User:Luu
I'm working on staging all sort of handy game information here. Contributions will be welcome and encouraged, but please do that by contacting me with them, rather than simply editing this page. Thanks!
Mage: The Ascension
Mage is a wonderful game that I have a deep affection for, and I can honestly say it improved my life. At the same time, it can be quite intimidating to get into. Part of this comes from the abstract nature, the sizes of the book, and the x20 series being in part a love letter to fans of previous editions. There's also a lot of concepts that can make understanding the game easier that don't always get spelled out. While I'm always to help out those that are interested directly, I wanted to provide guidance for those that want to give the game a try, but are intimidated or don't know where to start.
Game Books
Introductory
Believe in Magick! - This is a very brief (just under 20 pages) fan created supplement for M20. It's purpose is to briefly show you why Mage is an interesting game and helps you understand what it's about, it's general themes, and gives you a conceptual framework for approaching the game.
Note: This author has kindly offered to give this book freely to the players of Liberation. Working out final details for protecting access to the file and properly crediting. Until then, you can page me about it or find it on Storyteller's Vault.
M20 Quickstart - This QuickStart introduces the basic lore, character types, and rules of M20. The rules presented don't have all the nuances, but unlike earlier Quickstarts, it's still the same game system. The main part is brief (just over 20 pages), followed up an example story and sample characters. While this is far from everything to the game, these first two books are really perfect for getting started.
Mage Translation Guide - The Translation Guide is meant to help Mage: The Awakening understand the difference between Mage: The Ascension. Having never played the former, I can't comment on it's quality, but it seems well regarded as a bridge between nWoD and oWoD Mage. This covers Mage Revised, not 20th, so things will be different, but it will have some helpful elements if you are approaching from nWoD.
Core
M20 Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition - This is the core book and quite a Tome. It gets into a lot of details, but even at just under 700 pages, it still doesn't cover everything. If you read the earlier books, you have enough to get started, and then one can read the sections of this more relevant to them, or even one day make it through cover-to-cover.
M20 How Do You Do That? - This is a bit of a reference book for the magickal system. It's divided into various categories of things you might want to do magickally. It then goes over the various rules and provides examples. Liberation uses these rules as the basis for adjudicating magick here, but also had House RUles that streamline some of the elements.
M20 Book of Secrets - Secondary Abilities, Merits and Flaws, and then more extensive write-ups on certain topics covered in the core book. Stat-wise it's useful, there are also various parts that might be individually useful, but the real thing to read here is the section on Focus (Paradigm/Practice/Instruments), which does a good job of both better explaining and clearing up some common misconceptions.
M20 Gods & Monsters - This is the NPC book. The retainers, allies, cultists, and antagonists you might expect. Also extensive sections on spirits and other beings. The back of the book includes extensive rules for creating a Familiar should you choose that background.
M20 Technocracy: Reloaded - This is the book for understanding The Technocracy. If that's the group you want to play, you probably want to look into this.
M20 Book of The Fallen - This is the book for understanding The Nephandi. It has an 18+ warning, and is by far the most 'mature audience' books White Wolf has ever made. I do not believe this is extensively used here for PCs, if at all. It's fascinating, but it's dark material. It's not the gratuitous gore of other 'adult' books, but really gets into abuse and grooming and things of that nature. Definite trigger warning, the book even indicates it thinks playing an Nephandi PC is bad or your soul, but it's well written and it can actually help you identify various predators and their techniques.
Note: This book is 18+, so you must login to drivethrurpg for the link to work. It is also probably the most disturbing book White Wolf has ever published, and in a way that connects not just to eldritch horrors, but to real world abuse. You have been Trigger Warned.
M20 Rich Bastard's Guide to Magick - This is a book that concentrates on using extreme wealth as part of your magickal praxis. If you're playing a Mage with Resources 6+, you might want to look into this book, though I wouldn't call it essential. My personal opinion is that this book is more useful for making chronicles where all the characters are rich, rather than a rich character on their own. I had also hoped it would focus more on the various other Backgrounds and Influence elements that seem to go hand-in-hand, but a lot of it is just throwing money and magick at problems. I did get some interesting things out of the book, but far from an essential book, even if playing a wealthy Mage.
M20 Lore of The Traditions - This book is still in Kickstarter. It has 20+ pages on each Tradition. Time will tell if this replaces or compliments the Tradition books from earlier editions. About half of the draft PDF has been released so far.
Specific Groups
While not M20, there are Tradition Books and Convention Books for each Mage group. There will be some rules elements that do not apply, but a lot of the lore and flavor elements can be very helpful, and it is generally recommended to check out said book for the particular group you are interested in. Certain groups, The Order of Hermes in particular, have a lot of very specific views on protocol and hierarchy, and these books are generally the best way to familiarize yourself with that.
Reference
Enlightened Grimoire - Fan created book available on Storyteller Vault. It includes all 2000+ rotes every published in any edition of any Mage book, and it's well organized. Worth the $15.
Mystic Armory - Similar to Enlightened Grimoire, but covering the 15000+ magickal items to be found in Mage books.
Note: There is a discount for buying Enlightened Grimoire and Mystic Armory Bundle.
The Nine Spheres - This is a quick reference to the Nine Spheres used in the M20 magick system. It describes the general level of control each level provides, as well as includes example effects. A handy reference from the author of Enlightened Grimoire and Mystic Armory
Note: Pretty much any book by Charles Siegel is good, but only those three are true reference books.
Game Podcasts
MUSH Clients
Not all MUSH clients are created equally, in fact some differ significantly lacking important features; having nasty bugs; or no longer being maintained. This has hampered MUSH servers for a long time as they have aimed to support all clients, meaning that a lot new features get ignored. RhostMUSH has made significant effort to have these improved features have a graceful fallback method for older clients (some 20 years out-of-date!), which means game Coders can start to target the newer clients while still providing a useable experience for the older clients. Still, these older clients have slowed down MUSH improvements for awhile now and most people don't even truly realize what the games are capable of doing. To combat this inertia, this guide will go over the various features and clients, helping players to get the best possible client setup with the least amount of work, and understand how this will benefit them.
Features
After surveying the MUSH, I ended up with a list of commonly used essential features that I will be working on covering. As you can see, this is a lot of ground to cover, especially when dealing with a number of clients on a number of platforms. It will take some time for all this information to be available here, but if there are certain priorities or things I'm missing, do let me know. I'm also happy to work with you individually on a particular setup, as going over that is source of documentation itself. Initial setup help provided might start by pointing at a particular area of a client's documentation, but that's a stop-gap until I have a chance to write it myself. When the documentation deals with something specific to Liberation, it will be noted. My expectation is a client will generally be used for multiple MUSHes (an MU*s in general), so I want to provide help that will work for all the games that one might play on.
FANSI
256 Color
24-bit Color
Accents
UTF8/UNICODE/Emoji
SSL
auto logging
spawn windows
connect and disconnect scripts
fugue-style editing
regular expressions/matcharoo
highlighting and gagging
scripting on received input
spell checking and grammar checking
other advanced features
other client and terminal considerations
actively maintained
Fonts
You will want a good monospaced or fixed-width font for a MUSH.
These are all good options, but not the only options.
Recommended Clients
Top Graphical Clients
If you want a graphical-style client, these are the way to go.
Top Terminal Clients
If you want a terminal-style client, these are the way to go.
TinyFugue: For TinyFugue you probably want to use my fork as well as some of my script library. I fully support both, so you can always request help, bug fixes, or feature requests. It is by far the most stable and feature rich version of TinyFugue out there.
Unconfirmed Clients
MUSHclient was previously lacking some features, but the latest update seems to have added them. This has not yet been fully explored, but if you want to stick with MUSHclient, it is recommended you use the latest release. Minor issues found: does not accept all unicode input (characters can still be created via % code see 'help unicode')
Slightly Buggy Clients
These clients are either the only options for certain platforms, or were demoted due to a currently unresolved bug.
Atlantis (Recent utf8 bug discovered in client, seeing if devs are responsive.)
Duck Client (Recent utf8 bug discovered, seeing if devs are responsive.)
Mobile Clients
To be researched: iOS and Android clients. MukLuk and BlowTorch seem to be the two commonly used on Android. Mudrammer for iOS. People talk about WebSockets clients also. Android can also use terminal emulator for TF/TT++
But what about ...
There are definitely other clients out there, and they will work in the sense that they can connect to the game and allow you to roleplay, but that doesn't mean they don't have issues. The problem with them is usually some combination of no longer being maintained, lacking modern features, and/or having noticeable issues. You never know when the next OS or Library update is going to break a piece of software that hasn't been maintained for a decade or two.
Mage Wonder Crafting
This is my scratch area for documenting things on creating Wonders for Mage.
Template Proposal
Name of Wonder:
Type of Wonder:
Description of the Wonder:
Material used to create the Wonder:
Abilities relevant to Crafting Wonder:
Focus used for Crating Wonder:
Source and Resonance of Quintessence being Used:
Attempting a Purification process during Crafting?
Merits and Flaws for Wonder:
Effects to Invest (list Name, Spheres, Description, and System as per Rotes):
Additional Notes:
Step One: Foundation – Materials and Craftsmanship
What Shall I Create?
What is the material object you are creating, how does it work, and how does it connect to your character's focus?
Traits for Craftsmanship
What Abilities are relevant to the creation of the object? It's recommended your character have them at least 3.
What Spheres are required? Your character will of course need these?
What Arete are you planning for the Wonder (if applicable) ? It can't be higher than your character's Arete.
Practice Makes Perfect
The character's Practice must make sense both in terms of the object being created and the intended effect.
Materials: The Right Stuff
What materials are you using to create this Wonder and how are you obtaining them?
Substandard materials can introduce Flaws.
The ST may determine that powerful Wonders (4+) can be crafted with nothing but the finest materials.
The materials used and time taken can provide a number of modifiers to the various Extended rolls need to craft the relevant Object:
Crappy Materials +1
Good Materials +0
Best Materials -1
Rush Job +2
Extra Time -1
Extensive Research -2
Step Two: Energy – Quintessence, Tass, and Resonance
Arete Roll
An initial Prime roll is made to begin instilling the object the needed Quintessence.
A second Prime roll is made to instill powers.
These can often be a series of roll, depending on successes needed.
Base Quintessence Cost
5 Quintessence per level of the Wonder is required, with potentially more for additional features such as increased Arete.
Notes and Thoughts on HRs:
BoS says this cost for everything, which makes little sense. This seems right for Talisman/Devices, but it seems off to me for some others, particularly Charms/Gadgets.
There are *some* Wonder Crafting which have an additional cost of Quintessence per success. I need to track that down, I think it's in the Charts.
HDYDT has a bit that says:
Such investment demands one point of Quintessence for the highest Sphere involved in the Effect. The aforementioned living bomb requires four points of Quintessence from the mage nasty enough to create it.
While not explicitly stated, it seems like the cost of creating a Charm should be equal to either it's highest Sphere employed or the level of the Charm (they'll be about the same, latter might be easier for bookkeeping), and that would be per Charm as you can make them in batches.
Sources of Energy =
Tass: Prime 3 effect to invest energy from tass in the item OR crafting the item out of Tass
Raw Quintessence: Prime 4 (from inanimate objects) or Prime 5 (from living beings), which tends to destroy the source.
Personal Life-Force: Prime 3 (the Mage channels Quintessence from self)
Combined Sources?: At ST discretion
Step Three: Investment – Quickening the Wonder
Required Successes: How Powerful is the Item?
Extended Arete roll with at least 3 successes per level of Wonder
Difficulty: Is it Paradoxical?
Aside from Charms, Fetishes, and Trinkets, most Wonders require a vulgar Prime 4 or 5 Effect to seal the deal. Every other Effect sealed into the Wonder must be invested into the foundation as well, which also tends to use vulgar magick.
All the Right Spheres
As mentioned earlier, your character must have all of the appropriate Spheres, at all the appropriate Ranks, in order to invest Effects into a Wonder. During the investment process, those Effects get cast into the foundation, hopefully taking hold when the Prime magick melds the energy into the process and binds the whole thing together.
Appropriate Resonance and Synergy
Investment roll modifiers based on Resonance of energy used in creation:
Appropriate Resonance /Synergy -2
Suitable Resonance /Synergy -1
Conflicting Resonance /Synergy +1
Opposed Resonance /Synergy +2
Optional Step: Purification
This is a Prime 2 effect. You can Purify a Wonder up to three times as part of the creation process. The amount of times you successfully purify provides a difficulty modifier for later Investment rolls. (max of -3)
It does not mention the number of required successes per level of purification, or if it could be an extended roll.
Questions this leaves me and possible HRs:
- Only 1 success per required per purification attempt
- 2 successes required per purification attempt (this is usually the minimum number of successes to effect something other than the casting Mage.)
- # successes required per purification attempt equals Rank of Wonder (minimum 2)
Questions this leaves me and possible HRs:
- To get to a level of purification, you need that many successful purification attempts in a row.
- Purification attempts can be done through extended rolls (would only do this if requiring more than 1 success per purification attempt.)
- Can you start over if you fail a roll or do you need to take the level already purified to?
- Does botching introduce a flaw? Remove existing purification/prevent future purification?
Optional Rules: Features and Flaws
Each feature adds its cost to the base cost of the Wonder. Flaws will not reduce cost of a Wonder below one dot (two points). All Traits bestowed upon the user depend upon the Wonder being in that person’s possession; without the Wonder, that Merit, Flaw, or Background goes away.
Features
1-pt. Feature Minor benefit (grants user +1 die to Perception rolls, bestows feelings of comfort or calm upon user, gives user one-dot Background Trait, etc.)
2-pt. Feature Helpful feature (can be summoned to hand from a yard or so away, gives user a 1- to 3-pt. Merit or two-dot Background Trait, ID programmable – works only for “registered” users, etc.)
3-pt. Feature Powerful aid (“danger sense” on successful Arete roll, speaks and has cooperative personality, gives user a 4- to 5-pt. Merit or three-dot Background Trait, etc.)
Flaws
1-pt. Flaw Minor annoyance (works only at night, must be stored in rare or expensive substance, “feels weird,” gives owner nightmares, etc.)
2-pt. Flaw Troublesome hassles (demands blood when used, has distinct personality, gives user a 1- to 3-pt. Flaw Trait, comes back when thrown away, etc.)
3-pt. Flaw Awful Curse (drains one year of life from user when employed, demands live sacrifices, has obnoxious personality… and talks, gives user a 4- to 5-pt. Flaw Trait, etc.)
Secret Features or Flaws
Wonder Features
Merits or Backgrounds as Features
This sort of thing can get out of hand, however; a perpetual flow of money or assistance could easily unbalance your chronicle. And so, such features must be limited to between one and three dots of Backgrounds, or 1 to 5 points of Merits, with Storyteller approval required for each one. We suggest that no more than three features, total, be added to a Wonder unless the Storyteller has added them secretly, and that a player should be limited to only one 3-pt. feature when his mage creates a Wonder
Sentient Wonders
Sentient Wonders – singing swords, AI computers, Englishaccented power-suit guidance systems, and so forth – could, with the Storyteller’s permission, be purchased with a Background like Ally, Familiar, Mentor or Retainer. In this case, the character is the Wonder and the Wonder is the character.
Wonder Flaws
Flaws from botching in creation should not reduce cost.
Flaw Traits as Flaws
System-wise, these features and flaws either add to or sub - tract points from the cost of a created Wonder. As an optional rule, the Storyteller may allow players to employ features and flaws when crafting Wonders for the mages, use them himself as hidden quirks, or both. Alternately, the player could use the Supernatural Flaw: Jinx /Infernal Contraption in order to “buy down” the cost of the Wonder. In this case, the Wonder is simply an almighty pain in the ass. For details, see Chapter One, pp. 88-89 . Regardless of the flaws it may possess, a Wonder Background – with the exception of Charms, Gadgets, and Trinkets, the “lesser Wonders” that can be used up and then replaced later – can never cost than one Background dot, or two points, through the value of its flaws. Once again, the Flaw Traits remain part and parcel of the Wonder; if it goes, they go too. Problem is, buggy wonders have a nasty tendency to keep coming back no
