GRIMJIM said:
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.
Well, yeah. I did note that Kult is far more extreme than WoD (either iteration), right?
I found it more broadly defined and less restrictive than the WoD morality system in play - perhaps you're looking at a different edition?
There are few differences between the editions, and no differences in the morality mechanics we're talking about. In any case, the morality system -- as with every other element of the game -- is predicated on a strictly European, Judeo-Christian worldview far more specific than that of nWoD.
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.
Hey, Funksaw asked and I obliged. If you're not interested in the comparison, you could always just ignore it. I'm still not convinced that a morality track is less relevant in the nWoD than in Kult, but I'm not interested in selling you on it either.
I'd argue that Mage lost the core of what made it a pain in the *** to play before, not what made it great. Paradigm and the consensus were a muddled mess that chiefly served to foster arguments instead of enjoyable RPing. There are elements of Ascension that I miss but those are trivially easy to replicate and overall I like the new cosmology
much better than the old one.
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.
Personally I prefer that mages have to face the consequences of their moral behaviour. That said, the game supports Faustian mages just fine: goetic mages, Scelesti, Acamoth. Not always as PCs, but then I don't consider that a flaw in the game. Likewise, I didn't consider it a flaw when Masquerade didn't allow Sabbat characters.
However, the default game has atlantean artefacts, atlantean ruins, codes, methodologies and innumerable other things.
No, it has artifacts, ruins, codes, etc. that some people claim
without any corroborating evidence to be Atlantean. Certainly there's something from the past but nothing about its true nature is actually known with any degree of solidity. And again, that true nature is totally irrelevant to the day-to-day lives of mages in the setting unless you consciously choose to run a chronicle focusing on the topic.
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.
I never said it was the same as GURPS. That said, look at the VII book for Requiem -- that's pretty much the definition of "toolkit" right there.
KoOS
