In my Aethertide campaign, Lenny’s NWO Spook gave his cell phone to be used as components for an Etherite’s device. He had been using this cell phone for routine Technocratic procedures, minor bits of Enlightened Science. And then he went and bought a new phone, so he could keep doing that. As a GM, I didn’t question that, because I didn’t want “get a new Union phone” to be a plot point.

Naturally, in the back of my mind, I was starting to resolve this idea. Waking up on the Sunday of Celesticon this past weekend, I was struck with the solution: smartphones are Enlightened Science recently accepted by the Consensus. Well, mostly accepted, as they tend to crash like a motherfucker.

The hardware for Technocratic procedures (and Virtual Adept rotes) is ubiquitous. The software is the rub. But, as the Masses are fond of saying, “There’s an app for that.” Jailbreak your iOS device (or just turn it to a developer mode) and you can install applications that make use of the technology. Or install them on your Android. Each app is a procedure, one that uses Correspondence at minimum. Some also use Mind or Entropy — and it’s all within what the Consensus expects to see on the street. Other spheres are a stretch, and would probably burn the device out to absorb the paradox — notably Forces. Life or Spirit might only work as simple detection-and-display procedures, if you plug some other device into the headphone port or data port like you would a Square credit card reader device.

Glory to the Union! They’ve created a way to easily acquire backup gear. The VAs have also been able to use it, and write their own operating systems and rote applications. Another dimension of the Ascension War was sparked, with the NWO controlling the iPhone, and various factions in Iteration X fighting against themselves and Virtual Adepts in the battle ground that is Android development. (Blackberries? Windows phones? Who knows.)

(At least, they did back in the Aethertide continuity where such fights actually mattered.)

When these phones crash, it’s because the Consensus almost buys what they can do. And their fail-safe to not spew out paradoxical anamolies is to, well, crash. Sometimes just an app shuts down. Sometimes it’s so bad the phone bricks up.

It’s a little idea, but it’s a cool one to play with. And it means that gear from whatever’s routine doesn’t have to be so precious. I can click on my version of Google Maps+Life and scan for people in the area. My phone can make an encrypted call directly to another phone without the danger of going through the network. It can serve as an alarm for any number of things. That 99% of smartphones have cameras in them is no accident. And given how sounds and visuals can affect brainwaves, you can do some trippy Mind procedures.

I should note that this isn’t really a new idea. The Guide to the Technocracy covers pretty well how to look at Enlightened Science procedures. All I’m doing is thinking about taking the cell phone app model and applying it here. Remember, the device itself isn’t special, not in the Technocratic mindset. It isn’t a focus. It’s a tool to be used, not an item to be revered.

From a game standpoint, this idea serves a few story effects. It makes it easy to have Union characters doing things and resupplying. But most notably: it should make the Technocracy fucking frightening. Break an armature’s phone, he buys a new one. Or, hell, anyone walking down the street wearing Apple earbuds could be a fucking agent listening into your thoughts. And any phone can carry Enlightened software. The onslaught does not stop when you break the Union’s toys, but it does when it breaks yours.

You want evidence of Enlightened Science? Look in your pocket.

The Technocracy: There’s an app for that. There isn’t? Look again.

- Ryan

Once a person is properly attuned to space, it’s possible to see or chart anomalies like singularities and point masses. Gravity wells, wormholes and curved geometry are second nature. Remember how your math classes told you that a triangle always adds up to 180 degrees? Take a triangle and lay it on top of a globe, with two points along the equator and one at a pole – suddenly, it’s a triangle with three right angles! That’s just the least trick of Correspondence.

- Guide to the Technocracy, p. 49

Correspondence is Data

Cell phones. Wi-fi. Satellite transmissions. Television. Cable.

Before that, telegraphs. The early telephones. Shortwave radios.

Before that, letters. Books.

Before that, our voices.

Information can exist in our minds. It can exist on pieces of paper or hard drives. It can be transmitted through light or sound. It can be corrupted or destroyed. Information can be manipulated by nearly every Sphere, but there’s one Sphere that is information: Correspondence. Information has no sense of space, and yet it exists everywhere. That is the true power of the Correspondence master.

But because data is ephemeral, Correspondence alone does little. It can transfer and move information, which in this day and age of info-warfare is crucial. But with the right combinations of other Spheres, it can do more. Here are a some incomplete ideas about how to use Correspondence for Data manipulation:

Correspondence + Mind

Reading & transferring knowledge from one person to another, spanning distances. To the mind-hacker, your secrets are hers no matter where you are. Two mages with this can communicate with each other over distances, even sharing what another sees, hears & experiences. After all, that’s information in your mind.

This is a key (in my mind) to making the Digital Web 3.0 work. True neural networking, baby!

Correspondence + Matter

Duplicating hard drives or letters, nearby or in vast distances. The old adage that the most secure computer is the one that’s powered off and unplugged is untrue to someone who can just clone a hard drive by thinking about it.

Correspondence + Entropy

Early adepts of this technique are good at disrupting information flow. But the true master uses this to encrypt or decrypt knowledge. Add Mind to this, and suddenly you’ve encrypted thought itself. Necessary in this War.

Correspondence + Forces

Sense and feel information being transmitted around you. Add Mind to it, and you can read the information flowing around you. You’re a walking radio antenna. A walking broadcaster. A walking disruptor.

And nothing scares people quite like suddenly being in an information blackout. It’s like turning out the lights in a horror film. And that’s what the CorFor mage can do.

Correspondence + Mind + Matter

The college dream of sleeping on a book to absorb it through osmosis is not a dream for the Correspondence mage. Information is it Matter, and so it can be in Mind. Of course, that book could be anywhere in the world to someone with proficient enough Correspondence. (Which, by the way, would model The Archive from The Dresden Files.)

This also allows for some very scary Progenitor + Iteration X experiences, like the Enlightened Shock Corps.

Correspondence + Forces + Matter

You’re reading this blog post. Congrats. This rote is something the Masses[1] believe in.

I’ll leave it to readers and to the future to flesh these ideas out. But this is a core part of my Aethertide campaign, since we live in a world so saturated with wireless information. We had to figure out how all that worked, and given the Virtual Adepts and the nature of information, it just made perfect since to link that to Correspondence.

- Ryan

[1] Oops, did my allegiance just slip? ;)

Aethertide

Reason is Heresy. Conviction is Everything.

The Pitch

Start with “Mage: the Ascension, ten minutes from now.”[1] Add in some Caprica and sprinkle in some Max Attax from Unknown Armies. Then rock out with your cock out.

The World in Brief

The Technocracy got their way: the Umbra is closed and magick’s mostly dead. Paradox is barely an issue anymore — paradox spirits can’t come in, and it’s more work just to get something to work in a sleeper’s view than to get it to work right.

The Technocracy had a plan. It worked, and now they’re as dead as we are. But they were able to pull off one final stroke of magickal genius. AIs are able to exist right in front of sleepers. They walk around in automation bodies. The soulless, magick-resistant automations are continuing the Iteration. If you have flash, you should be fearing them.

Who You Are

You’re the last remaining Tradition Mages, rallying around the networks created by the Virtual Adepts & Sons of Ether. There are some renegade Technocrats as well, who realize they’ve cut themselves off as much as they’ve everyone else.

You’re also part of a plan, a cell in an operation codenamed Aethertide. You can bring back Ether, open up the Umbra, and spark magick back in the world. It’s risky; the Iterations are onto you. It might not work; a world-wide magickal effect was damned hard to pull off before. But goddamned, you must try!

What Just Happened

The Umbra closed off a year ago, at the same time the Iteration went publicly online, unveiled by {Blanking On A Cool Corporation Name}. Everyone who was Awake was hit hard–some died instantly, mostly those with advanced Arete. Most of us went into comas. A couple hundred of use are Again Awake and have been able to contact each other. The Sons and Adepts started the Neural Network, a network that cannot be accessed by machines. From there, theorists have begun work on Aethertide.

The world is getting used to friendly robots serving them in stores and cafes, just like they got used to Google and Twitter and Yelp and Craigslist telling them about things to discover and trust and try. That’s all part of the current Iteration.

What’s Happening Right Now

• There is a hospital in South Africa that has a elderly Zulu woman on life support. {Corporation Name} is providing them with free medical automations. Naturally, the world is celebrating this. But one of our own is in there, on life support. They say she’s an Oracle of Mind, who stayed behind. They say she’s part of the Neural Network’s backbone. If that’s true, soon the Iteration might have a way to tap into our last freedom.
• The earthquake in Japan was no accident. It was an attack against a {Corporation Name} plant — one that went too far. That splinter group is planning further attacks. They say it’s necessary, but they’re hurting thousands of people. And if they keep going too far, they’ll disrupt the Forces piece of Aethertide.
• There is a place in the heart of Russia that’s a wellspring of Prime. We need it. They need it. Our shadow war has been going on for three months in {Some Cool Location Name}. Commander Mehra needs reinforcements, especially those who know how to work very old Etherite technology (and most of them are still in comas).

What’s Looming in the Near Future

William McDouglas, a New World Order bastard, said that we have until May 21, 2011. That’s when the “next Iteration” is scheduled. {Corporation Name} is scheduled to unveil their newest consumer-level products at their expo that weekend.

That gives us barely four weeks. And the brightest of us are still in comas. Damn it to hell.

This is what Reason brought us.
The time for Reason is over.
Welcome to the Uprising of Conviction.
Welcome to Aethertide.

Audience Participation

What else has recently happened? What rumors are there about what’s going on right now? What else should we fear about in the near future?

Hey! If I get comments from ten other folks with ideas, I’ll post some more thoughts on Aethertide.
Which I got! There will be more Aethertide soon. But keep commenting with ideas! Some will find their way into a future post…

- Ryan

[1] Thanks to David Hill for that line.

My method of making antagonists: come up with a hurtful behavior & a target, then backfill the history until the antag becomes sympathetic.

It met with some resistance, as people said they find players want one-dimensional villains. But then I said “antagonists” and not “villains.” There is a difference, though I’ll leave that as a thought-exercise for the reader.

In any case, I like antagonists (and villains) to be more than one-dimensional for three reasons:

• If I understand their internal logic, I can play them consistently.
• One-dimension people can only be beaten. Complex characters can also be manipulated.
• Playing one-dimension characters bores the crap out of me.

At the Mage LARP I played in this past Saturday, I was asked to play an NPC that would be harassing one of the PCs. I was told the situation (said PC moved very quickly after a fire in her bar) and the NPC’s belief (that he was pretty sure said PC burned it down for the insurance money). I got to go from there. Oh, and the PC was a totally clueless sleeper.

Given the situation (said PC having moved across state lines), I decided to make him a fraud claims agent for the insurance company. And the STs gave me fairly broad narrative authority[1] to declare things about the situation that would make it complicated. So, with that authority and background, here’s what I had:

Hurtful behavior: figuratively crucify someone you believe to have committed arson

Target: Amber’s character Allison

So, I could be “some asshole that just wants to make someone’s life hell” but I needed more in order to make him feel believable. I didn’t have much to go on, because suddenly I was in character. But I knew that I could backfill the history of this guy and justify why he was an asshole during play.

Oh, and he had a name. I was Agent Frederick Hicks. Because I like naming antagonists after my friends.

The thread of justification:

• Allison (character) was at her bar, where I walked in and interviewed her about the fire. I was charming and nice enough, but I personally knew that was a front to be disarming.
• I then asked about her friend in the bar, Charity, by name. Apparently this was exactly the right thing to do, because she (played by my dear friend Jennifer Brozek) was totally paranoid at this point. And said that I would be in touch. Her eyes went wide.
• At this point, I walked away. I knew they needed time to stew. I didn’t have anything else to do as an NPC, so I went up to the STs are and just watched. Made a little small talk about how I was fucking my friends over, and confirmed that I could do big things, like pull the fire department or play related NPCs that this guy was connected to. The Head ST, Matt, was all for me rolling with it.[2]
• I still didn’t have the history yet, but I was starting to get the feel for it. I came back, and played out a phone call with Charity, where she was fairly defensive (and a bit rude). I knew that was the catalyst for Bad Things. And I needed a couple minutes to figure out why.
• My mind worked fast. I decided that this guy was a (quiet) misogynist. And a woman just challenged his authority.
• That wasn’t enough, though, to not be one-dimensional. I had to understand why, so his behavior wouldn’t just be “uh, because he hates women.” That’s morally equal-weighted to “uh, because he’s evil.”
• I then walked up, telling them that they got a call from the insurance company that the current policy was under suspension. That was Allison & Charity’s (and, really, Amber & Jenn’s) Oh Shit moment.
• I knew they were going to start using magick to figure out what the fuck was going on. So I took a step back to finish up the history. I was walking with a cane at the larp, and I decided that Hicks was crippled. Crippled by a famous in-game event that happened years ago. Was a firefighter, saved a famous person’s daughter, like the governor’s. Declared a hero. But his wife still left him when she didn’t want to take care of someone going through intense physical therapy and was scared by the experience. Which turned him into someone bitter. He doesn’t think of himself as hating women, but he does out of a fucked-up vulnerability.
• I had to add the counterpoint that once he got his job as a fraud claims agent, he was good. Good, and because he was a hero who lost something, others in power sympathized with him and thus he was connected.
• Admittedly, I hadn’t quite clicked on that one until about five seconds after I walked back in the scene, and said I was a different character, a “guy dressed as a fire chief.” He just walked in the bar, looked around, tipped his hat, and walked out. They were unnerved as all hell. (And for the record, that was the fire chief, but I said “dressed as” because I wasn’t going to give him a speaking role enough to declare it fact.)
• And to add to the end, and this might have been jumping the shark, he was pretty sore on this one and not thinking clearly because (a) his wife was also named Allison, and (b) he is a self-hating moron who still has his ex-wife on Facebook and recently saw pictures on her wall with her new boy-toy.
• Which mean suddenly I had history to explain why this guy thought he was right (or, rather, skipped from “strongly suspect” to “guilty under proven innocent”) about Allison burning down her own building. He had sleeper evidence that lead right to her, was damned good at his job, and was in a bad headspace for dealing with someone with the same name as his ex-wife.

That took around two hours, partly formed in response to reactions from Amber & Jenn, partly formed from my own actions and backfilling why they make sense. Sure enough, they used magic to figure out what was up with my character, and Allison (or maybe Amber) was left with an “oh fuck, I’m screwed” feeling.

Later, they figured out how to use my tenaciousness to their advantage. Since my character felt he was right, all they had to do was break him of this notion and he would get set on the next path. So they did their own digging, with magick, and Charity apologized and made herself uncharacteristically humble to a subtle, woman-hating asshole. The end result: they fucking co-opted him, made him someone they could use to do some sleeper policing.

That’s why I play complex characters. So that they can be treated like complex characters and the situations that arise can be dealt with in a number of ways. If I’m running a pulp game, sure, one-dimension villains with faces primed for punching. But for real drama, you have to remember that every character who acts thinks they’re right and have reasons to justify hurtful behavior.

I’m reminded of the first time I saw this that I can recall: In Final Fantasy 8, Seifer (an early-on antagonist) talked about how he was the hero and Squall (your character) was the bad guy. That blew me away. Sure, it didn’t change how I treated Seifer, but it did make that moment awesome.

- Ryan[3]

[1] Do this and I will happily be a vessel for your truth.

[2] Which, incidentally, displays an incredible amount of trust in a large-group dynamic. Something I’ve been pondering since the game for when I write up about my larp experiences thus far.

[3] I swear, I thought this was going to be a shorter post.

Relevant reading:

• Daniel Perez on Rebuilding Vampire
• JJ Lanza on Mage: the Ascension

(This will be a short post just to kick things off on my end, as I have been properly egged.)

So, here the thing: I fucking fell in love with Mage: the Ascension. Hard. Like, school boy crush on the hot, smart cheerleader hard. But I didn’t know anyone who wanted to run it. And I didn’t think I had the chops then to run it. So, I just read. And crushed. And read.

What really got it wasn’t just the magick, it was the paradigm. When you looked beneath the surface, there was this amazing moral choice in the setting. There were these chaotic reality-fuckers who were trying to keep the collective spirit of humanity from being snuffed out. Your heroes, your Robin Hood-types. Then there were these harsh guardians of the status quo who were snuffing out the collective spirit of humanity…in order to protect them from the devastation these chaotic reality-fuckers brought. Your villains, your Sheriffs of Nottingham.

But Robin Hood was also a rogue, a villain in some eyes. And the Sheriff was upholding his station, even if not having entirely noble methods or interests. It’s all about perspective. That was hot. Both sides want to save the world. Both sides are wrong. Pick one to side with.

And that perspective leaked through to how to do magick. There were many different ways to see magick, many ways to do magick, and…well, if you’re reading this, I suspect you know the high points of Mage. I loved the paradigm, the different perspectives.

I could take or leave the system. Not a complaint, per se, but it was the setting that fired me off.

Then I finally got to play a one-shot, thanks to my friend Jerry. He ran this game where we were brainwashed former Tradition mages who had become Iteration X — what he called the Enlightened Shock Corps (I don’t know if that’s in the books somewhere or not) — and I loved it. It was exactly what I was looking for: perspective. That said, Jerry was surprised that everyone had bought in so hard to being brainwashed. I think he expected some of us to rebel against it, and none of us did. We had a tragic slaughter of our old Chantry. Badass.

Later, Jerry ran a short campaign, but at the risk of gushing about my character, I’ll save that. In short: I loved it, but because of the other players and plot,  didn’t get to play with perspective as much as I wanted. (Briefly: I was a Son of Ether and fucking loved it.)

So, I have this thing in me that feels like it’s not done playing Mage. It’s not done playing with that world and those ideas. Naturally, I bought Mage: the Awakening when it came out, but it didn’t hook me. I’ll cop to how I didn’t give it a fair shake — I was looking for my school boy crush, and while this new girl was cute and totally down to hang out, she wasn’t who I was crushing on. (I should give it a shake again, though since then I have less time to devote to large systems, I’ll just have to grab a con game or something.)

Point being: what still fires me off is that moral ambiguity — that specific one, the Traditions vs. the Technocracy (or Order of Reason, I’ll take on some Sorcerers’ Crusade goodness) — and the way power was expressed as genuinely through perspective. You have these people that, for all intents and purposes, are reality-altering demigods. And they all want to make the world work more in their image, for whatever reason. Go.

I also had a lot of love for the detail in the magick system, the various spheres and levels. Made me feel like I could play a number of different mages with different perspectives and not have to work extra hard to not accidentally play the same character twice, if that makes sense. That’s probably what I feel is lacking in a number of indie designs these days, that the system doesn’t help aid me in playing a different role. That’s how I felt about Nine Worlds — it felt like it was a Mage loveletter, but there wasn’t enough there for me to have it feed my Mage fix. (Though, I enjoyed playing it for its own sake, so I’m not knocking it.)

Anyway, gentleman, there’s my initial post. Maybe there will be more. Maybe not. But, y’all have eggs and know where to throw them…

- Ryan