I know Mage: The Awakening is very different. I'm not interested in that one. But I am a neophyte who is interested in picking up some old Ascension books because the core idea behind it sounds great and it seems like it could be a fun platform for diverse types of modern fantasy gaming.
The internet, however, has so far not given me much of an idea what's different about Mage 1e vs. Mage 2e or Mage 2e vs. Mage 2e Revised, except that I understand the latter has a much darker assumed setting where the Bad Guys (TM) have more or less won. So could someone, or diverse someones, give me a general rundown of the major themes and rules distinctions between the three?
If it helps at all, my only oWoD familiarity is with the revised editions so far as rules go.
I know Mage: The Awakening is very different. I'm not interested in that one. But I am a neophyte who is interested in picking up some old Ascension books because the core idea behind it sounds great and it seems like it could be a fun platform for diverse types of modern fantasy gaming.
The internet, however, has so far not given me much of an idea what's different about Mage 1e vs. Mage 2e or Mage 2e vs. Mage 2e Revised, except that I understand the latter has a much darker assumed setting where the Bad Guys (TM) have more or less won. So could someone, or diverse someones, give me a general rundown of the major themes and rules distinctions between the three?
If it helps at all, my only oWoD familiarity is with the revised editions so far as rules go.
Its been awhile but from what I remember the big change in the editions for Mage had to with the ranks in the spheres. The 2e version was on the whole better explained, edited. The general trend was to reign the power in a bit. That said it is still the fantastic system of magic that was laid out in 1e. Hands down the best magic system in any rpg. I can't speak to 2e revised.
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Without going out to the garage and asking my wife to help me bring in the storage boxes all my WoD stuff is in (yes they're heavy!!) M:TA 2e forwarded the ascension war a little and revised a bit more - little changed between paperback and hardback versions and revised - which was another RPG Company releasing tatt for extra profit....the sphere system is one of the best magic systems around IMO because it makes you think..you don't have a spell list.
The Technocracy sourcebook is one of my faves for M:TA but once again WW had released 5 prior sourcebooks on the Technocracy factions which was done for £££$$$$$
I'm afraid i can't offer much more without going through the actual books - they went into storage about 3/4 years ago and we all moved over to 3.x
Ok. Thanks guys.
There is one other very important difference between Mage: The Ascension 2nd Edition and 2nd Edition revised.
When White Wolf ended the Wraith: The Oblivion line, they “blew up” Stygia. This is all well and good, except that this changed how the Umbra worked; effectively putting a serious nerf on the sphere of Spirit.
Another, and more minor change, was that Mage: The Ascension 2nd Edition Revised is when they started making Mages more dependent on Rotes. But, that is unlikely to be a big problem for most groups.
2e : best background
2e revised : slightly better magic system : streamlined, easier, as flexible and more progressive (new mages are more dependent on Rotes, so gaining flexibility is now a bigger part of gaining power)
Used to play with 2e background and revised rules.
ETA: I totally did not see Lord Fyre's post before I posted this. He said what I say below far more pithily.
I ran a Mage game eons ago...
Mage 1: Great conceptually, but the way the magic and spheres were written was clunky and could be crazily exploited by clever players and GMs.
Mage 2: Much more streamlined, much clearer rules, and as others say, the background is much better fleshed out as well.
Mage Revised: Overall, the spheres were even further better defined while still keeping the flexibility of the system. I remember that overall, the system changes were not dramatic but generally all worked much better. But...
I had a big problem with Mage though, which was that between Mage 2 and Mage Revised, they had a big metaplot event--they blew up the Shadowlands, where the Wraiths lived--and proceeded to work the results into the game mechanics. Specifically, the Spirit sphere got dramatically altered and unnecessarily nerfed--you couldn't go into the spirit world without risk of losing your avatar, etc. As my campaign was designed before the revision came out, and was heavily, heavily built around the spirit world and the Shadowlands, I could only pick and choose what I wanted to use from Mage Revised, because parts of it were useless to me in trying to keep my campaign in the state it was. Which was frustrating because, again, I really liked the other mechanical changes in the system, so was constantly flipping between Mage 2 (for the Spirit rules) and Mage Revised (for everything else), which got annoying and not worth the trouble after awhile. Yes, this just turned into a bit of a rant, sorry about that, but it's worth noting regardless.
So: if you like the spirit world and the ghosts and the Umbra from older editions: bear this in mind if you use Mage Revised. If you don't care about these things or your campaign would not be heavily concerned with them, then I would suggest going with it over the previous ones.