White Wolf's World of Darkness
Sometime I'm going to GM a game using my old Man Who Was Thursday idea for Pentex, next time I get a group of players that wants to do a multisplat game.
Also, Also, when I say oWerewolf I mean oWerewolf. People get all sorts of angry when you tell them your nWerewolf character is going to transform via Moon Prism Power Make-up and punish criminals in the Name of the Moon. It's literally Mangyical Girls!
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
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- He/Him
"i just dunno man, is it worse to fuck too many dogs or too few?"
-mj probably
- Location
- United States
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That's only unfucked the mechanics and touched on the fluff, though. There's still so much more fluff that needs unfucking.
Having sex with humans? What are you, some kind of pervert?
Really, oWolf let you play as Sharkmen going Pirating as a legitimate style. Just sing the King Shark Song and hunt down those damn landlubbers!
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We'd never agree on it.
dragonx99
Actually Satan
Speaking from personal experience as someone recently introduced to Mage through M20, no. No it is not solid for introducing people to Mage.
Seriously don't do it.
Right, but what would be the consensus that evolved out of the disagreements? If there's one thing I know about oMage, it's that is what is important!
AkatsukiL13
An Enlightened Mind
- Location
- New Copernicus Station
I'd say M20 but with the caveat that wasn't really designed as book for newcomers, it was more intended for old fans. However it does improve on some aspects of the game and its mechanics. In particular I love how they've changed up Foci and Paradigm.
Also it is a near 700 page book so it can be daunting to someone new.
I'd say get M20 and the free M20 Quickstart PDF. Read the latter first as it is much, much smaller and focuses on the basics of the game and its systems making it much easier to digest. After that you can move on to the behemoth of the M20 Rulebook.
From there it really depends on where you want to explore. MtAs has plenty to offer and there's more material in the pipeline. Though I would say that M20 How Do You Do That? is worth taking a look at.
While I don't hold that the Union works better as antagonists, I will say that when I do use them as antagonists I much prefer the more nuanced Union of later Editions, where they aren't jack-booted thought police bent on crushing wonder and imagination and imposing control and stasis on the world. There are times when you want enemies that are monstrous and alien to contend with and while there are times and situations that the Union can play that role but to me the Technocracy is at their best as villains when you can understand them, when you can relate to them and ultimately realize just far they have risen and fallen from their origins as the Order of Reason. It makes the Union both horrifying and tragic. Their ambition and success has pulled them from their noble ideals, twisting the OoR into the soulless monolith of the Union. As I expressed before, the OoR's Body and Mind, the High Guild and Cabal of Pure Thought, murdered their noble Spirit, the Craftmasons, as that corruption set in within the OoR.
Sure there are those within the Union that are striving to cut out the rot, mend the damage and try to steer the Union back towards the ideals and goals they had been founded on but they are few, working inside a vast, crumbling monolith.
Worse, they could be what the Traditions could have become if their positions had been reversed, with the OoR being the desperate underdogs battling a powerful, tyrannical Traditionalist Imperium. Or they could be what the Traditions become if the Union collapsed and they took their place as the top dog of the MtAs world.
I agree. I've been into MtAs since around 2002. And in all that time I've come to a single conclusion about Willworkers, their beliefs and the world they live in:
Everyone is right, everyone is wrong and Belief is EVERYTHING.
There is no MtAs group that is completely right or wrong. I've seen here and elsewhere people argue that the Technocracy is wrong because their Masters know that Magic is real while ignoring that the Traditions are just as wrong as them. Every Willworker, regardless of whether they practice Magic, Enlightened Science or whatever they call it, is doing the same thing, bending Reality to their whims. Terms like Magic and Enlightened Science are how they internalize what they are doing. That's why as Willworkers raise their Arete level they start discarding foci, because they start to realize they don't need them, that their beliefs are but a sliver of a greater truth.
Even the Nephandi and their Descent, an inversion of Mages and their Ascension, and Marauders and their maddness are but a part of this. I remember the ending of the first scenario in Ascension, the book that ended MtAs, which was the one most tied to the metaplot of MtAs ended with everyone Awakening and each achieving their own interpretation of Ascension. The Nephandi were carried off to the Hells they had always dreamed of, the Marauders became universes, each based on their mad ideas of Reality, every Traditionalist, Technocrat and Craft Mage reached their Enlightenment, Nirvana, Unity, Singularity or whatever they believed in.
All are One yet One is Many.
Again, something I firmly agree with. Nothing about the Ascension War that dictates that one side has to be wrong and one side has to be right or that one side has to be good, the other evil. Often times it is the shades of grey that are more interesting than the black and white.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
There is no such thing as consensus linear magic. If something is consensus, it's not magic. You don't develop sorcery from the consensus. You develop it by cribbing off of Mage's who open a paradigm through their Arete. The entire premise of the game is that you are literally magickal supermen who define reality and fight to rewrite it to your vision. That's the entire game.But the fact remains that you can't do a heart transplant without a massively skilled practitioner operating in a specially prepared environment with a bevy of supporters performing ritual actions to make it more likely to succeed and even afterward the result needs to be constantly reinforced by acquiring special potions distributed by hard to see specialists who write an unreadable instruction upon specially prepared tablets and enforce very specific behaviors.
There is no way that a heart transplant is not sorcery in Mage contexts and the idea that its some spontaneous consensual sorcery is ridiculous in the extreme.
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
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I'm sorry sir that is entirely too much moral complexity for me, I can only maintain interest in three things at once and right now it's 90's angst, furry shit, and genocide. If I let any one of these balls fall then we can't even carry on a conversation. S'just the way it goes yeah?
Having sex with humans? What are you, some kind of pervert?
Really, oWolf let you play as Sharkmen going Pirating as a legitimate style. Just sing the King Shark Song and hunt down those damn landlubbers!
The important thing to remember is that there are literally million-year-old wereshark elders who have been accumulating at least 1 point of XP per year for that entire timespan.
Think about everything that you, as a player, would do if your character had a million XP.
Now remember that the weresharks are the least important of the surviving Changing Breeds and have accomplished absolutely nothing of note.
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Then stop claiming that science, which is within the consensus is linear magic. You totally reversed your last position.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
I said scientists are linear sorcerers, not that all 'science' was linear magic. Science is the technocratic paradigm and some of it has become consensual.
What is the difference between linear sorcery and technocratic science consensus? Very simple; can an average sleeper do it? Aspirin is consensual. Cars are consensual. Savings accounts are consensual. Facebook is consensual.
Heart transplants are sorcery. Space shuttles are sorcery. Economic forecasts are sorcery. Modeling global warming is sorcery.
But the fact remains that you can't do a heart transplant without a massively skilled practitioner operating in a specially prepared environment with a bevy of supporters performing ritual actions to make it more likely to succeed and even afterward the result needs to be constantly reinforced by acquiring special potions distributed by hard to see specialists who write an unreadable instruction upon specially prepared tablets and enforce very specific behaviors.
There is no way that a heart transplant is not sorcery in Mage contexts and the idea that its some spontaneous consensual sorcery is ridiculous in the extreme.
No. Linear Magic is, by definition, magic that is within the Consensus. That's why it doesn't cause Paradox.
Gypsies can cast curses because the Consensus believes that Gypsies can cast curses, because that's an incredibly common racist stereotype. And sufficiently common racist sterotypes are true. They don't need to piggy back off mages to do it. Gypsies, Witches, Houngans, Exorcists, and what have you all have magic powers because enough people believe that they have magic powers, or are uncertain enough to believe that they might have magic powers. When a rebellious kid downloads a book of wiccan spells from the internet, yes, with sufficient study and devotion he can cast those rotes, much to the chagrin of his extremely religious evangelical parents, who probably think he's possessed by Satan. And when they take him to a shady exorcist, that person is using actual working linear magic rotes. And neither of them have any contact with the Awakened.
For that matter, dialing your telephone is a linear correspondence rote.
Everything is linear magic. That's the grand truth of Consensus reality. Whenever sleepers do anything, they do it by using magic.
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If you really think science is within consensus.... man, I envy you, so much.
You have lived... a blessed life, untouched by the stupidity of the masses.
Truly, you are one who might dance among thorns and be yet untouched.
You have lived... a blessed life, untouched by the stupidity of the masses.
Truly, you are one who might dance among thorns and be yet untouched.
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The central point here is that there's no reason why technocracy paradigmatic linear sorcery has to be the same a consensus based linear sorcery.
Like, as I pointed out earlier, the technocracy do a bunch of stuff (like quantum teleportation, worm hole travel, etc.) that should not be possible under current physics. It's pretty clear that hypertech (technocracy linear sorcery) isn't the same as what scientists and engineers do without it. It's a whole different thing.
That's why it's a different skill than technology
If it's not within the consensus then how does it work?
I think most people basically accept that scientists know what they're doing if nothing else.
Like, as I pointed out earlier, the technocracy do a bunch of stuff (like quantum teleportation, worm hole travel, etc.) that should not be possible under current physics. It's pretty clear that hypertech (technocracy linear sorcery) isn't the same as what scientists and engineers do without it. It's a whole different thing.
That's why it's a different skill than technology
If it's not within the consensus then how does it work?
I think most people basically accept that scientists know what they're doing if nothing else.
Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
Oh god, no, you do not have any idea what you are saying.
M20 isn't just not for newbies, it is actively harmful to getting people up to speed if they aren't already familiar with Mage and therefore imposing their own preexisting interpretation onto everything. There are scattered bits of usefulness there but they need to be pulled out, stripped of the horrendous authorial voice spewed all over the pages and jammed into an actual coherent thing. The setting information is of negative value because it's a barely-sensical postmodernist impressionistic screed where it should be telling you about the damn setting. The ability descriptions are worthless to anyone who hasn't specifically been exposed to the same cultural background as the primary writer. The reason it is 700 pages isn't because it actually has that much content, but because the author thinks that putting sentences upon sentences of worthless nonsensical blather is somehow important.
Do not subject your players to this unless they are either experienced Mage players or postmodernist American chaos mages who grew up in the 1990s.
This isn't me being down on M20 just because I don't like it, this is firsthand experience with trying to foolishly introduce a couple players to the game using M20. I will regret this shit for the rest of my natural life.
Consensus science is within the Technocracy paradigm because these people honestly believe that the consensus science is correct. They have beliefs as to stuff outside of the consensus because that stuff is "experimental" and "only works under laboratory conditions"
...
Again. One who might dance amongst thorns.
I've spent a significant fraction of my life in a state where there's a good chance I'd meet a couple people a day who honestly believe evolution is bunk. And that's not even getting into the screaming about GMOs and supply-side economics and global warming and one of my mother's closest friends is a creationist.
No, that is... really not the case everywhere. It's not even the case most places. It's mostly only true on university campuses.
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I don't think your experience is average.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
If it was consensual it would be coincidental. Like, you do know that Mage's can learn Medicine (the skill) because it is consensual but can't learn Shapeshifting (the linear sorcery) because it isn't right?
Unless there are some things that are more consensual than others? There is a major difference between the fact that a Verbena can study Medicine and can't learn Shapeshifting but instead has to use magic to produce it, you know? That line, where something goes from a spell you cast to a Skill or Knowledge on your character sheet that any character can learn? That's the difference between sorcery and consensual action.
Again, there is no such thing as consensus Sorcery. If something is consensual, its not magic anymore. It's something anyone can do, not something you need to be a special person with exotic powers to do.
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Okay but that doesn't actually answer my point.
Precious cinnamon bun.
Too pure for this world.
But seriously, a majority of people are ignorant jackasses about at least one subject or another.
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notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Who's the republican presidential nominee in your world? Can I visit?