Mage: The Ascension
Jun. 9th, 2011 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroMage: The Ascension, "A storytelling game of modern magick." You have Awakened, and discovered that reality is a lie that can be rewritten by your will. Can you help lead humanity to Ascension before it's frozen in sterile stasis by the Technocracy or torn apart by the insane Marauders and demonic Nephandi?
No, this game isn’t new to me. It’s actually one of the first rpgs I really got into, back around 1996, and it was my introduction to White Wolf games. Thing is, I started with the second edition of Mage, then eventually incorporated some elements from Mage Revised into my play style. When I found a Mage 1st Edition book in a $10 box at I-Con, I snatched it up.
The general layout of the book is basically the same. The artwork is pretty much all the same as the later editions; it doesn’t look like they changed much there. The general Storyteller system and game mechanics; most of the general details about the Traditions, Technocracy, Spheres, and various antagonists; and the cosmology of the setting changed very little between this and later editions.
There are a number of ideas that they hadn’t quiet fleshed out yet, and a few that they pretty much abandoned outright in later additions. The former includes the characterization of many of the traditions—they really didn’t seem to know what they were doing with the Euthanatos back then, for one—and details about antagonists. There’s no mention of Marauders reflecting paradox effects, and most “details” about the Nephandi are presented as vague rumors. The history of the Technocracy is kept relatively vague (though I don’t recall later books taking about technology taking over because magic and religion were distracted fighting with each other, and I thought that bit was great). They also obviously hadn’t really fleshed out the spirit world yet, particularly the “three worlds” aspect that they used to reconcile Mage, Werewolf and Wraith later on.
The latter includes the idea of “quintessence wars”, in which quintessence is a critical but limited resource, available only on Earth, and mages regularly fought wars to control it. This was pretty much dropped from 2nd Edition onwards. (They also emphasize using Quintessence in the systems more.) Similarly, there’s a lot of mentions of all mages aspiring to join the mysterious Oracles as soon as they got 6 dots in a sphere—the role of archmages was greatly expanded in large editions, and the Oracles were pretty much marginalized.
This book lists a specific set of foci that each type of Tradition mage MUST use for each sphere; later editions opened up the choices significantly and made paradigm and foci choices more freeform, even within Traditions. The spheres of magick stayed pretty constant, though—they swapped around a few Life powers and changed some rote requirements here and there, probably for balance after they playtested for a while; and they added and removed a couple of sample effects, presumably for the same reason.
They changed a bunch of system mechanics in the switch to 2nd Edition, which is probably the most noteworthy: The rolls for static (coincidental) and dynamic (vulgar) magick were changed, as was the calculation of paradox. The damage/duration tables were changed as well. I’m going to guess that playing the system as it was in this book was a bit unbalanced and even more prone to GM interpretation than Storyteller games usually are. (Mages actually seemed to get less powerful with each passing edition of the game, as they added more restrictions on what a particular sphere could do and how much paradox you could safely accumulate.)
Oh, and it wouldn’t be a White Wolf product without a few obvious typos, like a left-justified line with “(center this)” written next to it. Honestly, if you can’t find half a dozen typos in any 90s White Wolf book, you just aren’t looking hard enough. We loved them for the quality of the ideas and the simplicity of the systems, but their proofreading was a bit lacking.
Given that I only had middling opinions on Mage: The Awakening (the magic system was a little too rote-dependent for my playstyle tastes, and the world-build and backstory were nowhere near as good), I’ll probably keep playing Mage: The Ascension for a few more decades. Having a spare book with most of the critical concepts and setting details couldn’t hurt.
No, this game isn’t new to me. It’s actually one of the first rpgs I really got into, back around 1996, and it was my introduction to White Wolf games. Thing is, I started with the second edition of Mage, then eventually incorporated some elements from Mage Revised into my play style. When I found a Mage 1st Edition book in a $10 box at I-Con, I snatched it up.
The general layout of the book is basically the same. The artwork is pretty much all the same as the later editions; it doesn’t look like they changed much there. The general Storyteller system and game mechanics; most of the general details about the Traditions, Technocracy, Spheres, and various antagonists; and the cosmology of the setting changed very little between this and later editions.
There are a number of ideas that they hadn’t quiet fleshed out yet, and a few that they pretty much abandoned outright in later additions. The former includes the characterization of many of the traditions—they really didn’t seem to know what they were doing with the Euthanatos back then, for one—and details about antagonists. There’s no mention of Marauders reflecting paradox effects, and most “details” about the Nephandi are presented as vague rumors. The history of the Technocracy is kept relatively vague (though I don’t recall later books taking about technology taking over because magic and religion were distracted fighting with each other, and I thought that bit was great). They also obviously hadn’t really fleshed out the spirit world yet, particularly the “three worlds” aspect that they used to reconcile Mage, Werewolf and Wraith later on.
The latter includes the idea of “quintessence wars”, in which quintessence is a critical but limited resource, available only on Earth, and mages regularly fought wars to control it. This was pretty much dropped from 2nd Edition onwards. (They also emphasize using Quintessence in the systems more.) Similarly, there’s a lot of mentions of all mages aspiring to join the mysterious Oracles as soon as they got 6 dots in a sphere—the role of archmages was greatly expanded in large editions, and the Oracles were pretty much marginalized.
This book lists a specific set of foci that each type of Tradition mage MUST use for each sphere; later editions opened up the choices significantly and made paradigm and foci choices more freeform, even within Traditions. The spheres of magick stayed pretty constant, though—they swapped around a few Life powers and changed some rote requirements here and there, probably for balance after they playtested for a while; and they added and removed a couple of sample effects, presumably for the same reason.
They changed a bunch of system mechanics in the switch to 2nd Edition, which is probably the most noteworthy: The rolls for static (coincidental) and dynamic (vulgar) magick were changed, as was the calculation of paradox. The damage/duration tables were changed as well. I’m going to guess that playing the system as it was in this book was a bit unbalanced and even more prone to GM interpretation than Storyteller games usually are. (Mages actually seemed to get less powerful with each passing edition of the game, as they added more restrictions on what a particular sphere could do and how much paradox you could safely accumulate.)
Oh, and it wouldn’t be a White Wolf product without a few obvious typos, like a left-justified line with “(center this)” written next to it. Honestly, if you can’t find half a dozen typos in any 90s White Wolf book, you just aren’t looking hard enough. We loved them for the quality of the ideas and the simplicity of the systems, but their proofreading was a bit lacking.
Given that I only had middling opinions on Mage: The Awakening (the magic system was a little too rote-dependent for my playstyle tastes, and the world-build and backstory were nowhere near as good), I’ll probably keep playing Mage: The Ascension for a few more decades. Having a spare book with most of the critical concepts and setting details couldn’t hurt.
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no subject
Date: 2011-06-09 09:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-09 09:25 pm (UTC)We've tried a whole bunch of others - D&D (2, 3, 3.5, and 4), Star Wars d20, Spycraft, Call of Cthulhu (regular and Dark), HOL, Wild Talents, Cartoon Action Hour, Exalted, Paranoia, Toon, probably some more than I've forgotten, and a couple homebrews. White Wolf's still my favorite (with Mage: The Awakening my favorite of those).
Man, I'd insist that you come down to New York and play with us sometime if it wasn't such a long drive. Damn you, geography!
no subject
Date: 2011-06-09 09:26 pm (UTC)Someday, I will get down there for a visit and we will play! And someday, you guys should come up here. I'd see if I could talk our GM into doing a weekend session of our crazed Discworld-infused Pathfinder/D&D game so you could play. I have a feeling you'd love it.
...man, I need to run Orpheus sometime.