Back in 1993 I was still living in Liverpool,England. My spare time was spent primarily in pubs and rock clubs (I was still very much in a Goth phase) with the other nights dedicated to tabletop RPGs. I was running "Ravenloft" back then but also found time to play in some other games. One of them was the first edition of "Mage: The Ascension" by White Wolf.
"Mage" was the third major gameline produced in the classic "World of Darkness" series, the first being "Vampire: The Masquerade", the second was "Werewolf: The Apocalypse". Each had its own feel and metaplot, though they all had a buildup to a great "something". This was the 90's and popular culture was full of pre-millenial fears, everything from Nostradamus' predictions to the "Y2K Bug".
White Wolf did follow through and publish official endings for each line, which cleared the decks for them to reboot the games later on, minus the metaplot.
I had never played "Vampire", a game which was massively popular with my Goth friends, though the popularity was firmly on the LARP side of things rather than tabletop. I had played "Werewolf" and while I loved the rich setting, I struggled on a personal level to play it. The animalistic aspect was too much of a challenge for me. "Mage" however, was perfect.
The central concept of the game is that reality is consensual.It is maintained,powered and reinforced by our combined beliefs about what is possible and what isn't. A Mage is someone who has an awakened Avatar (like a higher self) and understands the nature of reality from a particular perspective ("Paradigm") and can alter it. Reality,like a rubber band, will stretch when manipulated but will snap back into it's original shape, albeit slightly looser than before. This is the real goal of the Mage...to gradually tweak reality so their magic becomes more acceptable and believable to the masses, and thus easier to do. If the Mage pushes too hard, then reality hits back hard in the form of "Paradox", an unpredictable punishment.
The main opponents of the Mages are the Technocracy, an organization seeking to enforce their own vision of reality. The Mages are organized into Traditions, schools of magic and mystical paths. I really liked this as at the time I was reading a lot of Occult and New Age material. The "Verbena" tradition for example, were representative of Wiccans and Druids, all about nature. The "Dreamspeakers" were Shamen. "Cult of Ecstasy" were like a Dyonisian cult and "The Order of Hermes" were the classic Hermetic group, a nod to the games predecessor, "Ars Magica".
Magic itself is described as "Spheres", of which there are nine. Each of the nine Traditions specializes in one of the spheres, though you can learn any of them. Combining the powers of the spheres is where the fun really is, and what I liked was how the sphere would be interpreted differently depending on your Tradition. The "Life" sphere, for example, would be interpreted by the "Sons of Ether" as the elecrochemical jolt that starts your heart, whereas the "Akashic Brotherhood" see it as Chi. The other spheres are Matter, Correspondence,Prime,Forces,Time,Entropy,Spirit and Mind.
What made this special, and still to this day my favorite game, was the way this all translated into gameplay. We were playing very powerful characters, people who could tear reality apart with our thoughts, yet the threats to us were just as powerful, in terms of the antagonists and the consequences of creating paradoxes.We were also lucky to have a GM and group of players who thoroughly understood the game. "Mage" can be a hard game to understand or explain, so group composition is a major consideration if you want to do it justice. With the right group,it's something special.
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