I am looking to start on ongoing campaign for Mage: the Ascension for my group of two players (each would be playing one character). I am somewhat familiar with running the system a decade ago, though that was a muddle of running 2nd and Revised. So I am looking for some advice (inspired by the advice for running Vampire in the 20th anniversery thread).
I will be using either 2nd edition or Revised - I believe I will want to use the rules from 2nd edition for the Spirit sphere at least, as I think that might be an interesting thing to explore. I was thinking of setting the game in Columbus Ohio, but I am not sure if I want to do a modern (2012) game or set the clock to the early 1990's as a way to avoid current (possibly volatile) political controversies.
I want this to be a campaign that can last a couple of months of playing 3-4 times a month for 4 hours (if that affects anything), with maybe a nod towards going longer if the players want it to. My main concern is that combat might be too lethal (depending on what we run into) which would really detract from getting character development going.
So, any tips, advice, things to think about, etc from people who've done successful campaigns?
I found that the best way to keep my game running was to throw out everything from the official canonical backstory (organizations, interactions between the Traditions, all of it) and then go through and cherry pick what I needed to make my game work in regards to the players and their characters. There is a very strong impetus in the Storyteller/WOD ruleset to put the needs of the characters and the players behind them in the back seat and make the story and metaplot of prime importance. This, to me, is defeating the purpose of the game, as the story is nothing without the characters (while the overriding notion of the ST/WOD is that the characters are nothing without the story).
I also threw out all concept of interacting with other "types" of Awakened, such as Werewolves, Vampires, and Fae, in so much as I would not let my players bring those characters into the game using non-Mage rulesets. My contention on this is that while they all share a similar world, it is clear from the "how to play these characters in this game" sections that the game mechanics were never intended to mix. If folks want to play a Vampire in a Mage game, there are rules for that in the back of the book. There is no need to shoehorn the V:tM mechanics into Mage, and vice versa.
Truthfully, I ran my game very fast and loose in regards to combat mechanics. It's my experience that the way that combat is laid out in the game, it is either completely ineffectual, or completely lethal, with very little in the middle. Generally I impressed upon my players that combat was a bad idea when more than two guns were involved by showing, rather than telling, the effects on NPC friends of the party, and then having one or two "near misses" happen. This left my players very cautious about getting into gun fights, or even brawls where the possibility of lethal damage was in play. When there WERE combats, they were brutal, short, vicious affairs that usually left one of the PC's in desperate need of medical attention. This suited me (and the players) just fine, because it meant they frequently sought out subtle, multi-faceted plans that relied on their wits and their magic more than firearms.
If I had to give you one solid piece of advice, it would be to go with my method of tossing everything out and then cherry-picking the best parts with regards to your game. If you don't want your players flying around in Ether-ships with the Awakened Creation of their dead mentor at the helm, then don't put that in. Don't feel like dealing with MiB's and Hitmarks and Authocthonia? take it out. I'm sure you'd have done this on your own, but it's never polite to assume. :)
I'd love to hear how your game goes!
Thank you for the feedback.
I'll definitely be trying to limit the other factions and metaplot to only what will be the focus of the story as it affects the characters. I hope to impress on them that this won't always follow official World of Darkness.
My current plan is for the game to be more street-level at first, and then slowly bring in more and more of the actual mage organizations and plots. I'm debating having both characters be Orphans at first, and eventually have them come to the attention of a Tradition mage and get recruited. If they want to be Tradition that is - not sure how well the general anti-science tone will work for my players (one being a chemist :)). So I am debating how much the Technocracy will be involved and if they will be bad guys.
I do plan on having plots with Nephandi and Marauders as well. The other races (werewolves, etc) will show up eventually as antagonists, going by the alternate write-ups in Mage and not the official rules.
Well, back to reading and refining my ideas.
One thing that I have found VERY helpful in running Mage: The Ascencion is to really bone up on what each level of the spheres can do.
As the GM, you want to both:
One way of dealing with the "anti-science" theme of Mage: The Ascension is not to focus on "magick vs. science."
Rather focus on how technology is being abused in the modern world - to dehumanize people, control information, and damage/destroy the environment. Surely you chemist friend well understands how chemicals are being abused in the world as nacotics, weapons (both explosives and poisons), and pollutants. This gives you a way to introduce a technomancer as a villain (either rogue or sanctioned).
One way of dealing with the "anti-science" theme of Mage: The Ascension is not to focus on "magick vs. science."
Rather focus on how technology is being abused in the modern world - to dehumanize people, control information, and damage/destroy the environment. Surely you chemist friend well understands how chemicals are being abused in the world as nacotics, weapons (both explosives and poisons), and pollutants. This gives you a way to introduce a technomancer as a villain (either rogue or sanctioned).
Thank you for the advice - I had not thought of that. I think that I would be able to have that work - and mainly have the characters oppose the more senselessly violent forms of the Technocracy. I can also see them teaming up with the Technocracy (with a lot of tension or possibly just with both showing up to deal with something at the same time) given the right incentive. I think there will be a large focus on the Nephandi and otherwordly entities, where I can see them cautiously accepting the Technocracy's aid (or gladly accepting the aid when it shows up in a firefight).
I have to discuss this with my players during character creation. I've been reading the rules to make sure I get the feel and setting better gelled in my mind before I get down to details with them.
As the GM, you want to both:
Avoid, or keep to a minimum, arguments about what a character can do - both with sphere and conjunctual effect.
Be able to think and react quickly to what the players can do (becuase if they can, they will). Skilled mages have an amazing ability to derail your plots.
I'll be giving the magic section a few read-overs and doing some thought experiments. I'm sure players will come up with things to surprise me - they always do in D&D which is more limited. But hopefully I can get the basic ideas of what would cause really big issues for plot ideas and adjust my plots accordingly.
Thank you for the advice - I had not thought of that. I think that I would be able to have that work - and mainly have the characters oppose the more senselessly violent forms of the Technocracy. I can also see them teaming up with the Technocracy (with a lot of tension or possibly just with both showing up to deal with something at the same time) given the right incentive. I think there will be a large focus on the Nephandi and otherwordly entities, where I can see them cautiously accepting the Technocracy's aid (or gladly accepting the aid when it shows up in a firefight).One way of dealing with the "anti-science" theme of Mage: The Ascension is not to focus on "magick vs. science."
Rather focus on how technology is being abused in the modern world - to dehumanize people, control information, and damage/destroy the environment. Surely you chemist friend well understands how chemicals are being abused in the world as nacotics, weapons (both explosives and poisons), and pollutants. This gives you a way to introduce a technomancer as a villain (either rogue or sanctioned).
This would also allow you to portray the "Technocracy" as a "different point of view" rather then as evil outright. (Possibly corrupted by the success and power they have achieved. This is exactly what happened with the "Order of Hermes" when they were in the same position in the Mythic Age.)
You could set up the "Sons of Ether" as Technocracy dissidents (seeking reform) rather than madmen & nutcases. This version of the Sons of Ether would use the same technomagick as the Technocracy (rather than their current nebulously defined “Ether” Science.)
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Speaking as the guy who wrote the Spheres for 2nd ed and the Merits & Flaws for Revised, the best way I've found to deal with magic in MAGE is to look at the paradigm of the mage in question.
For example, let's say you've got some mages with enough dots in Force (and a pinch of Prime) to toss a fireball. Your Son of Ether is going to have some sort of cool steampunk flamethrower that uses excited ether plasma. Your Order of Hermes guy is going to be chanting Latin and so on to cast his spell. Your Akashic Brotherhood type is going to be making like Dragonball Z. And so on.
The key is, if you can't make it fit into your paradigm, you don't get to do it because you wouldn't think of being able to do it. You get a Virtual Adept stripped naked in the middle of desert, it doesn't matter how much Force he has, he's not going to be able to toss a fireball because there's no logical way to do it. Give him a cell phone and he can hack into a communications satellite to summon in a strike from a death laser--and the Technocracy has to have death lasers--but without the cell phone? Not going to happen. And even with the cell phone, if he's in an area with bad service.
At least that's the way I ran my MAGE games when I was Storyteller.
^^^^^^^
That right there. And not just because he wrote the stuff, but also because it's solid advice.
Oddly enough, all of the Akashics in my various games never went the DBZ route - they all asked me things like "are there any open flames around? Yes? Okay, now, are there any containers with compressed gasses of any kind? Yes? Okay, now here's what I do..."
It'd have gone a lot easier on me if they just Spirit Bombed the hell out of the bad guys, now that I think about it.
Speaking as the guy who wrote the Spheres for 2nd ed and the Merits & Flaws for Revised, the best way I've found to deal with magic in MAGE is to look at the paradigm of the mage in question.
I am still reading through the rules, so I can't comment on the magick system yet. Thank you for the comment though! I will talk with my group about developing paradigms and using magick with them - I will probably be modifying the "drop your foci for spheres" system to something more loose based on Seekings instead of just the gaining Arete system, but I'll have to think about it more. And look over what benefits there are to still using foci after they have been surpassed.
I also wonder about requiring skills with foci - the way I am thinking about it, characters have certain methods they have already worked out within their style for rotes (throwing a fireball) - but what if the character wants to vary that on the fly (use electricity instead). Should they need some skill roll relevant to their paradigm? Maybe I'm overthinking it or it will be clarified with more reading.
Also, I had not remembered how complicated the combat section was with splitting dice pools, declaring actions, and the whole initiative/action/resolution system. I was thinking it was more fast paced and freeform - I'll have to look at it again to see if it flows more smoothly and how to run it more quickly.
Skills look good, though I will have to go through again with their list of what they are and think through some normal situations to make sure I understand it and use it quickly.
I talked to the player who I thought would be pro-Technocracy and got a pleasant surprise. He is not familiar with the Mage game or setting other than my brief discussion of the changing consensus and the war for reality, but he has an almost perfect character concept without reading any of it.
He will be a mage who was rescued from a bad situation on Earth by his mentor, a powerful magic-user who uses mostly physical magics. His mentor determined that he had some talent for magic, and so started tutoring him in a hermetic style (using pentagram/circles or amulets and reciting spell formulae either aloud or in his mind) while taking him on a planet-hopping tour. The young mage excels in areas his mentor is weak in - a time sense/time-viewing (working on time manipulation and travel). He also acquired an alien animal that can shapeshift as a pet. His mentor was then contacted by other mages with a mission that was too dangerous to bring his student on.
I think this translates pretty well into an Order of Hermes mage who is very weak on the politics of the Tradition, who has knowledge of Spirit and Time and possibly Entropy. The tour of the planets would be a tour of the spirit world, with visits to the mythical realities of the planets. His mentor was frustrated with the short-sightedness of his companions in the Order and instead focused on defending the spirit world and training young mages, but did not instill in them the respect for the Order or its internal politics. But he was still loyal to his fellows when they decided to act on a serious crisis. I haven't decided what to do with the animal yet.