The quality of the layout (I have the pdf, so I can't comment on the physical product) and the cogency of the updated rules themselves is very high. This is a great product, and a fantastic game. It suffers from the same crippling problem as most other White Wolf/Onyx Path products, though: it is unnecessarily vulgar.

I get it that this is the World of Darkness, and that things aren't sunshine and rainbows. This is gritty, beotches! But to make the game book try to reflect that by peppering in f-bombs and stories of homosexual relationships just ends up being suicidal to the commercial viablility of products like this, and (most tragically) keeps it from being readily passed on to new generations.

I just took my two oldest daughters (12 and 10) to see Dr. Strange. They loved it! They also love roleplaying games like Pathfinder. I would love to get them into a game like Mage, but I sure as (insert unnecessary cussword here) can't hand them the book! If I want them to play, I will have to just try to explain all the rules. That severely limits this game's (and all of the others') relevancy to future generations. No wonder Pathfinder is eating your lunch.

As edgy and dark as you think you want to be, there's really nothing in the contents of the backstory to the World of Darkness or in the flavor and rules of any of the Paths or Orders that would be considered inherently 'adult'. You can do necromancy in Skyrim, Scooby Doo has similar levels of violence and fear. The only things keeping this book out of a larger number of hands are a liberal use of profane words and a subtle homosexual undertone in the narrative that runs throughout the book before each chapter.

If some group wants to tell a depraved story about a necrophiliac Moros that kills and putrefies his victims just so he can copulate with their juicy rotten corpses, then they can do that whether or not the core rulebook has f-words all through it. Their stories are not silenced by a more broadly palatable book. There's just no reason to have profane language, deviant sexual behavior, and cartoon nudity in books like these (Mage may not have any cartoon nudity, but plenty other White Wolf books do).

You may think me prudish and ignorant or some such, but that's just not the case. From a business standpoint, you are hobbling your ability to reach a broader audience, and that just doesn't make good business sense. And from the perspective of an uber RPG fan, this kind of thing may mean that we won't have new versions of these awesome games in the future, and I hate that eventuality. I lament what's happened to the White Wolf brand already - the extreme marginalization of the greatest tabletop RPGs in the world. What if the only thing holding it all back are a few f-words and pencil-sketched tits?