crankyI have had a chance to read through Forged by Dragon's Fire. It has cemented the fact (which I originally noticed in Nagah) that me and Kraig Blackwelder's writing do not agree and the way that the Traditions were stereotyped (especially the Virtual Adepts) was painfully 2nd ed. On the other hand, most of his example Artefacts (and all of his example Grimoires) followed the rules that he wrote for creating them. While I like John Snead's writing style and think it fits much better with Mage, the example Talismans have fuck-all to do with the creation rules. Being the most complicated things to create, they would really have benefitted from at least some of them having a breakdown of how the points cost was reached rather than letting us wonder how a Talisman with Arete 4 (4 points), 20 Quint (another 4 points), 3 or 4 Effects (1 point each) and no noticeable Flaws could possibly have a cost of 8 points. This is by no means a problem with just this author or this book, the number of Mage books which require half the Rotes re-writing because the authors appear to have seen nothing vaguely like the Sphere descriptions in the Mage book is stupidly large. But even so, if the thing right in front of your examples is the rules for making them, it might do to remember the bloody things.
Rant off.
