Mage: The Ascension

Let's face it, in the World of Darkness, hope is all too rare. Vampires are abberations of the natural order whose agelessness serves only to illustrate the beauty of death. Werewolves are fighting a losing battle against the Wyrm, the spirit of active destruction. Wraiths are dead souls wishing for Oblivion. Hunters are angsty mortals with nary a clue about their benefactors' identities ... but they kill the Outsiders anyway. (Changelings I don't know, sorry.)And among all this chaos ... the Mage stands tall, looking to Ascend.Oh, it's not all fuzzy bunnies, being a Mage. There's pain, and death, and the rest of the World of Darkness to contend with. But Mages have something to fight for other than survival. They have ideals. (Perhaps morbid ideals, but nobody ever said morbid is wrong ...) They have dreams. And, in the World of Darkness as in our own world, the perception of reality shapes reality itself. (Okay, I play too many Malkavians in Vampire. So sue me.) This is what it means to be a Mage.It would take far more space than I have here to explain the worldview behind Mage. Suffice it to say that Mage (at least Second Edition) is positive in outlook, with a scope that encourages the imagination. This setting focuses on wonder, pain, and Ascension to a higher state. The group Storyteller will either love this game or hate it: love because of the openness of a magic system that's actually -realistic- (okay, you Christians are probably laughing at me now - oh well), or hatred because you've just spent twenty hours of preparation on Umbral Lords and now your players just want to use the spirit world to break into a Technocracy stronghold.When I read this book for the first time, it was almost a spiritual experience. This is what a magical RPG is supposed to be like, in my view. However, hack-n-slashers can wreak havock on the system, mainly through over-use of Forces. I find that taking Forces away entirely is the best way to deal with this nuisance ... although with a group of powermongers, perhaps Werewolf would be a better game for you.Warning: Revised Mage takes all the wonder and hope out of the setting and leaves you with the same old gloom and croon of the rest of the World of Darkness. The developers certainly did a wonderful job of making sure that the backstory fit the rest of the WoD, but I'm rather sorry to see hope go. (Life is painful enough without vicarously living through a rotting pile of bones, IMHO.) So, I proudly recommend Mage: The Ascension Second Edition to the Real Roleplayers and Loonies out there, Revised Mage to the Real Men among you (heaven help us all), and Harvard to the Munchkins that exist like worms at the heart of every gaming group...

yes, I gave it five stars, and I will get to the why. But I do believe, like other reviewers, that this game might not suit everybody, and it is certainly not easy to either explain nor play without running into some quite peculiar pitfalls. I started out with RPGs when I was 12. I have read, played and "directed" at least 10 different RPG systems. Fantasy, star wars, star trek, marvel superheores (anyone whot thinks I was waaay to deep into it is absolutely RIGHT, I was positively addicted). I even wrote a short monthly column on RPGs for an "alternative culture" magazine for a while. So when my best friend and companion in roleplaying introduced me to White Wolf games (with a copy of Mage as a birthday present), I was openly distrustful. (Mages with computers? you gotta be kidding me!). However, I overcame my first impression and read it, read it and re-read it. I was hooked! What was going on with this game was REAL MAGIC! All the other RPGs I have played and directed have the same problem: magic is a static thing, confined to the stereotypes which are known by all: wizened old men, reading out of musty old books, recipes including bat dung and frog eyes. Interminable list of spells, some of them useless, some inaccessible until the characters were incredibly powerful already, and the eternal problem of mages being weak and useless once their spells were spent. Mage: the Ascension is my favorite RPG (out of, like I've mentioned, many others I've met and struggled with for a while). But, it's not for everyone. It's not a game you can throw at the players out of the blue. It's a challenging game for the Storyteller. Yes, it's White Wolf as far as the basic system is concerned, but the Storyteller must do extensive homework ,and at least skim some of the reference works and recommended further readings given by the authors (some of which, BTW, are very good). Otherwise any chronicle will look and sound bland. I agree with other reviewers in that the designers reach out for much and leave a lot of spaces and gaps: I believe this to be intentional. The flexibility implied by a game where reality is "up for grabs" does not allow any hard-and-fast rules regarding the nature of the stories or the possibilities of what the players might do. For example: the Technocracy's struggle can (in my opinion) be seen as equally "noble" than the one from the traditions, in that they can be understood as seeing themselves as protectors of humankind from "what's out there". They can also be insane megalomaniacs out for world domination, will ye or nay ye, but it's another thing the Storyteller must decide beforehand. The Traditions are another kettle of fish: in my opinion they are more guidelines than models to build characters upon. For example: the Akashic Brotherhood is way too big, attempting to encompass many different real-world beliefs in one page of description. Again in my opinion, an Akashic can be fashioned after Indian yogis or Tibetan ascetics just as

Mage: the Ascension, for which this is the basic rulebook, is an RPG that takes magic into the modern world and then turns right around and makes magic of science, and reality a function of the will. A game for dreamers, philosophers, and armchair mystics, Mage is everything a mature RPG should be.

Mage is a great book in that it can be as simple and as complex as you want, with the typical WW anarchy when it comes to a storyteller following the writen rules...a much more plausible system of magic than the T$R crap with rules only to handicap with hardly a good explanation...And the magick system is much more plausible than the RIFTS system, which parallels T$R slightly but gives more explanations and better spells....This is the perfect game for elite players because it gives so much individual play into what the player wants magick to be for their character...Definitely a little too complex to be someone's first game without a satey net of good players though, but that's hardly a bad point...Put simply, White Wolf's World of Darkness is the best multiverse RP system, and Mage is the best part of it...

I've been playing RPGs now for 10 years and havent found something as good as this book. In my personal opinion the magic system is the best system there is and the stories you can come up with are unlimited. Besides, why play with a Vampire when you can create and manipulate reality at your wish.