for your benefit. There are also system and mechanical flaws, such as insufficient immersion in the Mage world and a cumbersome system for using magic. There's also Atlantis, which I'll get to in a moment. Overall, I've enjoyed both reading and playing the system and look forward to exploring the MAGE world more deeply.

I think that any review of an expensive book should start with the book itself. This is a massive tome as far as RPGs go, weighing in at 400 pages. The cover is very beautiful, with gilt lettering and a sort of holographic foil overlaid. The sidebars and some headings have gold ink text, which gives the corebook the feel of actually being an exotic grimoire and speaks to high production quality. Unfortunately, the art is not of the same standard (I guess you have to cut costs somewhere). The style for all the artwork is pencil sketches, being nothing but brown lines. While the style is, I think, less impressive than full artwork, it is the actual subject matter that I find ugly. Yes, most of the people being drawn are just ugly. Oddly, the quality seems to go up toward the end of the book (the Tremere character and the Nemean are well drawn and representtheir concepts well), but particularly the signature characters either look intentionally ugly or as if they were drawn by someone who had never met a properly-proportioned human being. When the signature characters look like someone you'd rather avoid on the street than play, then the art is not achieving its purpose.

The first chapter is a surprisingly brief explanation of how people come to be mages, the society they live in, and the social groups they join. The backstory for MAGE is Atlantis, that it was once a center of magical power and was then overthrown by the working of hubris. The social groups from Atlantis continue on the magical traditions in a fallen world. The Supernal realms (the source of magic) and the Fallen world (where we live) are now separated by the Abyss, a hole in reality. Using the wrong kind of magic (the kind that tries to overwrite the natural laws of this world) invokes Paradox, which is the Abyss being let in to the Fallen world through magic. This section really, depsearately, needed more development. In Vampire, this covered half the book. I felt that the atmosphere was undeveloped, and I had no clear idea of what mages DO with their time (which is, again, better defined in the other core books). Also, I feel that using the myth of Atlantis came off poorly. When I think of "Atlantis", what comes to mind is some white guy with an afro, wearing colored sunglasses and a shirt hanging open, discussing the power of crystals and positive thinking. I guess you go to printing with the corebook you have, not the corebook you want, but the idea of Atlantis is so hackneyed at this point that I am surprised it is so fully integrated into the system. Rather than release an alternate mythologies book (like for Vampire and Werewolf), the company released RUINS OF THE SECRET TEMPLE to more fully flesh outt he idea, so I guess we will all just have to accept it.

The second chapter is character creation. Like the other game lines, MAGE: AWAKENING requires the core book WORLD OF DARKNESS for the basics of character creation and MAGE adds the rules to take a mortal and make him/her into a will-worker. I really like the concept; at this point, I own 4 game lines plus the mortals book and it would really bug me to have all the chargen info repeated very time. This chapter has a very good example of making a character and also includes the explanations for the different paths of magic. Each path is determined by the supernal realm to which the character Awakens and influences which powers he/she can buy cheaply and which ones come hard. The relam to which you awaken influences your personality so that it is worth discussing what kind of people walk each path. If you are interested in more information on these paths, they are explained in the book TOME OF THE WATCHTOWERS.

The real meat of the book comes in the third chapter, which takes up 150 pages, and is on the rules for magic. There are 2 kinds of magic in Mage: rotes and improvised. Rotes are similar to D&D spells, in that there is a defined effect at a certain power level (it is not Vancian magic, though, in the sense that rotes are more like abilities which sometimes require energy but never disappear from your mind and don't require daily memorization). The dice pool is large, so your character is more likely to succeed. Improvised magic can do whatever you want, but the dice pools are smaller and the risk of failure is higher. Successes from your dice pool can be split to affect more targets, continue working longer, or covering a larger area. This seems pretty complicated to me (keeping track of all the modifiers) and i would have preferred some system easier to memorize. The rules for Paradox and mitigating its effects are included as well. Each oft he 10 arcana are described, as well as the powers available at ranks 1-5. A lot of rote spells are listed, and of course if you cast an improvised spell, the list of rotes is a good benchmark for what you can accomplish. Some examples of spellcasting are also given. This section is absolutely necessary for knowing how to play a character and most players would benefit from studying this section in detail.

The last main chapter is on Storytelling hints. The themes of Mage are exploration of the worold and the self, and the lure of power versus the wisdom of how to use it. There are some examples given of play hooks and ways to draw characters into a story (if you know much about mythology, then most of these are familiar). There are some sample antagonists from rival groups to Mages, artifacts left over from the ancient world (typing that sentence made me think of Nausicaa and the valley of the Wind. hmmmm...), and servants of the Abyss. This chapter wasn't so helpful, but the Appendices are absolutely essential. The first is on the Spirit world. If you haven't read Werewolf, you absolutely must read this chapter to be able to understand how interactions with spirits work. The spirit world is an important part of the mage/Werewolf cosmology and an important hook for many Mage games (not to mention the entire sphere of Spirit). My only thought is that this section is important enough that it should have been earlier in the main text. The next appendix is legacies, which are ways for Mages to craft their own souls, gaining innate magic powers. I didn't find any of the legacies that exciting (see LEGACIES: THE SUBLIME for better ones) except for the Tremere. However, the idea itself is an interesting one and I am happy to make my own. Finally, there is a section detailing Boston as a signature city for Mage play. There are some jaw-dropping secrets hinted at, which I found worthy of buying the city book, BOSTON UNVEILED. It also has a lot of potential for working in my Cthulhu supplements .

That's a lot of words, and I still haven't covered all of the interesting tidbits in MAGE: THE AWAKENING. I really enjoyed reading and playing Mage, and I guess my players have as well (since they are still coming back). The book certainly has some flaws, but I think many of them are compensated for in later supplements, making the game better over time. I find it pretty challenging as an entry into World of Darkness games because of the wide powers available to starting characters, but that is probably a plus to most people. I definitely recommend it to anyone playing magic in the modern day.

Mage: The Awakening delivers a world of subtle magic and ancient mystery........2006-10-09

Mage: The Awakening presents a world full of myth and mystery hidden just underneath the reality we know. Not only are there strange creatures about us, but there are whole other worlds - the Shadow, the Supernal Realm, the Astral Plane of our souls, and still others. Most importantly, there is magic capable of anything a dreamer can imagine. This is a world where a very few people have Awakened to the realization that magic is real, an ancient legacy lost to humanity, and that they can use it to realize their heart's fondest wish.

In Mage players take on the role of Awakened humans who have discovered that there's more to the world than they thought and who have inherited the ability to perform powerful magic. This magic normally has to be subtle, as the Abyss constantly reaches out to repress and twist magic. A large variety of themes and potential goals are present, but the largest one involves the corrupting nature of power. A robust magic system that involves both predetermined spells and freeform spellcasting is presented along with a plethora of mystical concepts.

Be advised that if you are a fan of the earlier Mage: The Ascension that this is not the same game, a reimagining of that game, or in any way derivative of that game. This game requires the World of Darkness corebook to play.

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