#mage the ascension

[tlwebb]

[madonnamadeofasphalt]

Vampires are horny like queer fuckboys on Grindr. Werewolves are horny like anarchists in a squat. Changelings are horny like starving artists in a drug-drenched commune. Mages are horny like overworked university students. Hunters are horny like soldiers crowded in a trench. Demons are horny like repressed feudal courtiers. The Hungry Dead are horny like creepy cult members. Wraiths are horny like a depressed motherfucker who just wants to feel anything again. Mummies are utterly and completely devoid of horny, as unhorny as a job application, they are antihorny. This is why nobody ever plays Mummy: The Resurrection.

[awakenedsalamander]

Thinking about how vampirism in the World of Darkness isn’t just dehumanizing in the sense that it makes you a literal monster but also how the Embrace quite directly rips away some of the most meaningful parts of someone’s identity to make room for the Beast.

Like, the obvious examples here are Garou and mages, given that the former, when Embraced, become the aptly-named Abominations, who lose their connection to Gaia and the Umbra and find themselves forcibly aligned with the Wyrm, the force that they view as the most horrific and destructive thing in the world; and the latter have their Avatar, their connection to magic and possibility and understanding, utterly annihilated— their one guiding light extinguished and replace with an entity that is (except for probably in the case of widderslainte) more vicious and cruel than even the most harrowing Avatar.

It’s telling that the Embrace is thus reflective of something each group considers to be one of the worst fates imaginable: dancing the Black Spiral and undergoing Gilgul, respectively.

But that’s a lot of jargon and doesn’t really hit if you don’t know the details of those game lines— the haunting part is that the basic idea remains the same even for mortals.

I mean, it’s true that everyone, mortal or otherwise, has some degree of intrusive urges toward malicious behavior, but the Beast is just so much worse than that. To be Embraced is to straightforwardly die, to lose the essence that keeps you alive, and have it brought back in this twisted form— from now on, to live is to kill and the Beast will never let you forget it.

Sure, vampires still retain their old interests and passions. I’m personally not keen on the interpretation of Kindred as inherently not having things like empathy, creativity, or grief. I think they still feel compassion and curiosity and tranquility and love and all that… but always, lurking behind them, is the Beast.

And maybe I’m just being a self-serious edge-boi but that’s such an unnerving thought. To still care about the people around you, but never without something whispering about how much you need— deserve— their loyalty, their service, their deaths.

[cruddyart]

Old gifs from the white wolf website taken from the wayback machine in 1996

I could put the other assets in too but I find this the most charming tbh dfghj

[ghoul-mortician]

What I love the most about the World of Darkness is how it demands you care. If you don’t care, if you or your character refuse to “buy in” to something, anything, you’ve already lost. Vampire’s Personal Horror is all about holding on to what makes you really you, not just some mindless hungry beast. A Werewolf needs Rage to fight, there is no sitting out the war for the end of the world. Mages are fighting over the fundamentals of reality. If you don’t care enough to make change, you never become a mage in the first place.

[probablybadrpgideas]

Gain EXP if you defeat a powerful enemy, demonstrate your character's personality, or explain the lore of Mage the Ascension in a way that makes sense.

[themainspoon]

I keep seeing polls made for people unfamiliar with a piece of media to ask them to try and identify the thing that does not happen in said media, and I always thought those looked like a lot of fun! So, I decided to make one, and I already knew the perfect franchise for one: The World of Darkness (WoD) TTRPG franchise. The WoD is a franchise containing several different TTRPG’s about playing as monsters, and it has some of the most unhinged lore I have ever come across.

Almost everything above is heavily simplified for the sake of fitting into the poll boxes btw. Also, I promise that this is not a trick. Ten of the Eleven options presented above actually are a part of this franchises seemingly infinite Metaplot. I’ll schedule a reblog containing the answer and some much needed context for everything above.

[archaontheshitterchosen]

Created by myself

[the-under-wolf]

This has been me for a week and a half now

[arcaneanarchist]

Famous actual play gms and the WoD games I'd like to see them run

Brendan Lee Mulligan- Mage the Ascension was built for this man. It's a game about philosophical arguments where everyone is a wizard need I say more? Listen to him talking about planescape in the promotional videos on the dnd YouTube page and tell me you wouldn't want to see him run mage I dare u

Matt Mercer- Vampire: the Masquerade Matt's sprawling political plots and comfort with a more serious tone would work really well for Vampire.

Aabria Iyengar- Changeling the Dreaming This isn't just because of a Court of Fey and Flowers, though that has shown she has a talent for depicting courtly politics and the fea. I also think that her work on Misfits and Magic really shows the wimsy and imagination she can bring to her worlds. An energy I'd love to see her bring to Changeling

Griffin Mcelroy- Hunter: the Reckoning, Amnesty was the best taz session by far and it was running monster of the week, which on top of the obvious setting and theme similarities also share a philosophy that prepping for the hunt is more important then the fight itself.

[fipindustries]

im so good at making memes

[tlwebb]

[peoplegettingreallymadatghosts]

everyone knows you don’t go Vulgar in front of Sleepers, anon

[drawncap]

Vampire the Masquerade: We are eternal creatures of the night who wish to complete our eternal goals that have been in motion for hundreds of years

Werewolf The Apocalypse: We are soldiers of Mother Gaia, and fight against the global corruption of the world.

Mage the Ascension: We are capable of manipulating the very make of reality itself and can change the world and must find how to do so, and if we should

Meanwhile, Changeling the Dreaming: Guys, being in capitalism sucks. Let's go to the park and sword fight naked.

[cruddyart]

Sometimes I rly feel like the wod Fandom needs to remember that while the wod is dark, it's also goofy as fuck and it's ok to laugh at it and point out how ridiculous something is.

Wizards killed an old vampire with space lasers. There is an evil company which puts demons into burgers. During the war in Atlanta someone replaced the round business table where the lasombras were arguing with a reflective square table which increased the body count during the meeting.

It's ok to laugh. We don't need to be defensive of our fav game.

[bethanythebogwitch]

My favorite magic system from a game I haven't actually played is from Mage: the Ascension. It kind of fits as both a hard magic system and a soft magic system at the same time because there are some hard rules, but its mostly very open. To become a mage you have to realize that reality is not what it seems. In MtA, reality is whatever the majority of people believe it is, known as the consensus. The consensus in modern days is pretty uniform everywhere, with small variations based on where you are, but it used to be wildly different based on the cultural beliefs of the local people. A mage is a person who realizes that the consensus isn't true reality and gains to power to act outside of its rules. Any given mage's abilities come from their own personal view of reality, known as their paradigm. A mage's magic can do basically anything, as long as it is accounted for in their paradigm. So a mage who's paradigm includes the classic Aristotelian elements can perform magic based on that, but if their paradigm doesn't include animistic spirits then they can't commune with those spirits even though other mages could based on their own paradigm. The problem with this is that the consensus doesn't like it when you go around breaking its rules and will punish mages by slapping them with an effect called paradox. Paradox can be anything from a spell failing to getting shunted into your own personal pocket universe. Nothing generates paradox like being seen doing magic by sleepers (people who are not mages and still live fully within the consensus). Most mages either only use magic around other mages or, if they need to cast around sleepers, will disguise their magic as a mundane effect. Someone throwing a fireball from their hands will generate major paradox because the consensus is that people can't do that. However if a mage holds a lighter up to a spraycan before casting their fireball, the sleepers can rationalize it as something that exists within the consensus and not as much paradox will be generated.

In the dark ages, magic was part of the consensus and mages could openly rule over the sleepers because everyone believed in magic and therefore magic was part of the consensus. In response to the tyranny of the mages, a group was formed called the League of Reason, who wanted to introduce a new form of magic to the consensus that everyone could use. This form of magic was based on logic and reason and was called science. This led to the ascension war, where the League of reason sought to remove magic and superstition from the consensus and a very loose coalition of mages called the Council of Nine Mystic Traditions want to keep magic in the consensus. And the League of Reason won. A mostly rationalistic, scientific worldview has become the consensus worldwide, forcing the Council into operating underground. The League of Reason has become the Technocracy, a worldwide secret organization ruling the world from the shadows and trying to stamp out magic and any other form of "reality deviants" to keep humanity safe, even if they have to suppress basic human imagination to do so. Notably, the earliest books for the game very much said "Traditions good, Technocracy bad", but later books went for a much more grey approach to the conflict between them, making it clear that both sides really are doing what they think is in humanity's best interest even if their ideas for how to do so are fundamentally incompatible.

What's really interesting is that science and technology really are a form of magic and technocrats are mages, even if the Technocracy would vehemently deny this. Technology is a form of magic that everyone can use because its part of the consensus and science doesn't discover new facts about the world, It creates those facts and applies them to the world. The Technocracy's super-advanced technology creates paradox just as much as magic does because personal anti-gravity suits and mass-produced clones violate the consensus just like throwing around fireballs and conjuring demons does.

Mage: the Ascension is a super fun setting because just about any fantasy or sci-fi trope can exist here. Classic pointy hat and wand wizards can battle cyborgs armed with self-replicating nanotechnology. Anti-authoritarian punks can hack your wallpaper to spy on you because they believe all reality is part of a unified mathematical whole that the internet gives us access to. A group of spacefarers can ride the luminiferous aether to mars only to encounter Aztec shamans who asked the spirits to carry them there thousands of years ago. A powerful mage can create a time loop by convincing their younger self to obtain enlightenment through the power of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Two people can have an argument over whether the guy they just met was an alien from Alpha Centauri or an elf from the Norse nine realms and both of them can be right. Animistic spirit-callers can upload themselves to the internet to combat spirits of malware. And an angry mage might just teleport you into the sun because they believe distance is just an illusion and therefore have the power to make anything go anywhere with a thought. It's a wild ride.