General Discussion

Thanks for the solid thoughts on how character development happens in this game.

I guess in most games, it's pretty typical that players would start by picking a Tradition that appeals and build their concept around it. Interestingly, in earlier editions of Mage, each Tradition had one affinity Sphere attached to it, so the Akashics are all about the Mind, the Cult of Ecstasy gets Time, etc (look at the first Sphere on each of the listed Traditions in the other thread). It's all very WoD. And I did think it makes for a samey-sameyness.

My invitation this game was to try to see if we could organically arrive at which Tradition your character might end up learning from, as they generally wouldn't even know what Traditions are in the first place. To do that, I was hoping to see how your characters play out, like what do they think magic is, what magic do they resort to more, and those choices draw them to respective Traditions.

So using Wren as an example, if her focus is music-based, and she is very reliant on tapping into the energies of the world, and she is always able to tune into all the phenomena around her, that does sound like something the Celestial Chorus might do, as opposed to let's say something like Dreamspeakers. Whereas KCC might be seeing Minsoo as more of a physically-focussed type (discussion in the other thread), maybe Akashic? And Kyle's been constantly science-y to see digital patterns, so maybe Sons of Ether? (although he hasn't used Matter much, which is super useful for this).

I think what sometimes gets in the way is Mage's over-written lore of the 90s, down to their names, I mean Cult of Ecstasy or Celestial Chorus, really? :P Makes them sound like hippies and religious apostles respectively. I think we can try to divest some of that lore, while still picking them as a Tradition. (ThetaSigma's point is that we can strip out those bits.) The game has alternate names for traditions just to circumvent this problem, so the Dreamspeakers are Khavadi, the Euthanatos are Chakravanti, etc.

I wanted to invent a bunch of 20 Questions to help us find our Tradition. Eg
Do you prefer to use your body or your mind when solving a problem?
Do you focus on the origins of something or the outcomes of something?
Do you try to affect a thing or the situation surrounding that thing?
What is more relevant to you, time or space?

You get my drift.

You know, I've reached a stage where sometimes I forget whether I posted something, or think I did when I didn't, or think I was editing something but it became something else altogether!

Anyway, good suggestion. Day Two night was certainly meant to devolve into after school individual threads so that everyone could catch up on personal goals. But we definitely have some adventure together directions still to pursue:

Main plots that connect:
1. Still need to coordinate whether you want to go after Emily, now that you have her trail from the hall (Joe and Myra), through the field (Minsoo), and out of campus (Kyle).

2. The counselling centre still has the heebie-jeebies. Torrance peeked at some files, but we didn't raid the place after that.

3a. The school has one or two more critical locations to discover that's relevant, eg the black room Myra saw, and the unknown symbol.
3b. Uncover more of the critical tensions in the school. Who's on whose side!

4. Find and save Daniela! And/or Alex Vance! (And why does the Headmaster have the same surname as Blackwood Sanatorium)

Side plots that connect:
1. Your parents! (Thanks Wren for discovering that first)
2. Find your Tradition and/or a master to guide you. (Minsoo's closest at this point)

Btw, once you get the Tradition, you can level up to Arete 3, xp permitting.

I'd rewind a bit to take in the counter-magic rules from the start (still p545, left column).

Countermagic works on the principle that you know what Sphere is being used to produce the magic, becaus you possess the same Sphere and can therefore attempt to 'undo' the effect. Somewhat similar to the rules for opposed rolls, the successes in your roll could be used to offset the successes in your opponent's roll.

Anti-magic (which is an optional rule) takes this one step further. Instead of using the same Sphere, one could just use Prime to oppose the magic being cast, by making it more difficult to cast, at the cost of Quintessence. This is the rule you screenshotted.

A third option is Unweaving (the next section on the same page, also optional), which uses Prime + the relevant Sphere. Because you have the relevant Sphere, it doesn't have to cost Quintessence.

I like the explanatory rationale for these rules, the logic behind them makes sense. Mages should be able to counter or undo magic. Even noob mages like our PCs might intuitively try to 'push back' with the same sphere or with Prime when they see something happening, eg a blast of fire comes your way, you call up some water, makes total sense.

In practice as a Storyteller I've also found this incredibly boring narratively. Someone casts something, I roll to negate, ad infinitum. (Sorry for the D&D reference, but imagine unlimited Counterspells. There goes all magic actions. A party of PCs can keep taking turns to roll against magic. A party of NPCs can keep taking turns to roll against any magic the PCs create. Occasionally a spell gets through, but by and large not much happens.)

I think countermagic makes the most sense in the context of PC vs NPC magical duels, if and when they happen. Unweaving magic makes the most sense if PCs encounter some magic they need to 'solve'. Anti-magic makes the most sense if the context is about the reality of magic, ie magic is loose and you're trying to snuff it out. In these contexts let's use all the rules. But otherwise, if you want to respond to someone's magic with magic of your own, give it a narrative sense of what's happening, rather than 'I roll to counter'. Hope this makes sense.

Btw, Lockwood Manor isn't that well protected as a Chantry as yet, it's a 2 dot Chantry, so rules-wise it'll either have 2 dice or a +2 for something, depending on what we're doing. The presence of you mages inside can add to its defense, based on whatever is relevant from your own Backgrounds.

Winding down the threads in preparation for the next chapter. Loose ends at the Lockwood house is all. Minsoo's and Jonathan's personal quests are kinda done for now.

Will have a new chapter up over the weekend! And also a summary sheet to keep all the important details refreshed (no one needs to try join the dots across all the individual threads, that's too hard!)