Mage: The Dirty Version – Ground Rules
So for those of you at home, let me tell you what I plan on doing with this thing. I have a few guidelines in mind that should hint at what I’m going to do.
For the Medium
The Dirty Version explores Mage through the tabletop RPG medium as I see it: one with its own voice to offer, instead of something emulating a book, film or other medium. I have pretty strong opinions about this and think that many RPGs nowadays are the product of envy directed at more popular or arty media. That’s why we now have dozens of games that let you play a story as structured by somebody with a halfassed recollection of 100 year old literary theory that happened to get dumped in their heads during high school. Fuck that. This is an RPG; it’s about unstable categories, insecure power relations and multiple narratives springing from the same event. In other words, it’s perfect for Mage.
Fuzzy Logic
Drawing from the above and looking at the old World of Darkness, I’m going to bust up neat little boxes where I can. Splats are a mix of in-world history and game function, and I’ll leave a heavy load on readers and players to negotiate the intersection between them. I think this is interesting and ads verisimilitude, since real organizations rarely stick to a set function. The current World of Darkness tends to be excessively structured at the core, but comes to life in expansion, but keep in mind that the old World of Darkness wasn’t much different — you just got up to three editions to write the expansions back into the core. The same thing applies to game traits, though Spheres will mostly stay functional because they have to be.
Not a Vehicle for Awakening Criticism
I mean, are you fucking crazy? I worked on lots and lots of that line and like it a lot. They’re different games — though honestly, not so different as many people think.
Like Ascension, but Not Ascension
I’m not going to rebuild Mage: The Ascension faithfully. It’s old and there’s a ton of stuff wrong with it. Your favorite thing may not appear. It will have at ideas from the old game I think are interesting or powerful. It will probably feel a lot like Ascension. It will also chop and staple a hell of a lot of stuff. So far, around half of the Traditions are pretty different and I’ve cut two Spheres. Say goodbye to Entropy and Prime, and I might kill Time, too.
Nonlinear and Compressed
This is coming in blog form so don’t expect a big-ass full RPG. Don’t expect a neat order, either. Honestly, You and I would both be bored doing it the linear way, slogging through potato-peeling systems. Lots of things will be presented as references, excerpts from big stuff that doesn’t really exist and so on.
Not New or Old World of Darkness Systems
I ultimately ran Mage: The Ascension with a variant of the Aeonverse/Exalted 1e system very successfully. This is not going to be your NWoD Ascension adaptation. It’s not going to be your OWoD 4th Edition. It may not even be an Aeonverse like thing by the time I’m done, since I’m running a game with that system and have already hacked it six ways to Sunday. Hell, I may even float a card-based character system that’s been floating around in my head.
Auteur Style
This is solidly about my ideas. Feel free to comment on what you want, but as this is totally unpaid, my reward, aside from attention (heh!) is exploring things my way. For example, if you think the Technocracy were good guys, you’ll probably be disappointed. Also, you may be a fucking idiot. See what I did there? That’s the difference between writing for you, and writing for me. This is aimed at being playable, but it’s more something for me that I think you’ll like. So let’s give this a shot.
My personal favourite moment was the following:
“The Dirty Version explores Mage through the tabletop RPG medium as I see it: one with its own voice to offer, instead of something emulating a book, film or other medium. I have pretty strong opinions about this and think that many RPGs nowadays are the product of envy directed at more popular or arty media. That’s why we now have dozens of games that let you play a story as structured by somebody with a halfassed recollection of 100 year old literary theory that happened to get dumped in their heads during high school. Fuck that. This is an RPG; it’s about unstable categories, insecure power relations and multiple narratives springing from the same event. In other words, it’s perfect for Mage.”
It’s looking good so far, one thing I wanted to mention, as one of those douchebags that are constantly yelling about “The Wire” and how great it is, is that the show really changed how I looked at splats and in-game organizations and their intersection. There’s always someone who’s getting ahead because they married the Captain’s daughter. There’s always someone who would be phenomenal if they could stop drinking. There’s always someone who can’t stay inside the lines. There’s always someone getting ahead by bullying others.