[WoD] Mage: The Ascension. Polling interest

[Argent Silvermage]

Well seeing as I have only second edition as well. looks good to me.

Any Ideas for the game?

I'm thinking of a Son of Ether
forces 2, Matter 2, Prime 2

Basic concept will fit in anywhere. He is the son of a "mad inventor" and is the only one who can get his father's gadgets to work.

 

[Fanog]

Ok, I'm convinced there's enough interest to proceed.

Here's the idea I had so far. Nothing is finalised yet, so this is your chance to add ideas.
- I haven't been able to find "Dragons of the East", the book about Oriental Mages, so the game won't be set (exclusively) in Japan.

- Play will start one-on-one with each of the players, where you are approached by someone and Awakened (=let in on the fact that magic exist and that you are a Mage). None of the characters have to know each other initially and can be from anywhere around the world. The amount of play in this phase of the game is dependent on your posting frequency and your prior knowledge of Mage. I'll use this time to get you to know your character and bring each of the player up to speed on the concepts behind Mage. I'd like to do this one-on-one to give each character a personal, unique view on magic. Once this is done, 'things' will happen, bringing you together as a group. Politics between mages will not be very important in the beginning, but may become so later. I haven't figured that part out.

This concept may lead to a slow start, which can be pretty dangerous for a PbP game, I think. I haven't decided yet, but I feel that the personal approach will work best for the start of this game. What do you think about this concept?

Fanog

 

[Argent Silvermage]

Prehaps a mix of personal and group would be best. Think of "X-Men" being brought together by the Professor. Each is initialy contacted alone but brought together rather quickly. Prehaps the people who Awaken us could be part of a larger organization thus there is a hook to getting us together but you still have a small bit of time to flesh out the character.

Basicly you get a small preview of the character then the character interacting with the group.

 

[loxmyth]

I know all about slow starts and flagging interest, believe you me. That said, I think the key would be if everyone is interested in developing their characters then this hopefully shouldn't be too much of a problem.

While the 'X-Men' start is always viable, it might come off as a bit contrived unless there's a reason to assemble a group of novice Mages. Of course, this is all in theory, since I don't know anything about the setting and thus such things may be very common.

Onto game concerns, I have almost no concept of what the different groups are and I'm not quite sure how to address it. Would it be a simple matter of pinning a character concept to group, or is it more complicated than that? Would I have to say before game start that I am playing a "Son of Ether" for example, or would it be easier to present the options in game?

 

[Fanog]

There are different factions among mages. These are groups who have (sort) of the same theories of how magic and reality is supposed to work.

Usually, a character is already on his way to a bigger understanding of reality before truely Awakening. His experiences prior to awakening will determine largely in which faction the character will feel most at home. Someone who has always worked with gizmo's and gadgets and gets them to do funky things, will feel right at home with the Sons of Ether, for example. He of she isn't automatically a Son of Ether, but in the course of the game, she will likely be tutored by one and join them.

Picking a faction at character creation is just a shortcut for trying to convey what kind of magic the character will be able to do. If someone would tell me "I want to be a Verbena", this gives me a rough picture in very little words. If you don't know the factions, you could also say "I want to play a witch-type mage, someone who is dealing with runes, bones, curses and lots of blood." This gives me exactly the same information.

So, the factions just give you a starting point, they show you what kind of characters would be possible. But it's also completely viable to think of a kind of magic, and pick a faction later in-game. If you'd like a run-down of the factions, I'll post it here, but you could also just think of /any/ kind of extraordinary character and handle the factions in-game. Every person who is capable of doing the supernatural could be a Mage, faction can always be pegged on later.

Did this make sense? I hope so. Please let me know if some things aren't clear yet.

Fanog