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Archonex posted:Awakening though is commonly used on these forums as a weird masturbatory screed of how _____ poster would (ironically, much like the mentioned rear end in a top hat old wizards) use magic to forcibly insert their own political beliefs as the dominant motif of reality. To hear people talk of it on here it's less of a game and more of a really tiresome and kind of nightmarishly hypocritical politicized thought experiment that certain folk just can't seem to pull free off, hence the joke of magechat being a big part of the game and being utterly inescapable. Mage: The Awakening, or nMage or whatever, breeds a different kind of pointless obtuse discourse than oMage did. I much prefer it! It's explicitly political discourse because unlike oMage the metaphysics of the setting are relatively clear. In nMage, the platonic realm of pure ideas that reality is but a shadow of is A Thing and Mages can manipulate it. Everyone gets a vision of it once, when they figure out how to do magic, and spend the rest of their lives obsessed with it-- usually with the goal of physically entering it and becoming a pure symbol. Once Upon A Time* some Mages figured how to do that, and then to cement their power slammed the door shut behind them. These are the "Exarchs," who became living symbols of oppressions, and they run a large a dominants group of Mages-- the antagonist faction-- called the Seers of the Throne. They are quite literally run by beings that are now pure platonic forms that once were people but are now the actual platonic truth of things like "Capitalism" or "The Patriarchy" or "Xenophobia" or "Social Darwinism" or whatever. They're a bit like the Technocracy in that they brutally enforce the status quo and try and limit the number of mages (so they have less competition) but they don't have any ideals, really. The Mages who work for them do so because they're offered power and an easier life than in the PC-faction and a free pass at using their magic to live large in the physical world. If they're really, really good at their job and survive the brutal factional infighting, a Seer might get to become basically an avatar of "Colonialism" or whatever and sort of live on forever as part of the whole evil machine. The PC Mages are called the "pentacle alliance" or the "diamond orders" and have some bullshit about Atlantis* that unifies them despite each have a distinct history and culture... but basically they are just various revolutionary groups in a sometimes contentious alliance. Rather than like, particular marginalized groups being particular splats-- like in Ascension-- you have tendencies and social organizations. So there's the revolutionary militia, the theoreticians / archivists, the political leadership, the uh let's generously say "commissars", etc. Because the game wants to be nuanced, all these organizations are pretty loving flawed. Plenty of people join the political side of a revolutionary political movement and end up paying lip service to change while grasping onto power for power's sake. This happens in the game too, but there's NOTHING like the equivalency in Ascension where "umm maybe the Technocrats are good, actually?" The most venal and self-serving pentacle member who "won" the setting would still be a clear improvement, since even "suddenly way more people can use magic" and "a power hungry rear end in a top hat mage is in charge" is better than "few people can use magic [and therefore cannot fight back]" and "a power hungry immortal symbol of the concept of oppressions is in charge." ANYWAY as a result of all of that nMage chat is less metaphysical and more about revolutionary politics and theories. Do we really need the commissar / secret police faction? Are the political leadership pragmatists keeping the whole thing together or a group of vanguardists out to make a magic oligarchy? Is it ever acceptable to work with a Seer? (No.) It gets pretty contentious, as anyone who posts about leftist / revolutionary politics might know. It completely rules. *okay so the Original Sin of the writing of the first couple of nMage books was like "Atlantis was a real place and all magic came from Atlantis and the bad guy wizards were Atlantean kings and the good guy wizards were their advisors and..." IMO it was a too hard course correction from oMage's "relativism! everything is true!" Newer books are like "Atlantis is/was/will be some kind of perfected society of Mages. It might have existed, or maybe will exist, or probably got written out of history when humans got up into the platonic truths of the universe and started loving about. It's relatively important as a symbol of a magical society, and symbols are important in this setting, but you don't have to like actually trace everything back to some golden age bullshit if you don't want it." Digital Osmosis fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Jul 30, 2021 |
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Jul 30, 2021 04:50
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Toph Bei Fong posted:I guess this is where we have to agree to disagree, because I can't see a world in which the traditions "win" being much better for the common person than their current situation. Maybe if there were a faction styled after the YPG and PKK, but the Traditions themselves all organize into hierarchical structures wherein the "enlightened" dole out their knowledge to the masses, either based on religious organization or guru based personality. They didn't have the foresight to provide us with a Bone Gnawer or Children of Gaia faction who are concerned with the poor masses of "regular" people. See, this is what I mean about the metaphysics of the setting muddling the discourse in oMage and obfuscating Ferrinus' point. Like, I think these are valid objections, but also that Ferrinus' read is correct, and I think that the reason both of these can be true is because the oMage metaphysics are incoherent and unworkable. In oMage the villains really are capitalism, and also the hero's plans really are "destroy the germ theory of disease." nMage's politics are clearer, sure, but that's not the only reason the discussion is different. It's not just blunter political metaphors in nMage, it's also a metaphysical framework that doesn't make a victory for Mages something that's easy to imagine as utterly terrifying.
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Jul 30, 2021 15:33
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fr0id posted:What makes delta green interesting is that it explicitly has sanity rules that make you risk losing it for inflicting, experiencing, or witnessing violence. So just killing everyone like in D&D will result in risking at least some sanity. Going in and murdering their families in the night risks a lot more. Moral implications are effectively codified in the game. Having the characters argue and threaten each other over what to do is a core part of the game. Some of them are roleplaying characters. Others just dislike another player causing them to possibly lose sanity points. I actually don't think this is all that surprising. Heroically bearing the burden of being the one who knows and fights the darkness is some bog-standard fascist poo poo. Think of the lone cowboy who saved the town riding away because he knows he just secured a peaceful and god-fearing society that has no place for him, or like, literally anything from The Walking Dead. The archetype, and thus the fantasy, in American culture is basically being The One Man Able To Do What It Takes But Who Is Then Really Sad About It Afterwards. I don't see "fighting monsters causes your character to go insane" as being a contradiction, in other words, I consider it a core feature of the power-fantasy. "I get to play as a man who heroically sacrifices his life, relationships, and sanity to protect the unknowing and defenseless sheep from foreign monsters? Sign me the gently caress up!"
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Aug 4, 2021 07:46
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