ANDERS MAGE PAGE 2.0

Wayne Peacock has been a freelance writer for White Wolf for quite some time. He’s worked on the Mage 2nd Storytellers Companion, Changeling: the Dreaming Second Edition, Land of Eight Million Dreams, and Hunter: the Reckoning among other things. He is also a co-conspirator for Changeling: the Celtic Cycle. In the “real world”, he’s been everything from a truck driver to a high school English teacher, though his most important role by far is husband and father.

He is currently taking time off freelancing to be with his family, but set aside some time to write this commentary on Mage Revised.

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

I thought about beginning this with just a quote from Frost, but damn, it is such a great poem and since the last three lines are about all that get quoted these days, I hope you enjoyed reading the whole thing. Didn’t read it? Go ahead and do yourself a favor. In fact, read it out loud if your office mates won’t think you’re weird enough for being a roleplayer already...

Good. Now, even if you don’t like my review you at least have a poem under you belt for today.

I plan to look at Mage: Revised Edition (M3) from two vantage points in this review: the experienced player and the new Mage player. Moreover, I’m going to concentrate on how the new rules and the new setting affect game play (storytelling and roleplaying).

What’s Changed?

Before we look at the issues of game play, let’s take a look at what is different with Mage Revised:

• Sphere Descriptions: This is absolutely the best part of the book – a definite improvement over the earlier editions.
• Casting rules: The new damage and duration rules are very good. Basically you roll your dice and then decide how you will divvy up your successes. This is much easier than the old system and allows for even greater control of Magic(k). Which brings up...
• Magick is now spelled Magic. Why? The reason is self-referential and contradicted several times in the book, but basically magic is magic, is magic – Garou magic and "true magic" are now the same, even though later on sections are used to discuss just the opposite. The text was so much easier when magick was just a term for true magick, mage magick, whatever. Oh, and the other reason given was that the "k" was pretentious. Yeah, I’m sure that hurt a lot of feelings in the WoD...
• There is a new Trait: Resonance. While the idea is really neat, the execution is crap. The usual excuse is given whenever a mechanic can’t be thought up to actually reflect the idea – tell the ST to wing it. Resonance is supposed to influence a mage’s effects by reflecting the mage’s personality. The Trait has the requisite one to five dots. But there is no system for improvement listed with the trait, and while promised in the seeking section and under paradox, cannot be found. But improvement over one dot, is not needed. Why? There is no functional difference between one dot or five dots. If a player describes a magickal effect that reflects her Resonance, she gets a –1 to her difficulty. The only other guideless are the equivalent of: "two dots is hot, three dots is hotter." Why turn this into a mechanic at all? It does not need to be a rule at all.
• The new Tradition write-ups contain new factions, which are cool. No real info on how they have individually dealt with the new setting for M3.
• More Paradox. A vulgar effect without witnesses used to generate one paradox. Now it generates one per level do the highest effect used. More exploding PC’s!
• It’s easier to cast Rotes than make up effects on the fly. Rotes are at –1 difficulty. There are no guidelines for when/how a practice effect becomes a rote. Nor are there examples of conjunctional rotes.
• New Damage rules, a la, Vampire revised. This is an improvement, esp. since Mind no longer causes lethal damage. A nice way to balance the fact that Mind effects are more often coincidental (no Paradox). Although with the new Paradox rules this balancing effect is called into question.
• The Spirit rules (Charms, travel) have been cut from the core of the game. With the new setting, I guess this will be okay for new players, but it means another book for them.
• No rules for Paradox spirits. See above.
• There are brief rules for incorporating Hunters, although a bit too brief for what should be one of the most contentious questions for the Traditions, but
• Traditions are in ruins. No guidelines for players already thrust into leadership positions for the game.
• Doissetep blowed up real good and Concordia (it’s not Horizon, because that name was pretentious too) was laid waste. How? When? Who? No answers in this book.
• There’s an ominous Red Star in the penumbra. (This phenomenon has appeared in most of the games as a part of The Year of Reckoning/Year of Revelations.) Let’s wait and see.
• If you cross the Gauntlet a player now takes Paradox + Arete, diff. 6, in Aggravated damage. Reportedly, this effect was caused by the destruction of Doissetep, Concordia, and the same event that ended the Wraith line — the destruction of Enoch with a Wraith H-Bomb. So, don’t think about going to the Dark Umbra either.
• Due to the proceeding events, all the Masters and Oracles are now trapped on the other side of the Gauntlet or died. No guidelines for players of Masters.
• There will be no Second Mythic Age.
• The Ascension War is over, although the Technocracy’s victory is phyrric at best. Basically, the masses settled for third best reality and have reached the coma stage of their sleeperdom.

The New Chronicle

If you want to play a game of street magick, (see Destiny’s Price) this is the game for you. Mages are effectively trapped on this world without mentors and two cents to rub together. The technocracy’s won and you are on your own. If a gritty game of survival amid the horrors of jaded, herd-like, sleepers and bad-guys in the shadows appeals, then M3 is what you have been waiting for. No equivocations on my part.

The game mechanics (minus the misses, like Resonance) hit the mark — they reflect new reality well. To run a new chronicle, you pretty much have what you need, except for Technocrats. (For rules for the Technocracy, buy the Player’s Guide to the Technocracy, the hands – down best Mage supplement in a long time!)

The Ongoing Chronicle

What if you have been playing mage since either M1 or M2? What if you have spent years building a campaign or character to significant heights? What happened to my Horizon Realm it took my cabal three years of gameplay to create? So many questions… To be blunt, you are S.O.L. looking for answers in M3.

Well, you should save your best arguments for last, but I would like to quote, the explicit passages from the revised edition that would help an on-going chronicle incorporate the changes to the system and more over the vast changes to the storyline (such as the new setting, Resonance, travel to the Umbra, etc.):

" "

Read it again if you want. This is a colossal mistake.

Storytellers and players who have been the line’s supporters will have to wing it — even if you want to follow the storyline. Even if you like the fact that the dawn of the M3 setting effectively hits the "Reset" button on your storylines — there are no guidelines for integration, no hints of forthcoming volumes that will answer your questions are in this, the core rulebook.

Remember the poem? In fact, by not addressing this issue head-on, the line has put the fans in Frost’s predicament: path #1, follow the line; or path #2, go your own way. By not giving them any encouragement to follow, well, you see where I’m going on this.

I think that a lot of the old guard will not support this lady or the tiger choice that has been presented to them. Out of my core group of player/storytellers not one has any desire to buy the new edition. In the greater gamer community in my area, not one has embraced M3 to my knowledge.

The storyteller is given the same justification used so often with sloppy WW game-mechanics: The Golden Rule — if you don’t like it, change the rules. With M3 the subtext is: Figure it out yourself. Many fans will probably interpret it as: "We don’t care." That is, the golden rule comes off as an excuse, rather than an impetus for better storytelling.

Why was this done?

I support the fact that game companies need to release new editions of their lines every couple of years. Heck, I bought a copy of M3 for that reason. I do not see this as a cash-grab by game companies. Rules need to be overhauled and new ideas for telling stories need to be expanded upon.

Other, darker reasons have been bandied about the net, such as management’s desire to de-Brucatofy the line. I hate to think that this was the reason. (Although I doubt M3 would have been the same book if Phil was at the helm.) Certainly, the rushed feel of the book, and the fact that it leapfrogged Werewolf (assuming there will be a revised edition of WW) in the order of re-releases, leads some credence to this theory. But that kind of scandal mongering is really not productive. It makes a good e-story, but not good business. Part of me may consider it, but most of me does not.

Bring new players to Mage? This is a possibility. Perhaps the metaphysical blinders now imposed on the mage line will lead to a stronger focus for the game. Certainly of the big three (Vampire, Werewolf and Mage) Mage had the largest scope. It’s still larger than the others, but it has nowhere near the storytelling opportunities that M2 had. But, if my gaming group is anywhere near the norm, WW will have to sell five copies to new players to make up for the veteran Mage players that will not buy M3.

Gother is better? Booooooring. The Goth subculture is waning in the US. And trying to emulate the "darker" feel of games like Vampire is a big mistake. Play to your strengths.

Mages too tough? For those that think this was true: which game were you playing? I hate to sound like the NRA (boy, do I) but playing with the existing M2 rules, mages are the next-weakest in the WoD pantheon. Most of the time a Mage should run squealing like a little girl when surprised by the horrors of the WoD! (Discretion and planning was a mage’s best asset.)

Stronger storyline. The M2 line was not big on a central storyline. There were canonical characters and places, like Porthos, etc., but overall there was no real story. Many of the newer games have made that their centerpiece: Legend of the Five Rings, Trinity, etc. Perhaps this is the new intent of M3. Believe it or not, I support the idea, although its execution in M3 is horribly flawed. What is so hard to understand is that WW produces one of the best examples of how to do this: Aberrant, specifically, the Teragen product. Teragen tells (not vaguely hints) the storyteller what will happen in the canon to Teragen, then suggests not only how to involve the PC’s, but how to break the storyline in many different ways! How adult of them. I was pleasantly astonished. Now M3 did not have to go this far, but something, anything, would have been better than what we got.

Hindsight is 20/20

A core rulebook should not drive the storyline of a game. If so, the storyline revelations in M3 should not be on this scale. The game mechanics that enforce this storyline make the book a dubious buy for those who will take another path. The storyline material should have been in another book – OR the material for the using the new rules and storyline should have been in the core rulebook. Ongoing campaigns should not have been left out in the cold with M3.

If you are going to unleash such a major change in the storyline, the Storytellers’ needs must be addressed up front. Get them to buy in by helping them out. (Take a look at the great lengths WotC/TSR are going to with D&D3e (really: http://www.wizards.com/3e is cool). There are even fan sites that have grown up due to the excitement that this has generated. Granted, the rules changes in D&D3e are much more fundamental than with M3 (although the basic mechanics of the WoD need an overhaul just as bad), but the product will be storyline neutral. Since M3’s revision is even more fundamental, and since its adoption by Storytellers does affect the storyline of ongoing campaign — more of an effort should have been made to reach out to the fans. A few of .pdf files culled from the core book a few weeks before the release does not cut it.

From what I can pick up on the net, unless you read the horrid Mage novels, bought "Tales of Magick I: Dark Adventure," and "Wraith: The Great War," then M3 is the equivalent of a sucker punch. If this storyline was an afterthought of these products, then it was a mistake to execute it in the core rulebook. If WW was planning this all along, why did they not communicate to the fans that owning/reading these sideline volumes was important to the development of the line? Vampire Revised pulled it off, because the rules made the game more of what it already was, and the storyline movement, although dramatic at the time, was way lower on the Richter scale that what was attempted with M3.

Perhaps The Storyteller’s Companion for M3 will handle a lot of these issues. It "expounds upon the history of the Ascension War and some of its major turning points" according to the ads. After M3, this product had better kick ass to win back fan loyalty. Even if it does answer most of a storyteller’s needs, again, the material should not have been in the "storyteller’s screen and etc." book. It should have been in M3.

As a Mage storyteller, I don’t trust where the line is headed right now, or how we are going to get there. I have serious doubts as to their goal of supporting the nuts and bolts of storytelling and playing. A dramatic story does not always equal a good roleplaying game. M3 does not demonstrate familiarity with the tasks of storytelling or the insight and understanding of people who are actually running or playing Mage.

A Scapegoat?

I don’t even want to go there. I know that something as big as M3 has a lot of hands on the tiller. Developers get handed projects, writers get outlines, and everyone tries to do a good job. The management, the developer, and to a lesser extent the authors and the fans all have a stake in M3 and whatever follows. Pointing a finger is not where I’m at. I’m the guy waving the flag and hoping that someone sees it. If you don’t like M3 say so, but also tell them what they did right and what that can do to make it better. I also care about other games that might be revised – Werewolf, etc. I hope that someone in that situation takes my concerns to heart as well.

Don’t drastically move the storyline along in core rulebooks. Be up front with your players and storytellers about which books will do this — you can build up a heck of a lot of anticipation (and sales) that way. When you do move the storyline along, include information for how to incorporate the changes into a real game. Some damn good story opportunities were missed in M3. Don’t forget the point of all of this effort — good gaming.

Recommendations: I have two.

For new players of Mage, consider M3. It has flaws, and good points. All you need to play is there.

For ongoing chronicles — I cannot recommend M3, as much as I would like to. There are gems in this book, but mining for them will leave you cold and bewildered.