sell me on [Mage: the Awakening]

[Chamchawala's Last Supper]

White Wolf's games almost always click for me. This is the only one where I've really tried and just can't. There are very clearly talented people working on the line, so I'm assuming that this is a matter of not approaching the text correctly.

I don't think I'm in the trap of viewing it through Ascension, anymore. I just don't get its own internal logic: I'll read a supplement that's well regarded, Intruders, say, and it just seems like a litany of stuff: it's a calculator, but an evil calculator; it's a town, but an evil town. I don't get the splats or why I should care about the Lie. I see well written things but can't suture them into a whole.

What are the parts I should be reading, and how should I be reading them?

[Goblinardo]

DaveB's Actual Play threads?

[Christian A]

Any specific setting-related questions you'd like to have answered?

I'm not in the habit of recommending the purchase of more supplements, but I think that Secrets of the Ruined Temple is a great book for the purposes of putting the setting in context.

I don't get the splats or why I should care about the Lie.

The paths are archetypical variations on the Mage theme, which is where they tied in quite a bit real world symbolism. You have mages that are the embodiment of stories and the progression of events, Merlin-style; mages dealing with identity, perception and relationships; the fairly standard necromancers and alchemists; visionaries and dreamers following a divine plan as well as vital, intuitive mages.

Orders, now, are starting points that decide how individual mages deal with the gifts they've been given. You can decide to better humanity's lot and join the Silver Ladder, battling against humanity's jailors, exalting the people and spreading the flame of enlightenment, à la Morpheus from the Matrix. You may choose to see magic as a fragile tool, one that must be protected from those who squander it at all costs, and join up with the Guardians of the Veil; etc.. It all depends on your answer to the archetypical question asked by the storyteller at the beginning of every game: "What do you do?"

The Lie is, well, many things, depending on who you ask. It's the System, and the System needs to be destroyed, according to some Free Council lunatics. It's an imperfect world, but nevertheless the best we can hope for, the Guardians of the Veil might say. It's there. Noone knows what it is. You might find out by joining the servants of those who control the Lie - the Exarchs - but chances are high you won't come back from that.

[Chamchawala's Last Supper]

Originally Posted by Christian A

Any specific setting-related questions you'd like to have answered?

Specific setting questions never really interest me except as a springboard for ideas: if I like and understand a setting, I can always fill that blank space with something; if I don't, welp.

I don't grok Awakening, which would be unremarkable except that I think it's the first Wolf game for which I've tried to and failed. I don't get its internal logic. The abyss is just a series of bad things; the Seers are just a bunch of people who want to oppress everyone in an entirely abstract way, for no ideological reason. I don't see what metaphors are running through the text, like with Vampire and rape and heroin. I know that it's a game about hubris, because people say as much, but I don't understand that it's a game about hubris, in the same way I understand that, say, Exalted is.

I assume that these things are there, because smart people are writing it, but I don't see them. I assume this is because I don't know how to approach the text properly.

[Sex Bobomb]

Originally Posted by Matthias Wasser

I assume that these things are there, because smart people are writing it, but I don't see them. I assume this is because I don't know how to approach the text properly.

nMage is a gamer's game, first and foremost. Its why its so jarringly out of place with the newer WW output, which balances the readability of the oWoD with the smart design lessons learnt with Vampire: the Requiem.

Look at RIFTS, DND, and other more standard roleplaying games and they're essentially what you described nMage as, lists of things.

The key to "getting" Mage: the Awakening is to approach it like it was written for gamers first, and that subtext and all those other things have taken a very firm backseat to "playability."

Of course, one man's playability is another man's HERO. So, YMMV. For those folks who enjoy the lists of stuff, Mage is wonderful, as evidenced by its strong fanbase. For people who like more involved or intricate settings, Mage comes off as being a sort of artifical grouping of lists and factions that have some sort of meaning but aren't really clear.

nMage, to me, is pretty much the anti-Exalted. Foregoing baroque setting for simple worksmanship, how you feel about that ultimatly is up to you.

[Keefe the Thief]

The Core Problem of the nMage corebook is that it is horribly organized and the choice of fonts and layout isn´t any better. Things are all over the place, some spells send you to two different places (sometimes in nWoD core) to look up how they work etc.

That is, you should try to see the book as a toolkit to approach your version of a Mage game: develop your own background and concept, and use the rules to flesh that out (preferably by using lots of sticky notes for the book). It really isn´t a "read me and inspire me how to focus my campaign" type of book like oMage, but it has vastly superior rules (mostly - theres still some bad stuff).

Maybe even try to read a splatbook or location book first - if you want to be inspired, those are a much better choice.

It really is a cool game, and our campaign is lots of fun. However, if i ever meet the guy who chose the font for the spell names... i think i´ll lose wisdom.

[InfernalTeddy]

I used to have the same problem, until I started to think about the gnostic part of mage, reread KULT, and decided to see Mage as the new KULT...

[Fhtagn]

It doesn't make sense, I'm afraid. It's a grab-bag of things the authors thought were cool, tied to a self-inconsistent set of metaphysics. This is covered by the story that if it's consistent it's not horror, and that the random weird things are there to spark imagination.

There is a decent magic system hidden under there, and there are wonderful ideas, albeit often badly formed. If you want to make a game of it, however, you pretty much need to create it yourself and just draw inspiration and elements from what's published, because if you try it as written you'll just get frustrated then bored.

[DaveB]

RPG.net's popular portrayal of Mage as being the unloved, unplayable red-headed stepchild of the World of Darkness is pretty similar to the site's popular portrayal of Exalted as being mechanically unsound. It doesn't neccessarily meet up with reality.

That said, it *is* the awkward middle child of the WoD, like its predeccessor before it. There's something about Mage that is not the same as the other children, but I don't think it's Bobomb's attempt to rationalise everything he doesn't like into "must be some other play style".

IMO, it's this - Vampire and Werewolf are your classic "once-human monsters" games, Vampire especially. Humans are things to be feared and envied.

Changeling and Promethean, the younger games, have humanity as a thing to be aspired to. Changeling is about reclaiming your life after abuse. Promethean about becoming a person. The new World of Darkness tries hard to make the normal human being something other than a joke.

Mage is aligned entirely the other way - it's about people who have what all the other game lines envy or try to get but aren't satisfied. Humans that turn themselves into monsters chasing power. The anti-Changeling, if you will.

Everything's about that power. The Lie is the Gnostic vision of the world - the world of darkness we know is the proverbial shadows on the back of a cave, with the Supernal as the light and the Abyss as the thing casting the shadows, interposing itself and creating reality as we know it as a result.

And incidentally, Matthias? That's what the Abyss is - it's negatives. That isn't a calculator, it's the thing that makes a calculator shape when you shine the Aether behind it. Abyssal Intrusions are things like mathematics gone wrong, language gone wrong, false histories that kill and parasites that reverse your sense of pain so you become addicted to eating glass. They're *lies*. The Supernal is everything that Is, the Abyss is everything that Is Not and the World of Darkness the interface between the two.

Mages are obssessed with Truth, though they have a funny way of showing it. They've squinted out into the light and convinced themselves that it's better than staying in the cave. Never mind that the cave is neccessary for human life as we know it. Never mind that fire burns - the Supernal is True therefore it must be Right.

Mages give themselves magical identities - their Shadow Names - only partially out of a sense of self-preservation. It's not *that* big an effect on sympathetic magic, after all, not until you get (through Archmastery) close enough to touch the light and replace your real name with it entirely. It's a rejection of the world and recasting themselves as they want to be. Luminous beings we are, not this crude matter. Mages lose wisdom as they deny their responsibility to the world in favour of chasing Ascension or becoming wrapped up in their power. They cling to half-remembered bits and pieces of the Ur-Civilisation the Guardians of the Veil would like everyone to call "Atlantis" because it was closer to Truth, and those that don't like it as a myth substitute their own quests.

Never mind that the last time anyone walked out of the cave en masse they killed the campers, took over the camp fire outside and built a sturdy gate over the cave's entrance so noone else can get out.

And the Light isn't Nice. The Primal Wild is not a cartoon Eden (I personally have been gently corrected when Freelancing for comparing it to Eden in the same sense that Aether is often compared to Heaven). It's the Truth of Nature, and the Truth of Nature is not a pleasent place for humans to visit. The Aether is the Truth of Power; not for the faint-hearted, even for those that prefer beautiful women with fluffy wings to old-testement visions of how Angels appear and behave.

What kind of person rejects everything around them, in favour of chasing the ability to play with that kind of fire? They'd have to be *crazy*. Visionary. Inspired, reckless, hubristic and any other adjectives you like.

That's Mage. Marching wide-eyed into certain destruction out of a sense of a better world. The Tarot Fool at the edge of the cliff. When the end comes and they get chewed up by the things they go poking into in this world, the Abyssal things they try to force their way past, the Supernal things they're trying to grab by the tail or (most often) their own fellow Mages, shoving and jostling for prime tail-grabbing position, there's no True Fae, Demiurge or Sire they can point to - it's all their own fault.

[Bulya]

Originally Posted by InfernalTeddy

I used to have the same problem, until I started to think about the gnostic part of mage, reread KULT, and decided to see Mage as the new KULT...

You know....I think that explains a lot. I really didn't like KULT either.