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Ferrinus posted:That made perfect sense, since Moros need to wear the trappings of death or else they fail to respire essence in Creation. Moros as a faux gothy Abyssal expy would be hilarious if I was going for a lovely Exalted knockoff game where Mages were convinced they were the next big rulers of Creation. Edit: And possibly strangely fitting given that Exalted now can channel special Supernal abilities in 3e. Which would make it sound like Salina's old working is still around. 
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Feb 15, 2017 02:39
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How much crossover is there between people who're hot under the collar about Atlantis and people who talk a lot about playing an Adamantine Arrow attorney who fights his battles in the courtroom, do you think?
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Feb 15, 2017 02:51
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Brainiac Five posted:How much crossover is there between people who're hot under the collar about Atlantis and people who talk a lot about playing an Adamantine Arrow attorney who fights his battles in the courtroom, do you think? Well, they're both spergin' out about the lore of the setting. So i'd say at least a bit.
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Feb 15, 2017 03:04
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The main problem I've found with Atlantis is that it was immediately put into this Diamond believes it exists and the Free Council doesn't care shtick. That and they could have named it quite literally anything else and it would have probably not been an issue. Now I just say that it's theorized that mages once existed in a lost civilization that was magical in its entirety in the open. Everything was magic until the mages of the time broke it with their hubris. The sort of story that you tell your mage children at bedtime. The word Atlantis doesn't come up because it's steeped in so much other mythology that just doesn't fit cleanly with the timelines and then you have to go and make things up about how the Greeks knew the word and why it's in popular culture etc, etc, etc.... It was a chore. Moros dressing like funeral directors is MtAw's vampire in a trench coat with a katana.
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Feb 15, 2017 03:17
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Jhet posted:The main problem I've found with Atlantis is that it was immediately put into this Diamond believes it exists and the Free Council doesn't care shtick. That and they could have named it quite literally anything else and it would have probably not been an issue. Well, see, the thing with Atlantis is that it's a myth that's fairly loving global, unlike Ys or even Lemuria/Mu, which themselves are also tied up with some nasty racial poo poo much more than Atlantis is. So there's that. I guess you could also make up words and disassociate your game about wizards in the modern-day world struggling against a global system that seeks to control meaning and deny people autonomy from the modern-day world and from important symbology related to the premise. That's good too.
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Feb 15, 2017 03:53
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Brainiac Five posted:Well, see, the thing with Atlantis is that it's a myth that's fairly loving global, unlike Ys or even Lemuria/Mu, which themselves are also tied up with some nasty racial poo poo much more than Atlantis is. So there's that. I guess you could also make up words and disassociate your game about wizards in the modern-day world struggling against a global system that seeks to control meaning and deny people autonomy from the modern-day world and from important symbology related to the premise. That's good too. The way I put it, you can as players and story tellers then associate it with anything you desire without having to hand wave or pick and choose setting material. Sure, it's less defined, and you could put in a line about how some mages compare it to Atlantis, Ys, or Lemuria/Mu, without having all the baggage that got attached immediately to Atlantis. It could be an ancient civilization on a planet that used to circle Betelgeuse. But leading with it as Atlantis makes me think the Mysterium isn't really all that intelligent because in hundreds of years that's the best they could come up with? And that's with Awakened magic making them the most unbelievably intelligent individuals to ever be on the face of the earth. The logic of it is lacking. It reads better as the way the Guardians or their predecessors covered some big magical no-no up in the recorded sleeping history than as a reasonable explanation for the Awakened Ur-Civilization. Now, I don't have the biggest issue with it, and can definitely run with Atlantis being a "thing". But at the end of the day, the lore creation for MtAw 1e was just a bit lazy, which is why it doesn't mesh well with the setting, and is probably part of the base reason that people end up having issues with it. The actual cosmology for the 1e World of Darkness was a lot less lazy and so much cooler to interact with that Mage didn't need the lazy Atlantis to be a thing, because there was so much else there that could have been used to create a much more interesting and exciting fallen ur-civilization.
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Feb 15, 2017 04:24
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Jhet posted:Now, I don't have the biggest issue with it, and can definitely run with Atlantis being a "thing". But at the end of the day, the lore creation for MtAw 1e was just a bit lazy, which is why it doesn't mesh well with the setting, and is probably part of the base reason that people end up having issues with it. The actual cosmology for the 1e World of Darkness was a lot less lazy and so much cooler to interact with that Mage didn't need the lazy Atlantis to be a thing, because there was so much else there that could have been used to create a much more interesting and exciting fallen ur-civilization. The lore for MtAw 1e and 2e is the same. Nothing has been fixed - you've just been tricked into complacency.
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Feb 15, 2017 04:35
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I personally like "Babel," but really the reason "Addicted to Mysteries" is that it gives you a much clearer sense of default PC actions. Vampires fight over status and resources while trying to hang on to their humanity; Werewolves fight turf wars and keep the local spiritual ecology in line; Mages seek out high weirdness and try to get to the bottom of it (even if this isn't strictly speaking a good idea from a rational perspective.) You can take these in all sorts of other directions but a baseline solves the "what do you do?" question. The Obsession mechanics sort of put this theme in with brute force (not that that's a problem, look at Vampire) and the city descriptions all show you some examples of high weirdness to build a campaign around. This may of course have been obvious to smart people since the beginning, but as a dumb person it wasn't quite as clear to me from 1e.
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Feb 15, 2017 04:38
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Jhet posted:The way I put it, you can as players and story tellers then associate it with anything you desire without having to hand wave or pick and choose setting material. Sure, it's less defined, and you could put in a line about how some mages compare it to Atlantis, Ys, or Lemuria/Mu, without having all the baggage that got attached immediately to Atlantis. It could be an ancient civilization on a planet that used to circle Betelgeuse. But why do you want people to associate it with anything you desire? Like, the story as outlined, when you cut away the Atlantis name, is that there was an ancient civilization of wonders, which oppressed the other peoples of the world, and eventually reached too far, seeking to dominate the universe. But they were cast down from power and all but the dregs of their wonders were lost. And every bit of the Diamond is derived from the basic story there- the Mysterium wishes to amend the loss of knowledge, the Guardians to amend the sin of reaching beyond your grasp, the Silver Ladder to amend the sin of withholding wonders from the rest of the world, the Arrow to combat both the enemies of these ideologies and the idea of dissociation from the world. Just saying, "well, it can be anything you want" weakens the game by removing the resonances, and the whole new-age aspects of Atlantis still maintain those basic resonances, though not as strongly as Plato does. Similarly, the Platonic/Neoplatonic/Gnostic nature of how magic works in Mage the Awakening resonates with the Atlantis myth. Saying it's "lazy" intimates a lack of analysis of Mage from a critical perspective.
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Feb 15, 2017 04:40
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I have no experience with 1e Mage, but how adamant were they on it being for sure Literally Atlantis? Because "there is this magnificent legendary place that has been lost for ~*~reasons~*~" and "there is this magnificent legendary forbidden place where only the gods/special people live" is pretty common throughout a wide variety of cultures - and they're usually tied to beings of great power, spirituality, and/or magic. Shambhala, Avalon, Iram of the Pillars, Yamatai, Penglai, Kunlun, Dvārakā, or yes, Atlantis.
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Feb 15, 2017 04:57
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Ferrinus posted:The lore for MtAw 1e and 2e is the same. Nothing has been fixed - you've just been tricked into complacency. Did 1e have lost relics from Atlantis basically giving you a migraine if you tried to scry back/forwards in time on them or made computers explode when trying to carbon-date them?
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Feb 15, 2017 05:08
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citybeatnik posted:Did 1e have lost relics from Atlantis basically giving you a migraine if you tried to scry back/forwards in time on them or made computers explode when trying to carbon-date them? I don't recall offhand if those specific effects were indicated but, yes, they all had serious time fuckery going on with them.
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Feb 15, 2017 05:11
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citybeatnik posted:Did 1e have lost relics from Atlantis basically giving you a migraine if you tried to scry back/forwards in time on them or made computers explode when trying to carbon-date them? Yes. Atlantis being lost to temporal disaster and presenting in multiple seemingly-contradictory forms dates back to 1e.
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Feb 15, 2017 05:13
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Brainiac Five posted:But why do you want people to associate it with anything you desire? Like, the story as outlined, when you cut away the Atlantis name, is that there was an ancient civilization of wonders, which oppressed the other peoples of the world, and eventually reached too far, seeking to dominate the universe. But they were cast down from power and all but the dregs of their wonders were lost. And every bit of the Diamond is derived from the basic story there- the Mysterium wishes to amend the loss of knowledge, the Guardians to amend the sin of reaching beyond your grasp, the Silver Ladder to amend the sin of withholding wonders from the rest of the world, the Arrow to combat both the enemies of these ideologies and the idea of dissociation from the world. I'm not sure it's a lack of analysis of Mage from a critical perspective, just disappointment that the platonic ideal or supernal truth ended up being named after something that has baggage that takes away from Plato's ideal state. If you were to introduce the idea to people who were unfamiliar with Plato and philosophy in general, it's not going to be that ideal state, it's going to be some mystical island that sank into the sea never to be seen again. So maybe not lazy in the sense of not putting in thought, but lazy in terms of not play testing the idea in a way that gets feedback like its been getting from groups since it came out. So sure, it's Plato's ideal civilization, but for most people it's going to be where Aquaman is from, or the Atlantis attached to the Stargate franchise. Most people aren't philosophers, or even read texts critically. So while we sit on the internet and do just that, the game needs to be accessible for the people that aren't doing the critical thinking. Billing it as something that it is and then really isn't isn't great for introducing the game to new players who don't read the text critically, or even read the introductory chapter all that well and just skip to the creation rules and the chapter on magic. What they really didn't need to do was call it Atlantis. Anyone reading critically is going to make the connection anyway, and it's not going to turn off everyone else reading it who's first thought goes to Greek mythology, skips Plato, and then ends up with Aquaman. Especially when the game ends up being about a group of mages, uncovering secrets, discovering magic, the duality of having sleeping ties and being awake, and dealing with fractured Awakened politics that can end up like playing with a model UN. The worst part is that then it ends up not being a game about uncovering the secrets of Atlantis and even finding the final key (which could be argued is what happens when you ascend, but oops, no Atlantis there). And then you have Free Councilors hanging on that part that says they don't need the old rites to renew the power, but what they end up reading is "No Atlantis, suck it". So right there in the second chapter you have introduced a conflict that cannot be resolved into the world. In 2e, they dropped the name, which is what would have made everything in 1e less sticky for people who don't read critically. The orders are mostly the same, the Free Council got an upgrade, and the Platonic theory behind spell casting and the supernal are still there. But they jettisoned the baggage that comes with the name Atlantis. The philosophy is still there, and heavily apparent in the example spells for Prime. So what it does is makes it more accessible, and leaves room for the storyteller to make up rumors and myths about it, because without evidence, it's just a hypothesis and belief. So if you want the answer to be Atlantis, you can still make it Atlantis in all its Platonic glory. My wanting it to be something else, to use myth and mystery from a large swath of what exists doesn't mean I can't read critically. It does mean that I reject the notion that to have one you need the other to make the world alive, mysterious, and magical. I don't need the name Atlantis to make the Mysterium desire to preserve all knowledge and find the truth hiding behind the Lie. I don't need it to make the Guardians full of zeal to make amends for the damage that the Supernal and Abyss cause to the Lie and for them to desire a perfect world and wait at the ready for their savior. Nor the Silver Ladder to want to go out into the world to make it better by introducing wonder and advancement through the Elemental Pilgrimage. I can do all that without needing that name. The ideal supernal civilization full of magic is gone, and it doesn't need a name to make it a terrible thing in my game. I suggest it makes it even easier. Now it can hide behind everything. And I'll never have to explain again that it's not the same place that Aquaman comes from.
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Feb 15, 2017 05:46
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Jhet posted:I'm not sure it's a lack of analysis of Mage from a critical perspective, just disappointment that the platonic ideal or supernal truth ended up being named after something that has baggage that takes away from Plato's ideal state. If you were to introduce the idea to people who were unfamiliar with Plato and philosophy in general, it's not going to be that ideal state, it's going to be some mystical island that sank into the sea never to be seen again. Well, I mean, you misunderstand it entirely. Nobody views Atlantis as an ideal state within the setting, and it's not an ideal state within Timaeus and Critias, since although that portion of Critias is lost the portions that remain describe Athens as the ideal state which defeated Atlantean depredations. And that's the thing, you seem to not understand that there is no going back, and everyone agrees that Atlantis is irrevocably destroyed, except for gadget-obsessed Free Councilors who childishly invert the basic philosophy because they got a huge stash of Alaska Thunderfuck from their dealer this week. You seem to not understand that the name "Atlantis" carries connotations that are pretty loving relevant to the history outlined in Mage: the Awakening, and that not every game has to have its backstory be automatically malleable in order for you to offer up your inferior version of things. Like, a central part of the moral ambiguity around the Diamond has to do with the fact that the society they venerate is, by their own description, not all that good. That it had the potential for the Exarchs, the Lie, and the Iron Pyramid lurking within it all along. And that each member of the Diamond has a response to that potential, an effort to resolve the dialectic of Atlantis. And the Free Council and Seers in turn have their own (inferior) answers. If you just delete and replace with the Island of Nambumbu from Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks, or with the island of Hourai from Chinese folk religion, you lose many of these connotations. Which, in my opinion, inarguably weakens the game.
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Feb 15, 2017 06:01
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I know I'm in the middle of Magechat but I just started a Hunter interest group with some friends. Is the best route to use the Chronicles of Darkness rules with the Hunter template on, or is there some... Errata out there since the Hunter book is from before those changes? I'm so excited to run a game again!
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Feb 15, 2017 09:50
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crime fighting hog posted:I know I'm in the middle of Magechat but I just started a Hunter interest group with some friends. There was a supplement released for Hunter after the CoD launch called Mortal Remains, which contains errata and rules updates for running Hunter in the hip new New World of Darkness. Among other things. It's pretty good overall, I think.
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Feb 15, 2017 09:53
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Awesome, thanks!
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Feb 15, 2017 09:57
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I'm gonna start a Geist game, trying to focus it through the Krewe rules and going full Persona/Jojo/Weird with it.
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Feb 15, 2017 09:57
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Brainiac Five posted:Well, I mean, you misunderstand it entirely. Nobody views Atlantis as an ideal state within the setting, and it's not an ideal state within Timaeus and Critias, since although that portion of Critias is lost the portions that remain describe Athens as the ideal state which defeated Atlantean depredations. Having read Plato, though ideal, shouldn't be required to appreciate the ideas in Mage. The problem is that Plato's Atlantis is not the version that is culturally dominant, at least not in my experience. Stargate, Disney, comic books, and new age idealization ("Atlantis ascended to a higher plane to be with the aliens!") are the ideas that come to mind first for most people or we wouldn't be having this discussion. Putting Atlantis at the forefront effectively cheapens the ideas not because Atlantis is bad but because western culture has changed what Atlantis means into something cheap and overused. Atlantis is to Platonic philosophy as ninjas are to Japanese history. Whatever the original idea is, it's been diluted to the point of kitsch.
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Feb 15, 2017 12:31
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I'd be surprised if majority of people who'd written significant content for Mage had read Timaeus and Critias. I'd always read 'Atlantis' as 'convenient name for fallen empire/city' and not paid any more attention to the name than that, which seems to have been the intent of the authors.
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Feb 15, 2017 12:49
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:Having read Plato, though ideal, shouldn't be required to appreciate the ideas in Mage. The problem is that Plato's Atlantis is not the version that is culturally dominant, at least not in my experience. Stargate, Disney, comic books, and new age idealization ("Atlantis ascended to a higher plane to be with the aliens!") are the ideas that come to mind first for most people or we wouldn't be having this discussion. Putting Atlantis at the forefront effectively cheapens the ideas not because Atlantis is bad but because western culture has changed what Atlantis means into something cheap and overused. Atlantis is to Platonic philosophy as ninjas are to Japanese history. Whatever the original idea is, it's been diluted to the point of kitsch. But you don't have to, the modern connotations are plenty loving relevant. I mean, this is an argument for never including allusions to anything at all out of paternalistic, nigh-patriarchal contempt for the reader, and it's compounded with a rejection of the idea of context.
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Feb 15, 2017 14:45
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 "I don't particularly like Atlantis as a name and the concept doesn't really need as much wordcount as it got in 1e." "WHY DO YOU HATE MAGE AND WANT TO DENY EVERYONE EVERYTHING?!?!?!"This is the argument as it stands and you're dumb as hell, Brainiac. No one's arguing for anything you just said. Did you write the Atlantis poo poo in 1e? Is that why you're so defensive of it? The problem is that as it stands currently, Atlantis is kind of a loaded term media-wise and doesn't bring forth the concepts the text is otherwise trying to convey. It's not that the idea of "big mage city with no paradox got blown up in the past" is bad, it's that (a) calling it Atlantis immediately puts most people into thinking about Stargate and/or a mediocre Disney flick, and (b) trying to tie a bunch of poo poo to that already flawed concept just feels tacked on when the alternative (just saying "this poo poo's old, so old no one remembers its beginning") is easier and more conducive to adding into a game.
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Feb 15, 2017 15:01
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Mages are all about symbols and their magical relevance, so there should be a great big swastika on the cover of Mage, and also on most of the pages. Because obviously most people who pick the book up are going to know that swastikas are sacred symbols of good fortune. My point is that, to the average reader, Atlantis has nothing to do with hubris. It's that lost city that sunk and they made a movie about it, right? My cousin says it was full of alien human hybrids or something. Is that what this game is about? "There was once a city of mages that overreached and fell to hubris, some call this city Mu, Lemuria, or Atlantis" would've been fine but when you lead in with "Magic comes from Atlantis, and that's what all mages are about now" it's going to turn off a lot of people. Christ, why am I still posting about this.
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Feb 15, 2017 15:22
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Personally, i'm with Kurieg. We just need to find that goddamn ZPM so Rodney can
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Feb 15, 2017 15:23
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My problem isn't with the lost mythical city as a concept, it's the name Atlantis has a lot of cultural baggage that it's gathered in the last 20 years. If they had named it Mu it probably wouldn't have been quite as bad.Archonex posted:Personally, i'm with Kurieg. We just need to find that goddamn ZPM so Rodney can Well Carter has a head start, he needs to catch up.
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Feb 15, 2017 15:45
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Kurieg posted:Well Carter has a head start, he needs to catch up. Precisely why he needs that ZPM ASAP. How else is he going to beat a gently caress-up of that scale? Why, by letting the norms burn down reality with all their newfound power and typical human self interest and lack of restraint! Also I thought it was mentioned somewhere that Atlantis was just a catch-all name for it. Others use Mu, Lemuria, etc, etc. It's just that Atlantis as a public concept epitomizes the "glorious society that fell from grace" meme so it tweaks most mage's need to feel like they're the most important thing ever while also giving them a lesson in why they're not that they can easily ignore whenever the time comes to do something destructive and selfish. Archonex fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Feb 15, 2017 |
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Feb 15, 2017 15:57
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ah but you see, the people who have problems with Atlantis are those that don't read critically into their white wolf rpgs and now hold on a minute and let me demonstrate my cheap Life rote that lets me suck my own dick
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Feb 15, 2017 16:01
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ZeroCount posted:ah but you see, the people who have problems with Atlantis are those that don't read critically into their white wolf rpgs and now hold on a minute and let me demonstrate my cheap Life rote that lets me suck my own dick Is that kind of like how people are convinced that Mages can't do anything bad by using magic? Because I have a counter-point to that as well! Picture Donald Trump. Picture Donald Trump tearing a hole to the Abyss with profane vulgar magic. Picture an Oracle freaking the gently caress out nearby and telling him to knock it off. Then picture Donald Trump insisting that he is the "Best at magic!" to the horrified Oracle before gesturing at the Oracle and derisively exclaiming the word "Sad!" with a smug little grin on his pumpkin face. That's the sort of person that'd have access to magic in some of the end game plans that the "good" guys have. That is the monster they'd create. Archonex fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Feb 15, 2017 |
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Feb 15, 2017 16:03
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I was just working on a campaign idea involving 13 lost civilizations and I explicitly blew off Atlantis because it has so much baggage it doesn't sound particularly mysterious or evocative.
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Feb 15, 2017 16:20
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Maybe it was cool once but it's been dragged through so many different pop-culture and genre wheels over and over again that it has all the magic and mystique of a trailer park.
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Feb 15, 2017 16:25
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Who are these people you hang out with where Atlantis is so full of baggage that you can't use it in a game
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Feb 15, 2017 16:28
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long-rear end nips Diane posted:Who are these people you hang out with where Atlantis is so full of baggage that you can't use it in a game Yeah, that's the real ancient mystery to uncover here. Who are you guys hanging out with that Atlantis is a tired concept?
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Feb 15, 2017 16:31
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:Mages are all about symbols and their magical relevance, so there should be a great big swastika on the cover of Mage, and also on most of the pages. Because obviously most people who pick the book up are going to know that swastikas are sacred symbols of good fortune. Judging from how people are reacting to the possibility of discussion, the people turned off by it are morons. This whole line of attack on the game ultimately views roleplaying games not as works of craft, but as marketing exercises. Atlantis doesn't pander to me, damages the Holy Brand. Away with it, let's have a focus-tested alternative that reduces complaints on Internet forums by 22%! Funnily enough, this line of objection is directly opposed to the objections to Beast, which are primarily on these artistic/literary grounds, not pearl-clutching over the Onyx Path finances. I don't suspect people who parrot memes like "Magechat! Squaaaaawkkk!" to recognize this conflict, admittedly.
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Feb 15, 2017 16:32
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People who were kids in 2001 when Disney's Atlantis came out, people who watched Stargate, people that have had any contact with new age mysticism, etc. OP clearly acknowledged that it was a flaw in presentation to put Atlantis as one of the more evident elements of the Awakening and the text in 2E doesn't it give it half as much the same space.
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Feb 15, 2017 16:36
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Yeah I'm somewhere between completely agreeing with Brainiac on one hand, and on the other hand totally embracing all the pop cultural "baggage" because it's funny and I like the gonzo attitude towards world-building anyways. Either way, Atlantis is fine.
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Feb 15, 2017 16:37
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Yeah I'm somewhere between completely agreeing with Brainiac on one hand, and on the other hand totally embracing all the pop cultural "baggage" because it's funny and I like the gonzo attitude towards world-building anyways. Either way, Atlantis is fine. Well I mean the pop culture stuff about Atlanteans building the pyramids is probably the most relevant reference in Mage, funnily enough.
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Feb 15, 2017 16:38
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Yeah I'm somewhere between completely agreeing with Brainiac on one hand, and on the other hand totally embracing all the pop cultural "baggage" because it's funny and I like the gonzo attitude towards world-building anyways. Either way, Atlantis is fine. Yeah, I still try link the WoD to Exalted 2e so i'm damned well a fan of gonzo gameplay. So i'm probably biased on that front. If nothing else, Atlantis is a good way to measure where your players stand on the mage morality chart. The ones that think that it's proof of how awesome mages are and not a dire warning of how their powers require the usage of wisdom and humanity to wield safely are probably Seers of the Throne or Silver Ladder members in the making. You can plan some of the events of your game accordingly from that. Archonex fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Feb 15, 2017 |
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Feb 15, 2017 16:41
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Archonex posted:Is that kind of like how people are convinced that Mages can't do anything bad by using magic? Because I have a counter-point to that as well! Something something join the Seers something.
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Feb 15, 2017 16:57
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 It's...it's just a preference some people have, to not like Mage a whole bunch or to think the name Atlantis presented without context is a little silly and evokes some hokey ideas. Just...take a step back from the game, for a second. High concept Mage chat about gnosticism and ethics is fun! I like it too! But Mage itself is a game meant to allow you to pretend to be a wizard in the modern age, it's not a blueprint of an ideal world. It's not special or unique among games. People are not bad or stupid for reading an opening about Atlantis and dragons and deciding it's not for them. If that's not what the game is really about, it's worth noting that, because if that's not the impression the writers wanted to convey it's good to get feedback that allows them to change it. I have 1e Mage on my shelf and despite my joking I have forced myself to read it in case I didn't give it enough of a chance. (Forced because the font hurts my eyes, the writing is good and I like it). I also understand what Atlantis is supposed to represent. The book does a poor job of alluding to what people are insisting they mean by it, probably because they do know their audience and assumed the people who'd be interested would have the knowledge to infer all of that. It's still not friendly to the layperson. It's a cool game, but it's not friendly to novices. You kind of already really have to want to play Mage before you pick up the 1e to stick with it, or at least that's what I've noticed with people--so it's an anecdote, dismiss it if you want. I understand 2e is more approachable? Anyway, just...Mage is good, but it's not 'I will DIE on this philosophical hill you PHILISTINES' good.
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