The Greatest Game I've Never Played

[stip001]

The following is a ramble about the White Wolf RPG Mage: The Ascension, which ought not be confused with the newer, less maddening sequel Mage: The Awakening.

Comments

[_famine_]

And this new version isn't all the old one was cracked up to be?

Mage: The Awakening

[stip001]

John,

Not at all. They rationalized everything by power level, and in so doing were forced to blur all of the paradigms together. Paradox happens if you cast too high of a level spell for the most part, regardless of how you envision it. Thus, paradigm no longer has a real effect like it was supposed to; magical systems are now just a gloss over the "real" system.

That and if I recall correctly (I didn't read all of the fiction, since I was more concerned with the rules) they took out the Technocracy. Which is a travesty, since at least half of the coolness of the original concept was the interplay between the Traditions and the Technocracy.

-Nick

Re: Mage: The Awakening

[fro_dude]

As I remember it (and this is the last inkling of an old memory) the deciding factor on the first rule was always perception. For example in your 20 dollar bill example the mage could tell everyone that he's creating the cash from nothingness, and as long as he did it in his pocket it wouldn't violate rule one, even if the pockets were shown to be empty before hand. All the "normals" would just figure that the mage used slight of hand or lied about the initial state of the pockets. If they don't actually percieve it somehow, no harm, no foul

Re: Mage: The Awakening

[fro_dude]

And just for clarification, you could be coincidental with respect to one rule and vulgar for respect to the other. Going back to my example of the block of ice, you could have the ice not melting and that would be coincidental, but if anyone saw it and realized what was happening it could be vulgar.