Monday Review: Mage: The Awakening (Warning: Long)

Mage: the Awakening Cover

Mage: the Awakening is part of White Wolf’s new World of Darkness line, being the new spiritual successor of their former Mage: the Ascension title published back in 1993.  Much like it’s predecessor, Mage: the Awakening (M:tAW) is a game where players take the role of modern day Mages, people who have awoken to a higher consciousness, a state of knowing that grants them the insight and the means to alter reality with the power of their will.

I’m getting into this review from the point of view of someone who loved Mage: the Ascension like crazy back when I was still in college, and picked up Mage: the Awakening without really knowing how different it would be.  As such, it was quite a surprise when I opened up the book and realized that when White Wolf said they were making a new Mage game, they really meant it.

That being said, the old edition is water under the bridge right now, so let’s get straight to Mage: the Awakening.

Mage: the Awakening is the third in White Wolf’s holy trinity of major lines, next to Vampire: the Requiem and Werewolf: the Forsaken.  It is a massive tome, easily rivalling the size of the Exalted 2nd Edition corebook, and if one thing can be said about it, the book is dense with text and rules.

How it all began

Mage the Awakening starts off with an introduction to Mages, and how they came to be.  The official cover story about the Mages’ origins involves an age of enlightenment where the first mages gathered in an island after receiving visions and dreams about the isle, which has been once inhabited by dragons.  This City of Mages was known by many names, but is collectively recognized to be Atlantis.  With a population of enlightened beings who commanded magics that will probably never be seen in the modern world again, Atlantis was a shining beacon of human potential…

But it was never meant to be.

Enlightened as they were, the Atlanteans were prone to hubris, and believed themselves to be as gods.  They constructed a mystical tower to serve as a means to reach the Supernal realms and rule over the world with power that only gods could weild.  Some of the Atlanteans recognized the folly of their peers, and fought with these would-be gods, in a magical battle that destroyed the tower, leaving those above stranded in the Supernal, and and those below trapped here, in the Fallen World, for the magics they unleashed was so powerful that it ripped reality asunder and created the Abyss.  A massive region of nothingness that separated the Supernal from the Fallen, making it impossible to travel from one to the other.

Those left behind had to start anew, using a pale shadow of their former magics to forge a new life stranded here in the Fallen World, aware that there were things in the Supernal forever denied to them as a price of their Hubris.

The story doesn’t quite end there, as five atlantean kings that had been trapped in the Supernal Realm sought to assist those in the Fallen.  Sacrificing their lives, they transformed themselves into magical watchtowers who could reach beyond the Abyss and let mankind touch the Supernal Realms and become mages themselves.

Here and Now

The actual game takes place in the modern world, where the player characters are rudely awakened into a world of lies.  Forced to adapt to a new awareness, being able to perceive reality as it is behind the curtain and never able to turn back, these new mages must learn quick or be caught in conspiracies and threats that have lingered for decades, or even centuries.

Game-wise, the players are normally assumed to have been discovered by other, older mages and introduced into their respective Orders.  It turns out that after the fall of Atlantis, the survivors maintained the groups that allowed them to rule atlantean society:

• The Silver Ladder – Administrators and Priest Kings, this order is the ruling caste, they give direction to the enlightened society, and keep them oriented on their goal: To awaken all of humanity and rebuild the world that they lost with the fall of Atlantis.
• The Adamantine Arrows – Warrior-sages of Atlantis who fight for the continued survival of the Atlantean orders against their enemies.  The Arrows are disciplined and ever vigilant, practicing a knightly code and an understanding of why they must fight.
• The Guardians of the Veil – Spies and Counterintelligence agents, the Guardians do the dirty work, so the other mages don’t have to soil their hands.  One of the most interesting orders to me personally, the Guardians are in full understanding that the assassinations and other less savory acts they commit are done for the greater good, and that they must take the blame and responsibility for their repugnant acts so that the rest of the mages may find enlightenment unsullied.
• The Mysterium – Chroniclers and Adventurers, the Mysterium dedicates itself to finding and protecting lost knowledge, studying it and making sure that Things That Man Was Not Meant To Know, remain unknown.  While they’re known to be bookish librarian types, they’re also intrepid explorers and will often jump at the chance to find Atlantean ruins and explore them for lost artifacts or lore.
• The Free Council – born not of the Atlantean creation myth, the Free Council is the modern point of view, the people who know they are mages, and are aware that pining for the past won’t do anything.  These eschew the legends of before and strive to weild magic and discover the Truth in the here and now, discovering magic in modern scientific theory, or perhaps in new technology.

That Crazy Little Thing You Do

You can’t have a game with Mage in the title without it being about magic, and this game has it in spades.  Like it’s predecessor, Mage: the Awakening has a freeform-ish system for adjudicating magic.  Magic in this game is grouped into Arcana, which are essentially classifications of the different facets of reality as per the Atlantean paradigm.  These are: Death, Fate, Forces, Life, Matter, Mind, Prime, Space, Spirit and Time.

White Wolf really went all out to address the issues from the last Mage game.  Mage: the Awakening uses 2 primary systems for magic.  The first is similar to old Mage, where they give descriptions of just what a mage can do with a given level of Arcana.  From there, the player may freely extrapolate any effect that he or she feels is within the scope of her character’s capabilities.  The upside to this is that there’s nothing stopping you from coming up with a unique spell that your character needs except the extent of the character’s understanding of the Arcana.  The downside is that it tends to be very difficult for some people to work under this kind of framework.

To address the second issue Mage: the Awakening goes on to provide an entire spell list for each of the five levels of arcana, and for every one of the ten different arcana complete with rules, requirements, and how the spell looks like and any further requirements to modify the spell if necessary.  This takes up a huge chunk of Chapter 3 but satisfies the need for structure very well.

Actual play experience has it that the more lateral thinking players love the freeform system, while the ones who like lists are more than happy with the sheer number of spells to pick from.

As you can imagine a system like this can get complex, but I feel that it’s a necessary evil for the kind of freedom you can give a character, and after reading the magic chapter several times over, and referencing it in play it will eventually start to become a lot easier to eyeball as a GM and use as a player.

What’s the Story?

Now that Mages and their abilities have been discussed, it’s time to actually go and talk about what it is Mages do.  The simple answer to this is “pretty much what they damn well please.” and therein lies the primary conflict of the setting.

We’re all familiar with the line “With great power, comes great responsibility.” But few games express that fact more than Mage does.  Being a game of personal horror, it forces the characters to re-evaluate things that they might have taken for granted when they were mortals.  Suddenly things that we just blurt out and say are suddenly possible.

Suddenly murder is possible without leaving any sort of evidence that could be traced back to you.  Stalking that chick to her bedroom is easy as scrying to her room with magic.  Transmuting lead to gold is just a matter of a little preparation and a space in your basement.  Suddenly, the idea of bringing back your girlfriend from the dead after that tragic accident doesn’t seem like a bad idea… after all isn’t CPR just the same thing?

What defines morality now that you’re able to change reality at such a fundamental level?  Who is going to tell you what is right and what is wrong anymore?  And if this doesn’t make you stop and think, consider the other mages…

What if they don’t have the same perspective as you anymore?  What if people start looking like lesser beings who don’t recognize the “truth” and are therefore less important?  Mages are people too, and it only took a little bit of pride to bring the glory of Atlantis to breaking reality once.  Until people learn, it’s bound to happen again.

And on this corner…

If there’s one thing about Mage: the Awakening, it’s the fact that there’s absolutely no lack of antagonists.  Being awakened only means you’ve attracted the attention of more than just the average joe on the street, or that nasty bastard at the office who’se looking to get you fired.

Among the opponents you’ll face are:

• Other Mages – Most notably a faction calling itself the Seers of the Throne, who are servants of the mages who have fashioned themselves to be as gods in the Supernal Realm.  These mages are out not only to destroy the Orders, but to make sure that mankind will never achieve it’s potential.  They are far more satisfied to rule over the sleeping masses, rather than to elevate them to awakened status because they revel in control.
• The Insane – Magic isn’t for everyone, and the act of Awakening often drives people irrevocably mad.  Having lost their sanity, insane mages aren’t restrained by the same conscience that other mages are.  They might turn against themselves and against those around them, making them a terrible threat to mortals and mages alike.
• Hunters – This doesn’t necessarily mean the Hunters of White Wolf’s Hunter: the Vigil line, but it certainly doesn’t exclude them.   For all their abilities, Mages go down rather quickly to a shotgun blast, or a bullet to the head.  Hunters plan, and hunters function in groups and that makes them very dangerous.  It also doesn’t help that there are Mages called Banishers, who have gotten the idea that they are abominations, and that they must purge the world of other Mages to prevent them from becoming too many.
• Other Supernaturals – Ghosts, Werewolves, Vampires, Prometheans and Changelings all can serve to be very dangerous adversaries for any Mage, especially since reliable information on any of them is hard to come by.  Mages excel at outthinking opponents and preparing well before any sort of confrontation.  If caught flat-footed however, the Mage won’t stand much of a chance.

And the verdict?

After reading the book and actually giving the game a spin in a campaign (both as a GM and a player) I find that Mage: the Awakening is a fantastic game.  It’s a heavy read, the book is dense with information and I won’t dispute the fact that it can get very dry in terms of reading and may be slightly confusing especially in the magic system section, but I’d be hard pressed to name a game that does what Mage: the Awakening does.

Unlike Mage: the Ascension, Mage: the Awakening brings things back to a personal level.  Sure there are secret societies and things beyond mortal ken, but it all echoes back to the characters.  It’s no longer about the struggle of two different world views fighting to see who wins the hearts and souls of the masses… it goes back to what you would do when given the chance to do the impossible at the cost of your own morality and humanity.

Mage: the Awakening is one of my favorite games, and I’m pretty sure it shows.  The games that can be run can ask all the hard and uncomfortable questions that you can brush away as a pointless intellectual excercise when you’re human, but are now valid options as a Mage.  Concepts that define humanity are no longer quite applicable to you, and you now bear the full responsibility of what it is to be gifted with powers beyond human ability, without the glitz and the glamor of a superhero game.

I’ve always been most comfortable running Storyteller games, and nMage is by far the one that fits me most like a glove.  I enojoy running it, and I love the systems.  It’s little wonder then that Mage: the Awakening won the 2006 ENnie Award for best writing.  The mechanics are sound (if breakable, much like any other game), and the possibilities that can be derived from the fundamental question of the ethics of magic are wonderful.

I don’t normally give actual scores, but Mage: the Awakening would score a 9/10 for me, short of perfection if only because of the difficulty of learning the system for a new GM.  In addition, there’s a lot of negativity surrounding the use of Atlantis as the core creation myth that makes it a barrier to entry.  If more people gave this game a try, I’m certain they’ll be surprised at how good it is.