I’m largely inclined to agree about Hypothetical Average Perceiver vs. Hypothetical Omniscient Perceiver. However, Result-Based Determinism vs. Process-Based Determinism is a different issue, it’s basically about whether or not you can do all manner of coincidental things with spheres other than Entropy – such as the classic of getting across town both rapidly and coincidentally by using Correspondence to summon a taxi that arrives swiftly and hits every light green, which ultimately comes down to whether you see spheres as broad (RBD) or narrow (PBD), which seems to be an important question for actually running the game (or at least, I’ve seen it come up more than once in play).

Absolutely. My vision of a new version of Ascension would be one where the majority of humanity has significant unconscious power, but that they also are in no way controlling this power. However, unlike Ascension, where the Technocracy is firmly in the driver’s seat – in my vision the Technocracy can influence the Sleeper’s vision of reality and so (to a lesser extent) can the Traditions, but this process is more one of making minor changes in direction (which can very rarely cascade into swift and vast reality changes). However, for the most part, the Consensus goes where it does with no one in anything remotely resembling conscious or deliberate control.

I vastly prefer this vision to the one found in Mage, both because the oWoD (to me at least) seemed far too obsessed with the idea of central and unified control (and thus of a singular and definable “The Man” to blame for all trouble, when truth is far muddier and less clear, and because this attitudue both denies the importance chance and randomness plays in the state of the world, and the fact that this sort of centralized vision means that the mass of Sleepers are not merely in control of their destiny (which seems an obvious fact), but they are also nothing more than the completely controlled pawns of the Technocracy.

My idea in no way means that I want to make the Technocracy any less villainous (and in fact, I really like the way you reshuffled the Traditions and Conventions), but is instead focused on the fact that I don’t believe that control is ever complete (or even remotely close to it).

As for who controls what, I think you have to be careful not to dilute the idea that people don’t have to consent to support the Consensus, and that conscious intention is stymied by subtle, difficult to eradicate biases. The power of Mage is that it calls people to account for their biases by removing the pretense that they’re wholly rational. This includes things like the idea of linear cultural progress and the idea of people as wholly utilitarian actors.

In any case, in thinking about Ascension-derived metaphysics, I keep coming back to the basic & annoying questions of Hypothetical Average Perceiver vs. Hypothetical Omniscient Perceiver & Result-Based Determinism vs. Process-Based Determinism.

Process-Based Determinism is the easiest from a rules standpoint, because you know what everything does, but it’s also more limited. Result-Based Determinism lets you do almost anything with any Sphere, if you can make the result hang together narratively, which is nifty, but also difficult to play and more difficult to GM.

Which of these options (if any) would you use for this version?