Villains in Mage

In the interest of drumming up more attention and support to a game that truly deserves more notice from a broader group of people, I’ve decided to do a short series on Villains for Mage: the Awakening.  Every day, I’ll be giving a short writeup on a given faction of villains for any game of Mage: the Awakening, along with their potential motives as a group, suggested tactics and maybe a plot hook or two.

Mage: the Awakening is a game that asks a lot of the difficult questions about power and responsibility, and because of that, the villains tend to be focused on the issue of the abuse of said power.  Magic is power incarnate, and because of it, many people tend to be driven down paths that they would otherwise never have considered if they didn’t have the means to do so.

Other villains for Mage come from the fact that they were not strong enough to control the power, and Magic itself warps them, drives them mad, breaking their fragile minds.  Madness is, in a way the direct opposite of a Mage, who must constantly weigh issues of wisdom when conducting his life.

Still other opponents come from the Mortal realm.  Just because Mages are capable, doesn’t mean that their immune to bullets all the time.  A group of hunters can be a very dangerous opponent, as they often attack from angles that the Mage may overlook or underestimate.

Given the fact that Mages don’t divorce themselves from the world around them (since they don’t turn to ashes in sunlight or lose control and turn into monsters in stressful situations,)  Mage has a great deal of possible plot hooks and interesting opposition.