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Mage the Ascension Discussion, Homebrew, Worldbuilding, and Game finding.

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UrsaTempest said:
It does. Prime counter-magic care not for silly thing like paradigm.
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It appears to be Mind Counter-Magic rather than Prime Counter-Magic?
rogthnor said:
But does it block stuff like union hyperpsych where the paradigm is that they are just that convincing? In my own paradigm it shouldn't so does that mean it doesn't work?
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It prevents your mind/brain from being altered by outside effects, right?
So it should work.
 
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Primium in general is Prime counter-magic, though. It does block Mind effect, but if you, dunno, use Force to fireball Primium-skulled target, it'll be affected as well.
 
UrsaTempest said:
Primium in general is Prime counter-magic, though. It does block Mind effect, but if you, dunno, use Force to fireball Primium-skulled target, it'll be affected as well.
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But does it block it if blocking that stuff isnt in paradigm for you (you being the person with the skull)? Its not part of the consensus after all, so a Magr had to make it work no?
 
rogthnor said:
But does it block it if blocking that stuff isnt in paradigm for you (you being the person with the skull)? Its not part of the consensus after all, so a Magr had to make it work no?
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Countermagic in general has a loose relationship with paradigms. This is primarily for gameplay reasons, as it's no fun to have a character create a ward against psychic intrusions and then be told that it doesn't work because the enemy is using a different paradigm.
 
Talkkno said:
Doesn't that kind of run into then with that assumption then Prime and the other spheres are actual things rather then just abstractions, since it has cross paradigm compatibility rather then working in universe understanding of magic.
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Spheres are OOC abstraction that's used to mechanically resolve magic uses, etc etc the IC understanding might be less clear-cut, etc.
 
UrsaTempest said:
Spheres are OOC abstraction that's used to mechanically resolve magic uses, etc etc the IC understanding might be less clear-cut, etc.
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It's not nearly that straightforward, actually. I generally agree that's how you should do it, but the existence/non-existence of the spheres as things are actually exist is... not something with one consistent answer.
 
TheLastOne said:
It's not nearly that straightforward, actually. I generally agree that's how you should do it, but the existence/non-existence of the spheres as things are actually exist is... not something with one consistent answer.
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There's sphere seats on the council, there's tradition-specific sphere names, and from skimming or reading some of the tradbooks, I don't recall any tradition-/paradigm-specific alternative IC classification schemes for magickal effects. But maybe I just don't remember them or didn't read the traditions that have them - do any of the books detail such schemes?
 
vicky_molokh said:
There's sphere seats on the council, there's tradition-specific sphere names, and from skimming or reading some of the tradbooks, I don't recall any tradition-/paradigm-specific alternative IC classification schemes for magickal effects. But maybe I just don't remember them or didn't read the traditions that have them - do any of the books detail such schemes?
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Various Traditionbooks have them, but they're just alternate names for the Spheres. I tend to disregard that, as WW made a lot of dumb choices.
 
vicky_molokh said:
There's sphere seats on the council, there's tradition-specific sphere names, and from skimming or reading some of the tradbooks, I don't recall any tradition-/paradigm-specific alternative IC classification schemes for magickal effects. But maybe I just don't remember them or didn't read the traditions that have them - do any of the books detail such schemes?
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Pillars are the 'sphere equivalent' in Dark Age Mage and appear again in Enoch, held by the Black Hand's pet mages.

But there's also alternate spheres, like Data, Space, and Dimensional Science. On the other hand, sometimes WW tries to pretend data and space are just correspondence by another name, and that you can't have multiple verses of the same sphere if you know an alt...

But since a Void Engineer definitely should be able to know both Space and Data, that's...

Well, it's a 'your paradigm is wrong' moment. I don't mind background elements supporting that; you have an Avatar whether you call it that or not, and they do reincarnate, and your disbelief in your status as a reincarnated Freemason in no way makes you less a modern day reincarnated techno-knight and all...

But that's background stuff characters can ignore in-character. Space and Data... shouldn't get in each others way.
 
TheLastOne said:
Pillars are the 'sphere equivalent' in Dark Age Mage and appear again in Enoch, held by the Black Hand's pet mages.

But there's also alternate spheres, like Data, Space, and Dimensional Science. On the other hand, sometimes WW tries to pretend data and space are just correspondence by another name, and that you can't have multiple verses of the same sphere if you know an alt...

But since a Void Engineer definitely should be able to know both Space and Data, that's...

Well, it's a 'your paradigm is wrong' moment. I don't mind background elements supporting that; you have an Avatar whether you call it that or not, and they do reincarnate, and your disbelief in your status as a reincarnated Freemason in no way makes you less a modern day reincarnated techno-knight and all...

But that's background stuff characters can ignore in-character. Space and Data... shouldn't get in each others way.
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Alternative spheres are touching upon the topic, but very very lightly. Pillars, based on second-hand accounts, seem like a more serious step in the right direction.

But I'm talking about paradigms that involve radically different architectures of magic. E.g. imagine Akashics who don't have the favoured sphere of Mind because their architecture isn't sphere based, but rather based on Chinese Elements, and thus instead Akashics master Elemental Powers, they factor in elemental synergies and rock-paper-scissors, they talk about Disciples of Wood who can perform Wood-element Effects from all nine spheres but can barely perform any of the basics of other Elements. But from what I've read and skimmed, paradigmal architectures don't go so far afield from the default. It's something that I keep hearing from fans (overwhelmingly from fans on this server and barely ever elsewhere, e.g. I never heard this idea from ones from my city), but not so much from canon. The parts of canon I read seem to paint a much more uniform picture where the justifications vary but the architectural 'laws of supernature' are in fact the same no matter what you believe and what you call them, unlike the laws of regular nature.
 
vicky_molokh said:
Alternative spheres are touching upon the topic, but very very lightly. Pillars, based on second-hand accounts, seem like a more serious step in the right direction.

But I'm talking about paradigms that involve radically different architectures of magic. E.g. imagine Akashics who don't have the favoured sphere of Mind because their architecture isn't sphere based, but rather based on Chinese Elements, and thus instead Akashics master Elemental Powers, they factor in elemental synergies and rock-paper-scissors, they talk about Disciples of Wood who can perform Wood-element Effects from all nine spheres but can barely perform any of the basics of other Elements. But from what I've read and skimmed, paradigmal architectures don't go so far afield from the default. It's something that I keep hearing from fans (overwhelmingly from fans on this server and barely ever elsewhere, e.g. I never heard this idea from ones from my city), but not so much from canon. The parts of canon I read seem to paint a much more uniform picture where the justifications vary but the architectural 'laws of supernature' are in fact the same no matter what you believe and what you call them, unlike the laws of regular nature.
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Honestly yeah. For all we talk about how it's all consensual, certain things tend to he immutable. Though that might come down to game constraints as much as anything. You cant expect WW to write a new magic system for each paradigm.

Generally the rpg rules are the only consistent rules that the game runs by. And because of that spheres are actual things.
 
The way we solved this was asking the player what exactly are they trying to accomplish and then finding the appropriate sphere(s) to achieve the said effect, regardless of paradigm for the most part.

For example, a Dreamspeaker is calling upon the strength and endurance of say their elephant totem. So they use life to do this. If they let the totem possess them and turn into a temporary fomori or whatever to simulate a similar effect, then this would be a spirit effect.

Sure, it doesn't lend itself to really utilizing the IC conception of spheres, but it clears up a lot of nonsense mechanically and keeps it from reaching the sphere bloat insanity of "How do you do That".
 
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vicky_molokh said:
Alternative spheres are touching upon the topic, but very very lightly. Pillars, based on second-hand accounts, seem like a more serious step in the right direction.

But I'm talking about paradigms that involve radically different architectures of magic. E.g. imagine Akashics who don't have the favoured sphere of Mind because their architecture isn't sphere based, but rather based on Chinese Elements, and thus instead Akashics master Elemental Powers, they factor in elemental synergies and rock-paper-scissors, they talk about Disciples of Wood who can perform Wood-element Effects from all nine spheres but can barely perform any of the basics of other Elements. But from what I've read and skimmed, paradigmal architectures don't go so far afield from the default. It's something that I keep hearing from fans (overwhelmingly from fans on this server and barely ever elsewhere, e.g. I never heard this idea from ones from my city), but not so much from canon. The parts of canon I read seem to paint a much more uniform picture where the justifications vary but the architectural 'laws of supernature' are in fact the same no matter what you believe and what you call them, unlike the laws of regular nature.
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Yeah, you're basically describing pillars there. Like, someone from the pre-Celestial Chorus group might master the Gabriel pillar and be able to do all sorts of things with water, but not be able to do a damn thing with earth because they haven't touched the Uriel pillar. My interpretation is that after centuries of working together and needing to collaborate using disparate magic systems the Traditions' views on magic have homogenized enough that anyone with a Trad education is going to be using more or less the nine spheres. This means that Crafts which were never involved in all that could totally have their own unique pillar systems, but most people aren't gonna want to reinvent the wheel when they've got these nice flexible spheres already.
 
rikalous said:
Yeah, you're basically describing pillars there. Like, someone from the pre-Celestial Chorus group might master the Gabriel pillar and be able to do all sorts of things with water, but not be able to do a damn thing with earth because they haven't touched the Uriel pillar. My interpretation is that after centuries of working together and needing to collaborate using disparate magic systems the Traditions' views on magic have homogenized enough that anyone with a Trad education is going to be using more or less the nine spheres. This means that Crafts which were never involved in all that could totally have their own unique pillar systems, but most people aren't gonna want to reinvent the wheel when they've got these nice flexible spheres already.
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My view is that the Spheres are used for the Order of Hermes and as a cross-tradition shorthand. A Virtual Adept would call himself a Master of Life when dealing with a Dreamspeaker, but in the company of fellow Adepts he'd call himself a L33t DNA coder.
 
@rikalous the Traditions spent several years in their formation coming up with the compromised sphere system to have a common language, which is heavily based off a Hermetic viewpoint.

@notanautomaton that's pretty much canon. Internally, individual Traditions might not use the sphere system to classify their magick as much or at all. Promoting something less Hermetic is brought up every now and then when the Traditions meet quorum at their big inter-tradition meeting in Horizon (or when they did if you're going by the Avatar Storm chronology).
 
notanautomaton said:
My view is that the Spheres are used for the Order of Hermes and as a cross-tradition shorthand. A Virtual Adept would call himself a Master of Life when dealing with a Dreamspeaker, but in the company of fellow Adepts he'd call himself a L33t DNA coder.
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Oh totally. I remember a bunch of the Tradition books had a list of the terms that particular tradition uses. The homogeneity comes from the way everyone has nine of those terms that map closely to the spheres.
 
rikalous said:
Oh totally. I remember a bunch of the Tradition books had a list of the terms that particular tradition uses. The homogeneity comes from the way everyone has nine of those terms that map closely to the spheres.
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I tend to ignore that every Tradition's personal nomenclature maps perfectly to the nine Spheres. PCs still use the nine Spheres, but that's purely for gameplay purposes.
 
notanautomaton said:
Gameplay wise people only get the nine spheres, though NPCs get some exceptions. It's in the fluff that things get confusing.
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Agreed. When I run a game the fluff is that the 9 spheres are one of the few immutable laws. But again that's because then I dont have to deal with people arguing that they should be able to do effects outside their sphere.
 
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