User:Sophia 1

Hi, hello, hi. Your Focus Producer and That Witch Who Makes You Do A Lot Of Needless Writing here.

I wanted to explain my philosophy on focus notes and provide an example setup as a resource and to help people coming in or reviewing their focus notes so you know what I am looking for, and how to make the process easier on you.

First, your focus note is your chance to shine and show just how cool your character is, and how you think your magick works.

"But Sophia," I hear some of you say. "Isn't that what the book write-ups are for?"

Yes and no. The book write-ups are, in the words of a friend of mine "Very Big Purple Book" - they're a little meta. They're a little vague and generic. Creation may be Alive and Innately Divine, but that covers a lot of ground, just sharing some principles - how you interpret the principles can differ. The Garou view of Gaia and the Triat and the Tellurian fall in under that, but extremely few Mages will have a viewpoint that matches that perfectly. So, while not asking you to repeat what's in the book (though if a turn or phrase or a particular part of a write-up appeals to you, putting that in yours isn't bad), I do want you to tell us how it relates to your character.

The second part of what a focus note is for is to explain yourself to the point that when you cast a spell in a scene, a person who has read your note goes "Ah, yes, that makes sense". I'm sometimes a bit of a hardass on "How do you do that", not mechanically like the book of the same name, but asking people to tie their instruments to their practices, their practices to their other practices, and their practices to their paradigms. This doesn't have to be a very in-depth explanation - Sophia's use of Wands as a sole Forces Tool is that the phallic implements are a common hermetic tool to the point of being a trope, and that she just leans into that (and a small aside how it ties to her primary tool of Languages by often involving inscriptions, and inscriptions as a tool can be tied into languages and ANYWAY I'm getting distracted)

The third part is that I want it to give at-a-glance information. This is why I encourage a summary note that has a barebones approach. While the format is not set in stone, I recommend the following:

Paradigm:
Practices:
Primary Instrument:
Personalised Instrument:
Unique Instruments:
Surpassed Instruments:
Correspondence:
Entropy:
Forces:
Life:
Matter:
Mind:
Prime:
Spirit:
Time:
Universal:

If I have instruments that cover several spheres, but are not universal, I just slot them into multiple spheres, f ex Blood and Other Bodily Fluids covering Entropy, Life, Prime and Spirit. As well, the personalised instrument is a specialisation of your primary instrument that gives a difficulty break on your Affinity Sphere. For example, Sophia's Affinity Sphere is Spirit, so her Primary Instrument is Languages, and I'd write up Personalised Instrument as Enochian Invocations (Languages, Spirit). For the actual breakdown on focus, in a similar interest of clarity, I recommend you set up something like:

Paradigm:
Words go here.

Practice 1:
Words go here

Instrument 1:
Words go here.

Insert additional Practices and Instruments until you've covered it all, and a little repetition, pointing back or forward is A-ok. f ex, Sophia's Ars Cupiditae intersects with her Alchemy intersects with her High Ritual Magick, and all of them prod back to We Are All God(s) in Disguise and how that is interpreted through a Hermetic lens.

It's also okay to split this up into several notes, say a note for Paradigm, a note for Practices and a note for Instruments, both for clarity and space reasons. And if your paradigms and practices are clear (which is not the same as long, necessarily), then single-sentence Instrument entries Just Make Sense (see my above mention of Sophia versus Wands)

Last, I want to mention something about leaning on existing frameworks. This is something that really benefits the Technocracy, but it is seen in the Order of Hermes and just about every tradition as well. Your faction or subfaction usually has a shared framework described in the book, and for example, a Technocrat might not need to write a lot about their Hypertech practice because so much of it is inherent in the write-up of what the Technocracy are, and what Void Engineer Hypertech (for example) typically looks like. You'll still want to mention it, but like with the paradigm and practice write-ups, it is as much if not more about your character's relationship to the framework in question.

I tend to ask a fair amount of people writing these notes, and it is my hope that it can both be a fun excercise in fleshing out (or showing how you've fleshed out) your character, as well as build a narrative around your magick.

Thank you for reading all this, and remember: Truth until Paradox!