Oh, man. If there’s another love I have, it’s for Cyberpunk. I’m going to have to check out the Cyberpunk Revival Project sometime (when I have time). As far a similar contest, possibly, though I wouldn’t have the time myself to participate — my days of rapid design for contests are behind me. I like what I’m making when I take more time.

- Ryan

I fell in love with Mage too. I liked the setting and many of the mechanical aspects so much that I started telling all my friends how cool it was. Unfortunately, I allowed myself to get cornered into running a game before I was ready and ultimately ran the worst game in my life.

One things I found over at 1km1kt, that may be interesting to you, is the Cyberpunk Revival Project. It’s a contest urging participants to remake Cyberpunk. The contest is going strong and there are a lot of interesting entries. Perhaps there could be a similar contest using the elements of Mage?

http://robosnake.blogspot.com

There’s a lot on there, including house rules, blather, hacks, original games and so on. Feel free to comment – occasionally someone does on what’s posted (oddly, often from Scandanavia).

Mage, being informed by Ars Magica, also contains a bunch of leftover crud like Rotes. In my oh-so-humble opinion, if you’re so disengaged from the premise of Mage that you need a spellbook compiled from a bunch of supplements to play it competently, you’re probably not going to engage in the kind of play the game seems centred around.

Of course, this is in large part the reason for WoD’s success – a compelling premise to sucker in the keeners, yet enough flexibility for the casual players to play D&D with it. A friend of mine cheerfully tells the story of when he successfully ran Mage as a pulpy WWII Nazi-killing game, throwing out all notions of competing Paradigms and used the system primarily as a way to define the PCs’ superpowers.

The biggest issue my group ran into was the arguing and philosophical debates of that ensued… mainly from the poor wording in areas of the 2nd ed book. It got so bad at one point, a person stormed out and I distinctly remember three game sessions that were nothing but in character conversations (read yelling) about who was right and how magic would work to handle the bad guys… by the time they finished and came to a plan, I let them know that the sun was raising and it was too late (by the way, it really was that late and they had been arguing for hours). It was the best of games and the worst of games.

A thought occured to me today while I was listening to Gary Zukav’s _The Seat of the Soul_, that Avatar in Mage was given the short stick. I think that Humanity in Vampire really was supposed to mean something, some yardstick, something to fuel play. But Avatar was just…meh. There was the whole Quintessence/Paradox with it’s circular track, but Avatar seemed to crying out for something.

Zukav talks of the Soul (Avatar) as this timeless force that connects with a personality which is it’s manifestation in the field of time. This Awakening is the realization of the connection to this immortal force. The Soul will be in contact with many personalities ‘at the same time’ from the perspective of the timeless Soul. This was actually a game effect that was brought in with the players guide called Dream. Your rating in Dream was how many extra dice you could throw at a roll based on some ‘past life’ experience tapped through the Avatar. Trippy stuff.

In one sense, the Avatar could be a separate character in itself. This is a spin off Daniel’s Beast or Wraith’s Shadow. It is a thing unto itself that can be very distinct from the personalities it works through. The whole idea of past and future lives is a neat thing to play with. I don’t know how I would describe the Avatar mechanically and who would get most control of it (player or storyteller). Maybe Zukav’s book will give me some more ideas.

I do think, and maybe this is perspective again, but the traditions seemed less limiting that the clans of Vampire or tribes of Werewolves. There was a lot of room for all types of mages. And, in fact, when they were not battling the Technocracy they were battling each other to impose their own views on reality. Maybe the thing was that Mage was about individuals, not groups. Outlooks could very so greatly from mage to mage that it might be hard to keep a group together.

Magick really did shine with it’s coincidental effects. This was the most creative aspect of play. How to cast things differently every time to not draw attention and Paradox. The gang in my group shied away from that and embraced the more static powers of Vampires and Werewolves.

Thanks for keeping the conversation going.