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Captain Monkey posted:Yeah but Ascension was a lot more fun. The Euthanatos kick the Moros' rear end every single day in terms of theme and cool factor. Acanthus and Moros are Paths, not an organisation. You're comparing two different things. What you're saying is the equivalent of "being a Christian is so much cooler than being British". bewilderment fucked around with this message at 06:34 on May 1, 2019 |
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May 1, 2019 06:30
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edit: The Euthanatos ALSO kick the Acanthus' rear end in terms of theme and cool factor. The Tradition so cool they copied it twice.
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I’m not sure I’ve ever even seen a good description of what a Euthanatos casting a spell is supposed to look like.
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May 1, 2019 06:32
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I really like Awakening's X and Y splats, aesthetically. OMage has never really appealed, because it has no actual feeling of occult traditions to me - it feels like New Agers, not Poke Runyon, fighting the Man or whatever. The Paths feel like distillations of (generally Western) occult themes, and Neoplatonism is a solid, interesting tradition in its own right. Add on all the weirdness, the revolutionary fervor (I also like Spire a lot), and the freeform magic system, and it has a lot of space to play games in. Though ironically for someone who cares about Awakening's metaphysics, I don't like Archmasters that much as playable space; I think it takes the focus of the setting away from the ground level to have actual playable Archmasters, and that's certainly reflected in how these discussions go. Also, Moros are awesome, how dare you. Necromancer alchemists who are constructed around the thematic explication of the Magnum Opus, the real philosopher's stone as the transmutation of the soul, is a fantastically well-designed occult schema. That thematic consistency makes the basic Moros symbolism a potent framework - the same is true of Obrimos (Forces and Prime as the fire of creation, revelation, etc), Mastigos (The Mind/Space correspondence is probably the most straightforwardly effective in the setting) and Thyrsus (Vitalism Shaman is a bit of a freebie). I'm less enthused with the Acanthus but that's because 'narrative' magic doesn't hugely appeal to me; very few occult traditions have thought of themselves as weaving tales, rather than finding the secret levers and arrangements of the world. Oh and of course the only thing I know about the Euthanatos is Voormas, if he was in fact that, and I found reading his White Wolfe Wiki page put me off OMage more than all the magechat arguments I've ever seen. Though that is in part a result of the 90s racism - it's not unusual to see a piece of nerd culture or literature posit Shiva as some kind of monstrous death god, but it's always really unpleasant with even a passing knowledge of the actual tradition.
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May 1, 2019 06:34
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Mostly 5th Edition, but I played a lot of 4th too. The system is deceptively simple, the game just loves throwing in lots of tiny subsystems and bonuses. One of the big things is that magic is very difficult to get really strong at but against anything other than wizards and other powerful supernatural beings it can do anything. Sounds fun. I’ve read a bunch of the 5th edition books since I wanted to see the path not taken relative to Mage the Ascension. I was a fan of how the Tremere were a mystery cult and not...vampire or soul stealers
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May 1, 2019 06:36
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Captain Monkey posted:Yeah but Ascension was a lot more fun. The Euthanatos kick the Moros' rear end every single day in terms of theme and cool factor. The Euthanatos are comparable to the Guardians. Paths are more like Avatar Essences than Traditions.
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May 1, 2019 06:37
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bewilderment posted:Acanthus and Moros are Paths, not an organisation. You're comparing two different things. The Euthanatoi are grouped by paradigm, and ehile there is an organization its not necessarily as stiff as you're thinking. They're not Hermetics or even Verbena level organized. I understand its apples to oranges in some ways, sinve they broke them up along different lines, but the flavor text for Euthanstoi is way cooler. Edit: Now the euthies are the gotv? Lol
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May 1, 2019 06:38
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I got the feeling, looking over M20, that Ascension is the Grant Morrison to Awakening's Neil Gaiman. All about the spiritual journey; very inwardly-focused. It's not about chasing mysteries and not really even about fighting the Technocracy. It's more like the sort of thing written on toilet paper at 3 AM in an Iowa bus station after swallowing an entire sheet of blotter acid; very revealing of the mental state of the author but not terribly much else. Seemed like it's a lot of potentially gonzo fun, where you can be either Jack Frost chasing a messianic ideal, or a Hot Topic reject shouting "EAT MY WHOLE rear end, TIN CAN MAN" as you throw four-dimensional snake grenades at a Terminator reject. bewilderment posted:Most Mage actual play involves doing things like fighting on top of a speeding train as you chase the renegade mage who stole your artifact, or convincing some Darkling-spirits (low level spirits of depression, gloom and generally feeling down) that they should shove off so your youth outreach centre can get some progress made. 100% this.
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May 1, 2019 06:40
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Joe Slowboat posted:Oh and of course the only thing I know about the Euthanatos is Voormas, if he was in fact that, and I found reading his White Wolfe Wiki page put me off OMage more than all the magechat arguments I've ever seen. Though that is in part a result of the 90s racism - it's not unusual to see a piece of nerd culture or literature posit Shiva as some kind of monstrous death god, but it's always really unpleasant with even a passing knowledge of the actual tradition. Fun detail: the Aeon of the Abyss's description matches Voormas's pretty darn closely.
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May 1, 2019 06:46
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I would personally consider Awakening more Warren Ellis than Neil Gaiman, but then, I also feel like Neil Gaiman... well. I still love Sandman, but American gods hasn't aged as well as teenage me would have hoped, rock be quite honest. And on a fundamental level he writes about 'belief' in an intensely 90s way, same as OMage. (I don't have a strong opinion on Morrison other than 'Animal Man was pretty cool, All-Star Superman was pretty self-indulgent') ...all of which dodges the real question: Alan Moore is an actual wizard, in that he practices ritual magic. What Mage setting is he operating in and how would we assign him a splat?
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May 1, 2019 06:47
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Ironslave posted:Fun detail: the Aeon of the Abyss's description matches Voormas's pretty darn closely. I'm aware, but also, I choose to ignore it because of how much I find 'a Thuggee who became a Mage, and later turned on his dark god' distasteful in the extreme. Very much 'poo poo that might fly in the 90s' that I have no desire to see in the present.
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May 1, 2019 06:50
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Berkshire Hunts posted:I’m not sure I’ve ever even seen a good description of what a Euthanatos casting a spell is supposed to look like. Joe Slowboat posted:...all of which dodges the real question: Alan Moore is an actual wizard, in that he practices ritual magic. What Mage setting is he operating in and how would we assign him a splat?
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May 1, 2019 07:01
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Joe Slowboat posted:...all of which dodges the real question: Alan Moore is an actual wizard, in that he practices ritual magic. What Mage setting is he operating in and how would we assign him a splat? Promethea is very Ascension, honestly. On the other side of the comics wizard feud, Invisibles and, uh, Nameless (I think that's the title?) are pretty appropriate to Awakening. Nameless is basically an argument-slash-mystic-assault against The Father.
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May 1, 2019 07:03
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Assuming Moore is a Pentacle Mage, since he wrote Promethea, what Order do you think he'd be most comfortable in? I'm inclined to say the Free Council (citing Promethea again, but also V). E: Promethea is about bringing about the magical apocalypse for all the right reasons, but I'm strongly of the opinion that it's more Awakening than Ascension, mostly because at no point is subjectivity on the table. There are platonic symbols (the wand, the cup) that exist, and the manipulation of which is magical... at the same time as human imagination is the key. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 07:06 on May 1, 2019 |
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May 1, 2019 07:04
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Consensual reality sucks and makes all the paradigms essentially meaningless. Screw Ascension.
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May 1, 2019 07:05
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Oh, I've read Nameless, the one about the John Constantine type seeing the Old Ones and the story getting all fractured. Eh, I suppose it gestures at anti-Father sorcery. I'd have to reread it to form a strong opinion.
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May 1, 2019 07:08
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Wow a lot of people never read the Euthanatos fluff. Its definitely not just 'flip a coin, bad guy gets whats coming' and it doesn't posit Shiva as a destructive monster. It views the whole of creation through the lens of Fate and Purpose. That can be as hard science as a math professor chasing chaos theory and the butterfly effect or as mystical as deeply religious Hindu spiritualists (that were, at times, poorly handled bc lol whitewolf). The Euthanatos' 'the world is bigger than you and moves in ineffably complex spirals and whirls that you can learn to read and control' is way better than 'yet another alchemist group obsessed with money and also ghosts i guess' or 'the fae bc capriciousness but not the True Fae because thatd be op'
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May 1, 2019 07:09
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ZeroCount posted:Consensual reality sucks and makes all the paradigms essentially meaningless. Screw Ascension. The arcana in Awakening do all this way better. Captain Monkey posted:Wow a lot of people never read the Euthanatos fluff. Its definitely not just 'flip a coin, bad guy gets whats coming' and it doesn't posit Shiva as a destructive monster. It views the whole of creation through the lens of Fate and Purpose. That can be as hard science as a math professor chasing chaos theory and the butterfly effect or as mystical as deeply religious Hindu spiritualists (that were, at times, poorly handled bc lol whitewolf). The Acanthus are similar. Nessus fucked around with this message at 07:16 on May 1, 2019 |
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May 1, 2019 07:13
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Nessus posted:I legit think that this was the origin of the mage chat demons, because the book was really explicit that what everyone believed was in large part bullshit, but also, here's an objective view of reality, outside of a hypothetical tenth magical sphere of meta-magic! This is absolutely true. But the point of the game is to be a cool person doing cool magic poo poo. And I like the way Ascension frames that. Its absolute garbage if you try to do any sort ot anslysis but that's not the point. That's like trying to delve deeply into the truth behind a dnd alignment chart to figure out why all drow are evil at birth.
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May 1, 2019 07:15
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Joe Slowboat posted:The Paths feel like distillations of (generally Western) occult themes, and Neoplatonism is a solid, interesting tradition in its own right. Add on all the weirdness, the revolutionary fervor (I also like Spire a lot), and the freeform magic system, and it has a lot of space to play games in. Though ironically for someone who cares about Awakening's metaphysics, I don't like Archmasters that much as playable space; I think it takes the focus of the setting away from the ground level to have actual playable Archmasters, and that's certainly reflected in how these discussions go. So 1E seemed to operate off the assumption that you'd scale up in power, gradually confronting grander and more powerful beings, edging upwards to Archmastery and potentially the secret masters of existence. The Exarchs were a Seer myth at publication, for example. By the time Imperial Mysteries rolled around at the end of the game's line, that assumption was evaporating. Sure, the supplement gives the rules for playable Archmasters, but it also depicts them as egotists and less as an example of who you'd be playing and more the type of antagonists and alienated individuals you'd find on the upper end of the spectrum. 2E seems to take the idea that game's not really about those scales; they're things you can interact with and brush against, and if you really want here's the way you can play it, but 2E very much focuses less on the giant picture and more on how far you're willing to go in the immediate to get what you want. I also find it a giant improvement.
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May 1, 2019 07:16
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Joe Slowboat posted:I would personally consider Awakening more Warren Ellis than Neil Gaiman, but then, I also feel like Neil Gaiman... well. I still love Sandman, but American gods hasn't aged as well as teenage me would have hoped, rock be quite honest. I disagree. I think select Ellis for Ascension because works like The Invisibles drip that kind of vibe; that incredibly 90s unexamined sense of rebellion, embodied by a group of club subculture rejects, all in service of fighting The Man. It's a vibe you also see in films like The Matrix and just seemed to be in the air at the time: "The sheeple are blinded by The Man, and only we enlightened punks can lead the revolution, which we're going to do via a comically over-the-top power fantasy!" Gaiman, on the other hand, wrote The Books of Magic, a story that is Awakening as all get-out; a tale of obsession, of the ethics of power, of the wonder of magic for its own sake, and the big questions it provokes.
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May 1, 2019 07:17
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Captain Monkey posted:This is absolutely true. But the point of the game is to be a cool person doing cool magic poo poo. And I like the way Ascension frames that. Personally I like playing games that have thematic meat to them. Not because of the magechat one can have, though I do actually like it (though I admit, I like it more in person with friends who aren't about to call me a soul rapist) but because it means constructing games for the table is much easier to do well. Awakening's themes are strong enough that just throwing together a Mystery that follows from the setting, or an Exarchic plot, will automatically have robust enough themes to build off of. Games that have a unifying vision are just better tools. E: I don't disagree that it's not as simple as "Gaiman is 90s belief fantasy as hell, so he's Ascension" but Ellis didn't write The Invisibles, that's Grant Morrison. Ellis' applicable works would be Planetary, Global Frequency, and various weird one-offs; he's more of an SFF writer but I would hugely enjoy if he wrote a wizard series, I'm sure. Also the apocryphal description of The Invisibles I've heard before is that it started off just being about Chaos Magic but when Morrison decided a central character was sympathetically linked to him, it became a spell to get him laid a bunch. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 07:25 on May 1, 2019 |
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May 1, 2019 07:21
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Joe Slowboat posted:E: I don't disagree that it's not as simple as "Gaiman is 90s belief fantasy as hell, so he's Ascension" but Ellis didn't write The Invisibles, that's Grant Morrison. Ellis' applicable works would be Planetary, Global Frequency, and various weird one-offs; he's more of an SFF writer but I would hugely enjoy if he wrote a wizard series, I'm sure. He wasn't saying Ellis wrote the Invisibles, he's saying a lot of Ellis's works have the same sort of vibe that work had.
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May 1, 2019 07:27
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I don't think you really ever get to the point where it matters in a typical tt group, and if it did the idea of s global awakening asks a lot of questions in owod too. Also you are still waaaaay too angry about some nerd calling you an utterly meaningless term over a quibble about rpg book metafiction.
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May 1, 2019 07:29
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Huh, that's really not the vibe I associate wth Ellis. I mean, maybe The Authority? That's not really about 'steeple' and a conspiracy though, and the ones that do involve fighting a system pretty universally have a lot of empathy for the people being lied to. There's some power fantasy in Spider Jerusalem, but mostly the fantasy is of being a print journalist that nonetheless people listen to. Planetary just directly pushes against that model; there is a conspiracy to hide the wonder in the world, but the answer isn't blowing things up, it's spacetime archaeology (Planetary is extremely Free Council, with maybe a hint of Mysterium). E: I think I have a right to still be annoyed at someone trivializing rape, and also calling me a rapist over an elf games disagreement... what, less than two days later in the same forum thread? Also, thematic depth is present at every session from the first- it's not a question of setting eschatology, it's a question of 'do these things aesthetically and thematically fit together.' It is, to some extent, the question of 'will the players come to care about these fictional constructs.' A good group can construct thematic depth in otherwise paper-thin games, but having a basis with real texture and weight to it is much easier. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 07:35 on May 1, 2019 |
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May 1, 2019 07:31
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I actually did gently caress up and get them confused; I meant Morrison. In my defense, it's 2:30 AM and I am running on maybe five hours of sleep. Ironslave is also right, though. Spider Jerusalem definitely carries a drop of that vibe.
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May 1, 2019 07:33
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Joe Slowboat posted:E: I think I have a right to still be annoyed at someone trivializing rape, and also calling me a rapist over an elf games disagreement... what, less than two days later in the same forum thread? I disagree. I'm not trying to pick a fight or anything but jesus dude, its fake. Nobody is hurt. And nobody's conception of rape as a crime is going to fundamentally shift since you're now trying to wrap yourself in the cloak of 'this trivializes rape!' You were upset and that's allowed but you keep bringing it up out of the blue in unrelated discussions. Let it go, buddy.
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May 1, 2019 07:36
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Captain Monkey posted:You were upset and that's allowed but you keep bringing it up out of the blue in unrelated discussions. Let it go, buddy. Eh, I think it's a pertinent example of why forum magechat is significantly worse than any IRL magechat I've ever experienced, but sure. I wasn't claiming it was an immense offense; I think it's gross that he went there, complete with detailed creepy imagery, but whatever. Your claim that RPGs shouldn't be analyzed for theme or whatever argument you were making is still terrible, though.
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May 1, 2019 07:41
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Good thing I didn't say that then! I even mentioned that the idea of a global awakening in ascension has some very neat implications, but I also mentioned that most groups don't really get to a point where any of this meta discussion matters. My entire point was that the euthies had baller aesthetics. That was a very poorly attempted swipe. Edit: I realize after rereading your post that I've drawn your ire and this will become your newest feud. Please consider not doing that instead.
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May 1, 2019 07:45
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Nameless isn't at all subtle - nothing that uses terms like "cosmic concentration camp" is.Joe Slowboat posted:E: Promethea is about bringing about the magical apocalypse for all the right reasons, but I'm strongly of the opinion that it's more Awakening than Ascension, mostly because at no point is subjectivity on the table. There are platonic symbols (the wand, the cup) that exist, and the manipulation of which is magical... at the same time as human imagination is the key. Meaning no offense, this mostly suggests to me that your familiarity with Ascension is primarily through its Internet MageChat existence, which is only peripherally related to the line.
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May 1, 2019 07:46
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I must not understand what point you're trying to make about 'meta discussion' - I admit, I can't tell what precisely you mean by it. I assumed it meant 'discussion of the meta-level concerns that go into constructing a setting.' As a result,, I honestly thought you meant 'thematic discussion doesn't matter because most groups don't get to the point where the themes would matter.' Obviously, I disagree with that. If that's not what you meant, cool. E: most of my understanding of Ascension is that it has consensus reality, and some exposure to the groups and characters. I do know it's not using Neoplatonic metaphysics in which the Cup and Wand are explicitly a big deal, since that's explicitly Awakening's new schtick with the Supernal - that's all I meant, Promethea has some literal (Neo)Platonism in it. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 07:53 on May 1, 2019 |
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May 1, 2019 07:49
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Joe Slowboat posted:If that's not what you meant, cool. Alright, buddy! Glad we're cool!
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May 1, 2019 07:51
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Captain Monkey posted:Alright, buddy! Glad we're cool! I mean, I am curious what you meant, but, sure. I'd appreciate if you didn't call me buddy, though.
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May 1, 2019 07:53
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Sure, pal.
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May 1, 2019 07:59
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Captain Monkey posted:The Euthanatoi are grouped by paradigm, and ehile there is an organization its not necessarily as stiff as you're thinking. They're not Hermetics or even Verbena level organized. I understand its apples to oranges in some ways, sinve they broke them up along different lines, but the flavor text for Euthanstoi is way cooler. Captain Monkey posted:Wow a lot of people never read the Euthanatos fluff. Its definitely not just 'flip a coin, bad guy gets whats coming' and it doesn't posit Shiva as a destructive monster. It views the whole of creation through the lens of Fate and Purpose. That can be as hard science as a math professor chasing chaos theory and the butterfly effect or as mystical as deeply religious Hindu spiritualists (that were, at times, poorly handled bc lol whitewolf). Moros aren't "an alchemist group obsessed with money" because Paths are analogous to avatar essences, not to Traditions. You might as well complaining that people with Pattern avatars are yet another orderly group obsessed with tidiness. It sounds like you may be basing your comments off of the 1E Path descriptions, which were absolutely wretched and seemed to have been written by someone who thought that each Path was a club of like-minded mages with an ideology, but that's totally off base. A Path represents the symbols from which you (primarily) draw your power but not the philosophy through which you view that power or what you think that power's for. The Awakening group most similar to the Euthanatos is the Guardians because the Guardians are strongly concerned with destiny, the soul, and reincarnation, and are often happy to simply ice people who they feel are discrediting those things.
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May 1, 2019 09:43
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So I have another question. It seems very obvious in retrospect but it didn't occur to me until somebody elsewhere who was down on werewolves brought it up. I've seen how tough werewolves are and they have some pretty nifty abilities. But how precisely do they intend stop two incredibly powerful cosmic forces that have spun out of control? Even if they could wipe out every last agent of the Wyrm and Weaver, what does that actually accomplish?
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May 1, 2019 14:02
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NikkolasKing posted:So I have another question. It seems very obvious in retrospect but it didn't occur to me until somebody elsewhere who was down on werewolves brought it up. I think it's part of why when making a new game, Forsaken has a much more "think global act local" focus around making your territory not lovely, instead of Apocalypse's "think global, probably act global-to-across-multiple-spirit-realms-eventually" deal.
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May 1, 2019 14:15
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Axelgear posted:I got the feeling, looking over M20, that Ascension is the Grant Morrison to Awakening's Neil Gaiman. All about the spiritual journey; very inwardly-focused. It's not about chasing mysteries and not really even about fighting the Technocracy. It's more like the sort of thing written on toilet paper at 3 AM in an Iowa bus station after swallowing an entire sheet of blotter acid; very revealing of the mental state of the author but not terribly much else. This is more a thing about M20 than it is about Mage20, which took the game entirely up its own navel by disowning all of the game's actual premises. Interesting fact: later editions of Ascension tend to assume there's something bizarrely noble about avoiding Paradox and being subtle, but the back cover of 1e is explicitly telling you to be bold and go crazy and says "we let things go to crap because we were too timid and didn't mage hard enough; perhaps you will have the courage to mage all over the place and go all-out and fix things."
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May 1, 2019 14:16
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Nothing good! Wyld triumphant is some "WH40k chaos wins, everywhere's the Warp now" level bad. Which is why we should all support the werespiders. They get balance.
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May 1, 2019 14:19
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I want to congratulate everyone in the last 10 or so pages of mage-chat on the successful consilium meeting. That's exactly how I see them winding around until they eventually diminish into something else. Lots of talk about big ideas and zero progress in any direction.
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May 1, 2019 14:41
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Axelgear posted:I got the feeling, looking over M20, that Ascension is the Grant Morrison to Awakening's Neil Gaiman. All about the spiritual journey; very inwardly-focused. It's not about chasing mysteries and not really even about fighting the Technocracy. It's more like the sort of thing written on toilet paper at 3 AM in an Iowa bus station after swallowing an entire sheet of blotter acid; very revealing of the mental state of the author but not terribly much else. Ironically, Neil Gaiman was an Ascension fan and sent one of the writers (Kathleen Ryan, I think?) fanmail. Awakening’s Seers are pretty openly based on Morrison’s “Outer Church” from the Invisibles.
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May 1, 2019 14:49
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