Mage:the Awakening is out. Opinions?

[Funksaw]

Everything I've ever said or done about White Wolf was earned. I submitted material to Boing Boing, yes. What I submitted was relevant information to Boing Boing's readers, was vetted by Xeni Jardin, was factually true and was, quite frankly, additional information about a story that they were covering. Remember, White Wolf's own actions caused Boing Boing to take notice of them in the first place - that had nothing to do with me.

And while White Wolf has earned my enmity many times over but I'm hardly unique in that respect. And I honestly hate them for their actions -outside- of what they publish - not for the quality of their work, which runs from mediocre to excellent.

DRM, Pimp, Conrad Hubbard's legacy of insulting everyone, Justin Achilli's less insulting but still obnoxious tantrums and WW's insane Camarilla policy aside, though - this happened to be one of those times when the work was mediocre.

 

[King of Old School]

It's worth noting that the structure of Mage 1st was not very different from Awakening, in that the game had a strong central thesis about the nature of things. It accepted the Triat as objective, and featured a universal creation story. Everybody knew paradigms were false and that pure will was doing, and you admitted right out that your magical tool was only a crutch.

Like M:tAw, it avoided referring to real world belief systems. For example, the Celestial Chorus was originally designed as a wholly fictional monotheistic religion; members just pretended to buy into other faiths, but knew that they were all really "parts of the One." The Order of Hermes was not only separated from the Western Tradition, they were originally not even related to the Order of Hermes in Ars Magica; the Ars OoH was supposed to be a false front for the "real" Order.

Yeah, Phil's dogged insistence on "no real magic" was pretty lame. Still, perhaps the most telling difference between Awakening and Ascension 1e is that the former actually works in play, while the latter was conceptually brilliant but unwieldy (!) in execution.

So in many ways Awakening does return to certain roots. Whether it grows from those roots into areas covered by Ascension isn't for me to say.

I happen to know for a fact that you can take Bill Bridges in one-on-one combat, so no excuses...

On a more serious note, if they don't turn you loose on the Orders they're seriously misguided. Your work on the tradbooks was one of the bright spots of the Revised line.

KoOS

 

[King of Old School]

And I honestly hate them for their actions -outside- of what they publish - not for the quality of their work

... which is why you can't discuss WW products credibly, even if you actually bought and used them (which you do not, correct?).

KoOS

 

[WildWeasel]

Wait, is this the same Funksaw that blasted WW on rpg.net for not selling him Adventure!, and thus dooming the entire RPG industry?

 

[King of Old School]

Wait, is this the same Funksaw that blasted WW on rpg.net for not selling him Adventure!, and thus dooming the entire RPG industry?

Funksaw is not dumb. He has a lot of thoughtful and interesting things to say.

Unfortunately, he also lacks perspective (!) and has a tendency to get carried away with himself and say things that I will term, in deference to the level of moderation on EN World, as intemperate and irrational. You can't have a useful discussion when the other party starts from a position of manufactured, emotional outrage totally out of proportion to the topic (e.g. RPGs). And I use the term "manufactured" deliberately in that last sentence.

KoOS

 

[Dinkeldog]

I was obviously expecting you to construct a response in the context of the argument, rather than asking you to employ CTRL+C/CTRL+V.

This is what it looks like when I employ CTRL+C/CTRL+V.

Okay, everyone, let's take a deep breath before posting. This should be more like a discussion and less like a debate with people trying to win points.

One more trip in and we'll be done with this topic for a while.

 

[Umbran]

Leached it out of what setting again? You seem to think this is an edition of Mage: The Ascension.

It is, effectively. Just as 3e is a decendant of AD&D, and is thus up for comparison, so is Awakening a descendant of Ascension. Since WW binds their settings so closely to their rules, I find it reasonable to compare setting changes alongside rules changes for the game.

Actually, you left out the entire body of text talking about what mages do. That's whatwould provide context.

Ah, I see. So, exactly how many pages of text will I have to quote before we can consider adequate context given?

Nobody checked it to defend it against complaints based on wilfully ignoring context and nuance. Happily, nobody is under any obligation to do so.

Sir - the next time you attribute willfull ignorance to me without first proving you can read minds, I will report you to the mods for being insulting. I differ from you on interpretation of the text. Fine. But you don't get to pretend to know why I hold the position I do unless I tell you explicitly. Is that perfectly clear?

How about 13th century illustrated manuscripts?

Actually, there are several copies of 13th, 14th and 15th century texts in my home. My wife makes a hobby of translating them. Will they do? In a world where pdfs abound, copies of texts are fairly easy to come by if you really want them.

We live in a world where most people can't extract information from digital media that's more than 20 years old, yet you somehow believe it should be true in some ironclad sense than anything a budding Merlin writes down is preserved for all eternity.

No. I think that a society that is stated to have a dedication to the propagation, continuation, and spread of magic would keep as many copies of such texts around as possible. But apparently they don't. Interesting how the actions of this society run so contrary to their stated goals...

And funny how I've never heard anyone argue that every wizard in Faerun or Oerth should have complete 30th level spellbooks, since that scenario is actually much more plausible in those fantasy settings.

Actually, there have been such discussions.

It used to be that there was a defense that Faerun and Oerth didn't have printing presses (a defense Mage lacks). And there was a great deal of debate about the impact of spells that allowed for speedy copying of spellbooks. The usual second defense was that D&D writing was itself inherently magical, and had to be done by hand - another defense Mage lacks.

Amazingly, people write books on paper and other materials that are not considerate enough to be indestructible. People lose track of books. Towers burn down. When it comes to magical books, people burn them, hide then, kill each other for them.

Fine. That all holds up until the time of the printing press. Imagine how many copies ogf books containing rotes coudl be made by a mage who enchants a printing press? Any tome that survived up to teh time of Gutenberg (and there are many of them).

(because, as you must realize the WoD is about a *hidden* supernatural world)

Incorrect - the supernatural world is only hidden from those who are not in and of themselves supernatural. The rules specifically call for all supernatural characters to be hooked directly into a support structure of people who are supposed to help each other survive. Those that are not part of the structure are deeply frowned upon, if not considered outright insane. But oddlyt, those structures do a remarkably bad job of education. Why is that?

Unfortunately, your struggles are only making me feel the setting is less internally consistent, rather than more.

You don't get arcane XP when Bobbi-Sue tells you about the secret crush she had on the Hawkins boy. It's arcane XP, not secret XP. Arnae XP comes from secret sources by virtue of a setting where the supernatural is a secret.

But that doesn't tell me why it is secret! Unless you contend that the elders conceal facts for the specific purpose of making sure people can gain arcane XP, the keeping of secrets is both counterintuitive and counterproductive for a people dedicated to the advance of this information, and the continuation of the culture based upon it, who have been capable of mass-copying of information for many centuries.

If your opinion has integrity: yes.

Sir, in this instance you're just wrong. To be blunly logical - I don't have time in my life to spend typing out pages of text I find boring. That does not imply that my opinion is unsound. Plus, it is an opinion - a matter of taste, that cannot be proven by a display of facts. Even if I did provide the extracts you request, we could both read them, get different things out of them, and both be right.

And here, we reach the limits of my time.

[qutoe] Caveat emptor.[/quote]

Right. If that's your defense, you should simply have started with that, and saved everyone a lot of time.

That reminds me of I can never enter combat in D&D, because there's a chance someone will max-crit me and kill me right away. How unfair!

There is a qualitative difference between teh risk of character death and the risk of alteration of character psychology. If you dont see that, then I don't expect we should discuss this further.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Interesting - the people defending the game are being more successful at convincing me not to get it than the ones criticizing it.

The Auld Grump

 

[Khairn]

Although I really like the new mechanics, when I reviewed the game along with one of my players we both came away with the same impression - "meh" :\

I think our issue stems from our "perceptions" of what Mage was compared to what it appears to be now. The original Mage grabbed us by the throat and yanked us into a fantastic world of reality shaking mystery and wonder.

MtAw seems to open the door into a partially decorated room and invites us to explore alot of things that dont seem to be really connected. It just doesn't generate the same sense of awe that M:tAsc does.

I can see real potential with the setting once some more of the great fluff that WW is justifiably famous (infamous) for gets included. But for now, we are going to get our Mage-fix by starting a new M:tAsc game. Maybe in a year or so we'll take another look at MtAw, but for now its not for us.

 

[eyebeams]

It is, effectively. Just as 3e is a decendant of AD&D, and is thus up for comparison, so is Awakening a descendant of Ascension. Since WW binds their settings so closely to their rules, I find it reasonable to compare setting changes alongside rules changes for the game.

3e is designed to support the play style introduced in AD&D as best as it can. M:tAW isn't designed to do that for the original Mage.

Ah, I see. So, exactly how many pages of text will I have to quote before we can consider adequate context given?

This depends on your sincere desire to provide context.

Sir - the next time you attribute willfull ignorance to me without first proving you can read minds, I will report you to the mods for being insulting. I differ from you on interpretation of the text. Fine. But you don't get to pretend to know why I hold the position I do unless I tell you explicitly. Is that perfectly clear?

I honestly can't think of a reasonably intelligent person advocating your position honestly. I admit that it is a failure of imagination on my part.

Actually, there are several copies of 13th, 14th and 15th century texts in my home. My wife makes a hobby of translating them. Will they do? In a world where pdfs abound, copies of texts are fairly easy to come by if you really want them.

OK -- I can see where you're going wrong here. You haven't read up on Grimoires. Recording magic isn't as simple as jotting something down in Word.

Incorrect - the supernatural world is only hidden from those who are not in and of themselves supernatural. The rules specifically call for all supernatural characters to be hooked directly into a support structure of people who are supposed to help each other survive. Those that are not part of the structure are deeply frowned upon, if not considered outright insane. But oddlyt, those structures do a remarkably bad job of education. Why is that?

Your're falsely assuming that mages know everything about the supernatural world. But wait -- they should, because they've written it doen, because they know all about it, right? The circularity of this makes me dizzy.

The current World of Darkness does not collect everything under an overarching scheme. I think that this may be the hardest concept for people to wrap their heads around. The old games had several competing overarching cosmologies that were supposed to explain everything. The current World of Darkness has things that are just plain inexpicable. For example, mages may have written information about the Empty Room (see WoD: Mysterious Places) down, but they don't know where the Room comes from, what it's purpose is how how to destroy it.

But that doesn't tell me why it is secret! Unless you contend that the elders conceal facts for the specific purpose of making sure people can gain arcane XP, the keeping of secrets is both counterintuitive and counterproductive for a people dedicated to the advance of this information, and the continuation of the culture based upon it, who have been capable of mass-copying of information for many centuries.

Firstly, you can't "mass-copy" spells. Transcribing a rote requires transmitting the imago and mudras. Again, see how Grimoires work.

This business about not knowing about arcane XP, then not knowing about Grimoires, tells me that you need to give the book abother reading before engaging this subject again.

Sir, in this instance you're just wrong. To be blunly logical - I don't have time in my life to spend typing out pages of text I find boring.

If you have ample time to complain, but not enough time to defend your position, then you must make do with the flaws of that approach.

That does not imply that my opinion is unsound. Plus, it is an opinion - a matter of taste, that cannot be proven by a display of facts. Even if I did provide the extracts you request, we could both read them, get different things out of them, and both be right.

This is a fancy way of saying your opinion is unsupportable, which is a fine resolution of things for me.

Right. If that's your defense, you should simply have started with that, and saved everyone a lot of time.

The idea that gamers buy things without making rational consumer decisions about their own tastes is something I will never understand. I understand it about as little as I understand games' desires to proeslytize about their unsupported opinions so as to make everyone accept them as gospel truth.

There is a qualitative difference between teh risk of character death and the risk of alteration of character psychology. If you dont see that, then I don't expect we should discuss this further.

There are similarities and differences, but you missed my point. Complaining about low percentage but common risks that dramatically affect a character would logically require you to harp about those risks in other games.