Review of The Seclusium of Orphone of Three Visions

With today's post, about The Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions, I will finish this series of reviews I have devoted to Lamentations of the Flame Princess (first installments of the series can be found in the following links: First part, second part, third part and fourth part).

The Seclusium, written by D. Vincent Baker, is a guide with the goal of help the referee to create the retreats magicians use when they wan to study their arts.

For this reason the book is divided in the following general parts: Introduction, examples and complete lists.

The introduction describes all the basics that are used later when the referee has to create the magician retreat, including reflections on such topical books of magic, the horrors with which you can populate them or the connection of this retreats may have with other worlds or planes of existence.

The examples consist of three retreats created using the book instructions, specifically the one used for the title of the work, belonging to Orphone of The Three Visions, and the other two, belonging to Bostu the Nigromant and Ibrakirre of the Far Sea respectively.

The third and last part contains all the reference lists and advices the referee can use to manage the creation of homes of the sorcerers which mainly include the following (basically this matters are treated using descriptive words and game statistics aren't included, so the outcome is easily adaptable to any kind of games):

• Details of the magician
• Details of the retreat regarding its social and political relation with the society surrounding it
• Necessary advice to sketch maps of the retreat
• Magical object creation, including, for example, weapons, tools, portals or all kind of accessories
• Characters and creatures
• The recent events that have affected the retire

Perusing The Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions it's clear that the author had tried so systematize all the options any creator (professional or amateur) follows creating a site like a magician's tower. At first this process continues to be a very personal matter and depends mainly on how each one organize work to do and his experience and inspiration at writing, so really should be each person who uses this book who judges its usefulness and how it can be used as a source to develop their creations (or put another way, if you can think of nothing for a magicians' hideout you can browse the book and use it as the basis of a design).

This entry it's also available in the following languages:
Castellano Català