(thoughts which occurred while in the shower)

Having just revised Schism, it made me realize just what is wrong with Mage: the Ascension. Why it consistently misses the point while having so much damn potential...

For one thing, every major White Wolf game would benefit from being transformed into a Sorcerer mini-supplement (the exception is Changeling, which is an anomoly I won't attempt to discuss in this post).

Each White Wolf game is about Humanity, despite what the mechanics of the game say. In Vampire, it's right there on the sheet. Werewolf is simply another look at Vampire (both feature altered humans struggling with identity and humanity issues) -- no wonder why Urge (Clinton's excellent mini-supplement) is such a better game than Werewolf. It's Werewolf done right.

Wraith is about Humanity as well. The characters are clinging to it...Humanity 0 means that they've "let go" and have either reached Transcendence or Oblivion (which the game hints are the same thing). Aberrant is like Urge + Schism...a superhero game where "Taint" is the thing that turns your character into a monster (ie: zero humanity).

And Mage, well where Urge is Werewolf done right, Schism is Mage done right. Schism's psychic powers translate to the magickal spheres of the mages. Loss of control translates to Paradox. But still, Mage isn't really about anything (it says it is...it ain't).

In Mage, the main factions are the Traditions and the Technocracy...but it rings hollow because although the Technocracy are the "bad guys," they share the same goal as the Traditions (albeit with different methodologies). Meanwhile, the Traditions themselves are fragmented into their own methodologies. Why aren't the Akashics at war with the Verbena or any other Tradition...? The game says that the Traditions share a moral center absent fromt he Technocracy...I say that's just bullshit. A weak excuse to give the game some kind of focus.

So here's what I would do.

Get rid of the Traditions altogether.
Get rid of all this mystical hoodoo and just make the effect of Paradox a repercussion of losing control of magick.
Make the Technocracy active bad guys. In other words, each character should have some connection with the Technocracy (in Schism/Sorcerer terms, the Technocracy is a kind of uber-Cabal which the mages have escaped from or have otherwise had ties to).

The focus of the game becomes: fight the Technocracy...but on a personal as well as global (and cosmic) scale. The premise is the same as Schism's...will you sacrifice yourself to fight for the rights of those who would destroy you? (yeah, it's the same as X-Men's, so sue me).

Anyway, did this have a point? I don't know anymore. Oh, just play Sorcerer.

Le Mon Mouri is Wraith done right! Ha!

Anyway...

I think you're on to something, Jared. But then, I think Vampire would be better if you got rid of the sodding Clans & just had a bunch of vampires. (I started working out Vampire done with Story Engine in my head a little while ago, where the Disciplines were Gift Affinities & there were no Clans). The last time I ran Mage, there were no Traditions & Technocracy--yeah, there were cabals & cults & Technocratic bad guys, but it was much looser, no "big group of good guys vs. big group of bad guys". I wanted to focus more on the whole Paradigm & Paradox thing.

But yeah, in the end, I think I'd rather play Sorcerer. Or Over the Edge.

Another thought on the World o' Darkness (TM):

Most of the games--Vampire, Changeling, Werewolf--work better for me if the whole central Simulationist premise ("What would you do if you were a monster?") is ignored & the vampire, werebeast, faerie thing is just used for funky color. Like those fun kids books where the main characters are all vampires or werewolves, but the narrative Premise is something else completely. Like, run a narrative game about "does power corrupt?" (or whatever--this is off the top of my head) & have the PCs be vampires, but the vampire stuff is just for fun gothy color--& I think the color needs to be amped up to 11.

Jared A. Sorensen wrote:


Well, as a great fan of Mage, thought I'd stick in my oar here.

For one thing, every major White Wolf game would benefit from being transformed into a Sorcerer mini-supplement (the exception is Changeling, which is an anomoly I won't attempt to discuss in this post).

This I agree with. Certainly I consider the basic vampire genre Done, since reading sorcerer.

In Mage, the main factions are the Traditions and the Technocracy...but it rings hollow because although the Technocracy are the "bad guys," they share the same goal as the Traditions (albeit with different methodologies).

Ah, but thats the glory of it - everyone is a good guy. Everyone wears the white hat in their own eyes - but "Lord preserve us from an honest man." Thus, magic becomes a metaphor for politics, in that one conception of the world defines both ones methods and ones goals. All data is mediated through a belief system, and action implemented via that belief system - the manifest merger of theory and praxis. IMO, mage is not about humanity, it is about Truth. Furthermore, it is about how one establishes legitimacy in the absence of absolute, or at least shared, truth.

Meanwhile, the Traditions themselves are fragmented into their own methodologies. Why aren't the Akashics at war with the Verbena or any other Tradition...? The game says that the Traditions share a moral center absent fromt he Technocracy...I say that's just bullshit. A weak excuse to give the game some kind of focus.

Well, they have been - as a Verbena PC I used to needle the CC about the Inquisition and Tyburn gallows relentlessly. IIRC the rationalisation was an alliance of convenience, a recognition of a common enemy; I see no reason to rule out tension. I mean, if nothing else it looks bad to the parishioners if you let the verbena sacrifice a goat to a pagan god on your catholic altar, doesn't it? And then theres Afterwards... even if the technocracy goes, does that just usher in another tyrranny, only "yours" or "mine"?

Furthermore, there are questions about power, about force. If the traditions are engaged a noble struggle on behalf of the unwitting masses, how do they reconcile the possible/probable deaths of said unwitting technocratic accomplices in their essentially terrorist behaviour? Negotiating the clash of ideological perspectives and moral systems in terms of deciding action can become a very interesting and rather metaphysical activity - but IME this encourages identification with and internalisation of the world and has a good dynamic in play.

I agree it could stand a few tweaks, and I like giving the technocracy a more distinct face, but I don't think that what I got out of it would be duplicated by sorcerors emphasis on humanity. As it stands, I feel it works well as a metaphor for resistance politics and it remains a game I hold in high esteem.

Jared A. Sorensen wrote: Having just revised Schism, it made me realize just what is wrong with Mage: the Ascension. Why it consistently misses the point while having so much damn potential...

Seth L. Blumberg wrote:

Jared A. Sorensen wrote: Having just revised Schism, it made me realize just what is wrong with Mage: the Ascension. Why it consistently misses the point while having so much damn potential...

Possibly this would be less confrontational toward people who actually like Mage if it were phrased something like "...realize just what I hate about Mage: the Ascension."

Did Phil Brucato micturate in your Wheaties or something?

Jared A. Sorensen wrote:
But I think what the game wants/tries to do, what it says it does and what it actually does are all totally different things...but the same could be said of all White Wolf's stuff.

Hi there,

I'll chime in on Gareth's side, in this one. This might seem odd, 'cause I'm the author of Sorcerer, a big fan of Schism, and not especially enthralled by Mage.

However, I do think that Mage (based on the first edition, the only one I have) is "about something," and that its system and so forth do address that something. I'm not personally interested in the subjectivity of Truth as a topic, including Pirsig's writings, so I don't find myself interested in playing the game very much. I also can't comment on how well its system really drives at that topic, although Mage players I know seem to take sides about which version of the Paradox rules is most satisfying or true to the topic at hand.

To continue ... I agree with Gareth that Humanity issues as defined by Sorcerer are probably a different topic entirely. An early review of Sorcerer called it the "anti-Mage," which I interpret to mean that Mage is essentially an Internal Projection game - one's perceptions and actions transform reality - and Sorcerer is an External Alienation game - reality bites hard, and one's perceptions and actions must be modified in response.

Now that puts Schism in an interesting situation, because the "demons" in Schism are internal. So perhaps that's the basis of Jared's claim, which I do find sensible - that the manner by which Schism addresses internal conflict is more satisfying to him than the manner by which Mage does it. I think contrasting these things would be pretty interesting, with the proviso that which one is "better" at the thematic level is definitely a personal and aesthetic choice.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Now that puts Schism in an interesting situation, because the "demons" in Schism are internal. So perhaps that's the basis of Jared's claim, which I do find sensible - that the manner by which Schism addresses internal conflict is more satisfying to him than the manner by which Mage does it. I think contrasting these things would be pretty interesting, with the proviso that which one is "better" at the thematic level is definitely a personal and aesthetic choice.

My experience parallels Jared's, except that when we had cool moments they were VERY cool moments.

Best,

Blake

I definately agree that it was hard to "get" - in fact at first I balked at playing, so negative had been my initial reading of Mage (I had wanted Hellblazer - not IMO an unreasonable desire considering the WoD theme to that point). But actually seeing it in play changed my mind completely; in fact I think it is one of those games that really, really rewards player creativity in problem solving, and IMO there is a player learning curve that is quite observable (in terms of internalising and comprehending pradox, paradign and their ramifications). But I agree the inherent structure is pretty nebulous, and leads to a catch 22 in which its hard to start playing it unless you already know someone who can show you how to play it.

I don't think that any of WoD games can be functionally combined with another - it generates too many headaches. I did run a Hellblazer styled game using Mages Hedge Magic rules and some Kult/Cthulhu scenarios, and that worked fine - this is how I would do a Mage/Vamp cross. (you run into some strange ideas when exploring vampiric disciplines, especially at high level, in terms of mages Paradox.)

Jared A. Sorensen wrote: FWIW, my own experience with Mage (LARP and tabletop) is that the game is either a) superheroes (Bam! Kapow! Paradox!) or b) college coffee shop navel gazing (where all the players sit in a circle, sip lattes and debate "reality").

Question mainly for Ron although anyone with thoughts can have a go. I just read the Fantasy Heartbreakers article and want to ask what people think of coincidental magic in mage as a kind of buried directorial power, as mentioned in the article. In play we found the coincidental magic was no sort of restriction but an opportunity, and I would describe a very high proportion of coincidental magic, like 80%, peformed in game was probably directorial, in hindsight. It was quite frightening what you could cause to happen by cunning manipulation of even low spheres. Come to think of it, the Correspondence sphere might also be said to be a mechanical transition between Author and Director, by moving magic, and hence legitimate action, outside the body.

Contracycle: you're absolutely right about coincidental magic and Director stance. I disagree about Author stance, though, partly because it's possible to affect things outside the self without Correspondence, partly because magic use that doesn't demand Director stance is at least as likely to emanate from Actor stance as from Author stance.

Not to drag Actual Play into this, but in my Mage campaign, I've essentially gutted the experience system (turned it into a flat 5-point reward for attendance) and added a second reward system I call "happy dice." Players get one happy die for each innovative use of Director stance through coincidental magic, and the bar gradually rises over time. I even went out and bought some bright yellow dice that look nothing like any other dice owned by any of us, and I hand them out when players earn happy dice, to make the reward more immediate and visceral.

Seth: That's effing brilliant. Literal color, effectiveness, reward, and record-keeping, all in one go. I think I'll have to pick up some obnoxious yellow dice (a most unpopular color generally) in a few different sidednesses (say that six times fast) for all the die-pool systems I use.

It was a few weeks ago that I noticed that magic systems that allow for improvisation are nearly all Authorial or Directorial power, and that that was what I had been struggling to achieve a long time in my own game designs. I didn't share that particular revelation at the time because I do a lot of revelation-sharing here (what can I say, it's one of two decent intellectual hangouts remaining on the 'net as far as I'm concerned) and thought it might be redundant.

This is cool enough I think I'll start up a new topic.

--JB

Hi Gareth,

I'm not sure what I can add to what Seth and JB have already said, except just the theoretical point (important though) that Director Stance is probably easier to employ for Simulationist-tending goals than Author Stance is. I figure you guys know this, but people do tend to miss it. So I'd think that the Coincidential magic in Mage tends toward Director rather than Author ... but I'm interested in what real play has generated.

JB, I suggest checking out the old discussion at the Sorcerer mailing list archive, at the Sorcerer site, and clicking on the Magic Systems threads. Lots of good stuff there.

Best,
Ron

Yeah, I agree that it is relatively easy to use in overt or tacit sim.

So by corollary with observing directorial power here, would mage benefit from an explicit discussion of directorial play? Lets say I found the implications of coincidental magic where far beyond the brief game text discussion - does anyone feel that those who had problems with mage would have been aided by a more explicit description of how coincidental magic rapidly tends toward directorialism?

A thought realms beyond earth - again tending a bit toward actual play, but I found that this sort of "home ground" thing gave the potential for a kind of protagonism, in that in controlling the setting, in effect, meant quite a lot of control over how other characters would experience your character - it was an opportunity to play to your strengths, as it were. Is this a valid perception and are there any conclusions to be drawn over local setting control as a means of auto-protagonism?

Lastly, a player in the long-standing game I was in is now running a mage game with HW/HQ mechanics, which appears to be going swimmingly - in fact he says better than the original, but he's an HW partisan. Do any of those who've had good experiences with mage think that their games would have benefitted from scene-based resolution mechanics?

In a word, yes. Scene-based resolution would speed Mage up greatly, in my opinion. From a coolness standpoint, I've noticed in each of the three Mage chronicles I've run that players typically only get one really meaningful effect off during climactic moments. The rest of the effects feel more like whiffs. Part of that is because most players steer away from small nudges to reality at those times, trying to achieve huge effects in a short time frame, but still.... In task-based scenes, the number of rolls multiplies to the point where it dilutes the color of Mage's magic. Magic becomes just another skill under those circumstances.

Let's contrast that with moments where the group is engaged in a cooperative ritual or an individual takes the time for a single effect in a scene. Far more powerful from a storytelling standpoint, partly because the end result lends itself more to directorial shaping and partly because people are more invested in bringing the color to the foreground. Every time the use of magic worked toward scene resolution rather than task resolution, it absofuckinlutely rocked.

Regarding the directorial power in Mage: coincidental magic IS basically a delegation of directorial power to players, as far as I'm concerned. It's usually far more interesting and impressive than vulgar, throw-a-fireball magic, and it requires more creative agility on the part of the players as well. In my view, coincidental effects represent the core design strength of Mage. Everything else says "generic modern magic" to me, though I agree the vulgar component likely has to be there to serve as a contrast. The coincidental components remind me of the end of the movie "Dragonslayer," where the hero says when he was little, magic for him was simply saying, "White horse," and a white horse would appear. Right after that line, he and his companion hear a whinny, and a white horse steps over the ridge. A little sappy, sure, but that's the kind of magic that I find deeply intriguing, not the point-finger, issue-phaser-blast spellwork.

Best,

Blake

I've done a fair amount of work for the line in the last couple of years so I thought I'd share my opinion for contrast.

Mage isn't really about Pirsig's sophism (the actual school, not the insult) anymore, and hasn't really been for a while. Mage is starting to really more take a stab at genuine postmodernism (rather than the cartoonish "create your own reality" New Age version thereof). All the same, it does carry characteristics of it as well as lots of other influences from various sources. It's "legacy drag": the kind of thing you see in most games that have been actively supported for a long time. It's probably one of the reasons that Aeonverse Storyteller wasn't extensively used for any of the Revised editions' rules, even though it's a good, clean system. I know that many of the game's quirks result from that as well as the fact that the Storyteller system really uses a sort of toolkit based appraoch over an integrated set of contingent systems.

The setting is intended to be used for a number of different kinds of games by shifting emphasis on one part or another, but always with a default available. You could do Schism with Mage without making major (or any, if you abstract it enough) changes to either game -- then you could drop Schism's setup without losing any sort of continuity to do psyhic wuxia, cinematic espionage or occult pulp. I think it's a valid criticism that having other possibilities be inherent in the setting undermines the dramatic weight of each one, but it's part of Mage's whole subjective trip.

Mage could do with some of the things that some people dislike about Vampire: a setting that emphasizes social ties and customs and pretty explicitly discusses the setting's default assumptions . Vampire (and to a lesser extent Werewolf) got some overkill on this are are now both emphasizing the role of the individual and the tension between characters and the setting's scheme, but Mage never really had a coherently expressed version of that scheme in the first place.

Arrgh! Exceeded character limit!

Anyway, I'll condense my points down into the following:

1) I'm not big on the methodology taken for granted here, but I do agree that Mage does force you to share directorial privilege, both for coincidetnal magic and sensory magic (since most starting cabals can discover things that you as GM, aren't necessarily prepared to answer, it's good to explicitly discuss what the characters should know and what that information is to fulfil story goals).

2) "Happy Dice" are pretty much like Drama Dice from Adventure!/Exalted. Certainly a good idea. I also give out 5 XP/session (in 10-20 point chunks so that character development makes a dramatic difference instead of being a slow crawl), but I don't think that invalidates the XP system.

3) I largely agree with the political metaphor thing, but the Traditions wouldn't really propagate a set of fascist fiefs if they had the chance. Most of them have always been marginal, it isn't the 15th Century any more; the basis of the Traditions is roughly anarcho-syndicalist. The Master may be hosing you, but you choose him/her as voluntarily of the strictures of being a mystic flunky. Of course, there's sometimes some immense social pressure involved, but it isn't the same as trying to retire/leave and being sent to the Village, Technocracy style.

Anders Sandbergs take on mage-as-politics: A Democratic Paradigm

http://www.d.kth.se/~nv91-asa/Mage/democracy.html

I also recommend the text on "Practical Paradigm Engineering (Realitybending 101)"

http://www.d.kth.se/~nv91-asa/Mage/reality.html

PS: I regard postmodernism as too weak to carry Mage. I recently discovered an anti-postmodernism mini-rant on an anti-Creationist page; in fact I think postmodernism would constitute a technocratic paradigm, as a mechanism for the transmission of ignorance :) My prejudices are showing, or perhaps merely my paradigm.

Sandberg's stuff is interesting enough, but I don't find it representative of my approach for these reasons:

1) In my view, Traditionalists aren't really that antiquated in their beliefs. They're more concerned with distinctiveness and synthesis with what exists now instead of returning to a Golden/High Mythic Age. The 1st Ed. idea that people actually lived just as well back then is dead. Since, as I've said, most Traditions can't even claim they were ever really top dog in their region's paradigm at any point in the past. The Traditions are about adding diversity to what exists rather than rolling the clock back.

2) I think the Technocracy is really more suited to being used as a source of pervasive influence than as the outright authors of global events. Otherwise, they might have just used absolutism to impose J. Gergory Keyes style Alchemitech 2 and a bit centuries ago (though this wouldn't be a bad idea for an alternate game).

3) I'm a pretty big supporter of genuine postmodernism (though I'd say that beyond a doubt, most people don't really understand how its relationship to academia differs from other fields). I'd say a more accurate description of Technocrat-spawned pedagogy is what you might find at Edge.org and in other discussions about technological metaphors being both central and objective. Then again, this is one of the problems/benefits of Mage: lots of people turn it into "Mage: The Polemic," and tweak their understanding of the game to lighten up on belief systems they're particularly enamored with. Postmodernism doesn't really suit the Technocracy. It's better as an implied practice of the Traditions, if only to counter the idea that the Traditions are pre-modern in focus.

eyebeams wrote: Sandberg's stuff is interesting enough, but I don't find it representative of my approach for these reasons:

Jared A. Sorensen wrote:
The game has no focus. There's nothing to do. What do I do? "Anything you want to do, it's Mage, man...define your own reality. Here, take a hit off this..." That's crap design. Oh wait, it's simu...(edited to spare innocent lives)

Saying that Mage is focused because it isn't as unfocused as Cyberpunk is like saying that Osamma bin Laden is a good person because he's not as bad as Adolph Hitler.

And, what's this? Jared thinks simulationism is bad design? I'm totally stunned! I'm sure the flames will rage high into the sky over that one.

I think that we can probably safely agree that the extent that a Premise is capable of being Narrativist for some is higher than for others. And that Mage is probably not on either end of the spectrum, but somewhere in between, still a little on the Simmy side. Would the game be more Narrativist with an explicit discussion of director stance and other Narrativist toys. Certianly.

I'm just re-emphasizing Ron's point about this being old news.

Mike

P.S. I'm of the belief that Postmodernism is dead, having anihilated itself in a cloud of philosophical dust around the time that Illuminati: the New World Order came out. So what age are we in now? Post-post-modern? Reconstructive?

I actually agree with Jared about this. Mage isn't a Narrativist game. It has no premise (in the Narrativist sense). There's no underlying dramatic conflict. It doesn't build Story. So what?

Not every game has to support Narrativist play.

Every (read: both, as in two) succesful Mage game I ever heard tell of was INCREDIBLY modified and customized, both as to system and setting details. The players in both these games LOVED having played it, but were very dubious that they could ever catch lightning in a bottle again - totally unrelated groups, very similar experiences/explanations. Also a very small sample, so apply meaning to these facts with great restraint.

Post-modernism - I was recently reminded that virtually everything of value in what gets called "post-modernism" (well, of value to my mind, anyway) . . . isn't post-modern at all. The ideas are gettin' on a hundred years old now. I like where Richard Rorty has brought things (though not neccessarily what he does with 'em), but . . . I'm not sure how I'd bring that to bear on an RPG.

Anyway, IMO the vast majority of RPGs out there exist merely to provide ideas and wrinkles for what inevitably become a maze of "house rules". And many people are just fine with that. If you stop expecting them to be gems of coherence like Sorcerer and etc., they stop being so confusing. At least, that's what I'm thinking nowadays . . .

Gordon

Hi folks,

I'm pretty certain that Jared's purpose in this thread has been fulfilled, and since he is not interested in forcing anyone else to agree regarding the value of Mage, since he was interested only in (a) pointing out the game's non-Narrativism and (b) bringing up Schism as a contrast ... well, I think the purpose is done.

My reading of Seth's post is that it's time to call the thread concluded. There is no "so what," beyond the (admittedly interesting) exposure of Jared's identity as a role-player.

That said, I think that points made by everyone on this thread may represent one of the few incredibly meaty dialogues I've ever seen about Mage, by which I use "dialogue" to indicate that everyone is not necessarily in agreement.

Best,
Ron