Quote from: SonTodoGato on August 09, 2021, 12:41:58 PM

Quote from: Ocule on August 09, 2021, 11:42:39 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 08, 2021, 12:45:22 PM

Quote from: zagreus on August 07, 2021, 05:19:51 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 05, 2021, 10:32:44 AM

Quote from: Wrath of God on August 04, 2021, 09:23:59 PM

Quoteand is also basically woke garbage because "believing hard enough changes reality" is basically the same logic

Not really - because Believing Hard in Ascencion is quantifiable skill that allows you to change reality

QuoteBecause the medium of RPGs is all about using defined rules and tools to solve problems

That's quite narrow definition - unless you define problem extremely widely.

Mage the Ascension is literally, "if you believe it hard enough you can make it real in defiance of all natural laws." That is precise mindset pushed by the lunatics who say Men can be Women if they believe they are. Mage is Woke wish fulfilment where they can change reality to meet whatever their whims of the day happen to be and the villains are caricatures of the Right Wing; oppressors who wish to impose an objective reality that will keep them from being able to be woman or a sea turtle or whatever. The latest Mage book literally paints it as conservatives are trying to oppress and ruin the world for their own gain and good Mages must be good transgendered woke Leftards and oppose them by believing really hard; because Utopia WILL come if you just kill enough of the unbelievers in it.

I ran Mage the Ascension.  Not because I wanted to tell some story about the left vs the right.   I could have given two shits about politics then (and now I'm pretty centrist in my politics): I ran a Mage game so I could tell a story about modern wizards throwing lightning bolts at vampires, werewolves, "Terminator" and "Mr. Smith" ripoffs in Philadelphia - with a side dish of dimension hopping.   Not "everything" is politics. 

And actually, you could play a pretty decent Technocracy game if you'd wanted (I had considered doing that- kind of like Paranoia in Mage, but you'd be blasting foes with technomagic) but my enthusiasm for White Wolf waned by the time I had gotten that far. 

Now, because I've, done that (probably 15 years ago now), I'm running Ars Magica which is a bit more of a grounded Magic system than Mage- requires less GM interpretation, though is still very flexible.  Magic is simply of the natural order, and a magus of the 13th century  understand how that natural order works better than most.   

Oh, I have run Mage as well; until relatively recently, I had an ongoing campaign that spanned two and a half decades (2e was the new hotness just as I took the reigns when the prior ST burned out after 6 sessions). When WW killed the line in 2002 to try and launch their NWoD (now with even more gnostic heresies) I kept right on going and ultimately wrote my "White Book Mage" because the old books weren't all that available and purchasable pdfs for them weren't yet a thing.

But over time I came to a realization that the game's metaphysics were garbage and you can see in my WBM (I've shared links to it here several times so search my post history if you care to look) I'd already started houseruling much more defined mechanics into the system and the fluff I included had a generally much more concrete cosmology than the traditional "belief makes it real" of the official books and my actual campaign even more so with the struggle over the Anchorheads of Reality (and eventually their source) becoming THE metaphysics of the campaign.

Hard mechanics because the soft stuff wasn't a game; it Storygame style improv theatre and really indulged the idea of the "GM as frustrated author" which is not what I've ever enjoyed my games being. My Mage setting had always been a sandbox and so I had always had house rules (even before I codified them in WBM) to make magick less of a constant improv theatre asspull.

And then I ran headlong into the politics shoved into Mage20. At first I ignored it, but the authors have grown ever more shrill and with the some of the specifics wherein they linked "not letting men be women because they believe it" to the various evil forces trying to keep magick from letting people change sexes like they're clothing and basically "objective reality is evil because it won't obey me" it finally clicked that the whole construct of Mage is just one big Leftard wankfest where their Utopia is being kept from them by the evil bourgeoisie (i.e. the collective belief of working class Americans and their Christian morality that wouldn't indulge the depraved whims of adult children who were so pampered they had to invent struggles just to feel like they'd accomplished something).

That's when I stopped running Mage and started adapting my White Book Mage rules towards my own urban fantasy setting where monsters are again monsters and morality and reality are objective and the supernatural works according to those laws of reality.

This is pretty much my experience with what happened in m20. They made it impossible to ignore the politics in it. The only thing good I can say about ascension now is creative thaumaturgy. I need to also take a look at ars magicka, but I saw some good rulesets for GURPS. It's a shame the basic premise of mage was good originally. A war for control of reality, mysterious organization that believes mages are are a threat to humanity and view them as a force of chaos. Every story I told with mage was usually from the perspective of a hermetic order or some kind of group. Avoiding the sillier shit

LOL could you give some more examples of politics getting into Mage?  I'm only slighlitly familiar with the setting; I know there are different "schools" and thar magic is "mind over matter". What were the major changes apart from this blatant propaganda?

I don't have the book in front of me right now I'll have to do it later if you want specific examples. Their official pages and channels would witch hunt anyone they believed was conservative or "alt right" and ban you. They'd also screech that the game isn't for you if you didn't follow their politics.

Their devs are activists and would make frequent posts about their activism. In the actual book it got worse the more they published but you could see similar examples in their core book such as x cards, to downright telling "fascists" not to play this game. We know who they mean by that, they've been calling everyone fascist since forever now.

In there QuickStart all the characters are some kind of minority and all the bad guys are white dudes. They've renamed every faction to be more pc, and this theme is pretty consistent.

Anyway if you're curious I recommend borrowing a copy or something don't give em money.

Quote from: SonTodoGato on August 09, 2021, 12:41:58 PM
LOL could you give some more examples of politics getting into Mage?  I'm only slighlitly familiar with the setting; I know there are different "schools" and thar magic is "mind over matter". What were the major changes apart from this blatant propaganda?

Here's just two... First from the back cover for Technocracy Reloaded;

"As science and technology draw humanity closer than ever before, certain factions within the masses display gross negligence, undermining the union's work and endangering the world for short-sighted gains. Despite global telecommunications, new frontiers in virtually every field of study, and an understanding of the universe only dreamed of by earlier generations, humanity faces threats on all sides.

"Can you save it?

"Climate change threatens to destroy life as we know it. Religious fundamentalism breeds terror around the globe. Diseases, once eradicated from the developed world through vaccination, have returned due to anti-vaxxer movements. Totalitarian nationalist governments rise, as the masses succumb to fear of the other." [Note: this blurb was written when the Bad Orange Man was still President]

From Book of the Fallen... this one line shows just how far up their own ass they are on their "belief makes it real" SJW bullshit... in reference to why its necessary to stop the messages of those who spread wrong think...

"Mage's "battle for reality" is fictional, yet also real."

That's just two easy to find examples... every book of theirs is now chock full of them and once you see the strings, you can never unsee them.

Frankly, the thread on Woke RPG companies needs another level... call it "Code Black"... especially for Onyx Path/NuWhiteWolf so great is their Woke Fuckery.

Quote from: SonTodoGato on August 09, 2021, 12:41:58 PM
LOL could you give some more examples of politics getting into Mage?  I'm only slighlitly familiar with the setting; I know there are different "schools" and thar magic is "mind over matter". What were the major changes apart from this blatant propaganda?

Okay, so there's two main groups: the Traditions (who practice ancient magics) and the Technocracy (who practice Science with a capital S, because they know they're not practicing real science but willworking but they call it Science so it doesn't count as willworking or some such BS).  The Traditions have all made peace with each other, because otherwise the Technocracy will steamroll them over.  Meanwhile, you also have Nephandi (who want to use willworking to destroy everything for reasons) and the Marauders (who basically are so detached from reality that they're immune to the forces that try to keep some semblance of baseline existence).  And all these Willworkers are fighting so that their view of reality is accepted by the majority of people, and becomes Consensual reality (the reality that says wands of fireballs aren't real, but microwave ovens are).  Get enough people to agree on something and Consensus changes (and has changed before!).

That's a dirty quick summation.  Now for the problems with mage....

*  The Traditions all get along.  The Hermetics who say women can't work magic, the Verbena who say men are detached from the Goddess, the Celestial Chorister who says all these other mother fuckers need to find Jesus or go to Hell.  And a good chunk of the real world groups these Traditions are based on don't like the LGBTQ+ crowd.  They all toss aside the "problematic" aspects of their belief systems in the name of teamwork.  Never mind that the problematic aspects are as much a part of their belief as anything else, and the more powerful members of the Traditions by definition have -very- strongly held beliefs.   (It's handwaved away as "real willworkers don't buy the nonsense the mundanes sell each other", but... that doesn't really hold up)
*  The Technocracy are evil Western intellectuals, businessmen, bureaucrats, doctors, engineers, explorers, and so forth.  And keep in mind, the good scientists, doctors, etc. are really just dupes and patsies for the "true" Technocrats.  They're the black hats, and painted about as one-dimensionally as you'd expect.  And yes, they're predominantly White (although Asians have a strong representation too, but less villainous natch).  Efforts have been made over the editions to mellow this out, but in the end you still have black hats with Science running around because the (canonical) game is about fighting The System and The Man and all that. 
*  Every Tradition mage talks in character about magic in terms of 10 Spheres because the writers wanted a theme of Tradition cooperation over players actually exploring cultural differences and disagreements.  And while the 10 Spheres are fine as an out of character mechanic, it's really frigging stupid to have Native American shamans deconstructing their worldview into a Hermetic Quabbalistic system so they can "talk shop" with a mad scientist (the only good Technocrat is a Technocrat who got kicked out for political reasons) who also reframed their world view to accommodate somebody else.  Technocrats use a different naming system for the same 10 Spheres because in a game about reality being subjective, some things are universal.
*  Speaking of some things being universal, some things are also localized.  What does that mean?  It means when enough people from Tribe A can outnumber the people of Tribe B, the Tribe A's belief that B are a bunch of cannibals becomes true.  Except that kind of "racism = belief = reality" thinking isn't part of the game (even if it -is- part of the belief systems of a lot of people).  So really some things are always true, some things are localized, and you have to figure out which is which and what is what because the game doesn't know.
*  The Nephandi are an excellent source of Black Hats.  But the Technocracy are already the black hats for just about any decent story, so the Nephandi are the -Extra- Black Hats, with connections to the Wyrm or Demons or Oblivion or Umbrood or whatever.  But basically their sole motivation is they're the angsty White Wolf fans who hate everything because everything doesn't kiss their ass and want to see it all burn.  But now with magic powers and less motivation (or brains).  The idea that some Nephandi are really less "destroy everything" and more "what if the others in my Tradition are wrong" with Nephandism being a political label rather than a state of being also isn't properly explored.  Arguably because it would run counter to the whole "shiny happy Traddies holding hands" theme the game is a slave to.  And with the Technocracy already providing all sorts of Black Hat themes, all that's left for the Nephandi are two-dimensional stories. 
*  Marauders exist because it's a Monday, and Mage is part of the greater World of Darkness crossover metaplot, and there needs to be a Wyld faction that fits within Werewolf's Triat.  So we have a group of chaotic, unique, breaks-all-the-rules mages... and the systems to classify and categorize them.  Blech.  Also, they exist as basically a warning call to show how far a willworker can fall.  But they're totally super powered and cool, so can only exist as GM plot devices (and I say this as a GM).  It probably helps that they're all crazy and basically falling so far up their own assholes that eventually nobody can relate to them.
*  When the systems make sense, they tend to get ignored by the authors.  Sometimes it's because it's a Monday and done for the sake of cross-game balance (you literally need a fuckton of Sphere to do stuff to a Vampire or Werewolf for "reasons"), sometimes it's because the person writing forgot whose rules they were using.  Seriously.  And then there's all the times when the system -don't- make any fucking sense ("Mages can't count as Awakened witnesses of their own magic" "then why have a separate category for doing magick without any witnesses?!?!").
*  EDIT: Oh yeah, you have a group devoted to goth mages who don't have a paradigm or some shit, but then they do, but whatever.  Ultimately though you have a "totally not organized group" organized group of Goth Mages, because it's 1993 and Goths are the people who butter White Wolf's bread.  That White Wolf never released Goth the Gothening ("it's a joke!  For $9.95 we laugh our way to the bank!") was clearly an effort of willpower on their part.

tl;dr - Trads are idealized Lefties based on real world groups that weren't so great, who sublimate their cultures in the name of protecting their cultures.   Technos are villainized people with advanced degrees in something other than the Humanities.  And the whole system and setting is a bit of shit show beyond that.

Edit edit: I loved me some mage back in the day.  But damn it, eventually you grow up and play Ars Magica instead.

Quote from: Habitual Gamer on August 09, 2021, 03:42:47 PM

Quote from: SonTodoGato on August 09, 2021, 12:41:58 PM
LOL could you give some more examples of politics getting into Mage?  I'm only slighlitly familiar with the setting; I know there are different "schools" and thar magic is "mind over matter". What were the major changes apart from this blatant propaganda?

Okay, so there's two main groups: the Traditions (who practice ancient magics) and the Technocracy (who practice Science with a capital S, because they know they're not practicing real science but willworking but they call it Science so it doesn't count as willworking or some such BS).  The Traditions have all made peace with each other, because otherwise the Technocracy will steamroll them over.  Meanwhile, you also have Nephandi (who want to use willworking to destroy everything for reasons) and the Marauders (who basically are so detached from reality that they're immune to the forces that try to keep some semblance of baseline existence).  And all these Willworkers are fighting so that their view of reality is accepted by the majority of people, and becomes Consensual reality (the reality that says wands of fireballs aren't real, but microwave ovens are).  Get enough people to agree on something and Consensus changes (and has changed before!).

That's a dirty quick summation.  Now for the problems with mage....

*  The Traditions all get along.  The Hermetics who say women can't work magic, the Verbena who say men are detached from the Goddess, the Celestial Chorister who says all these other mother fuckers need to find Jesus or go to Hell.  And a good chunk of the real world groups these Traditions are based on don't like the LGBTQ+ crowd.  They all toss aside the "problematic" aspects of their belief systems in the name of teamwork.  Never mind that the problematic aspects are as much a part of their belief as anything else, and the more powerful members of the Traditions by definition have -very- strongly held beliefs.   (It's handwaved away as "real willworkers don't buy the nonsense the mundanes sell each other", but... that doesn't really hold up)
*  The Technocracy are evil Western intellectuals, businessmen, bureaucrats, doctors, engineers, explorers, and so forth.  And keep in mind, the good scientists, doctors, etc. are really just dupes and patsies for the "true" Technocrats.  They're the black hats, and painted about as one-dimensionally as you'd expect.  And yes, they're predominantly White (although Asians have a strong representation too, but less villainous natch).  Efforts have been made over the editions to mellow this out, but in the end you still have black hats with Science running around because the (canonical) game is about fighting The System and The Man and all that. 
*  Every Tradition mage talks in character about magic in terms of 10 Spheres because the writers wanted a theme of Tradition cooperation over players actually exploring cultural differences and disagreements.  And while the 10 Spheres are fine as an out of character mechanic, it's really frigging stupid to have Native American shamans deconstructing their worldview into a Hermetic Quabbalistic system so they can "talk shop" with a mad scientist (the only good Technocrat is a Technocrat who got kicked out for political reasons) who also reframed their world view to accommodate somebody else.  Technocrats use a different naming system for the same 10 Spheres because in a game about reality being subjective, some things are universal.
*  Speaking of some things being universal, some things are also localized.  What does that mean?  It means when enough people from Tribe A can outnumber the people of Tribe B, the Tribe A's belief that B are a bunch of cannibals becomes true.  Except that kind of "racism = belief = reality" thinking isn't part of the game (even if it -is- part of the belief systems of a lot of people).  So really some things are always true, some things are localized, and you have to figure out which is which and what is what because the game doesn't know.
*  The Nephandi are an excellent source of Black Hats.  But the Technocracy are already the black hats for just about any decent story, so the Nephandi are the -Extra- Black Hats, with connections to the Wyrm or Demons or Oblivion or Umbrood or whatever.  But basically their sole motivation is they're the angsty White Wolf fans who hate everything because everything doesn't kiss their ass and want to see it all burn.  But now with magic powers and less motivation (or brains).  The idea that some Nephandi are really less "destroy everything" and more "what if the others in my Tradition are wrong" with Nephandism being a political label rather than a state of being also isn't properly explored.  Arguably because it would run counter to the whole "shiny happy Traddies holding hands" theme the game is a slave to.  And with the Technocracy already providing all sorts of Black Hat themes, all that's left for the Nephandi are two-dimensional stories. 
*  Marauders exist because it's a Monday, and Mage is part of the greater World of Darkness crossover metaplot, and there needs to be a Wyld faction that fits within Werewolf's Triat.  So we have a group of chaotic, unique, breaks-all-the-rules mages... and the systems to classify and categorize them.  Blech.  Also, they exist as basically a warning call to show how far a willworker can fall.  But they're totally super powered and cool, so can only exist as GM plot devices (and I say this as a GM).  It probably helps that they're all crazy and basically falling so far up their own assholes that eventually nobody can relate to them.
*  When the systems make sense, they tend to get ignored by the authors.  Sometimes it's because it's a Monday and done for the sake of cross-game balance (you literally need a fuckton of Sphere to do stuff to a Vampire or Werewolf for "reasons"), sometimes it's because the person writing forgot whose rules they were using.  Seriously.  And then there's all the times when the system -don't- make any fucking sense ("Mages can't count as Awakened witnesses of their own magic" "then why have a separate category for doing magick without any witnesses?!?!").
*  EDIT: Oh yeah, you have a group devoted to goth mages who don't have a paradigm or some shit, but then they do, but whatever.  Ultimately though you have a "totally not organized group" organized group of Goth Mages, because it's 1993 and Goths are the people who butter White Wolf's bread.  That White Wolf never released Goth the Gothening ("it's a joke!  For $9.95 we laugh our way to the bank!") was clearly an effort of willpower on their part.

tl;dr - Trads are idealized Lefties based on real world groups that weren't so great, who sublimate their cultures in the name of protecting their cultures.   Technos are villainized people with advanced degrees in something other than the Humanities.  And the whole system and setting is a bit of shit show beyond that.

Edit edit: I loved me some mage back in the day.  But damn it, eventually you grow up and play Ars Magica instead.

I'd chalk it up to the prevailing trends of the time. In the 90's, perhaps it was goths, industrial rock & punk and gritty stories that look 2edgy4me for us nowadays, so it makes sense that it be urban tribes vs. corporations in a grimdark, pre-cyberpunk world. That was kind of the spirit behind Vampire: The Masquerade.

Rather than mere propaganda, it sounds like they ran out of ideas and hired some uncreative woketards

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 09, 2021, 03:27:22 PM


"Climate change threatens to destroy life as we know it. Religious fundamentalism breeds terror around the globe. Diseases, once eradicated from the developed world through vaccination, have returned due to anti-vaxxer movements. Totalitarian nationalist governments rise, as the masses succumb to fear of the other."[/i] [Note: this blurb was written when the Bad Orange Man was still President]

From Book of the Fallen... this one line shows just how far up their own ass they are on their "belief makes it real" SJW bullshit... in reference to why its necessary to stop the messages of those who spread wrong think...

"Mage's "battle for reality" is fictional, yet also real."

That's just two easy to find examples... every book of theirs is now chock full of them and once you see the strings, you can never unsee them.

Frankly, the thread on Woke RPG companies needs another level... call it "Code Black"... especially for Onyx Path/NuWhiteWolf so great is their Woke Fuckery.

Rolling my eyes here. Funny how they never complain about left-wing regimes. Nope, they just hate the ones their parents like. You'll never hear something alongthe lines of this:

Welcome to a grim world in which governments and mass media cooperate to control the masses and brainwash them into giving away their freedoms, while censoring and persecuting those who disagree in the name of "safety", "science", "diversity" and "tolerance".

Nope, that would be a breeding ground for terrorists.

Anyway, the idea of the setting is that collective belief changes the world. Why not promote the idea that global warming is not real?

Quote from: SonTodoGato on August 11, 2021, 12:47:50 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 09, 2021, 03:27:22 PM


"Climate change threatens to destroy life as we know it. Religious fundamentalism breeds terror around the globe. Diseases, once eradicated from the developed world through vaccination, have returned due to anti-vaxxer movements. Totalitarian nationalist governments rise, as the masses succumb to fear of the other."[/i] [Note: this blurb was written when the Bad Orange Man was still President]

From Book of the Fallen... this one line shows just how far up their own ass they are on their "belief makes it real" SJW bullshit... in reference to why its necessary to stop the messages of those who spread wrong think...

"Mage's "battle for reality" is fictional, yet also real."

That's just two easy to find examples... every book of theirs is now chock full of them and once you see the strings, you can never unsee them.

Frankly, the thread on Woke RPG companies needs another level... call it "Code Black"... especially for Onyx Path/NuWhiteWolf so great is their Woke Fuckery.

Rolling my eyes here. Funny how they never complain about left-wing regimes. Nope, they just hate the ones their parents like. You'll never hear something alongthe lines of this:

Welcome to a grim world in which governments and mass media cooperate to control the masses and brainwash them into giving away their freedoms, while censoring and persecuting those who disagree in the name of "safety", "science", "diversity" and "tolerance".

Nope, that would be a breeding ground for terrorists.

Anyway, the idea of the setting is that collective belief changes the world. Why not promote the idea that global warming is not real?

  I like how they say religious fundamentalism breeds terror around the globe...pretending that current day there is only one flavor of fundamentalism that does that.  I also notice they completely leave out the religion of marxism that has probably killed more people than Islam, Christianity, and Judaism combined. 

I'm all for mysterious "sense of wonder" stuff and unique magic, as opposed to cookie- utter magic as tech and so on. But many people aren't. And the reason cookie-cutter stuff works is that it's reproducible and acceptable to the largest pool of people. That's why we have so many cheap factory cookies and so few artisan bakeries where the pastry chef gets up at 2am to make his heirloom recipe and sell his stuff for 8x the price per carb hit compared to the supermarket stuff.

Tangentially related, but I fucking love weird magic items that are useful but strange and maybe even a little uncontrollable.

Things like the wand of wonder, the bag of beans, the immovable rod... all great fun and even if the party is careful enough to identify stuff, it's still just a little... strange.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on August 12, 2021, 08:49:06 AM
Tangentially related, but I fucking love weird magic items that are useful but strange and maybe even a little uncontrollable.

Things like the wand of wonder, the bag of beans, the immovable rod... all great fun and even if the party is careful enough to identify stuff, it's still just a little... strange.

I like to turn that up a notch or two, with items that useful but slightly cursed.  You can drop it anytime you want, but players don't.  Plus, once you get a group of players used to that, you can slip in an item that is more 50/50.  They may go quite some time using it before they decide it isn't worth it. 

I may be overly fond of such things because of the over the top reactions some of my regulars have when it comes to finally getting rid of such things.  They tend to be quite imaginative with it, almost to the point of holding a grudge.  It's not enough to simply drop the item.  They feel the need to hide it, bury it, even spend some effort locking it away.  Especially fun with an intelligent item that tries to play the sympathy card when it realizes it is about to be locked up in a vault in a deep dungeon.  I had one sword pleading, whimpering, etc.  When the players were resolute, the sword said something like, "Just like last time" and sighed.  That's when the players remembered they had found it in a locked, deep vault.

Quote from: SonTodoGato on August 11, 2021, 12:38:03 PM
I'd chalk it up to the prevailing trends of the time. In the 90's, perhaps it was goths, industrial rock & punk and gritty stories that look 2edgy4me for us nowadays, so it makes sense that it be urban tribes vs. corporations in a grimdark, pre-cyberpunk world. That was kind of the spirit behind Vampire: The Masquerade.

The whole "World of Darkness" shtick was very much bandied about as justification for a lot of the nonsense in regards to the Technocracy.  Problem was, Mage was supposed to be a game about changing the world for "The Better", and a lot of the fanbase didn't buy the idea that the Technocracy were Black Hats and Trads were White Hats.  They wanted a middle-road Gray Hat setting for both (with Nephandi as Black Hats and Marauders as Blorgotz Berets).

But Mage wasn't meant to be a crossover game (because it's Thursday*) and so making it compatible with the rest of the WoD titles' cosmology/setting rings hollow...

(*I know I keep harping on this, but every time I saw a freelancer who wrote for the lines try to argue that point on TBP and say the games were not meant to crossover, I remembered two things: all the materials designed specifically to support or expand crossover stories (e.g. the death of Ravnos, Abominations, Midnight Circus, Vampire/Faeries, Wraith and Giovanni, etc.), and questioning a White Wolf freelancer usually meant you were questioning a mod or a mod's friend or a company a mod wanted to work for... so... (unspoken rules of TBP: "White Wolf/Onyx Path are good guys, do not say mean things about White Wolf/Onyx Path or your thread will be locked at least")

QuoteKeep it simple. That's my point. Don't bother making up a whole rationale as to how magic works, or a complex, well-thought-out system. Keep it balanced, of course; nothing too exaggerated. Maybe throw a few rules here and there, but keep it mind that magic works in mysterious ways.

Meanwhile me: crafting elaborate metaphysical system to explain both natural and supernatural phenomena in my setting to minute details.

How about NO.

QuoteMage the Ascension is literally, "if you believe it hard enough you can make it real in defiance of all natural laws." That is precise mindset pushed by the lunatics who say Men can be Women if they believe they are. Mage is Woke wish fulfilment where they can change reality to meet whatever their whims of the day happen to be and the villains are caricatures of the Right Wing; oppressors who wish to impose an objective reality that will keep them from being able to be woman or a sea turtle or whatever. The latest Mage book literally paints it as conservatives are trying to oppress and ruin the world for their own gain and good Mages must be good transgendered woke Leftards and oppose them by believing really hard; because Utopia WILL come if you just kill enough of the unbelievers in it.

Yeah I've seen latest edition wen't more WOKE, but in original game you had loose coalition of various freaks including many religious fanatics against Ultimate Technocratic Zentrism. Technocracy was not Right Wing in first editions in any sane way. Nor left either. Authoritarian Center on compass. Power for power sake. Also - all Traditions are fighting to REPLACE Technos. They want to enforce own paradigm on reality not make it wishy washy - because that's how you get Marauders.

Also still... there is objective reality under... our macro-world in Mage. In a way you could say mechanics of game itself it is, and even with change of paradigm... your character sheet would still work. Mages cannot reshape everything - Spheres will remains, and with them all elements they constitute. In different configurations by essentialy the same.
And this is way different from woke stance which is not "you need to work hard and hone your will to reshape reality" which is something more from this subconcioussness coaching bullshit books, woke stance is "you are what you feel you are without any demands from you and everyone have to respect you and treat you your imagined way or we'll cancel you"

QuoteI don't care about mechanics. I'll make something up on the spot. If it's blessed, it may be useful. How? That will depend. Some players find it hard to think outside of the book; particularly Spaniards, in my experience. Others understand it right from the get-go and see it coming a mile ahead. We're here to tell and play stories, situations and adventures, and I won't let the rules get in the way. That being said, this is not at all like the wokes who are here to "tell a story together" in which nothing bad can happen. It's just a rules-light approach highly consistent with the old school mindset.

Old School was light on many things but treating magic (and fighting) in narrative space was never one of them. Those were two elements who were universally well mechanised.
Narrative magic is way closer to some PBTA/FITD options where everything is solved as narrative puzzle, not in-verse practical problem solving.

Point is simply - most OSR and high-crunch players does not want whatever-narrative magic, simply as that. They want to think outside of box by using well defined and ruled abilities and spells in unconventional way, and not think outside freaking tesseract by having vaguely descripted GM-whim depended magic, which effectiveness will be mostly depending of famous "how good for a story it is". Wanna play Narrative RPGs or even Storygames, sure. But reallly stop preaching.

Quote
So, basically, you aren't talking about RPG's at all... you're talking about Storygames.

No not really. Storygames are games where gaming structure enforces Story to happen. For instance Fiasco. Games that push players more into Authorial than Actor role, ergo push them from RP-ying.

Very lite RPG where most of things is based on divine fiat of GM is still RPG. As long as it pushes players in Actors seats... it's RP, no matter whether you have mechanics to solve problems or not.
Old D&D had social challenges basically runned on GM's fiat and it does not made it Storygame.

Quoteit Storygame style improv theatre and really indulged the idea of the "GM as frustrated author"

Improv Theatre and Storygame are two very opposed things. Storygames often even lacks GM because rules of games replaces him.
This is more style derived from frustrated GM's dealing with rule lawyers or own dislike for learning mechanics, than from ambitions to make game that enforce stories.

QuoteCall it whatever you want. I'm not sure if its meant to be disparaging but I prefer this kind of gaming over learning complex rules to arrive at the same results.

Yeah, nope.

Quote from: Wrath of God on August 17, 2021, 06:42:52 AM

Meanwhile me: crafting elaborate metaphysical system to explain both natural and supernatural phenomena in my setting to minute details.

How about NO.
   

No one is going to stop you

QuoteOld School was light on many things but treating magic (and fighting) in narrative space was never one of them. Those were two elements who were universally well mechanised.
Narrative magic is way closer to some PBTA/FITD options where everything is solved as narrative puzzle, not in-verse practical problem solving.

Well, I guess I'm just playing games the wrong way then. Either way, never said it was all narrative. And nobody said magic had to work in terms of mechanics; that's just one view for some games.
   

QuotePoint is simply - most OSR and high-crunch players does not want whatever-narrative magic, simply as that. They want to think outside of box by using well defined and ruled abilities and spells in unconventional way, and not think outside freaking tesseract by having vaguely descripted GM-whim depended magic, which effectiveness will be mostly depending of famous "how good for a story it is". Wanna play Narrative RPGs or even Storygames, sure. But reallly stop preaching.

I'm not going to force them either. Let them play as they wish. In my opinion, it's wasting a good opportunity. You still miss the point; it's either strict rules or "anything goes as long as it makes for a good story". It's either crunch or you're woke (if anything, it is the wokes the ones that are interested in buying every book or bring up the players handbook or GM guide whenever there's a problem). If you like thinking outside the box, apply it to this case. I'm not talking about mechanics; I'm talking about how magic is like in your setting.

In a world full of this:







I want more ghost stories, rituals, incantations, secret gatherings in the forest, charms, curses, fairies and nymphs, potions, shamans, etc. I want elves, centaurs, cyclops, orcs, dwarves and goblins to be real but rare, mythical creatures who do not live in the same city, out in the open.

Quote from: Wrath of God on August 17, 2021, 06:42:52 AM
Old School was light on many things but treating magic (and fighting) in narrative space was never one of them. Those were two elements who were universally well mechanised.
Narrative magic is way closer to some PBTA/FITD options where everything is solved as narrative puzzle, not in-verse practical problem solving.

Point is simply - most OSR and high-crunch players does not want whatever-narrative magic, simply as that. They want to think outside of box by using well defined and ruled abilities and spells in unconventional way, and not think outside freaking tesseract by having vaguely descripted GM-whim depended magic, which effectiveness will be mostly depending of famous "how good for a story it is".

You're lumping "old school" and "high-crunch" together here, which I think doesn't fit. Old School covers a wide range - but especially, a lot of Old School embraced GM arbitration and rulings as integral to the game, rather than having everything be handled mechanically. I cited before about how many old D&D tournament modules focused on riddles, traps, and other interactions that were handled without any mechanics.

Much of Old School was not about crunch and system mastery -- it was about imagination and creative solutions that required GM arbitration.

Based on this, I think there's room for an intersection of unscientific magic and old school -- it's just something that hasn't been explored much previously.

Something I've been pondering lately is what separates magic from just, super powers? Way a lot of games and stuff are these days x-men and wizards are pretty much the same thing.

Magic in games is reliable, instant, repeatable, poses little to no risk the user and hell even having to study it is mostly out the window considering most wizard ages these days are super young. What makes magic magical?

Quote from: Ocule on August 18, 2021, 03:44:15 PM
Something I've been pondering lately is what separates magic from just, super powers? Way a lot of games and stuff are these days x-men and wizards are pretty much the same thing.

Magic in games is reliable, instant, repeatable, poses little to no risk the user and hell even having to study it is mostly out the window considering most wizard ages these days are super young. What makes magic magical?

You got that right. Magic is simply shooting beams or fireballs. Elves are simply another species, and so are dwarves and orcs. Goblins are just green humanoids. This is what "scientifc magic" does. It devalues everything. It's the result of 21st century scientism