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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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Scia said:
Honestly with her writeup I would have assumed that she has physical as Tertiary especially that she is currently as strong as the average 20 year old man and quite tough for a girl, as a 2 is after all average for a adult.
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I noted that she was athletic in the write-up. To note, there's no real way in the WW system as written to portray someone who is 'stronger than usual' for a teenager. I mean, at sixteen though, it seems silly to put an asterisk next to her stamina or whatnot.

At most I'll just throw a negative modifier on there if she's wrestling a bear. :p

Basically, at sixteen, I don't think there's really all that much difference? Not enough for a number: remember, 1 point is a massive difference in a system where there are only five.
 
EarthScorpion said:
But there's certainly some Truth in Christianity, given that you can find Mysteries in the obscure bits of it that the Sleepers haven't corroded away by looking at it with their Abyss-tainted eyes.
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Text on a Tomb at Shingou Village said:
When Jesus Christ was 21 years of age, he journeyed to Japan and pursued knowledge of divinity for 12 years. He returned to Judea at the age of 33, and engaged in his mission. However, people in Judea at that time would not accept Christ's lessons. Instead, they arrested him and tried to crucify him on a cross. His younger brother, Isukiri, took Christ's place and died on the cross.

Christ escaped the crucifixion, and endured the many hazards of travel in order to return once more to Japan. He settled on this very spot, in what came to be called Herai Village, and died at the age of 106.

On this holy ground, there is dedicated a burial mound on the right to deify Christ, and a grave on the left to deify Isukiri.

The above description was given in a testament by Jesus Christ.
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Arcane XP yo

hipster religion
 
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Revlid said:
Arcane XP yo

hipster religion
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yessssss

My interpretation of Mage is full of this kind of shit and things like Japanese Proximus families that claim to be descended from Jesus.

(This confuses some other magic-users, who know for a fact that the world began in 1956 and everything before that is a lie put in place by the Exarchs. Hence, men must fear anyone born before that date and seek to erase old architecture and old books, so that man will not be chained by the prisons the demiurges built)
 
That's sorta interesting, though...not sure. Feels a little hinky to me? Or, eh. It's probably the historian in me, and more a general objection to the consensual-ish editing war reality thing. Less a problem of the line and more just a thing I'm not entirely sure on.

Or at least, it seems like something that just breaks down somewhere in my head where I'm not sure you can have an even vaguely coherent setting in that case.
 
The Laurent said:
That's sorta interesting, though...not sure. Feels a little hinky to me? Or, eh. It's probably the historian in me, and more a general objection to the consensual-ish editing war reality thing. Less a problem of the line and more just a thing I'm not entirely sure on.

Or at least, it seems like something that just breaks down somewhere in my head where I'm not sure you can have an even vaguely coherent setting in that case.
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Basically, what you have to get about the things I like about nMage (and the stuff it does that oMage cannot) is that I want a full on Gnostic Occult Matrix game. You have exploits for the Lie, this reality-simulation that everyone else believes is real. Magicians are partially immune to the fluxes in the world, so they - unlike everyone else - remember that there used to be three skyscrapers down on Llewellyn Street... until last Sunday, when both the skyscrapers and Llewellyn Street never existed. Even Sleepwalkers have that same immunity, which means being a Sleepwalker who doesn't have a support network might well mean you think you're going crazy.

The Seers of the Throne sit in their magicians towers - which now take the form of tower blocks - and whisper "Hail Hydra" to Sleepers... and the Sleepers were now always part of the Seer's conspiracy, remembering that they were a sleeper agent all along. Guardians of the Veil are sin-eating cultists awaiting their messiah. The Silver Ladder builds cells for when the War in Heaven begins again, and crack reality to glimpse the Supernal and show it to their cults. The Adamantine Arrow exult militarism and the cosmos within the flesh. The Mysterium are a gnostic mystery cult which believes that knowledge is a living thing that sickens when the unworthy know it. And the Banishers are men and women who see too much of the world, realise the damage that magic has done to the world and decide that no one can ever be allowed to use it to repeat the sins of the past.

And all the time, qilipothic unrealities gnaw slowly at the world, infecting it, becoming it, trying to warm themselves on reality with much the same results as an ocean trying to warm itself on a candle.

(The Prince of Ten Thousand Leaves is my bae.)
 
EarthScorpion said:
Basically, what you have to get about the things I like about nMage (and the stuff it does that oMage cannot) is that I want a full on Gnostic Occult Matrix game. You have exploits for the Lie, this reality-simulation that everyone else believes is real. Magicians are partially immune to the fluxes in the world, so they - unlike everyone else - remember that there used to be three skyscrapers down on Llewellyn Street... until last Sunday, when both the skyscrapers and Llewellyn Street never existed. Even Sleepwalkers have that same immunity, which means being a Sleepwalker who doesn't have a support network might well mean you think you're going crazy.

The Seers of the Throne sit in their magicians towers - which now take the form of tower blocks - and whisper "Hail Hydra" to Sleepers... and the Sleepers were now always part of the Seer's conspiracy, remembering that they were a sleeper agent all along. Guardians of the Veil are sin-eating cultists awaiting their messiah. The Silver Ladder builds cells for when the War in Heaven begins again, and crack reality to glimpse the Supernal and show it to their cults. The Adamantine Arrow exult militarism and the cosmos within the flesh. The Mysterium are a gnostic mystery cult which believes that knowledge is a living thing that sickens when the unworthy know it. And the Banishers are men and women who see too much of the world, realise the damage that magic has done to the world and decide that no one can ever be allowed to use it to repeat the sins of the past.

And all the time, qilipothic unrealities gnaw slowly at the world, infecting it, becoming it, trying to warm themselves on reality with much the same results as an ocean trying to warm itself on a candle.

(The Prince of Ten Thousand Leaves is my bae.)
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It's certainly an interesting vision. I'm not sure it's entirely for me, but it is compellingly outlined.

Though I'm pretty sure Mind effects aren't quite that instantly and easily (and reality-rewritingly unstoppably) powerful.
 
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The Laurent said:
Though I'm pretty sure Mind effects aren't quite that instantly and easily (and reality-rewritingly unstoppably) powerful.
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That's not what's going on.
Because Reality isn't real in NMage ArchMages that have Ascended to the Supernal can alter the Fallen World in whatever way they like, these alterations are often retroactive, and the only thing holding them back is the threat of getting stomped on by the other ArchMages.
 
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Sydonai said:
That's not what's going on.
Because Reality isn't real in NMage ArchMages that have Ascended to the Supernal can alter the Fallen World in whatever way they like, these alterations are often retroactive, and the only thing holding them back is the threat of getting stomped on by the other ArchMages.
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He was talking about the Seers of the Throne as a group. Not, like, the very small percentage of them, fractional even, that are Archmages.
 
Sydonai said:
Oh, you meant the "Hail Hydra" thing.
Yeah, Seers get bullshit cheat-codes to do things like that.
IIRC It's one of the main things that draws Mages to the Faction.
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I dunno, it feels like the sort of thing where if it actually existed, the Seers would have won already. By which I mean, there wouldn't *be* any other Mages besides Seers. It also feels way too blatant, and that's something I actually liked about nMage. I like that Seers didn't start the Iraq War. They sure as shit made it worse because they're like flies to a shit-heap, but...

Seers aren't the Sins of the West, they don't care about, and in certain ways lack the ability or time to define and shape, the entire history of the world in the 'hands on, literally everything anyone ever did was Mages personally doing it while the sheeple stood and watched' way that oMage came across as.
 
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The Laurent said:
It's certainly an interesting vision. I'm not sure it's entirely for me, but it is compellingly outlined.

Though I'm pretty sure Mind effects aren't quite that instantly and easily (and reality-rewritingly unstoppably) powerful.
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It's not a Mind rote. It's a benefit of being a Seer. It's good to be a lackey of the ones in charge. Call it a benefit of being at the bottom of a giant pyramid scheme. It doesn't work on anything that's not entirely a slave of the Lie, but there's a very good reason that magicians cut themselves off from society, or else ruthlessly hide who and what they are.

Because the Lie is a system...



... and any Sleeper you meet could be the agent of a Seer. They're probably not, but they could be.

(And that's the power of the panopticon of the Exarchs.)
 
The Laurent said:
I dunno, it feels like the sort of thing where if it actually existed, the Seers would have won already. By which I mean, there wouldn't *be* any other Mages besides Seers. It also feels way too blatant, and that's something I actually liked about nMage. I like that Seers didn't start the Iraq War. They sure as shit made it worse because they're like flies to a shit-heap, but...

Seers aren't the Sins of the West, they don't care about, and in certain ways lack the ability or time to define and shape, the entire history of the world in the 'hands on, literally everything anyone ever did was Mages personally doing it while the sheeple stood and watched' way that oMage came across as.
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Seers have the issue that while they've got cheat codes in the form of Prelacies, they're also using weird omens as the top of their chain of command and are structured to actively encourage backstabbing within their factions. The Prelacies less serve to make them unstoppable and more to give them fancy tricks that let them be slightly superior to the Pentacle in raw power. It's amazing how many sleepers end up with a BSOD after a bunch of Seers use the "make spy" code on them.
 
EarthScorpion said:
It's not a Mind rote. It's a benefit of being a Seer. It's good to be a lackey of the ones in charge. Call it a benefit of being at the bottom of a giant pyramid scheme. It doesn't work on anything that's not entirely a slave of the Lie, but there's a very good reason that magicians cut themselves off from society, or else ruthlessly hide who and what they are.

Because the Lie is a system...



... and any Sleeper you meet could be the agent of a Seer. They're probably not, but they could be.

(And that's the power of the panopticon of the Exarchs.)
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Eh, that feels too easy. And yes, I know that's part of the point, but, as said, one of the things I actually liked about nMage is it seemed to give at least a small fraction of some shred of agency to Sleepers. Not much, because it's a Wizards game, and Wizards are conniving arrogant assholes, but...

This one thing seems to make it pretty meaningless to have the PCs interact with Sleepers if a ST can say, "Lol, a Seer comes around, effortlessly speaks a magic word, and those dots of allies/contacts/friend/etc are meaningless."
 
NonSequtur said:
oMage is the game where Sleepers mattered though. :V
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I mean, it's also the game where literally all of history seemed like a story of Mages doing things upon the inert political bodies of sleepers. At least, that's always the impression that comes off. It's probably not realistic, but most people around here play up the 'Technocracy runs everything/war over ideas' thing, and seeing how important it is, and how everyone talks about Sins Of The West and all...it's not that unwarrented?
 
The Laurent said:
Eh, that feels too easy. And yes, I know that's part of the point, but, as said, one of the things I actually liked about nMage is it seemed to give at least a small fraction of some shred of agency to Sleepers. Not much, because it's a Wizards game, and Wizards are conniving arrogant assholes, but...

This one thing seems to make it pretty meaningless to have the PCs interact with Sleepers if a ST can say, "Lol, a Seer comes around, effortlessly speaks a magic word, and those dots of allies/contacts/friend/etc are meaningless."
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Firstly, they can do that anyway. Any ST can always do that. And any ST can have a Mage with Mind show up and nullify or flip Sleeper contacts. Hell, PCs use that as a frequent tactic to take down their foes, so why wouldn't their enemies use such tactics against them if they're careless enough to let their enemies know who they are?

Secondly, it's quite a jump - to put it mildly - to assume that it's free. Or that a Sleeper can't get really lucky on their resistance rolls. I mean, they probably won't (because Sleepers are baaaaasically fucked on the resistance roll front as they don't have a power stat to help them), but it's possible.

But just remember - even in the Mage corebook, the Profane Urim is the "signature" artefact of the Seers. Seers, from the start, are meant to be assholes who possess your Sleeper friends and use them as pawns against you.

It's oMage where Sleepers really mattered, after all. nMage is gnostic as balls, and gnosticism has never been a friend to appeals to popular support. :p
 
EarthScorpion said:
Firstly, they can do that anyway. Any ST can always do that. And any ST can have a Mage with Mind show up and nullify or flip Sleeper contacts. Hell, PCs use that as a frequent tactic to take down their foes, so why wouldn't their enemies use such tactics against them if they're careless enough to let their enemies know who they are?

Secondly, it's quite a jump - to put it mildly - to assume that it's free. Or that a Sleeper can't get really lucky on their resistance rolls. I mean, they probably won't (because Sleepers are baaaaasically fucked on the resistance roll front as they don't have a power stat to help them), but it's possible.

But just remember - even in the Mage corebook, the Profane Urim is the "signature" artefact of the Seers. Seers, from the start, are meant to be assholes who possess your Sleeper friends and use them as pawns against you.

It's oMage where Sleepers really mattered, after all. nMage is gnostic as balls, and gnosticism has never been a friend to appeals to popular support. :p
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Sleepers really mattered and every important person in history was either probably a Mage or directly influenced/run around by a Mage. In a way, unimportance, or at least a different focus, allows Sleepers to actually matter (well, to people trying to live in the world.)

If the Mages aren't busy fighting over whether gays are objectively bad people (and, uh, yeah, Consensual Reality is a bunch of vile shit, IMO), then maybe Sleepers and others can actually, you know, matter in the areas that matter to most people day to day. If they're playing a different game, a different sort of shadow war where personally starting every war doesn't matter, that means Sleepers actually have the right to do stuff like that without someone asking, "Why did the Technocracy allow this to happen, it must be a complex plot between Technocracy splinter factions."

Like, in nMage, Brexit was just humans being stupid. In oMage, everything has to be explained through the prism of 'Mages run things, competing Mages compete to run different things.'
 
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The Laurent said:
I mean, it's also the game where literally all of history seemed like a story of Mages doing things upon the inert political bodies of sleepers. At least, that's always the impression that comes off. It's probably not realistic, but most people around here play up the 'Technocracy runs everything/war over ideas' thing, and seeing how important it is, and how everyone talks about Sins Of The West and all...it's not that unwarrented?
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Yeah but nMage is the game where a random archmage could rewrite human history pretty much on their own, for reasons no Sleeper has any connection to. In oMage, yeah, mages are a lot more mixed up in Sleeper history, but the connection goes both ways.
 
NonSequtur said:
Yeah but nMage is the game where a random archmage could rewrite human history pretty much on their own, for reasons no Sleeper has any connection to. In oMage, yeah, mages are a lot more mixed up in Sleeper history, but the connection goes both ways.
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Sure. But I can far easier ignore Archmages[1] or just say 'All of the Archmages cancel out more or less because I say they do, they're too busy doing other things.'

[1] God knows that nMage shoved them into a side book and doesn't have them going around solving everyone's problems and/or causing new ones because they were somewhat aware of just how dangerous Archmages were to any narrative involving lesser Mages.
 
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The Laurent said:
Like, in nMage, Brexit was just humans being stupid.
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Probably not, actually. Something like that provides a considerable and useful quintessence for rituals to overthrow power structures and break away from existing regulations.

There's a good chance it was engineered by archmasters opposed to the Exarchs.

(Alternatively, it could have been strongly reinforced by the Hegemon Ministry, which has an entire faction devoted to splitting and factionalising mankind to prevent it from uniting - as well as stirring up xenophobia and racial hatred to keep mankind divided)

That's the thing. The nMage you seem to want never actually really existed in the text. At best, it's an interpretation of some elements - and is outright contradicted by the higher end elements, like Imperial Mysteries. I don't pretend I'm not altering things - I'm just skewing the text towards the elements I prefer which do things that standard urban fantasy doesn't provide.

(After all, in nMage the Scientology expy is run by Banishers, including Banisher honestly-not-Tom-Cruise)

The Laurent said:
Sleepers really mattered and every important person in history was either probably a Mage or directly influenced/run around by a Mage. In a way, unimportance, or at least a different focus, allows Sleepers to actually matter.
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That's because oMages are basically stand-ins and exemplars for specific political beliefs and ideologies. Of course Isaac Newton and John Dee were Hermetics during that difficult period in the Sorcerer's Crusade era where the Hermetics were rather closer to the Order of Reason than the Order of Hermes and the Technocracy like to admit these days. That's because the two of them represent that early modern period when mathematics took modern form and there was no contradiction between being the father of modern calculus and believing in alchemy.

oMages who don't have beliefs that match the Sleepers of their period are surprisingly powerless. To have influence on the world, you need to believe what the Sleepers do, or pretend you do.

By contrast, a single nMage archmaster could go "Fuck you all, I'mma gonna rewrite the entire Old Kingdom period of Egyptian history to strengthen Ancient Astronaut theories of cultural origins" and Sleepers can't do shit to stop that.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Probably not, actually. Something like that provides a considerable and useful quintessence for rituals to overthrow power structures and break away from existing regulations.

There's a good chance it was engineered by archmasters opposed to the Exarchs.

(Alternatively, it could have been strongly reinforced by the Hegemon Ministry, which has an entire faction devoted to splitting and factionalising mankind to prevent it from uniting - as well as stirring up xenophobia and racial hatred to keep mankind divided)

That's the thing. The nMage you seem to want never actually really existed in the text. At best, it's an interpretation of some elements - and is outright contradicted by the higher end elements, like Imperial Mysteries. I don't pretend I'm not altering things - I'm just skewing the text towards the elements I prefer which do things that standard urban fantasy doesn't provide.

(After all, in nMage the Scientology expy is run by Banishers, including Banisher honestly-not-Tom-Cruise)



That's because oMages are basically stand-ins and exemplars for specific political beliefs and ideologies. Of course Isaac Newton and John Dee were Hermetics during that difficult period in the Sorcerer's Crusade era where the Hermetics were rather closer to the Order of Reason than the Order of Hermes and the Technocracy like to admit these days. That's because the two of them represent that early modern period when mathematics took modern form and there was no contradiction between being the father of modern calculus and believing in alchemy.

oMages who don't have beliefs that match the Sleepers of their period are surprisingly powerless. To have influence on the world, you need to believe what the Sleepers do, or pretend you do.

By contrast, a single nMage archmaster could go "Fuck you all, I'mma gonna rewrite the entire Old Kingdom period of Egyptian history to strengthen Ancient Astronaut theories of cultural origins" and Sleepers can't do shit to stop that.
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I admit that some of this is I haven't actually read Imperial Mysteries.

And eh, it's not really a dealbreaker. I just prefer my stuff a slight bit more grounded, and the Seer thing seemed to threaten to remove everything from any context where the Mages are characters who live in a world where they pay their taxes (or notably don't because Mages are dicks) and interact with human society in meaningful ways without running everything.

Like, again, some of this is that I'm a history graduate and I prefer to ground my stuff in a world I can get a grasp on or use as a basis for building things/society/culture/something.

Whereas going too far out there feels sorta untethered to me. This is less some claim of 'You are badwrong' and more that it just doesn't resonate as much with me.
 
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