Life After People in Mage (NWoD)

[Leliel]

Well, I've been watching that nihilism-inducing series on the History Channel, Life After People, and it gave me an idea-Mages, after a rival-induced malfunction in a portal ment to send them to a time just after the Fall of Atlantis, sends them into the future instead, specifically 400 years after the extinction of humanity due to a manmade plauge, with the only sentient residents-besides a bunch of nature spirits-are a few underpaid alien (as in, from other planets of the Fallen World) archeologists.

Why, you may ask?

It struck me that for all of thier claims to ultimate knowlege, mages are a profoundly immature bunch. This isn't a indictment of being good or bad, it's just they have an infliated veiw of humanity's place in the universe, when science has repeatedly shown that we are a mote of sentient dust. Traveling to a future where humans have been ultimately proven to be utterly inconsiquential to even the Earth's ecosystem would be a profoundly humbling experience for most of them-and one of the best things to happen to the WoD is a mage with a deflated ego. They'll even get a chance to save the race when they inevtably find their way back to their own time, since the afromentioned archeologists will be happy to explain exactly what happened to the previously dominant species.

Of course, the Abyss will still be around, even if it's mostly lost intrest in a dead world. That's the antagonist of the story, as it attempts to destroy the only way for the fish out of temporal water to get back home, and saving a hated enemy of it.

So, what do you think?

[Jerthanis]

Sounds like an awesome concept, but you'll need to think about how certain Arcana are going to interact with the plot and characters there. Time may prove to be too powerful if Postcognition is going to solve most of your investigation related problems. Mind may be too weak if there's literally no one there to use it on.

Also, presenting a complete cast of characters for the players to interact with is important, and if none of them are human, communication and personal relationships may be difficult to develop.

If you were I, I would choose to run a story-arc in the post-human world, before returning to the chronicle as normal in the normal timeline, albeit with a vastly different motivation and perspective on events.

[hewhosaysfish]

I thought that in Mage (and I'll admit this has been entirely picked up by reading other peoples discussions on these very boards) that reality and existence were defined by people's beliefs ("Consensus Reality"?)
I thought that was how Mages were able to do magic, by imposing their own version of events over that of everyone else, and why they had to be careful not to do too much in front of the mortals (because directly challenging the consensus reality - as opposed to discreetly tinkering with things no-one is watching - would be spitting into a thunderstorm).
Would you say this is an accurate impression of Mage or is it something I dreamed one night after eating too much cheese?

My point being that this cosmology doesn't really work in a world without humans.

[Tengu_temp]

That's oWoD Mage. They changed it in nWoD, I think.

[Krrth]

That's oWoD Mage. They changed it in nWoD, I think.

They did. Now, magic is magic....it has nothing to do with consensus.

The problem I see with the OP's scenario is that in WoD, humanity really is something special.

[Leliel]

Perhaps.

Then again, all the backstory is chronicled from a human's perspective. Of course they're somewhat biased to the "humans are special" POV (no, I'm not saying that it's beacuse the writers are human, the people in the setting are the ones who penned those myths).

And in any case, there isn't a metaplot in the NWoD: Whatever the ST says, goes.

[Krrth]

Perhaps.

Then again, all the backstory is chronicled from a human's perspective. Of course they're somewhat biased to the "humans are special" POV (no, I'm not saying that it's beacuse the writers are human, the people in the setting are the ones who penned those myths).

And in any case, there isn't a metaplot in the NWoD: Whatever the ST says, goes.

It is true that there really isn't a metaplot, and that the storyteller can change whatever they feel is necessary.

However, humans (and human derived) are mechanically special. Every sentient being that isn't human descended (Uratha, vampires, and changelings count as human) leaves a spirit when it dies. Humans cannot leave a spirit, at least not without some serious magic. Humans are also the only beings that leave ghosts.

[valadil]

Not familiar with Life After People but the idea sounds interesting ... as a premise for a game, not for the whole game. Wandering around on a barren and defunct world with a few alien archaeologists to bump into would be boring once the mage's ego deflated. I'd do this part for one or two sessions and then send the broken mages back to the real world to make a difference in the rest of the campaign.

[Haven]

I like the concept, but I don't know if Mage is the best system for it.

Though one of my many ideas for games that I never ran was a Mage game centered around a modern city on the edge of a giant chasm, and one idea for a session (or series of sessions) would be that the bad guys chased the heroes to the edge, and one way or another...they fell off.

They'd then awake in this far future, where the only other human they'd meet was a guy based on Philip K ****'s character in VALIS, who was crazy but could call down the power of Orbital Deathsat God. There would be werewolves and vampires still alive who'd lost touch with their humanity and were nothing more than mindless beasts, and consequently almost completely harmless.

(edit: Oh, right. Well, you know, the guy who wrote "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" and all that.)

[Tamburlaine]

Though one of my many ideas for games that I never ran was a Mage game centered around a modern city on the edge of a giant chasm, and one idea for a session (or series of sessions) would be that the bad guys chased the heroes to the edge, and one way or another...they fell off.

Hey, that sounds pretty awesome - do you mind if I borrow the idea?

As to the actual topic of the thread... I think it sounds like a brilliant idea, but I'm not quite sure if NuMage is the right setting for it. Hmmm, if it weren't for the whole consensus reality thing, I'd suggest Old Mage as better, because the rusting hulks of long-forgotten technocratic projects would be full of potential. How about an OWoD version, but rather than extinction, a mass exodus away from earth, maybe to escape the aforementioned designer plague?

[chiasaur11]

Hey, that sounds pretty awesome - do you mind if I borrow the idea?

As to the actual topic of the thread... I think it sounds like a brilliant idea, but I'm not quite sure if NuMage is the right setting for it. Hmmm, if it weren't for the whole consensus reality thing, I'd suggest Old Mage as better, because the rusting hulks of long-forgotten technocratic projects would be full of potential. How about an OWoD version, but rather than extinction, a mass exodus away from earth, maybe to escape the aforementioned designer plague?

That would take away the whole "mankind as dust" bit if we just left and were still influencing our reality, and that bit seems to the main point.

[Haven]

Hey, that sounds pretty awesome - do you mind if I borrow the idea?

Sure, go for it. It was actually planned for a oWoD game, because oWoD Mage is on my short-list of candidates for The Best Thing Ever. (I don't remember how I was planning to handwave the "consensus reality" thing, probably just say that one side effect of whatever apocalypse caused this is that it froze the laws of reality as they were at the time in place. So, while you're freer to enforce your will on things since there aren't any sleepers left, it's like swimming through sludge.)

[Oblivious]

I think the only thing capable of this sort of time travel would be a major artifact. If the abyss gets stronger over time in your universe, it could provide an interesting element when someone tries to cast postcog and realizes they can't look back more than an hour (also, any Guardians in the party could say "I told you so").

[Krrth]

Hey, that sounds pretty awesome - do you mind if I borrow the idea?

As to the actual topic of the thread... I think it sounds like a brilliant idea, but I'm not quite sure if NuMage is the right setting for it. Hmmm, if it weren't for the whole consensus reality thing, I'd suggest Old Mage as better, because the rusting hulks of long-forgotten technocratic projects would be full of potential. How about an OWoD version, but rather than extinction, a mass exodus away from earth, maybe to escape the aforementioned designer plague?

I'd say oWoD for this as well. Remember, if you're in a Horizon Realm, consensus doesn't matter.