So, what does that stat do again / Coming back to World of Darkness

I've been running Night's Black Agents, a Gumshoe game, for nearly a year now, and other Gumshoe games (Fear Itself, TimeWatch, Trail of Cthulhu) for longer. I've become familiar with  the system, how it works and how to make stuff up on the fly. It's now my 'go to' system. 

It used to be World of Darkness, though. I learnt to GM by running Vampire: the Masquerade. The first game I ran to an actual conclusion was a Hunter: the Reckoning/Mage: the Ascension mash up. I loved the games and the Storyteller/telling systems. 

I still have a great fondness for them, and hold them in high regard. 

So I've been thinking about what I would like to run once NBA finishes. I decided that I would like to run Mage: the Awakening. I've always had a soft spot for Mage, and would like to do something with the nWoD game. 

I play almost exclusively over Google+ Hangouts these days, and we use Google spreadsheets as character sheets. This means that there's a one off exercise of transcribing the character sheet to a Google Sheet format. 

I did that this weekend, and realised that WoD games, and Mage: the Awakening in particular, are really complicated. 

Keeping track of three different types of damage - Bashing, Lethal and Aggravated? Awakening also throws in Resistant damage as well, for four(!) types. 

Tracking Willpower, Morality trait (Wisdom in Awakening), Mana, Gnosis, Paradox, spell tolerance and Virtues and Vices is a massive drain on the player and storyteller before you start adding temporary health, speed, initiative and defense bonuses. 

I don't think I can do it anymore. It just seems like so much effort. 

Which is a shame - the settings and a lot of the game conceits are excellent.

Mage Noire

Let's skip the brain trust explanation and get right into it.
You used to be normal. Now you're not.
You used to have a normal life. Now it's anything but.
One day you had this dream, an I right, about signing your name somewhere and all of a sudden your brain is tied to this other place where the scales are tipped in favour of mad crap and if you pull on the strings, you can make crazy stuff happen as well.
And then sometimes you pull hard and the string breaks and you fall on your ass. Or something falls on you. That smarts, yeah.
Maybe you joined one of them nutty secret societies with handshakes that fry your brain or stop your heart dead, or maybe you didn't. Your business anyhow.
Where we are now is that we could both kill each other with a word, and none of these chumps would even know it. Hell, everyone of these guys could be a corpse already, and the world just ain't cottoned on yet. You coulda done it. You probably didn't. Maybe I did.
Whatever.
But here you are. In my place. And I know who you are.
Your move, kid.

North Sea Atlantis / Mage: the Awakening chronicle idea ahoy

Doggerland

It's a massive stretch of land, now submerged, that linked Britain to mainland Europe.

A h8ers regret / I was wrong about Mage Revised

Eels - I'm going stop pretending that I didn't break your heart

I realised something recently. Mage: the Ascension revised took the right path.
Ok, maybe not with the Avatar Storm.
But the whole "the Technocracy have won and the Traditions magical paradigms are fast becoming a forgotten history" thing now makes perfect sense to me.
It was the only way the line could go, without diverging into Shadowrun.

As such, I am hoping to god the Mage20 becomes a thing. The translation guide has the potential to be a genius addition to the Awakened line, and Mage20 itself should take into account the last 10+ years of Technocratic supremacy and progress.

A moment of clarity / Levels of reality, magic and the Awakened Mage

A number of things have bothered me about Mage: the Awakening since I first read it, and a couple more since I read Changeling: the Dreaming.
These things are mostly to do with my understanding of the Awakened state, the Supernal realms and how magic flows from these realms to our realm.
And Paradox. Mostly Paradox.
Paradox made sense in Mage: the Ascension because magic was all about belief and consensual reality.
Not so in Awakening. There is no consensual reality in this game. Instead, Mages tap into another plane of existence and apply some of the laws of that realm to our own to achieve certain effects.
Apparently.
So, Paradox in Ascension is the rest of the consensus slapping the Mage down.
Paradox in Awakening, on the other hand, is possibly the Mage fucking up and slapping himself. It can also be nearby sentient beings slapping them down because, dammit, people obey the laws of thermo dynamics in this house.
I get that the concept of Paradox is fairly integral to both iterations of Mage, I am just not convinced by how it has been ported across to Awakening and how it has been applied. Without it, Mages (magi?) Would be pretty much unstoppable, able to chuck fireballs, lightening and cars with reckless abandon, control, after and wipe the minds of the rest of the world, transform us all into swine, conquer death and live in luxury.
So, yeah, Paradox.

 Then there's the Supernal realms and the Watchtowers.
Having read Mage: the Awakening, I understood that the Watchtowers were situated within the corresponding Supernal realm, and that's where an Awakening Mage's soul is called to to inscribed their name. Fine. Then I read Changeling: the Dreaming and flicked through its supplement, Equinox Road. Having done so, I had no idea if the Changeling Arcadia was the same place as the Mage Arcadia. Were Awakened souls bypassing the Hedge, and its very serious negative affect on Willworkers? Where in Arcadia is the Watchtower of the Lunargent Thorn?
The Tome of the Watchtowers states that it "...occupies the centermost point of Arcadia..." yet the common descriptions of Arcadia presented by Mages differ significantly to of the escaped Changelings, enough to raise serious doubt that they are talking about the same place.
 Then there's the thematic similarity between the Shadow realm, mostly frequented by Werewolves and Spirits, and the Primal Wild Supernal realm. Also the Underworld from Geist: the Sineaters and the Supernal realm of Stygia. Stepping outside the game world for a second, these duplications of function and theme confuse me.

From a setting design perspective, its not quite right. How do they interact and relate to each other? To my understanding, nWoD is supposed to play nice with itself, and all the different parts are supposed to fit into the bigger picture. These things are not quite fitting, for me.
From a strictly Mage perspective, disregarding any information from other game lines, it all makes sense. That's how the oWoD rolled, though, with it getting sticky the more info from other lines you introduced to your game. NWoD is supposed to be better than that.

 Which brings me to my moment of clarity.
 The Astral Plane. Mages have the ability to explore their own consciousness, sub-conscious and those of the collective human race, as they ascend (descend) through distinct layers of consciousness and dream and collective sub-conscious etc seeking enlightenment, knowledge and things mortal man should not wot of. Importantly (to my theory, at least), during their Awakening, a Mage travels to (or perceives) their Watchtower by way of the Astral plane. They don't physically enter the Supernal realm in question, their Astral form journeys to the Watchtower, leaving their sleeping or semi-conscious body behind.
Which got me thinking - what if the Watchtowers are not actually in the Supernal realms? What if they're in the far reaches of the Astral plane? Maybe the Watchtowers are located at the points of crossing between the Astral plane and each Supernal realm? This would make them more properly Gateways... I'm thinking that the Astral plane can be seen as a bridging point between the Earth and the Supernal realms, that the Exarchs have cut off entry to these realms, so the Watchtowers were built on the realm edges, and are close enough to channel mana from those realms to Earth.
Maybe.
There's probably some fundamental point this theory misses, probably something about how the Shadow forms part of the Fallen World... However, this theory does allow me to reconcile certain things.
Changeling Arcadia is the true Arcadia. The Watchtower of the Lunargent Thorn occupies an area of the Astral plane that reflects Arcadia and is heavily influenced by its proximity to Arcadia. The same also applies to the other Watchtowers.
The Primal Wild is an area of the Astral Plane adjacent to the Shadow.
Stygia is the gateway to the Underworld.
Pandemonium is an entrance to Hell.
The Aether is next to the realm of angels and power.
 All these Supernal realms retain their sovereignty, as do the Watchtowers, and any differences and conflicts that arise from the individual game lines can be rationalized using this model.

I bet if I read the Astral Plane source book, it'll contradict everything I've just said...

Atlantis found / Atlantis lost

BBC News - Lost landscape discovered off Scottish coast
This is so a Mage: the Awakening story waiting to happen...
Or, maybe, Trail of Cthulhu

Let Dream Combat Commence! / Changeling vs Mage vs Psychic

Supplemental to my earlier post about Changeling: the Lost and Inception style combat, I've been flicking through my other nWoD books, trying to determine what other supernaturals can indulge in Oneiromachy.

Reading Mage: the Awakening tells me that a Mage with Mind 4 can enter a sleepers dream and mess around with the content of the dream.

It also tells me that any Mage can enter the Universal Dreamspace, the Teneros, by meditating. They can also use their magic in much the same way as they can in the waking world, with the added bonus of being Paradox free.

There is a suggestion that Mages may encounter the True Fae whilst on an Astral Journey.

Reading Second Sight tells me that both Psychics and Sorcerers can enter dreams and interact with the sleeping world.

They are comparatively defenseless, though.

After all of this, it's also clear that in the dreamworld, Changelings kick ass.

I can see great potential for cross over, both conflict and cooperation, in this.

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Reality rebooted / Mage campaign idea

Age of Ravens



I read this excellent article by Age of Ravens, which talks about the incoming DC Universe reboot and comic book reboots in general, and asks how this could be achieved in an RPG.

The players may be aware that the settings continuity has just been reset, they may not. The same applies to the characters.

So, how could you run a game like this?

My first thoughts were that wouldn't it be cool to have the characters fight to prevent the world ending, fail, and then discover that the whole of reality has been reset, and is carrying on regardless, just with some major changes.

Then I thought 'you could do that with Mage'.

Yup. You could. Easily.

Thinking about it, I think it could be run as a bridging campaign between Mage: the Ascension and Awakening.

The New World of Darkness is a paradigmatic shift away from the Old World of Darkness. Similar, but not the same. Familiar, yet alien.



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