Mage for Multi-Sphere WoDv2 Games

[Killer Klown]

@coin Ugh. You're right, sorry. I was on the Wisdom line of thought without sufficient amounts of coffee.
Plus I haven't played anything WoD related in a while now.

[Flitcraft]

I always saw Power Stat 5 as a kind of soft cap for what player characters are meant to obtain, and going over that as kind of NPC/Antagonist territory. It was genuinely weird to me to encounter so many characters in that range on the Reach and the games that have followed in its footsteps.

That said, I can't think of any reason beyond purely cosmetic fairness to cap them all at the same place on a multisphere game. They represent different things, and for all their mechanical similarities they do different things. Gnosis 5 is going to change the landscape of your game a lot more than, say, Wyrd 5, just because of what it unlocks in terms of Arcana.

That's not to say you can't make things work with Gnosis 5 and Masters running around, I just think it's better to make that decision one way or the other after looking at the actual effect it's going to have, rather than on the basis of symmetry.

[GangOfDolls]

Mastery is intended at least by theme to reflect a lifelong dedication to study and practice in a particular Arcana. Because of power bloat and Joneses Keeping Up With, it's treated like junk food in a drive through - easy to get and with very little effort.

It's always jarred me a bit that 20 year old Mages are running around - fully inducted into their Legacies and Life masters when in reality, that's all really more intended to be a mage career phase where they're maybe just starting out as journeymen and some aren't even done with apprenticeship level training.

I'd prefer it if PCs were limited to one mastery only and it took a lot of effort to get but then again, in my hardline world - a 20 year old mage shouldn't be at a point where they can even be a master.

[Ganymede]

@derp said in Mage for Multi-Sphere WoDv2 Games:

1. XP is gained far too quickly, leading to multiple high-level characters in a very short amount of time, all of them with competing interests and with enough power that they have no need to work well with others.

2. There is very little in the way of active antagonism or storytelling, as Seers of the Throne and other external threats are almost entirely nonexistent, so they have little choice but to try and get into other active things.

I think another problem is the absence of internal antagonism, which can often drive activity in the absence of active storytelling.

In Vampire, the Covenants have reasons to war with each other; in Werewolf, the packs vie for territory in similar fashion. But in Mage, if you keep to reasonable power levels, it is simply wiser to collaborate, and, in the absence of any Seer or external threat, that leaves you with mutual masturbation until something better comes along. And if you don't have reasonable power levels, and there's no need to collaborate, then ... well, it's just self-masturbation.

Not that I mind that, but, you know.

[Killer Klown]

@flitcraft It really doesn't, though. Gnosis caps Arcana, but it's the only Power stat that does so for powers. A Primal Urge 1 Werewolf or Blood Purity 1 Vampire can still buy every level of Gift/Discipline they want; though the Power Stats do serve as requisites for some of the higher end merits. Conversely, both the max level of Arcana and the number of different Arcana you can have are limited by Gnosis on the low end.
On top of that, it also governs the pool you have to draw from and the maximum amount of pips you can draw per round - which has become fairly standardized in 2e. On that it's a level playing field.
Where it most counts is in terms of skills and stats; having a power stat higher than 5 means you can buy stats and skills at higher than 5, and allowing that for one group while categorically denying it to another is unfair. The argument that 'mages can boost their stats' doesn't hold anymore either, since
A> Physical disciplines now passively increase Strength or Stamina by their rating (And Dex, if you go for that obscure bloodline that has it) - that's without having to spend or activate anything.
B> Werewolves have gifts that also increase stats, on top of the stats that they get from shapeshifting.
Further, Gnosis still limits the amount of spells a mage can have active at any given time. The symmetry would be limiting a vampire to only a certain number of Disciplines active <both passively and used directly against someone> or the number of Gifts they can have up at any given time - neither of which is a rule that exists. If anything, Mages depend on their Gnosis far more than the other supers depend on their respective power stats, so if you hobble it while not doing the same for the rest you might as well just not have Mage there to begin with.

tl;dr Edit - Mages start off not being able to do a lot of things that other supers can do right off the bat; Gnosis helps them overcome that restriction before it starts giving them any real bonuses.

[GangOfDolls]

And to clarify what I meant about arcana caps is that aside of the mechanics limiting what you can buy arcana wise, I think its worth exploring if your PC is only allowed a set amount of arcana spread in total.

People tend to follow the mage books as a cookie cutter recipe book though all spells per arcana are both usable and also examples of what you can do at that power level so you can go off book. I generally don't see people do that but I think that's a different kind of discussion. But just, if your PC is a dedicated to the study of arcana much like in life - they're not going to have time to run down every little thing. You have to decide where you put your energy and what things you have to sensibly exclude. Otherwise, you end up with a arcana generalist which in theory sounds toothless but an enterprising player can really work that system and we get back to mage being a one person solves it all situation.

[Killer Klown]

@gangofdolls True. Losing Paradigm was one of my biggest problems in nWoD; just because there's something that says you can do something doesn't mean you would IC. At least 2e emphasizes the usefulness of rotes in that they're not just ways to use alternate dice pools - but rather provide tangible mechanical benefits, so people are more likely to focus on specific spells rather than falling back to spontaneously casting everything.

[Derp]

@ganymede said in Mage for Multi-Sphere WoDv2 Games:

@derp said in Mage for Multi-Sphere WoDv2 Games:

1. XP is gained far too quickly, leading to multiple high-level characters in a very short amount of time, all of them with competing interests and with enough power that they have no need to work well with others.

2. There is very little in the way of active antagonism or storytelling, as Seers of the Throne and other external threats are almost entirely nonexistent, so they have little choice but to try and get into other active things.

I think another problem is the absence of internal antagonism, which can often drive activity in the absence of active storytelling.

In Vampire, the Covenants have reasons to war with each other; in Werewolf, the packs vie for territory in similar fashion. But in Mage, if you keep to reasonable power levels, it is simply wiser to collaborate, and, in the absence of any Seer or external threat, that leaves you with mutual masturbation until something better comes along. And if you don't have reasonable power levels, and there's no need to collaborate, then ... well, it's just self-masturbation.

Not that I mind that, but, you know.

Yeah, I mentioned that in a later post, about the Orders being far, far too kumbaya with one another and no real infighting between cabals, no tested loyalties between cabal and Order, etc. More antagonism across the board is needed.

The problem that I have heard most often in regards to why it is not there is 'the players don't want it, they want it a different way'. This goes for everything from the Free Council having seats on the Consilium to the complete and utter absence of Seers or other baddies of any significant presence.

I mean, players also want unlimited xp and a bedazzled pony, but that doesn't mean that we should let them have it.

[Flitcraft]

@killer-klown said in Mage for Multi-Sphere WoDv2 Games:

@flitcraft It really doesn't, though. Gnosis caps Arcana, but it's the only Power stat that does so for powers.

Which is why it strikes me as such a different creature from the others, and why it might be warranted to cap it at a lower level than the others. I'm not a big fan of power stats above 5 for player characters in general, though.

Further, Gnosis still limits the amount of spells a mage can have active at any given time. The symmetry would be limiting a vampire to only a certain number of Disciplines active <both passively and used directly against someone> or the number of Gifts they can have up at any given time - neither of which is a rule that exists. If anything, Mages depend on their Gnosis far more than the other supers depend on their respective power stats, so if you hobble it while not doing the same for the rest you might as well just not have Mage there to begin with.

I'm not really arguing from a perspective of fairness or symmetry. If one sphere being weaker than another were a reason not to have it, we wouldn't have M+, or anything but Mage, really.

I think there's enough appeal in the theme of Mage and the breadth of what they can do even at low levels to be fun, even if the scope of what they can do is less than what folks have got used to. There's plenty of stories you can tell better with Constantine than you can with Doctor Strange. Whether or not there's a big enough audience for that to carry a sphere, I don't know, but I think it's worth a shot.

[Derp]

Quick double post:

Players should also be limited in how much they can change the setting to suit their whims. One of the other big problems in Mage is that there are basically zero consequences for bucking millenia of traditions and indoctrination in favor of egalitarian utopianism. I have seen almost every Mage game have an even split of Council seats based on Order. This too creates problems, because:

1. No Order can get a leg up on the others politically, which limits sources of conflict

and

2. The Free Council literally has its own government, which shortchanges them severely.

Path-Based Council Seats have a deep in-game meaning in terms of legitimacy of their combined authority, etc. But everyone seems to open up as some kind of democratic experiment, which is completely antithetical to the sorts of rigid hierarchies that almost every Order presents.

There should be consequences for bucking the norms of ancient mystical Orders, but there never are.

[Killer Klown]

@derp Yeah, but that's not just for Mage. They seemed to take a different track in the entirety of nWoD with regards to antagonism. In oWoD there were defined 'good' and 'bad' guys, and they were pretty diametrically opposed - like Camarilla and Sabbat, or Gaians vs the Wyrm, or what have you. In nWoD they sort of tiered it out; you have the PCs, then you have another group that's like the PCs but of a different ideology <The Pure, or Seers> then you have a third group that's more or less guano loco <Bale Hounds, Scelesti> which tend to work in the service of some bigger, badder inhuman evil <Acamoth and such>. On paper it's a better, more layered idea - but the presentation was lacking. The idea of conflict and war was burned into the older versions from the getgo. You knew your Werewolf hated the Wyrm, you knew the Camarilla and Sabbat were in a state of conflict spanning centuries. It was a constant, present threat. In the new system, though, it's all left kind of vague due to the way the books are structured. The main guide focuses just on the players, and eventually you might get some information on the other groups out there - but by that point people have already cemented what they want their canon to be.

[Derp]

@killer-klown said in Mage for Multi-Sphere WoDv2 Games:

The idea of conflict and war was burned into the older versions from the getgo. You knew your Werewolf hated the Wyrm, you knew the Camarilla and Sabbat were in a state of conflict spanning centuries. It was a constant, present threat. In the new system, though, it's all left kind of vague due to the way the books are structured.

I don't see this as so much a bug, but a feature. Unlike OWoD, which was a decidedly different sort of gothic punk world setting, NWoD is supposed to be much closer to our own world. The wars and conflict between the factions are much more subtle and tactical, compared to the all out blood and bones type warfare that you saw in OWoD. It is much more tailored for the long game and tactical moves with the occasional bout of violence, much more political and calculated.

I think that is one of the bonuses that would make it work better in a MU, rather than worse. Open conflict is actively frowned upon, under-handedness and subversion is encouraged, so long as you don't get caught. Because they will absolutely throw you under the bus.

Also there are mechanical consequences for just killing all your enemies rather than just trying to screw them over.

OWoD supported the type of Mad Max warfare that some people shoot for, whereas NWoD is more akin to spy games and sabotage with the occasional assassination. Even werewolves are actively discouraged from killing each other.

[Killer Klown]

@flitcraft There's a difference between 'weaker' and 'artificial limitation'. On the one hand, M+'s are weaker by design - because they're basically just mortals with a few bells and whistles; and people know what they're getting into when they opt to play one. On the other hand, cutting parts out of a sphere because someone deems them too powerful is, at best, arbitrary - and stands to upset the overall balance of the game. Mage already has a number of restrictions built into the system that would usually address most of the issues people have with the system (Especially in CoD, where the other Supers gained a significant amount of power while Mage gained more restrictions/reductions) - but those restrictions need to be enforced across the board. People need to keep track of how much extra mana spontanious casting costs, how much mana they can spend per turn in light of that <that one is almost universally ignored from the scenes I've witnessed firsthand - and not just when it comes to mage spends>, how many spells they have up/are using and the stacking penalties for going over that limit and so forth.
Though, I do agree that 5 is a good cutoff for power stats in a normal game for everyone involved. Maybe go as high as six if you want to start talking hero-class stuff (Since there are a couple of merits that I remember from the various systems that require PU/BP of 6)

Re: @Derp - that's true, and why I said it works better on paper. The down side is that most stories are conflict-driven - even if it's not open warfare, a degree of antagonism keeps things moving. Without that hanging in the background things tend to stagnate, or you just run out of things to throw at players.

[Ganymede]

@killer-klown said in Mage for Multi-Sphere WoDv2 Games:

On the one hand, M+'s are weaker by design - because they're basically just mortals with a few bells and whistles; and people know what they're getting into when they opt to play one. On the other hand, cutting parts out of a sphere because someone deems them too powerful is, at best, arbitrary - and stands to upset the overall balance of the game.

The term "arbitrary" connotes a lack of reason. I disagree. The Arcana become exponentially more powerful in progression. Comparing them to the progression of Discipline powers or the myriad of Gifts is like comparing apples to rocket launchers.

[Flitcraft]

@killer-klown said in Mage for Multi-Sphere WoDv2 Games:

@flitcraft There's a difference between 'weaker' and 'artificial limitation'.

I don't see how. It's all artificial. These are game rules, not natural laws. If they're having an effect contrary to what you want for your game, you change the rules.

On the one hand, M+'s are weaker by design - because they're basically just mortals with a few bells and whistles; and people know what they're getting into when they opt to play one.

Just like everyone would know what they're getting into playing any splat that's been house ruled on a particular game. I'm not advocating for doing this in secret, so I'm not sure what your point is here.

On the other hand, cutting parts out of a sphere because someone deems them too powerful is, at best, arbitrary - and stands to upset the overall balance of the game.

It would certainly change the balance of the game, but that's kind of the idea.

[magee101]

@skew said in Mage for Multi-Sphere WoDv2 Games:

@derp said in Mage for Multi-Sphere WoDv2 Games:

You just need a better class of staffers

Emphasis mine. I think on the one hand, this is laughable. On the other, it really is the truth of it. Mage is exhausting. You need a group that's very committed to keeping the story going, so, just like Derp said, you can hit that sweet spot. Just, finding that group of active, motivated, creative staffers? Well...

When @Coin @tragedyjones and I were working on a new CofD 2E game, I did put together some house rules.

1. Paradox: As @Auspice says, paradox really lacks teeth in a game where there's so much downtime. We came up with a new system where each time you contain paradox, it doesn't go away, but stays in your pattern. Each time you would roll paradox dice, they get added to your personal counter, and you roll dice for each counter you have. This continues to build up until it's released.
2. Arcana caps. Like we did in FW, I think a hard limit on Arcana by Gnosis is a great idea.
3. Spirits and ghosts need to withstand with resistance stat, not rank. Rank is just way too easy, and a baby mage can toss around massive spirits with ease.
4. Magic items... need to be deal with in some way that we never finished dealing with. They can be a serious pita.

Point 2. I am not sure for 2e but 1e had Arcana caps based on Gnosis. You could only go this high for your Ruling, this high for your inferior and this high for teritary arcana based on what your Gnosis was at.

[Derp]

@magee101 said in Mage for Multi-Sphere WoDv2 Games:

Point 2. I am not sure for 2e but 1e had Arcana caps based on Gnosis. You could only go this high for your Ruling, this high for your inferior and this high for teritary arcana based on what your Gnosis was at.

I am fairly sure that many Mage staffers did not know this. I saw this rule broken a lot when reviewing sheets. People had way more arcana than their Gnosis supported, four+ masteries and such.

[GangOfDolls]

@derp

At least on the games I've been on, there was an awareness but election not to do it. The reasonings boiled down to the overall power creep in multi-sphere games and not borrowing trouble with the player base. Also a bit of: eh, what does this really hurt thrown in.

Which... it was hard to argue with in those enormous games.

It was also the case that mage spheres were often defacto cut off from the rest of the game. There were exceptions - The Reach had blended template families with dominant template type so there were vampire-intended families with some mages hanging around, for example. But on a higher level, there was a cold war agreement across most spheres that mages did mage things and everyone else should stay out of it and that followed on down the line with the vampires, changelings, and werewolves.

Even if the mechanical power structures were as @Ganymede pointed out apples to rocket launchers when you laid them side by side from template to template, the optics of restricting one template when giving another full freight to kinda just do whatever the fuck they wanted would have quickly devolved things into a crisis state.

On a game where its just mages and only mages, these rules can be enforced but it has to be enforced from the jump. The other thing that creeps beside power in mage games is the relaxation of what staff will allow as the game goes on, people stop being polite, and they get more and more worn out and worn down by the day to day of game running. Add to this in either single or multi-sphere scenario, plot focus as to start tight and stay tight which is also one of those 'this sounds great but when does this ever actually happen when humans start doing human?'

[magee101]

@derp Well shit, I may have only ever played two mages but I sweated my balls off conorming to that rule with my xp spends calculating spends out months in advance so I would know ehen I could raise my Arxana and know when my pc got Mastery

[Derp]

@magee101

That' s because you were brought up right.