[Mage: the Awakening] Silver Ladder + Adamantine Arrow Campaign Design Themes: Power

“Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Magic, by its very definition, is power. The ability to twist reality to obey your will, to impose one’s desires upon the world is secretly everyone’s greatest wish.

Imagine what you could do with magic? Wealth, influence, youth and beauty would all be available to you. All that’s holding anyone back is their own morality and sense of ethics. That is the very reason why Mages are part of a horror game.

Even if you strip away the monsters and the strange phenomena in the game, the presence of a single Mage is reason enough to be worried. Mages are people possessed of a powerful will, and their abilities bestow a wicked sense of entitlement that is horrifying to think about.

If you can change the world to fit your vision, who’s to say that you don’t deserve to get the best of everything? Lovers, wealth, influence… all of it is ripe for the taking, and if you play your cards right, nobody will every know that you’ve been tweaking things.

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It is this thesis that constitutes the backbone of the SL + AA campaign that I’m working on. The players are new Mages in a town run by a Consilium that is barely functional. Corruption has taken root into the heart of the Consilium, and almost every mage is dirty in one way or another.

The Player characters now stand at a crossroads. Their task is to whip the Awakened of the city back into shape, to take over the Consilium and fix it. It’s a tall order, and who knows what atrocities they might have to resort to to make it happen… and how power might corrupt them as well.

The game will most likely take place in two distinct phases. The first phase will be the acquisition of power, the introduction of the cabal to the consilium, and their climb to the top. The second phase will be interesting, as their positions of power suddenly put them in situations where they must protect their power and advance their interests in the midst of those who have “better ideas.”

Combat is probably not going to be the primary focus of the game, though given that I’m seriously considering the Noir setting, it will exist in some form. The Adamantine Arrows of the team will be able to exercise their experience in the field of battl while the Silver Ladder will clash over ideology, philosophy and power brokering the factions.

While I’m certain that the Cabal might not necessarily want to be the kings of the city, they will at least want to be Kingmakers.

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At this point I’m considering Chicago as the city, but I’ll have to review the Chicago book for it. I won’t be sticking too close to the canon history of it, so I hope that people won’t be too picky with my lack of understanding as I live halfway around the world from the US and have never set foot on American Soil.

I’m thinking of making about six to seven other Cabals for the city, along with the Seers of the Throne and other residents. This will most certainly include several Apostate cabals from marginalized communities that might serve as new members of a new Consilium in the future.

I’m also considering thematically arranging the various Cabals along what kind of Power they specialize in. The Seers might specialize in one kind of power, while some Cabals might have access or dominance in another. Money, Sex, Influence, Connections, Might, Numbers, Ideology, Religion… all of these constitute power in one way or another so this might be a good way to arrange the various cabals that the players will end up interacting with.

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It’s a lot of high-level thinking so far, but with enough work I think I will be able to generate an interesting set of Cabals to work with. I’ll also see if I can slip in other NPCs of note that aren’t mages to flesh the setting out a bit more.

[Mage: the Awakening] Limited-Order Campaign Musing

Last weekend, I was talking to my players about limited-faction campaigns and how they’d turn out, and we decided to try applying that kind of thinking to a Mage game. The first game we’ve tried to play with this kind of thinking was with L5R, and the Lion Clan game was very successful, so perhaps we might be onto something.

That said, Mage is an entirely different kind of creature, so rather than restrict the players to a single Order, I figure that it might be best to adhere to a pair of orders instead. While I was initially looking at a globetrotting Mysterium + Adamantine Arrow game (something that I might come back to in the future), the alternative was to try out a Silver Ladder + Adamantine Arrow game instead.

In some ways, a game involving the SL and the AA is one mired in the discussion of Power. Authority and the Strength necessary to enforce such are core themes of both groups. Given this sort of setup, I’ve gotten to thinking that there might be something there.

I don’t have a complete picture in my mind yet, but the idea is a campaign about the acquisition of power and holding on to it. Given the city-focused nature of Mage: the Awakening, the closest metaphor I can think of is a crime story where a new gang moves into a city to try and take over. Games like Grand Theft Auto or Saint’s Row are good examples of this kind of story, where the focus is eking out a niche, then climbing up the food chain.

With regards to location, I’m seriously considering a fictional American city as to give myself some extra leeway to rely more heavily on cinematic tropes.

Mage is all about dangerous people doing dangerous and risky things in the name of power and hubris, and maybe learning to be a little wiser along the way. I’m still going over a few ideas in my head at the moment, and while I don’t have a solid pitch yet, I’m seeing it as a reflection of the original Sword of Damocles concept I had for a Seer game.

I’m still mulling it over in my head right now, but I think I might be on to something. Perhaps later this week I’ll be able to cement this all into a solid pitch that I’ll be posting here on the blog for my players to think about.

[Mage: the Awakening] Order-Inspired Campaign Ideas

I’ve recently been talking to Sheimaruen, one of the other GMs in my gaming group about Mage. The topic was that of how to come up with interesting new ideas for Mage campaigns.

I mentioned that there was some merit to limiting choice with regards to the player options, and that led us to talking about what kind of good limitations work best for Mage. Rather than limit the Paths available to the characters, we figured that it might be a better idea to constrain a games options based off the Mage Orders.

While single-Order games are nice, I think there’s some measure of tolerance in the idea of mixing 2 Orders together to create a campaign. Some of the ideas that came up from this discussion included:

• A Silver Ladder and Adamantine Arrow campaign based off the idea that the Consilium is a metaphor for organized crime. A cabal of Silver Ladder mages with Adamantine Arrow backup moving into town with the express agenda of taking over the city’s current ruling faction makes for an interesting game involving politics, combat and a lot of back room deals. Fun opponents for this include a well entrenched cabal from the Seers of the Throne or an old boy’s club of mages who don’t like the new upstarts. Think Saint’s Row meets Awakened Magic.
• A Mysterium and Adamantine Arrow campaign that plays up the whole Occult Pulp angle. A special cabal of mages recognized by and sponsored by the Order itself to travel around the world to liberate Magic from those who would abuse it. This team would be composed of those who specialized in acquisitions and would run into all sorts of threats from strange creatures guarding Atlantean ruins to the Consilium of other countries.
• An all-Guardians campaign usually works well, but mixing that with the Free Council might be interesting to come up with a techno-thriller of Occult Espionage featuring Techgnostic solutions to stranger problems dealing with forces of the Abyss or of the Exarchs. Think John Constantine meets James Bond.

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Out of the three I have to admit that the second one sounds the most interesting to me. That said I think I could run the first one very well too, as long as I get to stick to street-level stuff first. Eking out territory ala Saint’s Row does sound like something that works in the context of Mage after all.

I think I might have found the next game I’ll run after HERO. Just need some extra time to plan it out. What do you guys think? Which campaign concept should I try fleshing out?

GM’s Day Sale – Philippine Gamer’s Picks: Mage: the Awakening

A quick look at the post counts per tag on the left-hand sidebar of this blog shows just how much Mage: the Awakening means to me. By far one of the most interesting and fun games to plan for Mage: the Awakening is one of my go-to games when I want something mind-bendingly awesome.

As such, I was very happy to see that Mage was part of the GM’s Day Sale this year and these are my Must-Have books for Mage:

Mage: the Awakening Corebook

The corebook is a monster as far as most corebooks go, with both a freeform magic system as well as a comprehensive spell list with plenty of options for players. While occasionally daunting, I highly recommend taking your time to read the game and the systems as Mage has a lot of potential to be the best game you’ve ever played. Take note that you’ll need a copy of the World of Darkness Corebook as wel.

Tome of the Mysteries

While described as a supplement, I consider this book to be part of a “Core” set of the Mage experience. There’s a lot of detail in this book that helps flesh out magic, methodologies and the way things work in Awakening.

Left-Hand Path

Left-Hand Path takes on the antagonists of Mage that have the least amount of detail (Scelesti, the Mad and Apostates) and build on them to make them one of the most interesting antagonists in the game, edging out even the Banishers.

Seers of the Throne

Seers of the Throne are the evil counterparts to the mages. They share similar magics, but their philosophies and methods are vastly different. Seers represent an interesting antagonist that show off what could happen if Mages give up freedom for power.

Imperial Mysteries

Imperial Mysteries delves into the details of Archmages, and the Ascension War. Reality-changing takes on an entirely different scale, and the stakes are incredibly high in a game between the Archmages and the various other players in the cosmic game.

[Mage: the Awakening] The Tricky Part About Balance

A friend of mine and fellow WoD GM asked me this morning, “How do you go about balancing encounters?” It’s a good question, and one that I’ve not really had that many chances to address in my blog, despite the fact that I’ve several actual play reports on Mage campaigns logged already.

The issue of “Balancing” an encounter comes from several “truths”:

• I want the game to be fun and challenging
• Killing off player characters without a fight is not a good way to promote fun;
• Having my villains get wiped in the first round isn’t fun either

Therefore GMs try to find ways to present encounters with monsters and villains that are constructed in a fashion where the players have a fighting chance but won’t immediately be overwhelmed by the enemy.

My approach towards balance is slightly different in the World of Darkness. Mainly, I try to steer away from the idea of balance entirely. In games like Mage: the Awakening game balance is almost impossible to achieve. Each Mage has their own specialties and style, and in their dominant field, they are absolute terrors to their victims. When taken out of their chosen battlefields though, they might as well be helpless kittens.

Because of this, the “combat” in my Mage games takes place much, much earlier. The moment either side catches a whiff of magical tampering from the other, villains and PCs alike start going into Cold War mode. Information, more than firepower plays a crucial part as both sides start trying to put together a more complete profile on the other. Once they’ve found the other side’s weaknesses, resources and capabilities, then they work on isolating the target and moving in for the kill.

Direct combat is often the target looking for a way to escape and shake off the aggressor, and the aggressor trying to make the kill as quickly and cleanly as possible. Ambushes are the norm in my games, as there’s no point in declaring your presence to the other Mage. All mages are dangerous, and it’s best for everyone’s sense of self-preservation to behave as if you only get one shot at a kill. In these situations, I don’t hesitate to tell the Players when fleeing might be a good idea to regroup, and mount a counter-assault aside from fighting a losing battle.

That said, the numbers game is still important. Mages are ridiculously capable, so try not to pit your players against greater numbers of Awakened combatants. Having them outnumbered in terms of willworkers is probably a sure-fire way to end things if they ever get into a real fight. If such a situation does happen in my games, it’s often because the opposing cabal has other objectives as opposed to just killing. Capture or intimidation are both good things to go for in such situations. A show of force, when performed well, will cow even the cockiest Cabal into taking care of who they piss off.

It’s always helpful to remember that the players are the heroes of the story. In any situation, even the worst tragedy should be done in a manner that plays up that role. The GM’s job is to make sure that it’s always a good experience for everyone. If you pull that off then you’ve got all the balance your players can ask for.