[Mage: the Awakening] Endangered Species – Inspirations: Psychology

Whenever I run Mage, I tend to drift towards high-concept plot hooks. I don’t exactly know what it is about Mage that encourages this sort of thinking in me, but it’s happened enough times to be a trend. One of the worries I have though is that I am always second-guessing myself before I introduce [...]

[nMage Japan] Spiritual Disease

One of the primary themes of the campaign I’m running now involves the concept of spiritual disease. This doesn’t mean that I’m focusing completely on Mages who have the Spirit Arcanum, of course, but rather a moral and social decay that seems to permeate across all levels of the society at large. While it’s been [...]

[Mage: the Awakening] Endangered Species

“Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.” -Welsh poet Dylan Thomas The Awakened community of Tokyo, Japan have come to understand a disturbing fact: They are the last of their kind. For three years now, there [...]

[Mage: the Awakening Japan] Culture Shock

The reason why I chose Japan for a setting for my Mage: the Awakening campaign is simple: Japan is STRANGE. There are strange habits, trends, behaviors, ideologies and practices that I find baffling. While some of these are a feature of tradition or art, a whole lot of them also exist as strange trends in [...]

[Mage: the Awakening Japan] Themes: Dark Night of the Soul

Despite being a Christian concept, I find the idea of the Dark Night of the Soul to be a strangely fitting one for the Mage: the Awakening Campaign that I’m going to be running. For those unfamiliar with the term, it is often used to describe a spiritual crisis, or spiritual dryness where the faithful [...]