How did you learn to run or play Mage?

I played in one Mage the Ascension 1e game.

I learned to play from reading a friend's Mage core book without having one of my own but having played a ton of Vampire the Masquerade so I went in familiar with the d10 system basics.

I made a mind oriented Order of Hermes magi who was a psychiatrist who did hypnotism therapy. I was fairly familiar with Ars Magica and I came up with a concept for doing a lot of hypnotism mind control type stuff without generating paradox.

The game quickly fizzled out I think after the first session, it was a bit too open-ended for our group with a bit too vague guidelines on using powers and the mechanics for doing so. But I loved a lot of the concept ideas in Mage and incorporate them a lot into my D&D games.

My Iron Gods AP campaign involved the Technocratic League of Void Engineers, for example for the mages who studied and exploited ancient alien tech.
 

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Oh, Mage. Yes, back in grad school I played in a Mage: the Ascension Chronicle that lasted for years. Probably the best tabletop RPG campaign I've ever been in.
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So many great details here!

DO you feel that Mage required or needed the other WoD character types in order for it to be interesting? As in... what if there were no vampires or werewolves or fey to interact with in Mage...just mages?

What did you not like about Awakening, what seemed so different as to not be worth it at all?

What kinds of characters did your group tend to create? What were the features that you quickly noticed would be fun about that character?
 


I ran MtA 1e back in the 90s.

The 1e rules were a fascinating idea with a few dumb decisions. I'm pretty sure 2e and later fixed the "useless" sphere ranks. Plus, I really dislike the WW mechanics and prefer the Shadowrun mechanics it was based on.

At a meta-plot level you had to take out the evil-for-evil's sake Technocracy stuff and turn it into "we were right to influence the masses so everything we do from now on is right" self-righteous egotism. Less mustache-twirling-evil and more evil-tony-stark-who-is-smarter-than-you-and-never-wrong-wait-why-does-Captain-America-disagree-with-me kind of evil.

Mage was, imo, a great game to run other WoD plots. They are going to want to stop vampires, non-euclidean horrors, evil cults that run corporations, monsters that eat children's dreams, etc, etc.
I see from time to time, folks pull from various comics/supers characters or ideas. Do you think there is a lot of value in coming to play Mage with a little bit of x-men or avengers ideas?

And, when you brought in vampire's and horrors and monsters = was that simply of the GMs creation, or did you use rules and stuff from the other WoD lines (vampire, werewolf, changeling, etc) ??
 

With a lot of difficulty.

And arguing over what was Paradox-inducing and what wasn't.

Had a Life mage character who did workouts every morning to perfect their body (you know, like millions of people who exercise every day). I used that as a ritual to use Life magick to enhance my physical stats a bit. The DM stopped the game and started shouting at me, asking me WHY I was doing this. What was the in-game reason? I just told him, but he took it as meta-power-gaming or something.

Please note that this was a person who memorized game rules and power gamed relentlessly, usually with even LESS rationale than I did.

Otherwise our games were the same as Vampire katanas in trenchcoats.

Would have loved to have experienced the game with some good people.
I really feel this. Most of the time I think that all of WoD would have been so much more successful if it would have had a collaborative Session 0 guided in the book + a few more player-facing rules to keep STs humble + a few ST tools to help them adjudicate gameplay easier and a little less adversarial. Nothing major, but just a few bits of these things go a long way towards a better WoD experience.
 

I played in one Mage the Ascension 1e game.

I learned to play from reading a friend's Mage core book without having one of my own but having played a ton of Vampire the Masquerade so I went in familiar with the d10 system basics.

I made a mind oriented Order of Hermes magi who was a psychiatrist who did hypnotism therapy. I was fairly familiar with Ars Magica and I came up with a concept for doing a lot of hypnotism mind control type stuff without generating paradox.
I like this character idea! Did everyone easily find something fun to play too? One session isn't much, but it sounds like there were ideas the players could have run with.

Why do you think it fizzled? Was it really just too open rules, or do you think it needed more ways for players to build plots and hooks for themselves into the world so they had "stuff to go do" ??
 

I like this character idea! Did everyone easily find something fun to play too? One session isn't much, but it sounds like there were ideas the players could have run with.
I remember my brother got excited about playing a Son of Ether mad scientist. I can no longer remember what my friends played or who was running it.
Why do you think it fizzled? Was it really just too open rules, or do you think it needed more ways for players to build plots and hooks for themselves into the world so they had "stuff to go do" ??
A couple things. I think the GM was not entirely comfortable with what open ended magic was supposed to be able to do conceptually or mechanically (players too), modern WoD cities was probably tougher than a points of light D&D/WFRP/Palladium setting for setting up the plot types they were used to running (although we had done a bunch of Shadowrun and Vampire the Masquerade before this and some Star Frontiers and Battletech RPG and Paranoia, I don't think the GM had run anything non D&D fantasy before), possibly the lack of adventures, possibly we were less self starting on doing stuff which is fine when the DM is running a module or has an idea for a plot but less so in a sandbox, perhaps a not entirely clear concept of what a group of characters in Mage do compared to the natural direction from being a coterie of vampires in VtM.

The GM had been excited at the Mage concept, we dove in for a bit on character creation and learning the system then the GM lost enthusiasm after the first game and that was that. Its possible the GM wanted to play it more than run a game of it.
 

So, in our group, that would have worked to establish a justification for spending XP in Strength or Stamina later, but would not have made the magical working coincidental.

Coincidence is about what local observers would see at the time you do something that defies the dominant paradigm. What you did hours before or miles away are unlikely to matter.
I mean, the character wasn't transforming into the HULK or anything. The Life magick just sped up the training process, increasing her heart rate, strengthening muscles etc.

Basically made her temporarily stronger and tougher each day via "enhanced" (eg magickally) her workout routine. The most non-mundane part of it was her Wiccan-style rituals before and after, in the privacy of her home. It was pretty subtle.

But the paradox vs. coincidental part wasn't the issue the DM had; it was anger that I dared use magick as a routine ritual to enhance my character's abilities (it was like a dot or two in physical attributes, not boosting Strength from 2 to 7).

Meanwhile his NPCs were throwing lightning bolts around and creating cyber-zombies.
 

DO you feel that Mage required or needed the other WoD character types in order for it to be interesting? As in... what if there were no vampires or werewolves or fey to interact with in Mage...just mages?

Might want to be a little careful about this question. I can start with: I think the game is plenty interesting as presented - you don't need to buy and use rulebooks of other games for it to be interesting.

But, even as presented, the game gives you an entire setting, and that setting has things other than the PC Mage types in it. Are you asking if you can reject the rest of the setting you are given? Because then it really depends on what you replace that setting with, and I can't answer to that for you.

What did you not like about Awakening, what seemed so different as to not be worth it at all?

The Awakening (and, as I recall, the Vampire and Werewolf books of that same line) had several issues.

1) It basically assumed that the factions the PCs came from had already lost the major conflict. That led to a significant tonal shift in the game.
2) The magic system made any use of magic significantly more difficult, especially ad hoc casting. IF we wanted to cast fixed spells, we'd play D&D, right?
3) The morality system for the game was borked. It was technically possible to develop a crippling mental health disorder from shoplifting a Chapstick. And while that result was unlikely, merely using magic to defend yourself from a supernatural attacker was nigh certain to eventually result in severe psychological repercussions.

It amounted to, "There's no reason to try, if you do it won't work, and we will punish you for it either way." We put it away after a couple of sessions, and went back to the older game.

What kinds of characters did your group tend to create? What were the features that you quickly noticed would be fun about that character?

I don't think we found any mechanical features that were determiners. Over time and two chronicles, we saw representatives of all the major Traditions. The basic determiner was probably that the character cared about things outside themselves.
 

The Awakening (and, as I recall, the Vampire and Werewolf books of that same line) had several issues.

1) It basically assumed that the factions the PCs came from had already lost the major conflict. That led to a significant tonal shift in the game.
2) The magic system made any use of magic significantly more difficult, especially ad hoc casting. IF we wanted to cast fixed spells, we'd play D&D, right?
3) The morality system for the game was borked. It was technically possible to develop a crippling mental health disorder from shoplifting a Chapstick. And while that result was unlikely, merely using magic to defend yourself from a supernatural attacker was nigh certain to eventually result in severe psychological repercussions.
I didn't read very much of NWoD and never wanted to play it. I got the overall impression of an editorial stance of "This game is all about angst, and we're going to make sure you have plenty."
 

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