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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Graf" data-source="post: 3255129" data-attributes="member: 3087">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.Obviously the old-archmage thing wasn't so cool. The new towers theme is better.The second line seems like subtle jab at the first edition but the nWoD still hasn't answered the question at all.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.I largely agree.This was well executed in the main book.Like Werewolf is boring?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.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".Lots of talking about how special or interesting an NPC was, very little making them interesting and compelling.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.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.[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.]This is what I'm talking about with the confused stuff.You're writing a suppliment.You need to pick.You can have a sidebar that offers an option but at the end of the day you've written a story and a setting and you need to get off the fence.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 <s>vampires</s> mages from different <s>clans</s> 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...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".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?If, after writing a roleplaying suppliment, you feel that the big way that you've contributed to WoD is by having a slightly different mechanism for ruling a city then I think you're aiming too low.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.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.-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"?I'll leave the "if you don't get it you aren't cool enough" type comments alone. I realize my post may have hit a nerve and it's a very-good-thing to have a responce from an author, especially one whose worked on both editions.Cool. As a supporting figure he'd be much more effectiveIn 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.</blockquote>

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