Mage - The Spiral [OoC]

[ajanders]

Request

If this game is not full, I'd be interested in playing.

Imagine someone who felt there was something fundamentally unjust about the universe.
Imagine that someone wanted that to change.
Imagine that same someone knew (or thought he knew, which may be the same thing) that there's no human way to change the unfair nature of the universe: no human agency can give the race to the swift or victory to the strong. But they wanted to anyway.
Whatever happens to a want deferred?
Does it shrivel like a rasin in the sun?
Or does it explode?
And when it explodes, what does it break? The unjust universe?
And if it does, what do you put in its place?

Character Concept: Agnostic Calvinist Euthanatos-to-be. Yes, it's inconsistent. He knows. It worries him quite a bit, too.

 

[Mickerus]

I'm still definitely interested in playing.

As far as concept goes, I'm leaning hard on the idea of lifting a page or two from the idea of dipsomancy from Unknown Armies (another great occult-style game, by the way, if you aren't familiar with it); I'm thinking a fellow in his thirties, a talented musician and songwriter out of the American midwest with more than a few skeletons in his closet - assuming he ever stayed in one place long enough to have a closet. He's in his mid-thirties, and a lifetime of failure and regret have driven him to alchohol. Ten years ago he would have been a natural for the Cult of Ecstacy, but now his apparent bent for self-destruction makes that questionable.

In non-Mage terms, think Tom Waits with a little bit of Jack Kerouac thrown in.

In Mage terms, either Cult of Ecstacy or an Orphan. For magic, I'm definitely planning on Time; his constant longing for the "old days" has actually manifested, and he often finds himself literally seeing the past, though not necessarily his own. Other spheres... not so sure. I'm certainly entertaining the notion of Entropy; both as a reflection of his grim view of the world and that intangible "drunk's luck".

 

[kuroshidaku]

Not really sure about Mage magic system, but i'm thinking no flashy spells. mostly things like divinations, telekinesis, spider climb sorta stuff. probably will end up doing damaging spells, but the guy's not overtly hostile.

Manifestation- I'm thinking something along the lines of a reasearcher into quantum mechanics, and all the weird stuff that happens there. Gave him a clue that something was not quite right in the universe.

Please tell me if there are any probs- I havn't played PbP or Mage before, but I do know D&D.

kuro.

 

[Fanog]

Kuroshiaku, the concept would be fine, there's enough weird stuff in Quantum theory to create magic

The Mage magic system is very open-ended. You're not bound by a list of 'spells' you know. You just think of any magical effect and roll some dice to see if it works. Of course, there are some quirks:

- You need enough knowledge of the specific part of reality you're trying to influence. For the purpose of magic, reality is split up in nine spheres. You have a knowledge rating in all of these spheres (though most will be at zero). Depending on the complexity of the task, you'll need a specific ranking in the corresponding spheres to be able to create the magic effect.

- Subtle effects are easier to pull of than overt ones. Remember where every person shapes reality? If you do someting that other people would consider impossible, they will try to deny your magical effect, preventing it from happening.

All of this will become much clearer once we're underway, part of the game will be discovering what magic is, and how each of you can work it. Just worry about the character idea and how this character might become aware that something such as magic exists.

Mickerus, character seems good.

I like all the concepts I've seen so far. I'll keep the thread open for another week, please feel free to update, expand etc your character concepts. I'll make my decision in about one week, depending on what's there at that time. Good luck all.

Fanog

 

[Fanog]

Three more days before I'm picking players. Any more interest?

(Oh yeah, and *bump* )

Fanog

 

[Keia]

Fanog,

I've got some interest. I don't have the books, have never played any of the white wolf games except aberrent and trinity, so I don't have much of an understanding of the game mechanics.

But, while reading through some of the concepts and the outline you laid out, I had an idea.

Think of the sports athlete, working his way through the various levels of competition always striving for more. More speed, more strength, more endurance, more sheer will. Whenever the competition increases, so does he, mainly through practice and training. . . or some he thought. At some point, probably int he game, he realizes that something is wrong that people aren't like him and can't push themselves to be able to do the things that he can do.

Plow through linemen as a running back, three or four hanging on him as he goes, refusing to go down. Banking a 25 foot jump shot through the basket, while getting fouled with the game on the line. The list goes on and on.

My concept is that this is a young man perhaps just out of college, having not just excelled but smashed records. He's been through the investigations and the testing to determine if its drugs and passed with flying colors. He's the Tiger Woods, Marshall Faulk, LeBron James : parts of each, all rolled into one. He thinks there may be something more, because it's dawning on him that no one can do what he does.

I would think he is a celebrity and has money from endorsements and the like. As a mage, he would be a physical enhancements type of mage, strong of will, internal stuff to the exclusion of everything else (i.e. can't light a match with his mind but can run through an inferno without a scratch as long as he prepares for it).

What do you think?
Keia

p.s. I post a lot.

 

[loxmyth]

Jason Siddique came from a long tradition of successful professionals. His father was a physicist employed at a large multinational and his mother a doctor. He had two older brothers that were engineers and a sister who was a lawyer. The Siddique's as a family were generally logical, orderly and right-thinking people.

Jason was not.

He was more interested in the abstract than the physical, more interested in the mysteries of the human heart than the mysteries of the electron. Eschewing more scholarly pursuits, the young Jason spent most of his time creating. Drawing, painting, sculpting, writing when the muse took him he would spend his time working exclusively on some piece of art. What was the point of pursuing an education if that education couldn't be applied to what was relevant in his life? he often thought.

Yet his parents were not interested in his excuses; make something of yourself, they would say; follow the rules and know your place in society, and you would find happiness. Ironically, the act of imposing their will upon young Jason made him a very unhappy individual, and he constantly looked for an escape from the drudgery of his life.

Pressured to do well academically, Jason did the minimum work required. He would go through all the motions, while secretly despising it all. If he could manage it, he'd sneak off to drown his sorrows in drink or any other recreational narcotic he could get his hands on.

It was in his last year at high school when he first had an inkling that the world was not quite as he had always believed it. He had applied, along with a prestigious state university, to a college of art and design. It was mostly a longshot; the college had limited space, and were highly selective. Jason was in for a surprise, however. Impressed with the young man's emotive artwork, they offered him a spot which he quickly accepted.

When his parents found out, they were enraged. They accused him of sabotaging his career, and he accused them of holding him hostage. He stormed out of his home and went to a local watering hole, where he drowned his anger in more liquour and drew doodles to release his rage. They started off simple, but finally when he was done, he had a drawing of the giant house he had spent most of his life in, set ablaze with the fires of frustration.

His biggest shock on returning home was to find that the fire department had just beaten him home. Apparently they got there before it had gotten a chance to spread much, and insurance would pay for the rest. But the investigators found that the fire had originated in Jason's room. Even though he claims to this day he had nothing to do with it, his parents disbelieve.

And so now he lives as a "starving artist" student, on his own, trying to juggle life between his studies of the fine arts and just surviving.

And every once in a while, he'll remember the fire.
------------------
How's this seem?

 

[Fanog]

Boards shutdown came at a very awkward time for this game.

I'm in the process of moving this weekend, so I probably won't have internet accesss. Next update will be monday, when I will pick players and post how we'll proceed.

Hoping this'll come off the ground soon, and that the board will stay up to allow it...

Fanog

 

[Argent Silvermage]

Is there still room for me? I sais I wanted to play in the original thread. Techno geek (Son of Ether) who's father is a failed inventor. Max's drive is to prove his father's work is viable but he knows willpower is the guiding power behing the devices sucess. He will be a sort of Psionic gadgeteer.

 

[Fanog]

Hi everyone,

First off, I’d like to thank everyone for their interest. Unfortunately, I only had five places available for this game, which meant that I had to decide on who could be in, and who wouldn’t. Congratulations to:

Loxmyth
Byron’s Ghost
Mickerus
Kuroshidaku
Keia

For those who didn’t make the cut, I’m sorry. I wish I could have included everyone. I hope you’ll stick along to read how the game goes, I’ll think of you if I ever need some additional players, or replacements.

To those players who are in: Please finalize your character background. Be sure to include the following:
- name
- current residence and occupation
- world view (if it differs from ‘normal’)
- personal goals and motivations
Also, please make a first draft of the character sheet. See character creation below, following this very short run-down of the basic system that Mage uses for conflict resolution.

The Mage d10 system
The White Wolf System uses only d10 dice. Every score a character has is given as a number of dots that determine the relative strength of that score. One dot is poor, two dots is average. Three dots equals good, four is exceptional and five is superb. This goes for every score that will be on your sheet.
When a check needs to be made, two scores will always play a role. One is an attribute (which is for raw potential), the other is an ability (which determines aptitude for and training in that particular task).
You add the amount of dots you have in the attribute and the ability, and take that amount of dice. Roll against a difficulty number, set by what you’re trying to do. The Difficulty ranges from 1 to 10, with an average of 6. Each die that comes up with a result equal to or greater then the difficulty, counts as one success. Each die that comes up a 1, reduces one from your amount of successes.
If you score at least one succes, the task succeeds. More successes you succeed better, of with more margin of error. A negative amount of successes (lots of 1’s) means that you botched the task. That’s pretty much the basis of the system.

Character Creation
This will deviate slightly from the book, since you will be creating normal persons who have not yet awakened. Because not everyone is familiar with the rules of Mage, I’ll give a brief walkthrough of the process. If things are unclear, please don’t hesitate to ask.
For reference purposes, I’m using this character sheet:
http://www.white-wolf.com/Images/CharacterSheets/MageRevisedcharactersheet.pdf
It’s not exactly equal to the one found in the 2nd edition book, but I’ll use this one so everyone has the same sheet. There will be some alterations to this sheet, so please read the following carefully, also if you already know the Mage rules. I won’t explain each ability individually, the name should give you a pretty good indication of what a given thing does. Again, don’t hesitate to ask questions.
Here we go, from top to bottom:

Vitals
Only your character name is important here at this stage. Nature and Demeanor are optional, a good background story will tell me just as much about you character. The other fiels in this section won’t be used yet.

Attributes
Attributes are divided in three categories: Physical, Social and Mental.
All of the the atrributes start at one dot, but you get points to improve these. First, rate the three categories for your character: excellent, good, average. For the three atrributes in the ‘excellent’ category, you get 7 dots to improve these. In the ‘good’ category, divide five dots among its attributes. In the ‘average’ category, you get three points. Within each category, feel free to distribute the dots any way you like.

Abilities
Again, these are split up in three categories: Talents, Skills, Knowledges. Rate each of these as you did for attributes. For your ‘excellent’, ‘good’, and ‘average’ category, you get 13, 9 and 5 dots to distribute, respectively. Please note that the maximum number of dots for any ability in this stage is three.

Spheres
Reality is divided, by definition of magic theory, in nine spheres. Your rating in each of these will determine how well you understand each of these parts of reality. Don’t worry about these yet, this will be taken care of in-game.

Advantages
Willpower represents the force of will of your character. (Well duh… ) You will sometimes have to make a roll with this stat, but the points can also be used individually. In that, you remove one point of ‘permanenent’ willpower to gain an automatic succes on a task, for example. These point of spent willpower can be regained by in-game actions that would boost your self-confidence. All in all, it’s a pretty important stat. Willpower start at five dots for each character.

You get four dots with which to buy various backgrounds, advantages that you have gained in you life so far. Choose from:
- Allies: Each dots give you one ally or increases the power of an ally.
- Resources: Money in the bank, stock, real estate, etc.
- Dream: Through one way or the other, the character learns bit and pieces of information and/or skills that she’s not supposed to know yet. Becomes more powerful with increased amount of dots.
- Influence: The amount of clout the character hold, usually within a specific community.
- Library: A collection of works, ancient and new, dealing with the ‘occult’.
- 'Mystery': There are some magic-style backgrounds that you wouldn’t have access to, yet. Feel free to put some points in a mystery-background, and I’ll be sure to pick something nice.

Finishing touches – Freebies
Now that you’ve gone through all the steps, it’s time to go back and touch up on the ‘weak’ spots. You get 10 freebie points that can be used to buy extra dots in any of the scores on the sheet. However, some are more expensive then others. Use the following table to see how many freebies it would cost to raise something.
- Atrributes: 5 per dot
- Abilities: 2 per dot (you can raise abilities above three by using freebies)
- Backgrounds: 1 per dot
- Willpower: 1 per dot
Please indicated seperately where your Freebies went, this makes it easier to check.

Merits and Flaws
I’m not a huge fan of these. They’re perks that can either cost you freebie points, or get you freebies (in the case of flaws). I’ll cover these on a case-by-case basis. If you want something special, just ask me. I’ll see if it’s possible, and if it costs/nets you any freebies.

In closing
That’s it for now. You can post your background and sheet here, or send them to me through email (adress in my profile). Once the first characters are finalized, I’ll open up a thread in the Rogue’s Gallery, and start the game. Good luck creating characters, and please don’t hesitate to ask me, anything.
I’m really looking forward to running this one.

Fanog