Translating Magic and Fate

So, as some of you will realize, I really do enjoy Mage: The Awakening. Like, really like Mage. Some people talk about Vampire (either Requiem or Masquerade), or Changeling, or whatever game being theirs. Awakening is mine.

Mage the Awakening is White Wolf's spiritual successor to it's Classic Mage: The Ascension. Awakening is set in the New World of Darkness line and deals with that line on both a cosmic scale, while still boiling it down to a key facet. In this game, Magic is the manipulation of the fabric of Reality, with Mages being able to perceive and manipulate those forces. Their souls were tied in to the higher realms of power and being. Mages grew powerful, Mages grew in numbers, and then Mages grew proud. They broke Reality as it was beyond repair, creating a gaping maw of reality that permeates the souls of most of the world. Magic is now at a premium, and the ability to use it is hampered by those who cannot use it. Mages must now contend with a world that no longer bows to it.

Awakening is the game of the cost of phenomenal cosmic powers. What happens when you go from a normal human to being the next best thing to a deity? What happens when you must encounter others like you and take sides in their eons long struggles with each other? When is it your fight? Is it your fight? How do you function in a world where the normal population is unable on an innate level to believe you, and therefore is as much an enemy as the monsters and mages you stand against?

It also asks the question of the Soul. A Mage's soul is their link to the forces of Creation. Without it, they are nothing. This is something that fascinates me the most, as someone who loves to discuss the psyche and soul to his heart's content.

There's just one problem: I hate the system the game is based on.

Awakening is part of the New World of Darkness system. It's a crunchy system, even for it's more straightforward lines like Hunter or Vampire. So many factors go into the creation of the character's sheets, it becomes hard to not focus on them. With Mage, it's even worse because Magic isn't free and you run the risk of pulling several times for one single spell. While this works (maybe) for a table top, it rarely works for a Larp. I've heard it said multiple times that Mage is the hardest game to run as a Larp. The math is too much.

There are also hundreds of spells that a player can do for their characters. where the other templates are limited to only a handful. So unless you know exactly what your character is doing next, you could be stuck. There have been many times where an ST has to tell a player that if they don't know the spell they are doing or the affect, they they can't use it during their turn. It takes up time, and larps should not be about doing pulls.

I often feel that when they were translating New World of Darkness from Tabletop to Larp, they didn't go as far as they could have. When situations get really action heavy, larps devolve into Tabletop games. I've had players, most of whom are larp designers and role playing veterans, up and leave because they weren't interested in playing a larple-top

Part of the reason I stopped running Mage was due to the focus on the pulls, which lead to a focus on the sheets, which lead to the lack of focus on the world. No one wanted to experience the plot, they just used the magic to solve the plot. This is a common problem in the MES, aided and abetted by a system that makes everything Quantitative and therefore measurable and finite. You know how strong your Storyteller can make his characters, so you know how you need to make your characters stronger. When you game the system, are you really playing a larp?

A few weeks ago, I was talking to my friend, who is also the Mage storyteller in our Accord game (the game needs experts on the different templates, there are that many) and we talked about the difficulties of playing a Mage in this game. We're also part of the New York Chronicle of Dresden Lives, he a player and me a Storyteller. We talked about the system, which is based on Evil Hat's Fate Core system. It's a narrative system where half of the character The magic in the game is easy and the combat pulls are simplistic. It deals with Qualitative action. How well did a thing happen as opposed to how much of a thing happened. It's simple, it's fun and it can be done without over thinking it.

For example: this past weekend we ran a game of Dresden at Imagine Nation Festival, which was in a camp in Connecticut. We played, in the dark of night, a combat heavy game with roving bands of hunters against the supernatural community. The combat system was explosive and dynamic and didn't take forever. People got to act out what they were doing, thereby diminishing (though not completely covering) the break from immersion. And these weren't small things, people acted being blasted into each other, of eating holy relics of dead gods, they did those things.

So, after thinking about it, I figured what would it be worth to convert Mage the Awakening to the Fate Core system?

That's one of my current projects, to try and translate the mechanics of Mage over to Fate Core. The setting would be left relatively untouched. There would still be the five paths of Mages, each an expert of two of the ten elements of Reality. There would still be five Orders of Awakened Society: The Pentacle. There would still be the Abyss and Disbelief, which level the playing field against the Mages.

The transition so far has been easy. Nothing set in stone, but going over it with my friends (whose names I won't say because they are officers of the MES) there are some points that I'm liking.

Simplifying Magic:
Magic is a stratified system in Awakening, only some can be done at a certain level of experience. Each level opens up access to certain rotes: specified versions of it. However, searching for these rotes can lead to overly long wait times we talked about before. In the Fate Core version, the magic would be considered a Creative Thaumaturgy. Creative Thaumaturgy isn't a specific spell, it's the player declaring a general action using their magic and the Storyteller filling in the blanks. This aspect gets removed from play alot, because it's hard to quantify how that affects the world.

With Fate Core, most skills are done like this. They break down the actions a character can take in four simple steps: Fight, Defend, Overcome an Obstacle, Create an Advantage. With that, and the fact that it deals in Qualitative and not Quantitative affects makes magic much more creative and expressive.

Example: A Mage with control of Fate (because reasons) is in a situation and they are about to get hit hard in the face. They have a few options here, if all they want to do is magic. They can Defend with their magic, and make a pull counter to the attack aimed at their face. They pull their rating in Fate Magic, and whatever difference between the attack pull and the defense pull will lead to Stress. The Defend pull is really well and the Storyteller says that a patch of water on the ground makes the attacker twist his ankle, skewing the blow into ineffectivity. Damn the luck

The Mage can of course attack with Fate, which is simpler and more straight forward. The Mage curses the action, causing the attacker to slip on the patch of the water on the floor and hurting themselves pretty bad. Damn the luck

The Mage, once they aren't being bashed in the head, could try to create an advantage on either the scene or the person. One of my favorite Fate spells is to curse a person, restricting them from acting a certain way. That would count as an advantage on them. The Mage would be able to invoke that to the detriment of the attacker. Damn their luck.

Finally, the Mage could do the most sensible thing: Run. They use their Fate magic to Overcome an Obstacle and find an exit. They pull against the challenge of finding an exit. The spell leads them to a conveniently unlocked door which they bolt out of. The attacker doesn't get to them in time and instead has a door slammed in their face. Damn their luck.

Magic Skills would be part of their own Skill Pyramid. You'd have One good skill and the rest beneath it. It'd be capped, initially, at a (+3), which is about fair and makes invoking your Aspects (Ie; keeping it in the tone of your character) all the more important. You want a stronger spell? Narrate how your Warrior Mage enters a combat ready stance before he uses Space Magic to attack you with his sword from across the room. Make the roleplay actions count towards the magic.

Paradox as a Consequence, Gnosis as a Skill
Paradox is one of those major things that happens when you start futzing with Magic too much. It's when Reality strikes back against any magic it deems is pushing the boundaries a bit too much. The stronger spells in Awakening were considered Vulgar, something that was clearly not plausible or went in the face of Reality on a significant level. Creating Thunder or Fire, changing the physical structure of one's self or another. Paradox is also invoked when Sleepers, normal humans who can't perceive magic, view magic. Their sense of reality is so unshakeable that the magic fizzles and Reality enforces itself further.

In the original, Paradox was it's own mechanic and lead to potentially a lot more pulls before you even pulled for your spell. In Fate Core, they have the Stress Tracks. Stress is the equivalent to damage, though they go away during a scene. The writing describes it as all the little chances that you didn't get hurt, but it's only a matter of time. The real damage, the ones that linger, are Consequences. If your stress fills and you want to stay in combat and not be at the mercy of others, you take a consequence. In physical combat, you may have a broken arm, rib  or be gut stabbed (whatever appropriate). In mental or social settings, you may find yourself Under a Compulsion, or Socially Disgraced. This can happen with Magic.

When casting something deemed Vulgar or Implausible, you pull for Paradox Stress. If you continue to fill up the Stress, you're either out of action or take a Consequence. These can follow the normal parameters of being marked by Paradox, or have a magical anomaly hover around you or worse, Hunted by An Abyssal Manifestation as a Consequence. To be nice, you can spend Fate Points to get mitigate the stress, but you only have so many Fate Points and you only have so many stress and consequence slots.

With all Stress and Consequence slots, there is a skill to help deal with that. For physical situations, you have Physique, your physical endurance. For Mental/Social, you have Will. The higher these Skills are, the more stress you can take. Tank characters would have their physique or will as their top Skill. For Mages, this would be Gnosis. Gnosis in the Original game was your Power Stat, how strong your magic was. It was also the level at which your Paradox pulls were measured. The goal was to pull your Gnosis or Higher, making someone with a Gnosis of 7 (out of 10) very powerful but with a 66% chance of evoking Paradox.

Because the game system in Fate Core is based more on the strength of the Skill and is a Qualitative system, Gnosis makes sense as being their "Magical Toughness". The stronger your Gnosis, the more Paradox Stress you can take on before it explodes. Fate Core focuses more on what you can do, so this changes the tone, but keeps the flavor.

Path as Aspect
While in Accord, there were a few instances where my PC, a Fate and Time Mage, had run into another Time Mage. In Awakening, you gain your magic by bonding yourself by one of five magical realms. Those realms govern two of the ten principles of magic, but you could learn any of the others with little-substantial difficulty. Rhys, my PC, was from the realm that Governed Fate and Time, the other Mage wasn't, but they were also equal to him in Time. In the White Wolf version, this means that if the two of them got into a Time fight (which is a Storyteller Nightmare) then the fight would be even with Rhys being able to cast it free while the other Mage had to spend Mana. You'd think that was a high enough price, but it really isn't. Most fights are over before you expend yourself completely.

So, in the Fate Core version, the Path of the Mage, which denotes what Powers are their strongest, would be considered as Aspects to be envoked when combatting other Magic. It shows that those Mages have governance over those spheres of Magic, yet have to acknowledge the mastery of the others in theirs. This helps mitigate the loss of the concept of Mastery.

The Aspects can also help identify the Character's Order and especially their Legacy. Legacies are subsections of Mages that add specificity in the type of Magic they do. Most of it went towards making strong spells not invoke Paradox, but they also were great for flavor. There were Scientist Space Mages, Mages who can read Fate through the magic inherent in Cities and hundreds of others. Those are Aspects, the kinds of things that come up during stories and that flavor how a Character acts, that can be compelled into plot when needed.


This is all still a work in progress, and I'm still not sure what I intend to do with it. Maybe I'll try to run it at a convention game, or just play it as a troupe game with some friends. This isn't something I want to hock off. It's a labor of love, and those deserved to be shared.

If you have any ideas as to how else these can be translated, or enjoy Mage, send me a comment below. I'll post updates as time goes on.

Later,

C

Dreamation 2015

I just got back from Dreamation 2015, the annual convention run by Double Exposure, the organizers for DexCon, Metatopia and many other events. This was also the first time as an official member of the Phoenix Outlaw Production staff, working as a Storyteller and GM. It was a good con and one hard worked at.

The Dresden Lives games experienced what we (the Storytellers) were calling a Mid-Season Finale. The Chronicle , the grand sum of the story as told with the players, has spanned many years and numerous conventions across the United States This weekend was the culmination of all of those plots and moving on to a new mode. Conspiracies were found out, and antagonists were revealed. There was also a conversation of power and responsibility, themes that are prevalent throughout the Dresden Files. When the things that bump come out of the dark to attack you, how do you make your stand? In a room full of Wizards, Vampires, Shifters, Mobters, Valkyries, Changelings and a whole host of other creatures and human, it's interesting to see where people made their stand.

I got to play three different characters throughout these games. Each one had their own motivations and troubles. The first was a doctor who was monitoring children prophesied to help bring about the end of the world. Unfortunately, those children were the children of the supernatural community of New York (read: a large chunk of the players) and they were mightily pissed. The character meant well, and would easily flip to the player's side when things were explained. However, he was also limited in what he could do to help them.

So, a few pissed off supernaturals essentially having an office drone asking them if they've tried turning it on and off? Yeah, that went well. In the span of ten minutes he was arrested, released, arrested, cornered and then had his heart ripped out of his chest. Full on Temple of Doom.

I next played a faceless monster who was once a human but had his personality completely deleted for the Conspiracy that abducted the children. He was set as a door guard, a powerful one, to keep the children protected. People tried to beg him, people tried to cajole him, and there were plenty of threats abound. They could have attacked him, and most of them would have made it through. But then one character made a decision. Because of plot, he had access to an alternate option. With the Storyteller's approval, he offered to take the children to another plane of being, effectively keeping them out of the way for everyone. That got them through. But it came at the cost of the PC who did, thereby marking the first PC death.

The faceless guardian remained with the children in the plane, swearing to protect them to their family members. Even at the next night's game, he was brought up. That made me feel good because he made an impact on people.

The next night I played Warden Parrish. Parrish is a Warden, which in the Dresden Files world means that he is a human Wizard who works for the White Council, the ruling body for Mortal Magic users.He's their cops, soldiers, and executioners. Wardens don't take "I didn't know" as an answer and are quick with the flick of the blade. The City of New York, for their gross litany of miscalculations, omissions, and just acts of wackiness, were held on trial by the Supernatural Community as a whole, with three Wardens presiding in Tribunal. Of the Three, Parrish was the most remote. Barely speaking, eyes blocked by sunglasses. Hands covered in black gloves. The only thing revealed on him was his sword. He wasn't a big talker, but when he did it was decisive.

Playing Parrish, I didn't want him to be just "I'm the one who kills you." He's Javert-like in that he will hunt you down until judgment day if he thinks you need a huntin'. But he's not one-dimensional. He has his own mind about how things work. I got a lot of compliments after game about how intimidating Parrish came off. He'll be a fun Face NPC (read: an recurring NPC) to play.

It was interesting watching the threads tie together during Dresden. Years of secrets got outted and revealed and characters had to make a lot of interesting decisions that will undoubtedly affect the second season.

I didn't sign up for much during the weekend. Aside from working on Dresden I had entered myself into a boffer tournament. It was sponsored by Oblivion Larp, a dystopian Boffer Larp in New Jersey. Several of the runners of Oblivion came in to Dresden the day before, giving me the opportunity to go "HELLO NEW FRIENDS". I've never done a boffer tournament before, point of fact I really don't get the chance to do boffer larps due to money and time. So getting a chance to try out some things was interesting to say the least. It also made for good research in developing Kensei, as I'm currently still bashing my head as how to make a combat system that is entertaining to both the fighters and the audience.

There were three tourneys. The dagger fighting one, the open weapon tournament, and a gauntlet course. The dagger fighting I went 1 out of 2 matches. I'm not much of a inclose fighter with weapons. I pretty much fell in love with a miniature Buster Sword, which had a wonderful reach and a wide blade to allow for easy deflections and blocks. I went 2 of the 3 matches I was in. Of the 5 stations of the gauntlet, I only made it to the second one. It was an interesting blend of folks who just liked to try out boffering and players who have been doing this for a long as time and clearly have weapons training. It left me feeling much more positive about Kensei, and needing to do this more.

What is also did was give me some awesome cardio as well. Unfortunately, my gas tank went empty shortly after that. I'm still trying to figure out better ways to keep my energy going during these conventions. To know when to hold em and keep playing and to know when to fold em. It's one of the things that keeps me from DR (aside from the aforementioned time+money) is that I am not a 24 hour marathon person. I like my sleeps. I was debating going to Ex Arcana, the Chronos system larp developed by Eschaton Media and Nerdy City productions (the venerable House of Jaffe). I was on line to sign in for game, when I felt my energy jackknife.

You see, not only was the boffer tournament matches exerting in ways I haven't done in months, it's Lent and I--like a moron--gave up soda. For those of you who haven't met me, I'm a Coke Fiend. I love my little red soda cans. So giving that up and then running a convention where I can't eat meat on Friday and can't drink cold caffeinated beverages (I don't drink hot drinks, sorry) meant that my blood-sugar levels were going WEEE! at various points.

So, I did the smart thing, backed out and let people who had never played it get a shot. When I went upstairs to nap, I looked at my recently purchased book for Ex Arcana (now available in PDF and softcover on DriveThruRPG) I realized my name was listed in the Playtesters section. I'd forgotten outright that I played a game before, so that became a magnificent surprise. I also know that there will be other games, and now that I have the deck and the book and actually know what the hell is going on, I now have plans and ideas.

My convention, otherwise, was rather chilled out. After going to a few of the Double Exposure conventions this year, I feel like I know a sizeable chunk of the population by face if not by name. For someone whose social anxiety is practically a lifestyle choice, this is a relief. I got to talk to Ashley Zdeb, co-founder of Eschaton Media. Eschaton is responsible for Dystopia Rising, the Apocalyptic Boffer Larp that is now a widespread network throughout North America. It's my opinion that DR has helped to redefine how boffer larps could be played. We also talked about the amazing response to the Chronos Larp system, and how Ex Arcana is being received. I know several of the incoming games, and many of the homebrews that were put on (example: of the Six Chronos games: two were based on TRON and Neverwhere, respectively) show off the versatility of the system. We also talked about our shared background in the Mind's Eye Theater/White Wolf  games.

I also got to see Sarah Lynne Bowman, editor of the Wyrdcon Companion and my Jungian Psychology in Larp Sempai. We didn't get down to sit and talk much, which was sad. We were too busy running around and doing our games. Sarah is an awesome human being and one of the people spearheading the academic backing of role playing games in all its forms. Also present, but I never got the chance to meet her, was Whitney 'Strix' Beltran, another researcher and expert in mythology. So there were arguably the two preeminent researchers into mythology and larp AND I COULDN'T FIND THE TIME TO TALK TO THEM.

One Day. Dammit.

Finally, friend of mine from Mind's Eye Society came to his first convention, in which he damned me for making him have fun and make new friends. I consider that a victory. He was a playtester for my Dresden game in June and now he got to play the same character in the official larp. I do believe he's hooked in, and is now a member of a group in the game that has some very large overarching plot. It's nice to have someone from my first and main source of gaming come into the new world I've come to enjoy, and then make them drink the cool-aid and want to come back for more.

it's all part of the job :D