Brisbane Awakening VST News 2013

Mage VST News - August 2013

Note: The VSS changes mentioned in this newsletter were not implemented, and do not apply.

Downtime Rules in the VSS

Since the general response to the proposed Option C, put out over ooc.brisbane on Saturday evening, has received an overall positive response I’m going to be going ahead and putting it into the VSS. This means that it will be in effect for the current downtime period and should be followed when downtime reports are being written. There is also a Downtime Report template to go with it, based on material submitted to me by Fletcher Gooley and adapted to fit with the new downtime rules. You do not have to use this template, but it is strongly encouraged because it has been written to include all the important things I’ll be looking for or will want to report back on. It also means that you don’t have to worry about deciding how to lay things out, it’s all there for you and all you have to do is fill in the various entries.

Keep in mind that this is an experimental process. Without MET and/or any further clarifications in the addenda, a lot of these rules are now left to individual domains and venues to define and this means that we have an opportunity to find rules that work for us without needing to be restricted from outside. This also means that if any serious problems are encountered the VSS can be altered to correct them, so don’t worry if anything in these rules makes you feel apprehensive or uncertain.

Additional Moods in the VSS

In addition to the inclusion of a set of rules governing downtimes, I have also written up two new entries to be included in the Moods section of the VSS: Realism and Introspection. I’ve written these based upon some recent conversations, and to better enact my own belief in communication about the nature of a game between storytellers and players. My intention here is to better display certain elements of what I like in a game and by extension the styles that will influence the way I run a game; and by doing so hopefully minimize any confusion or conflict that may result from a mismatch of expectations.

The first of these new Moods is Realism. Anyone who has talked with me about my favourite genres will know that I’m a big fan of Hard Science-Fiction, and anyone who has listened to me commentate on movies or video game plots will know that the less “hard” a setting is the more I become disinterested. Because of this, the kind of game I enjoy is the kind that makes an effort to be internally consistent whilst also keeping the plot as close to the real world as possible. As a storyteller I intend to stick to this formula, and I think the best way to convey the influence this will have on the game is through a couple of the key tropes that I’ll be drawing on with my writing.

Crapsack World / A World Half Full

These tropes are not quite opposites, but they juxtapose well. In the former case we have a world or setting where things are pretty bad by most people’s standards; and this badness is pretty much a universal constant. The second is very similar, but includes the possibility that with enough effort, cunning, and luck a protagonist might be able to change a bit of the world for the better; perhaps even the whole world if there are enough small victories, but that’s a goal beyond most protagonists’ lifespans. Most interpretations of the Fallen World in the Mage setting are one or both of these. We have a world in which the godlike Exarchs stole the Supernal from their former peers and in so doing nearly completely cut off humanity’s ability to Awaken, imprisoning them to forever be ignorant subjects, whilst employing a few of those who do Awaken to relentlessly hunt down the rest. Attempts to force Sleeping humanity to Awaken almost invariably end in failure and often the destruction of those involved, whilst possibly making further attempts harder; and even employing the magic available to them is often a risk for the mages who want to free humanity. There is always the possibility of achieving victories against the Exarchs and their Seers, and the mages of the Pentacle do win battles often enough to survive, but they have been fighting for millennia with no ultimate end in sight and the power of the Exarchs far from waning.

Some people like stories where the protagonists are big damn heroes who regularly save the day and then ride off into the sunset with nary a scratch to show for it. Me not so much, and so we arrive at the other key trope…

Sliding Scale of Endings (Earn Your Happy Ending / Bittersweet Ending / Downer Ending)

There are a great many possibilities on the sliding scale of endings, and none of them are going to be ruled out as a possibility for the ending of a character’s personal story or a plot arc within the greater chronicle. Some of them are more likely to occur than others, however. The first of the most likely possibilities is the Earn Your Happy Ending. Everyone has dreams and aspirations, and few people even Awaken without at least some ambition pushing them onward. On the other hand, it is a given that even in the best circumstances the world is out to get them. Seers hunt mages on behalf of their gods, while Banishers hunt mages out of magic-induced psychopathy. The Shadow, the Underworld, and the Astral Realms are all full of frightening and alien creatures hostile to the natives of the Fallen World; and the Fallen World itself works against the Awakened through the influence of the Exarchs and the Abyss. Combined with the inherent flaws and weaknesses of being human no mage can expect to achieve anything without effort, sacrifice, and at least a little luck. In the end though, those who are clever and lucky as well as determined enough can achieve a measure of victory and thereby earn a happy ending.

The next of the three most likely endings is the Bittersweet Ending. With all those forces arrayed against them, waging war from both outside and inside, it is a given that not every mage will succeed in their lives. Every foe facing the Pentacle mages is just as likely to be capable and determined as they are, and there is never a guarantee as to which side lady luck will be on in any given conflict. Sometimes luck favours the enemy, and the best one can hope for is to break even. The Seers may be stopped for the time being, but there will always be more Seers and the Pentacle takes casualties. On rare occasions everybody lives, but more often than not some people die and the survivors have to deal with injuries to their minds, bodies, and souls. For those who don’t make it, there is often the consolation that they’ve brought an enemy down with them. Even when nobody dies, it is an even rarer event that nobody suffers at all. Physical battles cause wounds and lasting trauma, whilst the proxy wars for control of Sleeper minds and imaginations can lead to the destruction of property or the loss of allies and influences.

The final possibility in the three most likely endings is the Downer Ending. Awakening is a process that generally tests a person’s will and imagination, but not every Awakening is as strenuous a test as others. Sometimes Awakening comes to those who lack the ability to deal with the many stresses and challenges that the life of a mage brings, or else the abilities that helped them Awaken in younger years degrade over time leaving a mage more vulnerable to attack by their enemies. Other times, luck and destiny will conspire against an otherwise competent mage and render their efforts impotent. Whatever the specific cause, the end result is that sometimes mages simply fail. Business ventures go bust, studies reveal nothing, battles are lost, and the Pentacle’s enemies triumph. In its worst cases, mages die amidst their shattered dreams. Any of these are possible outcomes for a plot or characters, and very little is precluded. Which one comes to pass in any given scenario is decided mostly by two things: a player’s choices and the roll of the dice. A Shoot the Shaggy Dog ending is about the only thing a player can count on avoiding due to its utter lack of dramatic effect, but there is little by way of plot shielding to protect anyone from foolish choices that can make for a more interesting game overall.

The other of these two new Moods is Introspection. The attraction to me in many stories is the underlying thoughts and ideas which the story explores. The graphic novels V for Vendetta and Watchmen have remained popular because they not only present well-written stories; they also speak to more in-depth ideas about ethics and political philosophy through their various characters. Movies like The Matrix or Fight Club do the same thing by challenging the assumptions we make about the world around us through the setting and the way the characters interact with it and with each other. A memorable story, in my mind, needs to do more than just present some cool looking events; it also needs to contain the elements necessary to make a person think long after the story is finished. With this in mind, I will be presenting stories that are geared towards exploring some of the key issues that lurk under the Mage: the Awakening genre.

Perhaps the most central idea I’d like to explore is the conflict of means versus ends. Playing to the themes of Power and Amorality, there is nothing to define “morally correct” here in terms of either the way the world is or how people go about changing it into what they want it to be. This means that every character has to make decisions about what they believe in and how they are going to go about influencing the world accordingly, as well as how they will deal with other characters and their decisions and opinions. If a character decides that a particular political ideology should be in power (particularly pertinent at the moment!), they need to decide how far they are willing to go to ensure that this eventuates. They also have to be prepared for others to disagree with their objectives or their methods, and how they will deal with the conflicts that could ensue. The fundamental question here is “do the ends justify the means?”. There are many possible answers for the myriad of possible variations on this question and it is at the core of many conflicts, and the closest thing to an authority on the answer being the very subjective possessor of power. I’d like to tell a story that invites thought about this question and the application of its possible answers.

I will also be trying to tailor story elements towards the philosophical issues raised in the various sourcebooks on the different orders. Story elements closer to Adamantine Arrow characters will be geared towards issues that play towards questions of idealism versus expediency, that invite those characters to think about the importance of honour and oaths whilst also putting them in positions that require them to think about the order’s mandate to be guardians of both Sleepers and the Awakened to some degree or another and how they can fulfil that mandate. Story elements closer to the Silver Ladder will be aimed towards the Elemental Precepts and how a théarch can best embody them, which may require anything from being tyrannical in an effort to compel people to overcome the inertia of the Fallen World to presenting the challenge of how best to guide Sleeping humanity towards their birth-right of Imperium Mysteriorum. Story elements nearest to the Free Council play to challenges like freedom versus security and the old versus the new, as outlined in their sourcebook, whilst also exploring the challenges of trying to harmonize often conflicting interpretations of what constitutes ‘democracy’ and the role of the Awakened in helping Sleeping humanity. Mysterium story elements deal with the need for preserving knowledge from a supposedly more enlightened time and then disseminating it to those who deserve it whilst also ensuring that dangerous knowledge stays safely contained, and coping with the necessary challenges that arise from leaning more towards the ‘the old’ than towards ‘the new’ in that associated conflict. Guardian plot elements will be aimed towards the question of how far one should go to ensure the safety of others even if they themselves don’t want to stay safe, and the resulting issue of how far can you go to protect the secrecy of magic and mages from the Sleeping curse before you cross the line into suppressing the knowledge and existence of magic and becoming the proverbial villain.

Obviously different people will think different things and some people will have more pre-conceptions than others, but I will still be trying to highlight some of these issues as well as challenging some of the overarching assumptions. Every NPC will have their own opinions on these issues, in particular issues which pertain to them directly by virtue of their own order memberships. Thus Adamantine Arrow NPCs will have their own views on what constitutes proper “honour” and where the line between “necessary expedience” and “immoral strategy” rests. Guardian NPCs will have their own views on what the limits of their activities are and how far they can go before they start to lose sight of their overall mission to protect the Awakened. Silver Ladder NPCs have their own understanding of the Elemental Precepts and their own views on what are viable strategies and what constitutes a heresy against humanity. Mysterium NPCs have their own thoughts on how best to preserve the knowledge of the past and how to bring it forward into the future, and Free Council NPCs have their own views on what constitutes an acceptable level of democracy in any government and how far the Awakened can go in employing their own talents before they cross the line from helping to liberate the Sleepers into forcing the Sleepers into compliance at the expense of their rightful freedom.

Equally obviously this isn’t a be-all and end-all description of what will be influencing my thoughts and my writing, and much as I’d love to convey a complete picture of my philosophical views and my intellectual preferences in writing style that’s just not possible. I could easily write many long essays on this and not convey everything that goes through my head consciously or subconsciously. What I hope this will convey is enough information about my thought processes and my influences from other media to help the people playing in my game to better understand where I’m coming from as a fairly new storyteller, and thus the sort of things that they should expect or not expect from my plots and NPCs.

Venue Storyteller FAQs and FYIs: Issue 1

Q: How do the various spells that create portals or access other realms of existence work, and how do they differ from teleportation spells?

A: There are a few spells to consider here. The first and simplest are the Portal and Teleportation spells cast with the Space Arcanum at 3 and 4 respectively and listed in Mage: the Awakening. There are a few key points to keep in mind with the way that the Portal spell works. The first and most important is that the function of the spell is to create a kind of doorway that links two places across vast distances. As described in M:tA on page 238, the spell will only function if the gateways can be placed “anywhere that allows a person of Size 5 or less enough freedom of movement to enter or exit it in a single turn”. This means that they can be placed on moving surfaces, but only if they have sufficient size to contain the gateway. It also means that the spell opens a gateway that stays open for a period of time and during which time the gateway can be seen and accessed by anyone nearby unless cast by an Adept of Space who applies a Portal Key to the spell. The second important point to keep in mind is that this spell can only be instantly cast with Space 5. This means that a Disciple or Adept of Space must cast it as an extended casting / ritual. By contrast, Teleportation allows a mage to displace themselves across great distances in an instant. It can be cast instantly by default and doesn’t open a gateway or leave any evidence of a spatial distortion that can be re-opened with the spell Follow Through.

Travelling from the material realm into another realm of existence utilizes different spells. The most relevant spell for accessing the Shadow or Spirit Realm is Spirit Road, available at Spirit 3. Unlike Portal, the target destination of the Spirit Road spell is always the directly across the Gauntlet and doesn’t allow you to traverse distances any quicker than you could otherwise unless cast conjunctionally with Space 3 as a sympathetic spell. Otherwise, this spell functions almost exactly the same as Portal. It opens a gateway that is visible to others and can be used by others whilst it remains open unless cast by an Adept of Spirit, who can restrict access at will, and without access to Spirit 5 it must be cast as an extended casting / ritual. There is also an equivalent to teleportation in the form of the spell Road Master, which will displace the caster directly across the Gauntlet without opening a gateway like Spirit Road. If a mage possesses both Space 4 and Spirit 4, they can combine the effects of Teleportation and Road Master to teleport across the Gauntlet. The spells Spirit Road and Road Master are both listed in Mage: the Awakening.

Accessing the Underworld is substantially more difficult than accessing the Shadow, and requires Mastery of Death to accomplish. The spell Deathlike Journey in Legacies: the Ancient is one method of accomplishing this that utilizes the combination of Death 5 and Life 2 to send the caster’s soul on a kind of spirit quest whilst maintaining their body in the real world. A spell that utilizes only Death 5 could potentially open a gateway similar in functioning to the spells Portal and Spirit Road, whilst Death 4 might allow someone to access the Underworld from the Shadow or vice versa due to the relative closeness of those two realms.

Accessing the Twilight is relatively easy, and can be accomplished in a number of ways. The most straightforward method is utilizing one of the spells Ghost Gate or Twilight Shift. Available at Death 3 and 4 respectively, these spells function exactly as the spells Spirit Road and Road Master but instead of accessing the Shadow they access the Twilight and change the user to or from a ghost-like state. The spell Psychic Projection, available at Mind 4, also allows the user to send their disembodied consciousness into the Twilight. The Spirit Arcanum has no listed spells used for accessing the Twilight, but improvised spells similar to Ghost Gate and Twilight Shift and available at comparable levels of proficiency can be used for this purpose as well. However these spells will give users a more spirit-like state, and thus their applications are subtly different from their Death equivalents.

Accessing the Astral Realms is the most difficult, and can’t normally be achieved using magic. To access the Astral Realms a mage must be within the area of a Demesne or a 5-Dot Hallow, and must then perform an extended meditation action as per the extended action presented in World of Darkness. Once they have achieved a certain number of successes and paid a tithe of mana, they are able to pass onto the astral road inside their soul and begin accessing the Astral Realms. Full rules for this are presented in the book Astral Realms, along with a number of spells used to supplement or inhibit this process.

Whilst there are a number of other realms of existence, such as the Hedge or the Abyss, mages do not normally have the means to access them and certainly can’t do so with magic of less than archmastery-level proficiency.

Q: Can the Space Arcanum be used to determine the distance or location of objects, places, and/or people?

A: There are unfortunately few spells pre-written to deal with this, however there are a few readily available. The first one of note is the spell Finder, available at Space 1 and described on page 233 of Mage: the Awakening. This spell allows the mage to “flawlessly track an item in his immediate surroundings”, and essentially functions like a kind of ‘quest marker’ for the item in question such that the mage will always know the distance and direction to the item as long as it remains within sensory range. A mage with Space 2 can cast this spell sympathetically, allowing them to track the item anywhere it goes at the cost of making the spell vulgar and needing to establish a sympathetic connection to the object. Though it doesn’t specify in the spell as written, where the specific text refers only to objects, the ability to affect said objects without the use of conjunctional Matter implies the ability to affect living targets without conjunctional Life. Thus this spell could be used to locate any specific person or animal as well.

The next spell worth considering is the spell Spatial Map, also available at Space 1 and described on page 233 of Mage: the Awakening. This spell grants the mage who casts it perfect knowledge of the layout of their immediately surrounding area along with the exact positions and relative distances between every object and living thing within that area for about six seconds, depending upon how the caster alters the spell’s factors. This spell won’t necessarily tell a mage where a specific object is, but it can be very useful for determining where things are in general. Looking for someone who is hiding? This spell will show that there’s a person in the closet, and if you know their facial features well enough you might even be able to tell who it is from the shape of their nose or the layout of their teeth. This spell isn’t listed as having a sympathetic version, though it could theoretically be cast that way with a truly staggering amount of data being available for a time.

These two spells are going to be the bread and butter of any attempt to directly locate someone or something using the Space Arcanum, and make a mage with even a little bit of space very effective at tracking things or people down. There are limitations to the effectiveness of these spells, such as the effect of wards or bans and the need for sympathetic connections to be effective over great distances, but they are still able to perform the basic function of locating stuff. There are a number of other spells available that add one or more conjunctional arcana to expand upon this basic function, but which aren’t fundamental enough to be listed here.

Q: How exactly do legacy attainments interact with Supernal magic?

A: This question is largely covered in the Mage: the Awakening Addendum in section III.B.5.a, which states that “while it is not possible to counterspell an Attainment, they otherwise interact with spells as normal. For example: non-visible alterations to space and time can be detected by the relevant spells; Attainments involving Space must still contend with Wards and Wans as would any other spell; attack spells are still resisted by the relevant magical shields; etc.”

It is also worth noting that as per the rules on page 345 of Mage: the Awakening, the effects of attainments do not register as magical to Mage Sight, though they are supernatural abilities and thus their use does trigger a mage’s Unseen Sense like every other supernatural ability. It is also worth noting that they do not count as spells for the purposes of Spell Accumulation, and therefore don’t count against spell tolerance and their effects can stack with spells that have identical but possibly cumulative effects.

Q: What are the effects of knowing or not knowing a target’s True Name on sympathetic magic?

A: First, this is only something that affects people (or former people such as vampires or ghosts and people-like entities such as powerful spirits). Animals, plants, places, and objects do not have True Names and thus don’t need to worry about them. Second, the effect is that not knowing a target’s True Name will reduce the effective strength of a sympathetic connection when casting a spell by two stages. The scale is normally: Intimate, Known, Acquainted, Encountered, Described, and Unknown. Without a True Name an Intimate connection is reduced to Acquainted, Known to Encountered, Acquainted to Described, and Encountered or Described to Unknown. Under normal circumstances there is no way to establish a sympathetic connection to something that is Unknown, which means that without a True Name there is no way to establish a connection to someone that is less than Acquainted.