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I suddenly wish there were a system half-way between Mage and Unknown Armies. Something like "Magic can make things better for everyone except yourself." Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Oct 28, 2016 |
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Oct 28, 2016 22:05
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Jhet posted:Because that's only half a step from wanting to lull the entire human species into obedience to their fitter mage masters. Nope, nothing wrong with that at all. Magic is the birthright of all humanity. You have uncovered the failure of Lion morality but have fallen into Stag morality. We offer a different way, Sage morality, which neither fears power nor sees it as the means by which you might feed on others.
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Oct 28, 2016 22:20
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Tiny Deer posted:Or the guy with a vendetta against the fact that raw cookie dough is delicious but you're not supposed to eat it. Proof that there is no God and we are all made to suffer. Alternatively, that people are always willing to take risks for their own pleasure. Because we've all eaten the cookie dough.
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Oct 29, 2016 23:08
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Well, no, that's manifestly untrue. There are several Gods and we are all made to suffer so that they can remain Gods and no one can steal their thrones like they did to the Gods before them.
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Oct 29, 2016 23:11
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mistaya posted:Proof that there is no God and we are all made to suffer. You can eat raw cookie dough. Just source your eggs well and they're perfectly safe. In CofD news... I ordered the mage book and received it today. The printing quality is really pretty good, and the content is laid out well, with a legible font, with a color scheme that I can actually read. Big step up from Awakening 1.0. Now the only question that I have left to answer will take reading the book. Because 1.0 really needed Tome of the Mysteries to really shine, so I'm hoping this version doesn't. Granted, I already have it, so maybe they're just going to be compatible and I'm dithering about nonsense.
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Oct 29, 2016 23:39
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Jhet posted:Because that's only half a step from wanting to lull the entire human species into obedience to their fitter mage masters. Nope, nothing wrong with that at all. Except the Ladder's plan would working out would basically require the destruction of human life and civilization as we know it. Setting aside that mages can do a lot of crazy poo poo that invalidate parts of society on a mass scale just look at what sort of devastation a high level mage can put out. Can you imagine if everyone started walking around with superpowers at the cost of taking down the management of the setting? Everything would burn the second some edgelord or power hungry bastard decided to start touching off nuclear explosions with a finger snap. And who would stop them? Why, another group with crazy nuclear fingersplosions or whatever the gently caress a high Gnosis mage could come up with on short notice. That poo poo's why the Exalted setting (IE: The setting they still hint as being a possible prequel.) got messed up in the canon in the first place. The Terrestials and Sidereals (IE: The closest mage equivalent.) took out the Solar exalted rather than fix the curse that was driving them nuts and well, whoops --- it turns out that everyone saying that they want to save humanity has differing ideas within their little group of anti-heroes and heroes about how to do that. What's more, a few of them were doing it out of spite and to basically take their position for themselves. Cue all the humanoid super gods playing out their plans and triggering multiple apocalypses that pretty much blow humanity back to a perpetual feudal age. And that's before all the horrible poo poo outside existence steps in to eat existence or corrupt it in its image. Which by the way NWoD has plenty of too. Like the Helminth or all the poo poo in the lower realms. Call me crazy but the Ladder seems a bit loving nuts. Or at least delusional about what the end result of what their plan is. They'd just be Exarchs 2.0. That being said, "The Silver Ladder removes the lie, tears down the God Machine, turns everyone into mages, and poo poo goes bonkers as all sorts of horrible poo poo starts pouring into a world that suddenly looks like an all you can eat buffet for godlike monsters" would probably make for a pretty good Gehenna knock-off scenario though. Archonex fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Oct 30, 2016 |
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Oct 30, 2016 05:32
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Archonex posted:Call me crazy but the Ladder seems a bit loving nuts. Or at least delusional about what the end result of what their plan is. They'd just be Exarchs 2.0. Attorney at Funk posted:There are a lot of people who can't see or don't believe in the difference between thearchs and the Seers of the Throne. They're called Seers of the Throne.
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Oct 30, 2016 05:32
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Hey, just saying. It's a terrible ideology when you plot out where it leads within the plot. That poo poo's caused the apocalypse before in multiple settings Onyx Path's designed. Heck, even within the NWoD setting the entire thing that got the Exarchs their start is that they basically decided that "no gods, no masters, burn the heavens" was a good idea. Not like it's not going to inevitably happen again if the Ladder gets their way. "Mages will gently caress everything up given enough time and inclination." is practically a byword of White Wolf/Onyx Path at this point. Archonex fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Oct 30, 2016 |
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Oct 30, 2016 05:50
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Building Hieraconis and manifesting the Avatar and so on aren't actually the same as the Atlanteans' original plan to dissolve the barrier between earth and heaven so that they could visit the supernal in the flesh.
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Oct 30, 2016 05:52
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Ferrinus posted:Building Hieraconis and manifesting the Avatar and so on aren't actually the same as the Atlanteans' original plan to dissolve the barrier between earth and heaven so that they could visit the supernal in the flesh. Building a literal city of mages and magic, tearing down part of reality, and breaching the supernal is pretty loving close to what the Exarchs did, yes. The only difference is that the Ladder doesn't talk about the practicalities of what happens after everyone has theoretical unlimited power at their fingertips once they've destroyed and remade reality in their image. quote:The mages of the Silver Ladder dream to build a new city of awakened. There are many names — Tianguo, Shambhala-lokha, the City of God in Man — and none is considered more authoritative than the other, but Hieraconis is the best known. Its people - sleepers and awakened alike - will successfully bridge the gap between the Fallen and Supernal Worlds, destroying the dualism of ages and freeing all humanity from pain, sorrow and want. All thought is magical; men and women create universes as works of art and none can be harmed or forced to do anything against their will. Read that and tell me that doesn't read like the plans of a super villain in the making. They even want to "surpass" their evil predecessors. That poo poo reads like the rantings of a mad scientist about to open up someone's cranium like it's a cantaloupe. Archonex fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Oct 30, 2016 |
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Oct 30, 2016 06:07
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No, "none can be harmed or forced to do anything against their will" does not sound like supervillainy to me.
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Oct 30, 2016 06:09
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:No, "none can be harmed or forced to do anything against their will" does not sound like supervillainy to me. Yeah. But then you get into "How do you enforce this reality staying that way?". Because if your dream is a world where anyone can do or be anything they want at any time without oppression then guess what? Some people are going to want to make the world in their own image or put the world back the way it was and enjoy a normal life rather than spew cosmic graffiti all over the place or whatever the gently caress a bunch of mages decide to do in their spare time. If your answer to this question is "Well the Ladder or _____ group will keep them from doing that!" then guess what? You've just described the Exarchs and the Seers of the Throne. Edit: I just don't see how anyone can look at the Ladder and think "Wow, yeah. These guys are not crazy as gently caress.". Remove all suffering from the world? Sure, that's a good thing to aspire too. We have real world organizations that want to minimize suffering. Ditto for the idea of taking out the Exarch's. They're basically crazy remnants of a bunch of wannabe god-kings. But the whole "WE SHALL BURN THE HEAVENS AND poo poo FIRE ON REALITY UNTIL IT WORKS THE WAY WE WANT" poo poo comes off as basically a bunch of low wisdom mages bordering on the edge of completely losing their poo poo and declaring themselves as gods to me. In fact: Here's an excerpt to help make my point: quote:Not all Orders view a cultivation of Wisdom as positive. The Silver Ladder derides mages who deny themselves their powers, stating that "Hubris is a coward's word". Likewise, the Seers of the Throne rarely care much enough about Sleepers to grow beyond Understanding. Archonex fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Oct 30, 2016 |
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Oct 30, 2016 06:13
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Archonex posted:Yeah. But then you get into "How do you enforce this reality staying that way?". Because if your dream is a world where anyone can do or be anything they want at any time without oppression then guess what? Some people are going to want to put the world back the way it was and enjoy a normal life rather than spew cosmic graffiti all over the place or whatever the gently caress. If the bit I quoted is actually achievable, then you don't need to enforce it. There's no way to put the genie back in the bottle.
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Oct 30, 2016 06:17
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Attorney at Funk posted:I didn't get to bed until like 6am because my back was bothering me. Reach Heaven through violence. Diamond, Thunder, Star and Blood: To achieve Heaven kill 6 Billion Demons.
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Oct 30, 2016 06:17
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:If the bit I quoted is actually achievable, then you don't need to enforce it. There's no way to put the genie back in the bottle. And this would be the point where I point out that things very rarely work out the way mages of high power want. It's even a mechanic. You gently caress with reality and it's liable to make adjustments in unforeseeable ways. Also the idea that people can't change the world after they "let the genie out of the bottle" is basically just them imposing their will on every other being to ever exist. It's the Exarch's same trick only they've politely excused themselves from the room ahead of time to try and avoid blame for their actions. Really, i'll leave off of it now but the whole "HUBRIS IS A COWARD'S WORD." quote pretty much sums my thoughts up about why i'd play them as a villainous group. It reeks of someone who in most games would be on a crash course to have their character go right into the unplayable end of the spectrum. Or be careening towards getting their soul eaten out by the Abyss after they decided that using the horribly infectious anti-reality in spells couldn't possibly backfire on them. It is a pretty  quote though. So there's that.
Archonex fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Oct 30, 2016 |
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Oct 30, 2016 06:24
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Archonex posted:If your answer to this question is "Well the Ladder or _____ group will keep them from doing that!" then guess what? You've just described the Exarchs and the Seers of the Throne. No, a world in which every last human is an invincible Awakened master is not the world of the Exarchs of the Seers of the Throne. They're not the same. The only Seer here is you because you're the guy who wants to keep magic out of people's hands because you don't trust them to use it. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Oct 30, 2016 |
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Oct 30, 2016 06:52
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It's one thing to argue that radical egalitarianism isn't possible -- there's a distressingly high likelihood that you're right. But you'll have to sell me on wanting it to be that way in my wizardgame. Conversely if you were to argue that radical egalitarianism is a bad idea, we'll just have to see who's calling who a supervillain at the end of that conversation. 
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Oct 30, 2016 06:56
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:It's one thing to argue that radical egalitarianism isn't possible -- there's a distressingly high likelihood that you're right. But you'll have to sell me on wanting it to be that way in my wizardgame. Pretty sure radical egalitarianism can't really apply here. It kind of falls apart when the egalitarianism in question being debated is whether humanity as a whole should be able to melt skyscrapers with a funny hand gesture or shoot nuclear fireballs from their fingertips. Even if you try to take a practical bent the ideology of the Ladder just gets hosed when you start reading the canon info on the setting and realize that it'd lead to one of two or three horrific endings if it was even possible. Don't get me wrong. As a faction the Ladder has some good ideas. But they get drowned out in the middle of all of the crazy bullshit that'd probably lead to the apocalypse. Now, real futurists and transhumanists go for the Free Council as the faction to root for. They're basically the only ones not entirely up their own rear end about Atlantean Archonex fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Oct 30, 2016 |
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Oct 30, 2016 07:17
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Archonex posted:Now, real futurists and transhumanists go for the Free Council as the faction to root for. They're basically the only ones not entirely up their own rear end about Atlantean
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Oct 30, 2016 07:34
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Archonex posted:Now, real futurists and transhumanists go for the Free Council as the faction to root for. They're basically the only ones not entirely up their own rear end about Atlantean 
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Oct 30, 2016 07:47
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 im a wizard
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Oct 30, 2016 07:56
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None of the factions are the faction to root for, as they are all pathetic self-involved failures that have rearranged the wreckage of a broken world for thousands of years while the Exarchs have proceeded to give not a single gently caress about any of it. Either sell out or try something new [And there's nothing new or interesting about the Free Council], don't do the same old bullshit and tell people it's progress. At least the Banishers have a clear path to victory. There are a limited number of Mages, kill all the Mages, there are no more Mages. If new Mages pop up, so will new Banishers, who can proceed to kill all the Mages.
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Oct 30, 2016 07:57
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Mulva posted:[And there's nothing new or interesting about the Free Council] I was joking about that actually. I'm not a big fan of any of the mage factions, really. Thought it was kind of obvious from my posts about the Ladder, but whatever.
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Oct 30, 2016 08:26
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Less at you and more the fact that while the others have in one form or another been doing their thing for thousands of years in one way or another, the particular grouping that is the Free Council is much more recent. Still not exactly new, just doing something various Legacies had done in one form or another over the centuries grouped into one place.
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Oct 30, 2016 08:29
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I think the problem you're having is not understanding that what the mages here want isn't a world where everyone has superpowers, it's a world where everyone is a god. There wouldn't be skyscrapers in this reality to blow up, and even if there were it'd be meaningless, because they could be reconstructed as easily as they were destroyed. Vast beings of infinite power don't have anything to fear from each other unless they give explicit consent to the concept of having limited power. Basically the True Fae, is what I'm saying. That's horrifying but not in the direction you're groping.
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Oct 30, 2016 08:38
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Tiny Deer posted:I think the problem you're having is not understanding that what the mages here want isn't a world where everyone has superpowers, it's a world where everyone is a god. No, I get that. I literally said it in my first post. I was using the skyscraper/nuke thing as a metaphor for why turning everyone into godlike beings is a terrible idea within the setting. The True Fae comparison is probably a better way to explain it though. Archonex fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Oct 30, 2016 |
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Oct 30, 2016 08:54
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In a perfect awakened society, it wouldn't matter if everybody had the power to do whatever they wanted; things like death and pain are, at worst, transitional stages or voluntary (and probably temporary) states. Multiple contradictory worlds can coexist simultaneously, since locational and logical singularity are part of the Lie (see: Space, Time, Fate). You can have two mutually exclusive All Powerful Kings with zero contradiction because there's no Lie. Without the Exarchs, issues like supremacy, questions of hierarchy, don't exist anymore. Because those too, are part of the Lie. Basically in the Ladder's utopia bad stuff can't happen literally by definition.
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Oct 30, 2016 09:45
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Jhet posted:You can eat raw cookie dough. Just source your eggs well and they're perfectly safe. I would advise against Tome of the Mysteries. What we don't already cover in the new core or the upcoming Signs of Sorcery, we either covered in Imperial Mysteries and Left Hand Path (both also 1st ed, but closer to 2e's setting than it is) or is outdated. An entire chapter on how to fit new spells into the 1e Practices will not help you in 2e. Nor will the essay on 1e Wisdom.
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Oct 30, 2016 10:54
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A world as envisioned by the Ladder bears almost no resemblance to our modern world, by necessity. The response to this is 'yes, and?' Their world, if created, is one in which all bad things happen to you only if you want them to. It is one in which the entirety of pain, suffering and mediocrity are recognized as lies told to the universe by the evil gods who formerly rules reality...except maybe they didn't, because the Supernal is not bound by linear time, so a defeat of the Exarchs could easily mean our current world never having existed. Where you are getting stuck is that the Ladder care about the people of the world but not for maintaining the world itself in its current state.
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Oct 30, 2016 15:24
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What's the best Hunter game? I had this cool idea to make a game about the Vatican black ops monster killing squad that operates all over the Catholic world.
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Oct 30, 2016 17:09
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:What's the best Hunter game? I had this cool idea to make a game about the Vatican black ops monster killing squad that operates all over the Catholic world. Exalted.
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Oct 30, 2016 17:13
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Eh, my current Mastigos Silver Ladder character is an east ended that joined the Ladder after bullshitting his way in to London high society. His ideal take on the Lie coming down is basically full on classless society because gently caress England's deep seated classism. I like the idea of the Ladder looking at the Seers and basically going 'there but for the grace of god go i.'
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Oct 30, 2016 17:31
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Archonex posted:Can you imagine if everyone started walking around with superpowers at the cost of taking down the management of the setting? Everything would burn the second some edgelord or power hungry bastard decided to start touching off nuclear explosions with a finger snap. And who would stop them? Why, another group with crazy nuclear fingersplosions or whatever the gently caress a high Gnosis mage could come up with on short notice. Welcome to the Technocracy, friend.
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Oct 30, 2016 18:35
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^^^^ All of that stuff up there was caused by me making a flippant comment about the differences between Seers and the Ladder being so narrow. It makes me all warm inside, because that sort of wobbling about the ethic of it is exactly why they're too close for comfort. It's a wonderful problem to have when your antagonists can be so very similar to members of your own consilium (if you so choose for your game).Dave Brookshaw posted:I would advise against Tome of the Mysteries. What we don't already cover in the new core or the upcoming Signs of Sorcery, we either covered in Imperial Mysteries and Left Hand Path (both also 1st ed, but closer to 2e's setting than it is) or is outdated. Like I said, I'm only just starting on the new book, but if CT, the practices, and intro to mage philosophy are covered in the 2e core, then I won't need TotM anymore for the most part. The 1e awakening book covered none of that, so it was very much necessary. I enjoyed the change in focus for the Free Council last night, and I enjoyed Imperial Mysteries and LHP. They're certainly closer to 2e than 1e, which is part of the reason they were very good. Either way, what I've read so far really doesn't change the setting I was writing for the game I'm starting. I'd guess it's half being a product of homebrew rule changes that have become changed in 2e, and half being a product of changing times and goals for parts of the meta-setting being close enough to where I already was.
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Oct 30, 2016 18:37
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:What's the best Hunter game? I had this cool idea to make a game about the Vatican black ops monster killing squad that operates all over the Catholic world. The Vigil.
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Oct 30, 2016 18:48
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I've actually warmed up to the Silver Ladder's philosophy a lot over the years. Though I sympathize with the Free council's notions that the Supernal is not the only thing that has meaning to it. Course, my thoughts on the matter are a bit more radical than any of the orders. The reasoning goes that, to go abuse the Plato's Cave metaphor some more, folks looked up from the shadows towards the flame and then completely forgot they're still in a drat cave and hey, maybe try taking a step outside of it and seeing what's out there too. In my take, with 2E's approach to the abyss, is that what the sundering of reality did was create a vacuum, and what cropped up there isn't really unnatural as such, it's just nascent versions of the supernal that don't currently mesh very well with the existing patterns because the Exarchs locked down everything in place and tied them to the supernal version of everything. The notion of Supernal Truth itself is part of The Lie, and is just one possible truth and configuration of reality. Consequently abyssal manifestations are fundamentally the same as supernal magic, it is imposing a foreign pattern on the local area that overwrites the existing pattern's rules. The reason manifestations are much more dangerous and less predictable is because they're hard to understand and reality has currently been configured to accept supernal overwriting much more easily than any other pattern imposition. I always thought it would be neat to have a legacy that takes this notion to its logical extreme and actually has the mage completely detaching themselves from the existing pattern structure to exist as essentially an abyssal manifestation themselves. In a way, the mage would become their own, very small, supernal realm.
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Oct 30, 2016 18:50
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Mulva posted:None of the factions are the faction to root for, as they are all pathetic self-involved failures that have rearranged the wreckage of a broken world for thousands of years while the Exarchs have proceeded to give not a single gently caress about any of it. Either sell out or try something new [And there's nothing new or interesting about the Free Council], don't do the same old bullshit and tell people it's progress. At least the Banishers have a clear path to victory. There are a limited number of Mages, kill all the Mages, there are no more Mages. If new Mages pop up, so will new Banishers, who can proceed to kill all the Mages. Yeah the Exarchs definitely don't care about the actions of earthbound mages, haven't bent their entire existences around their own fear of awakened humanity, and AREN'T crying.
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Oct 31, 2016 01:06
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Ferrinus posted:Yeah the Exarchs definitely don't care about the actions of earthbound mages, haven't bent their entire existences around their own fear of awakened humanity, and AREN'T crying. The exarchs aren't shouting "I'm not owned! I'm not owned!" while slowly shrinking & turning into corncobs.
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Oct 31, 2016 02:49
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Berkshire Hunts posted:The exarchs aren't shouting "I'm not owned! I'm not owned!" while slowly shrinking & turning into corncobs. No, but they sure aren't ignoring things, either. They set up the world to ensure they remained in control, top down, in every aspect...and even with that they need a network of powerful servants who actively attempt to recruit away their enemies and serve their will. And yet, even with the aid of literal deities, sometimes the direct aid in the form of ochemata, the Seers still haven't actually managed to take over or rule the world in any real sense - or even to wipe out the Diamond. Hell, their last big move? Backfired completely and ended up creating the Pentacle to resist them. The Exarchs have a pretty good racket, but their victory is neither assured nor easy. If it was, the Seers wouldn't exist.
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Oct 31, 2016 03:22
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The real issue is that only the most cowardly and unimaginative wizards shrink from the blazing truth of of the Pentacle.
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Oct 31, 2016 04:43
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