Mage: the Awakening

[Dhavaer]

I just bought the core book and Mage last weekend and i'm interested in hearign other people's opinions on the game.

Thoughts?

[tyfon]

Not very constructive opinion, forget me, but I have to say it:

Ascension was better.

[Skyserpent]

Wait... is this the Mage that has the Paradox system?

[Kurald Galain]

Ascension was better.

+1

Awakening simply lacks what makes the game "Mage".

[Dhavaer]

Wait... is this the Mage that has the Paradox system?

Yes, that one.

[Dragor]

I like it, but that's probably because I've never played any oWoD. Our games have never taken off the ground, though.

[Jerthanis]

I just bought the core book and Mage last weekend and i'm interested in hearign other people's opinions on the game.

Thoughts?

I am so, so sorry.

To expand: The game just doesn't have it. It is the combination of flavor, playability, and sheer fun factor. There's little balance between the different arcana, with Space and Mind blowing other schools out of the water in terms of usefulness, and Forces and Fate sucking a lot until rank 5. It has nearly incomprehensible spellcasting rules that require going over time and again before you understand them. There's a very simple flowchart to get you started available online. Additionally, the flavor of the political factions is uninspired, and most of them have little reason to work together or against each other, and antagonist forces are frankly all but absent from the book. The only currency of the setting are vaguely defined secrets, which seems largely pointless when every Mage knows the big one. Style seems inconsistent, because at one point the game seems to expect you to be playing Action Movie stars who blow up buildings while riding on motorcycles, another moment playing paranoid schizophrenics holed up in their libraries writing nonsense about elder gods.

Seemingly simple effects like, "Make light" are not only difficult to pull off at all and require investment of character resources, but are also actually risky for a character to perform, while game-destroyingly powerful effects like memory alteration, postcognition and mind reading are accomplished simply and for little or no cost.

Mage: The Awakening is quite literally the biggest waste of money I've ever spent on RPG related materials. It's not that it's out-and-out bad, as in "nothing good between its covers", it's just that what is good falls flat in execution, doesn't fit with other aspects of the game, or is obscured in a mire of bad things surrounding the good aspect.

You might have better luck with it, the game DOES have fans after all. I would say that the only thing I think White Wolf ever put out of lower overall playability than Mage: The Awakening was Monte Cook's World of Darkness... and I'm not even a fan of White Wolf. Also odd is that I think New World of Darkness the core book is quite possibly in my top 5 RPG systems of all time.

[Selrahc]

Run it as an Indiana Jones style game and it should be a lot of fun. Regardless of balance between powers the game I played was like that, and everyone was doing something cool with their stuff. Every character is really versatile, and can approach problems a lot of ways.

I have heard a lot of people say Ascension was a better game. It may very well have been. And it certainly sounds cool. But I do know I have played in a game of Awakening and it was great.

Frankly though, (On the balance thing) most of Minds spells are only good for screwing over the little people. Which any mage should be able to do with eaase. When your antagonists are powerful spirits, animated statue tomb guardians, or rival supernaturals the success rate of any Mind spell is going to be pretty low. Space on the other hand, is really really useful, and every group needs at least one person who is a specialist in it.

[Dragor]

So, I take it Ascension was better.

I like the general idea of Mage, but in Awakening it just seems to restrict you. Cool stuff? Only on a certain basis. It's a carrot on a very spiky stick. You want the carrot, but you go through pain and suffering to get it.

I think Paradox is just useless. If your PC's are at all sensible, they'll know that casting magic in front of Sleepers is stupid anyway. They don't need something to CONFIRM it was stupid.

So we haven't played it for a while. In fact, we haven't played any of nWoD for a while. I may seek out some oWoD books at some point (particuarly V:tM and M:tA), but my group's already swung onto 4th Ed, and we're not going to move away so soon.

[Jerthanis]

Frankly though, (On the balance thing) most of Minds spells are only good for screwing over the little people. Which any mage should be able to do with eaase. When your antagonists are powerful spirits, animated statue tomb guardians, or rival supernaturals the success rate of any Mind spell is going to be pretty low. Space on the other hand, is really really useful, and every group needs at least one person who is a specialist in it.

A specialized Mind Mage can shatter another equally specialized Mind Mage's Mind Shield in a single round on a roll that is a little bit above average, and force him to "drop his defenses". Which is enough to end most battles right there, which is more than you can say for any other single Arcana. Run a party with an aggressive enough Mind Mage, who is willing to expend the Mana to get what he wants and literally nothing beyond ST handwaving can stop him. I am however positing that making the antagonists in an arc uniformly animated statues and powerful spirits for the magic not to work on is ST handwaving at best and evidence your game is broken at worst.

With a steady source of Mana, the Mind/Space combination will orchestrate an entire political/subversion/mystery plot on its own with no need for other players.

Still, Indiana Jones style mystic tomb raiding does sound right up M:tAwakening's alley... some mysticism amid hollywood action comedy romance, I've also heard of running Shadow Hearts style games using Mage: The Awakening, and that also sounds like a pretty good fit.

[Revlid]

In nWoD versus oWoD, the split seems to be:

Old Mage is better than New Mage.
Old Vampire and New Vampire are even.
New Werewolf is better than Old Werewolf.
New Changeling is much better than Old Changeling. In fact, new Changeling is just flat-out awesome.

[valadil]

I am so, so sorry.
It is the combination of flavor, playability, and sheer fun factor. There's little balance between the different arcana, with Space and Mind blowing other schools out of the water in terms of usefulness, and Forces and Fate sucking a lot until rank 5. It has nearly incomprehensible spellcasting rules that require going over time and again before you understand them.

Huh. I'd heard that the one thing the new Mage book did right was how it clearly enumerated what sort of effects were possible with what combinations of spheres.

[Dhavaer]

Huh. I'd heard that the one thing the new Mage book did right was how it clearly enumerated what sort of effects were possible with what combinations of spheres.

I think this is true, I've read revised Ascension and I found the casting system in Awakening was a lot easier to grasp.

[comicshorse]

New Werewolf is better than Old Werewolf

Sorry to divert the topic a bit but I was a big fan of Old Werewolf. I'd be interested to hear how the new game inproves on it.

[Devin]

Jerthanis, what makes it good for Shadow Hearts? You could say I'm interested.

[Kurald Galain]

Old Mage is better than New Mage.
Old Vampire and New Vampire are even.
New Werewolf is better than Old Werewolf.
New Changeling is much better than Old Changeling. In fact, new Changeling is just flat-out awesome.

Really?

I'd say that Old vampire is better than New;
Old and New werewolf are even;
Old changeling is a much better world, but the magic system is not really playable.

(edit) likewise, New Mage is probably better in that it's more playable; conceptually, the older version is better, but in practice for most groups, not so.

[Tadanori Oyama]

I like it better than Ascension but I'm probably one of a minority. I was never that into the older version. I will tell you that I believe Requiem is much more interesting to me than Masquerade was.

There's alot of debate about the revised core settings in the World of Darkness. That's why I mostly stick with the secondaries, Promethean, Changeling, and Hunter when it hits next month.

[Krrth]

I rather like the new versions. The old versions were good, but (imo) got bogged down with too many splatbooks and rules. The new systems seem much easier, and are designed to work with each other.

[Selrahc]

I am however positing that making the antagonists in an arc uniformly animated statues and powerful spirits for the magic not to work on is ST handwaving at best and evidence your game is broken at worst.

Well there may be something in that, but well... who else is going to be guarding ancient tombs other than spirits and animated statues?

The main antagonist(Think the Nazi officers that race Indy to the treasure, but with a seer instead of a Nazi) was also a (more) powerful mind mage than our parties Mastigos. I don't think the GM did it to intentionally gip our mind mage. But he was more focused on Space anyway, so maybe I didn't see what mind can really do.

[Jerthanis]

Huh. I'd heard that the one thing the new Mage book did right was how it clearly enumerated what sort of effects were possible with what combinations of spheres.

Oh, it is certainly better than old Mage for internal rules clarity, certainly... though I'd argue that having the entire magic system be up to ST fiat is different from having incomprehensible rules for it, but then, I never played more than one game of old mage anyway. However, compared to the core's philosophy of simplicity in everything, with one-roll combat and so on, the processes for finding out Paradox, the mana expenditure/round rules with the calculating how much mana would be needed for an effect, with what sympathetic connection you have to Atlantean runes bonus, deciding whether to cast it as an extended spell (a good way to waste 6 hours in game, BTW) or an instant one.

I ran a nWoD game that ran up to the start of a Mage game, and there was a very clear dividing line between the pre-Mage part of the game for being quick and efficient with everyone understanding their characters and combat flowing like a dream, and post-Mage where every action was a chore of poring through the book and people arguing over whether the flavor use of the Monkey Paw rote should necessitate new mechanics for it and... Yeah, we had problems.

Jerthanis, what makes it good for Shadow Hearts? You could say I'm interested.

The fact that Shadow Hearts is Pure Awesome, and its combination of Lovecraftian Horror with "Let's kill everything" console RPG gameplay, with a cast of characters combining abilities which are realistic with supernatural ones. You really couldn't do many of the game's cast's signature abilities, but I had a really cool concept for Orville Wright the Forces mage for use in a Shadow Hearts Themed Mage: The Awakening game.

[Tellah]

Mage: The Awakening is my favorite game system, by far. It's also my least favorite setting. I recommend uses the casting mechanics, but stripping out all the stupid Atlantis stuff.

Actually, to be totally fair, I didn't use the system entirely as written. Mostly I just told players to tell me what their character wanted to do, then I told them what to roll. If you find the pre-written spells too complex, then just get a sense for balance and use Creative Thaumaturgy exclusively, as I prefer to.

As to the point of Mages breaking challenges--umm, yes? That's what Mages do. If you approach Mage looking for things like balance in combat, you'll be disappointed. Treat it more as a heavily roleplayed game, where relative power levels of the characters matter much less, and you'll have a better time. The way I run Mage, you could have a Mage with 200 experience and a sleepwalking mortal with 35 experience, and they'd both be having a good time (although they might not be in the same room very often). It's a game that requires the GM to work harder at specifically tailoring the game to the players, for sure--there's no such thing as a "balanced encounter"--but if you're willing to invest the time, it's great. If you want balanced combat, run Mutants and Masterminds, D&D 4e, Spirit of the Century, The Shadows of Yesterday, or a hundred other games that do it better.

[tyfon]

oWoD was never about 'balancing' and such. You could have elder vampire (like 700 years old) and 3 neonates in group, and run really great game. Power level ? Yeah, this one guy could eat whole coterie, but it's not about strenght, it's about roleplaying opportunities it brings (younger-elder relations, being removed from day-to-day modern life).

Mage is even better - really biggest array of possibilities I ve ever seen in RPG, grat cosmology and , yeah, I dare to say that, philosophy.

Book of Worlds (which I consider best game about planes ever) starts with story. Final words are : "You have whole universe to hide".

And Mage universe is REALLY big :)


Sorry - it's my favorite game...

[endoperez]

How does Mage compare to Ars Magica? IIRC, it started as modern version of Ars, but then White Wolf removed the connections.

I read through the Ars 4th edition rules (free download), and the setting oozes awesome, but it might be easier to find a Mage game.

[Jerthanis]

As to the point of Mages breaking challenges--umm, yes? That's what Mages do. If you approach Mage looking for things like balance in combat, you'll be disappointed. Treat it more as a heavily roleplayed game, where relative power levels of the characters matter much less, and you'll have a better time. The way I run Mage, you could have a Mage with 200 experience and a sleepwalking mortal with 35 experience, and they'd both be having a good time (although they might not be in the same room very often).

Oh, I don't disagree that the game can be run with specific tailoring, but when you want to run political mystery intrigue plots involving both sleepers and mage organizations and there's a specialized Mind Mage, the specific tailoring required is that no NPC knows anything that the Mind Mage could use to their advantage, or the game is over.

I'll give an example: A friendly NPC knows of a growing threat to the Mysterium in the form of a group of banishers who found a list of their sanctums, so the PCs need to convince the NPC to let them help warn all the mages to evacuate their sanctums. In truth, these "banishers" are just a ploy by the Guardians who think the Mysterium of the city is run incompetently and is letting magic bleed into the sleeper world, and that must be stopped, and the Banishers are there to give them some plausable deniability. Perhaps behind the plan is a single mage, who is in fact a servant of the Exarchs.

If you drop a Mind Mage into this, he doesn't even need to talk to the first NPC, he rips the knowledge of the sanctums from his mind. Once they get to the Sanctums, he can't quite force the mages to leave their sanctums behind, but he can influence the decision. If you ever let him see even a single one of the Faux banishers, he'll discover the truth of the plot, and will go straight to the Guardians, where he'll work his way to the person responsible and immediately reveal him as the servant of the Exarchs. The tailoring required to make this NOT be a plot entirely soloed by the Mind Mage with little effort is if you make no one know ANYTHING about the plot, which can as easily run into problems of the players knowing nothing as well and the plot not advancing. When you have to go to such ends to make even the most simple of plots work with the magic system in place, the ends you have to go to to actually make a complex, campaign long plot not fall apart the instant someone buys Mind 4 are just insane.

I'm painting myself into a corner harping on about how bad the Mind Arcana is for plot breaking, when I could be talking about how incredibly lame the default Atlantean Dragons who gave magic to primitive man is... but everyone already kind of knows that anyway.

[JMobius]

snip horrors of the mind arcanum

I had a similar problem when running a game of oWoD Mage. Mind was quite powerful there too, and while the rules on mind-sucking were fuzzy (like everything was) I was similarly hard pressed to come up with ways to prevent the specialist from derailing any mystery and suspense.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Old M:TA was like Shrodiger's Cheeze. Broken in so many ways all at the same time.

Without risking paradox, you could (assuming no sleepers around, you can get away with it if you vulgar without witnesses, with sufficent quintessence):

1) Turn a vampire into a lawnchair

2) turn a rock into a diamond of equal size

3) increase the aging factor on a person to be 1,000 years to the second, and watch him disintegrate away

4) Go back in time to stop the plot before it ever happened

5) Reduce the molecular cohesion of the opponent's body to disintegrate him.

6) Use a copper pipe and a backpack with assorted blinking lights to use Forces to create fireballs as Coincedental magic.

7) Use a simple Prime rote to make ANY weapon do Ag damage (coincidentally, because a weapon actually hurting something that looks human is perfectly reasonable, even if that 'human' is actually a vampire that should be able to regen the damage almost instantly)

8) Create a half pound of antimater and explode the planet

9) use the 'jedi mind trick' to make Professor Xavier look gimp in comparison, by controlling the actions of every sentient being on the planet.

[tyfon]

1) Turn a vampire into a lawnchair

2) turn a rock into a diamond of equal size

3) increase the aging factor on a person to be 1,000 years to the second, and watch him disintegrate away

4) Go back in time to stop the plot before it ever happened

5) Reduce the molecular cohesion of the opponent's body to disintegrate him.

6) Use a copper pipe and a backpack with assorted blinking lights to use Forces to create fireballs as Coincedental magic.

7) Use a simple Prime rote to make ANY weapon do Ag damage (coincidentally, because a weapon actually hurting something that looks human is perfectly reasonable, even if that 'human' is actually a vampire that should be able to regen the damage almost instantly)

8) Create a half pound of antimater and explode the planet

9) use the 'jedi mind trick' to make Professor Xavier look gimp in comparison, by controlling the actions of every sentient being on the planet.

1) Yes. Life/Matter effect. You could also blast him or teleport him to other side of planet (sun)
2)Yes. So what ?
3)Yes. And ?
4)No. Time 6 - 50 years of learning, only at GM approval, hard to learn from anybody, no written materials , extreme paradox.
5) Yes. So what ?
6) Would You really belive it's working ? Besides I fail to see how pipe can be requisite for let say Choirist.
7) Yes. So ? In werewolf You could go crinos and deal aggrav., vampiric bite always deals aggrav.
8) Where have You seen rote for antimatter creation ?
9) Number of successes ? Simply finding somebody in big city using Mind is , if I remember correctly, 20 successess .

[Glyde]

Excuse me, off topic, but I have to ask.

Is your avatar of Lenora?

[Kurald Galain]

1) Turn a vampire into a lawnchair

Ah, that old chestnut? That only worked in the very first edition; in any later version, it takes substantial ranks in Entropy to affect vampires.

2) turn a rock into a diamond of equal size

Sure, why not? I fail to see how this is a problem; you could also start your character with resources through the roof.

3) increase the aging factor on a person to be 1,000 years to the second, and watch him disintegrate away

Yes, with a high ranked sphere combo you get to kill people. And your point is? This also by definition has a witness (the target) unless he's supernatural in which case he gets a chance to resist it. This is like saying "OMG D&D is overpwoered cuz you haev firebal!".

4) Go back in time to stop the plot before it ever happened

Wrinkle wants a word with you.

6) Use a copper pipe and a backpack with assorted blinking lights to use Forces to create fireballs as Coincedental magic.

Exactly! That's the whole point of Mage. Why do you think guns and syringes work in the first place?

You're Doing It Wrong. First, White Wolf is not nearly as focused on combat and doing damage as D&D is. And second, just because your character can be completely badass doesn't mean you can't have fun!

[Kurald Galain]

Oh, I don't disagree that the game can be run with specific tailoring, but when you want to run political mystery intrigue plots involving both sleepers and mage organizations and there's a specialized Mind Mage, the specific tailoring required is that no NPC knows anything that the Mind Mage could use to their advantage, or the game is over.

While mind reading is indeed a problem in any RPG, I should point out that "rips the knowledge of the sanctums from his mind" requires rather high sphere ranks, and furthermore is vulgar magic with witnesses involved (i.e. the victims). Caveat emptor.

Even funnier, if a player makes a habit out of mind-reading crowds, he's going to be royally screwed the instant said crowd contains a Malkavian, Marauder, Nephandus or Spiral Dancer. Madness is extremely contagious, and if you gaze into the Abyss, it gazes right back at ya.

If you model mind magic as "you can instantly know whatever anybody else knows", of course it's going to be broken. So instead, you model it "through a ritual process, you can slowly figure out what somebody close to you is thinking about, but you have to get past his willpower to learn things he is actively hiding".