Whispers from the World of Darkness
by Lost Stranger.
The cute little girl looked at me for a second, and flinched away from me at the very moment I made a move towards her. She huddled in her bed, hugging an old, well-loved teddy bear with a missing eye. I put a finger to my lips and made a shushing sound. She nodded, and whispered to me. Read the rest of this entry »
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Sleeper: Huddling in Listless Ignorance.
This book is a revision of Mage: The Ascension, 2nd Edition. It has a handful of useful clarifications on the working of spheres, and a new game mechanic for resonance. That’s all I have good to say about it– if you don’t like to read open criticism, stop reading here.
Mage Revised asserts that the Ascension War is over, and that magic is dying. (Why didn’t they retitle the game: "Sleeper: Huddling in Listless Ignorance" ??) To me, it’s a no-brainer that Mage is about magic, not about whether-or-not-there-is-magic. The crucial premise of Mage is "Many Magics in the Modern World, one of them being Science." Not only is the premise "Magic is dying" totally inappropriate to the genre of Willworkers, it’s also incredibly tired and lame– it makes Mage a cheap imitation of the fragile-dream feel of Changeling. Magic cannot die, any more than reality can die.
What can die, however, is the great majority of Mage Masters. The developers decided that Mage: Revised should have very few Masters. Forgetting for the moment that the wise, powerful elder is a staple of this genre, this isn’t so bad. But instead of simply writing them out of the revised setting, they trumped up a "natural disaster" in order to kill off most Masters. Pretty as you please.
There’s no real discussion of the Technocracy, Nephandi, Marauders, or the Umbra in the revised book. These materials were in 2nd edition. They were left out of revised.
Game mechanics changed. Now, one gets very nearly as much paradox from successful vulgar magic as from botched vulgar magic– mages will be half-hoping for simple failure when they try to shape reality. Talk about undermining a Willworker’s self-confidence!
Also, nowadays, the greater your Arete, the harder it is to get into the Umbra. Someone explained this to me as the "metaphysical blip" theory of Arete. Sort of like Arete is some kind of energy one stores up, in order to muscle reality around! So, in Revised, Arete goes from insight to "power." From an in-character perspective, this makes no sense at all. It is, however, how they "explain" the deaths of most of the Masters, who had very high Aretes and were "caught off guard" by this sudden change in a fundamental structure of reality. Wouldn’t you be?
One cannot help but wonder why Mage: Revised is so unconscionably awful. There is a reason, and it’s not that the developers are Evil, per se. Before the revision, Mage was a game of high-stakes epic adventure. Higher stakes by far than any other World of Darkness game line. Mage players’ characters were powerful, and Mages as a whole defined reality itself. The scope of the game was tremendous, challenging, and rewarding.
Mage: Revised was developed in order to minimize the Mage game and Mage players into the world of White Wolf’s more profitable "Vampire: The Masquerade" line– profitability is the reason for all the changes. Magic itself was crippled, the majority of living Masters were eliminated, and easy access to the umbra cut off, so that the wide world of Mage is a little less scary and incomprehensible to the average vampire– because, apparently, the highest level of creativity gamers can rise to is "Superman vs The Hulk." Words cannot express my contempt. When will we stop debasing everything in the name of short-term profit?
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The release of Mage Revised has stirred up quite a hornet’s nest in the White Wolf community, and everyone seems to have an opinion. Since the book hit shelves, the newsgroups and mailing lists have been filled with commentary; some of it has been scathing, while others have been glowing with praise. Mage Revised is both vilified and exalted by the community, and the discussion is, I’m sure, far from over.
My column this month will NOT add my "two cents worth" to this duel of words; I fired my lone bullet way back in February when I reviewed it. Rather, I wish to examine the one absolutely new addition to Mage Revised that, in my humble opinion, isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on: the Resonance system.
Resonance is an idea that’s been around for quite some time in Mage, but was never fully capitalized on. Even going as far back as the simplistic concepts of "black" and "white" magic, there has always been a notion that magic has a certain feel to it, and that different types of magic have different "flavors", as it were. A calm priest would call upon the power of heaven, and the resulting effects would feel beatific. Meanwhile, the dark witch in her grove who uses blood and innocent flesh for his crafts would certainly feel palpably evil. This carried into Mage as early as first edition, but mechanics were always sadly lacking, as were explanations on which to base such mechanics. With the release of the revised edition, we were promised comprehensive mechanics and explanations for this long missing aspect of magic.
Sadly, what we were presented with in the new rulebook, to use a colloquialism… sucked.
The Problem
Here’s the new resonance system, in a nutshell. According to Mage Revised, all mages have a leaning toward one of three "metaphysical leanings": Stasis, Entropy, and Dynamism. It is this leaning, and the mage’s particular proclivity within this leaning, that determines how the mage’s work resonates. In game terms, each mage starts out with a single dot in one of these three traits. The more dots, the stronger the resonance.
Sounds simple, and something so simple should work beautifully, right? Guess again.
The first major problem with the system is its reliance upon an outside force for the effect. By tying mages to a "metaphysic trinity", the resonance system inevitably ties Mage to those Werewolf staples called the Wyrm, Wyld, and Weaver. The system takes no account of the mage’s avatar or nature whatsoever, tying it to an outside force and making the whole thing "stink of the Wyrm." Mage has always been good at avoiding the Triat as presented in Werewolf; now it is linked to it intimately, taking the feel of magic out of the mage’s hands.
The second problem is more practical. There are NO mechanics given for this supposed "new system." None, nada, zip, empty, non-existent. We are given a new trait with no mechanics on how it is raised or lowered or how it actually effectsmagic at all. The only solid mechanic we’re given is that a particular mage’s resonance can be detected as a "mystic signature" with a Perception + Awareness roll, and even then the book says it should be "immediately noticeable". The term "up to the Storyteller" seems to come up a lot, and yet these same Storytellers are given no way of making these decisions. The job of a new rulebook is to explain things such as this, and yet everyone is left floundering. Worse still, these flimsy resonance traits are now supposed to affect such major game mechanics as Quiet.
This is quite possibly the worst implementation of a new mechanic this writer has ever seen. The new resonance system is, in effect, a useless token. Players have dots on their character sheets that mean absolutely nothing, and Storytellers aren’t even given enough information, for the most part, to rectify the problem.
A New Mechanic
Far be it from me to just lay down and die, though. Knowing the problems we face with the new system, we can take the basic idea of resonance, and the possible utility of an actual Resonance statistic, and redirect it into something far more palatable and useful.
The alternate system I propose seeks to accomplish three major goals. The first is to shift the focus away from the Triat and back into the mage by centering on her avataric Essence and her inner Nature. Second, we create a solid, stable mechanic that aids players and Storytellers in flavoring magical effects. Finally, we give concrete rules for how such resonance affects the working of magic, including interaction with other magi.
A mage’s resonance should be primarily affected by her Essence, the inclinations and desires of the avatar. Dynamic essences tend to be wild and flamboyant, generating unpredictable effects and changing themselves at a moment’s notice. Pattern essences prefer predictable, orderly patterns in magic. Primordial essences "feel" like old magic, carrying an air of mystery and occasionally fear. Questing essences are focused yet creative, preferring effects that get the job done while still looking good. Thus, the mage’s Essence trait replaces the "metaphysic trinity" as the primary trait.
For the secondary trait, we plug in the mage’s Nature. Magic comes from the avatar, but is ultimately shaped by the will of the mage, and using Nature as the secondary trait reflects this. A visionary mage will be creative, yet centered on a goal, while a conniver will be far subtler and eventually overpowering.
The combination of Essence and Nature will result in some interesting combinations, but a properly created character should have no problems fitting the resonance in. Players and Storytellers should work together to come up with magical styles that fit the character concept. For example, a hermit with a Primordial / Loner resonance may call upon elementals and various world spirits that shun society, while another hermit with a Static / Loner resonance may use subtle effects that come only from concentration and discipline. Their magical effects would resonate far differently, but share the edge of being lonely magic. The resonance will radiate from the mage as well, making the Primordial hermit "the creepy guy in the woods" while making the Static one into "a disciplined survivor." The mage begins play with a single dot in this resonance trait, with the range being from one to five.
Resonance can increase and decrease, within certain parameters.
Resonance should increase or decrease in the following circumstances:
As a guideline, the mage’s resonance rating should never climb more than a single dot above the mage’s Avatar rating. Mages with weak avatars will simply not have the mystic wherewithal to resonate strongly; they cannot put enough resonant quintessence into the effect.
As a general rule, the higher the resonance trait, the more magic is affected. This becomes a matter of role-playing for the most part, requiring the player to incorporate how the mage’s magic "looks" into the mage’s background and paradigm. However, there are some tools players and Storytellers can use to help reflect resonance "in-game."
The idea that resonance can be used as a "mystic signature" is good, but the mechanic is a bit flawed. While Awareness + Perception should allow a mage to detect general tendencies in the resonance, true analysis should be far more difficult. Getting a true sense of this signature should require at least one level of one of the spheres used, and an Intelligence + Enigmas roll (at difficulty 10 - Resonance) to truly piece together the various feelings the resonance radiates.
A mage’s magic may be easier to work if she shapes the effect to match her resonance. At the Storyteller’s discretion, a mage that works their magic to fit their resonance should receive a one-point reduction of the difficulty for every TWO points of Resonance. Likewise, an effect that the ST rules is opposite a mage’s resonance should receive +1 to the difficulty per two points of resonance.
A mage may seek to smother her resonance so as not to leave a signature. For each point of resonance the mage seeks to hide, the difficulty of magic increases by one. Mages do not need to hide all their resonance at once, however, if they simply seek to subdue the effect.
Using Tass of a similar primary resonance as the mage lowers mystic difficulties by 1, while using Tass of a different resonance increases the difficulty by at least one. A priest is going to find using that jar of baby’s blood awfully difficult…
When working conjunctual magic, resonance should become a MAJOR factor. Mages with similar resonance (similar meaning same Essence) should perform joined magic at no penalty, while mages of different resonance should find their energies clashing, causing +1 difficulty. If two mages of exactly the same resonance work together, the energies flow together like water, causing a -1 difficulty drop. Stronger resonance should overwhelm weaker ones; for every point of difference between their resonances, the mage with the weaker resonance should gain a +1 penalty to her difficulties, reflecting the difficulty in adding weak magic to strong.
In Conclusion
The above is surely incomplete, and I encourage readers to add to this basic framework as they see fit. What I have sought to do is correct the major problems with the Revised mechanic and make resonance a viable option for gaming. Magic is powerful, and no one should walk into using it ignorantly…
…not even in a role-playing game
NEXT ISSUE: SAD NEWS - Well, it may be a while before I grace the halls of DViE again; I am taking a leave of absence from these pages to fulfill other duties and seek opportunities that have opened before me. I will occasionally come by for visits now and again, and I hope you’ll all be here waiting for me. Until then, may the power of the game take you beyond the Horizon! Feel free to write!
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Welcome back. I should probably be saying that to myself, seeing as I’ve been away from the column for so long, but life does have its ups and downs, and mine was somewhere between the third and fourth circles of Dante’s E-Z Bake. Things have perked considerably since then, so I find myself before you yet again.
This month’s article will tackle a hefty subject: the Seeking. As all players of Mage know, seekings are spiritual missions of enlightenment, tests and trials to further Awaken a mage to the mysteries of existence. Seekings are a part of most ancient cultures, with an emphasis on finding your place in the world and coming into wisdom and age. For the mages of the World of Darkness, seekings are vital elements of growth, eye-opening events that lead to greater power and wisdom. However, as vital as seekings are, the task of running a seeking can be a real pain. With the release of Mage Revised, the task is made even more daunting by sheer virtue of the fact that there is NO information on these important events provided.
A seeking is, in flowery terms, a direct interaction between the conscious mind of the mage and his subconscious mystic awareness, as embodied by his avatar. Usually in the form of dreams and vision quests, seekings test the mage’s growing enlightenment, pointing out obstacles to be overcome and walls to be broken.
In Mage, seekings serve a two-fold purpose. The first is the pursuit of self-perfection, or overcoming the weaknesses of a mage’s nature. All mages are human and, ultimately, flawed in character and spirit. Seekings provide a mage with personal insights and challenges that must be incorporated and overcome before further enlightenment can be achieved. The second is the pursuit of clarity. The path to Ascension is fraught with peril, and only a road of enlightenment can show the way. Seekings allow the mage to learn deeper and deeper truths about existence, overcoming preconceived notions and, eventually, his own restrictive paradigm.
An often-asked question is, "Why hold a seeking?" There is a case to be made that enlightenment should be acquired during the process of daily living, since that is the place where a mage acquires all his or her experience. However, seekings are necessary for this very reason, allowing a mage to use and ponder the knowledge he has gained without the prejudices of "the real world" affecting him. Seekings are a dynamic reflection of a mage’s inner struggle, and no real world act can truly reflect that.
During a seeking, a mage is tested in three main ways. First, a mage’s personality is challenged. The mage is often put in situations that conflict with her personality, forcing her to develop her strengths and overcome her flaws and weaknesses. Without development of the self, true understanding of the outside world can never come. Second, the mage’s beliefs are often put to the test. All mages hold to some set of beliefs about how reality works, whether they are hermetic or virtual, religious or spiritual, and a seeking seeks to test those beliefs. Mages who cannot look past their paradigm, or who cannot expand it to encompass some hitherto unthought of aspect of reality, do not develop properly. Finally, a mage’s power is tested. Her ability to wield the power of the universe is an important part of being a mage, and one who cannot handle the greater powers of mastery do not get very far.
Sooner or later, a player is going to ask for permission to raise his or her Arete. This causes problems immediately for the ST and the game as a whole. Seekings are personal matters best run one-on-one, and a player who decides, at the beginning of a session, that he just has to raise his rating right then and there can derail a whole session. It also puts the ST in the impossible place of having to craft an important personal event on the fly. To avoid this problem, players and Storytellers need to work together and plan ahead of time to ensure the success of the story.
Players should give their Storytellers at least two weeks warning that they’re almost ready to go through a seeking. This gives the Storyteller time to get his stuff together while the player earns those last few experience points. It also allows he player and the Storyteller to discuss potential goals of the seeking, to brainstorm ideas and work up a basic framework.
Storytellers who want to get an early start on the planning process should note how each character is acting during the session. Note little personality flaws and quirks, the characters’ interpersonal relationships, and their use of magic. Take particular note of how they act within their Nature and Essence. Finally, as a player’s experience total starts to stock up, answer three questions:
1) Do the characters display any constant behaviors or tendencies that can be considered weaknesses?
2) Is the character living up to her Nature?
3) Is the character living up to her Essence?
When the time comes to actually plan the seeking, decide whether you will test the mage’s personality, his faith in his paradigm, or his use of power. In many cases, a seeking will test more than one of these, but the major focus should be on one. This allows you to keep a focus while branching off.
Seekings should be structured with the essence of the mage’s avatar in mind. A dynamic avatar is not going to set up elaborate puzzles that have a specific set answer, so don’t set up the seeking as such. Primordial essences tend toward surreal, cosmic moods that use a lot of old symbolism and mythic threads. Pattern essences tend to work through logic and puzzles, reinforcing old lessons while introducing new ones. Dynamic essences are unpredictable and chaotic, and their seekings reflect this with wild events and odd, Dali-esque visuals meant to expand the senses. Questing essences focus on a foreseeable goal and test just how the mage reaches that goal.
Seekings can focus on all kinds of goals. They can lead to overcoming a personality weakness or resolving an inner conflict. Many seekings expand the consciousness of the mage, bringing her one step closer to a major universal truth. Seekings can help to develop, or even overcome, a mage’s paradigm. Seekings can also focus on reality, aiding the mage in telling reality apart from his own powers.
The actual goals of a seeking should be set early on, but two rules come into play here. First and foremost, the players should not know what the goal actually is. While little hints can pop up here and there, and false ones can be scattered like water, the final goals you have set out should only be evident at the end of the session. Second, be flexible; a player may come up with an even better answer than you envisioned, and should be rewarded thusly. Finally, remember that the player is laying down a lot of experience on this, so the mood should be one of learning, not competition.
This brings us to another issue that’s always been prickly with Mage players: the failure of a seeking and the spending of experience points. Many mages fail their seekings, unable to overcome some need for revenge or an inability to grasp some universal concept. In these cases, what happens to the experience points a player has spent months saving up? Some Storytellers have ruled that the experience points buy the seeking itself, and the failure to complete the seeking results in a loss of the experience points. Others give the experience back to the player out of a sense of fairness. My own take on this is somewhere in between: the players receive back half the experience points to save, while the other half MUST be spent immediately to improve the character’s skills or buy off flaws. My reasoning is simple; even if one does not achieve true enlightenment on a seeking, most mages will still come away with a few small lessons. At the very least, they’ll know what their weaknesses are.
Plan to run a one-on-one session for the seeking. Tell the player in question to show up early for the next game, if possible, or tell everyone else top show up late. If you can swing it, it might even be preferable to run it between sessions so as to minimize the disruption.
Seekings most commonly take three forms. Dreamscapes are seekings that take place while the mage is asleep, and they are the most common form. Dreamscapes rely heavily on symbolism and mythic threads most of the time, allowing for surrealism and oddity that warps the sensibilities and brings the mage to a new plateau. Mindscapes are meditative seekings, and are fairly common for pattern essences. They rely heavily on inward focus and personal drama. Finally, there are Walkabouts, rare seekings that take place in everyday life. Walkabouts are usually reserved for shamans and spiritualists, and occasionally take place in the Umbra.
When Storytelling the Seeking, start with what the mage knows and slowly warp it. A mage in a dreamscape may start in her living room, only to open the door onto a field of battle. The descriptions should be vivid, even more vivid than usual, and symbolism should stand out. Walk the mage through the seeking slowly, letting her think about each and every event and course of action. Seeking should never be rushed; considering the experience point layout the player has saved up for, she deserves your best. Each seeking should culminate in a defining moment, that single second of insight and decision that decides whether the mage succeeds or fails. Play up this moment, especially if the player succeeds.
The seeking is simply another facet of your story, and possibly the most important one for many Mage players. It is a story element not entered into lightly by either side, but ultimately rewarding.
NEXT MONTH: The revised version of Mage provides players with something they’ve been clamoring for: resonance mechanics. However, in my opinion, they fall well short of adequate, a seemingly a half-hearted attempt. I’ll look at resonance and suggest an alternative system for it.
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My response is: Just say no.
And I quote: "The main difference between the Enlightened scientist and his Tradition counterparts is that he remains completely unaware of his use of magic." That’s fucking amazing. He can use the Awareness talent on his fellow technomancers, but not on himself, I suppose is the point. Mages cannot "abandon" foci until Arete 6, now. But they can spend Willpower and use magick without foci at a higher difficulty regardless of their Arete or the day of the week. Unless they’re Technocrats, in which case they can’t do this, either. This is not so much a weakening of Revised as a failure to improve an absurd situation.
To cross in the Umbra, you now take damage. Everyone’s heard that part. But did you know, the higher your Arete, the more damage you take? Nothing makes it more obvious that the Mage revisors made no effort to think before they made up rules. Why didn’t they just make it a Strength + Occult roll? Furthermore. They’ve implied over and over that the Ascension war is over and magick, by sleeper mandate, is dying out. There’s so much wrong with this, that I’ll just restrict myself to saying that the name for Mage Revised should have been "Sleeper: the Huddling in Listless Ignorance." The abilities list is no better or worse than Mage 2nd ed, just revised. (That is, it’s got equally many glaring gaps in it. Now, there’s nothing remotely like empathy or Lore, for example.) The sphere descriptions are slightly adjusted in places, but nothing that really changes Mage magick. And not much of anything is more clear. Though it didn’t catch my eye at first glance, as someone else pointed out, the Mage Revised book is even less complete for running a game than Mage 2nd ed.
You’d have to be a no-life jackass with nothing to do with his time except criticize game hacks, to buy this book, if you had much of an impression of it beforehand.
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After my initial discussion of paradigms in this column, a few readers wrote to me, asking for something more substantial. While pointing out the importance of paradigm was well received by these readers, some pointed out to me that many people simply do not understand how to create a paradigm for their characters. This is understandable; most role-playing games either have self-contained paradigms or simply do not require players to question their beliefs in reality as much as Mage does, and suddenly being thrust into such a situation can be daunting.
However, paradigms should not be so difficult, since they are simply extensions of the already existing Mage mechanics. In the most abstract sense, a paradigm is what a Mage believes about reality, magic, and existence. However, boil away all the high-flung metaphysics and the self-analyzing philosophy and psychology, and the players is left with a simple way to explain game mechanics and characters statistics from the point of view of the character.
Paradigms are best made simultaneously with character creation. Very rarely is there any good time to make the whole paradigm in one sitting. Rather, bits and pieces of it should be created as various aspects of the character come together. When you choose your spheres, for example, ask how this person is going to explain this sphere to others; no character is going to say, "Hi, I’m Brianna, and I have Life 3!"
For those playing members of an established mystic group, the job of creating a paradigm is half done. Each Tradition, Convention, and Craft has its own ideals and views that it will teach its younger members to follow. Most mages will follow Tradition paradigm fairly closely, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s the only way they know to explain what they do. If Brianna’s mentor is a Verbena, and she teaches the young mage that blood and sacred oaks allow her to heal and harm, then Brianna is going to use blood and wood, and her paradigm will reflect those beliefs.
Of course, mystic groups only provide the skeleton of the individual paradigm, and it is up to the player to build on this and make the character’s magic as personal as possible. Does the character prefer some aspects of the paradigm to others? Is she rebellious, or is she a rules stickler? Maybe the character tries to mix paradigms a bit, such as a Virtual Adept trying to justify hermetic circles or a Chorister who still follows tribal ways.
The challenge of making a personal paradigm comes when playing an Orphan. These people have Awakened on their own and do not have the "controlled" Awakenings of most Tradition mages. Whereas a trained mage enters her Awakening with the Tradition’s preconceived notions about magic, an Orphan comes to power in a random environment, with only her own beliefs to explain what is going on. For these characters, the moment of Awakening is probably the biggest influence on paradigm. If Brianna Awakens during a drug high, for example, she may truly believe that what happened was a drug trip and can only be duplicated while high. This may, of course, eventually lead her to the Cult of Ecstasy, but it’s a start.
The final thing to keep in mind is that, no matter how a character Awakens, he or she will have some notion about how the universe works and why she can do the stunts she suddenly can. Awakening, to some degree, is all about insight and enlightenment; a mage simply cannot, by definition, function as a willworker unless she acknowledges some form of metaphysic, even if it’s something as simple as fairy tales or as everyday as common science.
The actual process of paradigm creation has three steps: Basic Metaphysic, Sphere Metaphysic, and Background Metaphysic. While creating your character, answer as many paradigm questions as you can. Imagine how this character will explain her mystic abilities to another mage, and avoid actually using MAGE’s terminology as much as possible.
The Basic Metaphysic coincides with character concept, and should resolve the character’s essential worldview. Ask yourself what this character thinks the nature of reality is and why she thinks she can use magic. These answers do not have to be deep by any stretch of the imagination; paradigms can be as simple as wishcraft or as complex as witchcraft. If the character doesn’t have a deep universal metaphysic, you should at least resolve the issue of how and why her abilities work; everyone’s going to come up with an answer for that.
The Sphere Metaphysic is fairly easy, especially if the character’s worldview has been developed. At this point, you should explain how the character explains each individual Sphere. These explanations should fit with the metaphysic; a Dreamspeaker explaining Forces as "the power of Satan" probably won’t cut it. The explanations should sound plausible to the character, and should cover as much of each Sphere as possible. It helps to define the character’s starting spheres at first, then explaining the others.
The Background Metaphysic defines the mage’s views on the Avatar, Arete, Quintessence, Paradox, and the mystic backgrounds like Arcane and Sanctum. These are important to clarify just how the mage sees her everyday life, as well as the things that affect her the most. A mage may not necessarily see that the avatar is what allows her to work magic; some may see it as "creative genius", while others revere it as a guardian angel or animal spirit. Arete is a measure of enlightenment, and everyone follows a different inner path, whether it is devotion to the One, inner balance, or acceptance of an idea. People will explain Paradox differently, based on their own experiences with it and the experiences they have shared with others.
Once these issues have been resolved, the player is left with a simple role-playing tool that allows her to get into the character’s head and mindset far easier than without.
Genesis: An Example Paradigm
Ok, let’s try this step by step. First, let’s grab a concept and a basic background. Our character will be a Virtual Adept… let’s call him Bob for now… and he was Awakened by another Virtual Adept during a Quake death-match. (Don’t giggle, just work with me here…) He was trained by the Adepts, and follows much of their paradigm, but the whole death-match Awakening has skewed his outlook somewhat.
For the Basic Metaphysic, we can pretty much use the standard Adept paradigm that has been drilled into his head: the universe is a vast network of information that can be hacked, altered, and uploaded. However, Bob is partial to the idea that the information for the physical world is written in Quake code, allowing for "spectacular, real-life 3D effects". Bob can take part of this code, play with it a bit, and modify the universal program in small ways. He’s even developed his own set of "cheat codes" (rotes); all he has to do is "hit the tilde", input his code, and the cheat takes effect.
For his Spheres, Bob has spent most of his time working with simple environmental changes. He has 1 level of Correspondence, 2 of Matter, 2 of Forces, and 1 of Mind. We’ll stick to just explaining those for now. Since Bob’s paradigm is code-based, his explanations for those Spheres should also be code-based. After a bit of thinking, we may come up with something like the following:
Moving onto Background Metaphysic, we can already see the general tendencies of this character, so Bob’s explanations for other things should be simple, yet potentially geeky. Bob will certainly not, for example, be using any flowery phrases to explain what his avatar is any time soon; he’ll just call it his "inspiration". His Arete can be explained as his ability to hack, his "eliteness", if I may steal a phrase. Paradox is just "bugs in the system" or "anti-hacking defenses", while quintessence is little more than a system backdoor or a code crack. His other backgrounds will take on similarly technical definitions.
And there you have it: Bob, the Quake hacker.
Paradigms really flesh out the character and make the role-playing experience far easier. There is no really deep philosophy required to do this, just a little creativity and a little thought. What you come up with may surprise you.
NEXT MONTH: Barring natural disaster or a burning need to write something else, I’ll delve into the Storyteller’s nightmare that is running a Seeking. We’ll look at the role of the Avatar, using Nature, and how to set this bad boy up.
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First off, since this is the October issue, I’ll take this opportunity to wish all the readers a wonderful All Hallows Eve. It really is my favorite holiday, the one day of the year when all the pretentious masks we wear in society are cast aside in favor of something more in tune with ourselves. If only every day could be like that…
But all good things have their limits, and so it goes with mages as well. For all their will-working ability, for all their power to shape reality to their whims and desires, they are limited by the crushing will of the masses. And while this seems like a simple enough thing to understand, it makes presiding over a Mage game an absolute bitch. How do you decide whether an effect is vulgar or not? How do you decide when to invoke Paradox? How much control does a mage have over the appearance of magic?
The process of deciding such things can be daunting for any Storyteller,whether novice or expert. However, if one keeps the nature of the Mage universe in mind and makes a few defining decisions early on, vulgarity and paradox should not be such a major issue.
A mage gains all his power, and a good amount of his limitations, from a single defining statement about the Mage metaphysic: Belief is everything.
As I talked about in my first article, reality in the Mage universe is subjective and fluid. The Awakened avatar realizes this on some fundamental level and can will this meaningless mass into some definite shape. Belief,especially strong belief, has a lot of power in this reality, for belief gives it purpose, shape, and activity. Only two things give the universe any true shape of its own: natural laws that govern the basic shape this reality takes,and the Consensus.
The Consensus
So what the hell is the Consensus?
Well, if a single strong will is able to define a small part of the universe,then it follows that ALL the intelligent wills in the universe can affect the entire thing. The Consensus is exactly that: the combined belief of everyone with a rational thought in his or her head. In essence, if enough people believe something, it’s likely to become the truth.
The Order of Reason realized this early on. When the "enlightened" orders pulled together to protect the average person, the first thing they did was make their ways appealing to common men and women. They introduced medicines average people could make, machines average people could use, and ideas that seemed grounded in a more stable reality. The majority of people liked the idea of a seemingly random universe acting along set rules of cause an effect. This did far more than give the Order strong mortal backing; it stabilized and defined reality in one set way through the Consensus.
In the modern Mage game, the technocratic paradigm rules the majority of the Consensus. The power of other beliefs may ebb and flow in places, but the overarching paradigm is unarguably scientific in nature. Most natural processes have been defined and refined, and people can expect things to act in a certain way. The Union has done a good job of solidifying their vision of reality; every activity, every gadget, every theory has been copiously traced back through older theories to a basic, unarguable "law of nature." Even the Sleepers can take part in this process by building on what the Union has built. In fact, the universe has been so narrowly defined at this point that the very subjectivity of it is difficult to see.
Of course, the universe remains rather fluid underneath this thick crust of science, and, much like the crust of our dear Earth, this layer of science is thinner in some places than others. Some Storytellers make the mistake of believing that the universe is NOT subjective, that it has always worked the way the Technocrats say it does. This is simply not so; if things were that way,then why is there an Ascension War? The Technocratic paradigm is simply one of an infinite number of ways to explain how reality works, and in places where a lot of people believe in other possibilities, those possibilities become accessible again. This is why a faith healer can get away with so much; people believe he can do it, so he just might be able to.
At some point, however, all mages, even a Technocrat, can push the envelope just a bit too far. Like creating a bubble underwater, a mage pushes aside the Consensus to form his own effects; when that bubble breaks, the water that rushes in is usually very unpleasant.
While no one is sure where it comes from or how it comes to be, everyone can agree on one thing: Paradox is reality’s police force, punishing those who violate the laws of the Consensus.
The most puzzling thing about it is that Paradox often responds to vulgar magic with spectacularly vulgar effects of its own. The only rule seems to be "an eye for an eye." Perhaps Paradox is merely inflicting upon the mage the same violation it feels the mage caused to the universe. Theories abound as to why Paradox acts the way it does, but no one has a definite answer.
Looking at the abstract metaphysics behind it is all well and good, but we still have the more concrete issue of running this damned game fairly. How does a Storyteller decide what is vulgar and coincidental? How should a Storyteller run a Paradox backlash? These are things a Storyteller needs to decide in advance, before the first session of the game.
The first thing a Storyteller should decide is how strong consensual reality is in her game. Is the game in a city, where the technocratic paradigm has a lot of hold, or is it in a far-off place where other possibilities are viable? Are there exceptions to the norm, such as a highly superstitious Chinatown or are search facility in the middle of the woods? In essence, ask yourself how"weird" you want your game to be and stick with it.
Next, do your players a favor and let them know how much control they have over how their magic looks. Seems like a simple thing to decide, but a thorough read of various Mage books reveals two completely different schools of thought on the topic - a "hard" way and a "soft" way. It’s a touchy topic for Mage players and Storytellers alike, one that will hopefully be clarified in the future. (Jess,are you getting this?)
The "soft" school holds that a mage need only will an effect to look a certain way, and reality will compensate… to a certain degree. Coincidental magic is far easier to pull off in this system, but the Storyteller has to keep a tight rein on the players. For example, a mage wishing to teleport across town using the "soft" school can simply invoke the Correspondence 3 effect… and have a taxi pick them up and whisk them across town.
The "hard" school holds that magic only creates an effect, and that the environment must be directly manipulated by the will-worker in order to shape the effect a certain way. In this school, it is far more difficult to create a coincidental effect, meaning the Storyteller deals with Paradox a bit more, but adjudicating the effects are much easier. Under this school, pulling off a teleport across town would be damned difficult.
Once you’ve decided and told your players how it’s all going to work, you have to make sure you follow through on it. When players declare a magical effect,always make sure you ask, "How does that look?" Make sure you factor in paradigm and foci as well; that fireball’s going to be a whole lot more believable coming out of a bazooka than it is out of an oak staff. It might be a good idea to keep a notebook of a few of your rulings so you can keep track.
When a mage accumulates five or more points of Paradox, it is customary to begin checking for backlash. However, in matters of backlash, it is always wise to follow the Golden Rule: if it doesn’t work, don’t do it. Paradox can throw an entire session off-course, especially the larger backlashes, so a Storyteller is encouraged to be creative and keep the mood. If having Wrinkle show up screws up your story, don’t have him show up. Rolling for backlash in the middle of a big fight is damned inconvenient for everyone involved, so hold of and roll when the action slows down.
When you do decide to roll, however, don’t pull punches. Remember that Paradox is supposed to discourage the use of vulgar magic, and your use of Paradox should reflect that. If you have a player gleefully flinging fireballs around,and he’s accumulated 15 points of Paradox in 2 game sessions, feel free to slap him.
As a rule, never walk into a game unprepared to deal with the larger backlashes. Come up with a few Paradox spirits ahead of time and keep them on hand. Create at least one Paradox Realm, one which you can throw almost any player into, and keep that on hand has well. Being prepared allows you to move into the event seamlessly, without killing the mood.
If you don’t want to deal with large backlashes, consider staging multiple small backlashes over a period of days or weeks to get rid of the accumulated Paradox. A fun thing to do is "bleed" the points off one by one by having some small, random, and totally strange events happen to the character. Maybe a frog jumps out of his wineglass at a weird time - one point down. Maybe he trips and finds his shoelaces tied for no reason - another one down. Later on, maybe he finds he understands Japanese perfectly for about an hour, but cannot remember English for the life of him the entire time - yet another point gone.
Finally, remember that Paradox works under an "punishment meets the crime" rule. A mage’s first backlash should be small, a warning shot of sorts. A mage who gets Paradox infrequently will get lighter punishments, whereas a mage who regularly stocks up on Paradox will eventually burn out. If you use Paradox fairly and evenly, your games should run all the more smoothly.
And if they don’t, just throw empty Mountain Dew bottles at your players.
Always works for me….
NEXT MONTH: On suggestions I received after my first article, I’ll be turning to something more concrete. I hope to return to my favorite subject - paradigm -and I will show how to create one for your characters. There are as many potential paradigms as there are beliefs, so how do you pull one together for your character?
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I love Mage: The Ascension. Out of all the games White Wolf puts out, it is my favorite, the one I will choose above all others. There is deepness to the game that, at least for me, the other games do not exhibit. To play a mere mortal, a frail human being, who is suddenly given powers over the universe itself, is to explore the very foundations of who we are, what we believe, and how we hold those truths to the light of reality. The game holds an infinite potential for philosophical and personal exploration, as well as raw power and universal melodrama.
That being said, I have to wonder why, for a game where belief is so important,paradigm is not stressed more in Mage. With each new supplement, I hope beyond hope that the ideas of belief will be revisited and brought to the fore; with each new supplement, I sigh heavily as paradigm is ignored or, even worse, downplayed horribly. The last straw for me was when The Orphan’s Survival Guide came out. There was a nice section on how belief can save your sanity and give you a framework to work your arts around… and then proceeded to throw a bunch of silly new-age religion at you to compensate.
If any book should have addressed the importance of paradigm, it was that one. Whereas the Traditions have strong beliefs they are taught from Awakening,orphans are on their own, often without a leg to stand on, making their arts haphazard and their potential unrealized. Only those who adopt a framework for their magick ever truly learn to use it.
Let’s face it, a mage Awakens to some pretty heavy-duty truths. To suddenly realize that the fabric of reality can be twisted and reworked is a big moment,probably bigger than the average human can handle. In that moment, a magus learns that the scientific paradigm is no more correct than, say, a religious doctrine, and that belief is what decides what is true and what is false. If a mage doesn’t have beliefs of her own, she can get lost in the possibilities, or,worse yet, become overwhelmed by the meaningless of it all.
The basis of the magick system is a pretty simple premise: reality is subjective, bound by only a few "laws of nature" and the belief of the many.
OK, so it only seems simple on the outside, so sue me for my philosophy minor. This simple statement is possibly the most misunderstood thing about Mage, and one’s interpretation of it affects almost every facet of game play, especially judging on the vulgarity or effectiveness of a magickal effect.
In essence, a subjective reality is free form, a place where all possibilities exist simultaneously, where anything can happen. Leaping into physics for a moment, and tapping into my "inner Son of Ether", the example of Schrodinger’s Cat is a wonderful way of explaining this subjective state. Putting aside the quantum mathematics (and that God-awful isotope device), we are presented with a simple, yet elegant, difficulty: if you seal a cat in a soundproof box, and comeback an hour later, how can you tell if the cat is alive or dead? You can make theories based on present conditions, but you can’t know for sure until you open the box. In essence, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time, or, to put it more simply, both possibilities have an equal chance of being true at the same time. Only when observation and judgement whittles down the possibilities do we attain the "truth" of the matter. The Mage metaphysic places reality in the same quantum state. All possibilities exist, from the sublime to the ridiculous, until they are seen and judged. Only then does something become"true" or "false."
Of course, not everything is fully subjective in this universe. As it says above, there are "laws of nature" that form a backbone upon which the swirling maelstrom can center. One should not confuse these basic patterns in reality with scientific laws; they are far more basic than that. There are issues, such as the existence of certain things and forces and the basic ways those things act, that cannot be argued otherwise; they exist, plain and simple. Gravity isn’t subjective, but it’s malleable.
The universe also finds some measure of stability in the form of the Consensus,the belief of the Masses. In essence, if enough people believe in one of the myriad possibilities the universe offers, then that possibility becomes more likely to happen. As certain possibilities become more "acceptable" to the Consensus, the old possibilities do not vanish, but they become less likely to happen.
Think of this metaphysic as a large hole dug into the earth, then covered by a blanket. It has a few basic boundaries (the walls and the bottom) but is empty,devoid of anything truly solid. The blanket covers this hole, just as the Consensus covers reality; the hole still exists, but all you can now see is a blanket on the ground.
Now throw an Awakened avatar into this mess…
At the first stages of enlightenment, the mage recognizes that possibilities exist in the universe that most people wouldn’t even consider. However, the mage still cannot truly comprehend the sheer volume of that possibility, and seeks a way of explaining what she can do. This explanation is called a paradigm.
Paradigms are inherent to all the Traditions and to the Technocracy because a mage wouldn’t be able to cope otherwise. The Awakening bares the pure force of existence to the mage’s sight, and there she sees… nothing. Everything she believed about the universe, about the meaning of life, and about herself, means nothing. Only through the power of belief is any of it given form or meaning,and her belief now transcends the Masses, giving meaning to the raw potential before her.
It’s enough to give you a headache… or drive you mad. Faced with meaninglessness, many Awakened succumb to Quiet and possibly go Marauder, or,worse still, submit to having that void filled by Nephandic masters. Only a mage with some kind of belief in the way things are, or the way things should be, can get past this.
Paradigms fill this void, and provide a starting mage the foundation for their particular brand of magick. Foci, rotes, and even the general appearance of magick are all determined by the way that a mage thinks things should happen. While technomancers will explain gravity in long terms involving mass and rotation, attractions and equations, a Celestial Chorister would talk about the"way of the One", and a Dreamspeaker would discuss being "held to the bosom of Gaia". Moreover, paradigm gives the character a structured starting point toward Ascension. It allows her to sort through the mess in front of her and carve a path toward greater wisdom.
Each Tradition and Convention adheres to its own group paradigm, giving its initiates a ready-built foundation. Of course, individual mages may vary on this "group paradigm" in various ways, but each mage tends to stick with the heart of her mentor’s teachings. Magi of House Thig may use technological devices, but they still scrawl the names of God on each listening device. Each Celestial Chorister may pray to a different form of deity, but they all agree that their prayers do reach the One.
Orphans, on the other hand, don’t have a guiding hand through Awakening. A new mage, alone and without an explanation for what is happening, can quickly succumb to pain, avarice, and hopelessness. By the same token, however, this person is still Awakened; having seen the truth about reality, she is bound to develop some kind of rough paradigm. Maybe she reads a little too much La Vey and chooses the path of indulgence; maybe she practices some variant of Wicca;maybe she latches on to the teachings of a great philosopher, or bases herself on some mythical being. In any case, the arts of an orphan are still based on some form of belief, because without belief, there can be no Art.
What does this all mean for your gaming? Paradigm is a facet of character creation that is often overlooked, leaving a two-dimensional character with no beliefs, no goals, and no real power. For Mage, more than any other game, what a character believes is possibly the most important facet of its creation.
When I ran my most recent Mage game, I required each player to come up with a full paradigm as well as a history. While this was a seeming pain in the ass for them, it made role-playing their characters far easier than they expected. With paradigm in hand, they could easily pick their foci, basic rotes, and the very style of their magick. It also made relations between characters far spicier; the Euthanatos player spent half the game trying to justify his paradigm and his Tradition’s beliefs to the other players.
Paradigms are a good tool for Storytellers as well. Is one of your players ready for a Seeking? Grab their paradigm, compare it to their Nature, and find a weakness you think can be strengthened. Paradigms can help determine the vulgarity of a specific effect or the way that effect appears in game. NPC paradigms can be tailored to clash with the players’, making relations with such a person difficult.
In the end, paradigm is a tool to enhance role-playing and make each character unique. In Mage, belief is everything, and only true believers ever get anywhere.
NEXT MONTH: I hope to continue writing about the metaphysics of Mage and its implications for game play. More specifically, I hope to open Pandora’s Box a bit and pull out the ever-popular topic of adjudicating magickal effects within this air of subjectivity. Fun for the whole family…
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