Mage the Awakening

[Killer Shrike]

Hey all, quick background:

I used to play WW games a lot, starting when Vampire 1st edition first came out and following it avidly for a few years. I got the 1st Edition Mage: the Ascension book when it came out and was really excited about it, having played Ars Magica (in many ways its progenitor) and being into the nascent WoD at the time*.

The game was basically (IMO) just barely playable, and no one in my local play scene even wanted to try it at the time.

Then, years later, Mage: the Ascension 2nd Edition hardback came out, and while it still suffered from some vague rules areas (even in the context of that era of WW rules), conceptually it made it onto my very short list of most remarkable games of all time.

At the time a subset of the regular playgroup, 4 of us, started up a Mage game on the side from our main game under the helm of a GM that had run a lot of Mage 1st Edition. So three Mages and 1 ST. One of the players decided a couple sessions in that he just couldnt hack the Mage concepts and switched to a Vampire and we pressed on.

We later picked up a couple more players that normally were anti-WW but were lured by the campaign; one read the book and honestly admitted "Im not smart enough to understand this" and played a Werewolf, and one played a Mage for a while.

We even, near the (unplanned) culmination of the campaign, synched up with another troupe of WW players playing a combination of Mages and a Werewolf to do the Mage and some of the Werewolf side of "Under a Blood Red Moon". That was actually one of the most fun things Ive ever done in a RPG; the playstyles of the two groups was different, but not so different as to be incompatible, so you really got the feel of what it would really be like for a bunch of stranger Mages to bump into each other and have to deal with each other's clashing paradigms. It was a blast.

The campaign unfortunately ground to a halt soon thereafter because the GM was burnt out after running such a large game with so many outsiders in it (and my Adept of Matter, Marcus Landers, was one session of XP shy of becoming a Master of Matter, dammit, after completing a personal growth to gain the necessary 5th dot of Arete :mad: ). Also, the other original Mage player had gotten out of the Navy and departed for the east coast around the same time which didnt help.

A couple of abortive attempts at a new Mage campaign were started, but never took off. Most of the group had transitioned out of the military and left the area, and Mage is not a game that one lightly takes on with unfamiliar players (something I learned by observation when we merged troupes for a while). With my group basically gone after all my military buddies save one had departed the area, me and the other survivor joined up with the other troupe, but they had switched over to their long running Vampire game so we made Vamps and played along. That group had a revolving GM policy, so when my turn to run came around I ran a Technocracy oriented segue with some Mages involved, but other than that...my shelf full of Mage books lapsed into disuse.

I didnt do more than looks at Revised; a cursory scan seemed like they had dumbed down and nerfed Mages, so I just put it back on the shelf and never gave it another thought.

Fast forward a few more years to now, and the new WoD, and the new Mage: the Awakening. Wily Quixote from these boards gave it to me as a late birthday present when we met for dinner Friday night, and while working this weekend I found time to read thru it a bit while waiting for processes to run.

All in all, while I find elements of it intriguing, overall I really find that they drastically cut the scope and the very focus of the original Mage. The background and conceptual model is so much more finite and objective than the gloriously subjective and practically boundless original versions. While it may be a better game systemically from a gamist perspective, from a creative perspective it is a much smaller, much less exciting exercise in imagination, IMO.

Anyone else with a history on Mage know what Im talking about or have a counter perspective?


* Ill point out that this was a bygone age before the lace wearing goth freaks usurped the game, and before the WW metaplot got completely out of control.

[Captain Obvious]

Haven't looked much at the new Mage stuff. I'll agree that Mage: the Ascension was a great concept, even if it got a little dodgy sometimes in execution.

I just wanted to say that that combined game sounds really cool. Something similar in a Champions game would rock.

[sinanju]

I"m a big fan of the CONCEPT behind the original Mage game. I love the idea of freeform magic and coincidental vs overt magic and so forth. I looked at the new version of Mage and my impression--admittedly based on a hasty exam--is that they've made rote spells far more common, and freeform magic less common.

What, players don't feel right unless they've got a stupid spellbook to choose from? The beauty of original Mage (for me) is that you're limited only by your imagination and your deviousness. With enough cleverness you can do amazing things. Picking Spell A and Spell B out of a book? Not so much.

[Killer Shrike]

I"m a big fan of the CONCEPT behind the original Mage game. I love the idea of freeform magic and coincidental vs overt magic and so forth. I looked at the new version of Mage and my impression--admittedly based on a hasty exam--is that they've made rote spells far more common, and freeform magic less common.

What, players don't feel right unless they've got a stupid spellbook to choose from? The beauty of original Mage (for me) is that you're limited only by your imagination and your deviousness. With enough cleverness you can do amazing things. Picking Spell A and Spell B out of a book? Not so much.
They went much further than that, tough to be sure there is much greater emphasis on Rotes now. You even have to pay XP for them :eek:

The most major difference in my opinion is that the old Mage basically said, what you believe is real if you believe it enough. It was all about subjective reality. Each Mage's worked Magic(k) via the paradigm of their own belief, whatever that may be. When they started off each Mage needed some crutch or focus for their powers. However, as Mages gained in mystical wisdom (as measured in Arete), they needed fewer and fewer such crutches until they never needed them -- they came to outgrow their worldly or limited view of willcrafting and essentially just willed things to happen thereafter.

Because this is such an accepting concept, it allowed for a huge range of character concepts, ranging from real world occult beliefs to totally made up stuff and everything in between, but ultimately it all boiled down to underlying effects (HERO's players will note that this is very much like the idea of SFX vs Effect). Even the Traditions were broad enough as umbrella groups to hold many different flavors and sub sects.

All in all, it was a very extensible and creativity friendly setup, and the underlying message was that reality is not absolute. Magic(k) use was ultimately an expression of a Mage's understanding and power over different facets of reality singly and in combination. Most Magick was freeform, not rote based. Rotes were really just examples, much like the sidebar powers in HERO.

Mage the Acension was, at its root, a game about casting off limitations and seeking growth beyond mortal ken. Power came easily to Mages, but it didnt matter because they were still always behind the power curve on a universal skein. It was all relative. Also, Mages were always opposed by powerful antagonists, and their motivation to progress was a personal one -- they were seeking to Ascend or perhaps joing the ongoing struggle for control of consensual reality. There was always a feeling of hope though, because if anyone could pull of a miracle to make things work out right, it was a Mage. The future could be better than the past...if a Mage worked at it and maybe got a little lucky.

Further, Mage was extremely symbolic, with a lot layered meanings, a lot of designed in traits corresponding with numerology, and a strong ideal of the fantastic being, if not commonplace, then at least pervasive.


The new game disposes of that entirely. There is a single common history based on Atlantis, the "Dragon Isle". Short version: the Mages of Atlantis grew too big for their britches, became like unto gods, had a big war, and permanently screwed up reality, destroying Atlantis in the process. All real Magic in the modern age is left over scrabs from the dribs and drabs that survived the collapse of Atlantis and the ensuing millennia. Every Mage must chose one of 5 paths which each combine two of the Arcana (what used to be called Spheres) in a pretty tight fashion. There are 5 orders that a Mage might be a member of, four of which claim an origin rooted in the Atlantis of yore.

Mages are not trying to Ascend as their goal in general, they are instead trying to....do who knows what? Their antagonists are generally very watered down, and much less personal. Reality is not subjective, its absolute. Magic is not wide open and flexible, rooted in natural laws of reality, instead it is a highly codified remnant of Atlantean High Magic. The future is worse than the past in all ways that matter; Atlantis was the pinnacle and its just all been downhill ever since. Magic is no longer as easily free formed as it used to be; there are pages upon pages of "rotes", which in less pretentious games would be called a "Spell List".

And while the new game gives lip service to some high-concept ideas, at its root it is a very gamist approach to Mage, meaning much more concerned with boxed in abilities, sects ready made to hang splat books on, and kitsch kewl stereotype characters meant to appeal to the maturity stunted munchkins out there.

Character creation is much more narrowed in, especially due to the mandatory Paths and their Watchtowers nonsense. Reading the book, I was completely uninterested in even trying to make a character, a rarity for me.

All in all, and I could go on, they did more than just change the focus between rote and freeform magic, they changed the nature of reality and the way that Magic interacts with it.

[Captain Obvious]

Yeah, that sounds like crap.

Well, maybe not crap in an absolute sense, but relative to the old Mage...

[Blue]

Before I joined my group, they had read the MAGE books. And here's how any attempt to start a game went:

GM: "I've got an idea for a MAGE campaign."
Player 1: "Mage? But every character is the same!"
GM: "They aren't the same."
Player 1: "Any result that you want to achieve you can do; You just need to make up the proper reason for why it worked."

Now how true that is, I have no idea. I think his argument, if I understand it, is that the rules were so loose that although everyone had different special effects for their powers, you could easily duplicate the same result by using your own power an justifying how you did it.

Anyway, the point is that the GM had ideas and couldn't get some key players on board. I was indifferent, knowing nothing of the system and setting.

So years later, our GM comes up with a setting, refers to it as a "hybrid" setting using WW rules. So he convinces players to get on board, but it's not long before we figure out that he's tricked the players who didn't want to play Mage into playing Mage with altered rules.

So I've not played the true "Mage" either in setting or rules to date, although I have played elements of it :)

[Killer Shrike]

Hmm...Player 1 didnt know what he was talking about. Mage the Ascension characters were very very different. With just the 9 different Spheres each realted to different aspect of reality and 5 playable levels of each, and each combinable with the others in many different fashion to create composite effect, Mages had widely different capablities. Add in all the other WW basic options for customizing a character and you had a very very diverse character pool.

However, just like in HERO there is more than one way to skin a cat, SIMILAR END RESULTS were accomplishable via different means. Sometimes. And even then it was not the "same".

For instance, the classic example is going faster, or perhaps a better way to say it is the end effect of taking more actions than others (a good thing to do in WW). Via the Life Sphere a sufficiently skilled Mage could enhance their bodies, making themselves literally faster. Via the Time Sphere a sufficiently skilled Mage could alter Time to effectively make themselves faster via a completely different means. Via Forces a sufficiently skilled Mage could do strange things with kinetic energy, effectively slowing or speeding something. Via Entropy a sufficiently skilled Mage could make other peoples actions fail, thus giving the Mage more SUCCESSFUL actions than others. Via Mind a sufficiently skilled Mage could make people THINK they were going faster or that they are going slower even though they really arent.

The difference being that each method had different pros and cons, some were more vulgar than others, and some required far more mastery of a Sphere than others. They definitely all felt different and had different applications.

[Hawksmoor]

Heya KS.

Yes I know the game. I love(d) it. Unlike you I thought the original game was playable from day one. You'll remember how sketchy all WW products were at that time (late 1992 to late summer 1993 when MtA was released). Anyhow I played throughout the nineties in one big metaplot of my own devising wherein Mages, Vampires, Werewolves, Ghosts and occasionally Changelings (though I hated the rules....but that is another thread) plotted and politicked and fought and loved and lived and died. It was glorious. I was plopping down 30 or so dollars a week at the FLFS and Amazon.com just to get ideas. Those were good times.

From what I can tell some new people in WW did not understand Mage at all! So they dumbed it down and curbed the more subjective expansionist elements. In many ways Mage is not about the world of darkness, it is about hope. Hope can't exist in the WoD so something had to give. Enter Mage Revised written by my nemesis, Jess Heinig.

Jess fundamentally did not get the concepts of the game. He rewrote the game to suit his interpretation and pretty much botched the ability of old hands like myself to acquire new WW product since it was incompatible with the older stuff.

:controlling rant:

The new game is worse by far though. It is just utter drek. I bought it just to see. Like removing someone from your ignore to see if they grew a brain but were then reminded pointedly that they were Ignored for a reason! If I didn't have a rule against burning books the new Mage and Revised would be on fire now...

Let me cool off some and we can discuss the joys of the best magick and reality system out there....EVER!

Hawksmoor

[Killer Shrike]

Shrike, I agree with you entirely in your assessment thus far, of both the old Mage and the new one. "Classic" Mage in its First and Second edition was extremely open ended, but could be rather too abstract for some (mostly younger) players to understand. Like Hero, there was a bit of a learning curve involved, and indeed could be more difficult for some. It had a good deal of configurability, but without the benefit of visible core design priciples like Hero provides, so people could sometimes be left wondering if they did it "right". This makes classic Mage very different from the other WW games of the time, in which you generally just pulled from a list of powers. The Third version of classic Mage attempted to water things down a bit, providing more rotes as guidelines, and generally simplified concepts. It wasn't horrible, but if you played through the first two printings, the game seemed just a little bit less robust. (I bought Mage 1st edition the day it was released, had it preordered for months. I was, and still am, a big Ars Magica fan)

Now keep in mind that the new Mage is written/controlled/developed/(or whatever) byt he same people who pretty much killed the old Whitewolf games, making it this massive and clunky, often contradictory world with too much attitude and too little to back it up. Furthermore, these are the same people whose contributions did little more than narrow playability down to the point where you had to play stereotypes only little more open ended than "classes". The mechanics of the game forced a person toward certain combinations of abilities to be at all effective, concept be damned.

Moreso, many of the developers for the new Whitewolf were those who headed development for the old Vampire game -- and they griped constantly about powerful Mages were. Nevermind that in play, it never seemed to work that way. The sheer amount of points required to get Arete and spheres to a decent level of power was incredible. Thaumaturgy paths did it cheaper, often with greater effect, and no risk of paradox. But so many Whitewolfers of forgot about how much Paradox can screw you in Mage. All they see is a never ending list of potential rotes FOR FREE -- not including the points for Arete, which must be increased before buying up spheres, several of them, because, like Voltron, you need to combine to have any real effect. Nevermind the higher point costs for all of these [Vampiric disciplines were dirt cheap in comparison], and severely reduced die pool sizes mages had compared to other types of characters.

So of course the new Mage is going to reflect that perspective. Is it good? certainly not. Is it marketable? Yes, likely moreso than the old Mage game. It is more immediately accessible to the gamer masses -- by pandering to the lowest common denominator, they increase their potential market. Players dont have to think so much, and can just pull from lists. Then again, I play mostly Hero now. I like being able to build what I want, according to a concept I develop.

I've gone way off on a tangent I think... So i'll just end this here. :ugly:

Hooray for allergy medication! :idjit:


Sounds like we have a similar outlook on the subject ;)

[Killer Shrike]

Heya KS.

Yes I know the game. I love(d) it. Unlike you I thought the original game was playable from day one. You'll remember how sketchy all WW products were at that time (late 1992 to late summer 1993 when MtA was released). Anyhow I played throughout the nineties in one big metaplot of my own devising wherein Mages, Vampires, Werewolves, Ghosts and occasionally Changelings (though I hated the rules....but that is another thread) plotted and politicked and fought and loved and lived and died. It was glorious. I was plopping down 30 or so dollars a week at the FLFS and Amazon.com just to get ideas. Those were good times.

From what I can tell some new people in WW did not understand Mage at all! So they dumbed it down and curbed the more subjective expansionist elements. In many ways Mage is not about the world of darkness, it is about hope. Hope can't exist in the WoD so something had to give. Enter Mage Revised written by my nemesis, Jess Heinig.

Jess fundamentally did not get the concepts of the game. He rewrote the game to suit his interpretation and pretty much botched the ability of old hands like myself to acquire new WW product since it was incompatible with the older stuff.

:controlling rant:

The new game is worse by far though. It is just utter drek. I bought it just to see. Like removing someone from your ignore to see if they grew a brain but were then reminded pointedly that they were Ignored for a reason! If I didn't have a rule against burning books the new Mage and Revised would be on fire now...

Let me cool off some and we can discuss the joys of the best magick and reality system out there....EVER!

Hawksmoor

Yeah, I did a little checking on WW forums and am sad to see that not much has changed in that environment. What is it about that company/product line that attracts so many pretentious/elitist fasionistas that gobble the current official line no matter how self-contradictory or how often it fluctuates?

Anyone raising the question/concern about the drastically reduced cocept of the new Mage seems to be snobbed into silence or ignored over there.

[Plucky]

Ironically, I'm about to sell my entire Mage the Ascension collection on eBay tomorrow. This is one of the few games I really like. Alas, I've ever only gotten to play in one story and I don't foresee myself having the opportunity to play it much in the future. As per my posting in the roleplaying blues thread, I've been selling my RPG stuff. The only things I've kept were Hero, Cthulhu, Mage and a smattering of other books here and there. Now, it'll be down to Hero and Cthulhu.

Don't expect to get much money for the whole thing (maybe I can get burgers) but at least it won't take up space anymore.

[Funksaw]

When I sold off a whole bunch of stuff on E-bay, the only game that wasn't on the auction block was Mage the Ascension.

I'm desperately trying to get people to play the game, even going so far as to convert it to the d6 system in order to include my friend who hasn't played since WEG Star Wars was in print.

[Killer Shrike]

Yeah, as witnessed in my 40k give away thread in the NGD (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=855005#post855005), my most recent move has forced me to cut the fat on my huge collection of hobby junk.

Ive still hung on to my RPG stuff, mostly, but just tonight I went thru a few boxes and culled out materials, notes, and characters from various past campaigns (some well over a decade back) into the trash, collated some semi-related materials down to core collections of key stuff, and ditch some of the boxes from older games. Cyberpunk's box and some various D&D settings boxes all got tossed out for taking too much room.

And I too have been pondering getting rid of my WW books. I can ditch the Vampire and scattered other books, almost all 1st and 2nd Edition and first printings in most cases. Mage though....Im just not ready yet to let go of. We'll see if sentimentality or the cold hard unmerciful reality of my wifes eagerness to pare down wins out. Fortunately, years of RPGs have trained me to fight the good fight, no matter how hopeless :D

[Killer Shrike]

When I sold off a whole bunch of stuff on E-bay, the only game that wasn't on the auction block was Mage the Ascension.

I'm desperately trying to get people to play the game, even going so far as to convert it to the d6 system in order to include my friend who hasn't played since WEG Star Wars was in print.
Which edition of Mage, and have you seen Awakening yet? If so what do you think of it?

[Lord Liaden]

Psst... wanna see Mage: The Ascension in HERO? :eg:

Seriously, in case you haven't caught it yet, Robert Harrison did a detailed conversion for a lot of that classic Mage material some years ago, and it appears that he recently updated it for 5E HERO System:

http://surbrook.devermore.net/whitewolf/WODmage.html

You might also benefit from the list of Robert's general House Rules for all his (numerous) conversions from the World of Darkness line - not very long, and nothing extreme:

http://surbrook.devermore.net/whitewolf/WODhouse.html

[Killer Shrike]

Psst... wanna see Mage: The Ascension in HERO? :eg:

Seriously, in case you haven't caught it yet, Robert Harrison did a detailed conversion for a lot of that classic Mage material some years ago, and it appears that he recently updated it for 5E HERO System:

http://surbrook.devermore.net/whitewolf/WODmage.html

You might also benefit from the list of Robert's general House Rules for all his (numerous) conversions from the World of Darkness line - not very long, and nothing extreme:

http://surbrook.devermore.net/whitewolf/WODhouse.html
How bizarre; a skim seems to suggest that he did a detailed Mage conversion without ever mentioning Spheres, perhaps the most important aspect of the entire game from a mechanical and character design standpoint.

[Captain Obvious]

Converting Spheres into Hero is a nightmare. The only way I can see doing it is to build a Mage character, and then convert that character into Hero, while Robert's conversion converts the system itself (with the exception of spheres).

[Hawksmoor]

Spheres in HERO are really just 9 different Limited Powers VPPs, IMO ranging from 15-90AP each, with a special +0 Advantage Stackable that allows the various VPPs to be used conjuctionally. I price the Advantage at +0 because that is how sphere magick works universally, so it is no great advantage to a particular character.

Hawksmoor

[Killer Shrike]

Actually, the GIFT sample Magic System in Fantasy HERO is pretty close to Mage's SPHERE concept. Ive often considered tweaking it to model that very thing.

[Hawksmoor]

Perhaps I am a Champions player and have never dipped into the other Genre's HERO is supposedly able to perform acceptably. So I go on what I know which is 5ER.

Hawksmoor

[Killer Shrike]

Perhaps I am a Champions player and have never dipped into the other Genre's HERO is supposedly able to perform acceptably. So I go on what I know which is 5ER.

HawksmoorThats too bad; Ive used the HERO System for many genres, and its always been reliable. That aside, The Gift is constructable out of what is in 5ER as it is more of a concept than a mechanic.

Essentially it is based on the concept of wrapping the idea of partially cosmic VPP's into custom topical Talents, which can be aggregated together for composite effects.

So you could have a Forces Talent, a Prime Talent, and a Time Talent of different capacities, and combine all three together for an effect that needed all three.

[Hawksmoor]

KS isn't that what I said?

Up to 9 separate VPPs that through rote effects can stack their effects to create powers that would individually outstrip the point pools of the smaller VPPs.

That said ideas like this are why I do not think that HERO does other genres well. Really good ideas are costly and I can't see how the mage type is balanced with the warrior type.

Hawksmoor
Hawksmoor

[Killer Shrike]

KS isn't that what I said?

Up to 9 separate VPPs that through rote effects can stack their effects to create powers that would individually outstrip the point pools of the smaller VPPs.

That said ideas like this are why I do not think that HERO does other genres well. Really good ideas are costly and I can't see how the mage type is balanced with the warrior type.

Hawksmoor
Hawksmoor
There are differences; the Gift is more streamlined than full blown VPPs

As far as your balance point, not sure what you mean in the context of Mage: the Ascension -- typically all or most of the group play Mages.


As far as balancing magic users vs non magic users in a fantasy genre, Ive been doing it for over a decade with the HERO System and can assure you that it is very possible; however thats a subject that is completely irrelevant to the current thread.

[Killer Shrike]

KS isn't that what I said?

Up to 9 separate VPPs that through rote effects can stack their effects to create powers that would individually outstrip the point pools of the smaller VPPs.

That said ideas like this are why I do not think that HERO does other genres well. Really good ideas are costly and I can't see how the mage type is balanced with the warrior type.

Hawksmoor
Hawksmoor

Ok, home now and have the book. The Gift is 2 columns on page 265 and 266. It functions like several VPP's with an associated Power Skill, but is heavily discounted in price. It is intended to be used with a set Spell List by default, but gives an option for spontaneous casting at a stiff skill penalty. It feels like a cross between a narrowed down Ars Magica and a powered down Mage the Ascension in its capabilities (though the 9 listed arcana are different).

With just a little tweaking it is very serviceable for doing Mage or Ars Magica in the HERO System.....

Next time youre at the game store you might want to peruse a copy of FH to see what you think about it ;)

[Savinien]

Sounds cool. Who's going to run a game on HeroCentral and teach me all about it?

[Killer Shrike]

Sounds cool. Who's going to run a game on HeroCentral and teach me all about it?
Not I. Running PBeM takes an enormous amount of time, and I dont know when Ill have that time (or the inclination) in the foreseeable future.

[Funksaw]

Which edition of Mage, and have you seen Awakening yet? If so what do you think of it?

I have 2nd, 3rd, and GURPS editions of Mage.

I have seen Awakening- my friend has it and I've read it throughly.

Now, there are two components to a game. System, and Setting.

The setting has been discussed - Atlantis, the Orders, the Paths, Gnosticism, etc. If you don't like it you'll never like it.

The system is WoD 2.0, which you might like. But while people are arguing back and forth about how "you can still improvise spells," the game's Arcana are more consistant with Vampire and Werewolf for play-balance reasons and a hell of alot less internally consistant. Some spells cost mana, some don't. The decision to make effects one level or another seems arbitrary. Some spells are exactly the same except you're casting on other people instead of yourself, those spells often have similar versions at 1 or 2 sphere levels higher but it's not consistant. The entire system is designed around rotes and the spheres were tacked on as a legacy afterthought.

Which is why many people are upset about the new Mage's system. Old Mage was, at it's core, a "reasoning from effect" system, only instead of figuring out what you can do at character creation, you figure out what you can do on the fly during play.

New Mage is a powers based system, like GURPS 3, where you do one effect and there's little improvization, little reasoning from effects. Put bluntly, a lightning bolt is not the same as a telekinetic attack, is not the same as getting hit with psychokinesis. Hell, a lightning bolt isn't the same as rerouting the electricity from a ground switch. It's jarring and it's a style of gaming that works for Werewolf and Vampire, where powers seem almost an add-on. You could have a vampire or Werewolf game without disciplines or gifts, and it would still, fundimentally, be the same. You can't have a mage game without magic powers and it seems that Mage is just a huge step backwards in game innovation.

I'm not a fan of the new Mage. Having read it, I get my "powers-list" gaming from Unknown Armies (which does a gnostic setting much better than all this Atlantis drek, I can make Mage a simpler system by converting it to the WEG d6 system... it's a poor, bland game that wouldn't have garnered any attention if it had to stand on it's own merits instead of on the good name earned by the earlier editions.

[Funksaw]

Spheres in HERO are really just 9 different Limited Powers VPPs, IMO ranging from 15-90AP each, with a special +0 Advantage Stackable that allows the various VPPs to be used conjuctionally. I price the Advantage at +0 because that is how sphere magick works universally, so it is no great advantage to a particular character.

Hawksmoor

I've thought about this many a time and here's what I've come to realise.

Two "reasoning from effect" systems really don't mesh together well.

Mage essentially, is White Wolf's HERO - you can do anything in the HERO system, and you can do anything in the Mage system, but doing two "everythings" in one system is a mind boggler.

You also have HERO's design philosophy of defining everything your characters can do - and you have Mage's design characteristic of, instead, defining everything you can't. You make a power in HERO, you can only do that power. In Mage, you can do everything except those things that you don't have the sphere's for.

If I were -forced- to play Mage in HERO, I couldn't do it in HEROthink and would simply use the HERO system for the characteristics, talents, skills, and perks, and just port in the Mage system whole cloth.

[Killer Shrike]

Funksaw: A pair of very excellent posts, particularly the first. Well said!

[Funksaw]

Well, Mage Ascension is one of my favorite published settings, and I've been thinking about converting it to HERO for a long time. That dog just won't hunt.

[sinanju]

Which is why many people are upset about the new Mage's system. Old Mage was, at it's core, a "reasoning from effect" system, only instead of figuring out what you can do at character creation, you figure out what you can do on the fly during play.


I'm not "upset" because I never intended to buy or play new Mage. I've still got the old books (including the GURPS version) to guide me if I ever decide to adapt it to Champions or Fudge (my games of choice these days). But you've described EXACTLY what made Mage such a great concept, in my opinion.

I _loved_ the whole idea of working up magical effects on-the-fly. It took imagination and quick thinking and a feel for how to weave your desired results into the setting the GM was describing you could make them look coincidental. I've played mages in traditional GURPS fantasy games who hid the fact that they were mages just because I so enjoyed the challenge of being sneaky and sly about it. MAGE was made for my preferred style of playing a mage.

It's too bad that they've moved away from that--but not surprising. The WW and Vampire fans have whined about mages being over-powerful since forever.

[Funksaw]

The big problem was that unlike Vampire and Werewolf, Mages aren't a Universal Pictures Classic Hollywood Monster Archetype. They never fit into WoD to begin with and I think if WW had thought about it, they would have made Mage a seperate gameline, like they did Trinity. It would have probably eaten into sales a little bit, but you have to remember that WW was looking for a third hit after Vampire and Werewolf and thought they could expand it with witches and warlocks, which, quite frankly, would have made a great game if they had played up the whole "Charmed but not lame" bit. But what happened is somewhere down the line, they ended up with this whole idea of reality being mutable and someone was reading too many philosophy books, and instead of having a good game about witches, they had a great game about reality hackers. (something more along the lines of Eden's Witchcraft, perhaps.) And yes, I'd rather have my great game, but it simply didn't fit in with the WoD stuff.

[Funksaw]

Actually, a good deal of the old Mage's "philosophy" is straight out of Robert Pirsig's "Lila" and "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

Probably. But who cares - the roleplaying game hobby is built from top to bottom on the idea of stealing good ideas and running with them.

D&D? Tolkien.
Traveller? Asimov.
Vampire? Rice.
Bunnies & Burrows? Watership Down.
Valdorian Age? Robert E. Howard.
Need I go on?

So if you're telling me that they stole some bits from ZATAOMM, I say, cool. But, as written, "Zen" isn't gameable. For a -game- it was pretty cool.

[Funksaw]

That was a throwaway line. Reading "too many philosophy books" wasn't a dig, it was that the Mage game contained too much philosophy to be a game about witches and warlocks in the Bela Lugosi universal pictures horror movie sense. As I said, the philosophy made Mage a better game, it just didn't fit in with the rest of the WoD.

[Black Rose]

Several years ago, one of my co-workers was working on a lovely project to convert the Mage Spheres to something a little closer to WitchCraft's magic system; somewhat more static effects (no Forces, but Kinetics, Fire, Light, Electricity, etc, instead) but remove the heavy-nasty Paradox effects. It worked for us because, at its base, all the WoD games are about living in a screwed-up world, with the Storyteller taunting you with the worst evilfrom Pandora's Box: Hope. You hoped you could make things better, or get ahead, or survive, but in the end, you had to do such reprehensible things to get there, there was no you in the end. WitchCraft, OTOH, was about hope. The odds might be against you, but there was a real chance to make the world a better place.

Personally, I liked the idea if Paradox from the story bits in the first Mage book, where it was more like bad karma to be worked off than the semi-codified BS it became. If I were running it in Hero, Paradox would be a choice between limited Unluck and various minor PhysLims, PsychLims, SocLims and DistFeat, mostly leaning towards the Unluck; it's bad karma, after all.

[Michael Hopcroft]

I know this is going to sound strange, but I was think it would actually be a better campaign to update Ars Magica to the 21st Century than to use the WoD version of Mage.

[Killer Shrike]

Several years ago, one of my co-workers was working on a lovely project to convert the Mage Spheres to something a little closer to WitchCraft's magic system; somewhat more static effects (no Forces, but Kinetics, Fire, Light, Electricity, etc, instead) but remove the heavy-nasty Paradox effects. It worked for us because, at its base, all the WoD games are about living in a screwed-up world, with the Storyteller taunting you with the worst evilfrom Pandora's Box: Hope. You hoped you could make things better, or get ahead, or survive, but in the end, you had to do such reprehensible things to get there, there was no you in the end. WitchCraft, OTOH, was about hope. The odds might be against you, but there was a real chance to make the world a better place.

Personally, I liked the idea if Paradox from the story bits in the first Mage book, where it was more like bad karma to be worked off than the semi-codified BS it became. If I were running it in Hero, Paradox would be a choice between limited Unluck and various minor PhysLims, PsychLims, SocLims and DistFeat, mostly leaning towards the Unluck; it's bad karma, after all.


Yeah, when we ran Mage we didnt do the anthropomorphized versions of Paradox, like Mr. Wrinkle. Seemed pretty stupid to us. Our Paradoxes were more like reality backlashes, and usually were directly tailored to whatever effect caused the Paradox in the first place. A key thing was that Paradox effects should be self contained; Paradox logically should not spawn more Paradox. It required more work from the Storyteller, but many of our Paradoxes were very very subtle...they might be played out over many sessions and reflected the idea of reality re-asserting itself in ways that made the Mages life increasingly inconvenient. The ST also would creep the difficulties higher for people that had accrued a lot of Paradox, making it a vicious circle.

We also used Quiets quite a bit, but they were internalized.

The end result was much more of a deterent than what boiled down to some freakish monster or even more improbable event than the one that spawned the Paradox in the first place popping out to punish the players. Punish based systems never work as well as enticement systems -- they just require much less imagination and consistency and are thus easier to implement.

I was the most anti-Paradox of all the Mage players in the group. Marcus worked all of his Magick thru tech. According to his backstory he was a reincarnated Iterator who had discovered the secret about the AI and was killed for it. He had sphere ineptitude Spirit, and had Iteration-themed nightmares. I was very careful to keep his magick coincidental, only cutting loose a few times and never in obviously vulgar ways. He also had a 5-dot Sanctum in the form of a semi that made for a mobile base; all difficulties were much lower when doing things in it or to it, so I made a lot of effects disguised as devices in the workshop in the back at much lower difficulties, using Prime 3 to keep them working for a while after I left the truck. I can't recall the exact numbers anymore, but I only accrued a few points of Paradox with Marcus and assiduously worked to get rid of them afterwards.

On the other hand another Mage that was in play for the full campaign, Michael, thought he was an avatar of the arch-angel Michael, and had a tendency to sprout wings and fly around with a sword of flame, wracking up Paradox like a tachometer. The only thing that kept him going was an expensive familiar that could filter the Paradox. He also had a lot of Quiets; he got more unstable as time went by. His Paradoxes tended to take the form of his human weaknesses showing thru, and a lack of faith in others causing him to fail more often via higher difficulties.


The other Mages that were played from time to time fell somewhere in the middle, and their Paradoxes, when they occured, were tailored. The only time I remember a grossly obvious Paradox was when a Mage from the other group we teamed with for a while went on a botch streak, botching every Arete roll across several scenes during the same session. Finally he rolled 4 out of 4 botches and filled his dial. The GM just blinked in disbelief and shrugged. Most of the attempts were correspondence effects, including the last one, so the GM had a spatial anomaly occur, and basically twisted the Mage apart, sending bits of him all over the world, effectively disintegrating him. There was also some damage to the immediate viscinity, leaving things warped and stretched toward the nexus of the effect.

[AlHazred]

I loved the old Mage game. I hate the new Mage game. The reasons why (for each) have pretty much already been hashed out in this thread.

I didn't know about the change of "ownership" in the Mage game line, but that puts into perspective what happened to one of my favorite settings.

When I was toying with porting Mage to HERO, I gave each PC something like 200 points. You had one big VPP, and a variety of "Sphere Familiarities." You bought, say, SF: Forces up to five times; each "level" of Familiarity cost (IIRC) 10 points. You could do any effect on the fly up to 30 Active Points per level of Familiarity, and different Spheres had different Powers associated with them. I think it would have worked fairly well.

[Solomon]

Is Awakening really that bad? Aww, that sucks. :(

I had stopped playing Vampire a few years ago, having grown disgusted by, well, the usual stuff. Inconsistencies, annying metaplotting, uber Mary-Sue NPCs, world-spanning conspiracies that made no frikkin' sense and so on. After Wraith was killed, Ascension was the only WW game I kept playing from time to time. When the new Vampire came out, it hit me as a vast improvement over the original, so I was really looking forward to a new edition for Mage. Meh. :(

[Killer Shrike]

Is Awakening really that bad? Aww, that sucks. :(

I had stopped playing Vampire a few years ago, having grown disgusted by, well, the usual stuff. Inconsistencies, annying metaplotting, uber Mary-Sue NPCs, world-spanning conspiracies that made no frikkin' sense and so on. After Wraith was killed, Ascension was the only WW game I kept playing from time to time. When the new Vampire came out, it hit me as a vast improvement over the original, so I was really looking forward to a new edition for Mage. Meh. :(
Well, in my opinion they took a game that had a fantastic concept but a cruddy system and turned it into a game with a decent system and a mediocre concept.

Concepts being more important than mechanics, I think it was a huge step down.

[Funksaw]

I'm actually trying to get an Ascension campaign going and plan to swap out the Storyteller system for WEG d6.

[Solomon]

Well, in my opinion they took a game that had a fantastic concept but a cruddy system and turned it into a game with a decent system and a mediocre concept.

Concepts being more important than mechanics, I think it was a huge step down.

Could the new system be easily superimposed over the old concept, or is it too deeply rooted in the new setting?

[Killer Shrike]

Could the new system be easily superimposed over the old concept, or is it too deeply rooted in the new setting?
Yeah, probably. You'd have to make some tough decisions about the Spheres and Spontaneous vs Rote magic, but it could be done by a GM with sufficient determination.

[Funksaw]

Could the new system be easily superimposed over the old concept, or is it too deeply rooted in the new setting?

I would honestly say yes, but you'd have to...

Okay, let me try to put it to you this way: when it comes to specific effects, the New Mage is much more straightforward than the Old Mage.

When it comes to broad powers and improvised spells, the Old Mage is much more straightforward then the New Mage.

The end result is that you could do it, but you end up very fundimentally changing the game's "feel."

I'd take a look at Eden Studios Witchcraft or Ars Magica to see what those games offer before deciding to port New Mage to Old Mage.

[FenrisUlf]

Yeah, I did a little checking on WW forums and am sad to see that not much has changed in that environment. What is it about that company/product line that attracts so many pretentious/elitist fasionistas that gobble the current official line no matter how self-contradictory or how often it fluctuates?

Anyone raising the question/concern about the drastically reduced cocept of the new Mage seems to be snobbed into silence or ignored over there.

Can't say anything about the current Mage, though I liked the older stuff as written by Phil Brucato (even if I was left scratching my head by the magic system; guess I'm not as clever as I like to think).

And yes, I've found entirely too many of the WW fans to be total asshats. I got so PO'ed by their actions the few times I dared to say anything I just turned away from Mage, Werewolf, and Vampire completely. (Well, that, and I rediscovered HERO...) What made it worse was that even the editors/writers for the various games seemed to enjoy provoking fights and encouraging flaming. No thank you. I'd rather deal with adults.

[Killer Shrike]

Can't say anything about the current Mage, though I liked the older stuff as written by Phil Brucato (even if I was left scratching my head by the magic system; guess I'm not as clever as I like to think).

And yes, I've found entirely too many of the WW fans to be total asshats. I got so PO'ed by their actions the few times I dared to say anything I just turned away from Mage, Werewolf, and Vampire completely. (Well, that, and I rediscovered HERO...) What made it worse was that even the editors/writers for the various games seemed to enjoy provoking fights and encouraging flaming. No thank you. I'd rather deal with adults.
Drama queens will be drama queens I suppose ;)

[BcAugust]

Hmm, I'm going to chime in as the lone dissenting voice. While I like Mage the Ascension in theory, I've only found one good person to play it with. Given that that's my main consideration for games, I was slightly disappointed by it. Though I think Revised was a pile of... well.

I like Awakening as a game I will possibly play/GM, though really, all I'm going to do is take the whole "This level will let you do this, go wild.". And I like the idea of rotes... it's just something that "Ok, I know this so well I can play with it easier." A reward for taking time and learning and also gives you a reason to search out teachers/grimores. I just think the experience costs are wacky. Not going to be taking most of the backstory. Don't forget, even for "unprepared" spellcasting, you're still throwing six to seven dice. With a much better chance of sucess then the old system too.

Well, then again you're talking with the person who said "Screw Masquarade timeline, I'm starting it over from the Dark Ages and really bringing it forward. And getting rid of that damned fleshcrafting. Let's give Tzimisce Blood Master like their damn backstory says they have."

[Killer Shrike]

So basically you like it except for the mechanics stuff youre going to bring forward from Mage the Ascension, and the background you are gutting out of it?

Thats quite a ringing endorsement :D

[BcAugust]

Actually, I'm taking the mechanics from it. I just think White Wolf does wacky experience costs. (For instance, Combo disiplines from DA... those were so out of whack they hurt.) So, I'd likely change the cost of the rotes to be more "Taking these means you've practiced them so much, you see how to match your normal skills with your magic to be more effective.", less "Take them if you never want to be a more powerful mage, except in two or three things."

And quite frankly, I've gotten to the point where the backgrounds of the games are less and less important. I'm actually thinking of using the New Mage for Diane Duane's Wizard series. It's perfect for that. (And if you've never read it, you need to. It's a wonderful series, though the juvinile is more popular then the adult fantasy one. Both are equally good.)

[Karmakaze]

It was a little disorienting for me when they put in the Dark Ages mage stuff, as Ars Magica had been (for a brief moment) presumptively the past of the Mage system.

Mostly, this makes me want to find the modern day variant of Ars Magica my friends and I worked out in college. Now that was a magic system!

[Robert Harrison]

How bizarre; a skim seems to suggest that he did a detailed Mage conversion without ever mentioning Spheres, perhaps the most important aspect of the entire game from a mechanical and character design standpoint.

Pardon me for being a little late to the discussion.:)

AFAIC, the most important aspect of Mage from a mechanical and character design standpoint *should* be Paradigm. Otherwise, Mage characters end up being little more than dull, flavorless, indistinguishable collections of Spheres. Paradigm is the only thing that should determine what kinds of magickal feats a Mage can attempt, not whether the player bought x dots in a particular Sphere. Hence the lack of any mention of Spheres.

A conversion of a game from one system to HERO is presents an opportunity to purge the game of unwanted elements. I just didn't find the concept of Spheres to be at all central to Mage or valuable enough to carry over into a HERO conversion.

[Killer Shrike]

Actually, I'm taking the mechanics from it. I just think White Wolf does wacky experience costs. (For instance, Combo disiplines from DA... those were so out of whack they hurt.) So, I'd likely change the cost of the rotes to be more "Taking these means you've practiced them so much, you see how to match your normal skills with your magic to be more effective.", less "Take them if you never want to be a more powerful mage, except in two or three things."

And quite frankly, I've gotten to the point where the backgrounds of the games are less and less important. I'm actually thinking of using the New Mage for Diane Duane's Wizard series. It's perfect for that. (And if you've never read it, you need to. It's a wonderful series, though the juvinile is more popular then the adult fantasy one. Both are equally good.)
Youre talking about "So you want to be a Wizard?" right? Ive got that series -- fantastic books. Didnt realize there was an adult version though. More info?

[Killer Shrike]

Pardon me for being a little late to the discussion.:)

AFAIC, the most important aspect of Mage from a mechanical and character design standpoint *should* be Paradigm. Otherwise, Mage characters end up being little more than dull, flavorless, indistinguishable collections of Spheres. Paradigm is the only thing that should determine what kinds of magickal feats a Mage can attempt, not whether the player bought x dots in a particular Sphere. Hence the lack of any mention of Spheres.

A conversion of a game from one system to HERO is presents an opportunity to purge the game of unwanted elements. I just didn't find the concept of Spheres to be at all central to Mage or valuable enough to carry over into a HERO conversion.
I know a thing or two about system conversions.

I see the Spheres as being integral to the idea of Mage -- its what ties the multitude of practitioners and their many (sometimes conflicting or mutually exclusive) paradigms together in one system of magic. Otherwise, you might as well have tailored systems ideally suited to a particular paradigm which is not what Mage is about.

Also, as Mages grow in power/wisdom (ARETE), their reliance on their paradigms as represented by the crutches they need to work magic decreases, which to me indicates that as they develop Mages realize that the frame of reference by which they approached magic, while useful to get them started, is ultimately not the way things really work.

Im not saying you were wrong to convert it the way you did, but I definitely would do it differently since I think Spheres and the concepts behind them are essential to the idea of Mage.

[Robert Harrison]

Im not saying you were wrong to convert it the way you did, but I definitely would do it differently since I think Spheres and the concepts behind them are essential to the idea of Mage.

Acknowledged. I freely admit that the conversion on Surbrook's Stuff reflects my own views about Mage, which I don't expect anyone to agree with.

The Mage Storyteller's Handbook (2002) discusses alternate approaches to handling magic.

"...You can base magic on anything you want. It's formless, free-flowing. Nobody said that it has to be based on the Spheres; no one said that you had to have Arete to do it. If you feel like it, mages don't even have to have Avatars. Anything is possible when dealing with this section of the game - just like anything else."

[Killer Shrike]

Thats kind of like saying you can have a steak dinner without actual red meat. While it might be true, that doesnt mean its satisfying if what you enjoy about steak dinners is in fact....the steak.

[Robert Harrison]

Thats kind of like saying you can have a steak dinner without actual red meat. While it might be true, that doesnt mean its satisfying if what you enjoy about steak dinners is in fact....the steak.

Well, I don't particularly enjoy Spheres, and I don't think that Mage is a Sphere dinner. :) I think the quote above suggests that Spheres aren't all that central to the game.

[BcAugust]

Youre talking about "So you want to be a Wizard?" right? Ive got that series -- fantastic books. Didnt realize there was an adult version though. More info?

Oh, yes. I'm looking at the high speech mechanic and going "Perfect". Plus, the rote vs freeform does follow the books quite nicely.

The Book of Night with Moon and To Save the Queen are the two adult books. They're actually done with cats as the main characters. But it doesn't harm them at all, gut wise. And there's just enough difference that you can go "Yeah, that's a cat's point of view, all right." They do fit together rather well.

[Killer Shrike]

Well, I don't particularly enjoy Spheres, and I don't think that Mage is a Sphere dinner. :) I think the quote above suggests that Spheres aren't all that central to the game.
And I think the quote is a meaningless statement. It would be similar to putting a passage into the HERO System to the effect of "Of course, you don't have to use points to build characters; you can use whatever means of character design you want."

While it is a true statement -- you could indeed make characters by any of a wide array of means as evidenced by all the other RPGs out there -- its still a disenguous statement -- it pretends that the system is not a product with a recognizable "look & feel".

One of the main purposes of a printed rule book is to serve as a "lingua franca" between various disconnected groups of people, and chucking out one of the most recognizable and integrated features of the system renders the game unrecognizable as the same property.

Or to put it into another context, it would be similar to putting a paragraph in a book about the C# programming language saying something to the effect of "Of course, you could write your program in some other language such as C++, Java, VB.NET, or a more obsolete language. You could even design your own syntax and write a compiler if you wanted to!". A true statement, but hardly a useful one in a book that is about using C#. Imagine if you took the advice of such a paragraph and wrote you app in COBOL; and then when another developer asked you why referred back to that paragraph.

[Robert Harrison]

We're still talking about Spheres, right? I'm sorry, but I fail to see how dropping Spheres would render M:tA "unrecognizable".

[Hawksmoor]

Because the game would then not be Mage the Ascension, but instead something else all together. It is the magick system that makes Mage and the metaphysical reality that grounds the game. Take that flexible Paradigm based alteration on fundamental Spheres away and the game might as well be Ars Magica or Turkan Age or DragonLance D&D 3.5.

The system makes the game.

Hawksmoor

[sinanju]

Because the game would then not be Mage the Ascension, but instead something else all together. It is the magick system that makes Mage and the metaphysical reality that grounds the game. Take that flexible Paradigm based alteration on fundamental Spheres away and the game might as well be Ars Magica or Turkan Age or DragonLance D&D 3.5.

The system makes the game.

Hawksmoor

I agree. It's specifically the ability to filter no more than nine very general spheres thru any kind of paradigm and get an endless array of results that makes the game what it is. It _might_ be possible to do it with some other equivalent of spheres (say, nouns and verbs used together to generate magical effects, as in one of the alternative GURPS magic systems), but then you're basically recreating the wheel. Why bother when the spheres are already in place?

Plus, the metaphysical reality of the game--that "reality" is what people make of it, and being a mage means being able to change reality by sheer force of will--is just too cool for words.

It's also my rationale for why the Technocracy hates the Tradition mages. Not because they're "doing it in the streets and scaring the mundanes" but because they're altering reality. The Technocracy crafts all their magic to be seen as science, based on unchanging, immutable laws; understandable, repeatable, reliable. They want a nice, safe, mundane, secure world in which magic (and magical threats) aren't an issue.

So the Technocracy spends years and countless fortunes developing the super-encryption chip and arranging to have it employed everywhere as part of their plan to more closely monitor everyone and tighten their grip on the population. And then some stupid Virtual Adept works a bit of coincidental magic based on the "flaw" in the super-encryption chip he "found" (i.e., created). And all that work goes up in smoke. Not because he's trying to harass the Technocracy, but simply because it was the easiest way to do something he wanted to do, and now the consensus reality includes that flaw.

It's maddening to control freaks like the Technocracy! These annoying mages repeatedly destroy careful laid plans, disrupt schedules and so forth just by doing their magic. They have to be stopped!

[Funksaw]

Because the game would then not be Mage the Ascension, but instead something else all together. It is the magick system that makes Mage and the metaphysical reality that grounds the game. Take that flexible Paradigm based alteration on fundamental Spheres away and the game might as well be Ars Magica or Turkan Age or DragonLance D&D 3.5.

The system makes the game.

Hawksmoor

To be fair, I think that it's the setting that makes the game but the system is geared closely to the setting.

For example, if instead of Mage's Spheres, you had Ars Magica's verbs and nouns, or Witchcraft's spell system, and you really wouldn't have a functionally different game. Spellcasting would be different, but it would still be a freeform magic system that relied on paradigm.

I think that the Spheres are a simple, easy to understand (if not easy to use in practics) free-form magic system and you could very well have Mage with a similar free-form magic system.

Keep in mind that I've played in Mage the Ascension games that ditched the setting but kept the system, and Mage the Ascension games that ditched the system but kept the same general setting. Are both of these "Mage?" Sure. Call it whatever the hell you want.

[Chuckg]

Heck, doesn't Mage: Dark Ages completely throw out the spheres, and focus on paradigms? White Wolf agrees with you.

[Captain Obvious]

Part of the background material for Mage: the Ascension said that the Spheres were a construct of the Order of Hermes, used to talk about how magic works, and that other Traditions, Crafts, what have you, didn't agree for the most part, but went along with it just to have a common standard to work from.

Personally, I think Paradigm is more important than Spheres in defining Mage magic. Throw out Paradigm and keep Spheres, and there's no flavor left to distinguish one mage from another. Keep Paradigm and throw out Spheres, and you only have a game-mechanics issue....