|
bewilderment posted:Mage 2e significantly benefited from a theme refocusing, since the Theme or Mood or whatever of 1e was 'Ancient Mystery'. This was roughly as exciting as being told that the theme/mood of DnD was 'careful encumbrance management'. Ancient mystery is good.
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 08:16
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 17:09 |
|
|
Ancient mystery is great. Atlantis being a thing that may or may not ever have actually existed, posited only by desperate, theodicy-seeking sorcerers who want a justification as to why they're the best and should rule the world, is also great. These two things are in no way mutually exclusive. Mages have a long and grand history out there, just waiting to be uncovered and discovered, even if Atlantis never existed. e: Also, 2e is fantastic and much better than 1e mechanically. Not perfect in some aspects - Wisdom, Nimbus, etc. - but spellcasting alone makes it worth the buy-in. If you don't like any setting changes, tweak the fluff, but Mage 2e is by far the superior thing mechanically. It works its paradoxical magic alone in the fact that it somehow makes Mages stronger and weaker at the exact same time.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 09:40
|
|
|
Atlantis never existed. But Atlantis didn't always never existed. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 09:41
|
|
|
I could never get anyone interested in Mage 1e after the word "Atlantis" was uttered. Everyone immediately tuned out because that name is so associated with boring new age bullshit/Disney/Stargate. And the 1st edition book starts by talking about Atlantis and dragons and basically it's the worst.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 14:28
|
|
|
Axelgear posted:Ancient mystery is great. Atlantis being a thing that may or may not ever have actually existed, posited only by desperate, theodicy-seeking sorcerers who want a justification as to why they're the best and should rule the world, is also great. These two things are in no way mutually exclusive. What always got me is that the story of Altantis doesn't even say that they're the best supernaturals in the setting. Just the biggest gently caress ups. You know what Atlantis was? It was a city of monsters. They transcended human hubris and attempted to go further than they were ready at the cost of the rest of the world. They shattered the world and irreversibly changed it's nature forever for the worse. They butchered who knows how many other entities and made the Abyss. The list of potential atrocities goes on and on. If you assume that all the myth's of Atlantis are true then the possible eventual death of the world is at their feet. Hell, just like how no one knows what the Exarch's truly became in setting no one truly knows what the Oracles are too. The most they have to defend the actions of the Atlanteans is that "Oh, well, some of us decided to go up there and kick their rear end before the Exarch's ruined everything." ignoring the fact that it had probably already been ruined by that point. An apology after the fact for a crime doesn't seem always seem all that sincere to those it was perpetrated against. And that's before you get into the sort of double-think needed to believe the Lie didn't exist before Atlantis. If that's true why do the myths usually say that only a select few truly gifted people awoke to their supernal power and gathered together? Sure, the whole "we gifted few" thing plays into an arrogant mage's idea of supremacy, but if the Lie didn't exist then why not everyone? What sort of hypocritical, double-thinking, megalomaniacal monster would want to be associated with a tradition like that? Yet again brought to you by a Banisher/a character in world that might have a good point about the traditions being high on their own farts/someone that wants to trigger Ferrinus again. Archonex fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Feb 14, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 14:56
|
|
|
Yeah I have never once used the word Atlantis when trying to hook someone into Mage, and for good reason. If I really think they'll like the concept, I just say "ancient magical city" and leave it at that because Atlantis never gets anything but eyerolls at best.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 14:57
|
|
|
Glad to see that team 'join the banishers' is still going strong.Yawgmoth posted:Yeah I have never once used the word Atlantis when trying to hook someone into Mage, and for good reason. If I really think they'll like the concept, I just say "ancient magical city" and leave it at that because Atlantis never gets anything but eyerolls at best. I've quite liked exploring 'Atlantis-as-Babel' quite a bit in games I've played - it adds a few interesting twists to the idea ...
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 15:05
|
|
|
When we first found out about Atlantis one of my friends first responses was "So we just need a ZPM to dial the eighth chevron and everyone awakens, right?" It kind of colored our perceptions of the game from then on straight though 2e.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 15:05
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:When we first found out about Atlantis one of my friends first responses was "So we just need a ZPM to dial the eighth chevron and everyone awakens, right?" Your friend is cool and good.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 15:08
|
|
|
it's funny, I always thought Mage makes Atlantis cool, not Atlantis Mage uncool
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 15:23
|
|
|
Atlantis isn't really the problem. It's more that M:tAw 1st edition led with the Atlantis stuff and tied everything to it so when a new player picks up the core book, the main thing they're going to get on an initial skim is "This is a game about Atlantis Wizards." Also "Metallic gold text in a fiddly cursive font is hard to read"
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 15:56
|
|
|
I actually skipped on Mage 1e originally when I saw Atlantis being mentioned, which was a shame, but foresight and all that. Sink that island, is what I say.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 16:13
|
|
|
I always liked the Atlantis myth. It was genuinely fun and tied into how strange and unusual Mages appeared to be in 1e. It's a pretty strong contrast between 1e and 2e, where the latter has a relatively generic dude conjuring fire as the example Obrimos and the former has a freckled unicycle enthusiast wielding their pedal wrench as a symbol of ultimate power.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 16:54
|
|
|
The main reason I never got into Mage as a game I actually would ever want to play is probably mostly because of Atlantis, I'm not even going to lie. Like mages seem cool at a distance, to me, I like having them as side characters, but running an actual campaign based on 'we're all fancy Atlantian cosplayers with secret cool shadow names and a social structure that sounds suspiciously like an ideal nerd social order' sounds unbearable, to me. Note that all role-playing games can be distilled to a sentence as dismissive as that one, clearly Mage has a lot going for it or no one would talk about it so much. Please continue to enjoy Mage!
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 17:00
|
|
|
Tiny Deer posted:In the reality of the game world, Awakened mages using magic at all is always at least slightly positive, no matter what evil thing they're doing, because at least it resists the Lie. Now imagine that a Mage is telling literally anyone else this. He is claiming that no matter what atrocities he commits, no matter how much pain and suffering he or any other wizard causes, it's to the net benefit of humanity. He has absolute moral superiority, and objective correctness about the nature of reality that you lack, being unable to use magic yourself. In fact, if it weren't for mages, everyone would be damned to eternal and pointless suffering, then a world-ending apocalypse, so you'd better be grateful! It starts sounding an AWFUL lot like the mage's perfectly assured position as morally and objectively correct in what they do is self-appointed, a delusion that mages pass around to justify their actions. Death to the Magi.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 17:07
|
|
|
citybeatnik posted:Unrelated to that: VtM advice needed. How the hell do I make combat in this godforsaken system actually have meat and heft behind it without stalling out for what feels like forever? My players are finally at the point, politically, where they're no longer simple annoyances to the Sabbat MRA-activist Bishop trying to play puppet master and I want to start throwing Blood Brothers and other poo poo at them. There's an Assamite Vizier, Ventrue, Nosferatu (who has "Beast Mode Activated" as his strength specialty), and Giovanni. I want to design an encounter or two where they have an actual fight on their hands but that they can, hopefully, win. How experienced are the players with VtM and how powerful are the characters? If you want to avoid long, drawn-out combat that can screw the players, I'd avoid throwing Blood Brothers at them - at least as casual, the-bishop-sent-us-to-rough-you-up antagonists. The combo of Potence, Fortitude and Sanguinus makes them really formidable opponents in combat if you're running a full circle of them and if your player characters are more politically than combat focused.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 17:08
|
|
|
Crasical posted:Now imagine that a Mage is telling literally anyone else this. Because there aren't any other extremely egoistical, hubristic, sell-delusional individuals in the world (of darkness)? I've often seen mages played like reluctant superheroes. They wake up one day to all this power, and then have to figure out how to best use it for themselves and the people around them. They won't all take the same path or use magic in the same way, and at the end of the day, I really doubt there are more that try to do good than those that are just in it for themselves. Lumping them together on any point of that spectrum is just a way to rationalize behavior. I expect if there were to be a survey of all mages about how and why they use their magic, we'd end up with a mess of things like you do for studies of altruism and happiness. Any mage that claims they come from a position of supernal authority is just making it up or using group think to give them a feeling of justification. Normal sleepers do this all the time.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 17:18
|
|
|
Jhet posted:Because there aren't any other extremely egoistical, hubristic, sell-delusional individuals in the world (of darkness)? Yes, but they're generally less capable of atrocity on the scale that a Mage can perform.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 17:22
|
|
|
Roark posted:How experienced are the players with VtM and how powerful are the characters? If you want to avoid long, drawn-out combat that can screw the players, I'd avoid throwing Blood Brothers at them - at least as casual, the-bishop-sent-us-to-rough-you-up antagonists. The combo of Potence, Fortitude and Sanguinus makes them really formidable opponents in combat if you're running a full circle of them and if your player characters are more politically than combat focused. Have the players soundly resolved the "ghouls with fire" problem yet? Because that's a pretty effective tool for a vampire to use against people he wants dead, without having to deal with wacky bloodlines and stuff. You can also fleshcraft them if you want them weird and sabbat-flavored. Fleshcrafting can also be used to counter specific tricks your players like. Do they use a lot of Dominate? Well, these guys don't have eyes, per se.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 17:23
|
|
|
Crasical posted:Yes, but they're generally less capable of atrocity on the scale that a Mage can perform. I didn't realize scale was the reason that mages are bad. I guess we should just ignore the little slashers because they're only killing a few people a month. Or ignore the vampires and their systematic and methodical wiggling into places of institutional power and control. It's just the scale of the magic that makes them bad. It's like saying that one bomb is worse than another bomb because it has a larger blast radius. My point really is that all actors are looking for justification. That justification might look reasonable to an outside observer or it might look bat poo poo crazy. But lumping all mages together is a fool's errand (or a Banisher's errand). Because at least with mages there's nothing they do that outright makes them at odds with the rest of existence (whether or not you put stock into the Lie and the Supernal is just theory and philosophy), it's all about how mages use their power that can put them at odds. A vampire's very existence puts them at odds with the world around them through their need to feed, but for mages? They have no intrinsic quality that puts them in opposition. For me that makes mages all the more interesting. They're at one moment a part of the world, but in the next they're part of something so much more powerful. How do you balance your character's desire to just blow poo poo up against the fact that you're still a mortal human? How do you justify controlling other people with your mind magic? How do you justify knocking out that security guard who was just doing his job with forces? This is the hubristic struggle and at the base of it, you're just struggling against going completely Mad.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 17:41
|
|
|
Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:Do they use a lot of Dominate? Well, these guys don't have eyes, per se.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 17:41
|
|
|
Jhet posted:I didn't realize scale was the reason that mages are bad. I guess we should just ignore the little slashers because they're only killing a few people a month. Or ignore the vampires and their systematic and methodical wiggling into places of institutional power and control. It's just the scale of the magic that makes them bad. It's like saying that one bomb is worse than another bomb because it has a larger blast radius. Just casting spells at the wrong time can cause issues with paradox though, which can cause the Abyss to seep into reality. Which will ruin people's lives in a variety of new and horrific ways. Or was that changed in 2e? I mean, if it wasn't then I think that getting infested by a reproducing Abyssal parasite that drives people to self destruction or just outright eats their soul is kind of a big deal that puts them on par on par with every other destructive supernatural entity in the setting. Especially with the implications of just how valuable a soul is that crop up throughout most of the games. It's not like the Abyss can get in if mages just stopped being mages. Hell, most of the ones that canonically do have a persistent go-between and foothold only have it because mages hosed up big time and let some world corrupting uber-monster in and then promptly flipped the bird to everyone that said "You need to clean this mess up right goddamn now." before going back to questing for ultimate supernal power or whatever the gently caress their obsession was at the time. Archonex fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Feb 14, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 17:53
|
|
|
Archonex posted:Just casting spells at the wrong time can cause issues with paradox though, which can cause the Abyss to seep into reality. Which will ruin people's lives in a variety of new and horrific ways. Or was that changed in 2e? Timing is a little less of a problem and it's more of a Reach management problem instead. Paradox has already come up more in 6 weeks of me running 2e than it really ever came up in regular 1e play. I really enjoy paradox now. But that's a consequence of using magic in fantastic ways. There's nothing that makes you use it in those ways, except my group keeps getting themselves into trouble and acting impulsively. Again though, nothing inherent about mages that makes them cast magic (except it's fun, and why wouldn't you), but the abyss is a consequence of reaching too far, not a part of the mage's daily routine.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 18:33
|
|
|
Roark posted:How experienced are the players with VtM and how powerful are the characters? If you want to avoid long, drawn-out combat that can screw the players, I'd avoid throwing Blood Brothers at them - at least as casual, the-bishop-sent-us-to-rough-you-up antagonists. The combo of Potence, Fortitude and Sanguinus makes them really formidable opponents in combat if you're running a full circle of them and if your player characters are more politically than combat focused. I've been playing with these folks off and on since New Bremen. The one least familiar with the system is the one playing the Giovanni. And the group has a melee powerhouse in the Nosferatu (who at this point also has Potence 4 and a dot in Fortitude), a ranged powerhouse in the Assamite, and whatever the Giovanni could pull off. The Giovanni player was the one playing the Tremere last go around before the Ventrue (who is played by his wife) had him get eaten by Rook the Anarch's sweeper and enforcer. The XP's been handed out like candy and they have a little over 50 total at the moment spent, at xCurrent. The game's mostly an excuse for us to get together on Roll20, drink, and bullshit but I also want to add in some actual tension for them. Currently they're being sent off to investigate an old ranch mansion that is in no way inspired by Resident Evil VII and will probably get chased around by dogs with human faces for a bit. But you bring up a good point about overpowering them too much, since everyone's more built around being either social characters or ambush attackers. I might have a Coagulated Entity thing happen less as a "boss" fight and more something they need to run away from though.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 20:36
|
|
|
Atlantis... is good.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 20:44
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:Atlantis... is good. I didn't mind Atlantis. As a construct of a believed ideal city-state of magic. But that's as far as I would use it. Anything further was just theory and philosophy by individual mages at varying levels of belief. It certainly wasn't great for introducing the game line to new people though. Half the time they'd just roll their eyes and pass on it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 21:08
|
|
|
Who are these people for whom Rhinestone Cowboy Doctor Priest or Trapped In A Cave By Wiccans And Enlightened By A Badger-sattva are totally acceptable parts of the buy-in but a grand wizard city is an eye-roller?
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 23:31
|
|
|
Axelgear posted:Who are these people for whom Rhinestone Cowboy Doctor Priest or Trapped In A Cave By Wiccans And Enlightened By A Badger-sattva are totally acceptable parts of the buy-in but a grand wizard city is an eye-roller? Mage the Ascension players.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 23:35
|
|
|
citybeatnik posted:Mage the Ascension players. Don't worry, I have it on good authority at least five of them won't be goobers about it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2017 23:36
|
|
|
Axelgear posted:Who are these people for whom Rhinestone Cowboy Doctor Priest or Trapped In A Cave By Wiccans And Enlightened By A Badger-sattva are totally acceptable parts of the buy-in but a grand wizard city is an eye-roller? Grand wizard city isn't a problem. Atlantis is. As a word, it has too much baggage. That said, if Atlantis were talked about somewhere in, say, the Storytelling chapter, or were mentioned a couple of times in passing, I don't think anyone would care. The problem is that the book opens with it and so it colored the immediate impression that my group and I had of the game. To this day when I mention M:tAw a guy in my group goes "Yeah, the Atlantis thing right?" and I don't think that's what anyone was going for. Mage isn't really about Atlantis though any more than V:tM is about Enoch. What Mage IS about was poorly communicated in first edition's core book. That's the only thing I'm saying. Atlantis is fine as a weird backstory thing that maybe gets mentioned in exposition somewhere. It's also been years since I've read Mage 1st so I might take away something completely different if I read it now.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2017 00:10
|
|
|
I don't think it's even because it's in the opening, it's because it's everywhere. It's not until near the very end of 1e that the books stop devoting noticeable amounts of wordcount to First City coverage, even if it's just to say "you can't get there; stop trying."
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2017 00:15
|
|
|
Atlantis as a word with new-age baggage is actually something I had no clue about until Awakening came out. 'Ancient Mystery of Atlantis and mage history' is cool as a thing that your campaign can be about, but it's pretty dull to make your corebook and by extension the gameline centre around it, especially when one of the player faction response to the theme is "who gives a poo poo, we have other things to worry about in the here and now". 'Addicted to Mysteries' has a wider breadth and also works a lot better for what Mage as a gameline is about and what Mages do.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2017 00:44
|
|
|
bewilderment posted:'Ancient Mystery of Atlantis and mage history' is cool as a thing that your campaign can be about, but it's pretty dull to make your corebook and by extension the gameline centre around it, especially when one of the player faction response to the theme is "who gives a poo poo, we have other things to worry about in the here and now".
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2017 01:33
|
|
|
Maybe it's just not me getting it. I never saw Atlantis as central to the game except as a kind of mythology and secret history for the Awakened; something that existed to explain why things were the way they were, in the same way that the story of Father Wolf gives werewolves an explanation for their own existence. It was something that informed who Mages were, but not something they needed as a persistent focus. Or so I always took it, anyway.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2017 01:39
|
|
|
People who get worked up about Atlantis either in-character or out of character are dumb babies.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2017 01:41
|
|
|
Axelgear posted:Maybe it's just not me getting it. I never saw Atlantis as central to the game except as a kind of mythology and secret history for the Awakened; something that existed to explain why things were the way they were, in the same way that the story of Father Wolf gives werewolves an explanation for their own existence. It was something that informed who Mages were, but not something they needed as a persistent focus. Or so I always took it, anyway. Yeah, like, the entire rest of the 1E line spent as much time and wordcount on Atlantis as I expected it would having only read the corebook and yet you had these legions of people acting like its presence in the backstory amounted to some kind of relentless religious persecution. So now you've got 2E with the exact same setting was in 1E but it's got to sit the reader down in a high chair and make airplane noises while moving the Atlantis narrative around in circles.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2017 01:46
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:Yeah, like, the entire rest of the 1E line spent as much time and wordcount on Atlantis as I expected it would having only read the corebook and yet you had these legions of people acting like its presence in the backstory amounted to some kind of relentless religious persecution. So now you've got 2E with the exact same setting was in 1E but it's got to sit the reader down in a high chair and make airplane noises while moving the Atlantis narrative around in circles. At least for me I'm only talking about it from the view of the corebook - most of the other books were fine. Except Sanctum and Sigil, I leafed through that one and it was so incredibly dull that I couldn't imagine seriously using it and showing it to any players. Cabal laws/rights like Hospitality and Nemesis are cool but whatever the rest of that book was, I just did not care about it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2017 02:02
|
|
|
The dumbest parts of the 1e corebook for me were the Path writeups - stuff like "sometimes Moros DON'T dress like funeral directors, just to throw people off" near rolled my eyes out of their sockets
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2017 02:04
|
|
|
That made perfect sense, since Moros need to wear the trappings of death or else they fail to respire essence in Creation.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2017 02:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 17:09 |
|
|
Ferrinus posted:That made perfect sense, since Moros need to wear the trappings of death or else they fail to respire essence in Creation. Take this devil talk out of my house young man
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2017 02:23
|
|
