Mage 2e game - The Golden Road
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I know people hate me or whatever, but I thought I'd throw this out there.
The Golden Road
The Golden Road is a different take on mage only games. Instead of the setting being in a city the setting will change with each story arc, as the PCs will be mages inadvertently pulled into the new "Ascension War" as deliberate pawns of the Oracles and Exarchs (yes they do exist!)
The first story is called "The Names of Angels" and it occurs in a castle, where one group of mages will inherit its power. The castle itself will have many mysteries and many dangers which involve not only discovering the secrets within the castle, but also threats from other antagonist PCs who want control of the castle as well (which includes naturally Seers and Abyssal mages).
Grid is going to be changed from story to story. Mages can start out with 0 XP all the way to 30 XP for the first story with a gnosis cap of 4. Then the second story will boost everyone's XP to around 60 and a gnosis cap of 5. The third story will boost it to 90 and a gnosis cap of 6. Then we have all new characters at the end of the third arc and begin anew.
If interested, just HMU here or find me on Discord (jujubejd#3283).
Let the hate spew.
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Hi! I have no idea who you are, so I probably don't hate you.
Just to get that out of the way.Now, on to business!
- Suggestion - You might consider putting this in the Advertisements thread instead, since that seems to be more what this is aiming for?
- Questions! - Does this mean that PCs will not be gaining any sort of xp through the actual story, and instead are just given a flat rate with periodic 'catchup xp' sorts of thing? Or does this mean that people will be getting periodic xp raises on top of the xp they earn in story?
Thanks! (Also WOO MAGE GAME!)
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@derp
Right now, I'm thinking the XP gains will simply be from story to story as a result of all the things the characters experience while traversing the story. From a 30K feet point of view in the chronicle, each story/location is only resolved every two-three months (I'm hoping that way). So I figure 20 XP for 2-3 months of play seems reasonable?I'm open to suggestions on doing something else, but that way the staff (right now just me on code and story and building) is incentivized to keep things going instead of it devolving to private mage RP (if ya know what I mean).
Also, it's here instead of Advertisements cause I dont even know if this would attract more than a few players tbh. I'm fine with just sandboxing this cause I plan on not having a PC and instead just focusing on STing, which I enjoy.
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I'm easy peasy. Whatever restrictions/constructions it takes to have a Mage game up I will do. I ain't picky. Who ever you are.
That's a very interesting concept for xp gain. Earned in chapters rather than votes/beats etc etc. It will certainly resolve one major gripe of 18 year old Mage Gods wandering about.
Then we have all new characters at the end of the third arc and begin anew.
I dont even know if this would attract more than a few players
You said Mage 2e. People will come.
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@chibichibi said in Mage 2e game - The Golden Road:
I know people hate me or whatever
Definitely not the best way to start off... whatever this thread is intended to be.
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@chibichibi Was going to say I sure don't know you, so can't possibly hate you. But I do know you, and don't think I hate you!
You were on FW, you saw how that went. You also saw the feedback in the planning for Chicago whatever CofD game I can't remember the name. I think you got a good grasp on what players do and don't want, and what (most importantly) you do and don't want. I think, so long as you make it very clear what kind of game you're playing (wherein the ST/GM/whatever maintains tight control over the story), you'll be just fine.
For the sake of ease of read, I offered some suggests on another thread. Just copy+pasting them here:
- 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.
- Arcana caps. Like we did in FW, I think a hard limit on Arcana by Gnosis is a great idea.
- 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.
- Magic items... need to be deal with in some way that we never finished dealing with. They can be a serious pita.
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I definitely agree with 2, 3, and 4, but with paradox, I'm still trying to figure out what we can do there. Considering a lot of the game is meant to not be in WoD by Night setting, Paradox rules are definitely part of the mysteries the PCs have to figure out.
The game I'm planning has each "chapter" set in different archmage chantries, so paradox might be meaningless or it might impose penalties depending on the path of the PC in question or even affect certain arcana differently depending on factors like type of spell, phase of moon or whatever. The initial plan is to make paradox random as fuck so the PCs should be paranoid about magic-ing problems away.
Thoughts on that from everyone?
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@chibichibi said in Mage 2e game - The Golden Road:
The game I'm planning has each "chapter" set in different archmage chantries, so paradox might be meaningless or it might impose penalties depending on the path of the PC in question or even affect certain arcana differently depending on factors like type of spell, phase of moon or whatever. The initial plan is to make paradox random as fuck so the PCs should be paranoid about magic-ing problems away.
Thoughts on that from everyone?
Just two things from me.
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The more you 'stray' from CoD Mage canon the least approachable your game would be for newcomers who're familiar with Mage but not your MUSH's rules. In other words I recommend creating as short a list of House Rules as you can get away with - no matter how large their impact - rather than a long set of tweaks and adjustments ("On page 133, the Rote's duration is doubled").
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Giving Paradox teeth is probably a good idea but tread the line carefully between magic use carrying enough risks to not be used trivially and between your game's Mages not using any. I think you still have a large leeway though since in the books Paradox is a boogeyman that doesn't actually do that much mechanically.
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Just my own two cents:
Paradox is meant to be a boogeyman, but it's also meant to be pretty rare, whether that means that mages suffer containing it or just eschew vulgar magic. Each Order has their own thoughts on the matter.
Either way, Paradoxes are hardly everyday happenings, so I don't think a system that makes them more common is going to do much in the way of their oh shit factor. Paradox is supposed to happen when a mage is already stressed and desperate, or careless and inexperienced.
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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Is it really a stray from CoD mage if we're doing it in chantries where the regular rules of reality don't apply and part of the game is to solve the mystery of the rule? Too abstract you think? If so, I might change how I'm planning the story then.
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Sorry for doublepost, but I now put together a Discord server if anyone wants to chat there.
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@Derp said in Mage 2e game - The Golden Road:
Paradox is meant to be a boogeyman, but it's also meant to be pretty rare...
Is it? It is very difficult to do much anything at low level gnosis/arcana rating without reaching. It becomes nigh impossible to do much of your high level magic without reaching. Unless you're continually casting spells 2+ levels below where you're at, you're risking paradox.
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Ok, in second edition that's true. In the old edition, you had to worry about whether or not something was vulgar or not. In 2e, though, reaching is used for the big stuff anyway, at least as far as story is concerned. Most mages won't need a reaching effect in their everyday lives.
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@skew said in Mage 2e game - The Golden Road:
@Derp said in Mage 2e game - The Golden Road:
Paradox is meant to be a boogeyman, but it's also meant to be pretty rare...
Is it? It is very difficult to do much anything at low level gnosis/arcana rating without reaching. It becomes nigh impossible to do much of your high level magic without reaching. Unless you're continually casting spells 2+ levels below where you're at, you're risking paradox.
Really, the big things are that Paradox and Essence aren't tracked/enforced so you get people that just roll spells over... and over... until they 'get what they want' in ST'd scenes.
As someone who really likes Mage, those tend to be the two things that irk me the most. I mean, a vampire tracks their BP. But for some reason, I don't see that sort of thing enforced with Mages so you get the ones who just go 'woop, spell failed, okay lemme roll again.' and they just keep doing it until they get their intended result.
So yeah, if you're Reaching and risking Paradox (which a lot of people do so they get them extra dice!), it oughta be tracked. You're doing stuff that is at odds with the universe, forcing it to your will. This isn't the 'disbelief' factor (tho that's fun to play with, too!), but you're fighting the universe itself more or less.
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@Derp If you're at 3, and cast a level 3 spell, you get 1 free reach. That's almost always going to be used for "Instant". If you want to, say, cast it by sight, or use it on more than one person, or make it last more than 2 turns... you have to reach. Reach, reach, reach.
@Auspice I suggested above having a tracker for paradox. I think it'd be rad.
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@Auspice Nearly every game I've been on has had a +spend code. Even Fallen World had it for mana. It's not that it's difficult to track, it's that it's just not enforced by the ST.
I know on FW it was enforced that if you ran out of mana, then no spells for you. The difficulty is that a lot of staffers didn't know when mana was supposed to be spent or not thus leading to way too much casting. That's easily remedied.
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@skew said in Mage 2e game - The Golden Road:
If you're at 3, and cast a level 3 spell, you get 1 free reach. That's almost always going to be used for "Instant". If you want to, say, cast it by sight, or use it on more than one person, or make it last more than 2 turns... you have to reach. Reach, reach, reach.
Which is fine, but remember what it is Reach actually stands for -- extending yourself beyond your current safe levels of practice in order to achieve a result. Most (sane) mages are not going to do that when there is a safer alternative, so Reach spells (and Paradox) tend to be the results of desperate actions.
If people are using that as everyday magic, then we should probably be having a different conversation -- namely about how Wisdom is viewed in the game and what the consequences for bucking those millenia of traditions are.
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@chibichibi said in Mage 2e game - The Golden Road:
Is it really a stray from CoD mage if we're doing it in chantries where the regular rules of reality don't apply and part of the game is to solve the mystery of the rule? Too abstract you think? If so, I might change how I'm planning the story then.
The way I count it is this: Imagine being a Mage player - but not your game's player.
The threshold of effort you'd need to put into before you understand what the mechanical differences are is what that game should be concerned about because it could be a turnoff. At a certain point it'd be learning a whole new system all over again if there were too many caveats, exceptions and addendums to the rules you already know - and many players don't like that overhead, especially for systems they are already familiar with.
That's why I suggest making as sweeping changes as you feel like as long as the list of those changes itself can be kept short.
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Oh then that's easy. I'll be putting stuff down that as they figure out things they'll notice modifiers for spells cause they are in an archmage chantry. It's a bonus or a penalty here and there. It's not really house rules anymore than a tweak like when the Reach gave +1 paradox roll if you did magic near water.
