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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 6184055" data-attributes="member: 14159">Okay.  Mage: The Ascension was always by-far my favorite Old World of Darkness game.  I loved the setting, I loved the metaphysics and idea of reality being by consensus and ancient conspiracies and cabals conspiring to shape the direction of society as a whole, that reality can be shaped if your soul just will wake up and realize it can do it and depending on the person that either means "magic" for the Traditions, super-high-technology for the Technocracy, demonic pacts for the Nephandi, or just being so freaking insane that you can inflict your personal delusions on the rest of reality for the Marauders. The thing was, mechanics-wise, Mage SUCKED.  It was one of the hardest games to run, especially to run well.  "Balance" was next to impossible.  While mages could do almost anything, starting characters tended to be pretty limited and it was freaking hard to get them up to the uber-godlike status that NPC mages could easily have.  Then there were the serious cringe-worthy moments in crossovers with other WoD games, like the arbitrary heavy handed fiat that every supernatural being hates each other.  Werewolves hate Mages for "defiling cairns", never mind that a Mage with the Spirit sphere is probably every bit as adept at dealing with spirits as any werewolf, or even moreso, so if the spirits didn't want that node touched, they'd probably say something to the mage.In any case, the NWoD's Mage: the Awakening, was frankly way lamer in setting.  Some new age stuff about Atlantis and stuff, making all mages into Gandalf-types channeling power from Atlantis, shoving aside the amazing variety of characters that old Mage called for.  No more steampunk (before steampunk was cool) Etherites or super-hacker Virtual Adepts, not to mention Men In Black (NWoD's Project Valkyrie is a pathetic imitation of the Technocracy, to be honest) or the slightly cliche (but still fun) HIT Mark, that barely-disguised Terminator clone.What I'd really like is to mix the two, to take the wonderful setting of Ascension and mix it with the firmer, better written rules of the New WoD, and also take that chance to remove some of the wackier things that slipped into the old Mage canon (like the Technocracy having an entire Dyson Sphere around another star, or the Ka Luon, or the entire Avatar Storm plotline which basically got rid of all the extraplanar fun)I know that White Wolf made 20th Anniversary versions of Vampire and Werewolf, and I've read that a 20th Anniversary Mage has been confirmed, but no details about when it's available (or how I could buy such a wonderful thing). After regrettably selling off almost all my OWoD books a few years ago (money was incredibly tight), I've started buying them up, just picked up the 2nd Edition Mage: The Ascension core book.  So, has anybody else tried to mix the old setting and new rules or otherwise have some really good info on 20th Anniversary Mage?</blockquote>

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