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Mage The Ascension
In White Wolf's explanatory "Mage" book, the lines between the good guys and bad guys are never clear.
In the old days, goes the backstory, when magic was real, a group of Mages -- mystics and sages who wanted to bring magic back to the world concluded that if enough of the population didn't believe in evil and danger, they would disappear.
Calling themselves the Order of Reason, some mages banded together to educate and enlighten the masses, using science and technology to brighten the world's darker corners. Over the years, however, as this Order became dominant, it began to promote conformity. Iconoclasts and deviants were gradually eliminated through the use of science, financial pressure and social ostracism.
Now known as the Technocracy, these mages wielded increasing control over mass media, education, technology and business; they even defined what was real and what wasn't.
It's amazing to encounter so insightful a worldview in a paper-and-pencil role-playing game. While mainstream society was dismissing geeks and nerds, they were increasingly retreating -- via games, MUDs and MOOs -- into their own folktales, fantasy worlds that foretold the future as brilliantly as Orwell or H.G. Wells. "Shadowrun," "Werewolf" and "Changeling" were escape routes, a new genre that offered some of the most revealing insights yet into the people who built (and are still building) the Net and Web, and creating continuing revolutions like the open source movement.
The legacy of the techno-outsider culture, such games have been partly supplanted by flashier entertainment systems from Nintendo and Sega, and technologically-sophisticated games like "Seaman." But these early stories were the precursors to a social revolution and its new worldview.
In "Mage", cynicism and lack of imagination exist only on the surface.
A shadowy world flourishes underneath this everyday one. In it, enchanters and sorcerers commune with powers that no mortal can see or believe.
The world (our world) is definitely a poorer place for the loss of faith in magic, but it's richer for a subterranean fantasy like "Mage," and for the caverns, tunnels, hidden rooms and pools of a score of virtual games. "Mage's" sci-fi spiritualism fits perfectly with the ascent of the Net and Web, where people with imagination, creativity, individuality and yearning have lots of dark corners to hide in. These geek refugees and artists still dip underground in search of their own shadowy worlds. Stories like "Mage" foresaw the amazing creative power of the Net, where the ability to personalize reality becomes commonplace. People can customize information, design their own spaces, role play on games and in chat rooms, express themselves freely. Online, the shadow world of the Mages has come to pass. And it's a much richer, darker and political kind of culture than the corporations who dominate entertainmnent generally permit in music or on screens.
"Imagine a world where visionaries struggle to bring wonder to the mundane," reads the "Mage" introduction. "Picture a war where the winners decide the fate of the world, and the losers are hunted for their presumption. ... Forging their own rules through the power of will, these enlightened few cast the shape of tomorrow. Ultimately, they seek to surpass the limitations of the universe, to transcend this reality through Ascension. Their special wisdom sets them apart forever -- they are mages."
In the dawn of the new millenium, the Mages warned, the Technocracy dominated the world and its people, using programs designed to subvert the remaining isolated pockets of deviancy.
Often, in fact, science and technology do fail to come to terms with their own complexity when managed by fallible and manipulable humans. Another brilliant vision of the future: in this world, with more technology than ever -- gene maps, supercomputing, artificial intelligence, wireless delivery systems, an avalanche of new software, plentiful bandwidth -- most people are never permitted or helped to understand it. The technology spawns all sorts of new devices, even while knowledge seems to shrink.
In our culture, reality certainly gets defined by technocrats who acquire and control media and culture -- journalism, Hollywood, music. People comfort themselves in the idea the the Net provides millions of diverse voices, but very few have any real influence or reach. Mass media still dominate the most influential people and institutions in the culture.
But for all the fantasy in "Mage," there's also relentless reality. There's a poignant chapter on dealing with "the Mundane World," where everybody has to go, at some point, to go to school, sleep or face the real planet.
Stories like "Mage" and "Shadowrunner" LINK often incoporate the idea of an awakening. Sometimes you awaken to magic; sometimes you simply awaken to the nature of the world. Some Mages get jarred into insight through a tramautic event; others experience a slow heightening of awareness.
The idea of the awakening is widespread on the Net, too, usually in a different context. The supplicant, often bored or disconnected from the traditional world, gets drawn into a new reality -- a game, perhaps, an e-mail exchange, a chatroom encounter, a revelatory programming experience. The Net is a particular world and many people talk of their sense of revelation and astonishment when they first enter and discover it. It is especially transforming because their lives are not the same afterwards.
Why'd I turn off the KatzFilter? Oh yeah, we were promised a /. printing of the new book. Did I miss that or something? Oh well. Just wanted to see if I was quoted in it.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Anyway, Jon, don't go reading too much into White Wolf's stuff. Rule #1: It's just a frickin' game. (You take it too seriously and you wind up like Dallas Egbert) Rule #2: You can (and many storytellers do) throw out any White Wolf material you don't like (I throw almost all of it out, and I don't let my players use any material I don't own).
The World of Darkness is a parallel to our world. It's recognisible enough to be realistic and fantastic enough to capture the imagination, sure, but it's just a backdrop for White Wolf's real product: The Storyteller System. Its only there so that neophyte Storytellers will have some stock material to base a chronicle on (and to inflate WW's profit margin).
Here's something for you to think about for a second... When WW announced the latest revision of the Vampire: The Masquerade rules, the teaser hinted that computers and the internet would play a larger part in the game. Many fans flamed that Vampire: The Masquerade was turning into Vampire: The Cyberpunking. No one wanted the game to be refocused, rather we wanted a few holes in the rules plugged up.
On the subject of Mage itself... A decent game, I guess, but Vampire really kicks ass. Personal preference? I don't know a single serious Mage player. Some of the Vampire fanatics own the Mage books, but only because they have the WW logo on 'em.
I personally take offense at the often used line that RPGs are an escape route for tortured geeks. Pththbt... These games started as tabletop war games for military buffs. Hardly geek-like, eh? To get one of these games together and to keep it running smoothly, a Storyteller needs to have 1 million hit points and infinite charisma. It takes a good network of friends to do it right. Lots of communication and endless phone tag. Hardly socially inept, eh?
The reason the kids in the DnD club were all beanie-heads is because these games take BRAINS to play. In a game where combat scenes can dilate game-time by a factor of 10 and require and ungodly number of die rolls, anyone who's not sharp as a tack with numbers, probability, and record keeping is going to go back to their Nintendo and play Ghosts-n-Goblins.
The world is poorer for loss of belief in Magic? HUH?
Who says the world has lost its faith? There's plenty of New Age shops and even mainstream bookstores have large quantities of texts on performing rituals and divination. The US Army was forced to allow Wiccans to practice at nearby campgrounds. The Catholic Church's leadership issues press releases that are picked up by the major news outlets. Wandering proselytisors (sp?) still ring my bell every once in a while.
Even if the world had lost its faith, many would consider that a Good Thing(tm). How many lives have been lost over religious matters? Even if you count just those that had something to do with someone's idea of "Magic", there's been plenty of documented witch-burnings.
And now, the haves vs. the have-nots... The great unwashed masses of the computer illiterate... Most of them consider their ignorance to be bliss. Case in point: My older brother gave up on computers at about the time I picked them up. Now he's a head taller than I am, gets all the girls, has a TAN, and loves life. Try explaining the DeCSS controversy to HIM! Does he like movies? Oh yeah. He digged The Matrix. To him, movies keep getting better. So what's the big deal? Nevermind.
Knowledge isn't shrinking. It doesn't even SEEM to be shrinking. Breakthroughs are coming down the pike every day. No one person can know it all so it might seem bewildering, but each person's store of individual knowledge can only grow.
I find the closing paragraph pretty ludicrous. No one has the "great revelation" experience on the net anymore. It's become another party-line. A global fun-zone. A really nifty way to slack off at work. The "pass this on" emails that go around give this one dead away... Americans are consumers, and we consume the net the same way we consume the telephone. Sometimes people look up at the clock and realize they've been online longer than they planned, but that's about the only great awakening that's going on. Business as usual, the net's a product now.
The real Threed's
--Threed
...of new ideas to our culture.
/.
Yes, Mage borrowed some ideas from the previous works of some of its authors (notably Ars Magica). Yes, it was set in the World of Darkness universe (a setting dominated by much more popular games like Vampire and Werewolf). Yes, it tried to incorporate elements of ancient myth into a game system (like most RPGs).
And it even stole insights from various pop-culture metaphysicians like Robert Pirsig and Carlos Castaneda (in some ways improving on their philosophical rigor).
But it also did some things which none of these did, attempting to integrate all of these into a coherent (but fictional) worldview and then using that worldview as the basis of a role-playing game. An ambitious and laudable project, whatever you think of the results.
I enjoy it. I recognize it's not everybody's cup of tea. But it's my favorite RPG at this moment. The swashbuckling supplement should be in every gamer's library no matter what they play. There is nothing better available.
There are some important things to be said about Mage in terms of the degree to which it actually seems to be written by people who believe they can say something important about the universe in a game. People with passion. People who care. And people with something to say.
Maybe this is why Katz wrote about it. His article seems vague on exactly why it was done. I don't consider the cyberpunk element all that important in Mage, although it's certainly there and I use it in my campaign.
I have little use, however, for Katz-bashers who cannot respond to a slightly-more-vacant-than-I'd-prefer piece with totally vacant flames. Those who are flaming Mage as derivative seem to break into two camps: those who know little of Mage and those who know little of intellectual progress.
Those who know little of Mage look at some superficial aspects which it borrows from much less ambitious works (Ars Magica and Shadowrun) and say their preferred game is better 'cause it was first. OK, if that's your definition of "better."
Those who know little of intellectual progress complain that it's based on ideas first propounded by the Greeks (or Pirsig or whoever). Well, yeah. But, if you're trying an ambitious philosophical work in a game format, you'd better take into account earlier ideas.
So: ambitious game, worthy effort, and a good time was had by all.
And: uninspired column, worthless flames, and a good time was had by all.
That's what I love about
BTW, does anybody know why all references to Pirsig were excised from the second edition of Mage? I've always wondered if he protested or something. Which would be too bad, since they actually made his ideas look good (not that they don't have some merit on their own).
Hey, these guys even made Castaneda look good. Just think what they could do for Katz.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
...much original material of interest over the past couple years.
But anyone who finds their recent stuff so repetitive they've given up should check out their new imprint: Arthaus. (Yeah, I know it's pretentious sounding, but it's really worth looking at.)
The swashbucking supplement is really useful.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
Yesterday in Jon's article Sovereign Individual (Part One) he quoted The Sovereign Individual: Mastering The Transition To the Information Age, by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg.
And it will involve a break with the past so profound that it will almost bring to life the magical domain of the gods as imagined by the early agricultural peoples like the ancient Greeks (and SF writers in games like Mage and Shadowrunner).
Not only did Jon lift the idea, he even got the name of Shadowrun wrong just like they did!
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
This is one of those columns where you know going in you have to put the asbestos on. Not being a gamer, I'm not announcing these things, but feel strongly that RPG's like Shadowrun and Mage should be taken more seriously as the cultural offerings that they are. I think there's a streak in some of the posts (I got lots of very nice compliments on this column, too, I should say. Be careful not to conclude from Threads that this is representative of /.) that simply wants to say "I know all about this," and that's a shame, because I'm not announcing the existence of these games.
They mostly tended to be dismissed, and still are not taken as seriously as they ought to be taken. I've been bombarded by suggestions for other RPG's that are interesting in this way and intend to keep on writing about them.
People who feel they know all about this stuff should obviously skip it, but I think these games were prescient and important -- and were definitely not recognized as such. So I will absolutely keep on writing about them, not in a technical but a cultural way. I think it's important, and yes, we know some of you are awesome and cool, so chill.
This is a great subject and I'm sorry that the state of Threads is such a mess that you can't read the great posts from some of the many people who played Mage and Shadowrun and like talking aobut them.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
If online rape isn't rape, then online deletion or muting of the raping character isn't punishment.
I have also played White Wolf games and other RPGs for many years. Perhaps your ire is more of an inability to look at what you do in a wider context. I have had the same thoughts that Katz has, looking at the games and their storylines.
Shadowrun is about the rise of corporatism. The Whitewolf games tend to be about alienation from society. Mage, in particular, has a lot to say about media manufactured reality.
Why do you think role-playing games are so vehemently denounced by certain segments of our society, and almost always recieve shoddy treatment at the hands of Hollywood. It certainly isn't because they're tales told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. If you want that, watch your average Hollywood action movie.
I'm not some deconstructionist literary geek with my head stuck in my navel (or some other part of my anatomy). He has something interesting and important to say. Listen to it. Maybe you'll learn something.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I actually played that game a lot. Even for the non-rpers, the main book is a really interesting read. White Wolf has created a really rich and interesting setting around that game, bringing interesting ideas and views of magic making the main book of that roleplaying game as interesting to read as many novels I have read.
At the forefront of that game is the conflict between technology and freedom, imagination and 9 to 5 boring lives, between fantasy and modern life.
I would definitly recommend that book to everyone, roleplayer of not. And to roleplayer I really recommend that game as it is IMHO one of the best RPG even...
You could also check out Ars Magicka which was the first game of white wolf (now published by another company I can't remember which one) which is kind of the basics for mage : the ascension bringing you among the middle ages magi.
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
I think Jon should read GURPS, the Generic Universal Rule and Point System, sometimes also known as the Generally UnRecognized Political Statement.
There, he will learn such truths as "All activities can be simulated by 3d6." So you assign Gore the appropriate numbe of points in the Political skill, do the same for Lieberman, roll a Quick Contest of Skills, and BANG! You just predicted the outcome of the election!
With the mass combat rules, you can see if the newly elected president will survive the coming war with Iraq.
Agreed.
;)
You can talk about how "elite" you are, and how stupid the other guys are - or worse, how evil they are.
And for every moment you flap your lips, you've wasted a moment you could have done something that didn't involve your own ego.
*sigh* The poor Illumnati, reduced to this
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
First of all, the idea of an ascendion, enlightenment, etc. is not new. It's very, very old, thanks to some "psychepunks" like Buddha, Lao-Tzu, shamans, Chuang-Tzu, Sufi mystics, etc. Hell, Ken Wilber's book "No Boundary" fairly laid out parrerns of concious development that lead to better, healthier, more "enlightened" mental functioning. "The Secret of the Golden Flower" has been translated and commented on endlessly, and focuses on similar issues.
Snapping out of mundane, neurotic mental states is old hat.
Secondly, the "secret society of do-gooders" views of Mage and Shadowrun (NOT runner) aren't exactly reassuring in my book. It's another form of elitism - "look I'm so cool as I battle the Evil Other Guys." It's the desire to be validated via conflict - which requires an enemy in the first place. Don't trust the Deathly Cool People In A Struggle - trust the people who are more concerned with the question "am I doing any good for the world?"
Role-playing games are NOT guides to life. They're games, even with good research. Companies sell what will sell at the time. Sure, I enjoy them and I can learn about people from them - but when I want to change myself or the world I put down the dice and the manuals.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
"'Mage: the Ascension' was nothing more than a cheap rip-off/riff on themes developped in cyberpunk."
Having played Mage and loads of cyberpunk genre systems (I'm assuming that you were referring to the full genre due to the lowercase there), I would have to ake the observation that you are probably tokin' off of JonKatz's crack pipe.
Okay, Jon is (once again), taking something, grabbing a corner of it, and spinning it into an essay that really didn't need the comparison.
Mage: the Ascension in a Nutshell:
All sentient beings shape reality by their perceptions of "what should be". Back in the middle ages, computers not only didn't exist, they *couldn't* exist, as people couldn't envision them. Computers did not fit into the worldview paradigm. At the same time, unicorns and dragons existed, and now they not only don't exist, they *never did*... because people don't believe they could have.
Now, most people are "sleepers". They contribute to the shaping of reality like a cup of mixed concrete contributes to a large building. Even if they are wackos, they can't do anything to change reality by themselves.
Certain people, however, are "awakened". These people are more like carpenders, electricians and demolitions men in the "building" of reality. Very, very rare, they can shape reality by affecting certain natural constants in various ways: Time, Entropy, Force, Mind, Matter, Spirit, Correspondance, Life and Prime. It is heavily implied that these natural constants are "natural" only because the Mages believe they are.
Now, of course, for any good game, you have to have conflict. And Mage has got one heck of a thrilling idea for conflict: The War to Define Reality. Although there are dozens of groups who are only somewhat or not affiliated with the two sides, there are primarily two major groups that are locked in battle: The Technocracy, and the Traditions.
The Traditions are pretty much what you think of when you think "Magick". They have the Druid like Verbena, the Crowley like Order of Hermes, the drug-taking free-love Cult of Ecstasy, and the Christian Celestial Chorus. They also include the hacker Virtual Adepts, and Mad Scientists of the Sons of Ether.
The Technocracy include the New World Order, the Men in Black, Iteration X, Void Engineers and other groups that are more difficult to try and pigeonhole in a Slashdot post.
The Tradition is attempting to spread Magick into the world, and either awaken the sleepers, or at least allow their paradigm to be widely used. You see, whenever a Tradition mage blows a fireball or magickally heals somebody, if a sleeper sees it, then reality itself will try and fix the "impossible" act via Paradox. That type of magick is called "vulgar", and Tradition Mages can't generally use it. They can, however, blow a fireball right after everybody smells gas (Mind+Forces or Matter+Forces), or wipe off the blood where they just got shot, and say "Thank goodness, it just grazed me!" as they heal the shot that tore apart their spine. This is coincidental magick, and it's really useful (you always have change for the bus, the cop is always around the corner when you need one, etc.)
The Technocracy is trying to stop the Traditions, and bring in the new world of Reason. The technocracy would be publishing all the press releases in Slashdot about "invisible skin", getting the masses ready for their (already working) invisibility treatment. Iteration X would be releasing the Hong Kong security robots, while their "Terminator style" robots already wander the streets (and keep breaking down because reality hasn't been fully bent to accept them).
The War is only the massive backdrop for the stories that you run in Mage. I have World of Darkness books measured by the yard... the whole cosmolgy is very well built, and it's a crying shame that most people only associate White Wolf with Vampire, as it is just one small part of a world full of very well placed and realistic stories of hope, love and glory. From the elegant and wild nature of the Changlings (Satyrs, Pooka, Trolls, etc.), to the dark, Lovecraftian horrors of the Balli to the Incarna of the planets (including the fragmented, always in pain Rorg who is the Incarna of the planet that used to be between Mars and Jupiter), the World of Darkness is a phenominal setting for just about anything from Disney's Gargoyles (I'm running a game right now, Tuesdays) to the more common (but still fun) Mind's Eye Theater Live Action Vampire (and yes, I'm running the game Fridays in downtown West Palm Beach).
And as for WoD being a rip off of Cyberpunk, no. (It's a rip off of Chill). :)
[1] Yes, it's spelled Magick. In Mage, Magic is a trick, and Magick is shaping reality. Since both are used, it's handy to have an alternate spelling.
[2] To players of Mage - yes, I skimped. This is for people who might want to audit Mage 101, not who are about to sit down and play. Mauraders, Nephandi, and how it ties into WoD cosmology were intentionally left out. Ain't no way I'm going to explain Horizon and the Deep Umbra in one sitting. And Third Edition is right out.
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Ars Magica was amazing, back in the day, it threw out all the assumptions made since Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson came up with them. I feel that it brought on the rebirth of RPGs, as seen by games like Fading Suns.
Of course, these days I only have time to read the Knight's of the Dinner Table (highly, highly recommended to any (ex?)gamer).
Let's see. I've been a White Wolf player since, what, Vampire: the Masquerade came out? Yeah, about that time.
Let's see. I've been an active player since then. So that would make it close to 8 or 9 years, as I recall, seeing as V:tM came out in, what, '91?
I can safely say that, quite frankly, Jon is again reading into something that just isn't there. Trying to politicize and 'newsify' (is that even a word?) something that's been around since 1978 or so, seeing as that's when D&D First Edition came out.
For the record, I've been playing RPG's for about 11 years. I started with D&D 2nd edition in 1989 and have been consistently and constantly playing in various RPGs ever since, including but certainly not limited to and definitely not in order of preference, D&D, AD&D, Mage: the Ascention, Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Vampire: the Masquerade, Battletech, and various freeform RPGs.
To try and make this into something it is not is an insult to those of us who DO play RPGs. RPGs predate the Internet, and in reality, have very little to do with it in any way shape or form, beyond the fact that communities surrounding RPGs have formed on it.
Awakening? What is this bullshit? I mean, seriously, this is utter bullshit and not even yellow journalism. Yellow journalism involves actual JOURNALISM, which Katz is OBVIOUSLY incapable of.
Go fucking read - the same stuff is in EVERY White Wolf game. Why? To add an element of realism , gods forbid we should have anything but FANTASY in an RPG. If you were a supernatural being, do you REALLY think that it would be easy to just get whatever you wanted whenever you wanted it, and get away with it? It's not even feasable to have anything resembling an education without painstaking attention to faking things in the so-called "real" world in a situation like that, which is what White Wolf points out. Christ. Katz must be illiterate. He seems to have also not noticed that the so-called "awakening" as he has dubbed it in his so-called infinite genius (*choking back laughter*) is always the late teens, in most cases 17 or so. Why? Because it's totally impractical to do it any other way and have anything resembling a cultured character, much less educated.
Somebody needs to send Katz to a proctologist for his rectal cranial inversion problem, apparently. I mean, christ, I've heard the bullshit in the past, but this is beyond bullshit and flat out insulting. Christ. Give Katz one iota of credibility for the Hellmouth bullshit and he runs with it and runs off with the profits from other people's suffering. This is beyond absurd.
What will it take to get Katz off slashdot? Fuck the checkbox - I don't want him spouting off any more bullshit for anyone to peruse. He obviously is incapable of decency, integrity, or intelligence. Where's natural selection when you need it? *sigh*
=RISCy Business
your company here.
shelby != ford
You missed Usenet: The Flaming.
After all, we make thinking machines by etching arcane symbols with rare elements into a pure crystal, and binding the symbols with inlaid metal. We make mighty creatures of steel that obey us with curious precision, like the genie from the lamp. We have great roaring war chariots of the skies that fly faster than sound itself and hurl fiery spears that hunt their targets with mindless fury. We can see across the world in an instant. We looked into the smallest things to find the secrets of the universe, and learned to make weapons that could destroy the world. We have visited another world, and prepare to visit others, sending our mechanical forerunners into the fathomless void between worlds on a pillar of flame. We play with the language of life itself, and reshape the plants and the beasts to suit us.
Magic is bloody boring compared to the real world.
If you want to look at the world through a romantic fog, you don't need to make up new rules for it.
--------
The game is Katz: the Delusion
What do we need for cards?
--The basis of all love is respect
I think this article is the answer to Ask Slashdot's "Is There an Effective Way to Kill Banner Ads?" question. The answer, it seems, is to disguise them as stories.
Coming Tomorrow on Slashdot:
"Are You GEEK enough to take the PEPSI CHALLENGE?"
Besides, M:TA, in its original incarnation, is more sophisticated than a lot of technology. It takes the problem of competing ideologies and worldviews and breaks it down in an elegant manner, then almost makes its solution believable. Very interesting, and all you Eternal Golden Braid fans might enjoy it to wrap your minds around.
Actually, the newest version of Mage came out fairly recently.
Yeah, but the original game was out in '93, when I graduated HS. I think Meester Katz would do well to get himself a copy of the 1st Ed game. Totally unplayable, but much more insightful. Really just a metaphysics thinly disguised with a couple of dice rolls. He might also enjoy Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which is to some degree the origin of the game's premise.
-jpowers
-jpowers
The comparison to Shakespeare is interesting. You can argue to some degree with his stylistic choices, but his work shows a clear understanding of both human nature and the ideas behind the "culture war" of his day. Same with Mage.
And it is a ripoff... of some great works of philosophy.
-jpowers
-jpowers
You know, I'm not usually a Katz-basher myself, but, please!
Anyway, as far as Mage goes, I'd rather Ars Magica anyway. What's Ars Magica? Well, among other things, it's the system they took a lot of the philosphy and backstory from (back when White Wolf owned the system). Me? I thought it was better done, and it doesn't bog under the trendy cyber-goth woe-is-me-woe-is-my-world tone. Ever wonder where they got the Order of Hermes from? Why there is a clan of Vampire called the Tremere?Methinks somebody's been paying attention to White Wolf's own hype. After all, everybody knows Vampire is about the struggle with darkness within (which is naturally why so many people play it as superheroes with fangs). And Changeling is about the sorrow of our lost childhood. And Werewolf is about the sad demise of our environment. Just because they take themselves that seriously doesn't make them deep.
It's a game. It's a game that's been out for years! This sort of article reminds me of the magazines in the early nineties touting their "new" discovery - the internet, as if it had only just begun to exist because they noticed it.
-- I'm not evil, I'm
Why should be at all find it strange that games creating by and for a certain type of people might actually include themes and characters through which those people can live vicariously. Duh. I mean we have shoot-em-ups because it is nice to escape our mundane world of staring at screens, shuffling paper, answering phones, preparing food, etc., to go crazy and blow stuff up. We have race car games because fans can't actually race in real life. We have RPGs in which characters and themes are those which the creators, for whatever reason, would like to play out.
This is surprising? If fantasy had absolutely no roots in reality, it wouldn't be very relevant or interesting would it?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Jon must be running out of ideas on stories relating to some gadget sold in Best Buy is changing the digital electronic world we live in. He's talking about trading card games? I suspect someone wants to work for UGO.
You create a character with different attributes. Now, your attributes make you of a specific class. The point of D&D is to let these classes coexist, in order to progress. The point of D&D 3rd, with the new skill system, is to differentiate these classes enough that they become different.
Now draw a parallel between 'class' and 'patent'. They're saying you cannot create a patent because small variations between patents are sufficient to be noticed. By expanding the skill system, WotC is saying it's wrong to put software patents because changing one line of code is enough for differentiation.
QED.
Huh... Someone has doubled his recommended daily dose of happy pills.
Even when it came out, 'Mage: the Ascension' was nothing more than a cheap rip-off/riff on themes developped in cyberpunk. Jon, you're getting worked up over nothing, and you're showing how shallow your actual geek culture is (ShadowrunNING? Can't you even doublecheck your facts?) Next, you're gonna tell us how accurate 'Hackers' was? Oh, and did you notice how Sandra Bullock's 'The Net' is an allegory for the loss of privacy in our modern society? Draw a parallel with the Number of the Beast, Iron Maiden, the Apocalypse, and you're set for a 10 articles feature.
except for 1:
Violence: the game of egregious and repulsive bloodshed
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
I went to the con but not to any of the panels I listed. There were at least a dozen simultaneous program tracks during the middle of the day. Between the overload and attending some of the children's programming with my 6 year old son, I missed a lot of interesting sounding panels.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Why should that matter? If what "Jon Erikson" posts is "insightful" or "informative" or whatever, then why should a reader with points to spare spare him one? Do you have some reasion to pick on "Jon Erikson," or (if you insist on the distinction) his "parent," "real-life" identity, where his comments become automatically dismissable, though they might be praiseworthy if uttered by a non-troll, that is, someone with a less well-developed sense of humor?
Hell, the other day I myself bopped up one of those "Anonymous Emily Dickinson" posts with a point for "insightful." (Of course some kneejerk illiterates promptly moderated it right back down. Too damn bad they couldn't be bothered to read the thing first.) Why? Because the poem actually was intelligent, on-topic, and closely pertinent to the question at hand (how hard it is to get the attention of the Kernel hackers). In fact, I'm grateful and I feel lucky to enjoy the "company" here of someone literate enough and clever enough to have picked out so felicitously apposite a poem.
Don't let your patellar tendon do all your reading for you, OK? that's your cerebrum's job.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Look, whether you agree with Katz's analysis or not, it's still great to see someone taking RPGs seriously.
I've held onto a hope that they could be a very powerful form of literature for years and years, but it's gets harder and harder. There's so much potential for terrific storytelling and interaction; and it's so rarely achieved. I like hack and slash and level gaining as much as the next life-long geek - but as you get older, and discover more subtle forms of myth and story, it wears thin. It seems to me as though Role Playing could be a lot more than it usually is.
Part of its becoming a fuller, richer form of literature/art has got to be these types of discussions about how it fits into the culture at large. Whether or not you buy the analysis, I think it's terrific to see this type of discussion. This is the kind of thing which might manage to convince those of us struggling to fight the good fight that there's hope, it's not all 12 year olds killing cliche monsters and giggling about NPC barmaids.
The other thing is whether it can ever be a less overwhelmingly male pastime.
If he'd writtne about it as if it was something invented yesterday, I'd have laughed at it just as loudly.
If I had to choose who would rule the world, RPGers or anime-kiddies, I'd choose the anime-kiddies. Their dimmness makes them easy to manipulate...
This belief is what will make taking over the world a piece of cheese. Go on feeling safe...
RPGers would waste the rest of the world's time by arguing over game mechanics and dice rolls.
Apparently you've never been to an anime NG or newsgroup. We can endlessly discuss minor details with the best of them!
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Uhm, I hate to break this to you, but the Traditions aren't the "Good Guy Mages". They're the anchors that are holding humanity back from being able to advance past our current state of psudo-religious hooey (the technical term), to a more advanced form, a form where we can:
Easily enhance our bodies and minds with technology
Where medical technologies are safer, more efficient, and allow us to cure any disease
Where we explore space far beyond our moon, and the deepest depths of our oceans
Where money no longer controls us, but rather that we control money, and it does our bidding
Where there is One World Government, equal rules for all, to stop madmen from controling the world, and killing innocent peoples.
We are the Technocratic Union. We are the desires of all of humanity. If we were not wanted... If we were not needed... then we wouldn't be the Guardians of Humanity.
The Technocracy -- You Need Us.
____________________
Clouds in the Sky,
Water in a bottle
The notion of illusory reality is nothing new it dates back thousands of years to Buddhism and Chinese philosophy. E.g. a Chinese sage was dreaming he had become a moth which was dreaming about him. So who is whose dream? Interestingly one of the names of Buddha is "the Awakened".
Also compare Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, Black Queen is dreaming about Alice, who in term is dreaming, of course Carroll, no doubt was aware of the earlier writings.
What was different about Orwell (and others) is that reality was not just illusory, it was consciosly manufactured with a certain purpose in mind.
So it is hard to attribute the stir made by movies like The Matrix (fairly crude and not particularly believable, nice special effects), to anything but ignorance about literature and history.
In fact most of the genre is a primitive interpretation of Buddhism. Dark City provides an excellent example. The senseless interminable cycle of reincarnation on a vast space station controlled by evil aliens from the outer space is broken and Nirvana (somehow associated with the sea) is reached... Hm, I think the original teachings were rather more imaginative.
For Katz to review Tunnels and Trolls- he's been sitting on his review copy for about 25 years.
If this is what passes for insightful modern journalism these days, I'm going to claw my eyes out. First Katz demonstrates his intimate familiarity with the cyberpunk RPG culture by garbling the name of "Shadowrun", and then he proceeds to ramble about how the backstory for an RPG (and an unspectacular one at that, if I may say so) has something terribly important to say about modern society.
This reads like uninspired ad copy for White Wolf. Reading this gave me the same sort of embarrassed and disgusted feeling you might get from watching a total stranger masturbate in public.
Slashdot people: Can't you let someone _else_ approve Jon's posts?
Delta Green (and Call of Cthulhu in general) deals with how fighting evil can be bad for your mental health.
[A]D&D is a study in the rewarding career of breaking into people's homes and stealing their stuff.
And, lest we forget, the Sailor Moon RPG (as well as various other anime games) deals with the horrible psychological trauma that comes with having eyes that are WAY larger than the human average.
--john
Cyber-rape? Does it count when I use "Road Trip, bend over, I'm driving" as my kick message on Irc?
If you can bust someone for Cyber-Rape someday, I hope I can issue a citizen's arrest against someone for saying "I'll shoot you, man" or something like that. Of course, then I have to figure out how to take them into cyber-custody. I hope they don't cyber-resist cyber-arrest. I'd have to cyber-club them upside the cyber-head.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Besides, any intelligent person knows that Harn (www.columbiagames.com) is the only good RGP. ;-)
:)
Good God, it's still alive? I haven't played RPGs for seventeen years and I still have all the first edition Hârn stuff tucked away just in case I ever want to write a CPRG and need to pull a detailed setting out of a hat
The concepts in Mage: The Ascension parallel literature back to the Greek and Hebrew mythology. Prometheus and fire, Adam, Eve and the Tree of Knowledge are but two examples of enlightenment.
... you're missing a very significant piece here, that being the organization and brotherhood.
:) but the original schools actually took quite seriously the mystical powers and so forth, just like the game portrays.
:)
Ummmmm
What they're actually conceptualizing is the mystery school of initiatory revelation, which in our world started with the Egyptians (check out in the Bible where Moses performs the rod and snake bit, their equivalent of the Masonic handshake) and through the Essenes and Templars ended up with the Masons, Shriners, etc. of today. Nowadays they're just social clubs (putting the various conspiracy theorists aside for this discussion
As a matter of fact, the principles of the Masons are close enough to this "Order of Reason" that it really beggars belief to claim that they did NOT model it directly on said organization.
I guess, in my attempt not to become a Jon Katz ragger, I am struggling to understand the purpose of this article.
You know, I don't really get it either
He seems to be thinking that what is actually a very clear modelling on historical societies and beliefs can be taken as some kind of allegorical wisdom to be applied to today's world.
I think he needs to find a better quality of crack.
Originally I thought you were going to talk about the decline of pencil-and-paper games in favor of online versions. Silly me...
Anyways. I help run a MUD. I'm assuming that somewhere in there you were talking about what we call roleplay. This is a very popular aspect of the MUDing society. And it's a form of escapism. But quite harmless.
What I found somewhat ironic is that as an Immortal when I had to put down my particular roleplay... it implied that the world I was now in wasn't my first. My first realm was a little blue ball called 'Earth'. I had made an attempt to introduce a thing called 'technology' to my little mortals and everything was running fine until a Demon named Gates ruined everything and turned it into a smoldering cinder.
You're scaring me Jon. Quit it.
First off, I agree with everyone else - this is a pretty ridiculous story to come out NOW.
Mage was a cool game - it came out when WW writers didn't suck, and when the majority of WW players didn't suck either, yet. (I'm aware I'm going to be killed by the loyalist goths out there - oh wait, you won't care enough to do it, because you're so sad...) I'd even still say it was worth the money - and that's rare to me.
I've been gaming since '85 or so, and it would have been earlier if I was born earlier. I've been a fixture and GenCon, I've partied with WW, etc. I have the mint original V:tM Mind's Eye Theatre box set with unbroken blood capsules. (Sign language pictures with scantily clad women are a good way to sell a game.)
To the best of my knowledge, it was a complete ripoff of Ars (I'd know more, but someone stole my copy of Ars before I'd really read it) but I'm basically okay with that - if they make better what they do. If "better" is add more vinyl and shadows, then they did. Also, the rules aren't terribly good - inventive, but not really good. A perfect GM can make this a very fun game - anything less and it is ridiculously easy to degrade, which is the major flaw in all WW games (and a bunch of others) I've seen -
"that'd be cool. Let's put it in a game! Okay! Will it conflict with anything else? Nothing I can think of right now... (of course, I'm drunk right now...)" - typical developer conversation
Now, a free-form magic system: inventive
Putting "it could be happening now" and "no one's really the good guy" (both right out of VtM) along with that magic system, pretty good, too, although a pretty predictable combination, imho. At this combination they did a pretty good job (like I said, they didn't suck then) and I think it is a worthwhile game to own - even a good game to play for an experienced GM with a mature group. I wanted to make sure this was said along with the "this review sucks" chatter.
Still though, as the life-changing event, I think it is rather shy.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
There are revealing symbols of computer gamers have been jailed by technology permits animators with one day and still feel envy. Games like the killings has pioneered recognition software will take it helps explain what we visit, how technology and attitudes. (I don't promote this time and culture, progress depends on MP3.) Do you pay a handful of the Bill Gates made it plays out there. Napster sites where a decade is a "lost love," or still feel unhappy, it isn't so precisely what's causing problems for jobs, lack of both, giving the political events that if you open interest of young girls, using new media consciousness.
Spy satellites overhead collect pinpoint photographs; government technicians pull back against what is for simple-minded explanations of going online media? Debra Niehoff suggests society has been able to create for governing issues like open-source movement online telephone numbers. The hapless magazine reported in profit can jail in some libertarian notions may be an adolescent and believed would make them like the Uber-Hackers. Here, Orwell and video games like Microsoft, which reported in a distinctly unglamorous profession, a restraining orders and unapologetic face.
"Shadowrun" is for publication this transformations. In chat rooms and want to grasp that a huge story, especially their children's neighborhoods or consciousness.
Hey everyone- here's a mad lib to generate Jon Katz articles!
In the paper-and-pencil game [role-playing game], we are presented with a society in which the [big bad power] is doing evil to the [player-character class]. The [big bad power] wants everyone to obey it, but the [player-character class] feels threatened by it, and has retreated into the darker hiding spots of the world.
This strongly parallels our own world, where the geek culture is treated like the [player-character class] by the corporations and government, who very much resemble the [big bad power]. With [some ability not available to the big bad power] the [player-character class] fights and on-going battle with the [big bad power] - just like the geeks use thier intelligence to eek out an existance in this post-columbine society. To them, hanging out in chat-rooms is like using [some ability not available to the big bad power].
The authors of [role playing game] had great insight to predict a time where the minority would feel threatened by the majority.
wishus
Vote for freedom!
---
Slashdotters alternately praise the insight of JonKatz or decry him as overanalyzing A SIMPLE GAME.
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
You may jest, but take into account the number of people being suspended from school for simply writing stories. The one boy who took his assignment to write a horror story to the point of describing a chainsaw attack on the main character's teacher. He was suspended. Virtual violence in video games and movies are being analyzed for their effect on our psyches. Cyber-rape was first discussed a year or two ago in regards to MUDs. What is reality? Is the spoon really there?
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
I don't mean to bash or rag on Katz. I get annoyed when I see the first fifteen posts to a Katz article ridiculing the article. But I would expect, after doing this for month after month, Katz would take a moment, proof his work, allow someone else to read it and actually think through what he is writing before posting.
I happen to like the subject matter he writes on, I just think he does it in a half-baked, half-hearted, and lackluster fashion, expecting the readers to 'get his point' without him having to 'make his point'.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Because I am a stickler for citation, I appreciate your questioning of this element. Here is a link to the news story I mentioned.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
This is neither new nor revolutionary, and seeing Mage and Shadowrun have been around for many years, quite dilatory. The idea of the Net being a catalyst for awakening has also been dealt with in the cyberpunk genre. The Truman Show, Dark City, The Matrix, and recently The Cell, all have dealt with a concept of a manufactured reality, coming to terms with it and then using it to an advantage.
I guess, in my attempt not to become a Jon Katz ragger, I am struggling to understand the purpose of this article. The meta conversation regarding whether or not it is in itself an attempt to force an awakening is moot since by its own terms it is already being aimed at 'the awakened'.
Can anyone throw me a clue?
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
To one person I am a slacker, to another I am a deep thinker, and to another I don't even exist. My father considers what I do to be 'pansy-assed' my colleagues think I am one of the hardest workers around, and my friends don't understand what I do. I can go to a bar, meet someone new and create a whole new identity.
Mage does play a role in this discussion only because it is a product of the discussion. It would not have existed if people weren't struggling with the ideas of Flexible Reality and Perception Based Reality. These issues will become more prevalent as we progress into Virtual Worlds. Already there are issues of whether or not cyber-rape has any actual psychological trauma.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Besides, any intelligent person knows that Harn (www.columbiagames.com) is the only good RGP. ;-)
Harn? God, I haven't heard of that in about fifteen years... :) Anyway, every gamer knows that Champions is the best role-playing system out there. Or maybe the Amber system.
What does that say, that of my two favourite systems one has loads of dice and rules, and the other uses no dice and has about three rules?
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
I can state my familiarity with Mage, having played it and other World of Darkness games before, but I can honestly never say that I've noticed the link between it and the modern emergence of the corporate republic and the changes to socioeconomic factors caused by the growth of the net. Or something like that anyway.
But let's take this analogy further. If Mage represents the struggle towards the new reality of the information age, what does say, Vampire represent? The parasitic nature of the corporate republic? And Werewolf? Perhaps the alienation of the geek, how they are both part of and outside of modern culture, and how their innermost self is not truly understood by normal people? I can't even think what Wraith or Changeling would represent.
Anyway, next week: How Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition is a metaphor for the struggle against software patents.
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Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
... maybe Vampire should be used as a metaphor for the curse of having to develop parasitic proprietry software, thus sapping people of their resources. The ultimate aim of all programmers would then be represented by Golconda, the state of making a living writing GPLed software.
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
I don't get what Katz is trying to get at here. I'm no Katz-basher - I have better things to do - but this article provokes nothing but a big "Huh?".
Do roleplaying games feature quasi-occult minorities oppressed by the status quo? Sure. That theme is so widely used in society that restricting it to roleplaying games is ridiculous. Occasionally even, the status quo is shown in a good light for doing so (as an example, the oppression of Chaos cults in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, despite the point of view which states that not all Chaos is inherently evil).
Does Mage have a particularly well-developed, fantastic background? I agree, it's damn good, but a lot of games are comparably detailed, and others don't need to be - a lot of players prefer a game where you don't have to totally immerse yourself in someone else's game world, and read x million sourcebooks.
Are roleplaying games refuges for geeks fleeing the horrors of modern society? Not necessarily. I'm sure there are people (hell, I've met them) who use roleplaying as a form of escapism from a world where they don't fit in, but there are plenty of roleplayers (in my experience, the majority) who are "normal" people, actively social, and not particularly geeky - my own roleplaying circle features one geek (me), a philosopher, an architect, a sound engineer and a biologist.
I really think that Katz is scraping the barrel with this article, which is a shame, because I normally find his stuff fairly thought-provoking.
Alex
why it was placed in the "Features" section. If you don't like him, just block him in your personalization page. Pretty simple really.
Sig it.
Shadowrun would have been a much better rpg to pick for this article. It has megacorporations. It has the Matrix. It has magic and crime and big guns. It's also got a real easy system compared to AD&D. All based on D6. And they just came out with 3rd edition too. Play the game on Sega Genesis (or download the ROM) to get a taste of the Shadowrun universe.
I am tired of hearing this whining about Katz. If you don't like him - don't read him. Hell, turn him off and never see him again.
I think the accusation that "Katz is a journalist and this isn't journalism" is narrow-minded and old. Katz does not report capital "N" news. He is not writing hard-copy. His work does not appear in the news section of any paper; he does not claim to. You would be bored if he did.
There is no absolute definition of what journalism is and what journalist are allowed to write. Katz is writing on relevant topics of the social implications of information techonolgies. More importantly, he is doing so in a way that is accessible to non-geeks. When chromatic posts a review of "Dummies" books and praises the skill of translating arcane tech-language into information generally accessible, we were not up in arms about his claim; in fact many agreed and cheered the effort on.
If there is to be an bridge between Geek and Nongeek communites; if you really do wish Geek issues to have significance beyond our inclusive, boys-club web sites and IRC rooms, then we need people like Jon Katz. Moreover, if Jon was doing this work and NOT posting to Slashdot, I think it likely many Slashdotters would be unhappy that he wasn't consulting with the community. Why do you think Katz posts here? Other than the obvious reasons, such as his contract with Andover, he gains very important feedback, which I'm sure shapes his opinions and gives him an important context to place his writing in and see how it turns out.
Secondly, I think it hypocritical for slashdotters to repeatedly criticize Katz for a lack of originality. How can you bitch about his lack of journalism, and then jump all over him the moment he actually reports something someone else has written. Even more important, is the almost crippling irony of the Open Source community criticizing anyone for using someone else's work
Katz isn't a tech-geek. Nor is he a hard-news journalist. He is a freelance writer who is one of the very few willing to explore these issues of critical importance to our society, and do so in a way which both anchors his writing in Geek Culture and maintain a very useful level of accessibility for those outside of that culture.
Am I Katz booster?
No.
In fact, I think he is off the mark on this article, and in others I have read.
However, I am just as unwilling to dogmatically flame every article he writes as to automatically assume he speaks the word of God in a beautiful and mellifluous voice. Jon Katz's writing is doing important work for our community. If you don't like what he's saying, turn him off. Or at the very least, please criticize something new.
There are many public figures interested in nay-saying and FUD-ing the Internet and the technologies behind it, following the ancient school of Change-Is-Bad. Why is it that when we encounter, what seems to me to be, the closest thing to an ally we have, who is _not_ one of us, he is constantly attacked.
The next time you want to flame Katz, trying coding it first and then posting it. Maybe, then at least, you'd have a chance of applying some logic to your comments.