NonSequtur
a body
Agent Smith gives off Nephandi vibes tbh
White Wolf's World of Darkness
Agent Smith gives off Nephandi vibes tbh
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
Because the Nephandi (and IIRC Pentex, which comes close?) have infiltrated the Technocracy?
The reason the Matrix is a mage movie isn't because of Agent Smith, but because of the overall gnostic and postmodernist aesthetic, and the idea of the Machine watching you via the structure of society. Agent Smith's attitude is kind of at odds with the sort of paternalism a good Technocrat should show.
The face of the Technocracy is Bill Taggart talking to Adam Jensen at the end of DXHR "Humans are irrational and short-sighted,
I like to recommend Intruders to people who want to take a look at Mage, because Intruders has the advantage that it's pretty setting-agnostic. The first chapter is actually just very good advice on writing and running horror games, while the latter stuff can be used all over and doesn't have too much Mage-specific mechanics or setting stuff that won't brush off. For example, if you're still running the oWoD, pretty much everything in Intruders can be used in it [1].
It's surprisingly evocative for something that's sort of a mix of a Monster Manual and a campaign idea book.
[1] And then there's Astral Realms as another cross-usable nMage book. If you've read Panopticon Quest on this forum, pretty much all the Astral stuff in it is actually nMage stuff that's just ported straight into Old Mage.
- Location
- Connecticut
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, that's sort of what I was doing. It's become apparent to me that I didn't necessarily need to do so many 'fixes' given the way that the setting has evolved over the decade or so where I wasn't looking at it very closely, but back when I read Awakening originally I felt sort of let down by the fact that the setting's big villains were sort of... well, underdeveloped. The Seers to the Throne worked for the Exarchs, and they were the bad guys on the Atlantean side of things, and so the Seers had plans that meant bad things for the mages... but what those 'bad things' were was poorly defined in the original core book. Contrast that to Ascension, who had the Technocracy in all of its 90's glory, evil robots and subliminal mind control and all, and it just didn't seem very clear or apparent what New Mages were supposed to do or be threatened by. And while the lich-Tremere were kind of cool, and the Banishers and Nephandi were sort of around, neither seemed like a particularly existential threat to the mages... And unlike Vampire the Requiem, the new Mage traditions didn't even have reasons to not get along with each other.
Apparently, that last bit is a feature, not a bug. Which is awesome, and I plan on checking out some of the newer books to see what it is that I'm missing. But yeah, the intent of my fix was to sort of put the Mages against each other in the same way that the Vampires were against each other - to give them legitimate philosophical reasons to come into conflict with each other, and also some more reasons to work together by giving each sort of sub-Mage faction a default group of enemies that they might feel threatened by, or a means by which the Abyss would work to threaten them. At the same time, I didn't want to go full paradigm and say that your choice of politics and aesthetics also dominates your world view and your magic, because that didn't jibe as well to me with the way that New Mage runs.
So, I'm glad that at least one person liked it. Out of curiosity, can I ask what the Covenant was that grabbed your interest right away?
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
The Free Council one. You seemed to present them as the more sympathetic of the technomancers, despite Awakening apparently not having as much variety in magic nor having as much place for something as out-of-the-main-road as technomancy. As I said, I'm not sure why they didn't grab me originally when Awakening came out; maybe it was inattention caused by overall disappointment about the new game line (my gaming circle's overall reaction seemed to be along the lines of "Meh, they released the game that is vaguely reminiscent of the game I liked", and I mostly share that reaction).
Also, perhaps I had the wrong impression about your purpose of the rewrite. You're saying right now that you're focusing on creating conflict. But what I'm seeing is a grounds for story about multiple very different factions overcoming their conflicts and opening their eyes to a much more unifying truth, about cooperating despite the differences in worldviews. The sort of thing that the cooperation of Nine Traditions exemplified, and the Disparate Alliance apparently even more so.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
The Nephandi want to destroy you, themselves, and everyone else. Agent Smith in the first movie is still the agent of an uncaring system that unpersons you and then is affronted when you buck it. He both depends on humanity, uses it, and loathes it as beneath him. Notice how he hid it though when talking to other agents - he knows that his hated isn't the party line, and he can toe the party line. But Smith, not Jones or Brown, is clearly in charge.
His reappearance, complete with 'oh god everything is wrong' is clearly him going into the Caul after Neo half-unmakes him.
Hmm, I don't disagree that Taggart and the Illuminati are good faces of the Technocracy, but there is a very real face of the Technocracy that hold everyone outside it in utter contempt, that wears the excuse of wisdom and guidance thin till the naked greed and disdain show through, and that its a more important face overall.
To keep it within the movie metaphor, the Architect exists, he does embody all the paternalism you could ever want, and he certainly matters. He just matters less then Agent Smith, because Agent Smith and his elk directly touch lives, where the Ivory Tower Architect only indirectly touches them, often though the hand of an Agent Smith.
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notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
The faction books gives them lots of reasons to disagree. The Mysterium has lots of secrets that everyone else wants, the Keepers assassinate people and act as secret police, the Silver Ladder doesn't believe in morals, and the Arrow's willing to serve evil dictators. And the Free Council don't like anyone.
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- Location
- Connecticut
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yep, there's definitely grounds for a story about overcoming the conflicts as well. But you can't overcome said conflicts if they don't exist to overcome!
So I hear, and I'm excited to read the faction books. But there's a difference in scale between inter-factional disagreements and inter-organizational disagreements - you're often going to dislike people from your police, and will possibly scheme to get around them, but you're unlikely to declare a holy war on them in the same way that the Lancea Sanctum might declare war on the Ordo Dracul, to give a Vampire example. Because I was going off of mainly the core book, I thought the setting needed the possibility of something more like that.
To be entirely fair, you just listed a reason why the Free Council would dislike each of the others.
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Well yeah, but they dislike everyone more than the listed reasons would indicate.
FourthWall
May The Sun Never Blind Your Eyes
- Location
- Chiraq
Call of Darkness mages have a saner world to work with and a better reason to work together than World of Darkness mages, but Co'D mages have less interesting villains to fight. All of the Co'D mages believing in the same thing isn't garbage, the Atlantis mythos is garbage. Since that is the driving idea behind the entire game, well, you can draw your own conclusions.
The five groups are actually a useful thing to back port into oMage so you have something of a reason for the Traditions to work together (instead of philosophical knife fights). They actually already had reasons to not like each other, too (fucking nobody likes the Guardians, the Mysterium conflicts with the Ladders and the Council, starting shit is the Arrow's entire reason for being). In fact, Guide to the Traditions basically put mages in nMage like groups in order to fostergameplay cross tradition innovation.
nMage's biggest failing is that it was boring as fuck. It's marginally more playable, but who cares about playable with a White Wolf game?
The five groups are actually a useful thing to back port into oMage so you have something of a reason for the Traditions to work together (instead of philosophical knife fights). They actually already had reasons to not like each other, too (fucking nobody likes the Guardians, the Mysterium conflicts with the Ladders and the Council, starting shit is the Arrow's entire reason for being). In fact, Guide to the Traditions basically put mages in nMage like groups in order to foster
nMage's biggest failing is that it was boring as fuck. It's marginally more playable, but who cares about playable with a White Wolf game?
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
The Free Council is interesting because they draw on actual communal anarchist philosophical bits... if without the pacifistic bits that are often attached to that. It has a turn of the nineteenth century communist vibe to it that very much dates them for where they came from. It's no surprise with that kind of DNA they don't agree with the Diamond Orders, they're built to question the legitimacy of any kind of authority or organization, to an extent even their own. Drawing upon ancient legacies is only going to damage your legitimacy with that crowd.
- Location
- Italy
A game with the pointless confusing mess that is Consensual reality really has no place calling anything garbage, even less Awakening's setting premise.Call of Darkness mages have a saner world to work with and a better reason to work together than World of Darkness mages, but Co'D mages have less interesting villains to fight. All of the Co'D mages believing in the same thing isn't garbage, the Atlantis mythos is garbage. Since that is the driving idea behind the entire game, well, you can draw your own conclusions.
The five groups are actually a useful thing to back port into oMage so you have something of a reason for the Traditions to work together (instead of philosophical knife fights). They actually already had reasons to not like each other, too (fucking nobody likes the Guardians, the Mysterium conflicts with the Ladders and the Council, starting shit is the Arrow's entire reason for being). In fact, Guide to the Traditions basically put mages in nMage like groups in order to fostergameplaycross tradition innovation.
nMage's biggest failing is that it was boring as fuck. It's marginally more playable, but who cares about playable with a White Wolf game?
And "boring" is such uselessly subjective descriptor that's it's laughable to call it nMage supposed "biggest failing": it's like saying "The worst thing about this game is that I didn't like it".
As far as I'm concerned, Requiem was the most boring of the nWoD games, mostly because it was just more of the same rather than a true new take on Vampire, at least just going by the corebook,
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
Yeah, the need to be. But the type of conflicts matters for whether or not they can be reconciled within a reasonable campaign's timeframe.
Also:
It's not pointless. In fact it's one of the main points. A big chunk of fun we had in a MtA campaign was working out ways to reconcile our paradigms in such a way as to work together effectively (our party included an Extatic, a Verbena in the process of shifting to a more technomancery paradigm, and two traditionless mages, one of which had a Matrix-/VA-like Paradigm and another had a paradigm based around pure willpower being the only thing that matters and the only thing that can change anything with enough effort; maybe someone else I'm forgetting).
- Location
- Italy
Is it? For my perspective it's a boring setting element, although I feel the entire reason for Ascension's renown is because of the amount flames it causes, both at the table and on the internet.
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- Location
- Connecticut
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Call of Darkness mages have a saner world to work with and a better reason to work together than World of Darkness mages, but Co'D mages have less interesting villains to fight. All of the Co'D mages believing in the same thing isn't garbage, the Atlantis mythos is garbage. Since that is the driving idea behind the entire game, well, you can draw your own conclusions.
The five groups are actually a useful thing to back port into oMage so you have something of a reason for the Traditions to work together (instead of philosophical knife fights). They actually already had reasons to not like each other, too (fucking nobody likes the Guardians, the Mysterium conflicts with the Ladders and the Council, starting shit is the Arrow's entire reason for being). In fact, Guide to the Traditions basically put mages in nMage like groups in order to fostergameplaycross tradition innovation.
nMage's biggest failing is that it was boring as fuck. It's marginally more playable, but who cares about playable with a White Wolf game?
24 hours ago I would have agreed with you that nMage was boring, but a few of the comments that people on the boards have given are making me reconsider... the jury is still out until I read some of these extra setting books.
Also, the biggest reason for oMage Traditions to work together is simple survival. The Technocracy is an incredibly dangerous foe, and the Traditions basically have to work together in order to survive against them.
FourthWall
May The Sun Never Blind Your Eyes
- Location
- Chiraq
Inasmuch as you can garner anything from reading multiple texts and following the metaplot, Bruscato's right: the Trads and the Crats are both shitty, bloated, hide bound organizations with their heads so far up their own asses they are an Ouroboros of terrible decisions. That's not just on Bruschetta, that's on all the writers. Yeah, some authors walk it back, but in doing so, your player characters aren't "real" Trads/Crats.
If nothing else, the elevator pitch for the main factions are either authoritarian technofascists or woo bullshit Esoterrorists (or if you're a VA, a smug elitist Nerd Rapture esoterrorist). But that's just what happens when you get a bunch of smug, sheltered neopagan Gen Xers writing about postmodern magick.
Falls apart by Revised, where to facilitate Crat PCs, the Pogrom is called off. Even in the Trad books, it's mentioned that your average Trad meeting is a lot of shouting and pissiness where very little gets done. The Council didn't even bother meeting shortly before everything turned to shit, anyway.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
Okay, so I was thinking about it, and it's interesting to think/look at, that I mentioned earlier.
The Vampire Covenants are like religions/political parties. In theory, there is nothing that says that the Carthians couldn't potentially kill all the other vampires, outlaw their beliefs, and rule supreme. I mean practically the variety probably strengthens things (like the Theban Sorcery and etc) and even more practically, because each of the Covenants deals with pretty basic impulses, even if somehow they were outlawed/destroyed in a Prince's territory, or even worldwide via ROB bullshit, they'd just come back.
There would always be vampires who would turn to religion, always vampires who would try to science/reason out their nature, etc, etc.
Yet at least fundamentally, the survival of the other Covenants isn't something that matters, except that if all of the others died it'd be because vampires were dying out or something.
Meanwhile, it's hard to find an exact parallel, but the Diamond Orders are like nations. NATO, in fact. Very close allies that fight among each other occasionally, but they all fundamentally (mostly) have signed the same treaties and agree on the general political stances (visa a via democracy, and modernism, and other staples of 'the west'), and thus interact with and treat each other like that. It breaks apart slightly with Cabals, which are like nations too, but that's the best parallel.
But the tightest knit of the 'Y's' that I really know anything enough about for it to count are the Courts. With a few exceptions, most Courts are designed as part of a system in which power is shared or conflicts are resolved, and they are resolved as per both tradition and new fundamental changes that take place via competition, and sometimes even war. Yet ultimately, the fact that Miami was drawn out as a big deal, the place in which the Summer KIng declared eternal Summer, indicates that it's not that common.
It's something special when one Court attempts to gain total control over the narrative, and even Grandfather Thunder wasn't actually *abolishing* the other Courts, just rendering them irrelevent in an act of folly and hubris that in my head-canon/Quest/etc led to his downfall and people spit on his grave and what the fuck was he thinking.
So you know what one good way to look at Courts is? Branches of government. No, I can't say that 'Summer is the military, Winter is the Pentagon budget' or some cute thing like that, and there's also the strong philosophy and social-club and therapy-group elements, but none of the Courts have beliefs that fundamentally require others to bend to their will.
Hell, Winter (I'm focusing on the Seasonal Courts, but the Directional Courts too share power) even has a philosophy/doctrine that's basically, "Hey, RPGs have a point. Spring court is needed as bards, Summer Court are fighters, Fall Court are Mages, and we in Winter are Rogues" and thus fundamentally acknolwedges and even celebrates the diversity of Courts, in a way.
I mean, being fair, there *are* Spring Court warriors and Summer Court Sorcerers and etc. But you get the drift, that's how strong the bonds are between them as compared to the 'you're a heretic, a pagan' 'Well you're just a sell-out!' of Vampire Covenants.
...and apparently the Traditions of oMage are even worse than the most fractious nWOD example I gave.
(I have no idea what Werewolves do, and Prometheans are a very individual splat, while Hunters have a bunch of different organizations, and so it's almost more like competing companies selling products in the same field, but which are wildly different.)
The Vampire Covenants are like religions/political parties. In theory, there is nothing that says that the Carthians couldn't potentially kill all the other vampires, outlaw their beliefs, and rule supreme. I mean practically the variety probably strengthens things (like the Theban Sorcery and etc) and even more practically, because each of the Covenants deals with pretty basic impulses, even if somehow they were outlawed/destroyed in a Prince's territory, or even worldwide via ROB bullshit, they'd just come back.
There would always be vampires who would turn to religion, always vampires who would try to science/reason out their nature, etc, etc.
Yet at least fundamentally, the survival of the other Covenants isn't something that matters, except that if all of the others died it'd be because vampires were dying out or something.
Meanwhile, it's hard to find an exact parallel, but the Diamond Orders are like nations. NATO, in fact. Very close allies that fight among each other occasionally, but they all fundamentally (mostly) have signed the same treaties and agree on the general political stances (visa a via democracy, and modernism, and other staples of 'the west'), and thus interact with and treat each other like that. It breaks apart slightly with Cabals, which are like nations too, but that's the best parallel.
But the tightest knit of the 'Y's' that I really know anything enough about for it to count are the Courts. With a few exceptions, most Courts are designed as part of a system in which power is shared or conflicts are resolved, and they are resolved as per both tradition and new fundamental changes that take place via competition, and sometimes even war. Yet ultimately, the fact that Miami was drawn out as a big deal, the place in which the Summer KIng declared eternal Summer, indicates that it's not that common.
It's something special when one Court attempts to gain total control over the narrative, and even Grandfather Thunder wasn't actually *abolishing* the other Courts, just rendering them irrelevent in an act of folly and hubris that in my head-canon/Quest/etc led to his downfall and people spit on his grave and what the fuck was he thinking.
So you know what one good way to look at Courts is? Branches of government. No, I can't say that 'Summer is the military, Winter is the Pentagon budget' or some cute thing like that, and there's also the strong philosophy and social-club and therapy-group elements, but none of the Courts have beliefs that fundamentally require others to bend to their will.
Hell, Winter (I'm focusing on the Seasonal Courts, but the Directional Courts too share power) even has a philosophy/doctrine that's basically, "Hey, RPGs have a point. Spring court is needed as bards, Summer Court are fighters, Fall Court are Mages, and we in Winter are Rogues" and thus fundamentally acknolwedges and even celebrates the diversity of Courts, in a way.
I mean, being fair, there *are* Spring Court warriors and Summer Court Sorcerers and etc. But you get the drift, that's how strong the bonds are between them as compared to the 'you're a heretic, a pagan' 'Well you're just a sell-out!' of Vampire Covenants.
...and apparently the Traditions of oMage are even worse than the most fractious nWOD example I gave.
(I have no idea what Werewolves do, and Prometheans are a very individual splat, while Hunters have a bunch of different organizations, and so it's almost more like competing companies selling products in the same field, but which are wildly different.)
So is there a tabletop megathread hiding around here somewhere? For the smaller RPGs that don't get as much love here like 13th Age, Wild Talents, Mutants and Masterminds, and all the rest. I ask because I'm making a Google Sheet Template for Wild Talents 2e and would like some feedback on it.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Just make a new thread for the relevant RPG, I'd say. A general tabletop RPG megathread would get any focused conversation lost in the shuffle.
- Location
- East of the Sun and West of the Moon
Weren't the Courts explicitly, in-universe designed to involve sharing power? As a strategy to hide from the Gentry, because they fundamentally can't wrap their heads around the concept of not grabbing all the power you can and hoarding it for yourself.
- Location
- Italy
The Tribes of the Forsaken are probably the vaguest and least organized Y-splats of the nWoD, even with the focus on "chosen prey" that 2e gave them. The fundamental social units for Werewolves are packs, while your Tribe indicates which Wolf Spirit-God you honor and echo as a hunter, complete in 2e with a predilection for a particular prey (spirits, humans, Claimed etc).
Then there are Lodges, which are wierd and for the most part badly implemented in 1e. I'm curious to see what the new edition does with them.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Yep, most formations of them are. So from the very start, they've designed themselves to be cooperative, and it shows.
Boy howdy does it show.
UrsaTempest
Don't Panic!
So, umm. I kinda-sorta want to run MtAs with Awakening rules, since I heard it is more coherent. So I picked translation guide, and I don't get it at all. So, umm, how do I do it? Where do I start?