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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.
"'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
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 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
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.