I love Mage lore, thank you for yet another great video. I agree with you wholeheartedly that Awakening is way cleaner and easier to understand than Ascension.
Very nicely explained, a concise summary of each Order. Three small correction thoughs, vulgar and covert magic are systems that were abolished in 2ed. Now the main source of Paradox is over Reaching for more power than a mage can grasp, which is a conscious choice. Sleepers and Abyssal anomalies make things worse, but now risking releasing Paradox is almost always the result of Unwise choices. The second one is that the Orders belong to the Pentacle, the Watchtowers are something else entirely. The last one is that the Silver Ladder want the Imperium Mysteriorum (meaning command/government/rulership of the Mysteries) rather than Mystorum.
This isn't the only place where such a swap would work well. Hunters who are purely human, with no Messengers, would make better opponents for the Werewolves who once culled the human herd in the name of Gaia, instead of the ones who mostly ignored humans in the primal paradise of Father Wolf. And a lot of Forsaken baddies, like the Idigam and the Hosts, feel very reminiscent of Ascension foes like the Ziggrauglr and Aad-Schlagaa. That's not even touching the whole costume swap of Wraith/Geist and the two types of Changelings, and don't get me started on Demon the Fallen!
I played MTA back in the 90s. for a while, I thought it was just a different storyline, like a reboot, but the mechanics stayed the same. I recently looked into it and saw that the mechanics and lore are very different. Thank you for the video to get this old guy caught up.
Mage the Ascension has one of the coolest settings in any rpg but like you said, when you try to do EVERY trope and pop culture conception of 'what is X' in a game it gets...messy. see also Werewolf the Apocalypse for what happens when you try to go TOO epic and you start wondering what exactly this had to do with werewolves to begin with.
The main thing that I hate about Ascension is the sophistry. I hate the idea of "Consensus Reality" and the attitude that believing something is true hard enough makes it true. Awakening is basically the opposite. It's about the discovery of hidden reality and leveraging it to your will. It's Neoplatonic.
@@TacticusPrime Something doesn't become a good game because it's in line with what you personally believe in. I believe in becoming a K2 Civilization but that doesn't mean it would make for an engaging story over, say, a Traveller campaign. Noisome attitude.
I've tried wrapping my head around Ascension, it just doesn't make any sense. You practically have to write your own headcanon describing how this stuff is supposed to work and explain it to your players. The more I learn about Awakening, the more it makes sense. I miss the wackier sci-fi elements of Ascension but I guess that can be duplicated by the Free Council? In any case, this game is a vast improvement.
I never had a problem with the multiple options in ascension, but I can work with the limitations of the orders. I like trying to fit tradition mages into them. I like the Free Council because it seems to leave the most room for variety.
awakening does seem a much more better put together lore than ascension, possibly the only bit of nwod that seems like a total improvement over owod. would be great if you could marry this setting with vtm
To what end? Mage (and arguably Changeling) always had the least to do with everyone else. VtM is about What, whereas Mage (and Changeling) is about Why and How. The higher-end metaphysics just flat-out don't _matter_ to Kindred. Even Malkavians or Tremere or Harbingers interact with a pale imitation of the mysteries that a Mage has to negotiate with every single day. What does a merger add? PS: And yes this means I believe that having Vampire and Mage in the same setting was a mistake the first time around.
The why are you guys all here problem doesn't just strike vampires of different clans, mages of different traditions, fallen angels from different hosts and Wraiths who may or may not even acknowledge the Guilds' existence. It also affects the very question of why a werewolf, a fairy, a mummy, and a discount knockoff of Doctor Frankenstein even exist in the same universe (it might work if we make the fairy a water sprite with a Charisma of 1, but nevermind that). Like the DC Comics DCU universe (and its associated animated DCAU), the separately created original White Wolf gamelines don't really click well together; you have to come up with awkward explanations about where the Mokole-Mbembe weredinosaurs were while the Childer of Caine were screwing around in Enoch, or why the Green Lantern Corps never dispatched sixty or so Lanterns to Themyscyra to beat down Ares and drag him away to be locked in a Sciencell. Conversely, the NWOD and the Marvel universes (comic and to a large extent cinematic, though they're doing less well with the latter bleeding into television) were designed from day 3 or so with crossovers in mind, because these had already been tried and they'd gotten to see what worked or didn't work. I'll never stop loving DC and OWOD, even loving them more than NWOD and Marvel, but I'd never want to stop having both to choose among. (I think we can all agree, though, screw God-Machine Chronicles and the New 52.)
Hey Lazar, I'm not sure you're reading this, but if you could share your music library, or at least the titles to easily find them I would appreciate it very much!
I would disagree strongly that Mage the Awakening demonstrates the OWOD vs NWOD difference better than Changeling the Fucking Lost. The designers of CTL literally took the fluffiest, most hopeful, brightest and silliest and most childlike of the seven previous core lines, and recreated it as an extended metaphor for kidnapping, abuse, enslavement, and the four stages of grief. This is even more obvious if you throw in Geist the Sin Eaters, a single-book line that thus doesn't really compare fairly all by itself, but if paired with CTL as being the counterparts of Dreaming and Wraith the Oblivion, leaves us with the impression that the nihilistic and Shadow-tormented ghosts and the whimsical fairies have decided to exchange costumes for Halloween.
Of note, the Mysterium is in truth not quite what they portray themselves as being, very deliberately. You know how sometimes a movie trailer blatantly lies for the sake of concealing a massive plot spoiler, because knowing how the movie ends (or even that a twist or the like exists) might ruin your experience of watching the movie for the first time. Without giving away what the real Mysterium is, this entirely unrelated discussion of movies having spoilers that the audience needs to remain ignorant of, that has nothing to do with what the Mysterium's big secret would be, if hypothetically they had such a secret at all.
I've been part of a game of Mage: the Awakening and eventually fell out cuz I found it too complicated. I dread to think how Mage: the Ascension is if it is even more complicated
Mage the Awakening in the first addition seemed like a black sheep. Its lore was not that ambiguous as vampire. The Seers did not seem as interesting as a villain as the Technocracy. The Technocracy are like an anti villain as they had noble goals. It brought up questions who you should morally fight for? The Seers are we are the biggest A holes and therefore we win. For example in Ascension you can have player that change sides as they find more good in the other groups. To join the Seer is more like I like power. I would rather it be the Silver Ladder believe in the good old days of Atlantis and when mortals and mages looked to them, and they lead great empires before that brought humanity out of darkess. The Adamantium Arrows take little stock in that and believe more in a philosophy having your mind and soul on a straight path for Ascension and becoming the champion. They are templar, paladins, mistic warriors and sages. The Mysterium can be one of the more open minded but are more out to documenting and figuring out what really happened. They are more interested in arcane as a science and politics can take the back seat, was there an Atlantis? Maybe but there are other stories that contradict that: the God machine, and some of the other lores of other groups. The Guardians of the Vail can be interesting as they were put into place by all the other groups as a peace keeper. There may had been a war between all the groups and it got bad very bad. So a truce was laid out and a grease was put down. Every greop put some reasorce in for this law enforcement. And they all hate it; the silver ladders hate them because they're not their lap dog as they should be; the adamantium arrows hate them because they take lay out line in conflict to not cross; the Mysterium hate them because of censorship; and the free Council hates them and just wants to abolish them. The free counsel believe in magic and humanity could be its full potential if hierarchies are removed. Other groups can be: the Banishers out to get rid of magic all together as they see no human can be trusted with such power not even them; the left hand path believing in no form of goodness but power and any means justify your pursuit for your advancement; and the mad they are so deep and lost in there delusion. The Supernal realm is not hard fact it can be a theory. Magic is about multiple models and maps of reality. It may be more like Dr Strange. I like the new Vampire for its ambiguity of how it happened and maybe it does not matter. The Supernal myth take that away. Other than that I love the game mechanics more for theost part. I like how the more powerful you get you it will have more drawbacks. Paradox are more potent, and you have a aura that like a beacon for trouble. Well until they made the one book for arch mages. I also did not get the new addition for the game so it may had some improvements.
![[#2024MAMA] ROSÉ (로제), Bruno Mars - APT. | Mnet 241122 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dgGqD28J6aQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Praise Algorythmos, the morally ambivalent.
I love Mage lore, thank you for yet another great video. I agree with you wholeheartedly that Awakening is way cleaner and easier to understand than Ascension.
Very nicely explained, a concise summary of each Order. Three small correction thoughs, vulgar and covert magic are systems that were abolished in 2ed. Now the main source of Paradox is over Reaching for more power than a mage can grasp, which is a conscious choice. Sleepers and Abyssal anomalies make things worse, but now risking releasing Paradox is almost always the result of Unwise choices. The second one is that the Orders belong to the Pentacle, the Watchtowers are something else entirely. The last one is that the Silver Ladder want the Imperium Mysteriorum (meaning command/government/rulership of the Mysteries) rather than Mystorum.
The choice of music that is very reminiscent of the Metroid franchises harmonizes astonishingly well with a discussion of Awakening lore.
I really wish the awakening lore was the mage lore that matched up with vtm because it's my favorite
Agreed. I have been saying this for years.
This isn't the only place where such a swap would work well. Hunters who are purely human, with no Messengers, would make better opponents for the Werewolves who once culled the human herd in the name of Gaia, instead of the ones who mostly ignored humans in the primal paradise of Father Wolf. And a lot of Forsaken baddies, like the Idigam and the Hosts, feel very reminiscent of Ascension foes like the Ziggrauglr and Aad-Schlagaa. That's not even touching the whole costume swap of Wraith/Geist and the two types of Changelings, and don't get me started on Demon the Fallen!
I played MTA back in the 90s. for a while, I thought it was just a different storyline, like a reboot, but the mechanics stayed the same. I recently looked into it and saw that the mechanics and lore are very different. Thank you for the video to get this old guy caught up.
Mage the Ascension has one of the coolest settings in any rpg but like you said, when you try to do EVERY trope and pop culture conception of 'what is X' in a game it gets...messy. see also Werewolf the Apocalypse for what happens when you try to go TOO epic and you start wondering what exactly this had to do with werewolves to begin with.
The main thing that I hate about Ascension is the sophistry. I hate the idea of "Consensus Reality" and the attitude that believing something is true hard enough makes it true. Awakening is basically the opposite. It's about the discovery of hidden reality and leveraging it to your will. It's Neoplatonic.
@@TacticusPrime Something doesn't become a good game because it's in line with what you personally believe in.
I believe in becoming a K2 Civilization but that doesn't mean it would make for an engaging story over, say, a Traveller campaign.
Noisome attitude.
I've tried wrapping my head around Ascension, it just doesn't make any sense. You practically have to write your own headcanon describing how this stuff is supposed to work and explain it to your players. The more I learn about Awakening, the more it makes sense. I miss the wackier sci-fi elements of Ascension but I guess that can be duplicated by the Free Council? In any case, this game is a vast improvement.
@@TacticusPrime fool
That's how it works in real life
The return of lord of lore, and archmage . I never knows much of mages much and this is truly interesting!! Thanks you!
Glad you enjoyed it.
@@lazarofstygia2241 hey can you explain plan VTR are there 13 clans or what?
@@jamesisaacson6379 There are 5 clans in Requiem and a larger number of bloodlines descended from them.
Glad this came out just as I was looking up mage stuff
always a pleasure to see that you have uploaded
Thanks.
I never had a problem with the multiple options in ascension, but I can work with the limitations of the orders. I like trying to fit tradition mages into them. I like the Free Council because it seems to leave the most room for variety.
awakening does seem a much more better put together lore than ascension, possibly the only bit of nwod that seems like a total improvement over owod.
would be great if you could marry this setting with vtm
To what end? Mage (and arguably Changeling) always had the least to do with everyone else. VtM is about What, whereas Mage (and Changeling) is about Why and How.
The higher-end metaphysics just flat-out don't _matter_ to Kindred. Even Malkavians or Tremere or Harbingers interact with a pale imitation of the mysteries that a Mage has to negotiate with every single day.
What does a merger add?
PS: And yes this means I believe that having Vampire and Mage in the same setting was a mistake the first time around.
What are your thoughts on doing videos on the Legacies of awakening? That or discussing things like liches, scelesti, or banishers?
Thank you for your videos.
The why are you guys all here problem doesn't just strike vampires of different clans, mages of different traditions, fallen angels from different hosts and Wraiths who may or may not even acknowledge the Guilds' existence. It also affects the very question of why a werewolf, a fairy, a mummy, and a discount knockoff of Doctor Frankenstein even exist in the same universe (it might work if we make the fairy a water sprite with a Charisma of 1, but nevermind that).
Like the DC Comics DCU universe (and its associated animated DCAU), the separately created original White Wolf gamelines don't really click well together; you have to come up with awkward explanations about where the Mokole-Mbembe weredinosaurs were while the Childer of Caine were screwing around in Enoch, or why the Green Lantern Corps never dispatched sixty or so Lanterns to Themyscyra to beat down Ares and drag him away to be locked in a Sciencell. Conversely, the NWOD and the Marvel universes (comic and to a large extent cinematic, though they're doing less well with the latter bleeding into television) were designed from day 3 or so with crossovers in mind, because these had already been tried and they'd gotten to see what worked or didn't work. I'll never stop loving DC and OWOD, even loving them more than NWOD and Marvel, but I'd never want to stop having both to choose among.
(I think we can all agree, though, screw God-Machine Chronicles and the New 52.)
Hey Lazar, I'm not sure you're reading this, but if you could share your music library, or at least the titles to easily find them I would appreciate it very much!
If YT still allowed PMs I would send you the names of them. I would rather avoid the wrath of Mama Susan, aspect of the Weaver, and her janny-spiders.
@@lazarofstygia2241 understood. Taking this opportunity thanks for the content!
I would disagree strongly that Mage the Awakening demonstrates the OWOD vs NWOD difference better than Changeling the Fucking Lost. The designers of CTL literally took the fluffiest, most hopeful, brightest and silliest and most childlike of the seven previous core lines, and recreated it as an extended metaphor for kidnapping, abuse, enslavement, and the four stages of grief. This is even more obvious if you throw in Geist the Sin Eaters, a single-book line that thus doesn't really compare fairly all by itself, but if paired with CTL as being the counterparts of Dreaming and Wraith the Oblivion, leaves us with the impression that the nihilistic and Shadow-tormented ghosts and the whimsical fairies have decided to exchange costumes for Halloween.
Of note, the Mysterium is in truth not quite what they portray themselves as being, very deliberately. You know how sometimes a movie trailer blatantly lies for the sake of concealing a massive plot spoiler, because knowing how the movie ends (or even that a twist or the like exists) might ruin your experience of watching the movie for the first time. Without giving away what the real Mysterium is, this entirely unrelated discussion of movies having spoilers that the audience needs to remain ignorant of, that has nothing to do with what the Mysterium's big secret would be, if hypothetically they had such a secret at all.
Thank you for your video.
You're welcome.
This sounds like 1e lore instead of 2e. All this Atlantis, Atlantis, Atlantis stuff put many people off the game.
Thank you for Upload :)
No problem 😊
I Gm this game!
Awesome more awakening.
I am here, please put your lore into my ear holes.
I've been part of a game of Mage: the Awakening and eventually fell out cuz I found it too complicated. I dread to think how Mage: the Ascension is if it is even more complicated
Is this 1e, 2e or both Lore for Awakened?
Would you consider doing a dedicated video on Samuel Haight?
Definitely.
tbh outside of vtm i like the lore of CofD more than the WoD equivalents
Make a video on Paths
comment for the algorithm
Mage the Awakening in the first addition seemed like a black sheep. Its lore was not that ambiguous as vampire. The Seers did not seem as interesting as a villain as the Technocracy. The Technocracy are like an anti villain as they had noble goals. It brought up questions who you should morally fight for? The Seers are we are the biggest A holes and therefore we win. For example in Ascension you can have player that change sides as they find more good in the other groups. To join the Seer is more like I like power.
I would rather it be the Silver Ladder believe in the good old days of Atlantis and when mortals and mages looked to them, and they lead great empires before that brought humanity out of darkess. The Adamantium Arrows take little stock in that and believe more in a philosophy having your mind and soul on a straight path for Ascension and becoming the champion. They are templar, paladins, mistic warriors and sages. The Mysterium can be one of the more open minded but are more out to documenting and figuring out what really happened. They are more interested in arcane as a science and politics can take the back seat, was there an Atlantis? Maybe but there are other stories that contradict that: the God machine, and some of the other lores of other groups. The Guardians of the Vail can be interesting as they were put into place by all the other groups as a peace keeper. There may had been a war between all the groups and it got bad very bad. So a truce was laid out and a grease was put down. Every greop put some reasorce in for this law enforcement. And they all hate it; the silver ladders hate them because they're not their lap dog as they should be; the adamantium arrows hate them because they take lay out line in conflict to not cross; the Mysterium hate them because of censorship; and the free Council hates them and just wants to abolish them. The free counsel believe in magic and humanity could be its full potential if hierarchies are removed.
Other groups can be: the Banishers out to get rid of magic all together as they see no human can be trusted with such power not even them; the left hand path believing in no form of goodness but power and any means justify your pursuit for your advancement; and the mad they are so deep and lost in there delusion.
The Supernal realm is not hard fact it can be a theory. Magic is about multiple models and maps of reality. It may be more like Dr Strange. I like the new Vampire for its ambiguity of how it happened and maybe it does not matter. The Supernal myth take that away.
Other than that I love the game mechanics more for theost part. I like how the more powerful you get you it will have more drawbacks. Paradox are more potent, and you have a aura that like a beacon for trouble. Well until they made the one book for arch mages. I also did not get the new addition for the game so it may had some improvements.
Is this 1st or 2nd edition lore? Just wondering cause I believe they changed some things in the newest edition.
1st edition.