short version of Mage the Ascension?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 12:35 pm

First off: No, I can't just play something else. OWoD is what's being run, it's entertaining, and the group is really resistant to changing systems. Suggestions of playing a different system are no help, really. I will probably eventually introduce them to AWoD, but not right now.

So, could someone give me the "short" version of casting, how they take damage, and maybe some of the better tricks.

For reference, my character's a dual-tradition Dreamspeaker/Son of Aether, with Forces 2, Matter 1, Prime 1, Spirit 3.

I was kinda damned lucky, actually, the way it's being run is that the other players pick what a given person will play. So... they chose mage for me. It's the first thing I've ever really won.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 1:05 pm

Mage the Ascension is a legacy system that has been printed more than once with wholly different game mechanics. Variable and fixed TN, for example, so the differences are hueg like an X Box.

In any version however they will try to dangle physical combat proficiency as something you give a fuck about. This is a sicker joke even than nWoD, because a starting character can seriously cast Nail to the Sky spontaneously, and this is explicitly referred to as a "minor force manipulation." All versions of Mage have hundreds of pages of pre-made spells called "Rotes" that don't even matter save that you can dumpster dive through them to find a gem here and there that has capabilities far in excess of what you can otherwise do with your spheres. In general, you will take level 3 in whatever your Tradition's sphere is and then you will spam spontaneous OMGWTFPWNAGE! over everyone and everything.

There's an entire thing where you are required by law to buy up your Avatar as far as it will go so that you can do long lasting magic, but that seriously doesn't matter much because as previously noted hurling people into fucking space is considered a minor, temporary change.

In general, Mage makes probably the least sense internally of any of the oWoD minigames. Which doesn't make it the worst, but does mean that if you can get everyone to play Vampire instead that you should. Do not try to play a Vampire in a mage game, because even the WTF-Cheaters from that system (Tremere, Setites, any of the Necromancer subclans) pale in comparison to Mages. Seriously, this is a game where transforming the air around someone into gaseous iron that will then crystalize on them releasing hudreds of thousands of kilojoules in the process is considered to be a "basic transmutation" and comes in with your second dot of Matter.

The game's spontaneous magic is based on magical teaparty and incredibly open ended and horrendously powerful arbitrary limits to what you can do. Anyone with an even passing familiarity with chemistry, physics, or biology can take these powers and rape the world. I am not even kidding.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 1:16 pm

son of a bitch... I knew I should have paid attention in high school science...

Well, one thing I've noticed is that when writing the book they went for encouraging esoteric occultnik bullshit fests over... well, actually explaining anything, like avatars, or quintessence (though quint. is explained... semi-decently, I just have an acquaintance who literally possesses the trope obfuscating stupidity... he says something and my brain just shuts down in defense... makes it really difficult to explain shit to him). How rampant is this in (2nd edition revised) Mage? How much does it generally matter?

and what do I need to turn vampires into lawn chairs?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 7:29 pm

Prak wrote:and what do I need to turn vampires into lawn chairs?

Vampires are not alive, so you get to affect them with Matter as if they were normal inanimate objects. So Matter 2 to transform them into stone or salt, and Matter 3 to turn them into Lawn Chairs. It takes Matter 4 to transform vampires into wind-up dolls.

But here's the deal: it takes Matter five to actually change basic properties of matter. So making water have a lower freezing point is seriously level five, but changing a tiny amount of the water to ethylene glycol so that the total has a lower freezing point is only Matter 2. So actually knowing the properties of chemicals makes you win the game with Matter. There's a similar thing with Forces, where creating a new force to throw something around requires high levels of Forces but you can cancel out the equal and opposite forces that keep things from flying off in crazy directions with Forces 2. Knowing Physics makes you win the game with Forces. Similarly, actually killing a human with Life requires Life 4, but merely causing them to be overgrown with flesh eating staph and dissolve into pink and yellow goo is only Life 2. Biology for the win.

All the spheres follow the same pattern:
1 - Detect X, almost completely fucking useless.
2 - Abide by some completely arbitrary limitations that keep you from doing anything intricate but in no way limit you from doing powerful things.
3 - As level 2 but you get intricacy restrictions lifted.
4 - You get your restrictions further reduced so you no longer have to be creative or know what you're talking about to do the powerful effects from level 2.
5 - make up universal laws and properties of matter and energy as you go along, play with cartoon physics.

So basically, level 2 turns you into an actual god if you know what you are talking about with regards to your discipline. Higher levels allow you to be less creative and knowledgeable and still do essentially the same effects. I am pretty sure it is written for non-science majors, because the restrictions they have are pretty much meaningless if you are.

For example, with Matter 2 you are not allowed to change temperatures or states, but you are allowed to change elemental and chemical composition. So you can transform the floor into solid nitrogen, which will immediately sublimate and absorb so much temperature doing so that it will freeze bomb the entire room. The simple properties of room temperature solid nitrogen are so dramatic that the restriction that you can't lower temperatures with it is totally meaningless. At least, it is if you know how heating curves work. And so on and so forth.

Note: with all the incredible cosmic power handed out with the three materialistic "pattern" spheres (Matter, Forces, Life), you may wonder what the point of the other six spheres is. And that's... a very good question. Mind is pretty neat in that the lowest level of sensing thoughts is pretty bad ass. But it's not really something you'd bother going up in, since actual recognizable mind control doesn't come in until level 4. There really aren't any things you can do with "real knowledge" of dreams and thoughts and shit. Entropy is basically just a shittier version of the hard sciences - you get to mess with "chance" while the real spheres let you just fiat events. Correspondence is something that you'd kind of consider pumping up if you were in a long campaign. It gives you teleportation, forcefields, and clairvoyance. But really, this is literally something you get instead of being able to turn anyone you want into Carbonite-Solo with a thought. Time takes until level 3 to give you super speed and won't actually let you be Neo from the Matrix until level 4. Spirit and Prime are basically metamagic and don't really do anything because the magic is so incoherent that no one can tell you what metaing it would even do.

Prak wrote:Well, one thing I've noticed is that when writing the book they went for encouraging esoteric occultnik bullshit fests over... well, actually explaining anything, like avatars, or quintessence (though quint. is explained... semi-decently, I just have an acquaintance who literally possesses the trope obfuscating stupidity... he says something and my brain just shuts down in defense... makes it really difficult to explain shit to him). How rampant is this in (2nd edition revised) Mage? How much does it generally matter?

The less you can interact with the plot, the better. Fundamentally, the whole thing comes down to you living in The Matrix except there is no real world. It's all just raw power (called quintessence) and equations. Things are what they are because of the "patterns" layered on the quint. This is why the pattern spheres are so amazingly powerful. They let you do anything, because all things are just patterns. Why they felt the need to have any other spheres at that point is sort of beyond me.

The big thing game mechanically from all that crap is that there are seriously backgrounds that determine how "awesome" you are. You need to take those. It might imply that your character is more attune to the mystic bullshit or whatever, but whatever.

The other thing to keep in mind is that straight up the Traditions are the bad guys. The good guys are the Technocratic Union. Which is sort of too bad, because there isn't a standard Technocracy faction that does Matter. Although you can pretty much swing being a Son of Ether and still be in the Technocracy. The entire book series is written by fucking hippie fascists who think that refrigerators are a tool of oppression because they get in the way of enlightened people being able to abandon civilization to wallow in plague and filth while they pursue personal enlightenment.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 7:54 pm

well, I'll have to read up on some basic chem, physics and bio... and I'm kinda sad that Spirit is basically useless... I started WoD with Werewolf so I kinda got the whole "there are spirits of EVERYTHING' intro. I like Dreamspeakers because to me spirit magic seems to be the easy button.

Hell, my power thing is unleashing angry spirits on people... I have yet to use it though...
fuck, I'm waiting for the point where I can seal angry spirits into people...

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 8:06 pm

Dreamspeakers completely suck. Hard. Seriously, that thing that Garou can do just for getting up in the morning where they can step across the gauntlet and talk to spirits? That's Spirit Three. And you don't get to anything else. Even seeing those fucking Avatar souls that people have is Spirit Five.

And yeah, Genesis the level 9 D&D spell is Spirit Five too, but despite its total ridiculousness it actually costs so much Quint that it isn't worth it.

Ironically, the Spirit sphere isn't playing on Easy, it's playing on Hard. What it does is open up extra dungeons filled with monsters without otherwise letting you do anything. So if you're enough of a badass that you are pretty much master of your reality (Forces 4 or 5 for example), you can start buying up Spirit in order to access the literally dozens of extra dimensions that Mage has that are filled with badass demons.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 8:18 pm

well... goddamn... I'm very glad I'm dual tradition then... though the Spirit sphere does seem like it has some fun things it can do... I was about to awaken a door last night and ask it nicely to open, but the demon was able to ghostwalk through.

though, we aren't actually paying a whole hell of a lot of attention to the limits on sphere ratings... I created an id card out of nothing and reformed another character's buck knife last night with Matter 1...

How do abilities and magic interact?
How does one increase their avatar rating?
What's the best way to find nodes? (I bought one at character creation, but due to chronicle setup, I don't know where the hell it is...)

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 8:30 pm

Why is Mage even in World of Darkness?

Everytime I hear about Mage it makes me wonder just what does this have to do with Monsters or Killing Monsters. From what I understand, Mage gives superpowers without actually giving you angst, darkness, an alien mindset, or a course of physical/spiritual destruction. Sure, there are goals and factions and all that shit, but at that point you may as well be playing a superhero.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 8:41 pm

I seem to recall as a Dreamspeaker you can take Backgrounds such that you have a teacher who comes to visit and teach you in your dreams... Damn. No book means I can't remember how to justify that, but it's useful. Two separate backgrounds, one for teaching and one for dreaming, I think.

Itay K · Post by **Itay K** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 8:41 pm

Regarding the Correspondence sphere: as in D&D, scry and die is a fairly effective technique that pretty much screws with traditional plots. While normal people's presence causes overt magic to draw Paradox, supernatural beings either a) have a way to stop scrying and/or teleport, or b) are auto-gibbed by characters with slightly more than starting XP.

As mentioned, Spirit and Entropy are completely arbitrary, and while the physical Spheres make the tiny bit of effort at supplying a base-ground for the Magical Tea Party going on, the aforementioned ones are basically a crapshoot - oWoD had at least three contradictory spirit worlds, and Entropy in its "fate/destiny" interpretation was basically a Metagame sphere that provided answers to the questions "is this character important to the plot?" "what is this characters importance to the plot?" "may I please arbitrarily modify the plot, pretty please with cherries on top?"

In short - the Sphere system was cute but had no semblance of balance at all. Furthermore, since the most integral part of the game was only marginally more "systemized" than complete freeform storytelling, the fact that it was tacked on to the horrible oWoD system was rather insulting.

souran · Post by **souran** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 9:14 pm

You should very quickly acertain how these people play.

OWOD is totally gm fiat driven anyway. Its rules don't work or generate anything like consistant results just run raw. However, this appears to be author's intent as this somehow makes the game awesome for storytelling mode.

Really, all that physics badassery works only if your gamemaster allows it. Which is hard to know before playing. If your gamemaster knows no physics they just won't get the results you try to explain. If they know alot they might expect you to play that way and not playing that way will slam your ass with so much paradox that demons will shoot out of your farts.

Similarly sometimes if you have a know nothing dm or a dm that is a paranormal believer type then playing the lucky mage can sometimes be uber. I think one of the sample things is making it so that you readjust the universe so that you just happen to be standing over a now open manhole when people start shooting at you is level 2. Yeah, it turns you into mr. bean but I know that it was one way to get massively vulgar results from spells that were effectively zero paradox.

Anyway, the point is that espeically in mage where whatever you want to do you basically just have to say that you cast a spell to do that means that you are REALLY in magic tea party land while if there are any vamp pcs they just have their foot in the door compared to you.

Orca · Post by **Orca** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 11:16 pm

Agreed on the GM fiat. All that stuff Frank was talking about condensing gaseous iron on people to kill them etc? Won't work if the GM uses the damage caps which tell you how much damage a given level of a sphere is allowed to do.

Now, I wouldn't have bought Spirit up to 3 but now you have it you have a get out of jail free card. Spirit 2 is summoning IIRC so you need to find out what spirits are available for you to summon. There may or may not be prerequisites in other spheres required.

Forces 2 is manipulate electromagnetism. So you can turn invisible by bending light around yourself, create visual illusions likewise, taser people and have general fun with magnetic materials like iron/steel.

You want Matter 2, Prime 2 ASAP. It's fairly cheap when you have level 1 in each already and creating matter is easily abusable even with a rat-bastard GM.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 12:21 am

Two Questions, Frank, form someone who's never read oWoD but has herd it discussed

1: I understand that the cost to do a spell is based on how many people notice it and how obviously magical it is. Wouldn't that make time and Mind pretty damn useful? I mean, you could do a lot of REALLY powerful effects inconspicuously.

2: Why would you be allowed to do that kind of Chemistry and Physics tricks? I though Mage explicitly didn't believe chemistry really exists, it's a lie propagated by the Technocracy. If you can do magic because you believe in ancient traditions, then you shouldn't be able to use conjured matter or force to do anything wildly outside what the ancients would expect that substance to do, no?

endersdouble · Post by **endersdouble** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 3:01 am

Frank: well, shit. MtA is one of my favorite games ever--despite it being totally fucking broken. I admit that maybe it's not for everyone, and as a fucking professional working scientist the hippie-bullshit bothers me, but for some reason I really love the basic premises:

1. Matrix, but no real world: the premise of science, that experiments are repeatable and consistent with one another, is wrong. Belief affects results.

2. Everyone has a different belief set; these are inconsistent. The universe doesn't care that much, but what's a universe between friends^H mortal religious enemies?

3. Every magical--or even magically cast in literature, think about The Hacker character archetype--is and can be real, and therefore is.

And the oWoD storyteller system mechanic (d10 for successes, 1-5dot based characters ) isn't totally broken...is it? I know it has issues (linear build costs, quadratic improvement costs) but I certainly haven't seen you tear it a new one.

So Frank, if I want to play MtA but in a not-totally-broken way, can this be done? Honestly, I liked--yes, I'm weird--game breaking down for half an hour to discuss "hmm, can you do this with those spheres". The plot didn't get advanced but the discussion was interesting. Nonetheless, I accept that this is probably not what most people want; do you think 1,2,3 can all be the case, /affect gameplay/ (I don't want it to be "your magic is whatever you say it is, but that's just fluff: everyone casts precisely the same spells" like Shadowrun), and /work/ as a game like you generally want?

souran · Post by **souran** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 3:12 am

Boolean:

The problem with old mage is that paradox is based on reality as we know it because its what most sleepers believe. The more sleepers who view something the more paradox it creates. Even in a place where nobody can actually see its better to try and stick to reality as believed than to actually just magic at something.

Again, because almost all charts, effects, and powers are limited ONLY by how much the game master decides at that time to let you do and paradox happens even when making trees fall in a forest with nobody to hear the sound that means that regardless for paradox purposes you should stick to things that are "manipulations of reality" instead of trying to impose your will on reality.

That is really the deal with all the mage displines espeically in old wod. In MTA what your game master knows and allows and BELIEVES is actually way more important than the rules.

In DND a fireball spell is pretty clear, even the complex spells are pretty straightforward. But old mage is really based on

1) What knowledge your storyteller has. If they think they are a physicst then you are probably better at the science badassery. However, if they are say a lawyer then who knows dominating peoples minds might be easier because he knows people are gullible or whatever.

2) What your storyteller believes! If your storyteller believes some crazy shit then your magic can do crazy shit. If he thinks that something that is obviously fake is true then you just have to run with it.

3) What yoru storyteller thinks is NORMAL. This is the hardest one. Is making mininukes through magic vulgar or incidental? Well that basically depends entirely on dm fiat. Once again if your gamemaster believes in black helicopters or that all people are super suspicious or that gasoline explodes when struck by bullets or whatever that becomes the reality you have to check your paradox against.

These things all suck. Not only do you have to try and make sense to yourself, but its like playing your gamemasters wanky threapist. The game only works if you can figure out the gm.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 3:24 am

I have no idea what the technocracy hasn't just killed all the other traditions as well.

sake · Post by **sake** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 4:13 am

Boolean wrote:
1: I understand that the cost to do a spell is based on how many people notice it and how obviously magical it is. Wouldn't that make time and Mind pretty damn useful? I mean, you could do a lot of REALLY powerful effects inconspicuously.

Time was one the of few things they bothered to nerf down hard. Pretty much any thing useful you could do with Time would cost auto paradox for some reason, even just a basic haste type spell. For some things the rules just seemed to consider fricking Reality itself to count as a witness for stuff.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 4:22 am

Well, the book I've got says that any vulgar effect nets you one paradox.
ANY vulgar effect, ONE paradox....

so...

Pulling money out of an empty wallet in front of a sleeper= 1 Paradox
The skyhook thing from Dark Knight picking your ass up in the middle of a field= 1 Paradox
Pulling a chainsaw out of your ass= 1 Paradox
Producing a full jetliner from a briefcase= 1 Paradox
Summoning a green flying monkey that shoots lightning out of it's ass, that appears in the ass of an enemy and must fight it's way out= 1 Paradox.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 7:04 am

Wasnt that an vulgar effect is one extra paradox?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 7:18 am

nope, "Even if it succeeds, a vulgar Effect earns one point of paradox."

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 8:47 am

Boolean wrote:Two Questions, Frank, form someone who's never read oWoD but has herd it discussed

1: I understand that the cost to do a spell is based on how many people notice it and how obviously magical it is. Wouldn't that make time and Mind pretty damn useful? I mean, you could do a lot of REALLY powerful effects inconspicuously.

Not really. Time and Mind are so "obviously" good if you´re trying to do things without people seeing it that the game nerfs them to fuck. Actually changing what people think and perceive is seriously Mind 4, and starting characters only go up to 3. The rest is all Dream Interpretation and shit that is supposed to be useful for deep philosophical way finding and crap. It doesn´t actually let you DO anything.

Time, similarly, fucks you by having all the effects count as vulgar regardless of what you do or what anyone else perceives and having giant spider-like time demons waiting in the time stream to attack you on a moment´s notice if you fudge the timeline at all.

Boolean wrote:2: Why would you be allowed to do that kind of Chemistry and Physics tricks? I though Mage explicitly didn't believe chemistry really exists, it's a lie propagated by the Technocracy. If you can do magic because you believe in ancient traditions, then you shouldn't be able to use conjured matter or force to do anything wildly outside what the ancients would expect that substance to do, no?

The entire philosophy behind Mage is nonsenical psycho-babble that cannot be made to make sense. Just for starters: Evolution is explicitly true (it defines the Life Sphere) despite the fact that people don´t believe in it. But basically, it takes active effort on your part to keep things from reverting to the dominant paradigm. Ideally, you can make gaseous iron at 20°. This literally requires Matter 2 and the presence of some air. And as long as you concentrate on it, it´ll stay that way. As soon as you let go (and at Matter 2 you have to let go pretty soon), it will follow the dominant technocratic paradigm and do what 20° gaseous iron would do under the cruel forced pattern of "chemistry" - which is to revert to a solid and give off condensation and freezing energy for Iron (which, by the way, is a lot).

But really, Mage fails at the first step of being a game at all. By claiming that reality and the effects of actions are neither deterministic nor probabilistic, it reduces all action to meaninglessness. The answers to all questions are Giant Frog. You can´t do anything without the storyteller deciding that you´re going to do it.

I mean consider: Prak is talking about making actual material with Matter 1: specifically outside Matter 1´s actual limits. If the storyteller is deciding that people´s actions can have effects that are specifically excluded by the rules, what the hell is left? And that´s pretty much every Mage game ever. There is honestly no point in having a character sheet in Mage. Your dice pools and stuff don´t mean anything because the results of your actions are not determined by your character´s abilities or by the results of your die rolls.

souran wrote:That is really the deal with all the mage displines espeically in old wod. In MTA what your game master knows and allows and BELIEVES is actually way more important than the rules.

Precisely. A substantial majority of people on Earth believe in some form of woo bullshit or another, and Mage tells the storyteller that their beliefs are imposed on them by the Science Scouts and that underneath that there´s a bunch of incomprehensible hippie bullshit. So maybe you can heal people by pumping Prime into crystals or magnets or something to enhance their natural healing powers. I don´t fucking know, and without getting into your storyteller´s mother issues and paranormal beliefs, neither do you.

The fact is, you need to have a deterministic or probabalistic universe if you´re going to have a shared experience. You can have people manipulate reality and crap, but there needs to be A reality that they are manipulating. Mage straight up denies that. Mage is a game that spends 500 pages on its magic system to tell you in so many words that you can´t possibly know how the magic system works or what it does.

-Username17

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 8:57 am

Posts of Frank Trollman reminded me why I fucking hate oMage. They serve as excellent illustrations that oMage is the game where your ability to do anyting is largely depended on your ability to convince/fast-talk/bullshit the GM.

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 9:04 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Why is Mage even in World of Darkness?

Everytime I hear about Mage it makes me wonder just what does this have to do with Monsters or Killing Monsters. From what I understand, Mage gives superpowers without actually giving you angst, darkness, an alien mindset, or a course of physical/spiritual destruction. Sure, there are goals and factions and all that shit, but at that point you may as well be playing a superhero.

Why you are surprised? oWoD always was in large part about dark superheroes. Or supervillains. It was, like, one of the three main pillars of gameplay (others were soap opera and jockeying for political power; angst is not good for more than one game). I suspect that ignoring this fundamental truth is one of the main reasons why nWoD fails so hard.

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 9:16 am

endersdouble wrote: So Frank, if I want to play MtA but in a not-totally-broken way, can this be done?

I'm not Frank, but, well, obviously you can, because quite a lot of people did (and probably still do) that. Of cource, you'll need to bring your own balance, preferably by discussing at length with your GM how magic is supposed to work. MtA also absolutely demands mutual goodwill and understanding between players and GM, because if GM tries to actually be antagonistic, or players try to fast-talk their way to da powah, the game will fall apart.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 2:49 pm

FatR wrote:
endersdouble wrote: So Frank, if I want to play MtA but in a not-totally-broken way, can this be done?
I'm not Frank, but, well, obviously you can, because quite a lot of people did (and probably still do) that.

I dispute that. I have never heard of someone playing a non-broken game of Mage. Enjoyable yes. Non-broken, never.

-Username17