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Archonex posted: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.
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Apr 29, 2019 04:14
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Nessus posted:So what you need to do is make the universal monomythic route to Awakening retrace the historical culture-hero's path and teach him that with great power... there must also be great responsibility. Let the Uncle Ben be ballast weight for the souls of humanity, IMO. That's basically the role Wisdom plays, and probably why the game makes it so hard to hold onto and grow it; being a decent, balanced person with power and an Obsession aggressively knocking on the door to your attention is hard, and a thing to be worked at. 'Course, Wisdom's also amoral and you might find yourself in situations where the Wise thing is to let yourself or someone else die, but on the whole that's the role it plays.
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Apr 29, 2019 04:23
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Archonex posted: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. Why do you think that mages having enormous potential that could be realized in the future and mages being abusive fuckups now are contradictory. I don’t understand. And it all flies in he gave of the fact that there is, at least hypothetically, a method to solve literally all problems: Mass Ascension. Also I don’t know that I should assume you are arguing in good faith considering that you have yet to acknowledge or explain your repeated insistence that the authors of Mage are lying to us in order to cover up the Truth of Mage. You seem to be throwing nonsensical arguments to defend your preferences, or don’t understand that fiction is fiction, or I’m gravely misreading your intent in some drastic way.
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Apr 29, 2019 04:24
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Archonex, what is your preferred solution to 'The gods of reality, who are the hypostases which most define how the world works, have cults in every splat, and are literally untouchable except by Supernal magic, are of the opinion that Oppression Is Good' since you outright condemn the Pentacle? What are you going to do about the horrific injustice of the Lie, of the demiurges, of the universe's wound? Your position is based on a terror of mages-as-monsters, and the idea that they could rewrite reality. And the idea that Awakening everyone would mean chaos, disorder, etc. But the Exarchs already broke the world; there is no going back (and the state of nature doesn't seem to have been pretty either). What tools exist, in a game where magic is very explicitly the form of rebellion that can touch the gods, to fight the Exarchs? You can't just say 'magic is outside of reality,' that magic is unnatural and horrible - magic constitutes reality. Magic is the operating system of Mage's universe. The Exarchs are real, powerful, and not going away. So... given that, your position that the revolution that is available is always the revolution that is morally unacceptable (Mass awakening, the Ascension War, the Pentacle)... you're arguing for the reign of the Exarchs as an alternative to unrest. To quote noted Thearch Mark Twain (A solid Shadow Name): "THERE were two “Ascension Wars” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor War, the momentary War, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief War which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real War—that unspeakably bitter and awful War which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.” This is why I find your position so galling. You take the 'mundane' world for granted as a nonmagical, normative place. It's not, in Mage - it's the conscious work of sorcerer-gods. Mundanity is a Lie that hides a more terrifying, wondrous world that can perhaps be made better once people know what it is. (And also, I have something wild to tell you about our own society, and how its injustices are not in fact just inescapable nature). E: It's a simple thesis: The state of the world is unacceptably unjust. This does not in any way say that Mages are good people, or even that the Pentacle isn't deeply hosed. Maybe you need a totally new organization of mages to overthrow the Exarchs! (Cough cough Free Council.) But the Exarchs need to be overthrown, and the only way to do that is pretty clearly supernal magic, because nothing else even touches the region of reality where they exist and emanate their tyranny from. If the Banishers are right, then we're saying that the Exarchs are preferable to revolution. I mean, I guess you could play in that interpretation of the universe, but drat, that's a pointlessly miserable setting in which the only goal is personal, selfish Ascension to escape the cage (and as someone said, waiting for the Abyss to worm its way into the Mansus). Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 04:28
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Octavo posted: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. There are parts of Guide to the Technicracy that asserts both that everything else written about the Technocracy is just black propaganda while the voice is both not in character and acknowledging that it is text in an RPG supplement. If those parts of GttT are supposed to be propaganda, we have to accept that out-of-character text can lie to us, which opens up a rather large can of worms with regards to believing anything committed to text in the entire MtAs line - the point at which we're no longer talking about unreliable narrators, but unreliable authors - and when the authors become unreliable, trying to determine what is and isn't true in the setting is a rather pointless exercise. It's not a terribly satisfying answer, but the truth is probably that the MtAs setting is inconsistent and there's no real answer to be found regarding the Technocracy, and every interpretation with at least some backing in the text has a claim on being valid.
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Apr 29, 2019 04:34
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Joe Slowboat posted:Archonex, what is your preferred solution to 'The gods of reality, who are the hypostases which most define how the world works, have cults in every splat, and are literally untouchable except by Supernal magic, are of the opinion that Oppression Is Good' since you outright condemn the Pentacle? What are you going to do about the horrific injustice of the Lie, of the demiurges, of the universe's wound? There is also the fact that he keeps insisting that the authors are lying to the readers when they say that Awakening all of mankind would result in paradise. Despite the fact that Mage the Awakening is a fictional world that only exists in the form of words written by those authors. Look I don’t plan on letting go of this because it actually concerns me in a way that makes me want to try to probe at your thought processes, potentially in order to recommend... healthier ways of thinking? I don’t know how to phrase this other than as concern for your ability to distinguish reality form fiction. I don’t mean that I think you’re mentally ill or something, just that you may have a very not constructive relationship with fictional ideas. Edit: I mean or you are, either consciously or by caring more about winning an argument than saying things you think are true, trolling us. jakodee fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 04:39
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Guide to the Technocracy was deliberately written as parody, but unfortunately satire is opaque to a lot of people, especially if they were perfectly happy to believe what it's telling them.
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Apr 29, 2019 04:42
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Rand Brittain posted:Guide to the Technocracy was deliberately written as parody, but unfortunately satire is opaque to a lot of people, especially if they were perfectly happy to believe what it's telling them. Guide to the Technocracy (Void Engineers, specifically) was the first and only OMage book I read in college. So I had no baseline to compare it to, though I was concerned that they seemed to be preparing to sell humanity out to space monsters so they could launch generation ships. E: Also, I know OMage was really all in on 'technology and magic are basically the same thing, just technology is more widely believed in' - Awakening doesn't really agree, since Supernal Magic requires Gnosis and the capacity to form an Imago. Nonetheless, both gamelines do seem to basically agree that magic is not an extradimensional energy that lets you break the rules, but a more complete understanding (or in OMage's case... willful relationship with?) the real rules. In a sense, magic is a kind of technology, albeit one that relies on personal awareness rather than external machinery. So... if one's really all in for the Banishers, surely one must also be against the internet and airplanes, since they allow for vastly increased personal capacity for destruction or deception? And keep in mind... those technologies are not available to everyone. They're getting less limited, but only by effort to expand that network. Mass Awakening is comparable to giving everyone access to that form of technology, to that knowledge of magical manipulation, a deeply democratic action. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 04:44
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jakodee posted:There is also the fact that he keeps insisting that the authors are lying to the readers when they say that Awakening all of mankind would result in paradise. Despite the fact that Mage the Awakening is a fictional world that only exists in the form of words written by those authors. I do think that Archonex has the perspective that awakening and becoming a mage is like getting given a piece of super-power and proceeding to use it to gently caress around, when it seems very clear in multiple places that it is more like "you have become partially what you always had the ability to be, and through training and practice may become even more so." This is legitimately weird but it isn't like it's a new concept, either, they didn't invent this for Mage.
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Apr 29, 2019 04:47
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jakodee posted:Why do you think that mages having enormous potential that could be realized in the future and mages being abusive fuckups now are contradictory. I don’t understand. And it all flies in he gave of the fact that there is, at least hypothetically, a method to solve literally all problems: Mass Ascension. You're talking about time travel capable super-beings that can basically alter reality at the high end of things. And mind you we're also talking about time travel capable super-beings that can basically alter reality at the high end of things that are canonically stated to have been around for at least over 6,000 years. If not far longer than that, since it's a plot point that the time-stream is literally hosed so badly around the time period the Vinca are around that no one can really tell how long the or sapient humans have actually been around past maybe 6,000ish years. Most of that time of which was spent dickering and loving with each other or damaging the stability of the world even further for short term personal or ideological gains. Even removing the possibility of time travel from the equation they've had plenty of time to fix the world if that's what the majority of them wanted to do. Beyond that, at a certain point it's hard for me to look at the setting, constantly see horrible poo poo like "Oh hey, just about all the anti-Exarch mages in Chicago murdered each other over the rumor of a relic that'd let them ascend to become arch-mages.". Or "Huh, the Mysterium has a sub-faction of what are essentially nazi-mages that see muggles as the Untermensch". Or "Oh, so they ran down the Pangaean Fox Deity, pinned it down, and ripped it's soul out so they could use it as a gigantic supernal battery. An act which drove away the Pangaean Wolf deity/whatever you want to call the being that werewolves consider their creator and basically ostracized all of humanity by proxy.". Or "Oh hey, an arch-mage named Hyperion accidentally redacted global Mithrite worship from history in favor of replacing it with Christianity as the dominant global religion. So much for all those people that were born as a result of it! But hey, at least he got to ascend!". Or just generally "Oh hey, here's another fiction blurb or statement in the text that within the wider context of the setting describes how ____ mage/s opposed to the Exarch's are basically loving over the rest of reality to ascend to the Supernal." before I just shrug and have to admit that both sides are written as being bad only in entirely different ways. The list goes on and on too. If I tried to list it all out it'd be far longer than that run on paragraph. Hell, it even goes beyond Awakening's game line content itself. There was even a vampire-centric novel where mages turned up as a side characters only for it to turn out that, barring one character, they're all backstabbing jackasses out for power in one way or another. Cue a slaughter as they murder each other and anyone in their way while trying to get a hold of an Abyssal relic of all things. This all happens while the wielder of said relic is getting ready to essentially enact a ritual that would basically diablerize the entire human population of the city, including it's mage populace. So, uh, y'know. Priorities. Also, quit deliberately misinterpreting what I say. My point isn't that the authors are lying to you to cover up the truth of mage. It's that the themes they say Awakening is about are heavily undermined by the reality of what is shown in the greater whole of the material. Hell, Wisdom is literally a metric for mages and one of the other big themes is hubris and where it takes you. But often it seems like hubris is shown more often than wisdom. And for all the potential that mages are supposed to have to make a paradise we pretty much only ever get to see the problems they make. Which paints an entirely different picture of the setting than what we're told they are. Archonex fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 04:49
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Deciding that you don't agree with the high-level approach a setting takes to its themes, and using that disagreement to imagine a different set of street-level facts, is basically what causes all Mage discussions to break down.
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Apr 29, 2019 04:52
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jakodee posted:There is also the fact that he keeps insisting that the authors are lying to the readers when they say that Awakening all of mankind would result in paradise. They could just be very stupid, if they've ever said that. I mean stripped to it's most basic level the idea of "Mass Awakening" as a solution to the problem of the Exarchs is saying "Man, these mages sure are a problem. You know what we need? More mages!". Which, on the face of it, is a profoundly stupid thing to believe. Thankfully I don't know that anyone has ever actually put it that way out of text. I'm sure some mages believe that, because people love to think they are special despite all evidence they aren't, but I don't know that the actual reality of the setting holds it up. If anything you'd want better mages, not more of them.
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Apr 29, 2019 04:52
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Archonex posted:Also, quit deliberately misinterpreting what I say. My point isn't that the authors are lying to you to cover up the truth of mage. It's that the themes they say Awakening is about are heavily undermined by the reality of what is shown in the greater whole of the material. Hell, Wisdom is literally a metric for mages and one of the other big themes is hubris and where it takes you. But often it seems like hubris is shown more often than Wisdom. And for all the potential that mages are supposed to have to make a paradise we pretty much only ever get to see the problems they make. Which paints an entirely different picture of the setting.
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Apr 29, 2019 04:52
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Rand Brittain posted:Guide to the Technocracy was deliberately written as parody, but unfortunately satire is opaque to a lot of people, especially if they were perfectly happy to believe what it's telling them. I think it might have been Malcolm Sheppard who said that the core Mage: the Ascension 1e theme of people being alienated by technology is one that's counter intuitive to a big portion of the audience. The point was never that flushing toilets and vaccines are bad and magic hippies are good. It's that small i technocracy - mechanized border security, racist facial recognition algorithms, always-on amazon echo mics, and telecoms ready to turn over all records to the cops - is hosed up and worth identifying and resisting.
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Apr 29, 2019 04:55
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The problem is not with Awakening. It's with Awakening being in the hands of a tiny minority (and to a lesser extent, with Obsession. We don't know if Gnosis caused Obsession before the Exarchs, but for the sake of argument we'll assume that it did.) Being a Mage means having knowledge, i.e. Gnosis, of the higher functions of reality, which allows one to manipulate them, in a way not dissimilar to the hacking done in The Matrix. That knowledge causes mages to be obsessive and driven, but, the alternative is ignorance: A humanity unaware of fundamental laws of reality and unable to change them, when those laws were written by tyrants. And again, my argument does not hinge on mages being good people. Indeed, they can have hosed up constantly for millennia as a collective! But, uh, that's all the more reason to get working on convincing them to act for the good of humanity. The Pentacle is trying, albeit with its own problems, because the Pentacle believes that the Exarchs running reality is unacceptable and that something needs to be done about it. If you have a better Mage collective idea, get to work! But stating that mages shouldn't exist because they haven't managed to fix the world is not dissimilar from saying that we should give up on physics because of the atom bomb. Gnosis is power, and power used badly is bad, but without some kind of power we're never going to actually fix the underlying conditions of reality. Or you can keep insisting collective action for the good of humanity is impossible. It's certainly never going to be written into a horror game's backstory, because it's more difficult to write plot hooks around it! Writing in 'and then Pentacle mages manifestly improved reality' is less valuable use of wordcount than 'here's a horrible monster thing that got created by some mages messing around.' But that's all the more reason for the PCs to try. The Pentacle is cool because for all its flaws, it's striving for utopia. I find the horror of the magnitude of that task much more interesting than a horror mode that says the task is impossible, and anyone who claims to want to make it happen is actually just a monster themselves. Hope for change is faint and fluttering; Banishers are horror monsters because they would rather see hope snuffed out than be faced with the unimaginable possibility of a different world. E: As far as I can tell the Technocracy issue also arises because the writers have not been consistently good at identifying why technology is alienating, and therefore, which technology is alienating. Much like a lot of modernist works, the alienation of modern society is associated with overt technological change, rather than the systems of power that undergird society. The Exarchs, meanwhile, do in fact identify sources of human misery in systems of control, and you get Seers Ministries based specifically around technological alienation in Pantechnicon and the like. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 05:00
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Nessus posted:It is somewhat harder to show the positive effects of wisdom because wisdom often boils down to "You didn't gently caress up and ruin everything." You don't see disasters that don't happen. Mages are supposed to have the potential to alter reality so that hardly holds water. Hell, the Silver Ladder has a literal stated goal of it, alongside some other aligned factions. If this is a thing that they can do, (and they can do it) then why aren't we ever shown it happening? Where's the stories about some mage getting it in their head to pre-empt a massacre? Where's the guy who goes back in time and instead of wiping out an entire religion to ascend lays the foundations for a better world? I mean, the obvious answer is that reading about some NPC doing all the crazy heroic poo poo the players want to get up too doesn't make for an interesting game for players to muck around in and reeks of the OWoD's metaplot. But by that same token you can't be throwing out global atrocities on the side of the good guys and expect every reader to go "Yup. I'm rooting for these guys and it's all gonna be worth it in the end.". That's hosed up. And that's not to say that we don't get fiction showing the good they do. But it's far less prominent. Hell, to get back to the novels for a second the only other novel with a big mage focus was that three sided Chicago story where it tells of a crisis from the perspective of three different game lines. In the Mage game line the establishment of the Pentacle Orders simply does not give a gently caress that the world might literally be about to end, or at least experience a global pandemic. They're all too busy playing power games to give a poo poo, and even the POV mage characters basically admit they're assholes. The mage that does directly contribute to saving everyone in their respective book even has to go so far as to commit suicide to do it. And at the end the other heroes get bitched out at by the aforementioned establishment members for creating a scene. Said mages are also described in their lore book as almost unilaterally being broken and fundamentally hosed up people that have done some genuinely evil things in the past. One even mind raped his wife so badly when she was protecting her children from him that she went nuts. Said mind raping was so horrible in potency that her sanity ended up snapping so hard and she went from a normal mage to becoming some sort of really warped version of a Banisher. What i'm talking about isn't something i've noticed once or twice. It's something i've noticed as a running theme. And if i'm supposed to believe that Mages are so good either for reality or people at large then at some point you gotta show that they're actually good and not just hubris driven fanatics hungry for power or barely functional idiots that really shouldn't have a hand on the levers of reality. Also, you're not gonna convince the guy who thinks he's literally existentially superior to you to listen to you and straighten the gently caress up. Even assuming your ST has you meet one of the nice ones in the game it's a feature of the game line that most people can't even tell when a mage is doing their thing. Which kind of exacerbates the problems in an already shoddy allegory. Archonex fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 05:05
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I would really appreciate your thoughts on the alternative to letting the Exarchs rule reality, Archonex! I've gone to all this trouble of writing  !E: Also... Is there any splat that isn't like you describe? The Chronicles makes some pretty pessimistic assumptions about human nature, and Mages are humans plus magic. They're as varied as any other collection of humans, morally speaking. So unless you're arguing that humans ultimately should be understood, in the Chronicles, to be too dumb and evil to collectively shape history, I don't see why mages in particular should be judged that harshly.
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Apr 29, 2019 05:10
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Joe Slowboat posted:I would really appreciate your thoughts on the alternative to letting the Exarchs rule reality, Archonex! I've gone to all this trouble of writing And yet this avoids both my complaint with the line all over again along with what i've pointed out several times now in regards to the Exarch's. Right, i'm not gonna get an honest rebuttal this time around. So i'll just stop here.
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Apr 29, 2019 05:10
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Archonex posted:And yet this avoids both my complaint with the line all over again along with what i've pointed out several times now in regards to the Exarch's. Your only response on the Exarch level, though, has been 'I'm not pro-Exarch, I'm pro-human' - and the idea that mages are collectively no better than the Exarchs. Or, I suppose, the idea that the Exarchs will never be beaten. But that doesn't actually respond to my point. Unless you are literally arguing that it's better to have the world ruled by the Exarchs, who explicitly do not rely on the Seers to make the world fit their vision, than to have mages running around loving up a bunch (and potentially defeating them), then I guess you have made your point. It's true, if one takes it for granted that mages including player characters cannot and never will overthrow the Exarchs, or successfully imagine and enact a better world than this one... well, it means some really grim assumptions about revolution. Thematically, this amounts to you stating that the things the Exarchs represent are unchangeable universal constants in the setting, and attempts to change them are doomed because humans (mages are, after all, humans) are simply too flawed to ever create a better world. That's, well, the classic conservative opinion. I suppose you could be defending that as a lens for interpreting the text! But, y'know, maybe don't act like the one reasonable person for insisting on that mode of interpretation. e: also I think the whole 'what humans can build with their hands!' thing is silly in the setting's cosmology. That's like saying 'look, evil wizards have made it so only a subsection of humanity can learn to read or operate advanced technology. Rather than give everyone access to these technologies, we should destroy these tools, because they radically expand an individual's capacity to harm others. And any fantasy of a just society in which these technologies are restrained and organized so that everyone benefits is impossible and ludicrous.' Magic is the actual operation of the Mage setting, the rules of reality. And it is technology - in fact, it's directly isomorphic with the unequal distribution of technological power in the present day (as well as, of course, political power, access to knowledge and technical skills, etc etc). Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 05:16
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He factually is pro-Exarch because his stance is the Exarchs' stance: magic is too dangerous for humans to have. If humans get it, they just make a big mess of things. It must be kept from them.
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Apr 29, 2019 05:20
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Joe Slowboat posted:Your only response on the Exarch level, though, has been 'I'm not pro-Exarch, I'm pro-human' - and the idea that mages are collectively no better than the Exarchs. Or, I suppose, the idea that the Exarchs will never be beaten. (This assumes of course that in the context of MtA there is an objectively extant planet Earth, which might not be a given...) e: It's like that one good thing Yudkowsky wrote. NEO: "Using humans as batteries makes no sense, it violates the laws of thermodynamics." MORPHEUS: "Where did you learn about the laws of thermodynamics?" NEO: "In the Matrix." MORPHEUS: "The machines tell clever lies."
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Apr 29, 2019 05:21
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Ferrinus posted:He factually is pro-Exarch because his stance is the Exarchs' stance: magic is too dangerous for humans to have. If humans get it, they just make a big mess of things. It must be kept from them. I mean to be fair the Exarchs got magic and hosed up all existence, so it's not like they don't have evidence on their side.
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Apr 29, 2019 05:24
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Nessus posted:I think Archonex's position is that the current state of affairs sucks, but the textual evidence suggests that mages writ large would not necessarily be any better in terms of facts on the ground, because they are repeatedly shown loving up with very few contrary examples. So, while their goals may be abstractly desirable, you would be more likely to gently caress things up and accomplish things like "one guy with awakened powers rolls coal so hard the planet Earth becomes like Venus, because his driving life goal is to own the libs." Yeah, and I'm asking for him to explicitly state "I think giving humanity at large access to expanded personal capacity, and the excesses that might result, is a worse world than one in which the Exarchs continue to rule but humans can't individually do that stuff." By framing magic as 'unnatural' and alien to the setting, rather than its underlying nature, Archonex is displacing that position into one that can rely on the idea that mages, with all their lovely decisions, are inherently unlike humans to such a degree that turning a human into a mage turns them into a worse person who will do evil things. I don't actually think that's well-supported by the system, given that you need to start killing people (or doing similar things) to hit the dangerous levels of Wisdom and mechanically enforced megalomania. Before that, Gnosis is just knowledge. Mages are lovely in the Chronicles because people, in general, are written as lovely in the Chronicles. And that can be as easily blamed on the structure of where one gets NPCs (plot hooks), as on the supposed nature of humanity. If you generalized 'humans' from their decisions in horror novels, I imagine you'd get a pretty dim view of the species, but even a horror novel rarely expects you to generalize that.
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Apr 29, 2019 05:27
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Mulva posted:I mean to be fair the Exarchs got magic and hosed up all existence, so it's not like they don't have evidence on their side. (in bourgeoise voice) Boy, revolutions sure are violent, we'd better stop having them. Unrelatedly, please do not think about how I got my hands on this state I am using to repress you.
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Apr 29, 2019 05:30
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Joe Slowboat posted:Your only response on the Exarch level, though, has been 'I'm not pro-Exarch, I'm pro-human' - and the idea that mages are collectively no better than the Exarchs. Or, I suppose, the idea that the Exarchs will never be beaten. My point is that if the magic of the game line is consistently being shown to be used to such a ruinous and horrific effect even by the protagonists then maybe it shouldn't exist at all. Again, hence the Banisher jokes both now and the last time we discussed this a year or more ago. A time I think you were even involved in and acted just as lovely in. If you weren't being disingenuous as hell you'd know this. I'm pretty sure you do, but you just keep ducking around the actual issues with the game that I espoused to talk about the Exarch's as if that absolves the rest of the line of it's issues. Which completely ignores everything I said in favor of some milquetoast gesturing at another narrative device. I'm not going to sit here and waste my time typing rebuttals at where ever you set the goal posts when you won't even loving address a word of what I actually type. Joe Slowboat posted:I would really appreciate your thoughts on the alternative to letting the Exarchs rule reality, Archonex! I've gone to all this trouble of writing What I will do however is point out how incredibly loving stupid the bolded part is since I missed that post earlier. Last I checked vampires, werewolves, and the other supernatural splats can't break reality in half or redact entire organizations from history by accident. Nor are we told they have done or ever even tried to do so. It's also not unreasonable to look at the setting expecting the guys who are really overpowered compared to the rest of the setting to be measured according to the standards both their game line sets and the impact their overpowered abilities have on the game world. There's also a hell of a lot of a difference between some vampire killing someone either accidentally or deliberately and someone literally nuking the gently caress out of an entire alternate timeline (Again, something both the Exarch's and arch-mages of both sides teamed up to do in 1e at one point. The list of horrible poo poo goes on and on.) and killing billions of people. By that logic you ought to say that Beast is an okay game line because not all Beasts a ST could put in a game are going to be bad people. Which would ignore the (much, much, bigger and far more serious issues than Mage. Abuse apologia is far worse than self-contradicting writing.) issues that Beast had by gesturing at a potential narrative device in an attempt to disregard the larger argument about the entirety of the content itself. Nessus posted:I think Archonex's position is that the current state of affairs sucks, but the textual evidence suggests that mages writ large would not necessarily be any better in terms of facts on the ground, because they are repeatedly shown loving up with very few contrary examples. So, while their goals may be abstractly desirable, you would be more likely to gently caress things up and accomplish things like "one guy with awakened powers rolls coal so hard the planet Earth becomes like Venus, because his driving life goal is to own the libs." Yup. This got addressed on the last page but people gotta stretch things out by not addressing anything I actually type so  .
Archonex fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 05:39
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If you're "pro-banisher", you are in fact pro-exarch. It's like how being "blackpilled" or a nihilist or whatever is in practice just another flavor of conservatism. All banishers can do is lose, and if the opposition loses then the status quo wins by default.
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Apr 29, 2019 05:44
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Hey maybe it's kind of lovely to try and conflate the degree to which people choose to play and buy-in to these games' themes and tones with their actual political leanings, and to compare them directly to unfavorable groups.
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Apr 29, 2019 05:47
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I'm no expert on the line, but Awakening seems to be fairly ambivalent about the liberatory value of the worldly power of magic, even if we are to understand that gnosis (not the stat) is valuable - magic use in the Fallen World is always fraught and, in terms of Wisdom, best done sparingly and with exacting care. The Diamond also doesn't read to me as intending to democratize magic - half of its component Orders are dedicated to its regulation and protection, and much of the influence the Diamond exerts in Sleeping society is intended to conceal, misdirect, and sequester magic from Sleepers. The Pentacle's obviously better than its adversaries, but I don't know that we're to understand any mage order or cult as being worthy of our praise. They provide reasons (and justifications) for mages to use magic, and often that's not the Wisest course of action.
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Apr 29, 2019 05:48
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You know what, I had a whole thing but it's very simple, and I'd rather be shorter and slightly less civil. Mages are not depicted as psychologically different from humanity at large beyond being intensely curious about magic and (if they start murdering people or doing other wisdom-degrading things) given to megalomania. Nothing about being a Mage makes a human less human, they just also have seen beyond the world. So, the claim is that turning humanity at large into mages will gently caress things up worse; in practice, that means the claim is that humanity, not 'mages,' should not have the power of magic. Magic is also both thematically and specifically the power to understand the underlying factors in the world and, potentially, change them. Saying that humanity will always misuse magic is saying that humanity at large cannot be trusted to change the world, and the status quo is necessarily the best we can have. It applies as much to the classic B-Movie 'Man was not meant to have such technology!' as it does to Supernal magic, only here, that technique, that sorcery is the only way to unseat the ordering principles of society (control through xenophobia, capitalism, surveillance, etc). Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 05:54
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Five Eyes posted:I'm no expert on the line, but Awakening seems to be fairly ambivalent about the liberatory value of the worldly power of magic, even if we are to understand that gnosis (not the stat) is valuable - magic use in the Fallen World is always fraught and, in terms of Wisdom, best done sparingly and with exacting care. The Diamond (and Pentacle) mission statement is absolutely to democratize magic. The Mysterium and Veil exist for reasons of immediate practical necessity, just like members of any revolutionary movement whose end goal is liberation might need to operate covertly in the immediate timeframe.
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Apr 29, 2019 05:57
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Ferrinus posted:The Diamond (and Pentacle) mission statement is absolutely to democratize magic. The Mysterium and Veil exist for reasons of immediate practical necessity, just like members of any revolutionary movement whose end goal is liberation might need to operate covertly in the immediate timeframe. It's even explicitly stated that the Pentacle only barely accepted the Guardians, because the Guardians grudgingly agreed that maybe someday magic can be for everyone. The Guardians just think a messiah is necessary first, which is why they keep their Esoteric Tenets secret from the rest of the Orders.
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Apr 29, 2019 06:01
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Ferrinus posted:(in bourgeoise voice) Boy, revolutions sure are violent, we'd better stop having them. Unrelatedly, please do not think about how I got my hands on this state I am using to repress you. I mean that doesn't make them wrong, just assholes. Ferrinus posted:If you're "pro-banisher", you are in fact pro-exarch. It's like how being "blackpilled" or a nihilist or whatever is in practice just another flavor of conservatism. All banishers can do is lose, and if the opposition loses then the status quo wins by default. No, they could kill all the mages and storm the gates of the Supernal. I don't know what that would actually do, I just know that everyone up there is profoundly terrified of it. And that I'd rather everyone up there not be up there, so, hey, could be good for a laugh.
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Apr 29, 2019 06:09
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...I mean if Banishers stormed the Supernal (and it would have to be Banishers because they are mages, who can mage)... the universe would probably cease to exist. The world is an emanation and reflection of the Supernal. Also the idea of being happily in favor of Banishers destroying the fundamental conceptual objects that keep reality real, but apparently opposed to humanity editing those conceptual objects to hopefully create a less awful universe, boggles the mind. Embracing nihilism to spite people who believe the world can be radically improved is in fact precisely what 'black-pill' is supposed to mean, though I wouldn't in fact call anyone here that because it has a much more specific connotation of Nazism and reactionary violence. E: Archonex, on the other hand, I will happily accuse of supporting the Exarchs because he's been insulting me for trying to get a straight answer about whether humanity ought to be able to change the universe (in this setting). So, y'know, I'm all in on spitefully associating him with the Ruin, Exarch of Nothing Better is Possible. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 06:13
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Joe Slowboat posted:You know what, I had a whole thing but it's very simple, and I'd rather be shorter and slightly less civil. I think he's a fascist at this point. He may not identify as one or be a troll or anything, but he's spent a lot of words throwing an enormous number of mostly contradictory and perfunctory arguments straight off of the Hard Man checklist and never responding to criticisms of them other than to deny that he ever made his main points. He seems to hate the idea of humans having power in general. This is a serious post. I think we shouldn't allow ourselves to be drawn into any arguments with or interact with Archonex anymore. Edit: We have had pages of discussion and Archonex has used: "people can't be trusted with power", "I'm not arguing for the system, I'm arguing against the revolution", "Revolutionaries are just in it to take power for themselves, they don't really believe it", and even "Oppression is better than Chaos". This is all extremely concerning because Archonex seems to be basing his version of the setting on what he wished it would be, rather than the setting written, ignoring the actual text, I think to make arguments for his political affiliation. Whether anyone else wants to keep interaction with him, I'm going to block him I think, or whatever this site's equivalent is. I haven't actually had to use it until now. Second Edit: To be clear: I still doubt he's a consciously fascist infiltrator; which is something I've seen on this site; I think he's just too deep down the political hole to be worth trying to interact with in the context of a tabletop rolepalying game discussion. Like your weird neo-confederate uncle. jakodee fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 06:14
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Joe Slowboat posted:...I mean if Banishers stormed the Supernal (and it would have to be Banishers because they are mages, who can mage)... the universe would probably cease to exist. The world is an emanation and reflection of the Supernal.
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Apr 29, 2019 06:15
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Mulva posted:I mean that doesn't make them wrong, just assholes. Well, propaganda isn't a matter of lies so much as emphasis. It's absolutely true that revolutions are bloody and nightmarish, that Pentacle Mage #374 joined the Tremere, whatever. The question is, who's telling it to you and what benefits do they derive from the conclusions you're drawing from it? quote:No, they could kill all the mages and storm the gates of the Supernal. I don't know what that would actually do, I just know that everyone up there is profoundly terrified of it. And that I'd rather everyone up there not be up there, so, hey, could be good for a laugh. I don't actually think they can, because they have no organization and therefore no serious capacity to excel in the use of magic. They can just flame out in various ways. An actual, like, "banisher Order" with an anti-magic ideology but an actual infrastructure and praxis capable of challenging the powers that be would just, like... be the Guardians of the Veil.
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Apr 29, 2019 06:17
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Ironslave posted:Hey maybe it's kind of lovely to try and conflate the degree to which people choose to play and buy-in to these games' themes and tones with their actual political leanings, and to compare them directly to unfavorable groups. Thanks for pointing that out. For the record i'm a firm Democratic Socialist leaning at least a bit into outright anti-cap territory. And, being a minority that a good chunk of the policy making portions of the local conservatives want to purge from society you'd have to be off your rocker to think that anything i've posted is an endorsement of the insane hyper right wing poo poo the Exarch's and Seers get up too in the books. My point was bigger than that. Joe Slowboat posted:You know what, I had a whole thing but it's very simple, and I'd rather be shorter and slightly less civil. I know you've changed the subject again but holy poo poo is this naive. It's spoken like someone who's never met someone who had to fear for their own safety and life. Or never met anyone that wants to drive you straight out of society. Or who thinks you're inferior from them due to how you were born. What do you think would happen if a bunch of neo-nazi's got magical powers? Especially in a setting like the NWoD? Or what do you think would happen if, in the NWoD/CofD an ardent believer in the modern day KKK's ideologies member woke up one day, had some sort of trippy supernal vision, and realized he could light people on fire with a few waves of his hands? Do you think it's all cynical political theater? Because if so i'd invite you to turn on the TV and take a look at the latest tragedy taking place. Even in this divergence from the actual talking points I made that you keep diverting around you sound incredibly sheltered. You don't give power to the persecutors and bigots when there's a massive dominant institution in place that will gladly optimize their actions to the greatest effect. That's how you make minorities a sacrifice to your cause and end up with them being left behind in the dirt. If all you're doing is giving everyone the same powers then all you've done is change the battlefield, and, in the case of crazy poo poo like "What if everyone had magic!" essentially have given an institutionally advantaged persecutor a murder weapon they can call on at any time quite possibly from any distance. That's not emancipation from the tyranny of the Exarchs or whatever. It's you stroking yourself off at the idea of fixing a fictional setting's problems while ignoring that it'd not do that at all and would get a bunch of innocent people killed. And just...gently caress it i'm taking my own advice and not engaging with you anymore. It's early in the morning here and I need to rest, not argue about fantasy books online. Archonex fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 06:22
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jakodee posted:He seems to hate the idea of humans having power in general. This is, basically, my read at this point (with the caveat that this may only apply to the universe of the Chronicles and specifically Mage, where power doesn't look like politics or technology, but like magic). And I can imagine a non-fascistic version of that, which is inherently conservative, but is not really reactionary. Except that the setting is explicitly run by gods of fascism, which is why I keep bringing up the Exarchs: The Chronicles world is one where fascists are in power, they just wield that power through a symbolic conceptual framework. They can be opposed in a variety of ways, which likely require magic if they are ever going to succeed. And, to be fair, I'm also on board with removing the capacity for destroying entire universes and timelines from the hands of individuals. Maybe we ought to rewrite the laws of reality to prevent such violence being enacted upon anyone, or hey, maybe we should even try to make it so that nobody can be harmed without their consent and everyone is equally empowered to shape reality? E: Right, I'm sheltered for saying 'sometimes, we have to fight, because there is already violence being done to the vulnerable.' gently caress off. There are already people who can enact immense violence due to their connection to the system of the world. They're using that to bomb Yemen. That's the Exarchs, metaphorically but also literally: The violence inherent to the current system of the world, including crushing economic exploitation and cops shooting unarmed teenagers. In Mage, the only tool that can change that is magic (metaphorically, acting on some kind of knowledge). Your argument is 'well if we let people disrupt the current status quo, some of them will do evil things, how dare you hand out guns at random.' Not to mention there's a faction whose entire reason to exist is to try to make sure only decent people Awaken (they're a death cult too, it's a horror setting). Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 06:22
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Ironslave posted:Hey maybe it's kind of lovely to try and conflate the degree to which people choose to play and buy-in to these games' themes and tones with their actual political leanings, and to compare them directly to unfavorable groups. That isn't What Archonex is doing. I think he's, consciously or not, trying to gaslight people into thinking the Mage is actually a game about how the Seers are Right. People who are offended by the idea of human's not being subjugated to a harsh authoritarian power in fiction, to the point that they abandon talking about the actual game to preach to people about how the masses cannot be trusted, probably sincerely believe the masses cannot be trusted.
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Apr 29, 2019 06:28
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Archonex posted:I know you've changed the subject again but holy poo poo is this naive. It's spoken like someone who's never met someone who had to fear for their own safety and life. Or never met anyone that wants to drive you straight out of society. Or who thinks you're inferior from them due to how you were born. What do you think would happen if a bunch of neo-nazi's got magical powers? Especially in a setting like the NWoD? Or what do you think would happen if, in the NWoD/CofD an ardent believer in the modern day KKK's ideologies member woke up one day, had some sort of trippy supernal vision, and realized he could light people on fire with a few waves of his hands? Do you think it's all cynical political theater? Because if so i'd invite you to turn on the TV and take a look at the latest tragedy taking place. In theory, everyone would be getting these abilities at once. Reality itself would be fundamentally different in the bargain. Mr. Klansman might be incapable of doing harm to others any more, one way or another. On a smaller scale, I presume that if one were to injure, destroy or replace whatever Exarch is emanating racism, as currently constructed, the ideology in mundane reality would begin to fade or mutate.
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Apr 29, 2019 06:30
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