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JustJeff88 posted:What's the fun of having so much narrative agency when you're inevitably punished for any use of that power? Mage is a dumb game. I can only speak for 1e because it's what I'm currently reading but, RAW they shouldn't have been able to do vulgar magic out in the open, that should have been popping off Paradox poo poo left and right. The GM ignoring that so the players can do cool wizard poo poo is absolutely the best way to do things (and hopefully the rules have changed slightly regarding Paradox) because while I was reading the write up (it was well done BTW) I kept thinking "Paradox should be ripping them all apart for all this vulgar magic the PC's are doing" Also lol loving HIT Marks. God Mage is so loving stupid, in a lot of delightful ways like the Terminators and the abundance of katana wielding trenchcoat wearers in the core book art. And then you have the whole "Science is magic but not really and it's destroying magic" poo poo and it's just.......90's White Wolf as hell.
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May 11, 2022 15:16
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Sounds like it was in the Umbra, so Paradox isn't a problem - Consensual Reality doesn't factor in so much in a Spirit realm. And, yes, Mage does have a lot of peak 90s White Wolf in it. Funnily enough, I always thought that Technocracy games made more sense than Tradition games - you're all more on the same page, trying to protect ordinary people from the insanely dangerous world magical terrorists want to bring back. And then after you've done a bit of playing around with cool parascience you find out what exactly your masters have actually been doing... (Also, tiny pedantic pet peeve, Railing Kill, but "Pay the piper" does not mean "Pay the price". It's a shortened form of "He who pays the piper calls the tune" meaning if you're fronting the cash it's your call on how things are done)
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May 11, 2022 16:43
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Coward posted:Sounds like it was in the Umbra, so Paradox isn't a problem - Consensual Reality doesn't factor in so much in a Spirit realm. Everything I've read about the Technocracy in the 1e core has had me doing the Simpsons Frogurt bit in my head. "We protect the earth from the horrible things lurking in the deep Umbra" That's Good! "We're also oppressing humanity and making everything lovely and awful because that's how we achieve Ascension" That's bad. "But no Marauders or Nehphandi!" That's Good! "The gauntlet is also choking the life out of the planet and did we mention were literally behind everything that sucks?" That's bad.
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May 11, 2022 17:23
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Coward posted:(Also, tiny pedantic pet peeve, Railing Kill, but "Pay the piper" does not mean "Pay the price". It's a shortened form of "He who pays the piper calls the tune" meaning if you're fronting the cash it's your call on how things are done) Both interpretations are legitimate. Railing Kill's version refers to the Pied Piper of Hamelin - once you've gotten your services, you have to pay out, one way or another.
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May 11, 2022 17:47
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joylessdivision posted:Everything I've read about the Technocracy in the 1e core has had me doing the Simpsons Frogurt bit in my head. "One of our factions are astronauts!" "That's good!" "The astronauts operate Dyson Spheres and other extraterrestrial installations with working conditions that would make Bezos and Musk balk. They may not have even built some of these and instead just found them floating out in the Deep Universe." "..." "That's bad."
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May 11, 2022 18:03
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My understanding of Mage is minimal at best despite my wishes for it to be otherwise, but I thought Paradox and Reality kicking your teeth in was only relevant if there were normies around to say "Hey, wait a minute... " if you tried to go hard on the magic without trying to make it look plausible.
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May 11, 2022 18:35
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One of the big issues with Mage is that vulgar magic is objectively inferior to coincidental. Not only do you get paradox, but it's also harder to use in the first place. There is no reason why anyone would ever throw a fireball instead of causing a gas main to explode or whatever. They should have made vulgar the easy, tempting way to power, whereas keeping a low profile would require more effort.the_steve posted:My understanding of Mage is minimal at best despite my wishes for it to be otherwise, but I thought Paradox and Reality kicking your teeth in was only relevant if there were normies around to say "Hey, wait a minute... This question was actually the source of a huge amount of controversy and debate among the fan base. You see, the rules distinguish between Coincidental magic - effects that look like they could have happened naturally - and Vulgar Without Witnesses - effects that look impossible but no one is watching. The latter can still cause paradox, albeit less than observed vulgar effects. However, it is never made clear what the difference is between something that looks possible and something that looks impossible but no one can see it. For example, one of the books had a spell that causes a gun to appear in your inner coat pocket. This is described as being coincidental because the gun could have been there all along. Many people strongly felt that this was a clearcut example of vulgar-without-witnesses or what is the point of even having that category? This leads us into the wonderful world of Hypothetical Observer Theory. One of the most common interpretations was the Hypothetical Average Observer, which states that an effect is coincidental if an average observer standing at a normal distance would not notice anything amiss. Of course, this would still cause endless arguments about what an average observer would have noticed, how far away they are hypothetically standing, etc. The theory also means that a coincidental effect can become vulgar if observed by an above average observer, which seems to contradict the definition of vulgar-without-witnesses. Some players therefore supported a stricter variant, known as the Hypothetical Omniscient Observer. According to this school of thought, the hypothetical observer is hypothetically observing everything at an atomic level, and the only way to cause truly coincidental effects is by manipulating probabilities to make things happen that could feasibly have happened on their own. Before you can even begin playing Mage, you have to agree with your players on how to interpret such fundamental philosophical issues with the rules. I haven't even gotten into Results vs. Process-Based Determinism. SimonChris fucked around with this message at 21:13 on May 11, 2022 |
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May 11, 2022 20:28
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One of the lesser known Buddhist Koan
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May 11, 2022 22:16
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Isn't one of the other examples for covert magic 'a guy in a restaurant dies for no reason, and people shrug and say it was obviously a heart attack'.
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May 11, 2022 23:02
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joylessdivision posted:Everything I've read about the Technocracy in the 1e core has had me doing the Simpsons Frogurt bit in my head. Also, one of the Conventions is run by a Weaver incarna, and one or more other Conventions is run by the gently caress-ing Nephandi. Panopticon sorta slaps tho. They're a cross-Convention amalgam who are on a by-any-means mission to purge such influences from the Union's ranks. They work directly for Control, which is basically the Bakelite from the video game Control complete with the difficulty of communicating/deciphering their will. And that's a big ol' tangent I guess. Reclaimer fucked around with this message at 23:09 on May 11, 2022 |
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May 11, 2022 23:05
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Tunicate posted:Isn't one of the other examples for covert magic 'a guy in a restaurant dies for no reason, and people shrug and say it was obviously a heart attack'. I prefer "instead of throwing a lightning bolt, have them step on the third rail."
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May 11, 2022 23:07
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JustJeff88 posted:What's the fun of having so much narrative agency when you're inevitably punished for any use of that power? That's double the fun! Part of the buy-in to any WoD game is that lovely things happening to your character is part of the fun/drama. I'm weirdly excited to see what happens when my Paradox pops off. Cassius Belli posted:Both interpretations are legitimate. Railing Kill's version refers to the Pied Piper of Hamelin - once you've gotten your services, you have to pay out, one way or another. Coward posted:Sounds like it was in the Umbra, so Paradox isn't a problem - Consensual Reality doesn't factor in so much in a Spirit realm. I've always understood the Pied Piper version of the saying and have always used it and heard it used synonymously with "pay the price."  Also, the platform battle didn't take place in the umbra. The confrontation with Imperialism did in the session prior. This battle took place in the physical world, but atop a giant locus of power, out to sea. There were no sleepers present (although one of us joked that if a single Technocrat decided it was "take your son/daughter to work day," then everyone would have been hosed). In M20, you can still get paradox for vulgar magic, but it's easier to do and you get less paradox for it if there are no sleepers present. Coincidental magic is still always best (and should be, because that kind of use encourages more creativity from players), but vulgar magic is a lot more usable and tempting in this revision. joylessdivision posted:Mage is a dumb game. I can only speak for 1e because it's what I'm currently reading but, RAW they shouldn't have been able to do vulgar magic out in the open, that should have been popping off Paradox poo poo left and right. While I agree that 1e Mage was dumb and almost unplayable, you should reserve judgment for a game that has had four editions since then. We're using M20 from just a few years ago, and a lot of the...rough edges have been filed off. Mechanically, it's more slick and gives both players and GMs more latitude to be creative. For example, the GM can forgo having paradox go off and have it accumulate like has happened to a few of us. Thematically, it's much less cringey with 90's WW nonsense, although it recognizes that it's never going to really escape that so it often makes self-deprecating fun of what's left. Also, a lot of the dumber, clumsier cultural stereotypes have been smoothed over, fleshed out properly, or outright removed. It's a refreshing way to play the good parts of a game from my past without the dumb poo poo that I didn't like. I wouldn't play 1e now with a gun to my head, but I would say the same about Shadowrun 1e (or 2 or 3) or D&D 1e (or 2 or 3).
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May 12, 2022 02:09
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Reclaimer posted:Also, one of the Conventions is run by a Weaver incarna, and one or more other Conventions is run by the gently caress-ing Nephandi. Control is never really defined, right? It could possibly be the emergent decisionmaking will of the entire technocracy, no-one knows.
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May 12, 2022 02:16
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Railing Kill posted:That's double the fun! Part of the buy-in to any WoD game is that lovely things happening to your character is part of the fun/drama. I'm weirdly excited to see what happens when my Paradox pops off. Oh believe my making GBS threads on 1e Mage comes from a place of weird love for the old WoD, glaring racist flaws and all. 1e just happens to be what I'm working through for a review and it absolutely has the potential to be pants on head absurdly dumb and great game, but as written it is very 90's and very frustrating for numerous reasons, many can be summed up by "90's White Wolf". Your game sounds like what a game of Mage should be, cool wizards doing cool wizard poo poo and fighting dumb WoD things like Hit Marks with a wizard who turned into a shark. I'm here for the delightful Mage shenanigans is what I'm saying.
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May 12, 2022 03:21
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CobiWann posted:I prefer "instead of throwing a lightning bolt, have them step on the third rail." That's a good example, but it raises further questions, which lead us to the distinction between process and results based determinism. Throwing lightning bolts is governed by the sphere of Forces, which covers manipulation of energy. Does that mean you can also use Forces to make someone step on an electrified rail? Yes, says the supporter of Results Based Determinism. The result is that the person is electrocuted, which is clearly a Forces effect. Of course not, says the Process supporter. To make someone step on a rail, you obviously need to use Mind to mind control them into doing so, or maybe Entropy, to make them randomly stumble. Your spheres need to cover every step in the process to reach the result. The fact that the target is electrocuted is completely besides the point since that is caused by the rail and doesn't involve magic at all! RBD makes the lines between the spheres very fuzzy since any sphere can do basically anything as long as the final result is related to its domain. PBD, on the other hand, makes it very hard to create coincidental effect since the coincidental version of a spell will often require mastery of completely different spheres than the vulgar one. These issues with the rules have never been resolved, and are mentioned in the latest edition as something you need to think about. However, the default assumption is now stated to be PBD with an average hypothetical observer. SimonChris fucked around with this message at 09:20 on May 12, 2022 |
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May 12, 2022 08:57
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joylessdivision posted:Oh believe my making GBS threads on 1e Mage comes from a place of weird love for the old WoD, glaring racist flaws and all. No worries. I get it now. I'm 40 so I grew up with this 90's poo poo. I am constantly oscillating between shameful cringing and nostalgiac appreciation for old WW stuff. I really can't recommend Mage 20th enough, though. It keeps the stuff I liked and fixed or removed the stuff I didn't. The authors even come out and say in the text the stuff they hated, are ashamed of, or always wanted to fix about 1e through 3e. It's a great book, and I've really enjoyed jumping into an oWoD game for the first time since college.
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May 12, 2022 12:19
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SimonChris posted:
Or you can sidestep this by making lightning jump from the rail to the person, something which is possibly close enough to possible in the public mind to dodge some or all paradox. Process based just means you need to get a bit more creative.
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May 12, 2022 12:22
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joylessdivision posted:Oh believe my making GBS threads on 1e Mage comes from a place of weird love for the old WoD, glaring racist flaws and all.  ".
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May 12, 2022 14:18
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wiegieman posted:Control is never really defined, right? It could possibly be the emergent decisionmaking will of the entire technocracy, no-one knows. Exactly, it could be just the shared dream of the entire Union but it also outranks your White Suit manager.
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May 12, 2022 16:10
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Reclaimer posted:Exactly, it could be just the shared dream of the entire Union but it also outranks your White Suit manager. There is power in a Union
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May 12, 2022 16:59
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wiegieman posted:Control is never really defined, right? It could possibly be the emergent decisionmaking will of the entire technocracy, no-one knows. Control was defined in the Judgment scenario of the Ascension book, which is the closest we got to a canonical ending to the original line. Yeah, pretty much. The Union believed so hard in the existence of secret invisible masters that it became true. This had the side-effect of destroying the original leadership since the technocrats also believed that anyone who made it high enough would join Control, and so it was. In the scenario, the PC's eventually make it to the HQ of Control in the Umbra; it is an empty meeting room where every decision they make manifests as orders from Control, in whatever form the agents on Earth expect them to take. If they stay too long, they fade away, becoming part of the collective consciousness of The Union. Of course, this is just the biggest scenario in the book. There is an alternate scenario where Control turns out to be the spirits of the old leaders of The Order of Reason, who have been trying to guide the Union back to its original ideals of empowering humanity. Like a good version of Threat Null.
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May 12, 2022 18:19
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I didn't catch the quote here, but it's always a grin when an author gets to say 'I finally was able to put in this great thing or get rid of this shite that I hated'. Of course, there's always the 'why not sooner?' floating in the back of the mind.Railing Kill posted:That's double the fun! Part of the buy-in to any WoD game is that lovely things happening to your character is part of the fun/drama. I'm weirdly excited to see what happens when my Paradox pops off. Well, you have fun then. I'm used to things like D&D where magic is part of how the natural world works in that setting, not something that offends Reality Itself and ends up with the player being buggered by demons fro the rest of eternity +1.
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May 12, 2022 23:53
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JustJeff88 posted:I didn't catch the quote here, but it's always a grin when an author gets to say 'I finally was able to put in this great thing or get rid of this shite that I hated'. Of course, there's always the 'why not sooner?' floating in the back of the mind. Magic was part of the setting at one point but the previously mentioned Technocracy made everyone believe magic wasn't real. It's all very broody 90's silliness really. It's like how most folks who have played Vampire will at some point have a story that's basically an episode of "What we do in the shadows", while the setting leans heavily on the dark, Gothic brooding stuff, it's also very easy to go buckwild and get silly with it.
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May 13, 2022 01:57
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joylessdivision posted:Magic was part of the setting at one point but the previously mentioned Technocracy made everyone believe magic wasn't real. It's all very broody 90's silliness really. Yeah, my Gangrel was pretty much the Avatar of Shitposts in the last VtM larp I was in. Still salty that the ST got bored and dropped the whole thing once the Tremere players ended up having to leave for various reasons. Granted I'm also salty that playing a Tremere was apparently the unspoken requisite to actually get any plot hooks or story interaction.
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May 13, 2022 02:16
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JustJeff88 posted:Well, you have fun then. I'm used to things like D&D where magic is part of how the natural world works in that setting, not something that offends Reality Itself and ends up with the player being buggered by demons fro the rest of eternity +1. Paradox isn't that bad. Usually it just does damage or causes temporary weird poo poo to happen to you/around you. Our life mage is sweating seawater for the next few weeks, for example. Sweat is already salty so it's not that bad...but she just kind of smells like the beach in a way a person usually shouldn't and might be a little clammy to the touch. That was the result of just a couple points going off, I think. It's doesn't affect anything mechanically. You can also do things to mitigate paradox besides using coincidental magic in the first place to avoid it. I see it as a price to pay in the game. It's not like D&D doesn't have costs. They're just different costs. The ones in Mage just give the GM openings to playfully gently caress with you now and then. It's also central to the setting that reality has been calcified by the Technocracy to not like your magic, so yeah reality kinds of hates what you're doing. That's just part of the game and I'm not saying it's for everyone but it is crystal clear in the source material. NGDBSS posted:YMMV on M20. I'm glad to hear that Railing Kill is having fun with the game, but my former group did not have such success. In fact we had to ignore the majority of the text, both mechanics and setting, to make a coherent game at all. I played an Entropy mage - and basically all the spells I cast that weren't convincing my GM to Do Whatever were stolen from Awakening 2E. M20 itself had no idea for what I should be doing beyond "make poo poo up I guess or get 3+ in two other spheres simultaneously? I'm a published game designer I can easily see how this game can go wrong with the wrong group (not that your group sounds bad, but the game might not be a good fit for your GM). The game almost requires a particularly permissive GM. Ours is running his first game, but he's played a ton of WW games back in the day so he knows the system well enough to know what he wants out of it and what he doesn't. He's playing fast and loose with the paradox rules, for example, and allowing paradox to accumulate rather than pop off sooner. The book suggests some good workarounds for things, but the game works best when the GM is liberally using those workarounds rather than playing very strictly "by the book." If the GM isn't open to dialogue and working together with players to stretch the rules, then the game can get bogged down in the kind of stuff you described. Also, it sounds like your GM was a little too strict on the rules. Even with a narrow reading of the rules there's about six things you can do with just two dots of Entropy by itself, and even more if you take the rules more broadly than the specific examples given. At three dots you're up to at least ten things you can do. Our Prime specialist wizard was "randomly" solving keypad codes using only Entropy 2. You don't need to combine spheres to do most things, but doing so multiplies the many options you (should) already have. It isn't my single favorite game, and it definitely isn't for everyone. I've had a good time revisiting it though, and the 20th Anniversary edition is worth a look if you have a group you trust to not rules lawyer or munchkin the game into oblivion and work collaboratively with the GM to tell an interesting story.
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May 13, 2022 02:30
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Having the Cleric cursing at his god for not helping “enough” during a major fight and the religion-rejecting Bard point out “you are kind of a poo poo follower” means I as the DM got to sit back as the party debates whether or not the Cleric was, in fact, terrible at following his god’s commandments.
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May 13, 2022 03:05
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Having read recent posts, I will say that the lore of Mage is interesting, but it sounds like a nightmare to adjudicate the rules for whatever the DM is called in that setting.
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May 13, 2022 03:35
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Oddly enough running a game of Mage is just as much about “consensus” as the in-game storylines can be.
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May 13, 2022 04:25
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JustJeff88 posted:Having read recent posts, I will say that the lore of Mage is interesting, but it sounds like a nightmare to adjudicate the rules for whatever the DM is called in that setting. Storyteller, they're called a Storyteller because White Wolf loved huffing their own farts. Which is why there a million terms for things that make those of us who have read/played/run these games sound like absolute lunatics when talking about the games using the proper terms. The lore of the old WoD is neat, if often convoluted and dumb in delightful and also  ways. Like my favorite bit of the games writers going "No, gently caress you, this is why you can't make an amalgam character" and giving us Samuel Haight
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May 13, 2022 05:20
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After seeing all the arguments, the only character in Mage I'd ever play is a totally normal stage magician who got a little too obviously magical for the Hypothetical Observer, and ended up eating several points of paradox which turned him into a real wizard
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May 13, 2022 07:24
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Tunicate posted:After seeing all the arguments, the only character in Mage I'd ever play is a totally normal stage magician who got a little too obviously magical for the Hypothetical Observer, and ended up eating several points of paradox which turned him into a real wizard  a Hermetic
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May 13, 2022 08:16
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FreshFeesh posted:Oddly enough running a game of Mage is just as much about “consensus” as the in-game storylines can be.
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May 13, 2022 10:02
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Reclaimer posted:
That guy can pull a rabbit out of anything.
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May 13, 2022 12:46
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Tunicate posted:After seeing all the arguments, the only character in Mage I'd ever play is a totally normal stage magician who got a little too obviously magical for the Hypothetical Observer, and ended up eating several points of paradox which turned him into a real wizard The real key is to play a Rabbi. If you can argue with Yaweh to the point where he goes "Well ya got me there", you sure as hell can argue reality into believing whatever magical nonsense you just did was completely coincidence. And to throw my other favorite Mage related nonsense in there, MOSAD MAGES vs PLO Werewolves. I am not making this up in the slightest.
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May 13, 2022 14:54
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My players now have a giant spike pig that is increasingly okay with the X-COM agents because they give her pumpkins and helped her deliver her piglets, plus the four piglets, which they're studying as they develop because c'mon it's a new species and this is fascinating work. The player playing their biologist is having a lot of fun coming up with the ways the pig both is and isn't normal, crossbow-strength quill ejection aside. They're headed to Maryland to deal with a potential house of the dead situation to introduce EXALT and their ridiculous foolishness through a shell company called Poncho.
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May 16, 2022 15:38
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According to my DM, Inflict Curse does not give someone a degree from DeVry University.
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May 16, 2022 21:09
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CobiWann posted:According to my DM, Inflict Curse does not give someone a degree from DeVry University.
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May 16, 2022 23:00
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Every time authorities begin to investigate it for fraud the university burns down and starts over somewhere else.
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May 16, 2022 23:09
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Lord Awkward posted:Every time authorities begin to investigate it for fraud the university burns down and starts over somewhere else. Does it burn itself down for the insurance money?
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May 17, 2022 00:47
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One weird trick insurers hate!
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May 17, 2022 00:58
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