Mage:the Awakening is out. Opinions?

[eyebeams]

Eyebeams (if you would be so kind), how might you best tackle this issue (short of using the Awakening spell system, that is)? Would a return to the Mage 1e system of having higher Sphere levels give higher damage multipliers fix this in any way? The core Awakening system of large dice pools and successive penalties for more expansive effects is pretty simple to insert into the Ascension system, but I was wondering if there were any easy tweaks that could be made to the Ascension system that might address this mathematical problem (and legacy be damned).

I used straight difficulty 7s for all tasks in my game. If you're varying difficulties instead in an old-style game, then make it straight diff. 6 and make rank-1 per roll the minimum number of successes for a successful Effect. Rotes and specialty foci should add 1 bonus die each and vulgar spells should add a single bonus die, to represent the power of vulgar magic -- something lese the old rules were bad at. Other mods affect difficulty. Witnesses add a straight +2 to difficulty in this case.

Example. I'm running a character with Arete 4. I want to cast a Forces 3 Effect. I need to get 2 successes for it to go off at all. It's diff 6 (8 around witnesses). If I used my dedicated wand and it was a rote, I roll 6 dice. If there are witnesses, the diffoculty is now 8.

The other option is to use highest Sphere+Arete and halve the results from the table (usually 1 HL/trait per success). This has the advantage of working properly with old multiple action rules, which is important since some foci are activities. Oh -- and halve affects again when buffing existing attacks (like bullets or Do strikes), or else the extra damage is a bit much.

 

[King of Old School]

Its a failure on the part of the creators to create the impression they were - possibly - seeking.

No it isn't, and now you're being silly. There's nothing in Awakening about Aquaman, nor about crystal-wavers. Indeed, there's very little hard info on Atlantis beyond "it was a city on an island where a bunch of wizards lived in a time before history, and then they had a big war and everything blew up and the island sank." They could have called the Awakened City Mu or R'lyeh and it wouldn't make a difference to the rest of the content. Everything else is down to your own projection.

He'd be entirely correct to make that observation. It was a major problem in the old game, at least in Vampire, that has now been spread to all the lines, though at least Werewolf now has a slightly more appropriate spin. Linking an objective determination of morality and linking it to systems and sanity when morality is a very subjective thing, very different from person to person and culture to culture. One of the things that could have very much done with a 'fix' in the new versions. This is also one of the most telling flaws in Awakening with magical capabilities also being linked to morality.

And again, if you are going to paint this as an objective flaw in nWoD then it's intellectually dishonest in the extreme to claim it's not a flaw in Kult.

Cain was, of course, an extremely central element to Masquerade, especially at the end but also very much so earlier, particularly for Sabbat games, though only indirectly linked to any powers - unlike awakening where Atlantis is directly tied to methodology, arguably making it even more centralised.

As the Free Council clearly demonstrates, you can have mages in Awakening who neither believe in nor care one whit about Atlantis. Likewise, I assure you that many, many games of Masquerade were played where nobody gave a royal crap about Caine except as a nice bit of colour to add to IC dialogue. Not everyone makes themselves a slave to canon and metaplot, but then we aren't all irrevocably scarred by experiences with the Camarilla either.

And if existing Mage fans wasn't part of the target audience, big whoops.

Thankfully, WW realizes that "existing Mage fans" aren't subject to the kind of monolithic groupthink you seem to ascribe to them here.

KoOS

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Wow, this thread's still going? Somebody needs to torch this bad boy.

 

[Mark Hope]

I used straight difficulty 7s for all tasks in my game. If you're varying difficulties instead in an old-style game, then make it straight diff. 6 and make rank-1 per roll the minimum number of successes for a successful Effect. Rotes and specialty foci should add 1 bonus die each and vulgar spells should add a single bonus die, to represent the power of vulgar magic -- something lese the old rules were bad at. Other mods affect difficulty. Witnesses add a straight +2 to difficulty in this case.

Example. I'm running a character with Arete 4. I want to cast a Forces 3 Effect. I need to get 2 successes for it to go off at all. It's diff 6 (8 around witnesses). If I used my dedicated wand and it was a rote, I roll 6 dice. If there are witnesses, the diffoculty is now 8.

The other option is to use highest Sphere+Arete and halve the results from the table (usually 1 HL/trait per success). This has the advantage of working properly with old multiple action rules, which is important since some foci are activities. Oh -- and halve affects again when buffing existing attacks (like bullets or Do strikes), or else the extra damage is a bit much.

Sounds interesting - a good way to represent the effectiveness of rotes and vulgar magic as well as incorporating the effect of sleeper witnesses. We started trying out something like the second option a couple of sessions ago, too. Thanks for the ideas - we'll give them a shot .

 

[GRIMJIM]

No it isn't, and now you're being silly. There's nothing in Awakening about Aquaman, nor about crystal-wavers. Indeed, there's very little hard info on Atlantis beyond "it was a city on an island where a bunch of wizards lived in a time before history, and then they had a big war and everything blew up and the island sank." They could have called the Awakened City Mu or R'lyeh and it wouldn't make a difference to the rest of the content. Everything else is down to your own projection.

R'lyeh would have had as major an impact due to the assorted baggage of the Cthulu mythos, Mu is slightly better than Atlantis but not by a massive degree. Atlantis is symptomatic of the problems and a catalyst for them. Things are done this way, they objectively work better this way, this is the right process and everything works this way, oh, and it all derives from the teachings of space bats... equally credible.

And again, if you are going to paint this as an objective flaw in nWoD then it's intellectually dishonest in the extreme to claim it's not a flaw in Kult.

My Kult book is out on a loaner at the moment, however, IIRC, the Kult 'morality' such as it was was more of a sliding indicator of light/dark, moral/immoral actions and insanity and eventual godhood and reconciliation could be found down either path. They were equally valid and defined in fairly broad terms. That actually makes it a bit less bad than the nWoD morality systems.

Besides which this is a fairly disingenuous line of argument in the space in which Awakening exists. It is not 'its own game' in the way one can look at Kult and Mage seperately, it is the inheritor to Ascension. Imagine the furore if D&D 4th was published using the Wushu rules. It would still carry the D&D name and I don't think telling people 'its an entirely new game' would cut too much ice there either.

As the Free Council clearly demonstrates, you can have mages in Awakening who neither believe in nor care one whit about Atlantis. Likewise, I assure you that many, many games of Masquerade were played where nobody gave a royal crap about Caine except as a nice bit of colour to add to IC dialogue. Not everyone makes themselves a slave to canon and metaplot, but then we aren't all irrevocably scarred by experiences with the Camarilla either.

You can have Mages that believe that but their undermined instantly since the practices and methods that WORK are all based on the objective atlantean methodolgy. Dissent in the face of unequivocal proof isn't too useful and defending or praising a game for something it actually isn't is equally misleading, especially when the game reviewed isn't a toolkit game.

 

[King of Old School]

R'lyeh would have had as major an impact due to the assorted baggage of the Cthulu mythos, Mu is slightly better than Atlantis but not by a massive degree. Atlantis is symptomatic of the problems and a catalyst for them. Things are done this way, they objectively work better this way, this is the right process and everything works this way, oh, and it all derives from the teachings of space bats... equally credible.

You've already mentioned that you think Atlantis is on an even plane with space bats. Do you really not understand that not everyone agrees with your personal opinion? I don't take issue with your opinion, I take issue with your insistence that everybody (or even a substantial portion of everybody) in the world agrees with it.

My Kult book is out on a loaner at the moment, however, IIRC, the Kult 'morality' such as it was was more of a sliding indicator of light/dark, moral/immoral actions and insanity and eventual godhood and reconciliation could be found down either path. They were equally valid and defined in fairly broad terms. That actually makes it a bit less bad than the nWoD morality systems.

No. Kult's "sliding indicator" is not meaningfully different from nWoD's Morality track, it just uses a different scale... bigger numbers and a zero average, rather than a straight 1-10 (or 10-1) progression. It still uses the same system of objective morality (i.e. the Judeo-Christian one) to determine movement along the scale. The only real difference is that Kult ascribes insanity to either end of the spectrum -- being too good is just as nutty as being too evil. That certainly isn't the same thing as saying Kult ascribes "equal validity" to classical notions of good and evil, since the horror element of Kult is derived in large part from the extremely evil behaviours of its actors (to a degree that some would consider gratuituous and juvenile in places).

Besides which this is a fairly disingenuous line of argument in the space in which Awakening exists.

Funksaw asked the question, and I was answering based on Funksaw's own predilections.

It is not 'its own game' in the way one can look at Kult and Mage seperately, it is the inheritor to Ascension. Imagine the furore if D&D 4th was published using the Wushu rules. It would still carry the D&D name and I don't think telling people 'its an entirely new game' would cut too much ice there either.

Now who's being disingenuous in their comparisons? Not everyone thinks mages should be completely divorced from morality (in either iteration of Mage), nor that morality is as subjective as reality in Ascension -- indeed, I've read a compelling argument that morality was the one thing in Ascension that was not utterly subjective, and was thus the point of the whole exercise. Certainly, Jhor was not divorced from an objective standard of behaviour... you deal out too much death, you go nuts. Incorporating notions of morality in Awakening just isn't the kind of break with precedent that selling Wushu as D&D would represent.

And for the record, not everyone who liked Ascension necessarily enjoyed the subjectivity of the default setting. I might even include you in that number, since it seems you want to minimize that subjectivity and "praise it for something it actually isn't."

You can have Mages that believe that but their undermined instantly since the practices and methods that WORK are all based on the objective atlantean methodolgy. Dissent in the face of unequivocal proof isn't too useful

The existence of the methodology doesn't prove the existence of the claimed source, nor does it prove anything about its true nature. This is such an obvious point that I find it hard to believe you honestly missed it.

It is also completely beside the point I was making: that Atlantis isn't relevant to the actual playing of the game in many/most cases. Joe Mage doesn't particularly dwell on the (non-)existence of Atlantis, any more than Joe Vampire particularly cares if the progenitor of all vampires was Caine or Dracula or La Magra or Longinus or J.P. Morgan. I understand that it's all terribly important when getting into catfights about canon on the 'net, but I'm concerned with using the material for its intended purpose.

and defending or praising a game for something it actually isn't is equally misleading, especially when the game reviewed isn't a toolkit game.

Despite the umpteen number of times WW have referred to the new World of Darkness as a "toolkit for horror?" Oh dear, your bias is showing.

KoOS

 

[GRIMJIM]

You've already mentioned that you think Atlantis is on an even plane with space bats. Do you really not understand that not everyone agrees with your personal opinion? I don't take issue with your opinion, I take issue with your insistence that everybody (or even a substantial portion of everybody) in the world agrees with it.

I believe, and in my experience general wider opinion is with me, that having Atlantis as the root cause simply has so many cheesy intermingled references - unsuited to the direction Awakening seemed to be trying to be pushing - that it has an overall negative effect on the game, making the other problems with it seem even more problematic than they actually are. In tracking the reaction and debate in several other places as well as round-table talk the Atlantean 'nature' of Atlantis does seem a sticking point and the reaction is as divided - if not more so - than it was to Revised.

It has been brought up elsewhere though that the culture is somewhat different in the US with greater and lesser credibility being given to certain things and less to others. I would think that the pop culture problems around Atlantis would be worse in that case, not better, but I'm willing to entertain the possibility. That just makes the accusations against the game that it is too 'eurocentric' even more amusing

No. Kult's "sliding indicator" is not meaningfully different from nWoD's Morality track, it just uses a different scale... bigger numbers and a zero average, rather than a straight 1-10 (or 10-1) progression. It still uses the same system of objective morality (i.e. the Judeo-Christian one) to determine movement along the scale. The only real difference is that Kult ascribes insanity to either end of the spectrum -- being too good is just as nutty as being too evil. That certainly isn't the same thing as saying Kult ascribes "equal validity" to classical notions of good and evil, since the horror element of Kult is derived in large part from the extremely evil behaviours of its actors (to a degree that some would consider gratuituous and juvenile in places).

Kult doesn't start delving into real in game effects (apart from the ability to use ritual magic effectively) until points that would be pretty much off WoD's scale in either direction.

I found it more broadly defined and less restrictive than the WoD morality system in play - perhaps you're looking at a different edition?

You have a _somewhat_ valid point in comparing the two games - but a limited one. If one does treat Awakening as existing in a complete vaccuum then Atlantis is still ridiculous but the game is slightly less disappointing overall since it would exist without the expectations that it currently does, but Mage does NOT exist in a vacuum especially given the reinterpretations of the other games. Mage is the only one that lost the core of what it was and what made it a stand-out game before.

Now who's being disingenuous in their comparisons? Not everyone thinks mages should be completely divorced from morality (in either iteration of Mage), nor that morality is as subjective as reality in Ascension -- indeed, I've read a compelling argument that morality was the one thing in Ascension that was not utterly subjective, and was thus the point of the whole exercise. Certainly, Jhor was not divorced from an objective standard of behaviour... you deal out too much death, you go nuts. Incorporating notions of morality in Awakening just isn't the kind of break with precedent that selling Wushu as D&D would represent.

Any bad guy Mages you now create, or any who don't subscribe to conventional Judeo-Christian morality, be they even something so closely related to that mindset as islamic, will now be penalised. Is not the bargain with darkness for power a far more universal magical theme than Atlantis? Whether Faust or Loa or 'the dark side of the force' stories of evil magicians abound. This cripples them.

The existence of the methodology doesn't prove the existence of the claimed source, nor does it prove anything about its true nature. This is such an obvious point that I find it hard to believe you honestly missed it.

Its true that its more important to have 'facts' in interlinked or drop in games, be they LARP or tabletop, so that everyone is working on the same page. However, the default game has atlantean artefacts, atlantean ruins, codes, methodologies and innumerable other things. With the default setting as written Atlantis is pretty central and all but proven, all that is missing is direct or time-sensed memories of the time.

This might be a bad comparison but its like having all the evidence for evolution laid out directly in front of you, going against that requires a massive amount of stubbornness or faith and, in the case of magic in the game, no amount of faith or stubbornness will let you work magic any better, just as refusing to acknowledge evolution or genes and trying to geneer on pure faith by invoking the bible won't get you very far IRL.

Despite the umpteen number of times WW have referred to the new World of Darkness as a "toolkit for horror?" Oh dear, your bias is showing.

If we restrict the discussion purely to the corebook that would be true - albeit a toolkit missing most of the tools you might need. If you include any fatsplats it is no longer true in the same way that GURPS is a Toolkit but Transhuman Space is not.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Any bad guy Mages you now create, or any who don't subscribe to conventional Judeo-Christian morality, be they even something so closely related to that mindset as islamic, will now be penalised. Is not the bargain with darkness for power a far more universal magical theme than Atlantis? Whether Faust or Loa or 'the dark side of the force' stories of evil magicians abound. This cripples them.

Low morality only penalizes a mage when it comes to paradox. And smart mages avoid getting paradox.

Second of all Muslims don't normally kill, rape or steal, how is having an islamic mindset going to be any different? In fact killing, raping and stealing is against most forms of morality. The only thing that is so-called judeo-christian in the game is the 7 virtues and vices. Using magic however is something that's against christian morality, and considered to be a grave sin.

Thirdly a lot of the game does use Gnosticism as a basis. And Gnosticism existed in Greece before christianity, though it was later changed by it.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Arguing with one of the developers about the game he's working on, and going on and on about how much it sucks to his face is outright offensive and rude.

 

[GRIMJIM]

Low morality only penalizes a mage when it comes to paradox. And smart mages avoid getting paradox.

Your morality score in Awakening is also affected by how you perform Magic, artificially hardwiring a judgement on how you do magic and rewarding 'good' behaviour tied into a morality system rather than letting the nature of the magic itself determine that. Its too tied up and it penalises the 'bad guys' fairly strongly.

Second of all Muslims don't normally kill, rape or steal, how is having an islamic mindset going to be any different? In fact killing, raping and stealing is against most forms of morality. The only thing that is so-called judeo-christian in the game is the 7 virtues and vices. Using magic however is something that's against christian morality, and considered to be a grave sin.

Well in that case given the Judeo-Christian set of the morality system they should all be slapped around more whenever anyone uses any magic.

Islam was just a pull out of the air example of a prevalent morality with some differences that was close enough to Judeo-Christian to show even small differences can have a fairly drastic effect. If you prefer use Christian Scientists and the question of blood transfusions, scientologists and psychiatric medicine, atheists or any number of political or social ideologies you care to mention. The hierarchy of sins is pretty strict in the game and fairly tight, it takes some poking with spoons to make it more usable.