Mage:the Awakening is out. Opinions?

[Funksaw]

3e is designed to support the play style introduced in AD&D as best as it can. M:tAW isn't designed to do that for the original Mage.

Quoted for emphasis.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Interesting - the people defending the game are being more successful at convincing me not to get it than the ones criticizing it.

Yeah, I buy that.

 

[Voadam]

In any WoD game, combat is intended to be a major, infrequent event with considerable psychological impact. If your play agenda is incompatible with this, then the entire WoD line doesn't have the kind of games you want to play. This begs the question of why you would actually want to buy the games. Caveat emptor.

I find this comment very funny. I can't remember a single VtM published adventure we did that would justify saying the game is designed to make combat infrequent. The fact that playing Sabbat was a campaign option and having read but not played Werewolf in one of its incarnations (GURPS) this comment seems even funnier. WoD is great for frequent supernatural combat. As a merely skilled mortal, not so much IME.

 

[eyebeams]

I find this comment very funny. I can't remember a single VtM published adventure we did that would justify saying the game is designed to make combat infrequent. The fact that playing Sabbat was a campaign option and having read but not played Werewolf in one of its incarnations (GURPS) this comment seems even funnier. WoD is great for frequent supernatural combat. As a merely skilled mortal, not so much IME.

We're not talking about the old World of Darkness in any way, shape or form. As for the old games, your opinion has quite a bit of merit. V:tM has lots of room for warriors, Werewolf was about warriors and the other games had no lack of frequent violence. The new games are not as conducive to this, except for Werewolf.

 

[Voadam]

We're not talking about the old World of Darkness in any way, shape or form. As for the old games, your opinion has quite a bit of merit. V:tM has lots of room for warriors, Werewolf was about warriors and the other games had no lack of frequent violence. The new games are not as conducive to this, except for Werewolf.

I see. I'm used to WoD referring to the WW setting and rules systems, not exclusively to the current edition.

I was interested to hear that the mechanics for Mage seem more defined and work better than the original. I played a little bit of 1e but the open ended and vaguely defined nature of the system was a bit too unwieldy for our group. I imported a lot of flavor stuff from mage, sorcerer, and the mage the sorcerer's crusade into my D&D games (especially that MtSC infernalism book) and got great use out of them. Sorry to hear the new edition deliberately is designed to have mechanical disincentives to running a play style that matches my own preferences. But good to know.

 

[eyebeams]

I see. I'm used to WoD referring to the WW setting and rules systems, not exclusively to the current edition.

I was interested to hear that the mechanics for Mage seem more defined and work better than the original. I played a little bit of 1e but the open ended and vaguely defined nature of the system was a bit too unwieldy for our group. I imported a lot of flavor stuff from mage, sorcerer, and the mage the sorcerer's crusade into my D&D games (especially that MtSC infernalism book) and got great use out of them. Sorry to hear the new edition deliberately is designed to have mechanical disincentives to running a play style that matches my own preferences. But good to know.

Mage's system gears can be very easily adjusted. In fact, I have a set of quick guidelines that enables you to do just that, at:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/eyebeams/226060.html

As for Morality, I can tell you from playtest that the risks have been somewhat exaggerated. A very simple way to tone it down is to just aggregate Morality rolls per scene or session. Check for the worst offense in the chosen time period and roll for that instead of tracking every single offense.

 

[Funksaw]

I'm willing to concede that for people who want a more easily understood system and cosmology, the new Mage is an improvement, but that's pretty much a tautology: "If you like the New Mage, you'll like the New Mage."

Like many people, I'd like to see an update and revision of the old Mage, of course, changing the way the game plays to incorporate both old Mage's playstyle and new Mage's simplicity. I suspect it will have to be a fan-project. And I also suspect if I want to do it right I could use some help on it.

Here's a list of changes I would make to the old Mage to update it:

1) Encourage higher magic dicepools so that you don't have to roll 3 dice 10 times for 1 spell.
2) Keep the Traditions and Conventions mostly intact, but eliminate the Ascension War, the Technocracy and Arch-Mages
3) Expand the universe.
4) De-emphasize the horror aspect.
5) Emphasize themes of "changing the world for the better" "exploration" "searching for enlightenment" "searching for truth" and "reaching for the stars while keeping feet firmly on the ground."
6) Include additional rotes and rules for how those rotes help mages cast spells without eliminating the emphasis on "making magic up as you go along."
7) Encourage player-suggested plot twisting, and defiance of expectations.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Interesting - the people defending the game are being more successful at convincing me not to get it than the ones criticizing it.

The Auld Grump

Right, people connected to the game defending it in such a manner will drive me further away then a bad review.

It's something like the Shadowrun 4 discussions. "We love SR/Mage, but it sucked, so we made a better one! It's not different, it's just evolved into something better!"

So, if you're a fan of the old Mage, is new Mage the game for you?

 

[Funksaw]

So, if you're a fan of the old Mage, is new Mage the game for you?

I think that White Wolf didn't really do a great job of emphasizing the difference between old and new versions.

This is a completely different game with very very few similarities.

This is very different from Vampire which was the same game with a few differences.

The central concept is very different.

If you are looking to run the same kinds of stories in the old mage that you can in the new mage, then you really can't do that.

Now, is that a bad thing? No -- in fact, my biggest criticism of the New Vampire was that it was very similar to the old vampire - so much so that it seemed more like someone's house rules superimposed on Masquerade.

That said, I'm unimpressed with the game on it's own merits. I compare it to the old Mage as a point of reference more than as a direct successor - but the game I would say it is most like in system and in cosmology is In Nomine - the game I would say it is most like in theme and "what the PCs end up doing" is Unknown Armies.

People may be generally pissed for a while because I think that WW threw them for a loop with this one - Vampire and Werewolf didn't undergo a whole lot of changes, Mage did, and I think people are disapointed that Ascension, which had a fanbase that thought very highly of it, is now pretty much a "dead line." - something that isn't true so much with Vampire and Werewolf.

 

[wingsandsword]

So, if you're a fan of the old Mage, is new Mage the game for you?

It depends on what you want out of Mage I guess.

Now, both are games of playing wizards. However, Mage: The Awakening is about playing Wizards, not Men In Black, Cyborgs and Magical Ravers. To me (as a fan of old Mage) New Mage gets back to the original concept of Mage: Wizards who have (theoretically) unlimited power who have to hide their magic from a disbelieving public, who strive for enlightenment and deal with magical politics in a hostile world with strange monsters on the fringes and amazing realms beyond this one.

That basic concept is the same between both games, just how both depict it is very different.

Old Mage started really getting far away from that IMO: The Ascension War, The Technocracy, Marauders, a Metaplot full of forgettable super-NPC's, "Mages" who seemed to be reaching just to create more splats (Cult of Ecstacy, Virtual Adepts), antihero organizations for PC's who were probably more reprehensible than "villain" organizations (the Euthanatoi were a lot more despicable than the Void Engineers, for example.)

The big lists of Rotes are pretty clearly there from a game-design perspective to make it much clearer what you can do with your magic, since arguing/debating how many spheres it took to do "X" was the fundamental debate of Old Mage. Open-ended magic is still possible, but it's clear that it's not encouraged.

If you really think you can't roleplay a wizard in the modern world who draws power from mystic enlightenment, hides his magic from disbelieving public eyes, deals with the politics of various orders of sorcery, has vast power tempered by limited training and may occasionally encounter strange beings or travel to strange realms of existence with New Mage, then I guess it's not the game for you.

To me though, they cleaned it up, got it back to its core concepts, made the mechanics a lot more sound from a game design perspective, and made it a lot easier to teach to newer gamers and much easier to run as a GM (Old Mage probably had one the steepest learning curves as a player, and was probably the hardest tabletop RPG to actually run I've ever seen.)