by Malcus Dorroga
"So if I shape the fireball like a Pinto, is it coincidental?"
– Another random Mage player
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.
Subjective Reality Revisited
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.
Paradox
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.
Your Game: Judging Vulgarity and Paradox
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?