Mage:the Awakening is out. Opinions?

[Shining Dragon]

Mage: the Awakening - Now with 100% More Atlantis!

If you liked the old Mage game for its abstract system and background, then you probably won't like the new Mage. When Mage first came out it was widely reguarded by the people I knew and at alt.games.whitewolf as unplayable (or at least lackluster IIRC). Then people who weren't normally looking to play it started to discover the strange new world that it presented with consentual reality and will workers and it gained almost a cult following. The new Mage takes it back to what people were expecting to begin with and presents your standard spell casting wizards that integrate well with the other WoD splats. Some people will like both and many will like one or the other.

 

[Shining Dragon]

I suppose I should throw my two cents worth in...

I like Mage: The Ascension. I played in a game for two years that now is a dim memory (my group played 2nd Ed. and stopped way before Revised came out - a comment by one player was that WW had lost a sale because they took so long releasing the OoH Tradition book).


Mage: The Awakening is a different game. It has a very different feel to Ascension. To me it conjures images of seeking secrets in lost temples - as the front of the book says it indeed is a game of modern sorcery. Ascension gives me a different imagery - umbral zepplins, kung fu mystics, government conspiracies to hide The Truth from the world.

I also like Awakening. I can only repeat the mantra that if you were seeking a new Mage: The Ascension in Awakening then you will be disappointed. If you are looking for a game of Mages in a modern World of Darkness then you may like Awakening.

 

[GRIMJIM]

You're a guy who hates the company. One of us knows the old and new game better than the other, I think.

Aye, I'd agree there, but with a very different conclusion to you I think.

Yes, your mage could be wrong. Ascension''s relativism wasn't a facile endorsement of absolute solipsism and believing that was so is an example of a poor reading, indeed. Ascension's point was that all paradigms were inaccurate -- *all* of them were wrong -- and that the process of Ascension was one where mages learned to expand their beliefs to include the ultimate truth.

No, all of them were RIGHT. Every god and spirit existed, subsisting on belief. Spheres/Willworking was, basically, an agreed 'language' across the different traditions to give them a conceptual framework to work together. As someone progressed they needed their 'props' less but that can equally be taken as a measure of power and practice as well as knowledge. The cosmological and metaphysical understanding in Mage could also be used to understand and explain every other supernatural force in the game within the framework of its belief which is something that helped cement the trend towards bringing the games together as one line. This was a large part of the problem that occured with Revised and the YoF and the sudden shifts that occurred contradicting everything previously established and breaking the metaphysical constants across the game (Particularly the Avatar Storm's inconsistent effects and Demon's metaphysical and historical precedence). If related to anything much before Mage was rooted in the absolute base reduction of magical thought behind Chaos Magic.

Actually, now your character can be *right* to a degree that was never possible in Ascension, becase your character has a conscious handle on the genuine process of magic.

A singular process with little room for interpretation, question or mystery outside of 'what has gone before'. For those who prefer a tighter focus and a less 'confusing' array of ways to do things that's great but given what made the original Mage great it can feel like a betrayal, especially given the way the other games went.

As others have pointed out, perhaps more gently, Vampire and Werewolf seem to have addressed their previous criticisms by loosening up, becoming more free and less structured. Contradicting that Mage now has a much tighter focus and that in spite of the relatively restricting nature of Mage revised creating a huge split in the old Mage playing community. While Vampire and Werewolf retain strong thematic elements from their old incarnations and are recognisable (TBH I'd prefer it if both had gone a bit further in some ways) Mage does not. It no longer 'does its own thing' but covers ground amply and more ably covered by other games. The system and philosophy behind the oMage was its greatest strength to the people who fell in love with the old game and unlike the other new games there isn't a great deal for them here.

1) It evinces a poor understanding of the texts at hand, from not even knowing how you pass on magic in the new game to not knowing what the old game's text was about.

If one wants to be petty one can blame that on poor writing being unable to convey what the writer is trying to say.

Otherwise I'd say that your interpretation seems very much askance to that I have experienced in any playgroup either tabletop or LARP.

2) Two-thirds of it come from two guy who hate the company so much communities have taken formal sanctions against them for crossing the line.

Then you're not seeing a lot of the rest that goes on here and your own reading comprehension is somewhat askew. Entirely seperately to my relationship with White Wolf (I can't comment on Funksaw as I don't know about it) I don't think much of the new games. The only valid criticism you can make of my criticism of the lines is that my Cam experience gives me a very different way of looking at things than your average tabletop player. In this case I actually think that that is an advantage, not a hindrance.

And you'll also find that any sanction was due to repeated public clashes with Achilli, who is now leaving White Wolf, a man whose flaming skills and insulting presence put the worst moments of either mine, or funksaws frustration and temper loss into the shade. Said sanction was also limited to one place and one where - unfortunately - partisan treatment of such things seems to depend very much on relative levels of hobby celebrity and very little on actions.

Other than that Pimp's only real crime was not being particularly funny, White Wolf's takeover of the Cam was hishandled horribly, the YoF was a brilliant idea - poorly executed (with particular reference to the Cam) and I have a major problem with two, now _former_ employees of the company who I regard as rude and petulant idiots who got away with far too much and seem to hate their 'fans'.

3) Worst of all, it fails to bring up any of the real, cogent criticism about the game that I've read elsewhere, to do with its focus on the Western occult tradition, Platonism and Gnosticism.

Not being quite so obsessed with regarding exclusion of my particular personal or cultural beliefs as an insult consider that all included when I talk about a lack of options or two tight a focus or one-true-wayism. I don't feel that it particularly skillfully matches up with those quoted 'isms particularly well either but I can see where the criticism comes from, I just subsume it into the greater criticism of being too 'tight' and 'small' - which was already a major criticism of revised, which in the light of awakening now looks extremely broad.

Heck, since nobody's hit that last I almost feel compelled to criticise the game myself -- as I have elsewhere. Then again, I equate criticism with analysis, not the insipid good/bad dyad that people think is critique.

People either like something or they don't, for various reasons, the more plus points you get the better the impression people come out with at the end. Liking or not liking, good or bad is a binary decision but the degree of good or badness varies. A pure analysis isn't really a critique since it wouldn't make a judgement.

If a page by page breakdown isn't analysis enough for you I don't know what is. The only purely emotive bad reactions I had to it were on Atlantis and the existence of the new Tremere - a word that brings a shudder to any long term WoD player. One is a central strut of the game, the other more easily ignorable.

Actually, you're criticising a structure I didn't have much input in. There's a difference between writing and development. On the other hand, I think KoOS has shed the most relevant light on your particular perspective.

Then stop taking it personally or address the criticisms logically if its not your 'fault'. Explain how people are wrong or, if they're right how what they consider a negative is a positive to you.

It isn't designed to satisfy somebody's relationship with the old game for good or ill. Given that the old Mage had a vocal minority of people who bought the entire line so they could whine about it at every turn -- given, in fact, that people who bought every book were the *majority* of this minority -- the fact that the new game inspires the same kind of complaints (right down to people acquiring the book despite their obvious predisposition to complain about it online, no matter the content) is most heartening.

PDFs are relatively cheap, especially with a weak US dollar, as new can sell at almost full price, some people like to keep a handle on the industry, some people were really waiting for Mage to see if they would buy into the whole nWoD deal as it was far and away their favourite game. I don't think that's so strange.

Given Mage sold second best to Vampire for the longest time and that most of the criticism and disappointment seems to be coming from former Mage players, while most of the support seems to be coming from non Mage players or those that deeply disliked aspects of what made the old Mage so good, I'd be worried.

For my part Mage was the one game that stood the chance of drawing me back, getting me interested in the nWoD and even potentially rejoining The Cam. I was looking to be blown away, excited, interested and even with the things I didn't like in the revised Vampire and Werewolf there were commonalities in them that gave me expectations for Mage (more compatable mechanics, much better explanations, relatively open-ended approach) that weren't particularly fulfilled. It just gave a profound sense of 'blah'.

 

[King of Old School]

Because it is possible to seperate digust and disappointment at one thing, from another.

It is certainly possible... in theory. What I doubt is that you are able to do so in practice, where WW is concerned. Your own commentary here and elsewhere only supports this conclusion. Again, people with an irrational hatred of a producer can't offer credible commentary on the product.

No, all of them were RIGHT. Every god and spirit existed, subsisting on belief.

Notwithstanding that this interpretation is not supported by the text (or at least, it is less supported than Malcolm's take), it's just not possible for mutually incompatible worldviews to all be right.

KoOS

 

[GRIMJIM]

It is certainly possible... in theory. What I doubt is that you are able to do so in practice, where WW is concerned. Your own commentary here and elsewhere only supports this conclusion. Again, people with an irrational hatred of a producer can't offer credible commentary on the product.

Criticism of certain products and practices.

Others, I like.

Notwithstanding that this interpretation is not supported by the text (or at least, it is less supported than Malcolm's take), it's just not possible for mutually incompatible worldviews to all be right.

In this world perhaps (including takes on the game) but it didn't matter what you believed, it simply mattered that you believed which was consistent with the makeup of the cosmology in associated products.

 

[painandgreed]

Notwithstanding that this interpretation is not supported by the text (or at least, it is less supported than Malcolm's take), it's just not possible for mutually incompatible worldviews to all be right.

I'd argue against that. I particularly held this opinion for WoD games, because as soon as you determine the Truth, then it is only a matter of time before it is told to the players and the mystery of the setting is deflated.

"All things are true"
"Even false things?"
"Yes, even false things are true."
"How can this be?"
"I don't know, man, I didn't do it."
-discussion between Malaclypse the Elder and student

 

[Funksaw]

I suppose I should throw my two cents worth in...

I like Mage: The Ascension. I played in a game for two years that now is a dim memory (my group played 2nd Ed. and stopped way before Revised came out - a comment by one player was that WW had lost a sale because they took so long releasing the OoH Tradition book).


Mage: The Awakening is a different game. It has a very different feel to Ascension. To me it conjures images of seeking secrets in lost temples - as the front of the book says it indeed is a game of modern sorcery. Ascension gives me a different imagery - umbral zepplins, kung fu mystics, government conspiracies to hide The Truth from the world.

I also like Awakening. I can only repeat the mantra that if you were seeking a new Mage: The Ascension in Awakening then you will be disappointed. If you are looking for a game of Mages in a modern World of Darkness then you may like Awakening.

I agree with the above post except to point out what I thought was pretty obvious. Ascension, for all it's wandering, was an original piece of work (in the "novel" sense of the word, not the "copyright infringement" sense) that provided a large framework for telling stories.

Whereas, the idea of magic existing hidden within the world isn't exactly all that original in the roleplaying sense. Unknown Armies is the obvious. Fan-brewed modern conversions of Ars Magica, I believe there might be something in Dreaming Cities (but don't quote me) and, lest we forget, Urban Arcana! Sure, it feels different because one's a d20 system but when you think about it... magic interacting with the world and no one else seems to catch on? All you have to do to turn UA into Awakening is to take the whole thing a hell of a lot more seriously and cut down on the monsters.

The other problem is that, quite frankly, if you wanted to cobble together a gnostic, hermetic-magic only world for Mage: Ascension, the rules didn't get the hell in your way. I remember playing in an Ascension game actually -set- after the destruction of Atlantis, homebrewed and kitbashed. It is going to be very hard to retrofit Awakening for other settings.

Those are the main problems I have with the game and note that I'm not talking about quality of product.

If you want to talk about quality of product, however, you're going to delve into the realm of opinion. Here's the things that I really can't argue logically - that are just my personal preferences coming to the fore, and, hell, maybe some people will agree. Other people might not agree. You're not going to argue me into thinking my -opinions about art- are wrong, so try not to think too much about it if it upsets you. And yes, I could change everything below, but A) I can't change them in games I don't run, and B) If I'm going to change this much, I might as well just play a different game.

I'd also like to point out that none of the below comments have anything to do with Ascension - that these are problems I found with the game standing on it's own merits:

The splats underwhelm me. They kinda mades sense in old WOD, because quite frankly, with Mage, Vampire, Wraith, Orpheus, and Demon, the splats represented the different type of pop-culture literature you can play. Hell, you can look at Anne Rice for the Toreador and Malkavian, look at Bela Lugosi for the Ventrue, the Lost Boys for the Brujah, Max Schreck for Nosferatu, the WWE for Gangrel... I kid, I kid.

Here, the splats seem pointless - the Paths seem to be a bit of an artificial limitation on personality (Here's one of the five personality types your character can be!) and the orders are underwhelming because there's not a whole lot differentiating an Adamantine Arrow from the Mysterium, from the Guardians, from the Silver Ladder. Sure, they have different jobs and different rituals, but there's not that much of a division there.

The 5x5 breakdown seems more than arbitrary, it seems downright foolish, and it seemed in this case that the designers were straining to fill in some of the slots.

I didn't like the new magic system. Yes, rotes -are- a simple way of casting magic. So is declaring "Magic Missle."

Reading the rotes doesn't give me a good idea of the power level of each step on the Arcanum - it seems arbitrary that the fate spell to reroll 9s is a Fate 2 spell while the fate spell to reroll 8s is a Fate 3 spell. It seems awkward that so many spells are versions of spells earlier on, but now you can use them on another person - in some cases, that's a 1 level difference, in other cases, 2 levels.

The only way the new system is coherent and playable is if you -eliminate- new spells on the fly altogether. And if you're going to do that you might as well be playing, well, Urban Arcana.

Additionally, I don't like Atlantis. C'mon. You've got the tower of Babel myth staring you right in your face and you choose ATLANTIS? This is a totally subjective measure, but did you ever think that one conjures up images of ancient lore and hubris while the other one conjures up images of Aquaman fighting Black Manta?

I don't get what Mages do in this game. Yes, they search old ruins for mystic lore. BIG WHOOP. First of all - dungeon crawls are not exactly White Wolf's forte. Secondly, the entire mage society seems to exist on an economy of secrets, and the problem with the economy of secrets is that information is not like money. You do not lose information by giving it to someone else (Although you do if you're inscribing it into a grimoire... which makes no sense to me, but there you go,) and the entire thing seems idiotic because keeping information from younger mages (likely new PCs) results in them being unprepared to fight the Orders' adversaries.

I also think the game is set up too much like Vampire: Masquerade

Hear me out - a very big deal is made in the game about how Apostates and Caballess are considered crazy. So, you basically have to join Cabals and Orders or be ostracized.

Welcome to the return of White Wolf Clique Politics.

In the old Vampire, this made some sense - Vampires are very powerful and wealthy but don't have any way to judge sucess outside of their society - they can't get day jobs, they can't really interact with people, so of course it's going to devolve into popularity contests and since there's no external measure of success, the only way to measure success is by pushing other people inside the society down.

In the new Mage, you get all the nasty stuff from clique politics but not the rationale. Mages aren't seperated from the sleepers unless they want to be. The theme is supposedly that power corrupts... only, quite frankly, the reason that power corrupts is because it's easy to lose sight of the little people. In a typical Mage city, all the "little people" are around you every day, and the next rung up, the "little mages" could all fit into a single small 9x12 room. Comfortably.

In conclusion, I just want to point out that many people are dissapointed that Awakening isn't an inheritor to Ascension. I also wanted to point out that there are also reasons other than "not being the old mage" that people might not like Awakening. In short, I think the game's a mess, an unfinished product, and like the rest of WoD 2.0, a cheap attempt by the current WW dev team to put their name on someone else's baby.

 

[King of Old School]

In this world perhaps (including takes on the game) but it didn't matter what you believed, it simply mattered that you believed which was consistent with the makeup of the cosmology in associated products.

But so what? I don't dispute that belief mattered in Mage, but I do dispute that merely believing made that belief true... which was your earlier assertion.

KoOS

 

[eyebeams]

I agree with the above post except to point out what I thought was pretty obvious. Ascension, for all it's wandering, was an original piece of work (in the "novel" sense of the word, not the "copyright infringement" sense) that provided a large framework for telling stories.

Sure.

Whereas, the idea of magic existing hidden within the world isn't exactly all that original in the roleplaying sense. Unknown Armies is the obvious. Fan-brewed modern conversions of Ars Magica, I believe there might be something in Dreaming Cities (but don't quote me) and, lest we forget, Urban Arcana! Sure, it feels different because one's a d20 system but when you think about it... magic interacting with the world and no one else seems to catch on? All you have to do to turn UA into Awakening is to take the whole thing a hell of a lot more seriously and cut down on the monsters.

And ignore most of the setting and system.

The other problem is that, quite frankly, if you wanted to cobble together a gnostic, hermetic-magic only world for Mage: Ascension, the rules didn't get the hell in your way. I remember playing in an Ascension game actually -set- after the destruction of Atlantis, homebrewed and kitbashed. It is going to be very hard to retrofit Awakening for other settings.

Many people are documenting themselves doing just that, putting the lie to your statement. I provided guidelines for doing so on my blog. They were very brief. And as a matter of fact, I've designed an alternate setting myself.

And neither Awakening nor Ascension's magic systems resemble historical Hermeticism in the slightest. Neither does Ars' system. Historical Hermeticism is highly ritualized prayer that begins with the assumption that the Abrahamic God exists and has coded the universe with methods to forcibly compel intermediary beings into service. Mage: The Ascension had one brief system for simulating this, tucked away in the OoH sourcebook. Further, the idea of the hidden face of God being revealed to the Hermetic initiate is undermined by the subjectivity of magic and of the spirits who would be stand-ins for intermediary beings.

The splats underwhelm me. They kinda mades sense in old WOD, because quite frankly, with Mage, Vampire, Wraith, Orpheus, and Demon, the splats represented the different type of pop-culture literature you can play. Hell, you can look at Anne Rice for the Toreador and Malkavian, look at Bela Lugosi for the Ventrue, the Lost Boys for the Brujah, Max Schreck for Nosferatu, the WWE for Gangrel... I kid, I kid.

Sure. That's part of the draw.

Here, the splats seem pointless - the Paths seem to be a bit of an artificial limitation on personality (Here's one of the five personality types your character can be!)

The Paths have default viewpoints, not required personalities. As did the Traditions.

and the orders are underwhelming because there's not a whole lot differentiating an Adamantine Arrow from the Mysterium, from the Guardians, from the Silver Ladder. Sure, they have different jobs and different rituals, but there's not that much of a division there.

They have different philosophies, initiatory practices and internal cultures. It's in the book.

Reading the rotes doesn't give me a good idea of the power level of each step on the Arcanum - it seems arbitrary that the fate spell to reroll 9s is a Fate 2 spell while the fate spell to reroll 8s is a Fate 3 spell.

Then you need to give the rules a more thorough reading, since the divisions between lesser and greater versions of the same practice are clearly spelled out. You may use a greater version of a practice at a higher Arcana rank.

It seems awkward that so many spells are versions of spells earlier on, but now you can use them on another person - in some cases, that's a 1 level difference, in other cases, 2 levels.

Same thing. Each practice maps across two ranks. This is consistent across Arcana.

The only way the new system is coherent and playable is if you -eliminate- new spells on the fly altogether. And if you're going to do that you might as well be playing, well, Urban Arcana.

Or you could read the rules thoroughly before playing and answer the elements of the system that puzzle you.

Additionally, I don't like Atlantis. C'mon. You've got the tower of Babel myth staring you right in your face and you choose ATLANTIS?

Arguing for a bible story is hardly a step forward to something more like Ascension.

This is a totally subjective measure, but did you ever think that one conjures up images of ancient lore and hubris while the other one conjures up images of Aquaman fighting Black Manta?

If White Wolf wrote its books in consideration of comic books, you might have a point. But censoring yourself for the sake of Aquaman readers makes no creative or economic sense. The idea that Mage should pay more attention to DC Comics than occult literature is . . . amusing.

I don't get what Mages do in this game. Yes, they search old ruins for mystic lore. BIG WHOOP. First of all - dungeon crawls are not exactly White Wolf's forte. Secondly, the entire mage society seems to exist on an economy of secrets, and the problem with the economy of secrets is that information is not like money. You do not lose information by giving it to someone else (Although you do if you're inscribing it into a grimoire... which makes no sense to me, but there you go,) and the entire thing seems idiotic because keeping information from younger mages (likely new PCs) results in them being unprepared to fight the Orders' adversaries.

You don't the way the new WoD works. Not everything is driven by a Brand Name Supernatural Being. The world is full of miscellaneous wierdness. Core WoD games have to do with surviving these encounters with your moral center intact. Mages are capable of resolving these mysteries completely. Not every session has to do with Atlantean artifacts and the like.

Secondly, it is not an "economy" of secrets. Mages are not traded fluidly in an open market. You don't learn magic from passive reading any more than people become good full contact foghters by watching Pride or WBC matches. They rely on building relationships -- possibly compromising ones -- with the knowledgable. The dodges for this are either tucked away or require sacrifice to use. In game terms, it's because magic is contained in the internal process of the spell -- the imago -- and not a simple description of how it works (which is why inscribing a grimoire isn't easy. See how it pays to read the book?). Mysteries do allow mages to get a better handle on the occult and teach themselves (just like I, as someone who's working on submission grappling in his spare time, likes to watch the odd fight vid -- but my time with a teacher is far, far better and without it, watching/reading would be useless).

Hear me out - a very big deal is made in the game about how Apostates and Caballess are considered crazy. So, you basically have to join Cabals and Orders or be ostracized.

Welcome to the return of White Wolf Clique Politics.

You mean the game expects you to play in a group? For shame!

In the old Vampire, this made some sense - Vampires are very powerful and wealthy but don't have any way to judge sucess outside of their society - they can't get day jobs, they can't really interact with people, so of course it's going to devolve into popularity contests and since there's no external measure of success, the only way to measure success is by pushing other people inside the society down.

In the new Mage, you get all the nasty stuff from clique politics but not the rationale. Mages aren't seperated from the sleepers unless they want to be. The theme is supposedly that power corrupts... only, quite frankly, the reason that power corrupts is because it's easy to lose sight of the little people. In a typical Mage city, all the "little people" are around you every day, and the next rung up, the "little mages" could all fit into a single small 9x12 room. Comfortably.

I think believing that Bad People are Bad because they lose sight of the little guy is a comforting *political reference deleted* myth, not to be taken seriously. There are plenty of Bad, Bad People who were perfectly in touch with the pulse of the common person.

In fact, Ascension's politics were *worse*, as I pointed out before, with decrepit immortals backstabbing each other. Awakening's chief form of competition has to do with forming a collective vision for a local society. The orders argue about the emphasis of certain elements. There is no drive to totally eliminate competitors from society. This is the antithesis of V:tM, where the competitors were exclusivist in outlook.

In conclusion, I just want to point out that many people are dissapointed that Awakening isn't an inheritor to Ascension.

Somehow, I doubt you are backed by a silent multitude.

I also wanted to point out that there are also reasons other than "not being the old mage" that people might not like Awakening. In short, I think the game's a mess, an unfinished product, and like the rest of WoD 2.0, a cheap attempt by the current WW dev team to put their name on someone else's baby.

Yeah, that bastard Bridges is trying to associate his name with an old game created a team that included . . . Bill Bridges! And Cruse the Wiecks for exploiting the creation of . . Stewart Wieck!

But I have a feeling that you cling to the cult of Brucato with the mistaken idea that he designed the game ex nihilo and that the majority of changes designed to destroy the "limitless possibility" thing weren't his (he didn't, and they were). If you want to buy a game that's a successor to his design/thematic concerns, buy Deliria. It's a pretty good game.

But you don't game any more, do you? In fact, you stopped gaming before the Awakening even came out.

 

[GRIMJIM]

But so what? I don't dispute that belief mattered in Mage, but I do dispute that merely believing made that belief true... which was your earlier assertion.

KoOS

That's the metaphysical constant between each of the games (until Demon messed it up, but even that's still explainable with a few contortions).

In oMage you had the constant pressure, the metaphysical 'gravity' of the consensus constantly pulling in one direct. That constant pressure of belief held most of the world in a constant state supported and maintained by the Technocracy who sought out reality deviants who threatened that constancy.

Safety and security Vs Freedom and danger, an old and still relevent argument.

There were some gifted individuals (those called the awakened or those with active avatars) might believe anything but their will had more weight than the average person. While normal people bucking the trend might be minnows swimming against the stream and getting nowhere (or not very far - static magick) Mages were more like salmon, able to leap upstream and make big splashes when they land, disrupting the stream (paradox) but they could still swim against the flow.

The technocracy victory was not complete however, different parts of the reality river flowed at different speeds and in different way according to localised belief (most particularly the orient). Even sleeper belief, massed together and believing something slightly different shaped local reality.

In each and every game belief shaped reality and it even explains vampires, werewolves and everything else particularly the spirit and faerie realms which were more malleable to human whimsy than the real world as well as a softer reality for lost spirits and entities that could survive there on far less belief.

Certain elements of wishful thinking in the general populace - humanising machinery, a continued fascination with magic, science fiction and other realms of fantasy occasionally made things easier and also allowed the less gifted (static magicians) to still make the odd change but it was ALL about belief and how that belief shaped reality. Even faith was really about belief.

I mean, come on, that was the central plank to the whole game - what we believe makes it real and people worked magic through what they believed in, through working their will. It didn't matter whether you believed in avatars or not, whether you understood what spheres were or not it was force of belief, passion and conviction that made things so, channeled through some divine spark that ignited a very few people.

That's how it could be so accomodating, what made it so great and how it hung the whole oWoD together because it could explain it all.