In Mage: The Ascension, players can gain bonus dice when using Familiar Rules from Book of Shadows or the Ressonance rule. Quick combat spells can do enough damage with only one roll and some effort. “Enough” means 8 aggravated damage to a character.
Mage: The Ascension is an interactive storytelling game about people who have “Awakened” to their true power. Mages using Death can lengthen their own lifespan by robbing years from another, or perform the reverse and hand another years from their own thread. Magick has a life of its own, and will not perish with the death of the mage. A Mage with Death 5 can bring the dead back to life, though a sufficiently inventive Mage with arcanas like Time could probably pull it off too.
Magick has a life of its own, and will not perish with the death of the mage. A Mage with Death 5 can bring the dead back to life, though a sufficiently inventive Mage with arcanas like Time could probably pull it off too. This spell specifically prevents the Soul from leaving the body. Any damage or deleterious effects accrued under this spell remain in place when the mage gives up his own life.
Awakening has many different Paradox and Disbelief rules, as well as different criteria for what is coincidental, improbable, or Vulgar magic. Mages using Death can lengthen their own lifespan by robbing years from another, or perform the reverse and hand another years from their own thread.
📹 What Do You Believe In? – Intro to Mage the Ascension
If you have been curious about Mage the Ascension and what it means to be able to bend reality within the World of Darkness …
📹 It took me 10 years to realize i could do this
It took me 10 years to realize i could do this #skyrim ○My New Mod Load Order: -Reforging To the Masses -SkyUI -SkyHUD …
Didn’t expect to see Mage on the website so soon, but that only makes me more happy about it. I always considered Mage the Ascension one of the coolest games in the World of Darkness given the many possibilities available to the player. Indeed, magic here is limited only by Paradox and the personal imagination of the magicians themselves. For beginners, the system may seem quite complicated, but I have always appreciated the creative freedom it gives. You are given basics in the form of Spheres and certain limitations of your current power, and on the basis of this you can essentially do whatever your heart desires. This is really pure art with the help of which truly amazing things can be done. Or incredibly terrible if used incorrectly. Or maybe correctly… this will determine for whom they will become such. To conclude, this was a great breakdown of the basics. Thanks again for a great job! 👍 Looking forward to more articles on this topic. About various Traditions, for example.
also besides 9 major Spheres in Mage magick, there are many variants, like the technocrats have Data, primal utility and dimensional science which in their terms, data = prime + correspondence, dimensonal science =spirit, primal utility = prime. Also the Nephandi use corrupted versions of hte nine spheres and there are minoir spheres .
I read the book several times since i started to GM 35 years or so ago (several systems). But everytime i started to prep a game i faced the same wall. I got intimidated by the player’s options, especially when it comes to information finding. Would live to have a article or two on how to prep and run a scenario. Cheers!
Very groovy to see Mage in a article. Very much one of the ‘lesser’ games. By that I mean one of those that never got enough love. I always felt mage was part of the what I felt were the big 3, Vamp, Wolf and of course Mage. Demon, wraith, mummy and the fae ones being like a filler for other supernatural things in the WoD. Nice one Nathaniel 😊🤘🏻🇬🇧
I personally like playing the technocracy. while the technocracy is top dog they dont control everything. and have difficulties with authorities other supernaturals etc. and technocrats are not all kill everything that does not conform, the technocrats ally with supernautral creatures and trads to fight a bigger enemy, like Nephandi, Marauders, wyrm, sabbat. etc. heck in one game my party of Technocratic mages have to ally with a Sabbat inquisiton nomadic pack to fight a Black Spiral dancer hive.
I always thought that the Technocracy were not truly trying to rid the world of magic, more understand all things and make them explainable to the masses through technology (a medium the sleepers can understand), that way all can ascend together. Who needs reality deviants messing with the program and confusing the sleepers, don’t they realise that they are only being a hinderance to the rest of the populous.
The technocrats police the umbra with teh void engineers that is why you dont see wraiths spririts bygones running around destroying the world, they have automated kill sats armed with missles and particle beam weapons along with starships and Space marines fighting a war in space or the umbra throughout the solar system vs. Nephandi aliens, spirits etc. in the sea you have also the void engineeres and the Progenitors policing the depths. Also the Void engineers police the transdimensional, the space between spaces also they police the shadowlands so wraiths dont infiltrate into the Earth, and a small department of void engineers explore alternate histories, alternate dimesnions like the Chrononauts. also Iteration X and Void engineers police the digital web. the enlightened internet that is seperate from the dark web and reguliar web but connects with it. in many ways the techno magicks of the Technocracy surpasses that of the Traditions and Disparates.
In my games, back historyof the WOD mages played very important parts as the guardians of humanity, in fact mages are humans themselves, and unleashed power of what hte human mind and spirit can do. Like the Garou like to say that they helf themselves back during the Impergium and ended it. but in reality, Mages, humans and vampires defeated the garou and ended the iimpergium and how about the origins of the vampires, my take is that vampires were actually a mage experiment to fight the garou during the impergium.
and besides sphere magick there are also non sphere magicks like Pillar magick which is a hold over from the dark ages and before that, Pillar magic is ancient magicks which are less flexible more specialised to a certain field of magicks, but supposedly more powerful than sphere magic, it is also supposedly prone to paradox and does vulgar magicks a lot. and there is also Linear magicks or hedge magic which are used by sorcerers which is a lot less flexible than Sphere and pillar magicks. but does not attract paradox. and Sorcerers are unawakened mages. Sorcers cover a whole gamut from Order of hermes style sorcereres, to shamans to techno sorcers to psychics and even inquisition vatican holy men .
Mage and World of Darkness in general needs to include more cosmic horror in their games. Where reality and magic are connected to beings that are beyond human comprehension and morals. Sure there’s the wyrm, but there need to be more quests your played character uncovers terrible truths that will make the world of darkness even darker and more cosmic horror monstrosities that make even the most godlike of beings in the world of darkness tremble in fear. At least Chronicles of Darkness is willing to explore more cosmic horror with the games like Demon the descent.
I’m a big mage fan, so I don’t get why you used words like “Modality” rather than the in-rules terms like “instruments” or “practice”. Makes it a bit hard to recommend as an introduction if I now need to re-clarify with players what you mean. Also the big focus on the Technocracy then minimal on traditions is an odd choice given the game generally assumes you play Tradition mages (with Technocracy a later addition with separate books).
also paradox depends on sleeper witnesses, if no witnesses or the witnesses are other mages or supernatural creatures no paradox, however the more withnesses the hire the paradox, unless the magick use in coincidental and conforms with the belief systems of the sleepers. Like for example, a akashic brother is fgihting a NWO agent in the middle of time square, it will look like a normal brawl with the akashic using impressive martial arts even acrobatic moves, while the NWO agent, is also using acrobatic moves and even impressive movie like martial arts with hard wired cybertech and even biotech reflexes and the combat skills are also hard wired into his brain implant cybvernetics(chippng skills). However to the sleepers this looks like a impressive movie type flight, paradox will only happen, when let’s say the akashic brother uses his magicks to suddently jump 50 feet in the air or his fists start to glow and put huge holes in the concrete or the NWO agent hand suddenly turns into a particle beam weapon or his skin turns into a iron man like armor. Paradox is deadly hoiw it repairs reality. so paradox might destroy both mages, erase them from existence and the sleeper withnesses just gets the event erased from their memories and they go about their business. Interestingly other supernaturals do not attract paradox. so their antics are covered up by the technocracy and the offending parfties get hunted down by Technocratic and governmental kill teams.