Brisbane Awakening VST News 2014

01 Mage VST News - 01 April 2014

Venue Storyteller Elect News and Recent Events

Hello all, your friendly Awakening VST Elect here! It has been some time since the first of these news announcements was written and posted, but now that I’ve been elected to take up the office of Brisbane’s Awakening Venue Storyteller again I’ve decided that I want to return to putting out these monthly reports. I feel it’s important that the players know what’s going on behind the scenes in the venue and get the chance to receive answers to frequently asked questions or recently raised issues regarding the genre.

So what’s been happening recently? As everyone knows I was recently elected to take up the office of Awakening Venue Storyteller and I’ve assembled a team of assistants to help me once I take up the office. For those who may have missed my previous announcements, my assistants will be: Nathan Bickerton, Fletcher Gooley, Callan Davis, Katrina Couzens, and Peter Gilmore. These generous folks will be contributing their time and energy to helping me run games once June rolls around, though for now it behoves me to make mention of a few particular tasks that some of my assistants will be taking up for the benefit of the venue.

First, I have appointed Nathan Bickerton to act as my Chief of Staff. He’s one of Brisbane’s most experienced players, having served in numerous roles in the club in the past over the years and is presently serving as our Awakening Venue Coordinator. He’ll be helping me manage my team, and I look forward to seeing his contribution to the storytelling side of running the venue.

Second, I have appointed Fletcher Gooley to act as my People’s Tribune. As was discussed during the recent election it’s clear that this venue has experienced some troubles over the past year in terms of the relationships between players and storytellers, and how these are communicated. Since some of these issues occurred during my previous term I want to take a pro-active approach to the situation this time around, and to this end I have given Fletcher the task of being available for people to talk to if they have any issues but feel unsure about how to bring them up.

Last but not least, I have appointed Callan Davis to take care of our venue’s Public Works. In practice this will primarily mean helping me take care of the wiki, a very important resource for our venue, but it will also mean that he can assist players with adding material to the wiki if they need help.

In addition I want to praise the effort that these guys are putting into the Knowledge-Building Program that I promised to provide for my aVST team during the election. There’s quite a bit of reading to be done from numerous books and fitting in weekly discussion meetings is not easy, so they deserve all the kudos for putting in this level of effort for the sake of the venue and its players.

On the subject of a New Player Primer, which was discussed during the election, we are currently in the first stage of development: gathering material. As we go through the Knowledge-Building Program we will be taking note of important topics and compiling material that we think will be useful and/or important. Come June we will have enough to begin the second stage of development, which will be sorting through the material that we have gathered in stage one and refining it in conjunction with the player base. In the meantime, I would ask that any players who have thoughts or suggestions to forward them to me. This project is all about helping players new to the genre get into the game as quickly and easily as possible, and nothing will help more with building that than hearing what players themselves think on the matter.

That’s all the news for now, but not quite the end of this piece. In addition to news about what’s going on in the venue, I like to provide players with an FAQ/FYI addressing any prominent questions or issues that have been raised recently. By doing this I hope to help everyone advance their knowledge of the genre and make sure everyone is up to speed on any rules developments.

Venue Storyteller FAQs and FYIs: Issue 2, April 1st 2014

Q: What the heck is an “angel” in the context of Mage?

A: In Mage “angel” is a term used to describe creatures native to the Aether, one of the Supernal Realms and the one from which Obrimos mages draw their power. As with each of the Supernal Realms, there are two broad categories of “angel” with one corresponding to the Forces Arcanum and one corresponding to the Prime Arcanum. More information about these creatures can be found in the book Summoners, beginning on page 74.

Q: What is up with Summoning and Supernal Creatures?

A: Summoning is a rare and dangerous form of magic employed by some knowledgeable and desperate mages when they seek knowledge or insight that pertains to their Path. A mage can only summon creatures from their own Supernal Realm, and doing so requires at a minimum the use of the Practice of Weaving (i.e. three dots) with one of the mage’s Path ruling arcana during a lengthy and difficult ritual casting as outlined on page 73 of Summoners. Summoning is an imprecise art, and ironically doesn’t actually compel a being to come forth from the Supernal even if the mage can successfully bridge the Abyss with their spell. Rather the mage attempts to entice a creature across, and a creature enticed across will be influenced by the Arcanum used for the summoning. Of course, this may go wrong and if it does there is a good chance that an Abyssal monster will come through instead. Even if it does go well, a mage may still become stained by the Abyss as a result of extended exposure to this style of Spellcasting.

Once a creature is summoned, a mage only has a limited amount of time to interact with it because creatures native to the Supernal Realms cannot survive for very long when exposed to the Fallen World. As long as they remain within the circle used to summon them they can remain unharmed for a limited time dependent upon the power of the spell; but once that runs out or they leave the summoning circle they begin to rapidly degrade. In a matter of a few hours even a powerful Supernal creature will have its corpus eroded by time, and exposure to Sleepers or Paradox will increase the speed of this degradation. After a short time the creature will discorporate, returning to its Supernal Realm or being sucked into the Abyss depending upon whether it remained with its summoning circle or not.

This is just a brief overview, with detailed information to be found through the Summoners book, but it is worth noting that for the purposes of our LARP game summoning isn’t something that’ll come up very often if at all. Section VI.A.2 of the Mage: the Awakening addendum states that summoning is a Top approval, and thus any instances of it will need to be very well justified in the context of the material presented in the aforementioned sourcebook.

02 Mage VST News - 21 April 2014

Venue Storyteller Elect News and Recent Events

Hello folks! Not a lot of news to report at this time, though there has been a little change-up in my ST Team. Sadly Callan Davis has decided to step down from the team due to other commitments and limited time. It’s sad to see him go, but as always real life comes first and the team wishes him all the best. This does, of course, mean that the ST Team now has an opening so I invite anyone interested to send me a message expressing such. I can be best contacted via my email (kbarr616@gmail.com) or via Facebook for those who have me as friends. Joining my team will be a great opportunity for anyone, whether experienced or just aspiring to storytelling; and in particular for those people who wish to learn more about the Mage: the Awakening genre. Speaking of which, since there isn’t much by way of news to report at this time I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about one of my key campaign points.

For those who were following along closely, the ninth and final point on my campaign platform was “Mage as it was meant to be”. At the time I gave a brief explanation, mentioning the Theme and Mood from the Mage: the Awakening core book along with several of my key sources of inspiration. Today I would like to have a bit of a deeper look at this fundamental idea and explore both the material presented in the core book and why I believe that they are so crucial to running the game of Mage: the Awakening as it was meant to be run.

The first point I want to discuss here is the core Theme of Mage: the Awakening: Power Corrupts. To begin I want to quote from the core book, from page fifteen, where it says that “reweaving the Tapestry of creation can inflate the ego and swallow a mage in hubris. As he gains more power — control over reality through the casting of spells of increasing control and complexity — he risks losing touch with his own mortal nature, forgetting the limits of his mind, body and soul”. I believe that this short passage speaks volumes about Mage as a genre, emphasizing the truth of a mage’s quest for power and the kinds of complications that should arise from this along the way.

Now, let’s consider some of the most basic abilities of each of the five Paths. A Thyrsus mage has the ability to instantly understand any sickness that they may be afflicted with and can potentially cleanse themselves of toxins and poisons with ease. An Obrimos mage can listen to radio transmissions with their mind whilst ensuring that their environment is always a comfortable temperature and free of excessive light or loud and disruptive sounds. An Acanthus mage has the ability to tweak causality so that they rarely suffer from little misfortunes like red light runs and bad traffic, whilst benefitting from a steady stream of good luck such as regularly finding small change on the street. A Moros mage, amongst numerous gifts of insight into mechanical systems, has the ability to see and speak with the ghosts of the dead. Finally, a Mastigos mage has near perfect awareness of their physical surroundings whilst being able to perfectly read the emotions of those who can’t hide their auras.

Even these most basic of a mage’s abilities lift them above some of the limits of the human condition. Who would not want to be able to purge themselves of a hangover, or a more malicious poison, with a snap of one’s fingers? Or to know that you’d never have to worry about those little misfortunes that make a day go from bad to worse? Or to be able to know for certain what the people around you are feeling at any given time? And if you could do one or more of those things, how might that affect you and your ability to relate to the people around you? If you knew that you were better than them in some way that they just couldn’t make up for? This is the basic theme of Mage: the Awakening, how mages deal with the challenges of tasting cosmic power in a Fallen World. But as the core book says, again on page fifteen, “balancing power with wisdom is not easy”.

The Mood of Mage: the Awakening, on the other hand, is Ancient Mysteries. On this topic I want to share the quote, from page sixteen of the Mage: the Awakening core book, “the true nature of reality is an enigma always beyond reach. The various mystical orders hold different beliefs, but none can ever prove them. In the end, Mystery prevails”. The proper Mood for Mage: the Awakening is harder to get at than its Theme, but is nevertheless available for those willing to put in the effort.

On page 299 of the Mage: the Awakening core book, the following is said: “Knowledge is power; secrets are decisive weapons in the Awakened struggle for supremacy. These secrets take the form of new rotes, grimoires and Artifacts. Mages may themselves be a powerful secret asset. The fate of a cabal may turn on the wisdom of a hidden mentor or the obscure powers of a secretive enemy”. This statement conveys part of what Mage’s mood should be, in the sense of how mages compete with each other as either rivals or enemies for a precious resource. A mage’s most powerful weapon is their knowledge, because a prepared mage is a dangerous mage. By virtue of that mages want to keep their knowledge secret, whilst their foes and rivals seek to learn those secrets to undermine them or their other adversaries. The opposite is also true, that a mage seeks to uncover the secret knowledge of his foes and rivals, even as they try to prevent their own precious knowledge from being uncovered. Information is a currency for the Awakened, but one that is hoarded and traded carefully. The above statement also conveys the idea that this ebb and flow of knowledge happens itself under a veil of uncertainty, where mages never know quite what secrets they are trying to uncover nor exactly how valuable they will be until they are uncovered. All that is certain is that where knowledge is power, omniscience is omnipotence; but to achieve omniscience will require a mage to unravel a good deal of mystery, and to achieve it first will require a certain amount of mystery to be kept before others.

Also on page 299 of the Mage: the Awakening core book is the statement that “in Mage, power comes from understanding why the universe behaves this way. A mage undertakes quests to wrest enlightenment from a universe determined to conceal its secrets”. The universe known to the Awakened is vast, far more so than the world of the Sleepers. There are multiple realms of existence available to the Awakened, from the Twilight to the Shadow to the Temenos or the Underworld. There is vast knowledge hidden in these realms, and within the Material as well, some of which dates back hundreds or even thousands of years in its origin. Here too lies the Mood of Mage: the Awakening, in repositories of forgotten and dangerous lore that date back to times well before modern day. This is also where concept of those mysteries as ‘ancient’ can really come into play. If we move away from the idea that has previously been prevalent, that ‘ancient’ must be tied to a particular local geography, then we open up a wealth of possibility for mysteries that are timeless or at least reflect timelessness. Knowledge hidden in Temenos realms need not be tied to geography, and may certainly appear venerable in its nature. Artifacts all, at least in theory, originate with Atlantis and many were held by the Orders as they spread out after the Fall; perhaps one such item has travelled a long way to end up here, still carrying its timeless presence even as it is at the centre of a globe- and centuries spanning conspiracy. This is where the Ancient Mysteries mood that pervades Mage: the Awakening can be found; it is, as the core book says on page 16, “a pervasive atmosphere of ciphers, secrets and looming cosmic revelations”.

Hopefully now you can see why this is not a game like your typical game of Dungeons and Dragons, one of High Fantasy full of swashbuckling adventurers. Mage is a gritty game that, by its very nature, needs to present the acquisition of power as a fundamentally challenging process, one which may ultimately erode the humanity of those who pursue their desires too recklessly. Mage is also a dark game built on conspiracies, some old and some new but every single one part of an omnipresent and often threatening sense of the unknown. This is Mage: the Awakening as it was meant to be at its core, a game of supernatural espionage where everyone is delicately balancing their desire for power lest that desire become too self-destructive to survive.

Venue Storyteller FAQs and FYIs: Issue 3, April 21st 2014

Q: What are the various Wisdom sins and how do they match up to normal Morality?

A: Wisdom is a very important aspect of the Mage: the Awakening game, as it is one of the primary ways in which the core Theme of the genre is expressed. The most basic discussion of Wisdom can be found in the Mage: the Awakening core book on pages 79 to 80, with the table listing the various Wisdom sins found on page 79. The following commentary quotes from this table.

• At Wisdom 10, we have “Using magic to accomplish a task that could be achieved just as well without it (i.e., boiling tea with Forces instead using the nearby stove). Selfish thoughts”. This means that only the most stringent mages take moral issue with using magic to make one’s day-to-day life easier.
• At Wisdom 9 we have “Magically coercing another so that he acts against his own free will (he does not want to perform the actions the magic makes him do). Minor selfish act (with holding charity)”. As before, basic acts of magical coercion are generally not seen as too bad; they are acts of hubris to be sure, but not the kind that would cause issue for a typical mage.
• At Wisdom 8 we have “Magically coercing another so that he violates his own moral code (i.e., he is forced to make a degeneration roll). Injury to another (accidental or otherwise)”. Again, as with the previous level using magic to coerce someone into doing something that they would normally object to doing is an act of hubris; but most mages would not take serious issue with it as long as it isn’t being used to accomplish some worse act of hubris.
• At Wisdom 7 we have “Laying a curse on someone. Petty theft (shoplifting)”. Here we see the first point that the typical mage needs to consider in terms of Hubris; laying a curse on someone, which can be a literal curse as with the Fate Arcanum or using something like Life or Mind to degrade their natural attributes or skills, is a moderate act of hubris on par with small acts of theft.
• At Wisdom 6 we have “Forcibly binding an unwilling sentient being or spirit to a place (such as through Mind or Spirit magic) or task (such as casting a Fate geas upon a subject). Grand theft (burglary)”. For the majority of mages, using their magic to bind sentient beings against their will is a fairly hubristic act; on par with a major act of theft, such as a serious bank heist or stealing a car.
• At Wisdom 5 we have “Magically transforming a person into a lesser being (turning a man into a pig) against his will. Intentional, mass property damage (arson)”. This point is starting to show a clear disdain for moral judgement, as the mage is willing to wreak extensive diminishment and humiliation on someone with their magical powers; the equivalent of burning down a building or other valuable property.
• At Wisdom 4 we have “Using magic to harm someone. Draining another’s Mana against his will. Creating a soul stone (and hence, limiting one’s Gnosis potential; see “Soul Stones,” p. 277). Impassioned crime (manslaughter)”. If a mage reaches this point then they are starting to show serious signs of moral corruption, as they are almost at the point where they will readily use their magic to inflict harm on another person; an act equivalent to impassioned killing, so think carefully before turning the Practice of Fraying or Unravelling (or Unmaking, for those few who may have it) on someone, especially a Sleeper!
• At Wisdom 3 we have “Forcefully abducting and/or exiling another person (mage or Sleeper) into the Shadow Realm, or causing her to become possessed by a spirit against her will. Planned crime without using magic (murder)”. At this stage we have a willingness to use one’s magic to perform inter-dimensional abductions, something that will often leave a person trapped in another world which they are woefully unequipped to survive, or using magic to have an inter-dimensional being possess someone against their will; these acts are equivalent to planned murders, so a mage who would baulk at murdering someone should probably baulk at these acts as well.
• At Wisdom 2 we have “Intentionally preventing an Awakening. Using magic to murder someone. Casual / callous crime (serial murder)”. Whilst intentionally preventing an Awakening is nearly as hard as inducing one, using magic to kill is not for someone with sufficient Arcana lore; but to kill even one person with magic is morally equivalent to far worse killings without the aid of magic by virtue of the brutality of the method, so as before give serious consideration to whether one kills with magic. Mages that descend to this level of Wisdom begin to show it appreciably, as Spirits from the Shadow can sense their lack of Wisdom and the mage is more susceptible to Paradox and Abyssal powers.
• At Wisdom 1 we have “Stealing a soul. Utter perversion, heinous act (mass murder)”. Perhaps the ultimate sin in mage society is the theft of souls, an utterly perverse act which indicates that the person performing it is virtually without moral guidance and is willing to inflict a most gruesome death or even Sleep on someone for their own benefit; soul thieves are like mass murderers, and mages tend to shoot first and ask questions later when dealing with them.

Now, it’s important to remember that this is not a comprehensive list of possible acts of hubris or Wisdom sins; it’s just a core guideline. The table doesn’t list invading an unwilling target’s mind to steal or alter their memories, for example, but you can be sure that doing so is an act of Hubris at some point (there’s a reason such acts are often called “mindrape”). So when considering how your character should act, or how they should react to the actions of others, this table is the guideline to

03 Mage VST News - 06 May 2014

Venue Storyteller Elect News and Recent Events

Hello folks! I have some interesting news to report this fortnight. There is still a vacancy on my team to be filled by an aspiring aVST, so my invitation for anyone interested to send me a message expressing interest remains open. I can be best contacted via my email (kbarr616@gmail.com) or via Facebook for those who have me as friends. Joining my team will be a great opportunity for anyone, whether experienced or just aspiring to storytelling with the club; and in particular for those people who wish to learn more about the very rich Mage: the Awakening genre.

Now, in the last two weeks I have been looking at what can be done to improve the venue and one of the things that I’d like to do is update the Venue Style Sheet. Obviously I don’t want to blindside anyone with this, so in this issue of my newsletter I’d like to discuss some of the changes I’ll be looking at making and why I want to make those changes.

The first major change that I’ll be looking at is adding two new Moods to the VSS: Realism and Introspection. The former I want to add because my personal preference is towards a more grounded game. There will always be an element of heroics and fantasy, but I don’t intend to portray a stereotypical movie. Characters can, and if they are foolish will, fail even if they are for all intents and purposes a protagonist. When it happens failure may be a minor hurdle, but it could also be significant and result in material losses; some of which may be irreversible if the situation is suitably dire. Happy endings are always possible, but they must be earned and probably won’t happen for everyone; in no small part because one person’s happy ending may be another person’s ultimate failure.

The latter mood I wish to add because Mage: the Awakening has such a rich framework for approaching philosophical and ethical issues. The game’s core theme, which I discussed in the previous issue, implies all manner of ethical quandaries such as whether ends can justify means or whether might makes right. The game’s core mood, also discussed last week, does a similar thing but for more philosophical issues such as the nature of reality and perception. Thus I want to add this as a core mood, since my plots and NPCs will typically be written with something like this in mind.

The next major change that I wish to make is a review of the experience system. In accordance with my election promises regarding power levels in the game, I want to attach more significance to each point of experience that I award; to make experience something truly earned for positive interactions with other players and the game world. The most prominent point that I want to modify to achieve that is in Game Experience Awards. This revision would reduce the amount of experience awarded for Game Attendance from three points to one point, do away with the point for Costuming (which in Mage doesn’t tend to amount to much), and expand on the amount earned for Roleplaying whilst also giving more definition to what kind of Roleplaying activities can receive the awards. The proposed system would define six areas of Roleplaying that could justify an award, which are: Path, Order, Cabal, Legacy, Concept, and Wisdom. More detail will be included in the VSS but the gist of it is that for each one of these things the character demonstrates in-game through interactions with other characters, they can be awarded a point of experience up to the maximum of five points per game.

In addition to that, this revision would also be making modifications to the non-game awards that can be earned. Under this revision the Downtime Submission and the Post-Game Report will be separated into two different non-game items, each worth one point of experience. In both cases an extra point can be awarded if the item is of high quality, which will mean fully described downtime actions and reports written in full paragraphs rather than dot-points. The Downtime Submission may also be awarded a third point if it includes an action that is resolved through a hard roleplaying scene with a storyteller and at least one other player. Thus it will be possible for a character to be awarded the full five experience points for non-game activities allowed in the addendum.

The final modification I want to make to the experience point awards is removing the experience point awards at character creation for a wiki page and the narrative backstory. The former I feel is not used with sufficient frequency to justify being worth experience, and in my observation is too frequently just created to meet minimum requirements for the experience and then never really touched again. The latter has never been very well defined, and in all honesty doesn’t provide anything that completing a CDD would not provide in terms of fleshing out a character. As such this revision would remove these awards on new characters created in the venue, whilst grandfathering them for existing characters.

The last major change I wish to highlight here is a proposed clarification of the rules for Pre-Cast Spells at the beginning of game. The VSS revision would place a limit on the number of successes that can be allocated to each spell based upon the character’s Arcana, it would require any costs in mana or willpower to be paid from the character’s start of game pool, and it would require Paradox rolls to be made for any vulgar spells that are pre-cast. These revisions are aimed at improving play balance by ensuring that characters can’t avoid the costs or drawbacks to spells with these rules, nor use said rules to have incredibly powerful spells active without investing time and making the appropriate rolls.

This VSS revision is still in discussion amongst the appropriate storytellers and is not yet in effect, but everyone will be notified as soon as this is the case and it will be updated on both the Wiki and the Facebook group when the time comes.

Venue Storyteller FAQs and FYIs: Issue 4, May 6th 2014

Q: What is the basic process of Astral Travel?

A: Without delving into the minutiae of the various Astral Realms, the basic process of Astral Travel is fairly simple. It begins with the mage who intends to travel entering a Demense or a sufficiently powerful Hallow, in mechanical terms one with a full five dots. These are the only places that normally permit travel into the Astral Realms, though some mages have unique abilities that break with this rule as a result of Legacies or Artifacts. Once in a suitable location, the Mage begins meditating and must continue to do so through several stages of deeper and deeper trance. This process is reflected in the Meditation action described in the World of Darkness core book, an extended action made rolling Wits + Composure with a number of target successes based upon how far the Mage wants to go into the Astral.

Once four successes are accumulated, the Mage has reached a basic level of meditation. Once eight are accumulated the Mage enters a state of Dream Meditation, and begins to experience visions that reflect their personality and Path as they begin to travel into their own soul. At twelve successes the Mage reaches a barrier that can only be crossed by expending a point of Mana, after which they arrive on a “path” with an exit allowing access to the Mage’s Oneiros. If they take this exit then they will enter the Antechamber of their Oneiros, their personal dream-space, and can go from there into themselves. If they intend to go to a deeper Astral realm then they continue down the main pathway, accumulating further successes until they accumulate sixteen and arrive at another exit off the main path. This exit leads to the Temenos, the collective dream-space of humanity, and if that is the Mage’s destination then this is the point where they turn off. If not, then it is possible to keep following the path further.

After a short while, once twenty successes are accumulated, the Mage can arrive at the end of the pathway. Whatever the visualization experienced so far, at this point the Mage will encounter an impassable barrier with only a point of light visible on the far side. This is believed to be the light of the Mage’s own Watchtower, shining across the Abyss that separates the Mage’s soul from the Supernal Realms. There is, however, one last exit accessible here that leads to the final Astral Realm: the Anima Mundi or the dream-space of the World. A Mage who seeks to access this alien and dangerous place turns off here, with the only alternative being returning along the pathway back up to consciousness.

The two biggest limitations to a Mage’s ability to Astral Travel are the fact that Demenses and sufficiently powerful Hallows are very rare, and the fact that doing so requires the Mage to be a capable meditator. Extended actions are often limited to a number of rolls equal to the pool used, as described on pages 128-9 of the World of Darkness core book, so a Mage who’s Wits + Composure pool is only four, the human average, without any bonuses from equipment or environment will have a great deal of trouble reaching the number of successes needed to enter the Astral Realms. As well as this, each roll takes a significant length of time. In the case of Meditation, each roll represents half an hour of meditating and if too much time is spent on this without suitable preparation can leave the practitioner weakened or ill afterwards.

The conclusion here is that whilst an important aspect of being a mage, Astral Travel is not something to take lightly or to undertake casually even if the means of doing so are readily at hand. Once an entry point is obtained, care must be taken to maximize the ability to meditate effectively and to do so without letting the body wither while the mind travels.

04 Mage VST News - 25 May 2014

Venue Storyteller News and Recent Events

Hello folks! First order of news is that there is still a vacancy on my team to be filled by an aspiring aVST, so my invitation for anyone interested to send me a message expressing interest remains open. I can be best contacted via my email (kbarr616@gmail.com) or via Facebook for those who have me as friends. Joining my team will be a great opportunity for anyone, whether experienced or just aspiring to storytelling with the club; and in particular for those people who wish to learn more about the very rich Mage: the Awakening genre.

Now that is out of the way, I’d like to talk about some major housekeeping matters that are going on in the venue at the moment; most particularly an audit of all the currently active PCs in the venue. Ominous as the term “audit” may seem, my reasons for doing this are very important. As I’ve been working on getting downtimes together, with the plan to return them ASAP, I’ve also been checking up on the character sheets I now have on file. To my dismay I have found many instances of inaccurate or incomplete recording of experience logs, as well as a number of sheets that have become illegal and need to be fixed up so that they can be played. I’ve also had numerous players come to me asking about inconsistencies in their sheets, which has turned up a range of other issues. Due to this I will be going through and investigating all of the PC sheets, with a full audit to be undertaken by myself and my team in June.

Whilst this is likely to be beneficial to some people who have been under-credited in their experience logs, it may also mean that others will lose things from their sheets that had been put there erroneously. I apologize for any distress this may cause, but as VST it is my job to ensure that the venue is being properly maintained and the unpleasant part of this job is telling people that there has been an error made with their files and then correcting it. Rest assured that I will do my best to ensure this process goes as smoothly as possible. If there is anything that you know is an issue with your character sheet, such as missing dots or uncertain experience, please let me know as soon as possible.

On a different note, I’m going to take this opportunity to explain a plan that I have developed in consultation with my assistants to address the issue of Paradox. Numerous players have expressed their concern about the impact that Paradox has on the game; specifically that it is not the threat that the story material says that it should be due to the mechanics, and this is a concern I share because Paradox should be a balancing factor to Awakened magic both in terms of story and in terms of mechanics.

The solution to this problem that my team and I will be trialling is based upon the idea that the best way to make Paradox more threatening is to work within the existing rules and take advantage of our ability to apply significant modifiers to any dice pool. In addition to the modifiers listed in Mage: the Awakening, we will now be looking to apply several modifiers that will give Paradox a bit more of a bite. The first is a simple suggestion derived from the MET: Awakening book, which is to apply a modifier to the Paradox base pool equal to the highest Arcanum level used in the spell. For example, this means that a Space 4 teleport spell will now add +4 to the Paradox dice pool to represent the vulgarity and complexity of the effect. The second is based upon Changeling: the Lost, where having particularly high or low clarity penalizes awareness dice rolls. Translated, this will mean that Wisdom can impose a modifier to the dice pool for Paradox; high Wisdom reduces the dice pool while increasingly low Wisdom increases it. The final modifier being added to the list is what I have dubbed the “magnitude modifier”, and is for use with ritually cast spells. For every full five successes added to the spell, the Paradox roll will increase by one. Much like the Arcanum modifier, this is intended to represent the idea that a bigger vulgar effect should be more prone to Paradox.

I have been trialling these modifiers this downtime period, and I believe that they will provide a much more reasonable balance to the power of high-level and vulgar magic without making such spells unusable.

The final thing I want to talk about here is my plan to include an IC newspaper with downtimes, to represent what characters are likely to pick up from the news during the month. I want to give a big shout-out to my aVST Katrina Couzens for this month’s newspaper, as she wrote the bulk of the articles as well as designing the layout. If you enjoy it (and you really should!), be sure to let her know!

Venue Storyteller FAQs and FYIs: Issue 5, May 25th 2014

Q: I want to be able to use a spell as a rote, how do I go about doing this?

A: Unless you are a Master of the relevant Arcanum, which would allow you to create rotes from scratch, using a spell as a rote requires learning the rote first. There are two ways to go about this process: learning from another character, or learning from a grimoire. Without access to one or the other, it is not possible to learn new rotes; and it is for this reason that the teaching of rotes and trading of grimoires is a staple aspect of Awakened “economics”. Therefore, if you want to learn a new rote your best bet is to ask around and see if anyone knows it already; just be wary of dealing in the secrets of another Order’s rotes, because they may not take kindly to outsiders gaining knowledge of their magic!