world of darkness Everything is Relative - [World of Darkness - Mage the Ascension] [Looking for ST]

[GleefulNihilism]

Howdy!

So something on my gaming bucket list, of the WoD games Mage might just be my favorite at least from a Lore perspective but I've never had a chance to actually play it. Hoping for a chance to try it out and looking for an ST, whether for a solo or a group I'm good either way. Best way to do that does seem to be just to dive in, so here's a rough idea of a character I had in mind. The elevator-pitch version is a Virtual Adept Space-Time mage, and one *very* new. So new that the chronicle might begin *before* his Awakening and part of the start at least would be his vision-quest/empowerment. Like at the start he could not know anything about Magick, Mages, Vampires, The Technocracy, the Traditions - none of it. Seemed to fit a newb player. :P

Relativity

Einstein once said Time is an Illusion. It's a snappy quote to make, sure - but it isn't just a quote and it doesn't go far enough.

It all comes down to Frames of Reference. We define Past, Present, and Future by their Relationships with each other. Present, is Now. Past is what came Before Now, Future what will come After Now. But what is Now? Now is *at best* a bubble of Space-Time expanding at the Speed of Light that is entirely dependent on your Co-ordinates and your Velocity dependent on Arbitrary Points of View. Observers in different locations and moving relative to each other can actually *disagree* on what is Past, Present, and Future as long as other relationships are maintained, like they're not moving faster then what their respective frames say the Speed of Light is. And Space does something similiar, you ask two different observers the distance between two points and they'll *disagree* depending on where they are and if they're moving relative to each other. Get it?

You might need to meet some friends of mine.

Jack Jones AKA "Jonesy"

Jonesy has never had what you can call an easy life. A foster kid in the system, he learned early that your Wits will be what gets you over the challenges of the world the best. Always looking for angles and oppurtunities, Jonesy always was smarter than he got credit for. A science teacher at his high school caught on though, and while they weren't able to do much themselves they did manage to pull a few strings and get Jonesy in contact with a few people.

They got him a scholarship to go to College. A real good one too, good enough to get an apartment off-campus if a particularly cheap one. Now seen as a promising Physics student, he's bound and determined to not let the one break he's caught in his life go to waste.

What Jonesy doesn't know is that he might just catch another one. He doesn't realize it but not only is Magick real but but many of his neighbors in this apartment complex are Mages, a few of them of the Sahajiya tradition. These mages who strive to achieve altered mental states to reach new levels of transcendence above the physical world, to use Experience and Emotion to break down barriers and self-imposed limitations, are good people who look out for their neighbors from the horrors of the Dark.

And while they don't even pretend to know what will happen exactly, the Sahajiya in the building are starting to think that Jonesy is close to his Awakening of the Magick inside him, possibly all he needs is a little push...

 

 

Edited September 16, 2023 by GleefulNihilism (see edit history)

[Malkavian Grin]

Mage always seemed cool, but I've never read up on it nor ever heard of anyone actually playing it. The most I've heard is "it's really hard for an ST to wrangle the players into not breaking the universe with their powers" or something to that effect. I would be in zero position to run this, and probably barely able to offer a character (despite WoD being one of my fav systems/lores) as I'd have to read up a LOT and I may not even have the books.

Much luck to you, Glee! You're a great RPer and any GM should be happy to have you playing 🤩

[GleefulNihilism]

1 hour ago, Malkavian Grin said:

Mage always seemed cool, but I've never read up on it nor ever heard of anyone actually playing it. The most I've heard is "it's really hard for an ST to wrangle the players into not breaking the universe with their powers" or something to that effect. I would be in zero position to run this, and probably barely able to offer a character (despite WoD being one of my fav systems/lores) as I'd have to read up a LOT and I may not even have the books.

Much luck to you, Glee! You're a great RPer and any GM should be happy to have you playing 🤩

Thank you!

Glad I'm not the only one to get that vibe. It sounds great, but it's hard to find anyone who even claims to have actually played it. lol.

[Heretic Burger]

On 9/16/2023 at 7:16 PM, GleefulNihilism said:

Thank you!

Glad I'm not the only one to get that vibe. It sounds great, but it's hard to find anyone who even claims to have actually played it. lol.

Oh I can claim to have played it, only a few sessions though, in a campaign that kind of crashed and burnt because several of the players didn't click with/understand the premises of the game. It's on my bucket list to play again or run but rereading the material (I'm looking at you M20), planning it and getting a group that understands it and avoiding the possible flame wars when discussing it is such a headache....

[silentfanbrother]

I tried to get into M20 but god knows how complicated it is to understand, running a game in it is very hard

[GleefulNihilism]

3 hours ago, Heretic Burger said:

Oh I can claim to have played it, only a few sessions though, in a campaign that kind of crashed and burnt because several of the players didn't click with/understand the premises of the game. It's on my bucket list to play again or run but rereading the material (I'm looking at you M20), planning it and getting a group that understands it and avoiding the possible flame wars when discussing it is such a headache....

 

3 hours ago, silentfanbrother said:

I tried to get into M20 but god knows how complicated it is to understand, running a game in it is very hard

Oh, I get that. And I have no doubt that I’m missing something too, lol.

Glad to hear I’m not alone though. Mage does have the Shadowrun vibe of “love the game, be a shame to actually ever play it”.

[Malkavian Grin]

I had though the 20th anniversary editions just streamlined the original rules of each property? Is M20 that different from its base rules?

Not to go off-topic too much here, but I'm still pining to play something from Promethean (preferably a mixed-setting game). But it only has a new WoD version; it wasn't introduced in the original. I keep thinking "how hard could it be to port it over to old WoD?" lol

[silentfanbrother]

1 minute ago, Malkavian Grin said:

I had though the 20th anniversary editions just streamlined the original rules of each property? Is M20 that different from its base rules?

Not to go off-topic too much here, but I'm still pining to play something from Promethean (preferably a mixed-setting game). But it only has a new WoD version; it wasn't introduced in the original. I keep thinking "how hard could it be to port it over to old WoD?" lol

Quite a bit Hard

quite afew skills don't carry over, many things that exist in CWoD don't in OWoD and Vice-versa

[TiffanyKorta]

The idea behind the 20th Anniversary (4th edition) was to collate everything in, more or less, one place and whilst there was some creep thats more or less what Mage 20 does. That said it makes it terrible to learn the game, personal whilst I don't like some of the setting changes (people always seem to want to take out the fantastical from the WoD) Revised is probably the best version to learn to play the game.

 

WoD uses both difficulty levels and minimum success, whilst CoD uses just the success counting method, so whilst it's not impossible it takes some fangling to get the two to play nice with each other. Promethium is a weird book as well, that really seems to encourage solo play.

 

I am always tempted to run Mage, but I've got to balance things against what I'm already running, all of which I'm current very much behind on!

[GleefulNihilism]

I know I don't know enough about running WoD stuff to actually step up as an ST any time soon. :P

[silentfanbrother]

5 hours ago, GleefulNihilism said:

I know I don't know enough about running WoD stuff to actually step up as an ST any time soon. :P

I have run WoD stuff before mostly VtM 20 and V5 a single one shot of W5, but M20 is a beast on it's own that is very hard to tackle as an ST