It's late, but I'm feeling restless, and Toasty's been asking me to do this game.
The Game: Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition
The Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
Degree of Familiarity: Quite a bit with the previous editions of the game. I haven't played or run this edition, though looking at it, it all looks pretty familiar (which of course is appropriate).
Books Required: Just the one, I hope, good grief, it's 700 freaking pages.
I played a lot of Mage back in the day. It's actually the most recent OWoD game I've played (not run, that was Changeling and then Demon before that), in a group that I was in right after I moved back from Atlanta (less said the better). The last Ascension game I ran kinda-sorta wound up forming the basis for the Mage: The Awakening starter chronicle (which you can find here; it's listed as an Ennie nominee but it actually won the silver Ennie that year, thanks very much). Anyway, my point is that I love Mage and I'm getting kinda nostalgic thinking about it.
So, I haven't done a character with a theme song in a while, but as I was thinking about this game, this song came into my head:
To me, the song is about staying positive, or at least active, in the face of the inexorable march of time. That works thematically for Changeling, but also for Mage, which also has themes of clinging to one's beliefs and passions in the wake of "progress." As I'm getting older, I reflect on how angrily, brazenly passionate I was in my youth, and on the one hand, I wish I'd been just a bit smarter and a whole lot kinder. At the same time, though, I miss being ready to jump into the fire if that's what passion demanded.
With all of that in mind, Step One is character concept, as usual. There's a list of concepts, and "night owl" sticks with me. I want to play a character who's pretty much nocturnal by choice (unlike my Vampire characters, who are pretty much stuck that way). He's a busboy, waiter, sometime line cook at a greasy spoon in [wherever this game is set]. He was a college student, but dropped out when he talked to his older sister and realized that a degree just doesn't mean what it used to - if he was going to be stuck working shitty jobs, at least he could be without quite so much debt. So he shares a studio with a couple of other guys, but doesn't really see them because they work days, which is when he sleeps. His name is Zachery Sibress.
Next thing is Affiliation. I know I don't want to be a Technocrat. Tradition or Disparate, then? Oh, hey, Traditions get to choose from several affinity Spheres nowadays. And what's this "Data" thing? Guess some things did change. Anyway, I don't see this guy as being a big Tradition person; I think Zachary is more a fan of the DIY aesthetic of the Disparates. I don't want to be an Orphan, though, I want some structure. Let's go Hollow Ones.
And then Nature and Demeanor. I think I like Prophet as Nature. Zachary speaks truth to power in a Cassandra kind of way; Troy's going to fall and no one wants to hear it, but he's gonna say it anyway. I'll put Loner as Demeanor even though it makes me cringe (it's hard to play loners in an RPG without being insufferable). I think Zachary's Essence is pretty obviously Questing.
Step Two is Attributes. 7/5/3, party like it's 1995.
Well, I think Zachary probably needs Social as primary, Mental secondary, Physical tertiary. Let's put two dots into all of the Social Attributes and then the last one into Charisma. Zachary makes an impression. I'll specialize it in Trustworthy.
For Mental, I'll put one in each, and then the other two into Perception (I have literally never regretted giving a character a high Perception score. In fact, I once played a Vampire character with Perception 5 and Intelligence 1; he could see 2+2 all day, but could not make 4. But I digress). I need a specialty, but nothing comes to mind, so I'll sit on that for a while.
Physical, just 1 into each sounds good. Might raise Stamina later.
Step Three is Abilities, with this janky-ass OWoD distribution. 13/9/5, you say. Oh, and Mage has Secondary Abilities, which I think is a bad idea because there's already too much granularity, but whatevs, I don't have to buy them.
Well, given Zachary's kinda gritty life, Talents as primary would seem wise. I think Knowledges can be secondary, and Skills tertiary. Hokay then.
Talents: Three in Streetwise, two in Empathy, three in Alertness (again, never regretted being perceptive). Let's take one in Art, I guess? Wait, I'm gonna shave one off Alertness to put it in Athletics, and I'll put one in Brawl, and one in Subterfuge. Two in Awareness, and that's good.
Skills: One each in Drive, Mediation, Research, Stealth and Survival.
Knowledges: One in Academics, Computer, and Science (all from his year in college) and two in Enigmas, Occult, and Politics (from his time with the Hollow Ones).
Step Four: Advantages. Which pretty much means Backgrounds. I get 7 dots, and there are a bunch. Let's check it out.
Well, I'm sure I'll want Arcane and Avatar, because those are fun, but I kinda want Contacts. I see Zachary as the kind of guy that folks talk to at 3AM over really shitty food. As such, he's hooked into the night-owl community; folks who work 3rd shift, folks with insomnia, folks carrying out the orders of their undead masters (wait, what?), and so on. I'll throw three dots into Contacts and one each into Arcane and Avatar, but I might come back to this with freebies later.
The other part of Step Four is to think about paradigm and focus, which have changed a bit in this edition. Basically I need to think about Zachary's type of magic, and I think he's very caught up in nightlife. Like, sure, there's the music scene and the drug scene and those things happen after dark, but there's a stillness to the city once you crest 2AM and the bars close. The diner he works at is open, sure. Gas stations. And there are some folks that just don't sleep. But in that stillness, he can hear the truth as the city whispers (and if he ever goes into the country, he'll learn that the rural areas have their own voices).
Zachary's magick, therefore, is very bound up in listening to voices that the hustle and bustle of the daytime world drowns out. His foci, then, include silence, meditation, chants, music (but music with repetitive beats and a lot of bass), salt (pour a pile of salt and blow on it, and watch the patterns), dice, and food and cooking (you share a meal with someone and you learn about them quickly).
Step Five is finishing touches, starting with Spheres. I get 6 dots, starting with my Affinity, but Hollow Ones can take whatever they want. OK, now I have to look at these rules a bit. They don't look too different, actually. I'm gonna take one in Correspondence, one in Entropy, two in Spirit, and two in Time.
I get 5 in Willpower, 1 in Arete, nothing in Paradox. I get 1 in Quintessence so far, but I might raise Avatar with freebies.
Speaking of which, next up is 15 freebies. Unless I wish to take Flaws. Just a moment. Oh, wait, never mind. The Merits & Flaws section is seriously truncated and I don't much like how it's done. Gonna skip it.
OK, so I have to raise Arete to two because it can't be lower than my highest Sphere (argh, this is not something I missed; I always said that mages basically start with Arete 3 and 7 freebies, since they effectively have to spend 8 to raise Arete to be useful, but since I'm not gonna play this guy I guess I'll leave it at 2). I'll burn two to raise Avatar, which means I've spent 6. I'll spend 5 to raise Stamina to 3, and with the last one I'll raise...let's say Willpower.
That's the end of chargen; the rest of it gets into beliefs and history and so on, but I've kinda done that already. I think that Zachary's path would involve learning to use Prime, Matter, Forces, or Life and figuring how those things fit into his paradigm. To him, magick is very ephemeral and...sleepy, I guess. I think his paradigm separates magick into "daytime" and "nighttime" Spheres, and he's very much on the "nighttime" side of things.
I gotta say, although I have my usual quibbles with the OWoD system, Mage remains a really compelling game.
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