Is it possible to play Mage: the Ascension in practice?

[Caim]

I've recently obtained a copy of Mage 20 (Mage: the Ascension 20th anniversary), and I really dig how magic works in this setting, with the whole slapping Spheres together, requiring a justification for how you just did what you just did. However, I can already see that this is going to go to shit when actually trying to play the game.

First you'll need to be able to determine what Spheres you need for your magic, how to cast to not make your magic vulgar and then finally roll. And that's where the issue lies. Determining what Spheres you need to cast will involve arguing with the Storyteller and your fellow players, digging through the books to see what it'll take to cast or even worse: you know what you want to achieve but not how to do it with the Spheres you have. This'll bog down the game significantly, especially when you have to figure out a way to justify this to make your magic coincidenal rather than vulgar.

All this makes me feel that a game of Mage is incredibly slow because players and Storytellers are constantly arguing and looking things up to not be cockslapped by Paradox or be able to cast magic at all. Is this true? Are there workarounds for this? Or is this all BS and does Mage work just fine?

 

[Alex]

When I GMed the game, I was rather open as to what spheres you needed for what. I thought it was interesting to have different paradigms allow you to use spheres differently (or even alternative spheres). The game wasn't fast by any standards, but I don't think it got too bogged down. Then again making magic up in the spot didn't happen all that frequently, and every player had some rotes to help establish what was their character's deal (I also had a more open approach to rotes than standard).

About paradox, I think paradox as it is described just doesn't work. So I decided that paradox depended on whether people could or not perceive something is amiss. This meant that you could get paradox way after you had cast the spell, but I think it worked alright.

 

[Excidium II]

My advice is to not play a game like this with complete morons. It's a game for mature players and it's not because of penis and vaginas.

 

[Havoc]

Here's the problem with your logic.

termining what Spheres you need to cast will involve arguing with the Storyteller and your fellow players,

Just stop there. The ST tells you what Spheres are needed to cast the Effect you want and that's it. Do you have enough Spheres? Yes? Then you can try to cast it. No? Then no. End of story.

And if you are that kind of person that needs to have everything in rules, mechanics and can't grasp the easy magic system of Mage, then there is a rulebook just for you. "M20 How Do You DO That?"

 

[Xathrodox86]

My advice is to not play a game like this with complete morons. It's a game for mature players and it's not because of penis and vaginas.

True. Of all the classic WoD range, M:TA is certainly the most mature and abstract. I couldn't play it with my group. Between all the dick/butt jokes and whatnot, the atmosphere would evaporate faster than air on a derelict space station.

 

[lightbane]

M20 has also been written by Brucato, which won't help you much. I would suggest checking Revised and the Traditions/Technocracy sourcebooks (depending on what side are you going to play). Also, before anything else, establish with the GM when something counts as vulgar magic and when not to avoid being slammed by the PARADOX! hammer. It is the base of all Mage games from what I read so far.

 

[Alex]

Here's the problem with your logic.

termining what Spheres you need to cast will involve arguing with the Storyteller and your fellow players,

Just stop there. The ST tells you what Spheres are needed to cast the Effect you want and that's it. Do you have enough Spheres? Yes? Then you can try to cast it. No? Then no. End of story.
(snip...)

Thing is, at least in the games I've played, an effect doesn't dictate what spheres you need. Rather, the way you achieve the effect does. For instance, if you want to paralyze someone, you could conceivably use any of the nine spheres to do it (possibly with the help of another one in some cases). Using matter, you could envelop your target in some hard substance (so matter 2 should be enough for it, though with matter 4 you would need less successes). Using forces 4 you could change kinetic force generated by your target into pressure, making it incapable of moving. You could use life 4 to change the person's body so that it was incapable of moving. You could use prime 5 to cut off the primal force flow that allows movement to a person (also, I would argue that using this with life 4 would allow for the spell to be made permanent with less successes needed). With correspondence 4, the mage could break the space around the target, so that it is impossible for it to go anywhere. With entropy 2 and a lot of successes, you could make the target keep slipping up and falling down, while with mind 4 you could just turn off his brain. With time 5 you could simply freeze your target in time, and with spirit 4 you could just summon something to hold your target down.

 

[Havoc]

Don't make it more complicated for Caim. Of course the Mage's Paradigm comes into the equation.

 

[Caim]

Alright, so the best way to go about would be to in advance take a look at your Focus, your Spheres and deduce what you can do from there in what combination you need. For example, a Society of Ether Mage with Matter 3, Forces 3 and Prime 2 can have a self-made weapon that looks like a nice prop to someone else but in his hands is capable of working as a flamethrower, can shoot bursts of compressed air, some sort of glue-like substance and so on. By writing down the exact combinations in advance (Forces 3/Prime 2 for the first two, Matter 3/Prime 2 for the latter) and having an Instrument that allows you to do this you create something of a spellbook in advance.

And yes, I also have a copy of How do you DO that, but I find that book to be incredibly obtuse to work with because the stuff is all over the place.

 

[HatTrick]

I honestly like the nWoD (or is it CoD now? whatever) Mage better. Less metaplot and dumb 90's stuff. Still, I do have a soft spot for those computer hacker wizards in M:tA.

 

[Night Goat]

My advice is to not play a game like this with complete morons. It's a game for mature players and it's not because of penis and vaginas.

So, you're saying we should have a Kodex Kool Kampaign?


Also, has anyone familiarity with the GURPS version of Mage? I've never played GURPS because I don't have Asperger's, but it can't be worse than the Storyteller System.

 

[Caim]

My advice is to not play a game like this with complete morons. It's a game for mature players and it's not because of penis and vaginas.

So, you're saying we should have a Kodex Kool Kampaign?


Also, has anyone familiarity with the GURPS version of Mage? I've never played GURPS because I don't have Asperger's, but it can't be worse than the Storyteller System.

Don't bother with GURPS unless you want to do a fuckton of math.

Also, an average GURPS character starts with 200 points to buy stuff. You can annihilate the neuron systems of all living things around you in a 74 gigaparsec radius (the edge of the universe is about 10 gigaparsecs from Earth) in an unavoidable, undodgeable and irresistable attack. This costs 53 points.

 

[Excidium II]

Storyteller just werks.

dumb 90's stuff.

The essence of WoD. Take that away and what's left is a boring husk. Much like Shadowrun, the more the setting gets modernized, the worse it gets.

There's already no metaplot in anniversary versions anyway. And you could always ignore it.

 

[Alex]

My advice is to not play a game like this with complete morons. It's a game for mature players and it's not because of penis and vaginas.

So, you're saying we should have a Kodex Kool Kampaign?


Also, has anyone familiarity with the GURPS version of Mage? I've never played GURPS because I don't have Asperger's, but it can't be worse than the Storyteller System.

Don't bother with GURPS unless you want to do a fuckton of math.

Also, an average GURPS character starts with 200 points to buy stuff. You can annihilate the neuron systems of all living things around you in a 74 gigaparsec radius (the edge of the universe is about 10 gigaparsecs from Earth) in an unavoidable, undodgeable and irresistable attack. This costs 53 points.

GURPS 3e characters typically start with 100 points. And besides the obvious fact that the GM probably wouldn't allow you to have that attack for so little, whatever the rules say, it also presupposes that you are allowed to use stuff from the supers book, which isn't the default assumption either.

Night Goat

The Gurps version of M:tA pretty much creates advantages that represent the different aspects mages have in Storyteller. So, for instance, spheres are translated into 5 level advantages. So, magic woks pretty similar in both systems. Personally I like how GURPS represent characters a lot better than the storyteller system, so I think the GURPS version can be worth a shot. One thing I think don't come out so well there, though, is how magic rolls work. In storyteller, you need to accumulate enough successes in order to accomplish the effect you want. This is translated into GURPS almost wholesale, however GURPS doesn't use dice pools, but rather a target number system. So instead of counting successes, you will measure by how much you beat your target number. Mage's system was made for working with dice pools, however. In GURPS, you either end up withspells that should be easy failing outright way too frequently, or getting a whole lot more power than they usually did more frequently. Now, to be fair, I haven't actually played the game in GURPS, so maybe there is something I am not seeing which prevents this, but that is the impression I got.

 

[Excidium II]

Better GURPS than d20 I guess.

 

[HatTrick]

Storyteller just werks.

dumb 90's stuff.

The essence of WoD. Take that away and what's left is a boring husk. Much like Shadowrun, the more the setting gets modernized, the worse it gets.

There's already no metaplot in anniversary versions anyway. And you could always ignore it.

I think I can do without all the "people get magical powers based on their ethnicity!" retard shit the 90's brought to the table.

 

[Excidium II]

But it's all based on real world stuff you can research and give more depth.

Better than having the whole fluff based on some retardo OC.

 

[Havoc]

Fuck you. A black Tzimisce is fucking heresy.

 

[Caim]

Storyteller just werks.

dumb 90's stuff.

The essence of WoD. Take that away and what's left is a boring husk. Much like Shadowrun, the more the setting gets modernized, the worse it gets.

There's already no metaplot in anniversary versions anyway. And you could always ignore it.

Having only read the 20th anniversary book all the references to the not-quite plot were very confusing. Sometimes it happened, sometimes it don't, sometimes the Hollow Ones did it, or it might still happen. The age of High Magic might start any time now, magic is on the decline, the cribs of various Mages might have been lost or are still there... that shit's just annoying and non-commital.

 

[HatTrick]

Fuck you. A black Tzimisce is fucking heresy.

Fuck you. Now I'm going to be Blacula in the next VtM game I play.

 

[Excidium II]

Cultural appropriation.

that shit's just annoying and non-commital.

They can't just go and alienate half the playerbase. Specially with mage where some people swear by 2nd and others by revised. At least they commited on writing magick with the 'k'.

 

[Alex]

I think the best thing to do about the WoD setting is to use the books as inspiration for your own game. Although I've had a few bad experiences where people didn't like me changing too much stuff around.

 

[Telengard]

I ran Mage a few times with different groups, groups who had assembled originally for a different game. And there were, indeed, problems. Inevitably, there was always someone who didn't understand their powers, and I mean didn't understand the basic design of the game, and thus couldn't use their powers at all at even a basic level, beyond doing something the book used as an example. And there was always at least one person who couldn't grasp the entire concept of freeflow creation of powers, and thus could never imagine anything to do with their powers when the moment came, and just froze all the time.

Eventually, I just gave up and reworked the powers list to a one-word set of steps. Don't remember what those were specifically, but it was something like Move, Bend, Create, Infuse, Transfer. So, level 1 of any Sphere always granted the ability to Move that element. Made it so even the dunces could at least function in the gameworld, even if they couldn't keep up with actually inventive players.

Now, I never had such a group, but I always had the impression that with a whole group of inventive players, Mage would just shine.

 

[Havoc]

Storyteller just werks.

dumb 90's stuff.

The essence of WoD. Take that away and what's left is a boring husk. Much like Shadowrun, the more the setting gets modernized, the worse it gets.

There's already no metaplot in anniversary versions anyway. And you could always ignore it.

Having only read the 20th anniversary book all the references to the not-quite plot were very confusing. Sometimes it happened, sometimes it don't, sometimes the Hollow Ones did it, or it might still happen. The age of High Magic might start any time now, magic is on the decline, the cribs of various Mages might have been lost or are still there... that shit's just annoying and non-commital.

Ignore it. I almost never use the metaplot in Mage, because... I don't know it. My Mage games are concentrated on my players and their actions, I've made up everything else. The world of Mage (Horizon Realms, Umbra, Technocracy etc.) is just too good on it's own, you don't need some special snowflakes that make shit harder for everybody else.

 

[Havoc]

Fuck you. A black Tzimisce is fucking heresy.

Fuck you. Now I'm going to be Blacula in the next VtM game I play.

I actually used this portrait to play a Tremere.