Plot Ideas for MtA

[XianTheCoder]

I've had this cool concept in my head of Supernal High, a high school dedicated to newly awakened Mages. In a nutshell, once an awakening happens, the Mage is found and whisked off to this school where they are formally trained and inducted into an order. It would be regional based, and a bit of a unofficial organization, but one that has shown surprising promise. I'd run the game in semesters, with players choosing a class schedule (which would effectively give them a dot in something at the end of the semester in liau of xp awards.. so "Intro to Space" would give them Space 1. The classes they take would dictate the nature of the conflicts they would face, which would be consistent with the xp cost of the dot they will receive upon completion).

The problem I'm having is coming up with a variety of plots that are interesting enough to build a whole campaign upon, with the players as students. I was thinking they would be students for a bit, maybe have a few Harry Potter-esque adventures, then finish the game post graduation (or fall of school) with some big climax.

I was thinking the Seers could be making attempts to infiltrate the school and the PCs are on a mission to uncover them, though it's a very unofficial mission (maybe a rogue professor sets them on the mission, or maybe they stumble upon it themselves). Eventually, they either graduate or the school falls to the Seers and the players are forced to deal with the fall-out.

I'm just having a real difficult time jump-starting the idea from "concept" to "campaign". Does anyone have any ideas for events, conflicts, plot lines, NPCs, etc that I could use?

[Talakeal]

I've had this cool concept in my head of Supernal High, a high school dedicated to newly awakened Mages. In a nutshell, once an awakening happens, the Mage is found and whisked off to this school where they are formally trained and inducted into an order. It would be regional based, and a bit of a unofficial organization, but one that has shown surprising promise. I'd run the game in semesters, with players choosing a class schedule (which would effectively give them a dot in something at the end of the semester in liau of xp awards.. so "Intro to Space" would give them Space 1. The classes they take would dictate the nature of the conflicts they would face, which would be consistent with the xp cost of the dot they will receive upon completion).

The problem I'm having is coming up with a variety of plots that are interesting enough to build a whole campaign upon, with the players as students. I was thinking they would be students for a bit, maybe have a few Harry Potter-esque adventures, then finish the game post graduation (or fall of school) with some big climax.

I was thinking the Seers could be making attempts to infiltrate the school and the PCs are on a mission to uncover them, though it's a very unofficial mission (maybe a rogue professor sets them on the mission, or maybe they stumble upon it themselves). Eventually, they either graduate or the school falls to the Seers and the players are forced to deal with the fall-out.

I'm just having a real difficult time jump-starting the idea from "concept" to "campaign". Does anyone have any ideas for events, conflicts, plot lines, NPCs, etc that I could use?

One problem you might run into in this sort of game is the PCs power level. Mage is very strict about what you can do with a given power level, and for students the answer is "not a whole lot". You might run into some bored players if you keep them at low power levels for the whole game, especially if they are the type who believes that playing Mage is about MAGIC, while if they are the sort who are people first and mages second you should be ok. On the other hand, if you let them have high end spheres really early in the game that would break a lot of suspension of disbelief, the students should not be stronger than the professors!

[XianTheCoder]

One problem you might run into in this sort of game is the PCs power level. Mage is very strict about what you can do with a given power level, and for students the answer is "not a whole lot". You might run into some bored players if you keep them at low power levels for the whole game, especially if they are the type who believes that playing Mage is about MAGIC, while if they are the sort who are people first and mages second you should be ok. On the other hand, if you let them have high end spheres really early in the game that would break a lot of suspension of disbelief, the students should not be stronger than the professors!
I'm not worried about power levels. I'm a very experienced MtA player (and a Quant in my real life), so I'm very familiar with how and where power levels scale in MtA. I actually use a LOT of house rules to fix the most egregiously out-of-whack mechanics and poor editing (of which MtA is perhaps the worst in all of nWoD). For example, Rotes... yeah... those are completely rewritten so they aren't... you know... worthless.

My main issue is that I'm not a creative GM, I come up with a good concept but I can't fill in all the literary holes. Hence my creation of this post. :) Once I have the timeline though, then I can scale the events appropriately to the correct challenge level.