Introduction to Mage: The Awakening

One of the biggest obstacles to getting people to try a game like Mage: the Awakening is its complexity.  M:tAw is  a game with broad themes, and a detailed system that was designed to enable the players to conceptualize spells on the fly, rather than to be constrained to just picking from a list.

Add a multi-faceted social structure of multiple factions with differing agendas, as well as a remarkable number of opponents, and it’s easy to see why the book is so daunting.  Many new players simply give up at the thought of having to absorb so much information, and I personally feel that they’d be missing out.

It’s because of this that I’ve decided to work on a series of articles that dissects the Mage: the Awakening Core Rulebook in the same way I’ve done with Fantasy Craft.  Hopefully, by taking apart the book and dealing with components separately, I can help clear up the confusing parts and make this fantastic game even more accessible to more players.

Introduction

Mage: the Awakening is White-Wolf’s “Storytelling Game of Modern Sorcery.”  Like most of White-Wolf’s games, Mage revolves around a defining moment that changes a normal person into something different, often against their will, and dwells upon the situations and consequences of that change.

Mage, as you could imagine from the title, is about playing people who have managed to attain a connection with the higher realms.  While there are many people who experience little epiphanies in their lives, mages are those who manage to ride it out and forge a true connection to realms beyond that of the everyday, mundane world.  This “Awakening” forges a connection between the Mage and the higher, Supernal realms, which allows them to supersede reality with their magic.

The Big Question

Now at this point, Mage: the Awakening seems like an odd duck compared to the standard World of Darkness theme of personal horror.  Afterall, Mages aren’t shapeshifting killer beasts, blood-sucking predators… so they can’t really be considered monsters, right?

Wrong.

Magic at its heart, is power.  Everyone knows the old saying that “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  This is made even more true by granting access to magic.

Magic is cheating.  Magic is overwriting reality with your own intentions.  Magic is an act of enforcing one’s own selfish desire upon the world.  By having magic, one is automatically susceptible to it’s use in a myriad of little sins.  With magic, the material world is your playground.  Money is no longer a massive concern, and with the right kinds of magic one can even make other people love (or at least lust for) him.

If anything, Mages are true monsters of the World of Darkness because they cannot hide behind things such as ignorance, nor nature as excuses for their sins.  Hubris is a very real thing to them, and only those with sufficient wisdom to judge the correct course of action to a given situation can hope to maintain some semblance of harmony with the world.

Walking the path of Wisdom isn’t easy for anyone.  Magic is wish fulfillment at it’s most essential form after all, a means to get what you want right now.  Every regret you’ve made, every jealousy you’ve harbored and every grudge you bear is now within your grasp with just a simple application of will… and as you live on, your list of “what if’s” will grow very long and heavy indeed.