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Anyone interested in playing a Mage game online? If you're not familiar with it, Mage: The Ascension is a table-top RPG by White Wolf which was recently shelved in favor a new setting. It's a modern day game where the main characters have the ability to use magic (duh).

I'm willing to teach the game (the rules are simple and the setting is well-documented online, but I can give the highlights), but I do insist that my players be serious about it. That means only missing a session for a serious reason and generally not being a flake. We're going to pick an evening to run (in AIM chat), and the game will probably generally last from about 7pm (EST) to about 11.

If anyone is interested, PM or post here. If you want to talk to me in AIM, you're going to have to let me know what your SN is in advance so I can allow it.

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Veni, vidi, dormivi.

I never heard of it, but the name sounds like the coolest ever.

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"Thought I was dead, eh? Not until I fulfill my dream!"
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"The most important part of the story is the ending."
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"Peace is but a shadow of death."
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How similar is it to Vampire: The Masquerade, if at all?

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Quote (Zero_Hawk @ 27th April 2006 05:53)

How similar is it to Vampire: The Masquerade, if at all?

It uses the same setting (the World of Darkness) and the same general system (attribute + skill on d10).

The biggest system difference is that magic is not like disciplines. Where disciplines used the same attribute + skill roll that everything else does, magic has its own stat: arete. You buy sphere knowledge like you bought disciplines, but every single magical effect is a straight arete roll based on the level of the sphere. There's also no humanity or generation, different backgrounds, a slightly different skill set, etc. If you know how to play Vampire, picking up Mage will be mostly about the details of the setting.

The feel of the game is different, of course. Vampire is about a gradual descent into darkness due to the cursed nature of the vampiric supernatural form. Mage is more about hope. "The Ascension" refers to a war fought amongst the different mage factions for control of the basic flavor of reality. Magic works because of a person's will to change reality to make it more in line with their view of the world. Right now, the Technocracy (same people who nuke Ravnos into oblivion, if you've picked up that detail from Vampire) are in control, and that's what science and technology are accepted by people as normal, and shooting fireballs out of magic wands is bizarre. (But that wasn't the case a thousand years ago, when stuff like Merlin made sense to people.) As a result, Tradition mages (almost always the player characters) are at a disadvantage when they do blatantly weird magic in front of normal people.

The things I really like about Mage are that you can always play a "good guy" if you want to (unlike virtually all other White Wolf games except maybe Changeling), and that you can play just about any kind of character you can imagine (unlike the new White Wolf Mage game, or D&D, or anything else). Want to play a Merlin-style wizard? Fine. A cauldron-stirring witch? A Matrix-esque computer worker of wonders? A mech-building mad scientist? A Native American shaman? It all fits into one of the Traditions. You can describe the way you work magic however you want; your only limitation is the level of sphere knowledge you're allowed to buy as a starting character.

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Veni, vidi, dormivi.