Mage: the Awakening

[Zeth]

 Hello! I am hoping to start a Mage: The Awakening game here on Elliquiy. laa has joined as a Mage and I would like a few more players before starting. I picture this game to feature exploration into the mysteries of magic and character driven. I will be using the nWoD core book and the Mage: the Awakened core book. If you are interested or have any questions, please feel free to post them here or PM me.

[BraveEarth]

I'd be interested, probably would want to be one of those new age Free Council Hippies. :P

[laa]

Hello thar Brave! I'm planning on playing the not-so-hippie Silver Ladder peeps, aye! =)

[Angie]

Dr. Angelo may be reporting in for this one. Any ideas where this is gonna take place in the world? Regardless, Angelo's a Mysterium Mastigo, and a licensed Doctor. So he'll have Medicine up the strap and a good chunk of Life in addition to the Mind and Space stuff. Oh, and a katana. Because Katanas are awesome.

[laa]

That would make us two Mastigo, aye! We're from quite different professions though, to say the least. Mine is a 'Financial services sales agent', or something like that. I totally googled it just now. I haven't figured out what weapon he would be using, but a gun wouldn't be unlikely.

And I have no idea where this takes place just yet. But hello there! I think this makes us four people + GM.

[Muse]

oooh!  Oooh!  May I play? 

[Zeth]

Alright, so what section we want to put this in? laa suggested exotic bondage. Everyone fine with that or have a different preference?

[Lockepick]

Always posting interest for Mage, if there is still room.

As for concept, I've got a couple I'm tossing about, depending on the campaign itself.

[Zeth]

Well this is my first time running Mage. I ran other nWoD games such as Hunter and Promethean. If you got any campaign ideas, I'm open to hear them.

[Muse]

Bondage exotic is fine, though Im sure you know where i'd put it if all else was equal. ;) 

[laa]

I can recommend one thing to ya, Zeth: Make up your own rules, your own creatures, and go off-road from the book as you please. Might already know this lil' thing, but in general, the books are meant as a form of guideline rather than a strict codex. =P

As for exact location, I'm up for just about anything, though my background only makes sense in nations/places with an intact banking system. =P

[Angie]

Dr. Angelo works best in Seattle, if only because it's the city I know the most about, but he can go anywhere and do just about anything. Mages always want a pair o' healing hands around. That reminds me, I'm going to need to rebuild him...again.

[Zeth]

Counting Stormwyrm that makes 6 players. I better make the game thread, we are fully packed. I need character sheets from everyone pmed to me. laa already sent his in.

[Angie]

Counting Stormwyrm that makes 6 players. I better make the game thread, we are fully packed. I need character sheets from everyone pmed to me. laa already sent his in.

Be done in a minute, need to look up a couple things.

[laa]

Headsup to the rest of you guys, my char is very social.

Also, anyone understood that section on how to do improv-spells?

[Angie]

Headsup to the rest of you guys, my char is very social.

Also, anyone understood that section on how to do improv-spells?

Need an explanation? I'll be happy to tell you how to do it if you need to.

[laa]

Yea, that'd be awe. =P

[Angie]

Yea, that'd be awe. =P

Zeth has also asked me to teach everyone about the wonderful site www.myth-weavers.com Go there, create an account if you haven't already, then go to Sheets. Click "Create New", name it whatever your character name is, and under Type, select "New World of Darkness". From there, you'll find that it's quite easy to fill it in. Much simpler then writing it all out in PM, trust me. Here, for example, is Angelo:

http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=1108111

Now, Improvised Spells: They're really quite simple. If it's one of your two ruling Arcana (let's use Angelo as an example, so for him, Mind and Space), it's a freebie. If it isn't, you must pay 1 point of Mana. This is ON TOP of any other Mana costs, so for example, if Angelo wanted to cast an improvised Healing Heart spell (a spell with a 1 mana cost), that would require him to spend 2 points of Mana-something he can't do til Gnosis 2.

Once you've paid the Mana, you roll (Arcana)+Gnosis. Let's say Angelo wanted to improv cast "Opening the Lidless Eye" (Mind 2, so free for him). He would roll his Mind of 2 plus his Gnosis of 1, for 3 dice. If you make the roll, hooray, the spell goes off. If not, well, it doesn't happen. Paradox rules apply the same to improv spells.

And really, that's all there is too it. Improvised spells follow all the same rules as Rote spells. Granted, improv spells don't need any kind of motions or chanting (like Rotes do), but for the most part, Rote spells have a lot of advantages over Improvised versions. 

Any questions?

[laa]

So unless there is a die-benifit, taking rotes in your own ruling Arcana is pointless?

[Angie]

So unless there is a die-benifit, taking rotes in your own ruling Arcana is pointless?

To an extent, yes. Angelo has a lot of them, mostly Perception based ones (Aura Perception, Third Eye, and Spatial Map) because he wants to ensure he casts those, especially in a critical moment. Take Rotes if you think/know you're going to cast those a lot, and I HIGHLY recommend taking at least 1 Mage Sight rote.

[laa]

I've got Third Eye, Multi-tasking and Postcognition, yeap!

I'll keep Multi-tasking, even though without academics I barely get any benifit at all. (-3 for unskilled)
Plan is to increase academics later, yeap.

[Zeth]

Alright then, your characters are all a part of one cabal. Appearently these have thems. So think up your Cabals theme like alchemy or baseball, or what ever.

You are NOT allowed the Destiny advantage. Becoming a Mage that can alter reality through will power makes you special enough.

[Angie]

Angelo gives not one fuck about the theme. Whatever you guys wanna play with, go ahead.

[Lockepick]

I'm a little confused at the order of operations here -- it seems like people are already submitting character sheets, but I don't even know that we have a theme for the campaign or the cabal.

If we're a cabal, we might want to be more... open to talking to each other what we're playing.

So are we saying that it's base character creation, but no Destiny Merit?

[Zeth]

Because Destiny just bugs me. You are already one of the chosen few in the world that can weil High Magic. That alone should be a destiny.

Laa gave me his character before I posted the ad and and Angie sent me her character from work. So I said gimme your sheets then read the 'cabals have themes' page just now. So I went out of order a bit.

The campaign takes place in a large metropolis in the modern USA. I don't want to pick a specific city in case one of you actually lived in that city and would gain n advantage.

I thought if we all got on mythweavers the party can look at each other's sheets and discuss.