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"The best thing your player character could do is stop existing, immediately" is a surprisingly common interpretation of a lot of the nWoD. (I mean, for a vampire I can see the point.)
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Apr 29, 2019 02:36
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I guess we’ve officially reached the stage of magechat where people just start making things up.
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Apr 29, 2019 02:38
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Nessus posted:"The best thing your player character could do is stop existing, immediately" is a surprisingly common interpretation of a lot of the nWoD. (I mean, for a vampire I can see the point.) It is certainly illuminating to see people repeatedly and unironically parrot Cipher's perspective from The Matrix with regard to Mage (and occasionally Demon.) "So the paradox is, that it's much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in 
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Apr 29, 2019 02:41
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Rand Brittain posted:I guess we’ve officially reached the stage of magechat where people just start making things up. What about it? Because the Silver Ladder's goal of "awaken everyone" or "everyone's gonna have ultimate power and no one will be able to hurt anyone" (as some other posters roughly put it hundreds of pages back during one of the inevitable bouts of mage chat) has some real flaws to it when you start figuring out how it'd actually work within the boundaries of what's possible in the setting. Especially when you factor in how fallible mages themselves tend to be ethically and morally speaking. Likewise, there's a gently caress ton of fiction and lore where the ostensibly good mages in any given era of the setting are up to stuff that's just as evil (if not more-so, like that time their prehistoric equivalents went around hunting down and ripping the souls out of Pangaean gods just so they could easily expand the villages they were basically in charge of. An act that probably helped gently caress up reality even worse in the long run.) as anything the Seers and the Exarch's get up too. They just put a nice, friendly coat of paint on most of it by saying they're fighting supernal oppression or protecting the muggles from the Seers or whatever. Archonex fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 02:45
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TheNamedSavior posted:Okay, so you fight stand-ins for capitalists, but where are the groups that actually go into NWOD's version of trump tower and shoot up the board of directors who plan on making water cost 10$ per drop? Yes, I could make my players one, but that doesn't change the fact the setting is mostly empty of people who realize that human pigs are basically the reason why Vampires are capitalist dicks and why the True Fae still exists at all. Well, no - like I said, Awakening is probably more explicit than Ascension was that the bad guys are incarnations of nationalism, the surveillance state, the free market, etc. None of the games, not even Mage, actually commit PCs to being bomb-throwing revolutionaries, but that wasn't true in the oWoD either - unless you come into the game with some understanding of materialism, you might find yourself fighting the evil Illuminati who are controlling us using chemtrails to prevent the meritocratic free market from letting us succeed and fail on our own merits! quote:You could also see it as Natives defending their culture and land from Racists (The Pure) and the worse ideas of human nature (Spirits). The cop metaphor is really just used because it's the best one could explain the mostly morally alien concepts in the game. To my knowledge, most Forsaken don't really shoot unarmed black men for going over the speed limit. I would argue they are more of a Town Militia IMHO. To be clear, I like WtF a lot, but even if you can avoid being the cops you then have to avoid being the local homeowner's association or some other force of local conservative reaction. These aren't criticisms I'd personally level against the game, but if you want something explicitly left-wing (rather than open to being played left-wing if that's to your group's tastes) I would not recommend Forsaken to you. The Pure, for instance, are symbols of the worst excesses of the oWoD Garou - hatred of humans and technology, supremacy of the spirit over the material, obsession with blood purity.
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Apr 29, 2019 02:48
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TheNamedSavior posted:Okay, I was wrong about Vampire, thanks for the good post, Archonex. Yeah, sure, none of the games set you up as being the heroic protagonists smashing the state. Hell, Mage even invites you to play as The State, with Literally Capitalism the Concept as your boss. But most of them (including Mage) provide you the set pieces and apparatuses to make doing so part of, the focus of, or the entire point of your game. Mage outright has an organization set up to rip apart the goobers who are all about that--the Council of Free Assemblies, believers in pure democracy--and where a game with them falls on the sliding scale of "boy mob rule certainly sometimes backfires" to "gently caress up the pigs" is going to be a consideration for what is wanted out of the game. Ironslave fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 02:50
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:It is certainly illuminating to see people repeatedly and unironically parrot Cipher's perspective from The Matrix with regard to Mage (and occasionally Demon.) Like at a certain point this isn't horror, it's just depression.
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Apr 29, 2019 02:51
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Nessus posted:Well I just think it's kind of hosed up and gross, and it's kept me away from a lot of nWoD stuff because it seems like any game where you're coming in from the perspective of "your characters shouldn't exist, in the sense that their existence is almost certainly going to be massively harmful to others," is not a lot of... fun? Meanwhile in old WoD, other than vampires, all the splats at least did not seem to get this huge brush of "you will inevitably cause massive harm and gently caress everything up." One of the possible "end of setting" scenarios featured in OWoD ended with vampires literally ending the world in an orgy of bombastic supernatural bloodshed. And a lot of OWoD featured vampires taking credit for various historical events, including some really nasty stuff from what I vaguely recall. If anything OWoD is a hell of a lot worse than NWoD on that front. At least NWoD vampires are so insignificant and balkanized that they can potentially opt to not do any harm by just staying out of their politics and going off somewhere quiet to do their own thing. Playing a bunch of newly made vampires that decided to just keep their heads down, act right, and make ends meet by working the night-shift at a Denny's for all eternity in some backwater town wouldn't be fun though, so it basically never comes up in games. By contrast, the OWoD's vampires sometimes bordered on being straight up super-villains. I mean, just look at...Well, anything a Tzimisce has ever done if you want evidence of that. Archonex fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 02:59
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Nessus posted:Well I just think it's kind of hosed up and gross, and it's kept me away from a lot of nWoD stuff because it seems like any game where you're coming in from the perspective of "your characters shouldn't exist, in the sense that their existence is almost certainly going to be massively harmful to others," is not a lot of... fun? Meanwhile in old WoD, other than vampires, all the splats at least did not seem to get this huge brush of "you will inevitably cause massive harm and gently caress everything up." I agree with you, but I also think that attitude is a massive mis-interpretation of all* of the game lines except Vampire (where it's absolutely true) and Mage (where it's still wrong, but the initial building blocks exist in the text, and it's possible to arrive there if you're really anxious about the possibility that a status quo built on suffering and lies will be torn down and replaced with something new.) Like, I might have strong and contemptuous opinions about Magechat, but something like "all Changelings should just gently caress off and die" is another creature altogether; it's not just disagreeable, it makes no sense either in-narrative or in terms of the themes of Changeling as a game. * admittedly my ignorance of Mummy might be my undoing here and of course Beast doesn't have that attitude, but should Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 03:02
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TheNamedSavior posted:And New Mage still kinda sucks, as stupid as Old Mage was, at least it was obvious that "Technocrats are capitalist assholes putting brainwashing drugs in the water, kill them.". was this before or after oMage started sucking off the technocrats and trying to make them misunderstood good guys
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Apr 29, 2019 03:13
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Archonex posted:What about it? Because the Silver Ladder's goal of "awaken everyone" or "everyone's gonna have ultimate power and no one will be able to hurt anyone" (as some other posters roughly put it hundreds of pages back during one of the inevitable bouts of mage chat) has some real flaws to it when you start figuring out how it'd actually work within the boundaries of what's possible in the setting. Especially when you factor in how fallible mages themselves tend to be ethically and morally speaking. Oh Jesus gently caress just stop. Please don’t come back here with that “but what if making everyone an invincible god metaphysically immune to being harmed by others causes to much CHAOS. Can we really trust the COMMON MAN with such power (and literally immunity to negative consequences). gently caress off, non of that’s in the book except from the perspective of the more brainwashed seers.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:14
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Ignore this.
jakodee fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 03:17
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killing the Pangaeans was a huge dick move (especially in the cases where it was probably done through deceit and betrayal) but destroying the Border Marches and breaking free from the predatory/prey, might-makes-right relationship that the Pangaeans embodied and enforced (and which remains in place in the Shadow to this day) was almost certainly in humanity's best interest at the very least it's a much more interesting moral dilemma than "are the Banishers right y/n?"
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Apr 29, 2019 03:20
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jakodee posted:Oh Jesus gently caress just stop. Please don’t come back here with that “but what if making everyone an invincible god metaphysically immune to being harmed by others causes to much CHAOS. Can we really trust the COMMON MAN with such power (and literally immunity to negative consequences). gently caress off, non of that’s in the book except from the perspective of the more brainwashed seers. Hey, lots of people think there's no difference between Pentacle mages and Seers of the Throne. They're called "Seers of the Throne".
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Apr 29, 2019 03:21
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ZeroCount posted:was this before or after oMage started sucking off the technocrats and trying to make them misunderstood good guys What was even up with that? I mean, I know Phil Brucato (Or one of the big Ascension devs. I forget which offhand.) purportedly had odd ideas about the way the world worked. But was there ever an official explanation of how the devs went from the technocrats being oppressive bad guys to "well actually the technocracy is a good thing!". jakodee posted:Oh Jesus gently caress just stop. Please don’t come back here with that “but what if making everyone an invincible god metaphysically immune to being harmed by others causes to much CHAOS. Can we really trust the COMMON MAN with such power (and literally immunity to negative consequences). gently caress off, non of that’s in the book except from the perspective of the more brainwashed seers. Thank you for proving why it's a bad idea to get too deep into mage chat. Also for completely ignoring the point I was making in favor of some "BUT THE EXARCHS" crap. Also, get your facts straight. If anything, i'd play a Banisher out to do away with anyone including the Exarch's being able to dick around with supernal magic before I ever played a Seer. No masters, only men, bitch.
Archonex fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 03:21
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Archonex posted:What was even up with that? I mean, I know Phil Brucato (Or one of the big Ascension devs. I forget which offhand.) purportedly had odd ideas about the way the world worked. But was there ever an official explanation of how the devs went from the technocrats being oppressive bad guys to "well actually the technocracy is a good thing!". You literally just said that we can’t trust the people with too much power too fast, using the same argument as every two-bit dictator, slaver, and racist ever as to why, no you can’t just be free now, you need to learn to be civilized by your betters first. Edit: Maybe consider that there is a reason everyone has labeled you as the “The Seers are Right Guy”. What opinions do you hold that led to the red text beneath your username? Double Edit: Maybe consider why you feel the need to insist the text is lying to us when it says we can make widespread change with entirely or almost entirely positive consequences. Could it be that you find that idea uncomfortable in real life? jakodee fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 03:24
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The Technocracy got a playable treatment but it was definitely Delta Green/Men in Black/Weird Science in the Guide to the Technocracy, and it was pretty clear that you would be swimming upstream if you weren't in the Party Line. I don't think they were particularly valorized by that book beyond the same degree of valorization you might have gotten from the Guide to the Sabbat, i.e. "here's some details on how they aren't literally murderfucking infants every god drat night." I think most of the "Actually, the Technocracy was Right" is a mix of "the Traditions sucked" and "the Technocracy has STEM lord signifiers and therefore, if you think about it..." The real thing you gotta do with World of Darkness is ban discussion boards.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:25
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Shoulda ducked.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:26
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jakodee posted:You literally just said that we can’t trust the people with too much power too fast, using the same argument as every two-bit dictator, slaver, and racist ever as to why, no you can’t just be free now, you need to learn to be civilized by your betters first. I'm the one who gave him that title, years ago, as a joke. I still disagree with Archonex (obviously) but I do think his position is a little more nuanced than what you're suggesting. I think that what he wants is something sad, self-limiting, and that it springs from a mindset that any tyrant would salivate over -- that it's basically "better things aren't possible!" liberalism in wizardgame form -- but I don't think he's deliberately stanning for the fascists. e: also, for context, his current avatar is only a slight, WoD-themed modification of an older redtext that someone gave him (and about a dozen other posters) for completely insane reasons that have nothing to do with politics Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 03:26
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Archonex posted:What about it? Because the Silver Ladder's goal of "awaken everyone" or "everyone's gonna have ultimate power and no one will be able to hurt anyone" So let's just kill every mage ever because Mages might be assholes. By the same logic, let's kill all humans, some of them might be assholes. It's not like we can have an awesome society where anyone can cure cancer, anyone can teleport to wherever they want, where anyone can look like whatever they want, where everyone is basically a mixture of a character from My Hero Academia and Pretty Cure. Nah, let's just kill everyone, instead of figuring out ways we could migrate or deal with the Mages who go full on Red Phoenix, and just throw everything away. That's totally not fascist at all. Thanks for the post on actually good groups in NWOD, though. I guess you could do a "good guy campaign" for the Carthians like you would for the Technocrats. Kill your upper management, then kill your enemies. I'll admit, sounds more interesting than my Bois, the Anarchs, most of their campaigns are just "punch stupid rich assholes in the face then repeat." Wait no, that's actually an amazing campaign idea.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:27
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'm the one who gave him that title, years ago, as a joke. I still disagree with Archonex (obviously) but I do think his position is a little more nuanced than what you're suggesting. I think that what he wants is something sad, self-limiting, and that it springs from a mindset that any tyrant would salivate over -- that it's basically "better things aren't possible!" liberalism in wizardgame form -- but I don't think he's deliberately stanning for the fascists. I think he’s perfectly well meaning as well, just uncomfortable with the very idea of quick, large-scale change being not-the-French-Revolution-Portayed-By-Glenn-Beck. I think he has weird hang-ups, not that he’s secretly supporting Nazism or something.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:30
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jakodee posted:I think he’s perfectly well meaning as well, just uncomfortable with the very idea of quick, large-scale change being not-the-French-Revolution-Portayed-By-Glenn-Beck. I think he has weird hang-ups, not that he’s secretly supporting Nazism or something.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:33
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jakodee posted:You literally just said that we can’t trust the people with too much power too fast, using the same argument as every two-bit dictator, slaver, and racist ever as to why, no you can’t just be free now, you need to learn to be civilized by your betters first. When the people are literally working with reality warping superpowers and have a track record of loving up in nightmarish ways all the way back to the existence of the Vinca, then yeah. You can whine about ~THE POTENTIAL~ of what mages could accomplish in whatever games you've played but the facts are clear. On the average they're not a very healthy thing to have around in any setting that doesn't want to have things go really, really, really, loving wrong. Hell, that's been a theme for a very long time. Even that 1e Chicago book had it as a plot point that all the mages opposed to the Exarch's murdered each other in one big conflict because they all wanted access to some mythical relic. This doesn't mean the Exarch's are right. Quite the opposite. It means they're only the biggest indictment against them. Also, I believe it was Tuxedo that gave it to me as a joke during one of the last times people had mage chat and some of the shittier posters were being willingly obtuse about just what "no more magic, just what people make with their own hands" actually meant when people started pointing out that the Pentacle Orders are just as lovely as the Exarch's but in different ways. If I still have it in my PM's I can check who it was. Edit: Yup, it was Tuxedo Catfish. Just checked my message box. Archonex fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 03:33
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Archonex posted:What was even up with that? I mean, I know Phil Brucato (Or one of the big Ascension devs. I forget which offhand.) purportedly had odd ideas about the way the world worked. But was there ever an official explanation of how the devs went from the technocrats being oppressive bad guys to "well actually the technocracy is a good thing!". On a recent podcast, he said that he wanted to take a Rashomon approach to Mage since it was a game about competing realities, you'd always get an in-character perspective from each group that would contradict the others. I don't think the writers of Guide to the Technocracy (or the revised Convention Books) ever believed "the technocracy is right." They're openly works of propaganda and a lot of readers fell for it. On the other hand, the Brucato definitely turned against the Traditions entirely when he went from writing stories them with believable flaws with Aesops about power corrupting to saying (again on the mage podcast) that they were totally hosed wizard fascists. Octavo fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 03:34
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Nessus posted:I mean you can sensibly make the case of "we should probably at least think a little about how to deal with this," the question becomes how do you avoid that becoming "actually I'm the new Exarch, at most somewhat preferable to the previous guy (and what if he could have said the same...)" Why the heck would that ever be an issue? Mages already kinda exist in the “failed revolutionaries lording over others” state a lot of the time. I’m not aware of any point in the a achievement of Mass Awakening that you would have to be wary of Comrade Stalin-Wizard or the First Citizen taking over. That’s kind of the problem mages are currently facing as portrayed in the books.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:37
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jakodee posted:Why the heck would that ever be an issue? Mages already kinda exist in the “failed revolutionaries lording over others” state a lot of the time. I’m not aware of any point in the a achievement of Mass Awakening that you would have to be wary of Comrade Stalin-Wizard or the First Citizen taking over. That’s kind of the problem mages are currently facing as portrayed in the books. The point where you have to worry about Comrade Stalin-Wizard is before the Mass Awakenings kick off, so basically, during a typical Mage campaign. One of the sample Mage NPCs, the Nemean, is almost literally that in fact. (He chose his shadow name because he wanted to serve as a warning to others not to go full "Lion" or might-makes-right in their philosophy, and then arguably became the thing he was pretending to be -- but of course, picking that name also means he's all but destined to be slain by a proverbial Hercules.) e: which is a roundabout way of saying i agree Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 03:41
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Archonex posted:When the people are literally working with reality warping superpowers and have a track record of loving up in nightmarish ways all the way back to the existence of the Vinca, then yeah. You can whine about ~THE POTENTIAL~ of what mages could accomplish in whatever games you've played but the facts are clear. On the average they're not a very healthy thing to have around in any setting that doesn't want to have things go really, really, really, loving wrong. Hell, that's been a theme for a very long time. Even that 1e Chicago book had it as a plot point that all the mages opposed to the Exarch's murdered each other in one big conflict because they all wanted access to some mythical relic. “I don’t care what the omniscient third-person authors of this book say, I’m going to do MY OWN RESEARCh, and come to MY OWN CONCLUSIONS. You blind sheeple just accepting the word of the authors I paid to write this books for me, when wi you open your eyes to THE TRUTH.” I mean yeah you could reject the ideas that the authors of book present to you because you think they are lying to you as a propagandistic effort to hide the reality of a completely fictional fantasy setting from you. But that would require you to reject the difference between reality and fiction.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:43
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jakodee posted:Why the heck would that ever be an issue? Mages already kinda exist in the “failed revolutionaries lording over others” state a lot of the time. I’m not aware of any point in the a achievement of Mass Awakening that you would have to be wary of Comrade Stalin-Wizard or the First Citizen taking over. That’s kind of the problem mages are currently facing as portrayed in the books.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:44
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It's perfectly reasonable to say that an allegorical work of fiction is too optimistic (or too pessimistic, or too radical, or too conservative, or whatever) with respect to how it lines up with the subject of its allegory. I do it all the time, especially when I criticize Mage. I just don't think Archonex's specific criticisms are true.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:45
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Octavo posted:On a recent podcast, he said that he wanted to take a Rashomon approach to Mage since it was a game about competing realities, you'd always get an in-character perspective from each group that would contradict the others. That makes sense. Everything i've read about Brucato back then says he was a remarkably odd person. Not surprised that he'd do an about face into "Well actually the authoritarian fascists with a technological bent are the good guys!". Now i'm kinda curious if he ever explained the logic of how he decided that the Technocrats were the good guys.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:46
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TheNamedSavior posted:Thanks for the post on actually good groups in NWOD, though. I guess you could do a "good guy campaign" for the Carthians like you would for the Technocrats. Kill your upper management, then kill your enemies. I'll admit, sounds more interesting than my Bois, the Anarchs, most of their campaigns are just "punch stupid rich assholes in the face then repeat." I'm really perplexed as to where this Anarchs stuff is coming from. Like, yeah, the Camarilla are more closely tied to the global capitalist status quo than the Invictus is, but at the end of the day it's vampires arguing over which vampires gets to be in charge of the other vampires. None of them are going to end the M-C-M cycle.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:47
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:It's perfectly reasonable to say that an allegorical work of fiction is too optimistic (or too pessimistic, or too radical, or too conservative, or whatever) with respect to how it lines up with the subject of its allegory. I do it all the time, especially when I criticize Mage. I just don't think Archonex's specific criticisms are true. Sure. I’ve made that criticism of fictional works from time to time myself. As far as I can tell Archonec’s complaint is that the authors either left secret hints that the Pentacle are The Real Villains in the books and no one but him got it, or that the authors are a Pentacle propaganda firm, despite, and I cannot emphasize this , the Pentacle being a fictional secret society of wizards.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:48
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Archonex posted:That makes sense. Everything i've read about Brucato back then says he was a remarkably odd person. Not surprised that he'd do an about face into "Well actually the authoritarian fascists with a technological bent are the good guys!". Now i'm kinda curious if he ever explained the logic of how he decided that the Technocrats were the good guys.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:50
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Archonex posted:That makes sense. Everything i've read about Brucato back then says he was a remarkably odd person. Not surprised that he'd do an about face into "Well actually the authoritarian fascists with a technological bent are the good guys!". Now i'm kinda curious if he ever explained the logic of how he decided that the Technocrats were the good guys. It’s really weird because everything else he ever wrote made him seem like kind of mindlessly technophobic and in love with Nature in the way that a suburban teenage Neo-Pagan is in love with Nature.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:50
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Archonex posted:That makes sense. Everything i've read about Brucato back then says he was a remarkably odd person. Not surprised that he'd do an about face into "Well actually the authoritarian fascists with a technological bent are the good guys!". Now i'm kinda curious if he ever explained the logic of how he decided that the Technocrats were the good guys. He doesn't think the technocrats are right or good. The protagonists he roots for are unsurprisingly the ones he created - the Crafts / Disparates.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:58
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Octavo posted:He doesn't think the technocrats are right or good. The protagonists he roots for are unsurprisingly the ones he created - the Crafts / Disparates.
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Apr 29, 2019 04:00
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jakodee posted:Sure. I’ve made that criticism of fictional works from time to time myself. The authors left in pretty blatant hints that Mages are a bunch of lunatics who will poke their noses in anywhere and try really bad ideas just to see what happens, which is absolutely true and even incentivized for PCs in the form of game mechanics. Similarly, most of the street-level antagonists in Mage are either Mages with no moral compass, or things that were created or summoned by Mages with no moral compass (and probably ate their unfortunate patron on the way in). My response to this is -- well, no poo poo, if everything in the world is a Lie, anyone who realizes this is probably going to develop a near-pathological sense of curiosity. (And well they should!) And of course "everyone must abdicate all power, or else!" isn't a workable solution to power being abused. But the game includes the contrary viewpoint(s) in its fiction, and even makes them pretty relatable at points, and they very much line up to real things that real people think about real politics. So ultimately I think "no, that's stupid and defeatist" is a much more productive line of argument than "there's absolutely no trace of that in Mage and you're crazy if you think there is."
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Apr 29, 2019 04:08
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:It's perfectly reasonable to say that an allegorical work of fiction is too optimistic (or too pessimistic, or too radical, or too conservative, or whatever) with respect to how it lines up with the subject of its allegory. I do it all the time, especially when I criticize Mage. I just don't think Archonex's specific criticisms are true. Nessus posted:If I'm reading Archonex right here, the criticism is that mages often use their great power for stupid reasons or otherwise produce problems in the community. You can probably reduce this risk (though not eliminate it) with preparation and forethought, but at a certain point you would be deciding that some people awaken and other people do not. From a utilitarian perspective this might well be worth doing even in its limited form but it is not total accomplishment of the goal, and it would be easy to go "Well, we awakened a million mages. That's good enough for now" and then "now" becomes "indefinitely, until the Worms breach the Mansus." Yeah, this was a big part of posts i've made both now and the last time everyone lined up on one side or another and had this argument. Ditto for what Tuxedo said about the themes not matching with the implicit content of the books. The books trumpet how awesome mages could potentially be but just as often undermines the statement by showing just how loving horrible it would be to live in a reality inhabited by a collection of reality warping super-beings loving with both reality and time over what's essentially a petty dispute over the dispensation of power writ large across the face of reality. My thought wasn't that the Exarch's are right and their bullshit claims of "policing the power" are true but instead that the whole system is so often depicted as fundamentally corrupt or negligently deficient on both ends. It's a pro-human opinion. Not a pro-exarch opinion. And I can entirely understand how Tuxedo and others disagree with it even if I don't like how Jakodee and some other people spazz the gently caress out and start resembling the fantasy equivalent of tankies any time someone in this thread gently or otherwise tries to point out that Mage's stated themes don't always live up to their written realities.
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Apr 29, 2019 04:09
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Brucato's writing would be far more consistent - and in many ways more tolerable - if he just straight up hated technology. He dislikes the Trads (which predate him), thinks the Crafts (from a book he helped develop, no surprise) are more representative and culturally sensitive (they aren't), and he's a big believer in the mythologized "Renaissance", so he's all about tech-progress in some idealized "inspirational" form - I recall someone who worked on SorcCrusade saying he was, if anything, over-eager to lionize the Order of Reason. He's really down on "The Church" in a very early 90s way and romanticizes the "philosopher-scientists" who, in Pop History, liberate us from Unreason. No big surprise that the Crafts turn into the Real Heroes in M20, and much of the development of the Tradbooks is jettisoned. The guy writes everything in a very personal way, and was left to his own devices - so of course M20 reifies his preferences and meanders into preaching at the reader. (Consider the masturbatory fashion in which M20 redefines "extraordinary citizen" from "hypertech sorcerer" to "you, gentle First World reader, who uses the internet but has an open mind." Being extraordinary is proposed as the intersection of faith, imagination, and technology. In peak 90s throwback fashion, people too poor for smartphones can't be extraordinary.)
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Apr 29, 2019 04:10
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Nessus posted:What exactly is the difference between a Tradition and a Craft, or is this like the distinction between a cult and a religion? The Traditions were the groups of mages who banded together when the Order of Reason started ramping up inquisitions and european colonialism. Their fight against the modern Technocracy is the Ascension War and the main conflict in oMage. The Crafts were written after the Traditions were created in Mage 1e and were intended to be mage groups that didn't take part in the Ascension War and focused on survival and cultural preservation. They were intended to be less cartoonish than the Traditions and more accurately reflect real world cultures (ymmv on how successful that was.) They got reorganized and given a new purpose in Mage 20 as the Disparate Alliance, a survival network that is investigating the Traditions and the Technocracy for Nephandic infiltration.
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Apr 29, 2019 04:14
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