Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 11:42 am
Chapter Three: History Lessons
So, all White Wolf games are obligated to have history chapters, and those histories inevitably stretch back to the dawn of time because reasons. This is stupid. This is particularly stupid in Mage, where reality is consensual and the past constantly changes based on what people believe happened, making history a largely fact-free zone. it is incredibly stupid for the Technocracy because unlike all other major factions in the oWoD the Technocracy is essentially modern. It's one thing to talk about events thousands of years ago in Vampire, where thousand year old beings are still around and represent a functional part of the setting, or even in werewolf where you can hypothetically talk to immortal spirits and shit, but the Union really doesn't care very much about anything before around 1600 CE - it's all mythic path that point. As a result this chapter (which is the longest one so far) is an epic waste of space. This is doubly so when the authors chose to double down on vague uselessness and go all historicity on their recollection and talk about multiple interpretations and viewpoints and shit. No one cares about any of that, we just need data that can inform actual stories not philosophizing.
So I'm not even going to talk about the pre-modern parts. That's ten pages you simply do not need to read.
really no need to start earlier than this
Now in terms of the modern, at least potentially relevant historical pieces there's a couple of other things. First, none of the historical accounts presents in various Mage books are consistent in the slightest. Many of the various important events are relate one way in the core book, another way in this book, a third way in the relevant splatbook, and if they occur anywhere else a fourth way there. As a result the actual history of something like the career of Lord Vargo the zeppelin emperor is totally unknowable: canon does not agree with itself.
not this emperor zeppelin, though then again, maybe so
Then there's the additional issue of how actual real world historical figures interact with Technocratic history, which leads to one of the major conundrums of Mage: was everyone important who ever lived a mage or weren't they? The traditions largely elide this question by being 'outside of society' for centuries so they only have to probe this question for ancient figures like Lao Tzu or weirdos like Aleister Crowley. By contrast, when it comes to the Technocracy a decision has to be made with regard to nearly every major figure in the advancement of the sciences from the enlightenment onward. The result is about as ridiculously messy as you might expect. Some examples: it is strongly implied that the modern form of the Technocratic Union was dictated by Queen Victoria, but it is an open question whether she was 'enlightened.' Johnnes Kepler explicitly was enlightened, lived for centuries, and landed on the moon in 1892 (really), meanwhile Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project generally apparently were not.
no Technocrats to see here, move along
While this is generally just stupid, it can be worse. Witness the case of Alan Turing. In Mage he was absolutely one of the enlightened - also powerful as fuck - and he was part of the Virtual Adepts in their little 'hey we don't like our bosses much so we're going to jump ship' conspiracy that has never been well justified. The fate of Alan Turing is related in at least five MtA books, including this one. Everyone version is significantly different from the others, but none of them manage to get around to mentioning how Turing was prosecuted by the UK government for being gay and that this probably had something to do with his untimely death. Maybe, if you didn't feel like addressing that, you could have avoided making Turing such a centerpiece of the secret history.
In other news this chapter includes the usual stupidity about WWII - how neither Hitler nor any member of his inner circle were mages. They are at least willing to shove 'nephandic aid' in there, but that's all. In truth is it really quite unclear how WWII could have even happened given the Technocracy's existence, or that if it did, how it didn't manage to fracture the organization in half. The chapter tiptoes around that particular question quietly.
seriously, move along, nothing to see here
The concluding bits of this chapter more or less declare Technocratic victory, of a sort, by listing off some major achievements by each of the various conventions - whose names must be getting very tiresome considering they haven't been officially introduced in any sort of systematic way. There's also a page long sidebar on how the Union uses its influence to try and avoid a major balance of power conflict that would launch WWIII by channeling government energy into smaller, side conflicts. It has a very high ratio of BS to actual information. Then, of course, there's the obligatory summary of the very recent metaplot developments (which wouldn't be properly codified until Mage Revised came out, so they lack any rules) and a prophecy that the end of the world is nigh.
inescapable
All in all, this is a really dumb chapter and it is full of gobbledygook. Thankfully, because the Technocracy is a ruthlessly modern organization managed in a modern way you don't have to care about almost all of it. This is a big leg up on Vampire - where you absolute do care about shit Tremere was doing a thousand years ago - or even Mage - where all the important big dick NPCs are hundreds of years old and remember this crap and take it personally. So the verdict is largely stupid but irrelevant.
verdict
So, all White Wolf games are obligated to have history chapters, and those histories inevitably stretch back to the dawn of time because reasons. This is stupid. This is particularly stupid in Mage, where reality is consensual and the past constantly changes based on what people believe happened, making history a largely fact-free zone. it is incredibly stupid for the Technocracy because unlike all other major factions in the oWoD the Technocracy is essentially modern. It's one thing to talk about events thousands of years ago in Vampire, where thousand year old beings are still around and represent a functional part of the setting, or even in werewolf where you can hypothetically talk to immortal spirits and shit, but the Union really doesn't care very much about anything before around 1600 CE - it's all mythic path that point. As a result this chapter (which is the longest one so far) is an epic waste of space. This is doubly so when the authors chose to double down on vague uselessness and go all historicity on their recollection and talk about multiple interpretations and viewpoints and shit. No one cares about any of that, we just need data that can inform actual stories not philosophizing.
So I'm not even going to talk about the pre-modern parts. That's ten pages you simply do not need to read.
really no need to start earlier than this
Now in terms of the modern, at least potentially relevant historical pieces there's a couple of other things. First, none of the historical accounts presents in various Mage books are consistent in the slightest. Many of the various important events are relate one way in the core book, another way in this book, a third way in the relevant splatbook, and if they occur anywhere else a fourth way there. As a result the actual history of something like the career of Lord Vargo the zeppelin emperor is totally unknowable: canon does not agree with itself.
not this emperor zeppelin, though then again, maybe so
Then there's the additional issue of how actual real world historical figures interact with Technocratic history, which leads to one of the major conundrums of Mage: was everyone important who ever lived a mage or weren't they? The traditions largely elide this question by being 'outside of society' for centuries so they only have to probe this question for ancient figures like Lao Tzu or weirdos like Aleister Crowley. By contrast, when it comes to the Technocracy a decision has to be made with regard to nearly every major figure in the advancement of the sciences from the enlightenment onward. The result is about as ridiculously messy as you might expect. Some examples: it is strongly implied that the modern form of the Technocratic Union was dictated by Queen Victoria, but it is an open question whether she was 'enlightened.' Johnnes Kepler explicitly was enlightened, lived for centuries, and landed on the moon in 1892 (really), meanwhile Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project generally apparently were not.
no Technocrats to see here, move along
While this is generally just stupid, it can be worse. Witness the case of Alan Turing. In Mage he was absolutely one of the enlightened - also powerful as fuck - and he was part of the Virtual Adepts in their little 'hey we don't like our bosses much so we're going to jump ship' conspiracy that has never been well justified. The fate of Alan Turing is related in at least five MtA books, including this one. Everyone version is significantly different from the others, but none of them manage to get around to mentioning how Turing was prosecuted by the UK government for being gay and that this probably had something to do with his untimely death. Maybe, if you didn't feel like addressing that, you could have avoided making Turing such a centerpiece of the secret history.
In other news this chapter includes the usual stupidity about WWII - how neither Hitler nor any member of his inner circle were mages. They are at least willing to shove 'nephandic aid' in there, but that's all. In truth is it really quite unclear how WWII could have even happened given the Technocracy's existence, or that if it did, how it didn't manage to fracture the organization in half. The chapter tiptoes around that particular question quietly.
seriously, move along, nothing to see here
The concluding bits of this chapter more or less declare Technocratic victory, of a sort, by listing off some major achievements by each of the various conventions - whose names must be getting very tiresome considering they haven't been officially introduced in any sort of systematic way. There's also a page long sidebar on how the Union uses its influence to try and avoid a major balance of power conflict that would launch WWIII by channeling government energy into smaller, side conflicts. It has a very high ratio of BS to actual information. Then, of course, there's the obligatory summary of the very recent metaplot developments (which wouldn't be properly codified until Mage Revised came out, so they lack any rules) and a prophecy that the end of the world is nigh.
inescapable
All in all, this is a really dumb chapter and it is full of gobbledygook. Thankfully, because the Technocracy is a ruthlessly modern organization managed in a modern way you don't have to care about almost all of it. This is a big leg up on Vampire - where you absolute do care about shit Tremere was doing a thousand years ago - or even Mage - where all the important big dick NPCs are hundreds of years old and remember this crap and take it personally. So the verdict is largely stupid but irrelevant.
verdict