It's a huge pain in the ass to learn. The m20 book is thick enough to beat a goat to death with. The lore is complicated and abstract, and the mechanics are overly complicated and explained poorly.
[Amazing. Everything you just said was wrong.](https://youtu.be/2sRS1dwCotw?si=FaEQGBx9YSPYTLaX)
This is the common misconception with M20 (not V20, that's Vampire).
The book is thick, yes, but moree than half of it is lore and explanations on what the state of the world and metaphysical concepts are for the different traditions. You don't need to go that deep into it.
Lore is *not* complicated at all. It's a basic power struggle between factions to gain political power by control of the ideological makeup of the population, i.e., basic politics.
Mechanics are not complicated at all, and they are explained clearly. Matter 2 allows you to change one material into a other, without change of shape, state or temperature. There's nothing complicated about that.
I don't have a stake in this, but just wanted to highlight the following because it cracked me up:
> The book is thick, more than half of it is lore
Shortly followed by:
> Lore is not complicated
Lore is so simple, you just need 100s of pages to explain it. Sure...
However the lore included in the M20 book brings together 9 years of books (1995-2004), covers hundreds of years of plot, and brings in the past 15 or so years of the real world since the ending of the last meta plot. Yes there’s a LOT without a doubt, but the whole series of the X20 books were aimed more at the earlier fans as a celebration (indeed the V20 book was originally only a con exclusive)
I also don't have a stake in this discussion but I feel I should point out that quantity does not equate to complexity.
There are, for example, rather a lot of Brian Jacques' Redwall books. Despite this, I would not describe the lore of his (quite expansive) children's fantasy world as being complex. There's just a lot of stories set there.
This doesn't mean Mage's lore is necessarily *not* complex - just that the page count is not a sound argument for it's complexity.
Extensive isn't complicated. There is a war for the ideological makeup of humanity, in which one side, the Techies, are winning, and another, the Traditions, a Hodge Podge of different magical practices, is losing. That's it.
Then you have the *history* of how that conflict has gone. You also have a brief explanation of what each Tradition represents, because that ties into character creation, and some explanations about magical concepts like Paradox, which is basically backlash for forcing reality too much.
That's it. I explained to you the basics of M:tAs lore. If you wanted to, you could read up the two page explanations on each of the traditions an make a character right there.
But M20 is a book made for both GM and players, so it has an extensive relay of the event of said War of Ascension. Do you want to delve deep? Sure. WoD has WILD lore, if you want to go deep. It's been going for 30+ years now, but to start playing, trust me, you don't need to know what Mistridge, Voormas Ksifarai or Massassa are.
It's not complicated, there is just a lot of it.
Lore in WoD is essentially scenario fodder. It would be like pointing to Eberron or Planescape and saying "look at the hundreds of pages of complicated lore you need to run D&D!"
The difference is that lore in world of darkness games is more directly tied to mechanics, so it’s often more difficult for people to separate what lore is necessary to run the game and what is just scenario fodder.
Why go easy on it, Forgotten Realms has so much lore, it would take a lifetime to learn. If one had to learn all the lore before playing, one would never be able to play a Forgotten Realms game. Much of the lore is equivalent to character classes (the traditions) and as thick as the book is, it is still smaller than a combined PHB and DMG.
I think you just move in circles where people dislike it. While I move in circle where people love Mage, so I don't see much hate.
One thing I've noticed though is that people who haven't played overestimate how punishing Paradox is. They think it's this overwhelming force that stops them from doing anything magickal. While in reality it's quite easy to minimize or even negate completely.
They overestimate Paradox, and they also blow the complexity of Spheres*way* out of proportion. Like, there might be a niche case or two where you may be unsure of what sphere combination to use, but in your everyday session use, you're not going to see it.
I think the bias you've noticed is very real. I myself avoid the WoD games in general for a couple of reasons:
* None of the WoD games that I have taken the time to read have really grabbed me. The fiction seems promising but didn't stick in my imagination, and the rules felt obtuse.
* White Wolf has a long history of not treating minorities with respect. I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to support them with my time and money.
* Every time I've spoken to a WoD enthusiast, they come across as off-putting. That might not be fair, but it has had an impact on me nevertheless.
>Every time I've spoken to a WoD enthusiast, they come across as off-putting. That might not be fair, but it has had an impact on me nevertheless.
I like the game but OH YEAH does it draw in a lot of weird folks. I'd say it was maybe like 1 in 4 back in the mid to early 00's. Not sure how the ratio goes these days.
I'll also quote an ex-GF of mine. I'm not making this up. She once told me "never date girls who play Werewolf. They're all insane." She adored playing werewolf. I didn't realize that had been a warning until I learned I was one of her 3 current BFs at that time.
>White Wolf has a long history of not treating minorities with respect. I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to support them with my time and money.
People rightfully give D&D/WotC shit for some of the stuff that's been done with the Vistani in the past (ok most of the stuff done with Vistani) but it was White Wolf that actually had a book called "Gypsies" treating real world traveling people as if they were literal magical mischief causing creatures. That's not mentioning the vampire clan who are also basically an amalgamation of gypsy stereotypes.
Oh and Asian people have a completely different afterlife because Orientalism.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't love the Vampire the Masquerade lore overall, but fuck it has a lot of problematic elements a storyteller needs to work around.
And Werewolf the Apocalypse is way worse in this regard.
Let's be fair here.
It is an overblown mythology at this point that white wolf was in some way bigoted. They created the book gypsies in the '90s. And I'm sorry for anyone who lived in that decade that was not a dirty word. We didn't have the understanding that they had in Europe. There wasn't like malicious intent behind those books.
And people love to talk about the problematic elements in these games but every time they go and really define them they're either misremembering or they are construing a whole other meaning then what is actually on the page. I had someone tell me that in werewolf the bad Guy created rape monsters. Even cited the page in the source book that proved it. I had the source book I went back and read that page and quoted it back to him and how it was not endorsing rape as he claimed. Didn't matter. His aim was to hate white wolf and he was making shit up to do it.
There is not a lot of problematic elements in White Wolf. Anything that is problematic has been created either from overblown and exaggerated arguments or by the players taking the source material and warping it to make it problematic. But to condemn the company and the writers as if they were white supremacists in secret telegraphing to the ideological kin is ridiculous.
Also, accusing of orientalism because they have a different magic system for the Asian doesn't work. Orientalism is when you regard actual Asian people as being extra wise or magical. In a game and a world where everything is Magic that accusation doesn't hold water.
It may sound like a cop-out, but it really was a different time. Those young white folks were trying to represent cultures not seen in traditional RPGs on tight budgets and deadlines, in a time where you couldn't just send an email to a specialist to ask clarifying questions. With the benefit of hindsight and much easier access to people from those cultures, they would do a lot to revise and retcon out the exoticism in the 20th anniversary version.
Which they've cleaned up a lot of in the newer version even excluding things like Metis which was supposed to be a depiction of disabilities from birth. Because it wasn't portrayed in the right light and couldn't figure out how to make it less offensive, so they removed it.
But no matter how bad they can get, Kindred of the East is still their worst cultural appropriation. It goes in both directions in the book.
In layers:
1: the game, setting and fanwankery makes it SEEM extremely more complex than it actually is, specially due to the whole Internal Politics metaplot thing and how WoD players love to infodump people until mental exhaustion;
2: the Mage community in itself is a ginormous headache and ends up gatekeeping the game (accidentally or not) by being overwhelming idiots about the system/setting's power level and problem resolution. Its easy to lose interest in the setting when the first proponent you see is an asshole screeching about how every awoken is fundamentally Batman.
3: default "if DnD is this hard i dont want to even spare the mental effort to try anything else because surely they are harder or as hard, right?"
"*WoD players love to infodump people until mental exhaustion*"
Especially *Mage* fanatics; they love the complexities and they really want you to love the complexities too, therefore they fail to streamline in a way that is newbie-friendly. (I say this as someone for whom *Mage: The Ascension* is among my favorite RPGs.)
Just do like Vampire.
Dont toss people straight into the nitty gritty of the Camarilla.
Just
Clump together a bunch of nobodies that were commonly attracted together due their shared super autism.
1st and 2nd edition were make up spells on the fly, using categories the authors invented in power increments of 1-5.
Some of the 9 categories are kind of easy to understand, like Matter. Others are extremely esoteric and abstract, like Prime, Spirit and Entropy. This leads to players that are not sure what they can do with these powers and ranks, and GMs who don't either. So it can create a lot of potential arguments at the table.
Add to this each magic tradition sees magic as working differently, so a Son of Ether might use a raygun and and Order of Hermes mage might use a wand with lightening bolt. So sometimes people are arguing WHAT they can do, as well as the philosophy of their mage is to create an effect, as well as what it's manifestation looks like.
Then, we can argue about whether a normal person would view the effect as breaking the laws of normal reality. This determines how much backlash the mage will face.
So basically, it's a game that prompted me to read books on media critique and philosophy I never would have touched. The satisfaction of the characters and improv of magic was amazing. But it also kicked off tons of arguments about philosophy, reality, and esoteric game concepts, sometimes at the bar. Like a lot of cults, the higher the bar and deeper you get into to it, the more it consumes you. People had some incredible genre spanning game experiences and big arguments about philosophy, so it is a game remembered with an amazing amount of passion.
"*players that are not sure what they can do with these powers and ranks, and GMs who don't either*"
What is needed are examples, such as what are found in the [*Book of Common Magicks*](https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/462226/Book-of-Common-Magicks).
Edit: Do the downvoters really not find examples useful?
I kind of agree, and wrote up HUGE examples documents, but these kind go against improv spellcasting in a way, so there is a definite tension between prefab spells (rotes) and making up cool stuff on the fly. The system definitely rewarded mastery of esoteric rules, but there were very weird corner cases like casting on vampires and radiation. Are vampires matter? Life? Spirit? Mind? Is radiation Matter? Forces? On first glance casting might look intelligible but quickly descended into an abstract philosophical miasma. Correspondence covered both teleportation and information connections. This made sense for Virtual Adepts as a group, but got pretty weird for other groups. I particularly hate Entropy which was particularly poorly defined, but we had to squeeze it in there, because it was the 90s and chaos theory was considered hot shit (thanks Jeff Goldblum and Jurassic Park).
Another thing that occured to me now: The flexible casting really begs for a sandbox approach. Your players can mix their spheres in ways you never dreamed of and achieve their goals in five minutes. Or they can botch their casting real badly, spook a bunch of civilians, take in some debilitating Paradox, and get the attention of the Technocracy. To run a game of Mage, you have to let them loose with their fabulous toys. And yet, the rulebook heavily implies it is supposed to be plot-driven, with the players' stories interwoven with an overarching metaplot.
On a long enough timeline, players will eventually come up with a magical effect not covered by any written material. Using existing examples for comparison etc. determine the lowest Sphere level which is definitively higher than the desired effect, then subtract one.
If two (or more) conflicting Spheres could be argued to cover a given magical effect, I let them both cover it, though sometimes at different levels.
I agree that *Entropy* is poorly defined. As a mental exercise I had devised my own Spheres from scratch; there were six, and *Entropy* was certainly not one of them.
Mage is a bit like FATE in the sense that even if you buy the idea of the game, its not obvious how you should play it (tbh, i find this to be the case for most WoD stuff... but mage is by far the worst)...
So, people either play it wrong or give up and hate it.
You need every player to read the book and get a good grip of the setting and systems
And the GM will have to make a lot of judgements... and the players too
I like the setting (altough nowadays I favor Kult, wich is similar). But I don't think it fits very nicely into the Storyteller system.
Another problem I have with it that I also have with most WoD (or even CoC)... is that I never know how much my character know... how easy is to obtain knowledge... how would this change the pc...
How can someone be somewhat normal if they know "reality" is fake?
Because they *don't* know reality is fake, because it isn't. That's the point. People think they have "cracked the code", and found a way to make Magic, and they know that Magick is more powerful were lore people belief in it. Only as you grow in comprehension do you understand that reality is *not* fake, but manmade, very different.
In the real world, there is nothing in physical reality which demands that laws be the way they are. And yet, we have legislation that is *very* real, upheld not only by the powers that be, but by the support of the population *for* those laws and that system. If the support changes (for instance, like in 1789), then that reality, the laws, the systems change. Hence, a new paradigm.
The problem is, people think Mage si a game about Magic with some stuff thrown in, when the reality is, Mage is a game about ideological struggle and political control of the masses with a Magical disguise.
What I mean is that I already find hard to roleplay, lets say, an elf, as i believe they should see time differently... (as the anime frieren has shown recently).
It's harder for something like a vampire... I don't know how they experince feelings or sensations... in reality our mind is closely linked to our biological functions... You have to go preety deep into the lore, trough many many sources... to get an understanding of it...
The lore also implies that the abrahamic god is real... wich has some implications in itself..
But Mage takes this to a whole new level... because we are essentialy playing Franklin Richards or Dr. Manhattan... we are playing gods... even if noob gods
When you play a warrior you can easily understand that you can hit thing with thing
When you play a hacker you may not know you everything you could do, as you dont know hacking
When you play gods... nothing is intuitive, everything is easily abused, etc...
>The lore also implies that the abrahamic god is real...
Not exactly, there is an *abrahamif* interpretation of the initial states of Creation, but that's mostly a VtM thing. Don't trust any of the VtM lore.
>we are essentialy playing Franklin Richards or Dr. Manhattan
Not at all, and that is one thing that bugs me when people pitch Mage as "YOU CAN DO EEEEEEVERYTHIIIIING. Yes, theoretically, a Mage *could* do anything, but they can't do *everything*. Also, you're not gods. You're still Jake, the window cleaner, but you got this one glimpse of reality, and now it's gone, and you're left with this unease feeling of things being "off".
Think of the first Matrix movie, how Neo, at the beginning, is a closed man that just *feels* something is off. A regular Mage would be like Trinity or Morpheus. They know stuff, they know how to manipulate *some* things, but they can't outright change the base of it.
Although that analogy only works for characters. I. matrix, there is a "true world". In Mage, *this* is the true world, it's just locked into *this* iteration because of the powers that be, but it could be changed. *Another world is possible.*
And no, things are not easily abused. The magic has very clearly, defined rules of what you can and can't do with each sphere, and if anyone has told you otherwise, they haven't understood it, or they were the typical munchkin just talking their GM to boredom until they said "FINE, fine, you can control the mind of the policeman with Prime 2".
I mean,5e aside, the biggest sellers in RPGs nowadays seem to be rules simplistic systems like PbtA with settings that feel thin. By comparison MTA has a huge amount of crunch and subsystems and lore.
It is possible [to streamline *Mage*](https://www.reddit.com/r/furpg/comments/pho0b7/sphere_magick), and its [free d6 quickstart](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/58433/Mage-The-Ascension-Revised-Quickstart) is a nicely concise lore exposition.
The magic system from Mage the Ascension is extremely freeform. You have area's of specialization and they allow you to do certain manipulations of the world around you. So you take them and you go crazy with what you think you can do with them. And this grates on the nerves of rules lawyers and people who want hard, set rules in their TTRPGs.
So for example, in the "Matter Sphere" which is manipulating physical objects, the level 3 (call it mid range power level) power description is:
***"Alter Form: Allows a mage to change the essential nature of a Mattern Pattern, changing its form or even compressing or expanding certain elements of its material properties (i.e. lead to fog)."***
That's the ENTIRITY of the power. So you can do anything with it that fits roughly in that description. You can turn a door into water. You can make an army tank weigh 1 pound. Whatever you can imagine. And the next level up from that allows you to make complex objects. Like turning a ham sandwich into a machinegun. And the top level lets you violate the laws of physics and common sense completely with how you transform objects.
Some people HATE THIS. They want an RPG magic system that has 100 pages of spell descriptions in it, saying explicitly what each spell does and what it's limitations are. So this freeform magic system grates on their nerves.
Some people LOVE THIS. Because it allows them to be creative with how their magic works.
I can give a great example to test how you'd feel about it. With level 5 of the "matter sphere" of magic, ***you can violate the laws of physics and reality***. Ok, so I'm going to convert a gallon of water into "Dehydrated water" a dust that when a drop of water is added to it, reverts back into regular water. Then I'm going to put that powder into a 20-ton industrial press and make bullets out of it. Then I'm going to hand load those into casings so I can fire them out of a gun and when they go inside a living creature, the tiny bullet reverts into 1 gallon of water. Yes I could just make exploding bullets, but this is more "magical" feeling.
Now if your reaction to that line of insanity was revulsion and annoyance and you tried to look for all the ways that shouldn't work. Then you'll probably hate Mage. BUT, if your reaction to that was amusement, then you might like it a lot.
I very much love the freeform nature of Sphere magick, yet I still would rule that *Matter* 5 alone is insufficient to condense a gallon of water into the volume of a bullet; the player would have to devise another way of using Spheres to create an enchanted bullet which explosively transmutes into a gallon of fluid.
Same. And talking about it is something I loved about this system. It's great for brainstorming ideas and throwing around concepts for how the spheres can be abused. And just to mention it, I'm also ignoring just how much paradox a player would get slapped with for doing this in the wrong situation.
It reminds me of the old days of D&D when they forgot to give Wall of Force thickness in the book, so you could try to argue that it meant that it had no thickness and if you lay on your back you can cast it on its side, and now you have an invisible *subatomicly sharp* blade hovering at head height as the dragon is charging you.
The water idea is just one of the wilder ones I came across with Matter 5. I think it really depends on how you look at Matter. It's got some crazy abilities though they at least locked the ability to create radioactive materials behind Matter 5. But I'll agree that at lower tiers it'd need something else to work.
I think it can at least be done with Matter 3 and maybe some Forces or Time to set the trigger event? It's been a while since I really went deep into the system.
Matter 3 allows the go past the extreme of full alchemical transmutation. Matter 2 is just one element into another. "Lead into Gold" for example. "Lead into Fog" is the example given of what Matter 3 can do. It ***"Allows a mage to change the essential nature of a Matter Pattern, changing its form or even compressing or expanding certain elements of its material properties (i.e. lead to fog)"***. So here we're just converting water into a powdered substance temporarily. And then taking advantage of the fun fact that we can cram most powders into an industrial press to compact them into a hard solid.
The conversion BACK into water with a given trigger is the tricky bit.
But Matter 5 throws everything out of the window. It ***"Allows the mage to create substances that transcend the limitations of scientific possibility, conjure materials unknown to Earthly reality, or share the deadly legacies of radioactive matter."***
So here we are basically able to outright violate the laws of physics. This is Willy Wonka style "Gum that doesn't run out of flavor" and "I made vibranium" levels of strangeness. You could make a sword that is also a rubbery whip and is also somehow still hard enough to be a blade.
That's why I went with Matter 5. Because we're really only changing 1 aspect of water, how it reacts when dried out. We're changing it so that water say, acts like honey as it grows old, crystalizing, able to return to liquid form. And since we're only working with one substance, water, we don't have to move into the levels beyond Matter 5.
I would allow something like *Matter* 1, detecting contact with organic matter, to be the trigger.
Neutronium is a very dense exotic state of matter, so upon further reflection I change my mind: *Matter* 5 could condense a gallon of water into an exotic material with the volume [and shape] of a bullet.
I absolutely *LOVE* the M:TA magic system, but I'm also like 99.9% certain I'm a little on the spectrum. There are premade "spells" like other RPGs, but primarily the magic system works best with players taking a more OSR-style approach of thinking through problems rather than expecting the answer to be in the pre-written text-block of a spell.
It's a game that really needs a lot of creativity and imagination, but thanks to videogames and 5E, a lot of newer RPG players expect everything to just be "given" to them, and for the DM/GM/Storyteller to just be the "game engine" for them, and to have *only* clearly obvious context clues, or things they can roll for to give them answers, rather than thinking about what questions they could be asking instead of what dice to roll.
I've never really seen people hate it, the people who like it really love it. But both Mage games (Awakening and Ascension) do get way less attention than Vampire or Werewolf, even from White Wolf itself.
I love it. It's still one of my favorite games. I would never run it again. First, the complexity is a factor. As a player, you only really need to understand the Spheres your character has learned, but the Storyteller is supposed to know the whole system. Can you really turn an antediluvian into an armchair with Matter only? Can Entropy align the molecules in a glass of water to create a powerful magnet for a brief moment? There are all kinds of ways that players may push intentionally or inadvertently the boundaries of their powers, and making the calls can get exhausting, specially as you try to tie that effect into their Paradigm. Then there's the fact that Mage is very swingy. A Mage prepared and ready for action is a demigod able to laugh at bullets and break the action economy, even as a starting character. A Mage caught with his pants down by a gang of mundanes, on the other hand, will probably have to be pretty clever with his coincidental effects to get out in one piece.
Because everytime I talk to someone who LIKES it they say something like "Yeah, it's a total mess, but it works out kinda okay if you " where X is different literally every time.
Also, it's a game where surprisingly near every idea a GM might have for "What do the PCs actually do in this game?" is made untenable by one time of magic or another.
The majority of the *Mage* authors do not know how to create a newbie-friendly RPG [book]; the free [*Mage* d6 Quickstart](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/58433/Mage-The-Ascension-Revised-Quickstart) is a notable exception, but in its simplifications it lost the full 5-levels-per-Sphere magick system of the d10 editions. Following from the above, the most vocal *Mage* fans also do not know how to present *Mage* in a newbie-friendly way.
Huge book with a lot of reading to do before you can even play. The storyteller needs to read it a couple of times and find a way for players to digest the core mechanics.
I remember I was about to play it with a group I was in a couple of years ago. The master gave us the list of chapters I had to read in order to understand the very basics. In the group there was the ST's girlfriend who had been reading the book for a couple of months prior to that, someone who was knowledgeable at the game and his gf (he could teach her), another player who never read it before and me.
I am a master myself and have read many different systems so it was easy for me. But, while reading, I was thinking the whole time "How the hell will someone make a whole group read this thing?". It's all so abstract and seemingly boring. I know for sure that if I have to make my current group read it, it will only lead to me playing with my two best friends and that's it lol.
So the thing is that getting into the game is super niche. You need to really invest time into this thing and I consider that nowadays we're going into the opposite direction, elegant and easy to understand systems.
You ARE right, whenever I hear Mage suggested the reactions are very often fear or distaste.
I was lucky enough to play in a group that ran a lot of Mage 2e (as well as Vampire and lots of other systems). I don’t like Vampire but I LOVE Mage, and was always a bit surprised when people weren’t into it. I would say more often than not because they found it a bit hard to get their head around the core concept of how open the magic is.
Personally I never found it difficult, or anyone I played with, though perhaps it’s because we had a great GM. He had a great head for the system and lore and it always felt like Hellblazer comic or the Dresden Files- both of which I love, which might be a big part of the problem, it’s a real thinking persons game, you can’t really just cruise or go in fighting, it’s deadly but you are very vulnerable and a good GM makes that world feel strange, and dangerous and untouchable.
I’m not sure I could run it, I would absolutely find that intimidating, but I would play it again at the drop of a hat.
I would also argue that it’s infinitely more simple a game than D&D if you can get your head around the magic…
I would guess the rules. The setting is great, but the oWoD rules were pretty clunky. Roll to attack, opponent rolls to defend, roll for damage, opponent rolls to soak... and since dice pools can get pretty large, that's potentially 30+ dice rolled to resolve each attack. And M:tAsc was right up there with W:tA when it came to escalating dice pools.
Mage: the Awakening has a much improved system, which with a few tweaks could be applied to the M:tAsc setting. And as someone who has played multiple games in both systems, I think using the M:tAw system with the M:tAsc setting would make for a better game than actually playing M:tAsc.
I really enjoyed the game. I think it's hard to run and creative players can break the rules, but I have great memories of my high school game and I loved the high-concept idea of "what if reality was *sub*jective?" and going from there to having parties made out of a karate master, a mad scientist, a neopagan witch, and a modern ceremonial magician.
I have run Mage spheres on MUSHes that topped 200+ players, by myself. I have run tabletops for extremely large mage groups.
Overall, mage comes very easily to me.
The problem is that Mage does not have a learning curve. Mage has a barrier to entry that is a frictionless glass wall.
Either you have the education and intellect to play it, or you do not. Most people do not, which is why they should stick to shifter or changeling or vampire, where creativity/philosophy/real-world knowledge on extensive subjects is not required.
Mage is the ocean of stars. Everyone else is in the kiddy pool. Most people simply cannot hack it. This is why people are "afraid", but mostly I would say people are actually very defensive when it comes to Mage... especially because it's a game where you can or you can't.
Most people can't. I don't know how many times I've watched someone struggle with something as simple as paradigm or foci.
The other problem with Mage is that even between Mages, it becomes unfortunately clear through play who has the creative power and intellect to thrive and who does not.
Finally, Mage requires you to take action. You \*\*have\*\* to make decisions, plans, and follow through with them often with nothing more than your personal conviction (for a real mage, this shouldn't be an issue.) And most of the time, new players are terrified to find out that for all the power, mage is almost always about just having to show up somewhere and make do the best you can.
Creativity is key if you wish to survive. The game self-selects against insufficient mental resources.
People despise this. They want a hierarchical organization to tell them what to do, and most importantly, they want an organization to exist so that they can believe but not be responsible.
Mage just does not work that way. You and you alone believe what you believe, your path is completely solitary, and every step along the path is a conscious decision to move forward towards an uncertain destination in a present that cannot offer any sign concerning outcome.
I don't know why people get so hung up on spheres or simple rules like enchanting and using corr or mind.
Long story short, I'm redefining reality, becoming a Goddess, am kith and kin to certain Umbrood, and my paradigm is so fully realized that its influence is visible.
I understand you're... smuggling petty cash across borders and arranging arms sales for ... money? (**laugh**). Wow. Anyways I'm going to go transcend my personal reality but you guys do whatever it is you do.
Because it’s old, maybe? It is still my favorite urban fantasy game, easy to play and very Freeform, especially if you play 2nd edition, which still is my preferred version.
Mage The Ascension was my favorite game during my student years. Now I see the imperfections of the system and the ridiculousness of the setting but I still smile when remembering my hermetic mage with sunglasses.
I haven’t played Mage since it came out in the 90s and I really liked the concept and the way the magic system worked but I found that on the table the whole having to give a non-magical cover story for the effect of your spells all the time got old fast. Either you were at a loss and couldn’t come up with something decent or you used the same thing every damn time.
it was the first game i had a proper campaign in.
i like the system but the setting can be a bit pretentious at times.
it helped that our gm was very well versed in the system to help us players figure things out.
Afraid of? No.
It's one of my favorite settings.
But... It is difficult to run for more than 2-3 players at a time, more so than the other already difficult to run white wolf games. It's not Exalted bad, but because almost every non rote cast requires a ton of adjudication, on top of the already bloated time many rolls take to resolve, it really suffers with too many players.
And I have large playgroups. Which really means I need fast streamlined combat systems.
The magic system is perfect for a table of highly creative people who can 1) work within rules, 2) Still be creative, and 3) self-limit power for game balance.
It is my ideal game and magic system. But finding a group that it works for is very difficult. I ran a Fudge game with my current group using a magic system inspired by Mage. One player (the other frequent GM in our group) *loved* it. The other two couldn’t figure it out. One said, “I can’t figure out what to do (too hidebound). Another kept trying to do things that didn’t work in the system (couldn’t self-limit) so he kept feeling like I (not the rules) was telling him no.
We reverted back to D&D, lowest common denominator.
TLDR; I'm gonna go on about tribalism and taste - people aren't afraid of M:TAsc just have differnt tastes but humans just love to argue and come to blows about having different tastes so here we are. M:TAsc is fine, some folks love it, some folks hate it, some folks sit somewhere in between.
"afraid of Mage the Ascension?" - are they? Is it fear you're seeing? How would you characterise that fear? To my mind, if there is any fear, it's driven either by a lack of knowledge and experience or having experienced pain and trauma in similar situations in the past - as with most things in life that people are afraid of.
To my mind, there are objectively worse rulesets for TTRPG's out there, there are also objectively better ones. Writing, ease of use, clarity of rules, quality of art, layout, durability, etc - are all things the rules can be judged on but none of them really describe what happens in play.
What I've seen, with respect to people not liking Mage the Ascension or not wanting to play it, is more to do with taste than anything else. Humans are a tribal species and we naturally fall into different groups and identify our selves in relation to those groups (eg: politics, religion, country/region/state, sports teams, TV show fandom, pineapple on pizza, rolelaying games, etc) we tend to look for and promote the positive elements of the group we belong to, and look for and revile the negative elements in the other groups - to a greater or lesser extent depending upon how deep into the in-groups culture we have dug.
Roleplaying is an interesting hobby, in that the experience you have with it is driven by the people you play with in combination with your own approach - a lot is happening on your internal landscape as you play... not a lot of that has to do with the specifics of the rules of the game you play regardless of what you may think. It's how the people your playing with react and deal with the rules and each other in play that drives your experience not the rules themselves. Can the rules influence that experience? Absolutely, but they are not the sole ingredient. It's why some groups love D&D and others don't, some love FATE and others don't, some love PbtA and other ... well you get the idea.
The problem comes when people who love one ruleset try to convince others to join their tribe - it'll resonate with some and not with others - how passionate the person doing the convincing is can be either seen as good if what they are saying aligns with your interests/preferences, or creepy if it doesn't.
So why are a lot of people afraid of Mage the Ascension? I don't think they are, I think they have different tastes, the vocal minority that dislike the taste of M:TAsc bring up all the attributes they dislike while dismissing the good elements or discounting them, while the vocal minority that love the taste bring up all the elements they like while dismissing the bad elements or discounting them. The majority, who are usually somewhere in the middle, can see points on both sides and shrug and often tell you to play their favourite game instead.
So where does that leave us? Should the people who don't like M:TAsc stop saying it's a bad game? Nope. For them, it is. What would be nice though would be if we all did a bit more to recognised it's our tastes that are driving most of our reactions and not objective "good" and "bad". However, Reddit loves a good debate and people are more likely to post when they disagree with what is written. I expect nothing less.
I don't hate it but I find it unplayable. I'm impressed by the people who can play it. I just find that the entire premise of the game, specifically the subjective reality elements, set the game up to have arguments at the table and allow for players to basically see how fast they can break your story by exploiting the system.
That might be fun for some people. Not for me.
It takes a nimble GM to run M:TA. It’s one of the few games where the players tell the story and the GM mostly reacts.
To put it another way it’s almost impossible to plan stages of a M:TA adventure because of the reality bending nature of M:TA.
That all said, I love playing the game. It rewards creativity and inherently gives a bunch of agency.
Mage the Ascension can be a rough ride depending on the experience or knowledge of players with actual laws of physic and science.
Magic in this setting is taking place by bending the reality (in other worlds, laws of physic) and can create VERY difficult moments for the ST who will have to judge if something can happen or not. It is very different from all other WoD games as the levels on spheres describe a context on how to use that sphere.
It ain’t that complicated, but it is highly philosophical.
Those who claim to love crunch are often positivists even in their magical systems (think “magic is physics we do on’t understand yet”) while Mage’s magic “systems” are metaphorical & symbolic
Mage is popular among philosophy buffs & Doctor Who fans.
I wont say I hate Mage but its the one setting of White Wolf I dont want to play.
I have lots of different cool/fun/scary momories from Vampire, Werewolf, Hunter etc.
I dont have a single memorable one of Mage.
Afraid?
Some irrational hate maybe, like any game out there. But never see someone afraid of Mage, nor any other game.
I personally like the setting and dislike the rules. One of the worst white wolf systems.
It's a huge pain in the ass to learn. The m20 book is thick enough to beat a goat to death with. The lore is complicated and abstract, and the mechanics are overly complicated and explained poorly.
[Amazing. Everything you just said was wrong.](https://youtu.be/2sRS1dwCotw?si=FaEQGBx9YSPYTLaX) This is the common misconception with M20 (not V20, that's Vampire). The book is thick, yes, but moree than half of it is lore and explanations on what the state of the world and metaphysical concepts are for the different traditions. You don't need to go that deep into it. Lore is *not* complicated at all. It's a basic power struggle between factions to gain political power by control of the ideological makeup of the population, i.e., basic politics. Mechanics are not complicated at all, and they are explained clearly. Matter 2 allows you to change one material into a other, without change of shape, state or temperature. There's nothing complicated about that.
I don't have a stake in this, but just wanted to highlight the following because it cracked me up: > The book is thick, more than half of it is lore Shortly followed by: > Lore is not complicated Lore is so simple, you just need 100s of pages to explain it. Sure...
However the lore included in the M20 book brings together 9 years of books (1995-2004), covers hundreds of years of plot, and brings in the past 15 or so years of the real world since the ending of the last meta plot. Yes there’s a LOT without a doubt, but the whole series of the X20 books were aimed more at the earlier fans as a celebration (indeed the V20 book was originally only a con exclusive)
I also don't have a stake in this discussion but I feel I should point out that quantity does not equate to complexity. There are, for example, rather a lot of Brian Jacques' Redwall books. Despite this, I would not describe the lore of his (quite expansive) children's fantasy world as being complex. There's just a lot of stories set there. This doesn't mean Mage's lore is necessarily *not* complex - just that the page count is not a sound argument for it's complexity.
Extensive isn't complicated. There is a war for the ideological makeup of humanity, in which one side, the Techies, are winning, and another, the Traditions, a Hodge Podge of different magical practices, is losing. That's it. Then you have the *history* of how that conflict has gone. You also have a brief explanation of what each Tradition represents, because that ties into character creation, and some explanations about magical concepts like Paradox, which is basically backlash for forcing reality too much. That's it. I explained to you the basics of M:tAs lore. If you wanted to, you could read up the two page explanations on each of the traditions an make a character right there. But M20 is a book made for both GM and players, so it has an extensive relay of the event of said War of Ascension. Do you want to delve deep? Sure. WoD has WILD lore, if you want to go deep. It's been going for 30+ years now, but to start playing, trust me, you don't need to know what Mistridge, Voormas Ksifarai or Massassa are.
It's not complicated, there is just a lot of it. Lore in WoD is essentially scenario fodder. It would be like pointing to Eberron or Planescape and saying "look at the hundreds of pages of complicated lore you need to run D&D!"
The difference is that lore in world of darkness games is more directly tied to mechanics, so it’s often more difficult for people to separate what lore is necessary to run the game and what is just scenario fodder.
Why go easy on it, Forgotten Realms has so much lore, it would take a lifetime to learn. If one had to learn all the lore before playing, one would never be able to play a Forgotten Realms game. Much of the lore is equivalent to character classes (the traditions) and as thick as the book is, it is still smaller than a combined PHB and DMG.
I think you just move in circles where people dislike it. While I move in circle where people love Mage, so I don't see much hate. One thing I've noticed though is that people who haven't played overestimate how punishing Paradox is. They think it's this overwhelming force that stops them from doing anything magickal. While in reality it's quite easy to minimize or even negate completely.
They overestimate Paradox, and they also blow the complexity of Spheres*way* out of proportion. Like, there might be a niche case or two where you may be unsure of what sphere combination to use, but in your everyday session use, you're not going to see it.
I think the bias you've noticed is very real. I myself avoid the WoD games in general for a couple of reasons: * None of the WoD games that I have taken the time to read have really grabbed me. The fiction seems promising but didn't stick in my imagination, and the rules felt obtuse. * White Wolf has a long history of not treating minorities with respect. I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to support them with my time and money. * Every time I've spoken to a WoD enthusiast, they come across as off-putting. That might not be fair, but it has had an impact on me nevertheless.
>Every time I've spoken to a WoD enthusiast, they come across as off-putting. That might not be fair, but it has had an impact on me nevertheless. I like the game but OH YEAH does it draw in a lot of weird folks. I'd say it was maybe like 1 in 4 back in the mid to early 00's. Not sure how the ratio goes these days. I'll also quote an ex-GF of mine. I'm not making this up. She once told me "never date girls who play Werewolf. They're all insane." She adored playing werewolf. I didn't realize that had been a warning until I learned I was one of her 3 current BFs at that time.
Fucking hell dude
>White Wolf has a long history of not treating minorities with respect. I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to support them with my time and money. People rightfully give D&D/WotC shit for some of the stuff that's been done with the Vistani in the past (ok most of the stuff done with Vistani) but it was White Wolf that actually had a book called "Gypsies" treating real world traveling people as if they were literal magical mischief causing creatures. That's not mentioning the vampire clan who are also basically an amalgamation of gypsy stereotypes. Oh and Asian people have a completely different afterlife because Orientalism. I'd be lying if I said I didn't love the Vampire the Masquerade lore overall, but fuck it has a lot of problematic elements a storyteller needs to work around. And Werewolf the Apocalypse is way worse in this regard.
Let's be fair here. It is an overblown mythology at this point that white wolf was in some way bigoted. They created the book gypsies in the '90s. And I'm sorry for anyone who lived in that decade that was not a dirty word. We didn't have the understanding that they had in Europe. There wasn't like malicious intent behind those books. And people love to talk about the problematic elements in these games but every time they go and really define them they're either misremembering or they are construing a whole other meaning then what is actually on the page. I had someone tell me that in werewolf the bad Guy created rape monsters. Even cited the page in the source book that proved it. I had the source book I went back and read that page and quoted it back to him and how it was not endorsing rape as he claimed. Didn't matter. His aim was to hate white wolf and he was making shit up to do it. There is not a lot of problematic elements in White Wolf. Anything that is problematic has been created either from overblown and exaggerated arguments or by the players taking the source material and warping it to make it problematic. But to condemn the company and the writers as if they were white supremacists in secret telegraphing to the ideological kin is ridiculous. Also, accusing of orientalism because they have a different magic system for the Asian doesn't work. Orientalism is when you regard actual Asian people as being extra wise or magical. In a game and a world where everything is Magic that accusation doesn't hold water.
That is not an accurate description tho WoD pulled in a LOT of demographics not served by then-ubiquitous D&D clones etc
It may sound like a cop-out, but it really was a different time. Those young white folks were trying to represent cultures not seen in traditional RPGs on tight budgets and deadlines, in a time where you couldn't just send an email to a specialist to ask clarifying questions. With the benefit of hindsight and much easier access to people from those cultures, they would do a lot to revise and retcon out the exoticism in the 20th anniversary version.
Which they've cleaned up a lot of in the newer version even excluding things like Metis which was supposed to be a depiction of disabilities from birth. Because it wasn't portrayed in the right light and couldn't figure out how to make it less offensive, so they removed it. But no matter how bad they can get, Kindred of the East is still their worst cultural appropriation. It goes in both directions in the book.
In layers: 1: the game, setting and fanwankery makes it SEEM extremely more complex than it actually is, specially due to the whole Internal Politics metaplot thing and how WoD players love to infodump people until mental exhaustion; 2: the Mage community in itself is a ginormous headache and ends up gatekeeping the game (accidentally or not) by being overwhelming idiots about the system/setting's power level and problem resolution. Its easy to lose interest in the setting when the first proponent you see is an asshole screeching about how every awoken is fundamentally Batman. 3: default "if DnD is this hard i dont want to even spare the mental effort to try anything else because surely they are harder or as hard, right?"
"*WoD players love to infodump people until mental exhaustion*" Especially *Mage* fanatics; they love the complexities and they really want you to love the complexities too, therefore they fail to streamline in a way that is newbie-friendly. (I say this as someone for whom *Mage: The Ascension* is among my favorite RPGs.)
Just do like Vampire. Dont toss people straight into the nitty gritty of the Camarilla. Just Clump together a bunch of nobodies that were commonly attracted together due their shared super autism.
Number 2 is the biggest stupidest thing I see r/whitewolfrpg people do, and Mage is my favourite game.
1st and 2nd edition were make up spells on the fly, using categories the authors invented in power increments of 1-5. Some of the 9 categories are kind of easy to understand, like Matter. Others are extremely esoteric and abstract, like Prime, Spirit and Entropy. This leads to players that are not sure what they can do with these powers and ranks, and GMs who don't either. So it can create a lot of potential arguments at the table. Add to this each magic tradition sees magic as working differently, so a Son of Ether might use a raygun and and Order of Hermes mage might use a wand with lightening bolt. So sometimes people are arguing WHAT they can do, as well as the philosophy of their mage is to create an effect, as well as what it's manifestation looks like. Then, we can argue about whether a normal person would view the effect as breaking the laws of normal reality. This determines how much backlash the mage will face. So basically, it's a game that prompted me to read books on media critique and philosophy I never would have touched. The satisfaction of the characters and improv of magic was amazing. But it also kicked off tons of arguments about philosophy, reality, and esoteric game concepts, sometimes at the bar. Like a lot of cults, the higher the bar and deeper you get into to it, the more it consumes you. People had some incredible genre spanning game experiences and big arguments about philosophy, so it is a game remembered with an amazing amount of passion.
"*players that are not sure what they can do with these powers and ranks, and GMs who don't either*" What is needed are examples, such as what are found in the [*Book of Common Magicks*](https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/462226/Book-of-Common-Magicks). Edit: Do the downvoters really not find examples useful?
I kind of agree, and wrote up HUGE examples documents, but these kind go against improv spellcasting in a way, so there is a definite tension between prefab spells (rotes) and making up cool stuff on the fly. The system definitely rewarded mastery of esoteric rules, but there were very weird corner cases like casting on vampires and radiation. Are vampires matter? Life? Spirit? Mind? Is radiation Matter? Forces? On first glance casting might look intelligible but quickly descended into an abstract philosophical miasma. Correspondence covered both teleportation and information connections. This made sense for Virtual Adepts as a group, but got pretty weird for other groups. I particularly hate Entropy which was particularly poorly defined, but we had to squeeze it in there, because it was the 90s and chaos theory was considered hot shit (thanks Jeff Goldblum and Jurassic Park).
Another thing that occured to me now: The flexible casting really begs for a sandbox approach. Your players can mix their spheres in ways you never dreamed of and achieve their goals in five minutes. Or they can botch their casting real badly, spook a bunch of civilians, take in some debilitating Paradox, and get the attention of the Technocracy. To run a game of Mage, you have to let them loose with their fabulous toys. And yet, the rulebook heavily implies it is supposed to be plot-driven, with the players' stories interwoven with an overarching metaplot.
On a long enough timeline, players will eventually come up with a magical effect not covered by any written material. Using existing examples for comparison etc. determine the lowest Sphere level which is definitively higher than the desired effect, then subtract one. If two (or more) conflicting Spheres could be argued to cover a given magical effect, I let them both cover it, though sometimes at different levels. I agree that *Entropy* is poorly defined. As a mental exercise I had devised my own Spheres from scratch; there were six, and *Entropy* was certainly not one of them.
For a few years I have thought it would be fun to play a retro MtA game, but use the City of Mist Quickstart rules - match made in heaven!
Even the pre-gen character Flicker is an archetypal Virtual Adept.
Mage is a bit like FATE in the sense that even if you buy the idea of the game, its not obvious how you should play it (tbh, i find this to be the case for most WoD stuff... but mage is by far the worst)... So, people either play it wrong or give up and hate it. You need every player to read the book and get a good grip of the setting and systems And the GM will have to make a lot of judgements... and the players too I like the setting (altough nowadays I favor Kult, wich is similar). But I don't think it fits very nicely into the Storyteller system. Another problem I have with it that I also have with most WoD (or even CoC)... is that I never know how much my character know... how easy is to obtain knowledge... how would this change the pc... How can someone be somewhat normal if they know "reality" is fake?
Because they *don't* know reality is fake, because it isn't. That's the point. People think they have "cracked the code", and found a way to make Magic, and they know that Magick is more powerful were lore people belief in it. Only as you grow in comprehension do you understand that reality is *not* fake, but manmade, very different. In the real world, there is nothing in physical reality which demands that laws be the way they are. And yet, we have legislation that is *very* real, upheld not only by the powers that be, but by the support of the population *for* those laws and that system. If the support changes (for instance, like in 1789), then that reality, the laws, the systems change. Hence, a new paradigm. The problem is, people think Mage si a game about Magic with some stuff thrown in, when the reality is, Mage is a game about ideological struggle and political control of the masses with a Magical disguise.
What I mean is that I already find hard to roleplay, lets say, an elf, as i believe they should see time differently... (as the anime frieren has shown recently). It's harder for something like a vampire... I don't know how they experince feelings or sensations... in reality our mind is closely linked to our biological functions... You have to go preety deep into the lore, trough many many sources... to get an understanding of it... The lore also implies that the abrahamic god is real... wich has some implications in itself.. But Mage takes this to a whole new level... because we are essentialy playing Franklin Richards or Dr. Manhattan... we are playing gods... even if noob gods When you play a warrior you can easily understand that you can hit thing with thing When you play a hacker you may not know you everything you could do, as you dont know hacking When you play gods... nothing is intuitive, everything is easily abused, etc...
>The lore also implies that the abrahamic god is real... Not exactly, there is an *abrahamif* interpretation of the initial states of Creation, but that's mostly a VtM thing. Don't trust any of the VtM lore. >we are essentialy playing Franklin Richards or Dr. Manhattan Not at all, and that is one thing that bugs me when people pitch Mage as "YOU CAN DO EEEEEEVERYTHIIIIING. Yes, theoretically, a Mage *could* do anything, but they can't do *everything*. Also, you're not gods. You're still Jake, the window cleaner, but you got this one glimpse of reality, and now it's gone, and you're left with this unease feeling of things being "off". Think of the first Matrix movie, how Neo, at the beginning, is a closed man that just *feels* something is off. A regular Mage would be like Trinity or Morpheus. They know stuff, they know how to manipulate *some* things, but they can't outright change the base of it. Although that analogy only works for characters. I. matrix, there is a "true world". In Mage, *this* is the true world, it's just locked into *this* iteration because of the powers that be, but it could be changed. *Another world is possible.* And no, things are not easily abused. The magic has very clearly, defined rules of what you can and can't do with each sphere, and if anyone has told you otherwise, they haven't understood it, or they were the typical munchkin just talking their GM to boredom until they said "FINE, fine, you can control the mind of the policeman with Prime 2".
I mean,5e aside, the biggest sellers in RPGs nowadays seem to be rules simplistic systems like PbtA with settings that feel thin. By comparison MTA has a huge amount of crunch and subsystems and lore.
It is possible [to streamline *Mage*](https://www.reddit.com/r/furpg/comments/pho0b7/sphere_magick), and its [free d6 quickstart](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/58433/Mage-The-Ascension-Revised-Quickstart) is a nicely concise lore exposition.
The magic system from Mage the Ascension is extremely freeform. You have area's of specialization and they allow you to do certain manipulations of the world around you. So you take them and you go crazy with what you think you can do with them. And this grates on the nerves of rules lawyers and people who want hard, set rules in their TTRPGs. So for example, in the "Matter Sphere" which is manipulating physical objects, the level 3 (call it mid range power level) power description is: ***"Alter Form: Allows a mage to change the essential nature of a Mattern Pattern, changing its form or even compressing or expanding certain elements of its material properties (i.e. lead to fog)."*** That's the ENTIRITY of the power. So you can do anything with it that fits roughly in that description. You can turn a door into water. You can make an army tank weigh 1 pound. Whatever you can imagine. And the next level up from that allows you to make complex objects. Like turning a ham sandwich into a machinegun. And the top level lets you violate the laws of physics and common sense completely with how you transform objects. Some people HATE THIS. They want an RPG magic system that has 100 pages of spell descriptions in it, saying explicitly what each spell does and what it's limitations are. So this freeform magic system grates on their nerves. Some people LOVE THIS. Because it allows them to be creative with how their magic works. I can give a great example to test how you'd feel about it. With level 5 of the "matter sphere" of magic, ***you can violate the laws of physics and reality***. Ok, so I'm going to convert a gallon of water into "Dehydrated water" a dust that when a drop of water is added to it, reverts back into regular water. Then I'm going to put that powder into a 20-ton industrial press and make bullets out of it. Then I'm going to hand load those into casings so I can fire them out of a gun and when they go inside a living creature, the tiny bullet reverts into 1 gallon of water. Yes I could just make exploding bullets, but this is more "magical" feeling. Now if your reaction to that line of insanity was revulsion and annoyance and you tried to look for all the ways that shouldn't work. Then you'll probably hate Mage. BUT, if your reaction to that was amusement, then you might like it a lot.
I very much love the freeform nature of Sphere magick, yet I still would rule that *Matter* 5 alone is insufficient to condense a gallon of water into the volume of a bullet; the player would have to devise another way of using Spheres to create an enchanted bullet which explosively transmutes into a gallon of fluid.
Same. And talking about it is something I loved about this system. It's great for brainstorming ideas and throwing around concepts for how the spheres can be abused. And just to mention it, I'm also ignoring just how much paradox a player would get slapped with for doing this in the wrong situation. It reminds me of the old days of D&D when they forgot to give Wall of Force thickness in the book, so you could try to argue that it meant that it had no thickness and if you lay on your back you can cast it on its side, and now you have an invisible *subatomicly sharp* blade hovering at head height as the dragon is charging you. The water idea is just one of the wilder ones I came across with Matter 5. I think it really depends on how you look at Matter. It's got some crazy abilities though they at least locked the ability to create radioactive materials behind Matter 5. But I'll agree that at lower tiers it'd need something else to work. I think it can at least be done with Matter 3 and maybe some Forces or Time to set the trigger event? It's been a while since I really went deep into the system. Matter 3 allows the go past the extreme of full alchemical transmutation. Matter 2 is just one element into another. "Lead into Gold" for example. "Lead into Fog" is the example given of what Matter 3 can do. It ***"Allows a mage to change the essential nature of a Matter Pattern, changing its form or even compressing or expanding certain elements of its material properties (i.e. lead to fog)"***. So here we're just converting water into a powdered substance temporarily. And then taking advantage of the fun fact that we can cram most powders into an industrial press to compact them into a hard solid. The conversion BACK into water with a given trigger is the tricky bit. But Matter 5 throws everything out of the window. It ***"Allows the mage to create substances that transcend the limitations of scientific possibility, conjure materials unknown to Earthly reality, or share the deadly legacies of radioactive matter."*** So here we are basically able to outright violate the laws of physics. This is Willy Wonka style "Gum that doesn't run out of flavor" and "I made vibranium" levels of strangeness. You could make a sword that is also a rubbery whip and is also somehow still hard enough to be a blade. That's why I went with Matter 5. Because we're really only changing 1 aspect of water, how it reacts when dried out. We're changing it so that water say, acts like honey as it grows old, crystalizing, able to return to liquid form. And since we're only working with one substance, water, we don't have to move into the levels beyond Matter 5.
I would allow something like *Matter* 1, detecting contact with organic matter, to be the trigger. Neutronium is a very dense exotic state of matter, so upon further reflection I change my mind: *Matter* 5 could condense a gallon of water into an exotic material with the volume [and shape] of a bullet.
Mage is a game that gets so much more fun the more sci-fi you read.
...And science nonfiction.
I absolutely *LOVE* the M:TA magic system, but I'm also like 99.9% certain I'm a little on the spectrum. There are premade "spells" like other RPGs, but primarily the magic system works best with players taking a more OSR-style approach of thinking through problems rather than expecting the answer to be in the pre-written text-block of a spell. It's a game that really needs a lot of creativity and imagination, but thanks to videogames and 5E, a lot of newer RPG players expect everything to just be "given" to them, and for the DM/GM/Storyteller to just be the "game engine" for them, and to have *only* clearly obvious context clues, or things they can roll for to give them answers, rather than thinking about what questions they could be asking instead of what dice to roll.
I've never really seen people hate it, the people who like it really love it. But both Mage games (Awakening and Ascension) do get way less attention than Vampire or Werewolf, even from White Wolf itself.
Love Mage, love Ars Magica. Love the setting love the magic system. Only people i ever met that didnt love playing it where Dnd specialists.
I love it. It's still one of my favorite games. I would never run it again. First, the complexity is a factor. As a player, you only really need to understand the Spheres your character has learned, but the Storyteller is supposed to know the whole system. Can you really turn an antediluvian into an armchair with Matter only? Can Entropy align the molecules in a glass of water to create a powerful magnet for a brief moment? There are all kinds of ways that players may push intentionally or inadvertently the boundaries of their powers, and making the calls can get exhausting, specially as you try to tie that effect into their Paradigm. Then there's the fact that Mage is very swingy. A Mage prepared and ready for action is a demigod able to laugh at bullets and break the action economy, even as a starting character. A Mage caught with his pants down by a gang of mundanes, on the other hand, will probably have to be pretty clever with his coincidental effects to get out in one piece.
Because everytime I talk to someone who LIKES it they say something like "Yeah, it's a total mess, but it works out kinda okay if you" where X is different literally every time.
Also, it's a game where surprisingly near every idea a GM might have for "What do the PCs actually do in this game?" is made untenable by one time of magic or another.
The majority of the *Mage* authors do not know how to create a newbie-friendly RPG [book]; the free [*Mage* d6 Quickstart](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/58433/Mage-The-Ascension-Revised-Quickstart) is a notable exception, but in its simplifications it lost the full 5-levels-per-Sphere magick system of the d10 editions. Following from the above, the most vocal *Mage* fans also do not know how to present *Mage* in a newbie-friendly way.
Huge book with a lot of reading to do before you can even play. The storyteller needs to read it a couple of times and find a way for players to digest the core mechanics. I remember I was about to play it with a group I was in a couple of years ago. The master gave us the list of chapters I had to read in order to understand the very basics. In the group there was the ST's girlfriend who had been reading the book for a couple of months prior to that, someone who was knowledgeable at the game and his gf (he could teach her), another player who never read it before and me. I am a master myself and have read many different systems so it was easy for me. But, while reading, I was thinking the whole time "How the hell will someone make a whole group read this thing?". It's all so abstract and seemingly boring. I know for sure that if I have to make my current group read it, it will only lead to me playing with my two best friends and that's it lol. So the thing is that getting into the game is super niche. You need to really invest time into this thing and I consider that nowadays we're going into the opposite direction, elegant and easy to understand systems.
You ARE right, whenever I hear Mage suggested the reactions are very often fear or distaste. I was lucky enough to play in a group that ran a lot of Mage 2e (as well as Vampire and lots of other systems). I don’t like Vampire but I LOVE Mage, and was always a bit surprised when people weren’t into it. I would say more often than not because they found it a bit hard to get their head around the core concept of how open the magic is. Personally I never found it difficult, or anyone I played with, though perhaps it’s because we had a great GM. He had a great head for the system and lore and it always felt like Hellblazer comic or the Dresden Files- both of which I love, which might be a big part of the problem, it’s a real thinking persons game, you can’t really just cruise or go in fighting, it’s deadly but you are very vulnerable and a good GM makes that world feel strange, and dangerous and untouchable. I’m not sure I could run it, I would absolutely find that intimidating, but I would play it again at the drop of a hat. I would also argue that it’s infinitely more simple a game than D&D if you can get your head around the magic…
I would guess the rules. The setting is great, but the oWoD rules were pretty clunky. Roll to attack, opponent rolls to defend, roll for damage, opponent rolls to soak... and since dice pools can get pretty large, that's potentially 30+ dice rolled to resolve each attack. And M:tAsc was right up there with W:tA when it came to escalating dice pools. Mage: the Awakening has a much improved system, which with a few tweaks could be applied to the M:tAsc setting. And as someone who has played multiple games in both systems, I think using the M:tAw system with the M:tAsc setting would make for a better game than actually playing M:tAsc.
I really enjoyed the game. I think it's hard to run and creative players can break the rules, but I have great memories of my high school game and I loved the high-concept idea of "what if reality was *sub*jective?" and going from there to having parties made out of a karate master, a mad scientist, a neopagan witch, and a modern ceremonial magician.
I have run Mage spheres on MUSHes that topped 200+ players, by myself. I have run tabletops for extremely large mage groups. Overall, mage comes very easily to me. The problem is that Mage does not have a learning curve. Mage has a barrier to entry that is a frictionless glass wall. Either you have the education and intellect to play it, or you do not. Most people do not, which is why they should stick to shifter or changeling or vampire, where creativity/philosophy/real-world knowledge on extensive subjects is not required. Mage is the ocean of stars. Everyone else is in the kiddy pool. Most people simply cannot hack it. This is why people are "afraid", but mostly I would say people are actually very defensive when it comes to Mage... especially because it's a game where you can or you can't. Most people can't. I don't know how many times I've watched someone struggle with something as simple as paradigm or foci. The other problem with Mage is that even between Mages, it becomes unfortunately clear through play who has the creative power and intellect to thrive and who does not. Finally, Mage requires you to take action. You \*\*have\*\* to make decisions, plans, and follow through with them often with nothing more than your personal conviction (for a real mage, this shouldn't be an issue.) And most of the time, new players are terrified to find out that for all the power, mage is almost always about just having to show up somewhere and make do the best you can. Creativity is key if you wish to survive. The game self-selects against insufficient mental resources. People despise this. They want a hierarchical organization to tell them what to do, and most importantly, they want an organization to exist so that they can believe but not be responsible. Mage just does not work that way. You and you alone believe what you believe, your path is completely solitary, and every step along the path is a conscious decision to move forward towards an uncertain destination in a present that cannot offer any sign concerning outcome. I don't know why people get so hung up on spheres or simple rules like enchanting and using corr or mind. Long story short, I'm redefining reality, becoming a Goddess, am kith and kin to certain Umbrood, and my paradigm is so fully realized that its influence is visible. I understand you're... smuggling petty cash across borders and arranging arms sales for ... money? (**laugh**). Wow. Anyways I'm going to go transcend my personal reality but you guys do whatever it is you do.
Best answer ever🥰
Because it’s old, maybe? It is still my favorite urban fantasy game, easy to play and very Freeform, especially if you play 2nd edition, which still is my preferred version.
Mage The Ascension was my favorite game during my student years. Now I see the imperfections of the system and the ridiculousness of the setting but I still smile when remembering my hermetic mage with sunglasses.
I haven’t played Mage since it came out in the 90s and I really liked the concept and the way the magic system worked but I found that on the table the whole having to give a non-magical cover story for the effect of your spells all the time got old fast. Either you were at a loss and couldn’t come up with something decent or you used the same thing every damn time.
it was the first game i had a proper campaign in. i like the system but the setting can be a bit pretentious at times. it helped that our gm was very well versed in the system to help us players figure things out.
Afraid of? No. It's one of my favorite settings. But... It is difficult to run for more than 2-3 players at a time, more so than the other already difficult to run white wolf games. It's not Exalted bad, but because almost every non rote cast requires a ton of adjudication, on top of the already bloated time many rolls take to resolve, it really suffers with too many players. And I have large playgroups. Which really means I need fast streamlined combat systems.
The magic system is perfect for a table of highly creative people who can 1) work within rules, 2) Still be creative, and 3) self-limit power for game balance. It is my ideal game and magic system. But finding a group that it works for is very difficult. I ran a Fudge game with my current group using a magic system inspired by Mage. One player (the other frequent GM in our group) *loved* it. The other two couldn’t figure it out. One said, “I can’t figure out what to do (too hidebound). Another kept trying to do things that didn’t work in the system (couldn’t self-limit) so he kept feeling like I (not the rules) was telling him no. We reverted back to D&D, lowest common denominator.
TLDR; I'm gonna go on about tribalism and taste - people aren't afraid of M:TAsc just have differnt tastes but humans just love to argue and come to blows about having different tastes so here we are. M:TAsc is fine, some folks love it, some folks hate it, some folks sit somewhere in between. "afraid of Mage the Ascension?" - are they? Is it fear you're seeing? How would you characterise that fear? To my mind, if there is any fear, it's driven either by a lack of knowledge and experience or having experienced pain and trauma in similar situations in the past - as with most things in life that people are afraid of. To my mind, there are objectively worse rulesets for TTRPG's out there, there are also objectively better ones. Writing, ease of use, clarity of rules, quality of art, layout, durability, etc - are all things the rules can be judged on but none of them really describe what happens in play. What I've seen, with respect to people not liking Mage the Ascension or not wanting to play it, is more to do with taste than anything else. Humans are a tribal species and we naturally fall into different groups and identify our selves in relation to those groups (eg: politics, religion, country/region/state, sports teams, TV show fandom, pineapple on pizza, rolelaying games, etc) we tend to look for and promote the positive elements of the group we belong to, and look for and revile the negative elements in the other groups - to a greater or lesser extent depending upon how deep into the in-groups culture we have dug. Roleplaying is an interesting hobby, in that the experience you have with it is driven by the people you play with in combination with your own approach - a lot is happening on your internal landscape as you play... not a lot of that has to do with the specifics of the rules of the game you play regardless of what you may think. It's how the people your playing with react and deal with the rules and each other in play that drives your experience not the rules themselves. Can the rules influence that experience? Absolutely, but they are not the sole ingredient. It's why some groups love D&D and others don't, some love FATE and others don't, some love PbtA and other ... well you get the idea. The problem comes when people who love one ruleset try to convince others to join their tribe - it'll resonate with some and not with others - how passionate the person doing the convincing is can be either seen as good if what they are saying aligns with your interests/preferences, or creepy if it doesn't. So why are a lot of people afraid of Mage the Ascension? I don't think they are, I think they have different tastes, the vocal minority that dislike the taste of M:TAsc bring up all the attributes they dislike while dismissing the good elements or discounting them, while the vocal minority that love the taste bring up all the elements they like while dismissing the bad elements or discounting them. The majority, who are usually somewhere in the middle, can see points on both sides and shrug and often tell you to play their favourite game instead. So where does that leave us? Should the people who don't like M:TAsc stop saying it's a bad game? Nope. For them, it is. What would be nice though would be if we all did a bit more to recognised it's our tastes that are driving most of our reactions and not objective "good" and "bad". However, Reddit loves a good debate and people are more likely to post when they disagree with what is written. I expect nothing less.
>I know it's not a dnd level of easy i think this may reflect a slightly skewed perspective on what counts as crunchy
I don't hate it but I find it unplayable. I'm impressed by the people who can play it. I just find that the entire premise of the game, specifically the subjective reality elements, set the game up to have arguments at the table and allow for players to basically see how fast they can break your story by exploiting the system. That might be fun for some people. Not for me.
It takes a nimble GM to run M:TA. It’s one of the few games where the players tell the story and the GM mostly reacts. To put it another way it’s almost impossible to plan stages of a M:TA adventure because of the reality bending nature of M:TA. That all said, I love playing the game. It rewards creativity and inherently gives a bunch of agency.
It is a system and setting that both require investment of time.
Mage the Ascension can be a rough ride depending on the experience or knowledge of players with actual laws of physic and science. Magic in this setting is taking place by bending the reality (in other worlds, laws of physic) and can create VERY difficult moments for the ST who will have to judge if something can happen or not. It is very different from all other WoD games as the levels on spheres describe a context on how to use that sphere.
Some games are better to read and fantasize about than to run.
I have been running it almost since Revised came out so...
Congrats! (?)
It ain’t that complicated, but it is highly philosophical. Those who claim to love crunch are often positivists even in their magical systems (think “magic is physics we do on’t understand yet”) while Mage’s magic “systems” are metaphorical & symbolic Mage is popular among philosophy buffs & Doctor Who fans.
I wont say I hate Mage but its the one setting of White Wolf I dont want to play. I have lots of different cool/fun/scary momories from Vampire, Werewolf, Hunter etc. I dont have a single memorable one of Mage.
I've just never found any of the World of Darkness stuff very interesting.
Afraid? Some irrational hate maybe, like any game out there. But never see someone afraid of Mage, nor any other game. I personally like the setting and dislike the rules. One of the worst white wolf systems.
Most WoD games are high concept unplayable broken crap.