ANDERS MAGE PAGE 2.0

One thing that's bothered me about Mage for a long time is rotes. I mean, you have these people who can alter Reality itself just by flexing a little Willpower, totally on-the-fly, and they waste time learning rotes? Why would this ever happen? Seems that any mage would have better things to do than resort to predetermined spells.

Recently, while Jason Corley and I were talking about the importance of a coherent paradigm for Mage characters, I realized that there were, in fact, some compelling reasons why rotes would be created and maybe even used.

1. Rotes are good educational tools.

Most mages receive some kind of instruction in their art, but they also have their own peculiar rationale for why magic works. Instructors would find it easier (and students would find it more rewarding) if, instead of wasting time trying to figure out how to explain a particular aspect or application of a Sphere in terms of the unique and twisted paradigm lurking in the newbie's skull, the teacher simply demonstrated an effect, taught it as a rote and left the student to figure out on their own why it works. Consequently, mages who had the benefit(?) of a formal education would probably recall a few rotes from that time, some of which might even be useful.

2. Rotes can smooth over differences in individual paradigms, both within a Tradition, and between several Traditions.

For example, let's think about two Order of Hermes mages who have a preference for showy, vulgar effects, particularly the ever-popular fireball.

Bob invokes Thrice-Great Hermes to liberate the Essential Fire from the base elements of the pavement, the wall, or the Man In Black standing at the end of the street, and is rewarded with a nice big ball of flame.

Joe, on the other hand, weaves a Sigil of the Hallowed Salamander between the all-powerful Sun and the wretched target, focusing the flames of Helios itself in a spherical area, with the usual destructive effect.

Same effect, different paradigm, and when Joe and Bob decide to go into the cabal business together, they're going to run into a serious problem the first time they want to work together and summon a fireball big enough to engulf the World Trade Centers (and all the Syndicate goons inside), because Joe thinks the Earth, Air, Water, Fire element system is utter bullshit, and Bob can't tell the difference between a salamander and a cow. So they write their checks and send away to the Trimegistus Correspondence School of Hermetic Magic, and learn the rote "Jimmy's Big-Ass Fireball (TM, patent pending)." This rote doesn't fit either of their paradigms very well (where's the sigil? where's the invocation?), but it's closer than the way their partner says it should be done, and it works well enough. Anyway, now they're working from a common ground that will let them get those 20 successes they need.

And with a lot of tinkering, they might even be able to develop a variant of the Big-Ass Fireball that Dr. Wildebeest, pyromaniac Son of Ether, could work into his paradigm.

Mages who do a lot of work with other mages, or Chantries that accept members of many different Traditions, will tend to develop lots of cross-craft rotes like this, if only to keep up with the single-paradigm, single-Tradition groups who can work magic together seamlessly.

3. Some effects fit more easily into an individual paradigm when they are developed as rotes.

Say you have an Akashic Brother who wants to talk to his Venerable But Very Dead Ancestors. Under ordinary circumstances, this is a straight Spirit effect and he'd simply need to, say, bathe in purified water and meditate a while to focus his Spirit mojo. But that's not satisfying, and doesn't seem to pay proper respect to the ancestor in question. So our Akashic Bro sits down and works out a complicated ritual which involves gifts of precious jade, burning of incense favored by the ancestor in life, and a small twist of the ancestor's hair placed in his favorite begging bowl. Not only does he get the bonus for the long ritual, he scores brownie points for intimately connecting the magic to the effect, and probably even fits into the paradigm of his little Ultra-Reformed Californian Buddhist Lite commune well enough that he can speak to his ancestor every other week without Paradox (or huge bills on the local SoE's Necrophone). Mages who have a lot of free time, or very specific magical needs, will tend to create rotes of this type.

4. Rotes can develop as a result of having to produce a specific magical effect often.

This is fairly self-explanatory. If Vicky Verbena has to extract slivers of glass from Professor Shockwave and wash his wounds in lamb's blood mixed with sage every week because the good doctor refuses to use a lower setting on the Megasonic Amplifying Bazooka, she's probably going to develop a routine Life effect to heal his wounds (and the Chantry's probably going to be eating lamb chops for the rest of the year).

There are some obvious benefits to using rotes. For one thing, they're almost always faster than composing the effect on-the-fly, particularly if it's a well-practiced rote. The cross-paradigm and ritual uses of rotes are particularly handy. But the down side is pretty extreme: while creating a rote is a fairly creative act, using it isn't, and mages whose Avatars have a Dynamic or Questing Essence will be set back rather severely on the path to Ascension if they rely too heavily upon rotes. After all, you aren't really learning anything new about Reality or your powers, and well-practiced rotes become almost akin to static effects. On the other hand, if your Avatar has a Pattern or particular type of Primordial Essence, rotes are pretty satisfying things.

I figure the Traditions would have varying opinions on rotes. My take on it is like this:

The Order of Hermes is, of course, Rote Central. I mean, they have tomes, manuscripts, carved blocks, tablets, painted frescoes, and god only knows what else, most of which are the painstakingly anal research of other hermetic mages (particularly notes on ritual magic). They also have a strong emphasis on formal training, and the different Houses within the Order (and even the individual mages in each House) have different views on what the "correct" paradigm is. Consequently, they produce a lot of rotes, practice a lot of rotes, use a lot of rotes, and teach a lot of rotes.

The Virtual Adepts are gaining on the Order of Hermes, particularly since their style of magic is tailor-made for rotes. Rotes get modified slightly and tossed into programmer's toolkits, to be reassembled into newer, more elaborate rotes. VAs compete to see who can write a rote program that produces the same effect faster and in less lines than the older, obsolete version.

The Celestial Chorus, with its emphasis on rituals and tradition, would have a nice stockpile of rotes, too. Older Choristers would probably value those rotes highly. I could see a younger core of mages who dislike rotes for that very reason. Even though the Chorus is pretty ecumenical (they're all paradigms of the One, anyway, right?), they'd still have to hash out some differences within their own flock as well as with other Traditions.

Sons of Ether, while having a paradigm that encourages rote creation, probably don't use that many, if only because of the Ego Factor. After all, why use Baronet Xenon's Quasi-Dimensional Flux Generator when your own Multiphasic Wave Amplifier produces the same effect without those nasty eight-level harmonics? Only particularly useful and well-crafted rotes would win the hearts and minds of other SoEs, not to mention their pocketbooks.

The Verbena, Dreamspeakers, and Akashic Brothers would have rotes. Dreamspeakers and Akashics would probably focus more on individual rituals, while Verbena would concentrate on rotes which allow large covens to work together smoothly, but those aren't hard-and-fast restrictions by any stretch of the imagination. Rotes from these Traditions would probably stay within the Tradition and not be particularly focused on.

The Cult of Ecstasy and the Euthanatos are somewhat similar, in that rotes aren't really their main gig. The Cult have that emphasis on personal experience, and the Euthanatos have that emphasis on personal responsibility. As a result, rotes aren't particularly important to them. Oh, they have them, and use them, for all the reasons I've suggested and all the ones I haven't but of all the Traditions, I see these two as being the least likely to hold on to rotes. Once their purpose was fulfilled, the rotes would be discarded and forgotten.