|
Also worth noting is that The Corpus Author, the ascended founder of the Mysterium, is very goddamn cool & good, but her order is still a distant second place to a tie between the Silver Ladder and the Free Council, and that the other Orders can go gently caress themselves. I missed out on Harry Potter for kind of silly reasons, but I still ended up seeing a fair number of the movies with friends. The one movie I saw on my own was the third, because I loving love Alfonso Cuarón, and I got bored during it and looked up on the HP wiki why there was an evil house. Anyway, I got into the history and found the houses were founded based on who they thought should be taught magic - Gryffandor thought the brave should, Ravenclaw thought the wise should, etc. Hufflepuff? They thought anyone who wanted to learn magic should be taught it. Which means, due to my ideologically commitment to the Silver Ladder, I'm a diehard Hufflepuff supporter despite having seen only like four of the movies and read none of the books. I've argued this to people in bars. To women in bars. I've referenced nMage to explain where my ideological support comes from. I did not go home with any of them. I regret nothing. Digital Osmosis fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Nov 30, 2018 |
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 17:29
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 20:22 |
|
|
Yeah, that's a clear improvement over 1st ed, which gave me a strong impression of the Orders being more like the different operational divisions of a supernatural paramilitary organization. It's a strong theme as well and gives the game a clear direction of "we are fighting a guerilla war for the freedom of humanity, here's how you fit into that," but it's not really much good for anything except a story about fighting the good fight.
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 17:31
|
|
|
Digital Osmosis posted:I'm a diehard Hufflepuff
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 18:03
|
|
|
Cardiovorax posted:So, anyway, about them there mage splats. One thing I really like is how the different supernal origins are a lot like Avatar Essences from oMage, but more fleshed-out and set up in a way that lets you use them to define how your character personally relates to his magic and journey of enlightenment on a day-to-day level rather than only during Arete questings. It's more integral than the Traditions were, as a character-defining choice, but doesn't feel too constraining in terms of how it allows you to act in practice. In the nMage game I'm in, I'm playing the Arrow party member. And he is the primary combat member, partly because he's an Arrow and partly because he's a Obrimos. But most of his day is spent in non-violent conflict. He tends to follow the orders ideal of seeking struggle. He's a grad student and has to deal with academic stuff for much of his day. He's in conflict with both the local Consilium leadership the local Arrow leadership because he tends to see them as tired and stagnate. So for him, some of it is the order's teaching, and some of it is where his personality naturally gravitated to.
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 18:38
|
|
|
The Orders have their emphasis in different places to oMage's Traditions. I explain it thusly in the Translation Guide. A full oMage character has an acatar Essence, a Tradition, and a faction within that Tradition. To fully understand a Hermetic, for example, you have to know that he is Questing House Thig Hermetic. An nMage character has a Oath, an Order, and a Legacy. Between them they cover the same things, but the lines of the boxes are different. Magical style comes from the larger organisation and "the purpose of magic" from the faction in oMave, but the other way around in nMage. Don't think of the Silver Ladder as being like the Hermetics. Think of them as. ej g the Hiuse Quaesitor, Orange Robes, Ivory Tower, and all the other leadership/judge factions in all the traditions, disparates, and conventions.
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 18:45
|
|
|
Personally I like to think of the Paths as corresponding to major occult claims - in Mage, truths - with a particular fitting symbolic register to them. Mastigoi learn that the microcosm corresponds to the macrocosm, and how to make use of every part of theirs. Thyrsoi learn they are one with the natural world, and how to relate that world to humanity. Obrimoi learn Brahman-atman identity, and that there are secret laws. Moroi learn that all things change and all things end, but that there is something eternal within change. Acanthoi learn that everything happens for some kind of reason, and that said reasons aren't fixed but narratively malleable - though I admit I have a weaker sense of Acanthoi than the other Paths. And then the Orders, as noted, are about what you do with Truth, which is also Magic, when it's been revealed to you in secret. Though I think they should also be understood as organizations brought together historically for the effort of a war to dethrone the gods, again.
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 19:33
|
|
|
 do not mock us, we Hufflepuff are a proud people.
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 19:34
|
|
|
so uh, do you not believe that magic is humanity's birthright? ban this seer
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 22:40
|
|
|
joylessdivision posted:
I mean, no you're not. Definitionally.
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 22:53
|
|
|
Technically speaking, the Free Council is Hufflepuff while the Silver Ladder is an elaborate structure involving the other three houses that seeks to use all of them to break reality. The Ladder also is notable for NOT trying to recruit as many mages as possible, because they believe in specialized roles in the Ascension War. They send suitable recruits to the other Orders. In short, Dumbeldore is a Thearch? Oh god what have I become (In fact all of Hogwarts is Seers)
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 22:58
|
|
|
Dave Brookshaw posted:Is this the point where we spin into the stage of nMage Chat that's about how Ascension portrays the Awakened as the best version of humanity, who could solve the universe if only they could work together, and Awakening portrays the Awakened as dangerous obsessives who get other people killed a lot?
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 23:28
|
|
|
Digital Osmosis posted:I'm a diehard Hufflepuff supporter despite having seen only like four of the movies and read none of the books If you have the opportunity, check out the off-Broadway comedy "PUFFS" I think they filmed it and its streaming on BroadwayHD, but if you're in NY you should be able to get TKTS tickets easily
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 23:45
|
|
|
LGD posted:If you have the opportunity, check out the off-Broadway comedy "PUFFS" That show was the reason I had that conversation at that bar that time! I am in NYC, but like I said I'm not enough of a Harry Potter fan to think it's worth it. Even off-Broadway shows are pretty loving expensive. I'm ideologically committed to the Hufflepuff cause, but not that much
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 00:10
|
|
|
so to what extent can one compare the mountain to seathe the scaleless :v more seriously (as serious as somebody who doesnt own a single mage book can be in magechat) how do we know that the exarchs are indeed individuals, and not the manifestations of the communal values/beliefs/complexes/etc of those who conquered heaven? (and the few who have been admitted to their number since). like, as an example, is the eye specifically a former mage that ascended the ladder, or is the eye the collective disposition the exarchs hold/held towards the use of surveillance to hold onto power? idk if im explaining my thought process v well. anybody here read unsounded? the khert is a similar concept to what im thinking of here, if far more democratic :v e: by this light, would the oracles possibly be the parts of those who became the exarchs that arent okay w the idea of eternal oppression?
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 00:39
|
|
|
Warthur posted:Now I'm remembering our latest Mage game where someone tried to magically con Fate into thinking that some people had already died (in order to fool an ancient curse into unravelling itself) and accepted a dramatic failure, unleashing magical forces which caused the people in question to *actually* die...
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 00:47
|
|
|
Tollymain posted:so to what extent can one compare the mountain to seathe the scaleless :v I'm pretty sure there is no way to know if the Exarchs are one or many, except that Ascended mages do seem to maintain individuality (See again, the Corpus Author, who is probably the coolest NPC in Imperial Mysteries that I don't want to kill on principle). So while the Exarchs might be collectives of Ascended mages, I'm pretty sure the individual mages aren't likely to divide up into their good and evil parts. If the Oracles are the heroic, non-tyrannical Star Ladder Ascended, then I am pretty sure they'd be a distinct population from the Exarchs. e: plus, the Exarchs certainly seem to behave as a collective of individuals with underlings, especially the Father, who has an actual gender (no prizes for guessing) and the head of his Great Ministry of Paternoster even has an artifact that might be a physical representation of his face from when he was human. So the Father in particular has some of the strongest clues towards individuality, though whether that's all an elaborate lie we by definition cannot know. That's the kind of thing that depends on your table's Chronicle canon. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Dec 1, 2018 |
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 01:18
|
|
|
are exarchs merely ascended mages tho? also i take the seers' understanding of the exarchs to be fundamentally incomplete and theoretical e: is the father the mage who left that representation of a face or is that simply a mage whose influence so heavily colored that aspect of oppression that it took on smaller parts of that mages person in the process? i dont believe there needs to be an elaborate lie, just a subtle misapprehension that took root so early that its very difficult to question Tollymain fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Dec 1, 2018 |
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 01:40
|
|
|
Tollymain posted:are exarchs merely ascended mages tho? Well, if we take the general description of the Star Ladder to be true, then the Exarchs are probably mages who Ascended in a particularly powerful way, which is via the Star Ladder. What that means, exactly, is not entirely clear - 1e treated the Star Ladder as a literal physical tower, the debris of which appears in Keys to the Supernal Tarot, but the Astral Realms book also describes the Ladder as having been built along the Astral spine of the world, in dreams. What exactly that means for the Exarchs... well, if they are in fact Ascended mages who conquered the Supernal and enthroned themselves by taking up the symbols of Rule, then there's probably some core personality to them. On the other hand, even if that's the case, they're from a timeline completely alien to our own, if not multiple timelines Before the Fall. Maybe only one Exarch comes from each of ten (or eleven?) parallel Atlantises! Also fun: The Star Ladder is implied to allow anyone who climbs it to Ascend, as opposed to only weird mystics who figure out a secret way to the highest world (traveler ascension, i.e. random mages on Earth figuring out a way to Ascend, are iirc still the most common kind, for all that Archmages understand the way better - there's just way fewer of those weirdos). And not only that, but those weird mystics are less powerful within the Supernal than the Star Ladder Ascended, which is also wild. So, whatever the Star Ladder was, there's a reason it's plausibly the source of the Abyss when it fell. ...which reminds me, the Gate: Might be an Exarch of the normal kind who descended to the Abyss to regulate it, but could also be an Abyssal Annunaki in the shape of a not-Exarch, and how much fun would that be? None fun. None fun for anyone.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 02:01
|
|
|
Breaking into mage chat with the first of the Werewolf charts. Some notes: Khan are overrepresented because over a hundred were killed in their civil war in the 1940s and 50s; Ajaba likewise overrepresented due to their own near extinction at Simba hands. Yes, there really is a White Howler - blame the early novels. Apostate is my label for Garou Nation defectors to the Spiral Dancers, akin to antitribu or barabbi. Oddly enough, we have a nearly perfect match between quoted population of Stargazers and actual represented population. BSDs are meant to be 10% so we're short, counting the apostates, by at least 2%. Tribally, Lupus are heavily overrepresented compared to their stated proportion in the CoG (2.5-5% while represented lupus sample is 25% of the total CoG population) and homids are actually underrepresented among modern Glass Walkers with a known breed, with Metis and Lupus members making up ~20% where it should be no more than 5-10%. Similarly, the Ratkin ratio is massively off - of known-breed Ratkin, it's 8:6 Homid:Rodens when it should be 1:5. Lupus remain massively overrepresented at 34% (with the assumptions that non-known Glass Walkers and Red Talons are Homid/Lupus respectively) of the 20th century data set rather than the 3% they should be - even including non-known breeds and assuming they're homid Lupus are still 8% rather than the 3% they should be so to achieve the correct ratio we'd need to add some 8,000 more Garou, which would give us a total Garou population of some 16,000. The Ananasi and Ratkin are each meant to roughly rival the Garou in population, while the others all hover in the single tribe range. As you can tell, Fera are grossly underrepresented, especially ratkin. Gurahl are proportionately highly overrepresented.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 02:09
|
|
|
Loomer posted:Yes, there really is a White Howler - blame the early novels. If you're talking about Johnny No-Name then he's misrepresented, because he also needs to be a Cyber Dog, and a Khan.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 02:13
|
|
|
Tollymain posted:are exarchs merely ascended mages tho? Dave pointed out a while back that there's no evidence that they're ascended mages, or even were once human, and that that's more of a Seer belief to support the idea that 'one day if I'm enough of a tyrant I can become an Exarch too.' So, yeah, there's a lot of theoreticals, but a big aspect of mage seems to be grabbing theories and running with them (see I Am Just a Box's detailing of the Orders). Which fits. There's no 'This is the true Answer' box, but they try and put together a picture of what such a box would be like by examining the world and working backward from there. Sometimes maybe you start with a theory and work forward, sometimes you're biased by personal hope/delusion/feelings/obsessions. nofather fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Dec 1, 2018 |
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 02:14
|
|
|
i feel like if they were never human that opens up less of a can of worms and more of a colossal fissure in downtown nyc spewing waves of shai-hulud
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 02:21
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:If you're talking about Johnny No-Name then he's misrepresented, because he also needs to be a Cyber Dog, and a Khan. Oh, god, there's two then.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 02:22
|
|
|
nofather posted:Dave pointed out a while back that there's no evidence that they're ascended mages, or even were once human, and that that's more of a Seer belief to support the idea that 'one day if I'm enough of a tyrant I can become an Exarch too.' So, yeah, there's a lot of theoreticals, but a big aspect of mage seems to be grabbing theories and running with them (see I Am Just a Box's detailing of the Orders). It is worth noting, however, that the Exarchs do canonically exalt certain Seers as lesser Exarchs, effectively allowing them Ascension to a place at the right hand of (in this case) the Unity. So while the Iron Seals themselves may not have ever been human in this or any other timeline, depending on your interpretation of the setting, there are technically Ascended Exarchs of some kind. e: To be clear, I'm pretty biased towards the Exarchs as Ascended humans, because I personally prefer that image of the Ascension War. Once, there was a war in heaven and humanity won... and the part of humanity that won then decided to become tyrants. It's a good symbolic register for a game about hubris and the power of concepts and ideal formations; thought and organization has allowed humanity to conquer the universe, but in doing so we've wounded it horribly (the Abyss) and created power hierarchies that serve the few over the rest of humanity. "Up until now, mage sight has been a symbolic interpretation of the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it!" Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Dec 1, 2018 |
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 02:26
|
|
|
by my hare-brained logic that seer added a new facet based on their work and philosophy to the ideas that make up the exarchs while being assimilated mid-ascension
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 02:33
|
|
|
Loomer posted:Oh, god, there's two then. Er I think he was? Even if he wasn't I'm pretty sure that the protagonist of the cancelled computer game was supposed to be a lost cub uncorrupted black spiral.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 02:35
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:Er I think he was? You're correct. He was the Last White Howler, like the guy whose app I rejected for the WOD RP room went on to try and make his own video game to show me. (There were actually several such people. And the ones who didn't wanted to play an Abomination.)
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 02:58
|
|
|
Usually, anything that either a MUD or the actual game writers told you you couldn't play appeared at least once in a novel. Modern day White Howler? Sure! Mokole-Garou hybrid? WHY NOT?! Toreador-Brujah Inconnu? YOU BET!
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 03:08
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:I mean, no you're not. Definitionally. I know  Changeling question: I have to explain Seeming/Kiths to new players and I barely have a grasp on it completely. I've got it simplified in my head using D&D terms as "Seeming is Race, Kith is Class" Is that close to right or am I completely off and going to further confuse myself and my players?
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 03:10
|
|
|
Loomer posted:Usually, anything that either a MUD or the actual game writers told you you couldn't play appeared at least once in a novel. Modern day White Howler? Sure! Mokole-Garou hybrid? WHY NOT?! Toreador-Brujah Inconnu? YOU BET! I've got an old anthology of WtA short stories I always keep meaning to re-read, but can never bring myself to. I know it had at least once instance of two Garou flirting with each other because the Litany isn't a thing I guess?
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 03:13
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:I've got an old anthology of WtA short stories I always keep meaning to re-read, but can never bring myself to. I know it had at least once instance of two Garou flirting with each other because the Litany isn't a thing I guess? Well, to be fair, the Litany didn't stop at least 350 Gaian Garou from gettin' down.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 03:17
|
|
|
joylessdivision posted:Changeling question: That's completely off. Nothing is really analogous to class. Seeming is a fairytale archetype. You were taken to Faerieland as a human, and when you came out, you came out squashed and warped to fit into the tales of Faerie, whether by the intentional molding of your Keeper or the incidental transformations of your Durance. Different stories lend themselves well to different beats, and for changelings, story beats are the magic they weave. So an Ogre is going to have an easier time standing strong and exacting vengeance, and a Fairest is going to have an easier time charming, bewitching, and being too terrible and glorious to strike at. Kith is a specific story; it's a lens through which the tales of Faerie express themselves differently. An Antiquarian stolen, slaved and withered away in a timeless manse, and a Chirurgeon abducted by otherworldly visitors, mutated over time by strange gene therapies and procedures in folded space, can both be expressions of someone kidnapped to an oppressive wonderland and Wizened by servitude, but these stories wear different skins, and those skins add a little extra color. Not enough to change the fundamental meaning of the story, but enough to bend it a little with the detail of a kith blessing. The one can be seen as a subcategory of the other, even in second edition where kiths aren't associated with default seemings.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 03:23
|
|
|
Loomer posted:Usually, anything that either a MUD or the actual game writers told you you couldn't play appeared at least once in a novel. Modern day White Howler? Sure! Mokole-Garou hybrid? WHY NOT?! Toreador-Brujah Inconnu? YOU BET! The dude from Breathe Deeply was just a Garou with Mnesis, he wasn't a Mokole-Garou hybrid. Jay No-Name, however was a Garou/Bastet(Either Khan or Pumoncia, I don't really have the book to read myself) who was then experimented on by the Technos to make him into a cyborg.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 03:27
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:The dude from Breathe Deeply was just a Garou with Mnesis, he wasn't a Mokole-Garou hybrid.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 03:48
|
|
|
I Am Just a Box posted:That's completely off. Nothing is really analogous to class. Thanks! I was starting to get the whole subcategory thing and had kinda parsed it together as "Clan and Coven" from Requiem but your explanation makes perfect sense. I will probably steal it and add it to my pitch doc I'm writing up for this game.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 03:52
|
|
|
i feel like one reason why magechat is such a thing is that (i suspect, because ive literally read less than a dozen wod titles total lmao) we generally only get to see the larger cosmology through the lens of mage i mean it makes sense, generally speaking the stories you are telling with other splats are not going to be dealing w those portions of the cosmology, right? and also most of them are not exactly good places to be trying to plumb the depths of the universe from, there are far more pressing concerns, etc. all the same, i wonder how that larger cosmology would look to adequately informed members of other splats. mage tells us how they interpret the other splats and their place in the greater picture but has anything been written about what a vampire or a changeling or a demon would see if they had the same rough breadth/depth to their data about the nature of the universe? like, when a vampire w sufficient wisdom, resources, and experience looks at the world, what do they see Tollymain fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Dec 1, 2018 |
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 03:55
|
|
|
Hate to sound all wanky over it but a prison you can see the bars of is still a prison. The big mage way of dealing with it is the way everyone else does with their drastic life changes, finding some manageable part of existence and focusing on that, occasionally one will seek ascendance and jump screaming into the obliterating mass of symbols that form the world and hope for the best. So while I think a vampire would find it easier to appreciate something like 'death isn't meant to be a hard stop, but a transition' than your average person, just like mages they wouldn't stay always 'woke' and would appreciate that, even if the way the world is made is flawed and our tendency to fall back on instinct and resignation is part of that, a vampire's gotta eat. Though fighting against the way things are is sort of a given in a few gamelines.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 04:12
|
|
|
Nessus posted:So did that guy have like a cat form and a werewolf form or was his Crinos half-cat? 
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 04:13
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:The simplest explanation of course is that Pyros just is and doesn't need some other explanation for where it came from. Isn't the point of Horrors that sometimes there's one-off madness that nobody can adequately explain? Despite the most obsessive of occult investigators nobody is sure WHY Death Bed: The Bed that Eats People is there. Some poo poo just be. I'll keep holding out for a universe where 'everything is Mage (or sometimes Werewolf)' isn't true.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 04:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 20:22 |
|
|
nice cyborg cat wolf anyway nah im not talking about how they deal w the world being different than they thought, i mean "i dont believe the mage interpretation of the nwod cosmos is the only valid high-level model, just the only one that gets play"
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 04:19
|
|