Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!

[Ganymede]

@sunnyj said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

When I STd Mage, the confused players buried me in pages, but we figured out.

I understand what you're saying, but this seems to be the actual issue. Mage is open-ended when it comes to "powers," so it is going to be harder to figure out what can and cannot be done. In my opinion, that sort of mental preparation ought to be done before one hits a scene.

You know, kind of like what a Mage would do before going on a quest: get spell ingredients, memorize Mordenkainen's Magic Man-Meat Mash or whatever, etc.

[Arkandel]

@ganymede I've been the Storyteller for Mage many times and what I'm actually concerned about isn't so much how long people take in scenes to figure out what to do but what they do off stage.

Namely the tough part is Mage-proofing the plot so that it survives casual scrutiny by players throwing spells at it to see if they can resolve it in their downtime.

For example whodunnit questions can be trivialized by someone with enough Time and Space if you're not careful, and the worst case scenario for me would be to make that resolution a key part of my plot, then go into panic mode when that one character solved in one +job what I was planning to be a big reveal two scenes down the line.

[Thenomain]

@arkandel said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

Namely the tough part is Mage-proofing the plot so that it survives casual scrutiny by players throwing spells at it to see if they can resolve it in their downtime.

nMage2e fixes this. It fixes this so hard.

Though nMage2e (I can't call it "MtA2e" because there are two MtAs—CoDMtA?) is pretty much about doing things in spurts. Probe, retreat, analyze the new knowlege.

[SunnyJ]

@ganymede The preparation should be done before a scene, but you and I both know 'should' is a HIGH BAR to set on MUs for some reason. If you set a high bar, people leave, because most players are, quite frankly, lazy af.

Few people = Fewer people = No People

[Ganymede]

@sunnyj said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

If you set a high bar, people leave, because most players are, quite frankly, lazy af.

You realize this means that only you and I would be left on a game, and that, to me, makes me ooze with anticipation.

[magee101]

@arkandel When it comes to MtA1e (The one that was on TR and FC), I have found some of the most fun as a Mage player when I wanted to mess with a plot was to get scenes to help lower my sympathetic connections to the rest of the plot, as a GM those are the sorts of scenes and plots I would throw to my Mage players who will be later down the road using spells in off-time. That way it still feels like they did more than just throw some spells at it and gets some juicy RP logs outta the sitch. Now I can't say that's the normal, but for me as a player thats what I was looking for out of plottage.

I really enjoy with Time/Fate how you can appear to be a mostly passive observer but you actually know the whole deck and you're the one putting cards in people's hands. It feels like your Charlie to the Angels, but more interesting than a speaker box.

[Killer Klown]

M2e did do a hell of a lot to fix what was broken in the system, it's true. The mechanics of casting was twisted just enough on it's axis to still be familiar in process to 1e players, but tone down the dumbfuckery you usually saw in the original system.
They made things like Rotes relevant not by making them more powerful, but by helping them mitigate those basic power reductions in specific ways.
The way spells work now, trying to buff your dice hacks is far less useful - vis a vis, in the old system dropping 9/8/rote could drastically increase your power since successes directly translated to one of your spell factors. In 2e you 'bid' ahead of time as to what your spell factors are (Which all start at the lowest level except for the primary factor; which starts at the primary arcana for the spell), and after a certain number of reaches you start losing dice from your pool. Once you've set your factors, successes only really factor in to how difficult it is to dispel your effect. Increasing your casting pool can give you more dice to play around with, but improving the reroll effects doesn't count for much since that happens after the factors are set.
Also, even though Paradigm really isn't a thing in nMage, I still think Paradigm is a thing in nMage. What I mean is I tend to focus on specific themes rather than just beefing dice/power. In oMage, that meant by necessity gaining mastery in certain arcana because that was the only way to improve the spellcasting - but that's not so much of an issue in 2e (See above re: Rotes); you can buy the arcana up to what you want, then buy a rote for the ability and usually not have to worry about going further in the Arcana unless you want to. This fits my gaming style nicely; I usually only have a handful of spells that I use regularly on any given character; while the pc can do all the other crap listed per arcana, I usually don't bother with it. That both helps in planning spends and keeps the options of what to do round by round to a manageable degree.

[Ganymede]

@killer-klown said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

This fits my gaming style nicely; I usually only have a handful of spells that I use regularly on any given character; while the pc can do all the other crap listed per arcana, I usually don't bother with it. That both helps in planning spends and keeps the options of what to do round by round to a manageable degree.

This is how I like to play Mage as well. Sure, I can do a billion things, but my PCs tend to fix problems using the spells that she's adept at using. I like how Mage 2E fit into that mold.

Yes, I know there are other people that would rather play the "anything you can do I can do better" game, but this is why the game grinds down to 15-minutes-per-fucking-action doldrums.

[Jennkryst]

@ganymede said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

@sunnyj said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

If you set a high bar, people leave, because most players are, quite frankly, lazy af.

You realize this means that only you and I would be left on a game, and that, to me, makes me ooze with anticipation.

I'd end up there, too, but timezones and stupid schedules on my part would mean no scenes ever, and now I am a sad.

But yeah.

[Royal]

Any updates on this'n? The setting really interested me.

[Pacha]

@royal

Thank you for your interest! It is a cool setting!

Unfortunately, it never came to anything. A few of the team that was working on it got snowballed by real life, and then one thing led to another and it never happened.

I'm really sorry to disappoint you on that.

[Royal]

Happens to the best of them. Thanks for exploring the posibility!