Graf said:
At the risk of stating the obvious I think that the new Mage is a good game. I'm not trying to ding anyone's work. At the same time I do beleive certain things about the game based on having read it, and one or two suppliments for it. In particular the Boston book.
And that is basically that it's still a game struggling to find a compelling theme.
I don't think you're really talking about the theme. You're talking about realizing the theme through plotlines, which is a bit different.
What -do- mages do with all their time?
I've read several books and, except for the main mage book, it's been hard to get an idea.
"search for knowledge" and "seek enlightment" isn't an answer to the question..
Actually, it is. Remembers that both of these things are not abstractions. Searching for knowledge has a specific game system associated with it, as does becoming "enlightened." To gain Arcane XP, you have to go out and dig up unusual things. To get spells, you have to trade for, invent or steal them. Mages have to do this while staying under the radar or outsmarting rivals and enemies.
I rather think you're overstating Werewolf's degree of "focus." Werewolf looked focused because the corebook lacked things like detailed information about antagonists, but like Mage, that's fleshed out. There are lots of different games you can play with Predators and the Pure that aren't pure shamanic border-guarding.
I think you're putting up a straw man here. You don't want to awknowledge that the Mage suppliments (or the Boston book anyway) have struggled to fulfill the promises made in the main book.
They haven't managed to evoke the dramatic supernatural elements of setting instead concentrating more on this-guy-who-is-spooky-has-forces-3.
Actually, Boston's been pretty well-received largely because of the dramatic supernatural elements, like the Prince of 100,000 Leaves. I didn't do any NPC writeups in Boston Unveiled.
Boston expended about half of it's pages on some fairly cookie cutter NPCs. I lost count of how many "dramatic awakenings" were X-died-and-then-they-came-back. Which is what Vampires do. It would have been cooler if it was more than "x gets hit by car, x wakes up as a mage, x is cool because they got hit by a car and then woke up as a mage".
That's the nature of the material. mages Awaken. Vampired get Embraced. Werewolves have their first changes. There are always points of similarity and the incident will always be important to the NPC's writeup. Really, if you can't accept that, then the whole World of darkness isn't really you're thing, is it? Because that's just how it works.
Lots of talking about how special or interesting an NPC was, very little making them interesting and compelling.
Perhaps you could pull out a specific character from Boston as an example.
You're making my arguement for me actually.
He's identical to a "Prince". He's not evil (or more evil than a nasty PC).
But he's spooky and he rules the city and he's a jerk.
He rules the city with an alliance of another clan who don't really like him but feel obliged to work with him.
He's more sterotypically Prince-like that most of the Princes in the Vampire books.
Point by point:
1) Actually, vampires eat people.
2) That makes vampires bad and the Nemean not so bad. Also, the Nmean has no interest in actively expanding his power base. He levies taxes and encourages cabals to settle things amongst themselves.
3) He's not spooky -- his cabal is. The Nemean is the head of an influential cabal. Princes rule with vampires who are not usually in their cotories.
4) If he's so much like a Prince from vampire there are no Princes from vampire like him, then, uh . . . you realize your last statement is self-contradictory, don't you?
You should consider that perhaps, what you *really* mean, is that you *personally* have preconceived notions about what vampire and mage characters are like, that these are *not* supported by the books in either line, but it's *your personal * preference.
That's fine. But it's personal preference, not a broad critique.
It's an OK archetype to toss out, and there are some interesting options later on in the Boston book (but ones that would in fact, make him someone who deals with horrible demons, so I'm not sure where that comment came from).
SO... he doesn't have an alliance.
Wait! He DOES have an alliance.
No, his cabal has an alliance, not him personally. He's Hierarch because he's in an influential cabal.
[And it says several times that this alliance is why he rules the city. One way or another his alliance includes roughtly a 3rd of the mages in the city. etc. etc.]
No, it says it's why the Noose is predominant. It doesn't matter who actually leads the Ebon Noose. Again, you keep treating it like a cult of personality, when it isn't. Anybody who's an Ebon Noose master has a decent shot at Hierarchy of Boston for historical reasons.
Werewolf makes it clear that Max Roman wants to make a new werewolf society. That's something solid to sink your teeth into.
Nemean is just an evil guy who rules the city using his web of alliances to compell other vampires mages from different clans orders to keep people in line.
He rules his city through fear, but doesn't want anything except to be in charge.
Long live the Prince...
Actually, he's not that interested in being an active leader, as the book notes -- but that's a policy he got from his cabal. Again, the social unit of the cabal is far more central to how mages do things.
The other nWoD books have NPCs that are interesting. The Mage book offered a lot of material to do that.
I think that these sorts of things -will- be made in time, but that the authors need to get away from the Vampire meme and more toward the back of the Boston book (which had a more creative slant and seemed to be working to answer the question of "What do mages do all day?" by saying "Traveling into their inner selves to discover hidden truths".
As I said: There are *rules* for doing that.
Uh. Vampire princes are peoples friends?
I feel a bit silly trying to have a debate on this subject.
That is what you're saying right?
That vampire princes have to go make friends with people?
Uh, have you played Vampire? The point of Vampire is that you need to make *personal* political ties to advance. The entire system of blood ties is based on creating this web of *personal* alliances.
In Mage, the basic social organization is not the city hierarchy (as it is in Vampire). It's the cabal. A cabal is a law unto itself with its own heraldry, rights and internal obligations.
And I see this as punting.
If you can't come up with something interesting for them to do; and they represent an entire order which seems like a bit of a stretch, then I think you should leave them out.
If you -can- think of soemthing for them to do other than "plot in their extradimensional fortress to take over the city" then you ought to write it in.
"Extradimensional fortress?" Okay. I think maybe the problem is you didn't give the book a thorough reading. Please tell me where I put this extradimensional fortress, as it's the first I've heard of it.
The idea that people need the writers permission to change things in game suppliments is a bit of baloney.
And a weird exuse to trot out when you're also talking about how Mage is -already- open.
Where did I say this, exactly?
-If- people are free to do whatever they want with the Superior New Mage then why are you only writing part of a book and leaving the rest for "storyteller creativity"?
Opinions of the setting are ultimately subjective, but I will say that the new game's rules *are* superior. One sign that internet fandom wasn't playing the old game is that I never heard any complaints about a basic mathematical flaw in the old magic system.
The core isn't "incomplete." It just has a different emphasis.
I'll leave the "if you don't get it you aren't cool enough" type comments alone.QUOTE]
I never meant anything of the sort and franbkly, I wonder if you're reaching a tad here.
Cool. As a supporting figure he'd be much more effective
In a lot of DnD games I've run I find PCs respond better to having allies that are simpistic sterotypes.
It allows their characters more space to shine.
You missed my point. The PCs appreciate him because he's uncommonly honest about his motives, not because he lacks complexity.
