Closing it down, building it back up.

The High Speech

So the next Chronicle is coming up, and I'm feeling nervous. Not just for the closing of the Chronicle, which thematically speaking I already have planned. My fear comes from not being sure what the future is like for Mage in New York City. It's never been the most popular, with only a handful of the Core players coming in. Holding games in NYC isn't cheap, and some of our games have already felt the axe.

I really don't want that for Mage. I think that it's a great game, just not for everyone. It thrives so well in other domains, some of which ONLY play Mage. Why not here?

Right now, I feel the end of the venue coming in for this Chronicle. May be it's all the planning for End O'The World Rituals and Antagonists no one expects. But the game is definitely coming to a final conclusion. If it is, and it doesn't get picked up for Next Chronicle in the City? Then that's it, I'm out as a Storyteller, at least for a little while.

However, I'm working on the knowledge that people DO want to play Mage, just not for this Chronicle. To be fair, I don't blame them. There are only a handful of games left, what the hell could they possibly do in such short amount of time? I can throw NPCs at people interested, and to be fair I have about a half dozen on deck for people, but it doesn't compete with the thrill of building and playing your own character.

So, that brings me back to Next Chronicle, and planning. I have plans. They're tentative, until National puts out their Addendum, but this is the groundwork plans I have.

I. Places of Power

Mage the Awakening is a Player vs Environment game. By sheers nature of it's description, it's about the Diamond/Pentacle Orders (re)discovering and encountering other forces within the world. Temples, conspiracies, artifacts, creatures, Spirits, etc. In a setting like New York, where old is new and new is always on the horizon, that can be a lot of fun to play with.

In the current chronicle, the game is deeply entrenched. The Main setting of the game is an abandoned subway station with a sense of "We deal with the problems on the outside". So there is very little exploration and sense of consistency in the game. It really is just "Whatever geography the ST wants at the time." While that makes sense, I like continuity and consistency. I want actions to make sense. That hasn't really existed for this chronicle of Mage.

So my plan is to create landmarks throughout the City, places of interest for Mages. Bookstores, Temples, Clubs, and god knows what else. I want this City to be alive for the players and not just some arbitrary field for them to walk around.

Another Idea I have. A friend of mine who plays Requiem has done extensive research on Ley Lines, energy lines within the earth that also exist within clutches of civilization and bisect, join and split off like a power conduit. The Prime Arcanum is built largely around this concept. I want to develop that so when people use that magic they can actually go "oh, I'm not on a nexus point" or "there is a convergence of ley lines, I wonder what this does..."

To tie off this section, I want to stress that I plan on doing a lot of bookkeeping for this game. Whose dots are in what and where, lists of people, places and things

II People of Power

If you're going to build a world, you have to fill it, right? I want to build a series of NPCs that exist in these locations and that serve as charcters for the PCs to interact with. I want there to be antagonistic characters, contagonistic characters, supporting characters, sidekicks.

Most importantly, I want there to be a decent representation in the Orders. One of the key factors in this game are the Pentacle Orders and their ties (or in the Free Council's case, lack of ties) to Old Atlantis. For multiple reasons, two of which being attendance not allowing impressive political game and the fact that some of the previous storyteller's seemed to want to play Mage: The Ascension a lot more than Mage: the Awakening, and wished to focus on the Paths far more than the Orders. While I like Ascension, trying to warp Awakening into Ascension is like calling an Ox a Bull. Thank you for the effort, but just stop cutting his balls off. I digress...

One of the best games I've ever played in is the local Changeling: The Lost game. One of the reasons why is because (to me) there is a sense of continuity and history. This City is well lived in by the Freehold, with numerous contacts, motleys, Court owned buildings and other valuable locations being firmly established by PCs and NPCs with ties to those areas as well as motivations and agendas of their own.. I want that for Mage, and I think it can be done. I want their to be color in this game other than "There's trouble afoot! Quick! To the mage-mobile!"

III: Objects of Power

In case no one has noticed, I love the use of relics and objects of power. Granted, for this kind of game, I'm aiming more towards larger, less moveable versions of what I did this year. I want to explore that as much as possible. An enhanced sword being used in the night, an imbued necklace causing troubles. That kind of thing. Nothing major (the Addendum would shit itself with some of the things I had planned. More importantly though, I like having history for an item, because that helps color the world around them.

IV:  Stories of the Soul

To finish off, I want this game to be about what Awakening is in the crux: A story about the inherent Magic in the soul of a person. I've spoken to several people interested in playing Mage and hearing their concepts. Some of them are so beautiful and so in depth that I could feel myself being challenged to meet their requirements. How does being connected to the Universe affect you? I know a lot of people play Mage as some form of instant gratification. Well, I have a Soul Stone and Mastery of Forces, I can shoot whatever I want Pew Pew Pew!!.

Those are some players, mind you, not their characters. I want to give the game back an inherent introspection it seems to have lacked. Like recently, when the PCs/players sat down and started discussing "What if these people CAN Nuke the Abyss? What would the world be like without Paradox? Is that even a good thing?" I want that because that means that they (the players and the PCs) are conscious of their decisions and aren't just going "BACK EVIL DOERS!!! I'm a MAGE!!"

Conclusion
So I have all of these planned, and I'm willing to implement them. But I can plan for the greatest, smoothest game on earth and it will mean nothing if no one wants to play. I can plan anything, but what does that mean if people don't want to interact with that world?

We'll see where we get to after February, hopefully, with a lot more Magic to come.

of course, we can just say fuck it and build the venue around this...





Later