Mage the Ascension and why it is so hard

[jarratt_gray]

So I'm running a one off Larp in a couple of weeks which will include a couple of Mages and I find myself wondering what have I got myself into. Mage 2nd Ed is a fantastic game with some brilliant ideas and a whole new way of looking at the world

Comments

[grandexperiment]

Yep. Not much more to add :)

The way I see it is that for each individual PC the RPG works fine. My biggest issue is when you have multiple PCs. There is often no overlap and this makes the game unwieldy.

Mage the Awakening kind of dealt with this by making a large common ground and allowing PCs to work towards paradigm like magic later down the line. Admittedly, the result was an entirely different game but it was more playable.

[jarratt_gray]

I dig Mage the Awakening as well. I like that it is an entirely different game. Why make the same game twice?

[grandexperiment]

I agree. I do think that Mage the Awakening did try and fix some of the structural flaws in Mage the Ascension though, so there is some connection at a structural level at least.

[jarratt_gray]

That is the other disconnect with Ascension. The mechanical system and the world system are not the same. How you do something mechanically does not connect with how your character views the world and does stuff. This makes things much harder. The world system is fine, but the mechanical system needs to be built in a way that teaches and integrates the world system so that playing ones character and performing magic is a more intuitive and elegant process

[amphigori]

I loved, LOVED coming up with foci, how my mage actually cast the magic, and how to make it coincidental.

Where I struggled was thinking big enough or thinking creatively enough. Being able to do *anything* and seeing the world as so transmutable would, I would think, result in some 'out there' plans of attack that I, Jackie, had a hard time even considering because of my familiarity with "Reality".