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It is evocative, perhaps a bit too evocative. Hand drawn art affords a kind of distance I liked. Besides a lot of the original art (i'm thinking of Guy Davis and Josh Timbrook specifically) is great.
What's important though is how it plays. V20 is certainly clunky, V5 i have no experience of.

I think the issue with supplements is how they are done. It bugs me to see things like clans (lasombra in this case) relegated to a city book. I don't agree with that at all. I don't really need endless clans/bloodlines.

And I certainly don't need a Malkvaian Madness Network (Fishmalk FM!)
Well, that is all in the Chicago by Night supplement, so avoid that one I guess.

To the point of why they chose to introduce the Lasombra in that book was because the introduction of the Clan into the Camarilla happens in a chronicle presented in that book - The Sacrifice. There is now mooted to be a Sabbat book, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them reintroduced into the Sabbat at that point, along with the Tzimisce (who have been detailed so far in a free supplement).
 
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Well, that is all in the Chicago by Night supplement, so avoid that one I guess.

To the point of why they chose to introduce the Lasombra in that book was because the introduction of the Clan into the Camarilla happens in a chronicle presented in that book - The Sacrifice. There is now mooted to be a Sabbat book, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them reintroduced into the Sabbat at that point, along with the Tzimisce (who have been detailed so far in a free supplement).
Sure you can rationalise the content in game any way you like. The Lasombra like Tea so we'll include them in a book dedicated to vampire tea recipes.

I'm not questioning the quality of material in the book, but I have no interest in basing a game in Chicago. This book is a locatoin/setting book. I firmly believe clan information like this doesn't belong in such a book. This scattershot approach to what I consider essential info (the clans) is the wrong approach. I would much rather they released a companion (they have one, it's free, which is great, but I'd be happy to pay for a bigger one that rounded out the clans). It's not as if this is setting info that's novel; we already know who the clans are, regarldss of how they rebrand them. It's my biggest criticism of the game line. I am quite willing to buy quality supplements, but I don't want to be led by the nose like this.
 
My son played in a game of V5 and liked it. He's a hard old-school oWoD guy and liked it. Simpler. However it REALLY makes being a vampire a thing you can't avoid - hunting, on the edge of loosing control, etc. That was Kenneth Hite's design goal, which wasn't exactly the goal of the original system (which like most older games don't have a specific design goal).
 
Having read V5 about the last thing I think it needed was more clans.

I realize some of the fans of the older game want all that lore bloat but I'm glad it was minimized.

Kinda ironic too as one regularly see complaints online about 5e D&D adding more subclasses and/or not having enough subclass options.
 
Sure you can rationalise the content in game any way you like. The Lasombra like Tea so we'll include them in a book dedicated to vampire tea recipes.

I'm not questioning the quality of material in the book, but I have no interest in basing a game in Chicago. This book is a locatoin/setting book. I firmly believe clan information like this doesn't belong in such a book. This scattershot approach to what I consider essential info (the clans) is the wrong approach. I would much rather they released a companion (they have one, it's free, which is great, but I'd be happy to pay for a bigger one that rounded out the clans). It's not as if this is setting info that's novel; we already know who the clans are, regarldss of how they rebrand them. It's my biggest criticism of the game line. I am quite willing to buy quality supplements, but I don't want to be led by the nose like this.
Well, we will see what they end up releasing in the future. As I say, I know that there is an upcoming Sabbat book, where they may be included, in the same way that Banu Haqim and The Ministry were included in the Camarilla and Anarch books respectively.

The Chicago book made a point of needing to include the Lasombra because the Clan were important to the Chronicle outlined in the book. The Lasombra Clan themselves are not central to the game as a whole, however, as they are peripheral to the Clans included in the core game, in the same way that they weren’t included in Vampire 1st and 2nd editions outside of supplements.

The way I look at this, and this isn’t anything official I might add, is that the core seven Clans are analogous to human society. So, for example, the Venture represent the conservative establishment, the Brujah represent the radical agitators, the Tremere are the rising professional class, the Nosferatu are the ugly underclass, and so on. The other Clans, outside of the core, by extension represent those groups that lie outside normal society. In the case of the Lasombra, for example, they are presented sociopathic corrupters and not part of normal vampire society.

Now, while WoD games have always encouraged the playing of monstrous characters, including the Sabbat, the themes that follow these other groups tends to lie outside normal vampire society which is what the core game explores first and foremost. The other caveat lies in the meta plot elements of the game where different Clans shift about in their Sect allegiances (and different individual vampires even moreso). So, in the Chicago book, the plot elements present the Lasombra, at least those that have survived a global Sabbat purge, being brought into the Camarilla. Whether or not they should be trusted, going on their history in the game is a fundamental theme - and as such, there needs to be a sold introduction to the Clan in the setting material.
 
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I have not played V5 or fully read any of the V20 books, but I have heard that V20 allows you to become monster superheroes while V5 has a more horror aspect from Requiem. Does that sound accurate?
It does upset some fans when this is said, but in a nutshell, yes. V20 is a big catalogue of power options with the vampiric condition a stylistic overlay. V5 tries to explore what it means to be a Vampire first and foremost, with the powers merely being tools of the trade, so to speak.
 
Once Upon A Time...

(some ideas for London the Dreaming. A setting for Changeling, somewhat far removed from Concordia, the default/defacto setting in the corebook).

The noble houses of the Sidhe remain, but the High King in far off Tara Nur is a world away. London is largely under the sway of the Duchess of Sorrows. She rules from the nightmare tower known as Castle Darkhearth, strangely protected from the banality of the square mile where it is located. There, in her mortal guise as Fay Morgaine, she runs a powerful hedge fund known as Mordred Investments. She is never without her loyal troll bodyguards, Mr Fe, Mr Fi, Mr Fo, and, of course, Mr Fum. They are a renegade family of extremely efficient and quite sadistic thugs. Even the London Bridge freehold wants little to do with them. Efray is nominally loyal to House Balor, but serves darker forces, long ago bent by the dark kin of the Thallain and bought into the Black Court as their champion against the Excalibur Compact.

There are many, across the benighted freeholds of London, that oppose her. Few speak out as often as the rebel's known as the Fleet Footed Few. A group more properly known as the Excalibur Compact. They were created hundreds of years ago to preserve the integrity of Albion following the death of the mortal king, and chosen of the Dreaming, Arthur Pendragon. They alone are the chosen of the Lady of the Lake, or so they claim. Only the Dreaming knows for sure as there are none alive that have clear memory. One who might has long lost his mind to Bedlam with dreams that provoke nightmares, but also provide insight to those gifted readers. That vital voice has grown ever more distant of late. The Few believe he is a prisoner of the Duchess, but most really think that, if Merlin ever existed, he is far into the Dreaming. Whether that is better than being the Duchess' plaything is uncertain.

There are few dragons left in Albion now. Most did not survive the Shattering. Others returned to the Chimerical world. One remained, tempered by Banality only to be 'rescued' by the Duchess, becoming her favourite pet. Its name is Nicor. The Duchess would love for it to produce eggs, but her sorcery thus far has failed. It is rumoured that a Dragon's egg has arrived in the city recently, either carried by furtive fae traders, or inadvertently by unsuspecting mortals. such a prize would appeal to greedy men because dragon's eggs manifest as jewels; large golden eggs. Stare into one too long and one's true nature is reflected in the gleaming gold. Or perhaps one's fate.

TBC
 
The Duchess’ will is enforced by a special branch of the mortal police she keeps to herself. The real police never seem to question why these bobbies exist, but they are known as the Red Branch. More commonly they are called Smilers; a nickname given by the mortal children they inevitably (and delight in) scaring. Redcaps loyal through an old oath to the Duchess’s service. Fresh meat in return. All the prisoners they can eat. When they appear there is always dirty work to be done. They also have enchanted mortal police at their call if needed.
 
It does upset some fans when this is said, but in a nutshell, yes. V20 is a big catalogue of power options with the vampiric condition a stylistic overlay. V5 tries to explore what it means to be a Vampire first and foremost, with the powers merely being tools of the trade, so to speak.

Seems appropriate anyways, V20 was intended as a nostalgia-based product, so I wouldn't expect it to stray too far from te oWoD. 5th edition is a re-envisioning of the line. It's a shame Hite didn't stay on as lead designer.
 
It seems like Ken did more of the mechanics and a bit less of the setting for V5 but I'm not sure.
 
Yeah, the Atlantean origin and semi-gnostic approach to how magic and Paradox worked meant that magic had one singular, hermetic-looking vibe, as opposed to oMage saying that Hermetics and Wiccans and kung fu masters and Weird Scientists were all mages. That was because they were trying to present the idea that "reality" was a word only to be used in quotes and anyone's approach to magic was as good as any other, which I guess made sense because they all ended up having to use the same game mechanics.
So yeah, NWoD Mage is more consistent but less flavorful.

JG

The game's Second Edition front loaded a lot of the stuff that had built up across the line that made it a bit more complicated than that. Spellcasting really wants to use ritualistic and symbolic elements (that are often culturally informed) to give themselves the dice bonuses that can help with improving spell factors, and Paradox was made solely into a function of how much the caster is pushing themselves to make the spell powerful. Atlantis gets mentioned a lot less both as a specific term and the general concept it references (which became a lot more weird and varied in its own right), and there's a stronger emphasis on the Free Council as the people who think human innovations and cultures are magical in their own right.

And the overall vibe became very... John Constantine. Mages as detectives drawn to figure out weird stuff and constantly being in danger of dragging people along into the consequences of that. A different flavour, rather than a lesser one, I think.

I myself am getting back into Chronicles of Darkness stuff after several years of being away, and finding a lot of enthusiasm for it there.
 
And the overall vibe became very... John Constantine. Mages as detectives drawn to figure out weird stuff and constantly being in danger of dragging people along into the consequences of that. A different flavour, rather than a lesser one, I think.
It seems like Mystery would be hard to do because the mages have so much access to powers that let them gain lots of information.
 
It seems like Mystery would be hard to do because the mages have so much access to powers that let them gain lots of information.

Well, there's layers to it.

Like for one thing, the Mystery governing a discrete subject can have literal layers to it depending on the complexity of what's going on with it, that requires a sequence of rolls to fully uncover (but where too much time spent at once on trying to do so can cause the mage's own aura to contaminate the scene, cost them the rare and precious Mana, or even become susceptible to a Supernal entity with strange intentions).

And then depending on what the status of the thing is and how it relates to a wider context, the information uncovered might constitute further questions than definitive answers. You go wandering around in the city and notice distortions in destiny suggesting a number of people are being pushed in several directions. You take one aside and spend some time scanning them (which, first of all, requires time and focus so you might need to make arrangements to stay still and not be freaked out by you looking at them like that), and you can eventually uncover the details of the particular spell they were under; what it does, how long it was meant to last and has already elapsed, the fingerprints of the one who cast it (which may or may not be recognised by you).

But that alone doesn't tell you why, what it was intended to do and how it relates to any other given person who is probably being affected by the same source. It doesn't exactly tell you what the person has already done while under the effects of this spell, which might require going to other places and making examinations of the present or the past. And even with the information gathered from other multiple sources, that ultimately provides only the pieces, it's on the imagination and insight of the player to come up with how they might all fit together and what to do about that. Are you opposed to what the mage involved is doing? Do you want to learn from it? Help it out? Where do you go from either of those conclusions?

That's for the relatively straightforward matter of another regular mage casting spells on people or places. It gets weirder when they're stranger types, the Scelesti, the Tremere, the Rapt. Be careful that this Mystery isn't a lure left by the Seers of the Throne to draw you into a trap. Or maybe something related to the Supernal odder and stronger than mages, the native entities, hints of the old gods, archmasters and the Exarchs themselves. One of the fiction pieces in the Fallen World Anthology involves a character investigating the fact that he has several corpses dotted in various places. What secrets might you uncover from a temple that seems to come out of a past that never existed and is composed of materials resistant to magic? Determining the nature and intentions of an Abyssal spirit of anti-destiny is only half the battle, you need other means to determine how to send her packing.

And the things that form Mysteries that a whole Consilium forms around are much bigger than can be determined from a single observation. You're not going to uncover exactly why walking out traces of High Speech runes in the city of London causes the one who does so to experience effects or power ups related to what that rune describes from scrutinising just one thing (or if it is, it's probably a thing very hidden and requires a greater investigation to uncover in the first place). And what needs to be uncovered for a thorough understanding of it is probably spread across the territories and interests of multiple mages, who'll resist you barging in on their own projects. If you want to figure out what insights are provided by the arrangement of stones in this particular graveyard, you need to negotiate with the cabal dedicated to keeping the resident ghosts happy, which they won't be with strangers barging in.

And the magic of things that are not directly Supernal don't translate directly even under mage scrutiny, requiring a lot more examination and a bit more leaps of logic from the observer. Take the questions raised by finding a bunch of people being guided by Fate spells, and make them a bit murkier when those impositions are made with the sorcery of a vampire.

Think of it as similar to how in reality, scientists have access to sophisticated diagnostic tools, but you've got to run subjects through multiple tests in order to build up the data that then needs to be processed to form functional theoretical models. And time and resources to do those things are not unlimited, you're in competition for access to them with other people with their own research projects and need to argue your case before superiors. A mage can be distracted from their investigations by needing to defend their right to control access to a source of Mana that another cabal is trying to argue they have a greater need for (although if you should lose that font, there's always the option of a bit of human sacrifice as an alternative source...).
 
It seems like Ken did more of the mechanics and a bit less of the setting for V5 but I'm not sure.
The main mechanical development was done by Karim Muammar, who is still involved with the current development team. The story/setting development was mainly done by Martin Ericsson, through some consultation with Mark Rein-Hagen. Ken Hite was more involved with system development, but also took an overall lead on the game as a whole. There were lots of writing credits, including Neil Gaiman as a quick celebrity name-drop.
 
I've been watching Utopia (original UK version) and there's a hint of Deviant's core idea in that... characters (some of them) genetically altered in a lab, fighting/serving a powerful/ruthless conspiracy. I wonder if it was an inspiration?
Nah - I never actually saw it.

Deviant is mainly Orphan Black, with bucketloads of other influences. Same way Awakening 2e is mainly the pre-nu52 Hellblazer.

It is stylistically similar to Promethean while being different thematically, which for nWoD games is considered more important. Promethean's about childhood and understanding yourself, Deviant's about terminal disease and self-destruction.
 
I want to expand a bit on my comment about Mage 2nd Ed's approach to the Free Council, because the thing is that the game reworks some key bits of the lore to actually be more accommodating to more culturally embedded traditions of magic.

See, in Second Edition, the Diamond Orders emphatically do not come either from establishment by an actual diaspora of mages leftover from the downfallen mythic society, nor are they templates imprinted into reality that mages have a recurring tendency to align into. They trace back to the empire of Alexander the Great and general Hellenstic era, when the institutions established in that period encouraging cultural and economic interchange led to Greek, Persian, Egyptian and Indian mages to engage with one another and compare notes to find that they have a lot of ideas in common. Like, Atlantis becomes a popular term for Western mages because the earliest prototype of the Diamond Orders included lots of people who were big fans of Plato at a time when those books were brand new. Over the course of a few centuries, syncretism, debate, introspection, examination of mysterious ruins, a bit of imaginative speculation and some political expediency causes them all to become the five original Diamond Orders (there were two who would merge to become the Mysterium in the mis-13th century). Because they start off in the middle of a communications nexus between three continents, over the following years they spread out (although apparently there remain some different paths of evolution between West and East; an English Adamantine Arrow has a bit more of the Greek contributions in their praxis while a Siamese one might have more of the Indian, but they'd recognise a common belief system in conflict as a crucible for the self in one another).

And a significant thing to this is that it means that everywhere else also has its own magical traditions (and Legacies) similar to what the ones in the Alexandrian lands were before they became the Orders (what the Diamond will designate as "Nameless" and "Nameless Orders" when they're particularly organised). Sometimes when the Diamond moves in their direction they become integrated into the whole, adding some of their own insights and qualities. Sometimes they remain staunchly independent, either from very different ideas about magic, pride in their existing lineage, or political incompatibility with the Diamond. That's a significant enough thing in Africa, Asia and Europe, and it basically becomes the definition in the Americas and Australia by the time Diamond mages find more reliable ways of establishing communications there than Space magic and Astral exploration. The Diamond just tends to predominate on account of organisation, well stocked archives of lore and items, a very elaborate framework for understanding Mysteries, and probably the fact that the Mysterium is not shy about stealing shit when other people have something they think is useful or insightful. The Dreamspeakers (a common name for a variety of Legacies who combine shamanistic traditions with the Astral Realms) and the Elemental Master Legacies (a collection of traditions that might date to the Stone Age) are good examples of groups who never quite gelled with the Diamond.

(Exarch worshippers exist as their own discrete cults and a slightly underground trends in the Diamond until the early 16th century, when a bunch gather together from the zone of warfare for control of the Italian states to become L'Hégémonie Secrète, later the Hegemonic Ministry devoted to centralised government, conformity and nationalism as means of control, who gather all the cults together into a vast network of conspiracy and hierarchy under the banner of the Seers of the Throne, and coping with their emergence becomes a big concern of the Orders for some time.)

The Free Council is what happens when the 18th and 19th centuries creates a lot of innovations in science and technology, new artistic and intellectual movements like Romanticism, and revolutionary fervour for things like democracy and nationalism as the environment that a lot of new mages Awaken to, and they make common cause with all of the marginalized Nameless to battle the Diamond for supremacy across a hundred years. It finally ends when overtures from the Seers (ironically spearheaded by Hegemonic) causes them to designate servants of the Exarchs as their true enemy and provides a tenet to let them make the leap from alliance of groups into fully developed Order, who can then make peace with their former opponents but still stand quite apart from them in terms of how they view magic and humanity and organise themselves regionally (Assemblies are given more emphasis in this Edition as a competing model with the Consilium).

So your Hermetics, Wiccans, Asian martial artists (plus Taoists and Buddhists and the like) and scientists of varying degrees of weirdness are still in the game, all part of the big melting pot that is the Council of Free Assemblies (which is supposed to be the biggest Pentacle Order by a pretty large margin). I don't know enough about Ascension to say how much of a translation it is, how much your Akashics or Verbena or Etherites thought their magic was axiomatically separate from what others did or how much they could accomplish without tools, but it's a fair bit more than nothing and a thread that can be pursued in any given game (including tensions that might exist between different systems within the Free Council as a whole).

I'll note that this is all something where the difference doesn't really come down to "did Atlantis exist" at all. Diamond Orders believe in the Supernal as something that projects itself mysteriously into the world and has to be sifted out, with themselves modelled on the image of an idealised Awakened society that can be derived therein, while the Free Council see the Supernal in terms of something revealed in and conversely shaped by human societies across the board, to be celebrated and cultivated. (The Seers regard the Supernal as something that actively imposes itself into the world to shape things according to divine will, and service to such is both the only sensible path to enlightenment and a way of preventing their gods from taking a heavier hand.)

Oh, and there are still Nameless and even some Nameless Orders who remain apart, either from isolation or some fundamental reason to want nothing to do with the rest.

A bit of a wordy post, but it's my hope that it conveys some of the context in the new Edition for how there's more variety to what mages think and do and it could scratch a few itches.
 
I Isator Levi , Am I right in saying relics of Atlantis exist and they indicate the previous world had a society with high technology and magic and a very alternate history?

And welcome!
 
Deviant is mainly Orphan Black, with bucketloads of other influences. Same way Awakening 2e is mainly the pre-nu52 Hellblazer.
I've never seen Orphan Black, I suppose I should go watch that.
 
I want to expand a bit on my comment about Mage 2nd Ed's approach to the Free Council, because the thing is that the game reworks some key bits of the lore to actually be more accommodating to more culturally embedded traditions of magic.

See, in Second Edition, the Diamond Orders emphatically do not come either from establishment by an actual diaspora of mages leftover from the downfallen mythic society, nor are they templates imprinted into reality that mages have a recurring tendency to align into. They trace back to the empire of Alexander the Great and general Hellenstic era, when the institutions established in that period encouraging cultural and economic interchange led to Greek, Persian, Egyptian and Indian mages to engage with one another and compare notes to find that they have a lot of ideas in common. Like, Atlantis becomes a popular term for Western mages because the earliest prototype of the Diamond Orders included lots of people who were big fans of Plato at a time when those books were brand new. Over the course of a few centuries, syncretism, debate, introspection, examination of mysterious ruins, a bit of imaginative speculation and some political expediency causes them all to become the five original Diamond Orders (there were two who would merge to become the Mysterium in the mis-13th century). Because they start off in the middle of a communications nexus between three continents, over the following years they spread out (although apparently there remain some different paths of evolution between West and East; an English Adamantine Arrow has a bit more of the Greek contributions in their praxis while a Siamese one might have more of the Indian, but they'd recognise a common belief system in conflict as a crucible for the self in one another).

And a significant thing to this is that it means that everywhere else also has its own magical traditions (and Legacies) similar to what the ones in the Alexandrian lands were before they became the Orders (what the Diamond will designate as "Nameless" and "Nameless Orders" when they're particularly organised). Sometimes when the Diamond moves in their direction they become integrated into the whole, adding some of their own insights and qualities. Sometimes they remain staunchly independent, either from very different ideas about magic, pride in their existing lineage, or political incompatibility with the Diamond. That's a significant enough thing in Africa, Asia and Europe, and it basically becomes the definition in the Americas and Australia by the time Diamond mages find more reliable ways of establishing communications there than Space magic and Astral exploration. The Diamond just tends to predominate on account of organisation, well stocked archives of lore and items, a very elaborate framework for understanding Mysteries, and probably the fact that the Mysterium is not shy about stealing shit when other people have something they think is useful or insightful. The Dreamspeakers (a common name for a variety of Legacies who combine shamanistic traditions with the Astral Realms) and the Elemental Master Legacies (a collection of traditions that might date to the Stone Age) are good examples of groups who never quite gelled with the Diamond.

(Exarch worshippers exist as their own discrete cults and a slightly underground trends in the Diamond until the early 16th century, when a bunch gather together from the zone of warfare for control of the Italian states to become L'Hégémonie Secrète, later the Hegemonic Ministry devoted to centralised government, conformity and nationalism as means of control, who gather all the cults together into a vast network of conspiracy and hierarchy under the banner of the Seers of the Throne, and coping with their emergence becomes a big concern of the Orders for some time.)

The Free Council is what happens when the 18th and 19th centuries creates a lot of innovations in science and technology, new artistic and intellectual movements like Romanticism, and revolutionary fervour for things like democracy and nationalism as the environment that a lot of new mages Awaken to, and they make common cause with all of the marginalized Nameless to battle the Diamond for supremacy across a hundred years. It finally ends when overtures from the Seers (ironically spearheaded by Hegemonic) causes them to designate servants of the Exarchs as their true enemy and provides a tenet to let them make the leap from alliance of groups into fully developed Order, who can then make peace with their former opponents but still stand quite apart from them in terms of how they view magic and humanity and organise themselves regionally (Assemblies are given more emphasis in this Edition as a competing model with the Consilium).

So your Hermetics, Wiccans, Asian martial artists (plus Taoists and Buddhists and the like) and scientists of varying degrees of weirdness are still in the game, all part of the big melting pot that is the Council of Free Assemblies (which is supposed to be the biggest Pentacle Order by a pretty large margin). I don't know enough about Ascension to say how much of a translation it is, how much your Akashics or Verbena or Etherites thought their magic was axiomatically separate from what others did or how much they could accomplish without tools, but it's a fair bit more than nothing and a thread that can be pursued in any given game (including tensions that might exist between different systems within the Free Council as a whole).

I'll note that this is all something where the difference doesn't really come down to "did Atlantis exist" at all. Diamond Orders believe in the Supernal as something that projects itself mysteriously into the world and has to be sifted out, with themselves modelled on the image of an idealised Awakened society that can be derived therein, while the Free Council see the Supernal in terms of something revealed in and conversely shaped by human societies across the board, to be celebrated and cultivated. (The Seers regard the Supernal as something that actively imposes itself into the world to shape things according to divine will, and service to such is both the only sensible path to enlightenment and a way of preventing their gods from taking a heavier hand.)

Oh, and there are still Nameless and even some Nameless Orders who remain apart, either from isolation or some fundamental reason to want nothing to do with the rest.

A bit of a wordy post, but it's my hope that it conveys some of the context in the new Edition for how there's more variety to what mages think and do and it could scratch a few itches.
It's an eloquent post.

I would say that there is a difference between M:TA 1st edition and 2nd edition, where there was an attempt to de-emphasise the Atlantis myth and clarify the rules. The 2nd edition is better, because the 1st edition gave the impression of having a fixed setting background, whereas it is now more ambiguous and mysterious.

The two criticisms that remain, for me, by way of comparison to Mage: The Ascension is that the magic rules are now so structured, it feels a lot less freeform than they used to in the old game - even though they are easier to adjudicate, they feel more complex. Secondly, the fundamental premise of Mage: The Ascension - that of a consensual reality - isn’t really in Mage: The Awakening as much as a gnostic premise that reality is basically an illusion. Some people just prefer the former as a premise.
 
I Isator Levi , Am I right in saying relics of Atlantis exist and they indicate the previous world had a society with high technology and magic and a very alternate history?

And welcome!
Surviving pockets of the Time Before do often have mysterious ruined structures in them, which appear ancient by the standards of wherever they are, but while the Diamond call them "Atlantean ruins", they react oddly to Time magic because they never had an origin in the timeline as it currently exists. The study of such things is complicated by the fact that the few details about the world they come from are contradictory between sites - it's not that they're ruins of a lost magical civilisation that never existed, it's that each one is from a *slightly different* lost magical civilisation that never existed. The Fall was a cascade failure.

Mages are well used to wrapping their heads around events that never happened. Make an object. Shield it against history changing with Time 2. Go back in time a day with Time 3 and don't make the object on your second run through the day. When you catch up to the present and your time travel spell ends, the object still exists, but now has no origin. Mage: The Ascension prohibits such things by whacking them with Paradoxes (the game term). Mage: The Awakening prefers "it's magic, deal with it". Ruins of the Time Before are different because they're not explicable as simple changes within the confines of the universe, they're left overs from the wikipedia-editing of reality.

If you're familiar with Exalted's deep lore, "Atlantis" is more like the pre-Crystal Sphere Cataclysm than it is like the first age. The world in the Time Before is fundamentally unknowable, and the history of the nWoD's world is all "after the fall". As far back as mages probe in time, The Fall happened sometime before it. Or in the future. Or is still happening.
 
It's an eloquent post.

I would say that there is a difference between M:TA 1st edition and 2nd edition, where there was an attempt to de-emphasise the Atlantis myth and clarify the rules. The 2nd edition is better, because the 1st edition gave the impression of having a fixed setting background, whereas it is now more ambiguous and mysterious.

The two criticisms that remain, for me, by way of comparison to Mage: The Ascension is that the magic rules are now so structured, it feels a lot less freeform than they used to in the old game - even though they are easier to adjudicate, they feel more complex. Secondly, the fundamental premise of Mage: The Ascension - that of a consensual reality - isn’t really in Mage: The Awakening as much as a gnostic premise that reality is basically an illusion. Some people just prefer the former as a premise.
Yeah, based on my knowledge of Awakening 1st Edition (I didn't see second) the magic system was more formal. In Ascension mages could technically do anything that was possible in their combination of Spheres and rotes were simply examples of how that would work. They weren't something the characters needed to "learn." In Awakening, rotes are emphasized in that they make casting easier.

JG
 
Secondly, the fundamental premise of Mage: The Ascension - that of a consensual reality - isn’t really in Mage: The Awakening as much as a gnostic premise that reality is basically an illusion. Some people just prefer the former as a premise.
The 'consensual reality' thing was what put me off of digging deeper into OWOD Mage. Too close to the new age crap I was surrounded with in real life at the time... crystal rubbers and channelers and vision boards, oh my!
Moving away from that concept invites my interest again.
 
by way of comparison to Mage: The Ascension is that the magic rules are now so structured, it feels a lot less freeform than they used to in the old game - even though they are easier to adjudicate, they feel more complex.

I'm not too familiar with Ascension's casting system, could you explain the freeform points to me?

Actually, I do recall having looked up an online summary of what Sphere levels did, and it seems to me that you had to reach three dots before you could actually... do things? Cause effects against the world? Whatever else Awakening has, the first dot in an Arcanum comes with the Practice of Compelling, to exert some degree of control over phenomena. Everybody who's learnt the slightest bit of Forces can take control of an existing flame, source of heat, light or electricity and control where it flows.

Secondly, the fundamental premise of Mage: The Ascension - that of a consensual reality - isn’t really in Mage: The Awakening as much as a gnostic premise that reality is basically an illusion. Some people just prefer the former as a premise.

Wellll...

First off, it's not really the idea that reality is an illusion. There are references late in First Edition and early in Second to how, devoid of the ideological cast to it, the Fallen World is more accurately called the Phenomenal one. The idea being that while the Supernal may constitute pure forms to things, they only really have functional meaning when expressed in a concrete reality. A character in the opening fiction to the Mysterium Order book talks about how the world is where things like metaphor, poetry, artful approximation, and is beautiful in its own right. The Supernal is pure light, but you need to split it to get the full range of colours.

Indeed, with the fact that Second Edition renders Mage Sight as one actually seeing the Realm of their Awakening overlaying the world, a sense of literal separation between them is greatly downplayed. The book Signs of Sorcery describes this in more detail, how in many ways the Supernal is more about a certain perspective on the world than something definitively separated from it.

The other side is that Consensus Reality could be regarded as one interpretation of the creed of the Free Council; that the Supernal is the way it is because human perspectives made it that way. The Free Council would actually assert that the supremacy of the Exarchs is a signifier of tendencies towards tyranny and oppression in human societies, and not the other way around (and the book describing the origins of the Orders notes that at that stage the Exarchs don't seem to be acting so openly, which one could use to argue that they aren't quite there yet). I think one could play characters who take that outlook to places that say sufficient changes to the world will change the way magic works. It might not play out much in games directly, but did Consensus Reality do that much either?

Mages are well used to wrapping their heads around events that never happened. Make an object. Shield it against history changing with Time 2. Go back in time a day with Time 3 and don't make the object on your second run through the day. When you catch up to the present and your time travel spell ends, the object still exists, but now has no origin. Mage: The Ascension prohibits such things by whacking them with Paradoxes (the game term). Mage: The Awakening prefers "it's magic, deal with it". Ruins of the Time Before are different because they're not explicable as simple changes within the confines of the universe, they're left overs from the wikipedia-editing of reality.

Tell 'em about the guy in New York who prevented his own birth.

Yeah, based on my knowledge of Awakening 1st Edition (I didn't see second) the magic system was more formal. In Ascension mages could technically do anything that was possible in their combination of Spheres and rotes were simply examples of how that would work. They weren't something the characters needed to "learn." In Awakening, rotes are emphasized in that they make casting easier.

JG

Well I'm not sure what you'd mean specifically about "anything possible in combination of Spheres" versus "more formal". Like, mages in Awakening still have improvised casting, and players are encouraged to come up with their own spells. You can do that on the fly in play, with the Practices as guidelines for what each level of the Arcanum can do (and just about anything the Practice could reasonably do is available, depending on how much Paradox you're willing to risk).

Rotes are certainly useful, but I don't think to the point that anybody is dependent on them. And I certainly think that when you've got a game based on the idea that mages value and trade in knowledge, it's useful to have something that would reconcile improvised casting/creative thaumaturgy with wanting a grimoire or teacher, and determine what you're willing to exchange for it. Or indeed, should you come into possession of that stuff, what can you get other people to give you?

Like, grimoires are a thing in Ascension aren't they? What do they do?

Plus, rotes are a place where you get to increase the cultural specificity of the spell. Get a rote that adds your Computer dots to your casting pool, and you've got a spell following the logic of hacking reality.

(I'll also note that Awakening is not very concerned with combinations of Arcana, especially in Second Edition. You can generally do the stuff you want with just the one.)
 
Isator Levi said:
I'm not too familiar with Ascension's casting system, could you explain the freeform points to me?

Actually, I do recall having looked up an online summary of what Sphere levels did, and it seems to me that you had to reach three dots before you could actually... do things? Cause effects against the world? Whatever else Awakening has, the first dot in an Arcanum comes with the Practice of Compelling, to exert some degree of control over phenomena. Everybody who's learnt the slightest bit of Forces can take control of an existing flame, source of heat, light or electricity and control where it flows.
Well it depends what you want to do - each level of the Mage (Ascension) spheres describes what effects you can achieve. The difference really, and this did change in different editions, is that Mage Spheres are really just like pots of different coloured paints that you could choose to do with how you please with any interpretation, whereas by the time Awakening was developing the core system, it had a whole bunch of moderators and structure used for ruling what you could or couldn’t do. The former had plenty of criticisms ("what is stopping me from turning vampires into a deckchair at a whim?”), but some people liked having no extra rules.


Wellll...

First off, it's not really the idea that reality is an illusion. There are references late in First Edition and early in Second to how, devoid of the ideological cast to it, the Fallen World is more accurately called the Phenomenal one. The idea being that while the Supernal may constitute pure forms to things, they only really have functional meaning when expressed in a concrete reality. A character in the opening fiction to the Mysterium Order book talks about how the world is where things like metaphor, poetry, artful approximation, and is beautiful in its own right. The Supernal is pure light, but you need to split it to get the full range of colours.

Indeed, with the fact that Second Edition renders Mage Sight as one actually seeing the Realm of their Awakening overlaying the world, a sense of literal separation between them is greatly downplayed. The book Signs of Sorcery describes this in more detail, how in many ways the Supernal is more about a certain perspective on the world than something definitively separated from it.

The other side is that Consensus Reality could be regarded as one interpretation of the creed of the Free Council; that the Supernal is the way it is because human perspectives made it that way. The Free Council would actually assert that the supremacy of the Exarchs is a signifier of tendencies towards tyranny and oppression in human societies, and not the other way around (and the book describing the origins of the Orders notes that at that stage the Exarchs don't seem to be acting so openly, which one could use to argue that they aren't quite there yet). I think one could play characters who take that outlook to places that say sufficient changes to the world will change the way magic works. It might not play out much in games directly, but did Consensus Reality do that much either?
Again, a lot of this is development from the 1st to the 2nd edition, in an attempt to make the backstory premise more mysterious than it was, but Ascension is still different. What Ascension was exploring was the post-modern and solipsistic concepts that reality was the product of our own collective conception, not just a perception. That is, there is no one true reality and everything we experience as real is real. In Awakening, they begin by establishing that the reality we perceive is false and then establish a true reality (the Supernal) which has mysteries as to what it is and how it is formed, but is nevertheless a true reality that only the Awakened perceive.
 
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Well it depends what you want to do - each level of the Mage (Ascension) spheres describes what effects you can achieve. The difference really, and this did change in different editions, is that Mage Spheres are really just like pots of different coloured paints that you could choose to do with how you please with any interpretation,
I don't really get this. Could you give an example or two?
Again, a lot of this is development from the 1st to the 2nd edition, in an attempt to make the backstory premise more mysterious than it was, but Ascension is still different. What Ascension was exploring was the post-modern and solipsistic concepts that reality was the product of our own collective conception, not just a perception. That is, there is no one true reality and everything we experience as real is real. In Awakening, they begin by establishing that the reality we perceive is false and then establish a true reality (the Supernal) which has mysteries as to what it is and how it is formed, but is nevertheless a true reality that only the Awakened perceive.
Ehhh... not really. Even in the First Edition core book, it was not based on a dichotomy of "Fallen=False/Supernal=True". The concept of the Lie has always been the world ignorant of magic, not the world as experienced by everybody. The mythic history at the beginning of the book proposes a time when the natural order of things was for fragments of the Supernal to incarnate in prosaic reality as a way for the universe to know itself. It has always been a presentation of the cosmology that both sides are interdependent.

I also want to note that the revision might be less about ambiguity and more about enhancing the sense of mages as academics by exploring the basis for what they believe and how they come to believe it. I mean for the most part, I think the history is not that uncertain, to readers or characters; mages can archaeologically trace themselves back to at least the Neolithic, and I'd say contradictions between fragments of the Time Before are less about obscuring the picture and more about a sense that reality became really messed up. Although Dave can correct me on this.

I'll note, the idea that so-called Atlantean ruins are incompatible with one another is not new. Secrets of the Ruined Temple, the line's seventh release within a year of the core, introduced it. That came before most Order books. It's just put at the forefront now.

As for Consensus Reality, sure it's never going to have a major prominence in the makeup of the setting. I'm just suggesting perspectives where some of the underlying ideas it brings up are not totally incompatible.
 
I don't really get this. Could you give an example or two?
Well, the one example already given, and had an article or two written about the game as a criticism back in the day, asked the question about whether a Mage who understood Matter at level 3 had anything stopping them from turning a Vampire into a deck chair? The rules surrounding this were vague, and although there was always a degree of hyperbole about the whole vampire/deckchair issue ('wasn’t Life or Prime required too?’; ‘couldn't the vampire resist in any way?', etc) and it was only in resultant publications/editions that they started to really clarify rulings such as this.

The procedures as a whole about how magick could be used were frequently left to the spontaneous imagination of players, with rotes merely suggestions about how they could be combined for effects. In Awakening, the rules are much more codified with Rotes being more hard boiled into the rules.

Ehhh... not really. Even in the First Edition core book, it was not based on a dichotomy of "Fallen=False/Supernal=True". The concept of the Lie has always been the world ignorant of magic, not the world as experienced by everybody. The mythic history at the beginning of the book proposes a time when the natural order of things was for fragments of the Supernal to incarnate in prosaic reality as a way for the universe to know itself. It has always been a presentation of the cosmology that both sides are interdependent.

I also want to note that the revision might be less about ambiguity and more about enhancing the sense of mages as academics by exploring the basis for what they believe and how they come to believe it. I mean for the most part, I think the history is not that uncertain, to readers or characters; mages can archaeologically trace themselves back to at least the Neolithic, and I'd say contradictions between fragments of the Time Before are less about obscuring the picture and more about a sense that reality became really messed up. Although Dave can correct me on this.

I'll note, the idea that so-called Atlantean ruins are incompatible with one another is not new. Secrets of the Ruined Temple, the line's seventh release within a year of the core, introduced it. That came before most Order books. It's just put at the forefront now.

As for Consensus Reality, sure it's never going to have a major prominence in the makeup of the setting. I'm just suggesting perspectives where some of the underlying ideas it brings up are not totally incompatible.
Whatever the origin story/rationale of magic in Awakening is - and it is fine to suggest different perspectives of it - it is less ambiguous than that of Ascension, which basically doesn’t have one. The existence of a Supernal realm is the underlying paradigm of the game and the different Mage groups are all basically in agreement about that - even though they may have differences about what mysteries it may hold or how to approach magical knowledge and power.

In Ascension, the ‘deep truth’ is essentially non-existent in a post-modern sense - reality is simply what the consensus or strong individual willworkers make of it - the product of competing paradigms. When Bill Bridges and co. took to discussing the upcoming game on Mage forums back before Awakening was released, they made it clear that they were trying to remove the post-modern elements of the game - the consensus reality - to make the game more compatible with other lines and also just to take the game in a different direction. For some old time fans, however, the consensual reality elements were the big appeal.
 
I also noticed in skimming over MAGE (the Ascension) 20th Anniversary, that they were creating "reality zones" in some areas where more Traditional magic worked better, because in the real world, and especially in the Middle East, religious paradigms are paramount and "consensus reality" isn't something the Technocracy has a lock on.

JG
 
I also noticed in skimming over MAGE (the Ascension) 20th Anniversary, that they were creating "reality zones" in some areas where more Traditional magic worked better, because in the real world, and especially in the Middle East, religious paradigms are paramount and "consensus reality" isn't something the Technocracy has a lock on.

JG
I think skimming is the only way you can attempt to read Mage 20th Anniversary edition! :smile:

But yep, the underlying truth in Mage is that every paradigm is true - even if they happen to be contradictory, or at least until Paradox gets you.
 
Well, the one example already given, and had an article or two written about the game as a criticism back in the day, asked the question about whether a Mage who understood Matter at level 3 had anything stopping them from turning a Vampire into a deck chair? The rules surrounding this were vague, and although there was always a degree of hyperbole about the whole vampire/deckchair issue ('wasn’t Life or Prime required too?’; ‘couldn't the vampire resist in any way?', etc) and it was only in resultant publications/editions that they started to really clarify rulings such as this.
Does this mean that Matter 3 in general had transformation effects and people argued whether or not a vampire's corpse body qualified as inanimate matter to transform, or that it was uncertain whether or not Matter 3 could transform things?

I'll be honest, this kind of sounds like taking what would be an edge case in any event and revolving things around it. An example of such a thing as it might more commonly come up would help me understand it more.

I can't really say anything more about the Ascension cosmology, it's too far out of my wheelhouse.
 
Does this mean that Matter 3 in general had transformation effects and people argued whether or not a vampire's corpse body qualified as inanimate matter to transform, or that it was uncertain whether or not Matter 3 could transform things?

I'll be honest, this kind of sounds like taking what would be an edge case in any event and revolving things around it. An example of such a thing as it might more commonly come up would help me understand it more.

I can't really say anything more about the Ascension cosmology, it's too far out of my wheelhouse.
The consensus (so to speak) was that a vampire qualified as inanimate (or dead) and thus was subject to the Matter Sphere and not Life. As with many MAGE discussions, the drama was not "can you do this under the rules" but "is this a good idea?"
If I ever ran a MAGE Ascension game, one of my Paradox spirits would be a British colonel who shuts down the players' spells on the grounds that they're "too silly to continue."

JG
 
Does this mean that Matter 3 in general had transformation effects and people argued whether or not a vampire's corpse body qualified as inanimate matter to transform, or that it was uncertain whether or not Matter 3 could transform things?
Yes, and yes. Each Sphere at each given level were only given a couple of paragraphs to explain what effects could be done, and there was ambiguity involved throughout - not least because each could be interpreted through different paradigms as well.
I'll be honest, this kind of sounds like taking what would be an edge case in any event and revolving things around it. An example of such a thing as it might more commonly come up would help me understand it more.
It was an edge case but it does illustrate how the system itself was more open to interpretation. One of the effects given of my favourite pre-gen characters ever, is that of the Couch Potato. The character would sit in front of a TV screen with a remote control and use Correspondence 3 magic to simply interact remotely with any location that appeared on the TV screen, as if it was reality.

Another character used Entropy to effect probabilities as a Chaotician (another cool character). The mechanics of the effects were freeform in that they just had dots to justify what effect they were after, rolled a number of dice to beat a Difficulty based upon the Highest Sphere rating, tried to avoid botching (Paradox) and otherwise could do whatever they wanted to paint their own paradigm of magick.

There has been attempts to tighten up Mage rules with more rulings and explanations over resultant editions but even then, the Awakening rules, by contrast, are a lot more structured and case specific.

I can't really say anything more about the Ascension cosmology, it's too far out of my wheelhouse.
No worries. Ascension’s cosmology can be very messy and complicated to read up on - the basic premise, however, is simply that all paradigms of belief are true until they come into conflict with other, with the ‘consensus’ simply being the truth with the biggest inertia.
 
The consensus (so to speak) was that a vampire qualified as inanimate (or dead) and thus was subject to the Matter Sphere and not Life. As with many MAGE discussions, the drama was not "can you do this under the rules" but "is this a good idea?"
If I ever ran a MAGE Ascension game, one of my Paradox spirits would be a British colonel who shuts down the players' spells on the grounds that they're "too silly to continue."

JG
Reminds me of this!

 
Actually, I will say one more thing concerning comparisons between Ascension and Awakening, because I've only just remembered it.

I think it may not be quite accurate to say that Awakening represented a soft away from postmodernism, because I recall at least one occasion where Malcolm Sheppard's reports on the development and Bill Bridge's intentions said differently. That it wasn't about moving away from the postmodern, but having a different perspective on it (reality objectively exists, but the observer is limited and so it encompasses innumerable approaches to it) and that the actual mages are more in on the postmodernism; they recognise their own lack of objectivity, and so construct world views in a bit more of a syncretic fashion. Hence how you get sects empowered by multiple cultural worldviews coming together.

This is also apparent in descriptions of going to the Supernal in a literal sense; a human existence just cannot engage with a truly objective reality, and is obliterated on contact with it. Even in Awakening, Mage Sight, and the actual journeys of archmasters to the Supernal World, it has to be rendered comprehensible with symbolism. Ascension might be the result of a person becoming capable of adjusting themselves to the point that they actually can recognise reality in an objective fashion. Alternatively, it's about modifying reality until your subjective worldview becomes objective, although you generally need to be an archmaster to do that (kind of raises questions about what the difference is, doesn't it?). Either way, it renders the state of your existence incomprehensible and unapproachable to everyone else; communication across those lines requires a bit of postmodern artifice.

It wasn't something apparent to me when I was first drawn to Awakening (a thing that happened after I had read a bit about Ascension and found it just didn't quite gel with me), but the more I learned about it the more tightly wound I was. The things Second Edition does with those elements deepen my sense of engagement, particularly in the sense of creating actual structures to engage with. Supernal summoning is the process of reducing an aspect of incomprehensible objectivity to understandable metaphor, and then having discourse with it.
 
As a matter of something across game lines, I've also been giving a closer look to my Werewolf the Forsaken Second Edition, and I'm thinking about how...

I'm aware of the fact that the World of Darkness's Umbra is a gigantic spirit world of innumerable facets, and it would be my understanding that most of this stuff is introduced in Mage: the Ascension to give them a variety of otherworld's to play around in while the werewolves get to keep their particular lane.

So it's always gonna be kind of funny to me that the New World/Chronicles of Darkness just goes to the mages and says "yeah, you need to play around in the werewolf spirit world". Users of the Spirit Arcanum might go "but they play so rough in there!", but hey, the Uratha were here first.

And sure, mages still get the Astral Realms as something a bit more exclusive that I think covers some of what the old wider Umbra did (although still with particular definitions), and Second Edition even made Emanation Realms into something you didn't need to be an archmaster to get a look at, but it's still not quite the same thing, I expect.

It's funny to me to imagine the Technocracy trying to explain away the Hisil.

"Iiiittt... it could be an alien?"
"It is literally a living rope that ate a bunch of smaller living ropes like it was a goddamn shark!"

(If I ever knew enough about the Technocracy to know whether or not they rationalised away animism as aliens or anything else then I've forgotten about it. I'm just amusing myself.)
 
I still liked the approach given in Mage's early days, that the Technocracy used the same magic as tradition mages but it was expressed through technology. This tech was disseminated to sleepers when the Technocracy felt they ready for it (and not before!) but it meant their agents had access to tech that was 50-150 years in advance of our own. Victorian Technocrats using mobile phones, helicopters and computers!
 
There seems to be an error in the text of V5. P.88, in discussing Toreador clan archetypes, ends the page: "The Toreador love a performance,
and the one who plays at being a spy knows how to pry valuable"

The next page is art. The text continues on the next page, thus: "get, often taking more time than they need to properly enjoy the game."

There seems to be some text missing, but I can't see where it is. Only fluff, but still
 
If someone was going to run a Vampire game on the forums, would you guys prefer VTM or Requiem? No V5 or Blood & Smoke/Requiem 2E.

Asking for a friend....
 
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