correspondence 3 and local blast furnaces

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.whitewolf (More info?)

I was thinking that it would probably only take Correspondence 3 to
hunt a vampire from the safety of one's own Sanctum, Chantry, etc.

Step 1: Locate the slumbering leech in its coffin during the daytime.
(Correspondence 2, I think, would be sufficient...)

Step 2: Use Correspondence 3 to teleport sunlight falling in the
vicinity to the inside of the coffin, or even to the inside of the
vampire's body. (Possibly I'm wrong and this would take Correspondence
4...)

Step 3: Sit back and enjoy the lack of one more vampire for a while
before seeking a Master of Prime to help with one's terrible Paradox
issues.

A little thought, however, convinced me that most cities have big
furnaces somewhere. Maybe they are blast furnaces, maybe they are
trash incincerators, but they are close by. With a few more successes,
one could transport something far more generally destructive than
sunlight ... one could teleport heat.

Why bother using Prime 2 Forces 2 or 3 or 4? Just use Correspondence
(I think 3 would be enough, but possibly I'm deluded) to teleport the
heat of a local blast furnace on to your target. The Paradox would be
the limiting factor, of course.

Assuming this notion works, how much heat would be needed to melt the
Primium off a HITMark? Would that be more like the heat of a standard
blast furnace, the heat of a world-class blast furnace, or the heat of
the sun?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.whitewolf (More info?)

In article <1111617673.396267.243340@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>,
"Rip Rock" <riprock@adres.nl> wrote:

> Step 2: Use Correspondence 3 to teleport sunlight falling in the
> vicinity to the inside of the coffin, or even to the inside of the
> vampire's body. (Possibly I'm wrong and this would take Correspondence
> 4...)

Correspondence 4 is the sphere level for teleporting things that aren't
the mage's own self.

> Step 3: Sit back and enjoy the lack of one more vampire for a while
> before seeking a Master of Prime to help with one's terrible Paradox
> issues.

The idea's come up before, IIRC. I tend to like it. But then, I also
tend to like transforming vampires into lawn chairs.

The official unofficial WW crossover answer, though, is I believe along
the lines of "It wouldn't be really real sunlight, and thus wouldn't
count."

My answer to these questions remains invariable, "What is the focus of
your game? If it's about X, then X gets the benefit of narrative love
and having an edge over Y, Z and W."

> A little thought, however, convinced me that most cities have big
> furnaces somewhere. Maybe they are blast furnaces, maybe they are
> trash incincerators, but they are close by. With a few more successes,
> one could transport something far more generally destructive than
> sunlight ... one could teleport heat.

Just out of curiousity, why not teleport the target into the furnace? If
you've been a good little Revised mage, you've done all sorts of
research on your target, including accumulating an ungodly number of
successes through extended actions and collecting items that improve
one's Correspondence relationship with them.

--
Tyler

m o c t o d o o h a y t a h c t i v o n i l b

Bac>|wards

 

[william]

Archived from groups: alt.games.whitewolf (More info?)

Rip Rock wrote:
> I was thinking that it would probably only take Correspondence 3 to
> hunt a vampire from the safety of one's own Sanctum, Chantry, etc.
>
> Step 1: Locate the slumbering leech in its coffin during the daytime.
> (Correspondence 2, I think, would be sufficient...)
>

Yes, with a lot of roleplaying and GM cooperation (with Corr 2, you
basically have to catch the vampire by spending your nights for a few
months running surveilance or plain dumb luck).

Corr 3/Prime or Entropy 1 (to detect the undead) works a whole lot faster.


> Step 2: Use Correspondence 3 to teleport sunlight falling in the
> vicinity to the inside of the coffin, or even to the inside of the
> vampire's body. (Possibly I'm wrong and this would take Correspondence
> 4...)

Already addressed.

>
> Step 3: Sit back and enjoy the lack of one more vampire for a while
> before seeking a Master of Prime to help with one's terrible Paradox
> issues.
>

It's so, so much easier to just use Corr 2, Forces 2 and start an
electrical fire or something.


> A little thought, however, convinced me that most cities have big
> furnaces somewhere. Maybe they are blast furnaces, maybe they are
> trash incincerators, but they are close by. With a few more successes,
> one could transport something far more generally destructive than
> sunlight ... one could teleport heat.
>
> Why bother using Prime 2 Forces 2 or 3 or 4? Just use Correspondence
> (I think 3 would be enough, but possibly I'm deluded) to teleport the
> heat of a local blast furnace on to your target. The Paradox would be
> the limiting factor, of course.

Justify this in paradigm. No, seriously. Tell me a way to do this
quickly using a standard Tradition paradigm.

>
> Assuming this notion works, how much heat would be needed to melt the
> Primium off a HITMark? Would that be more like the heat of a standard
> blast furnace, the heat of a world-class blast furnace, or the heat of
> the sun?
>

I'd personally just use forces 2, confine the energy of the blast
furnace into a recepticle, and...

Well, I just answered my own question on how to Corr3 the energy from a
blast furnace in paradigm. Just find something sympathetic to the target
or his location and chuck it in after the proper rituals. However, this
requires you to be at the blast furnace or have set up the explanation
before hand.

William

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.whitewolf (More info?)

In article <3ah41cF5gn6foU1@individual.net>, William
<wilit0613@postoffice.uri.edu> wrote:

> > Why bother using Prime 2 Forces 2 or 3 or 4? Just use Correspondence
> > (I think 3 would be enough, but possibly I'm deluded) to teleport the
> > heat of a local blast furnace on to your target. The Paradox would be
> > the limiting factor, of course.
>
> Justify this in paradigm. No, seriously. Tell me a way to do this
> quickly using a standard Tradition paradigm.

I envision a Hermetic suggesting to the fire elementals resident in the
furnace that they deserve to get out and see thw world a little. Why,
here's a Hermes Gate just for you, no less.

--
Tyler

m o c t o d o o h a y t a h c t i v o n i l b

Bac>|wards

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.whitewolf (More info?)

William wrote:
> Rip Rock wrote:
> > I was thinking that it would probably only take Correspondence 3 to
> > hunt a vampire from the safety of one's own Sanctum, Chantry, etc.
> >
[my deluded substitution of Correspondence 3 for Correspondence 4
snipped]
> >
> > Step 3: Sit back and enjoy the lack of one more vampire for a while
> > before seeking a Master of Prime to help with one's terrible
Paradox
> > issues.
> >

I neglected to mention earlier that I had initially imagined using the
sun, but I believe the WoD makes the sun harder to contact with
Correspondence than a local blast furnace. That is *not* New Age
thinking, that is WoD game mechanics, but my blast furnace thing is an
adaptation of New Age craziness to WoD geekiness.

A True Believer in the New Age would say, "All things are One Thing,
All places are One place, the sun is merely a phenomenal image. All
material things spring from the Infinite Energy of Consciousness...."
and so on. But that road leads to New Age philosophy, not gaming.


>
> It's so, so much easier to just use Corr 2, Forces 2 and start an
> electrical fire or something.
>


I guess White Wolf thinks it's easier, but I don't like White Wolf's
approach. I like Mage because it (theoretically) allows me to work out
my issues with White Wolf in the context of a game. (In practice,
whenever a game gets going, the creative energy of the other players
ends up taking the whole thing far away from both White Wolf's vision
and my ideas, but that's okay.)

I sometimes read fringe sciences in real life, and based on those
fringe science ideas, I can imagine a nonlocal source of infinite
energy. If you don't have the patience to read the fringe science
websites, Heinlein's Friday (IIRC) has a science-fantasy device called
a "shipstone" or something which does this.

When I imagine vampires and their coffins, I imagine that there isn't
enough flammable stuff nearby to go up in an electrical fire. I
imagine that the coffins are stored somewhere dark, rather dank, and
cold -- a bad environment for an electrical fire to get going.

By contrast, stories of spontaneous human combustion strike me as
entertaining stories. (I'm not saying I believe them in real life, but
darn, they entertain me.) I'd like to tell a story that was more like
spontaneous human combustion stories from Charles Fort or somebody.

Starting an electrical fire coincidentally seems more of a stretch than
tapping a major source of nonlocal energy and routing it through the
unreality of space to the target. I don't imagine coincidental magic
working the way that White Wolf does. (In real life, I don't believe
that the universe works according to fringe science, but I think the
narrative of fringe science is more entertaining than the World of
Darkness as it's supposed to be.)



>
> > A little thought, however, convinced me that most cities have big
> > furnaces somewhere. Maybe they are blast furnaces, maybe they are
> > trash incincerators, but they are close by. With a few more
successes,
> > one could transport something far more generally destructive than
> > sunlight ... one could teleport heat.
> >
> > Why bother using Prime 2 Forces 2 or 3 or 4? Just use
Correspondence
> > (I think 3 would be enough, but possibly I'm deluded) to teleport
the
> > heat of a local blast furnace on to your target. The Paradox would
be
> > the limiting factor, of course.
>
> Justify this in paradigm. No, seriously. Tell me a way to do this
> quickly using a standard Tradition paradigm.
>

I appreciate your acute insight. You have intuitively seen that I'm
not coming at this from a White Wolf- World of Darkness standpoint, but
from a fringe-science-inspired science-fantasy standpoint. As
mentioned above, the blast furnace thing is a compromise because
contacting the sun would take more successes (I think).

If I had a player doing this in paradigm, her reasoning would run
something like this: "The vampire exists in a highly tenuous state.
The vampire is like an unstable combination of chemicals. The whole
universe wants the vampire to cease existence. The universe will help
me destroy this vampire -- the universe will practically hand me the
torch, I just have to reach out and grab it. This is why the universe
has informed me of the location of the vampire and the location of a
blast furnace, so that I may bring the two into conjunction."

The reasoning above is not an elegant Order of Hermes idea, appropriate
to the standard-issue World of Darkness. I applaud whoever said that
the Hermetic would invite the fire elementals to go and frolic in the
vampire's body, providing them with a handy gate for just that purpose.
That's a good adaptation of the WoD.

For me, most of the motivation to tell a WoD story is the notion that
my own quirky, non-White-Wolf science-fantasy paradigm is a story worth
telling.


>
> Well, I just answered my own question on how to Corr3 the energy from
a
> blast furnace in paradigm. Just find something sympathetic to the
target
> or his location and chuck it in after the proper rituals. However,
this
> requires you to be at the blast furnace or have set up the
explanation
> before hand.


That's a good thought, leading in a different direction, but worth
pursuing.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.whitewolf (More info?)

In article <1111994036.021731.279300@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
"Rip Rock" <riprock@adres.nl> wrote:

> If I had a player doing this in paradigm, her reasoning would run
> something like this: "The vampire exists in a highly tenuous state.
> The vampire is like an unstable combination of chemicals. The whole
> universe wants the vampire to cease existence. The universe will help
> me destroy this vampire -- the universe will practically hand me the
> torch, I just have to reach out and grab it. This is why the universe
> has informed me of the location of the vampire and the location of a
> blast furnace, so that I may bring the two into conjunction."

I quite like that.

But how does fringe science not fit into Mage? The Sons of Ether are all
about the fringe sciences.

--
Tyler

m o c t o d o o h a y t a h c t i v o n i l b

Bac>|wards

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.whitewolf (More info?)

Tyler Dion wrote:
> In article <1111994036.021731.279300@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
> "Rip Rock" <riprock@adres.nl> wrote:
>
> > If I had a player doing this in paradigm, her reasoning would run
> > something like this: "The vampire exists in a highly tenuous state.
> > The vampire is like an unstable combination of chemicals. The
whole
> > universe wants the vampire to cease existence. The universe will
help
> > me destroy this vampire -- the universe will practically hand me
the
> > torch, I just have to reach out and grab it. This is why the
universe
> > has informed me of the location of the vampire and the location of
a
> > blast furnace, so that I may bring the two into conjunction."
>
> I quite like that.
>

It's a slanted New Age paraphrase of the philosophical concept of
"natural law." Mage is great if one is addicted to slanted paraphrases
of philosophy, and I am so addicted. I'm glad you find it
entertaining. Many folks find it annoying, so I usually repress the
urge.


> But how does fringe science not fit into Mage? The Sons of Ether are
all
> about the fringe sciences.
>

What I mean is that fringe science, no matter how wacky, is trying to
express something it believes to be real. Mage, no matter how closely
it draws on sources in New Age stuff and fringe science, is about
telling a story that defies analysis, explanation, and falsification.

No matter how you analyze a bad Mage product from White Wolf, you can't
ever pin them down to a contradiction. Mage is constructed from
inexplicable axioms selected by the White Wolf orthodoxy.

By contrast, if a New Age guru claims to be teaching Hindu-style
vegetarianism and then tells his students to eat beef, you can show
that he is contradicting himself. If a fringe scientist (from real
life, like Tom Bearden, who runs
http://www.cheniere.org
) claims to be using standard arithmetic, but saying that 2+2=5, you
can pin him down to a contradiction. (And if he's using modulo
arithmetic, 2+2=5 is okay in modulo 1, and possibly in other systems.)
http://www.answers.com/topic/modular-arithmetic

Fringe science is a bunch of retired or never-tenured scientists and
technicians -- most of them second-rate -- trying to do science as it
is advertised to be --- a real quest for truth.

Academic science is conformity, boot-licking, and money-grubbing, and
nearly all its participants -- who are first-rate scientists -- have
given up on science as a quest for truth, and refuse to admit their
surrender. But sometimes -- maybe 1% of the time, maybe less -- it
really is a successful quest for truth.

You can make Mage characters and stories inspired by fringe science,
but you can't use the real thinking of fringe science in Mage. Mage is
about telling a story that functions according to the arbitrary
decisions of a story-teller, *not* according to any kind of
discoverable rule.

When they made Mage, they didn't have a positive vision of how to
simulate a series of events -- real or fictional. They had a negative
vision of how to prevent any player from proving their story couldn't
work. They took to Masquerade idea of secret heroes who can do almost
anything so long as there is no evidence and elaborated it into the
Paradox/Awakened magic idea. Mage isn't really based on any theory of
real or ficitonal events, it's based on a way to keep the story-teller
generating unassailable stories.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.whitewolf (More info?)

Tyler Dion wrote:
> In article <1111617673.396267.243340@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>,
> "Rip Rock" <riprock@adres.nl> wrote:
>
> > Step 2: Use Correspondence 3 to teleport sunlight falling in the
> > vicinity to the inside of the coffin, or even to the inside of the
> > vampire's body. (Possibly I'm wrong and this would take
Correspondence
> > 4...)
>
> Correspondence 4 is the sphere level for teleporting things that
aren't
> the mage's own self.
>

I think that applies to material objects rather than thoughts, right?
So I would need Corr 4 to send Tass (in the form of water or quartz or
something) to my apprentice in a distant city, but only Corr 3 Mind 3
to open a telepathic communication link to the same apprentice in the
same distant city ... correct?

So here is another broken-by-design aspect of the WoD that never fails
to drive me crazy. Tass is material, Quintessence doesn't seem to be
material. Do I use Prime 3 Corr 3 if I want to send Quintessence from
my own Pattern into my apprentice's Pattern?

Some combination of spheres must be sufficient to send Quintessence to
a willing recipient. Whatever Spheres those are, they should also be
sufficient to take Quintessence from an unwilling enemy target.

So if, for example, a Celestial Chorister with Correspondence of an
appropriate level happens to notice a distant vampire, the Chorister
ought to be able to drain the blood points, and probably the health
levels, of the vampire.

And that attack is way too powerful, for my average campaigns. I would
need to start fudging or else leave vampires out of the campaign,
because as soon as they were found, they would have only a few seconds
of unlife remaining. (And in fact when I ran Mage, I usually gave up
on vampire bad guys after starting Mages wiped the floor with fairly
strong vampire goons.)

If White Wolf had started with a concept of a really neat system for
paranormal events, they could start with a theory of how Prime worked,
and see the consequences at the start. Instead, I think they lumped
together "vis" from Ars Magica and the Masquerade/Paradox notion of
unfalsifiable arbitrary story-telling, and Prime is one of the
illogical-but-unfalsifiable results.

I'm not bothered by the fact that Mages are more powerful than
Vampires, I'm bothered by the fact that I can't seem to think up any
combination of spheres that has unambiguous, immediately apparent
results. The Spheres don't seem to fit together with any rhyme or
reason. My players used to complain about this, especially with
Entropy. They just didn't think anyone would ever want Entropy 5 when
you could achieve the same disruption of thought with lower levels of
Mind magic...

Ironically, Mage is what inspired me to go back and re-read _Zen in the
Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_, which complains about just this kind of
problem at great length. Nowadays I spend a lot more time thinking
about the philosophy of that book than I do gaming...

If you have a copy of that book, look at the first big philosophical
discussion, about whether ghosts are less real than gravitation. It's
right near the beginning, page 34 of my paperback. It has the passage:
"We believe the disembodied words of Sir Isaac Newton were sitting in
the middle of nowhere billions of years before he was born and that he
magically discovered these words. They were always there, even when
they applied to nothing. Gradually the world came into being and then
they applied to it. In fact, those words themselves were what formed
the world. That, John, is ridiculous.

The problem, the contradiction the scientists are stuck with, is that
of mind. Mind has no matter or energy but they can't escape its
predominance over everything they do."

White Wolf has made a universe running on Quintessence, and in a
seemingly 19th-century style of energy usage, they have made the
available energy very finite so that Mages have to hunt like vampires
hunting for blood. That might be good for gameplay and story-telling,
but it's very, very bad for making scientific models -- even
fringe-scientific models.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.whitewolf (More info?)

In article <1112062461.622846.93210@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, "Rip
Rock" <riprock@adres.nl> wrote:

> I think that applies to material objects rather than thoughts, right?
> So I would need Corr 4 to send Tass (in the form of water or quartz or
> something) to my apprentice in a distant city, but only Corr 3 Mind 3
> to open a telepathic communication link to the same apprentice in the
> same distant city ... correct?

Sounds about right to my own imperfect understanding of the rules.

> So here is another broken-by-design aspect of the WoD that never fails
> to drive me crazy. Tass is material, Quintessence doesn't seem to be
> material. Do I use Prime 3 Corr 3 if I want to send Quintessence from
> my own Pattern into my apprentice's Pattern?

Again, it doesn't sound unreasonable.

> Some combination of spheres must be sufficient to send Quintessence to
> a willing recipient. Whatever Spheres those are, they should also be
> sufficient to take Quintessence from an unwilling enemy target.
>
> So if, for example, a Celestial Chorister with Correspondence of an
> appropriate level happens to notice a distant vampire, the Chorister
> ought to be able to drain the blood points, and probably the health
> levels, of the vampire.

Here the difference is familiarity. Correspondence uses the relationship
between caster and target to determine the difficulty in targeting a
person at a distance. Check out the Correspondence Range table on page
209 of Mage Revised.

Your vampire would be a total stranger to the Chorister, thus requiring
six successes just to target him, in the absence of any personal items
to lower the Correspondence range. On the other hand, your apprentice
probably qualifies as a "companion," which takes two successes to
target. So it does balance out.

> And that attack is way too powerful, for my average campaigns. I would
> need to start fudging or else leave vampires out of the campaign,
> because as soon as they were found, they would have only a few seconds
> of unlife remaining. (And in fact when I ran Mage, I usually gave up
> on vampire bad guys after starting Mages wiped the floor with fairly
> strong vampire goons.)
>
> If White Wolf had started with a concept of a really neat system for
> paranormal events, they could start with a theory of how Prime worked,
> and see the consequences at the start. Instead, I think they lumped
> together "vis" from Ars Magica and the Masquerade/Paradox notion of
> unfalsifiable arbitrary story-telling, and Prime is one of the
> illogical-but-unfalsifiable results.
>
> I'm not bothered by the fact that Mages are more powerful than
> Vampires, I'm bothered by the fact that I can't seem to think up any
> combination of spheres that has unambiguous, immediately apparent
> results. The Spheres don't seem to fit together with any rhyme or
> reason.

Well, one explanation might be it's because the spheres are supposed to
be an imperfect magical Esperanto devised by negotiation among nine very
different worldviews. It's one of those "It's a feature!"/"It's a bug!"
things. I tend to see it as a feature.

> White Wolf has made a universe running on Quintessence, and in a
> seemingly 19th-century style of energy usage, they have made the
> available energy very finite so that Mages have to hunt like vampires
> hunting for blood. That might be good for gameplay and story-telling,
> but it's very, very bad for making scientific models -- even
> fringe-scientific models.

You don't *have* to hunt for Quintessence. After all, mages can meditate
for the stuff. I'm sure at least one mage out there has invented the
magical equivalent of the waterwheel or hydroelectric turbine.

--
Tyler

m o c t o d o o h a y t a h c t i v o n i l b

Bac>|wards

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.whitewolf (More info?)

In article <1112060696.268993.182290@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
"Rip Rock" <riprock@adres.nl> wrote:

> Mage is
> about telling a story that functions according to the arbitrary
> decisions of a story-teller, *not* according to any kind of
> discoverable rule.

Is there *any* role-playing game that functions according to
discoverable rules? AFAICT, they all involve some level of GM fiat.

--
Tyler

m o c t o d o o h a y t a h c t i v o n i l b

Bac>|wards

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.whitewolf (More info?)

In article <b-mdnQXx1q2D19TfRVn-uA@telcove.net>, Tyler Dion
<tfdion@spammenot.com> wrote:

> > So if, for example, a Celestial Chorister with Correspondence of an
> > appropriate level happens to notice a distant vampire, the Chorister
> > ought to be able to drain the blood points, and probably the health
> > levels, of the vampire.
>
> Here the difference is familiarity. Correspondence uses the relationship
> between caster and target to determine the difficulty in targeting a
> person at a distance. Check out the Correspondence Range table on page
> 209 of Mage Revised.
>
> Your vampire would be a total stranger to the Chorister, thus requiring
> six successes just to target him, in the absence of any personal items
> to lower the Correspondence range. On the other hand, your apprentice
> probably qualifies as a "companion," which takes two successes to
> target. So it does balance out.

And just to clarify, that's if you're incorporating Correspondence into
your effect for long distance. An effect using regular line of sight
only needs successes to target Patterns. But then, if you're in line of
sight with a vampire and casting an effect, you've got bigger problems
than how many successes you need to accumulate.

--
Tyler

m o c t o d o o h a y t a h c t i v o n i l b

Bac>|wards

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.whitewolf (More info?)

Tyler Dion wrote:
> In article <1112060696.268993.182290@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> "Rip Rock" <riprock@adres.nl> wrote:
>
> > Mage is
> > about telling a story that functions according to the arbitrary
> > decisions of a story-teller, *not* according to any kind of
> > discoverable rule.
>
> Is there *any* role-playing game that functions according to
> discoverable rules? AFAICT, they all involve some level of GM fiat.
>

What I mean is that when my usual group plays superhero games (whether
it's Rolemaster, Villains and Vigilantes, Hero, etc.) we all know what
superpowers are, we all know how they interact, we all know what's
possible in the game universe. It's a narrow, shiny, four-color
universe, and everyone has washboard abs, but it makes for quick
conflict resolution.

With my usual group playing a narrow-minded superhero game, we can do
at least four big brawls per evening session. Such games are full of
action, and short on ambiguity.

With Mage, we would be lucky to resolve one big brawl in the usual
gaming session. We all have creative ideas, but there are many
judgement calls to be made. There's lots of weirdness and atmosphere
and creativity, but much less action.

With Call of Cthulhu, there's some atmosphere, absolutely *no* player
creativity with my usual group, and everyone gets wounded or dead.

With D&D, there are at least two plain-vanilla brawls per session.

There's a tradeoff in gaming between surrendering to stereotypes and
getting lots of stereotypical action versus really pushing the
boundaries, doing creative thinking, and slowing things down because
everyone has to talk about exactly what is happening and how the rules
can permit it.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.whitewolf (More info?)

Tyler Dion wrote:
> In article <1112062461.622846.93210@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
"Rip
> Rock" <riprock@adres.nl> wrote:
>
> > So here is another broken-by-design aspect of the WoD that never
fails
> > to drive me crazy. Tass is material, Quintessence doesn't seem to
be
> > material. Do I use Prime 3 Corr 3 if I want to send Quintessence
from
> > my own Pattern into my apprentice's Pattern?
>
> Again, it doesn't sound unreasonable.

Whoops! I forgot to mention a major hang-up that often confused my
group. Vampires aren't alive, so Life magic doesn't affect them, but
maybe it affects their blood points, but their blood points can't
directly injure them without additional spheres.

So if you're used to using (e.g.) Life 4 Corr 3 to injure distant
people, it won't work on vampires. That kind of sphere-exception has
caused major plot twists for my group, and probably for many others.


>
> > Some combination of spheres must be sufficient to send Quintessence
to
> > a willing recipient. Whatever Spheres those are, they should also
be
> > sufficient to take Quintessence from an unwilling enemy target.
> >
> > So if, for example, a Celestial Chorister with Correspondence of an
> > appropriate level happens to notice a distant vampire, the
Chorister
> > ought to be able to drain the blood points, and probably the health
> > levels, of the vampire.
>
> Here the difference is familiarity.

And maybe some refs would say that to drain blood points out of a
vampire you need Matter 3 or more, but you don't need Matter to give
someone Quintessence. I myself can't decide which sounds more
plausible.

All the same, if Quintessence makes Patterns work, and if Prime 3
allows you to push Quintessence out of any Pattern, Prime 3 ought to
allow you to mess everything up, whether it's a living human, a
vampire, or a steel door. But the rules have scattered exceptions: if
the original Mage, Prime 2 did some damage, but not aggravated damage,
and IIRC Prime 4 could snuff out an inanimate Pattern but not a living
one. And every edition afterward changed things slightly.

>From those scattered data points, I have trouble drawing a smooth
curve. (The problem isn't limited to me: various members of my group
have run Mage, and every single Storyteller has understood the rules
differently, and come up with rotes that would break the other
Storytellers' campaigns.)


> Correspondence uses the relationship
> between caster and target to determine the difficulty in targeting a
> person at a distance. Check out the Correspondence Range table on
page
> 209 of Mage Revised.
>
> Your vampire would be a total stranger to the Chorister, thus
requiring
> six successes just to target him, in the absence of any personal
items
> to lower the Correspondence range.

That's a very good point.

>
> You don't *have* to hunt for Quintessence. After all, mages can
meditate
> for the stuff. I'm sure at least one mage out there has invented the
> magical equivalent of the waterwheel or hydroelectric turbine.
>

In the campaigns I have run, Mages *could* survive without a Node, but
couldn't do big stuff -- and all my players always wanted Nodes anyway.
But once they had that Node, they found everyone always was trying to
challenge their ownership/occupation. They always had to fight
defensive battles to keep their Node, then they had to sortie and
destroy public documents and records that could imperil their secrecy.

I always saw Nodes as the biggest weak point of any long-term, stable
group of Mages ... especially in first edition.

Now, in Revised Edition, once you have 4 and 5 Prime, Nodes are much
less necessary. So, yeah, for revised edition I guess hunting is a
much, much smaller piece of the puzzle.

 

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In article <1112238254.054140.192980@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
"Rip Rock" <riprock@adres.nl> wrote:

> With Mage, we would be lucky to resolve one big brawl in the usual
> gaming session. We all have creative ideas, but there are many
> judgement calls to be made. There's lots of weirdness and atmosphere
> and creativity, but much less action.

Well, if you're looking for high action Mage, maybe the GM just needs to
become more comfortable making rules judgments on the fly, without
discussion among everyone.

I mean, you're pretty much right. The Mage system relies heavily on GM
fiat. If you or whoever the GM is isn't into that, maybe you'd be
happier with the Mage HERO conversion or whatever.

FWIW, if the above seems like useless advice, one big brawl per session
is about all I can stand. I like running around IC and debating things
OOC, so it's a little hard to sympathize fully with what you dislike
about Mage.

--
Tyler

m o c t o d o o h a y t a h c t i v o n i l b

Bac>|wards

 

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In article <1112239450.741975.127480@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
"Rip Rock" <riprock@adres.nl> wrote:

> So if you're used to using (e.g.) Life 4 Corr 3 to injure distant
> people, it won't work on vampires. That kind of sphere-exception has
> caused major plot twists for my group, and probably for many others.

I guess it depends on how bothersome you want vampires to be to your
players. You faintly touched on the point yourself that it's easy enough
to declare that a vampire's blood makes them susceptible to Life magic.

But if you want vampires to pose a more significant problem, I'm not
seeing a drawback to the Matter magic ruling. The players are thrown.
They must overcome this unexpected obstacle. And when they do, they have
a piece of information they can rely on.

> And maybe some refs would say that to drain blood points out of a
> vampire you need Matter 3 or more, but you don't need Matter to give
> someone Quintessence. I myself can't decide which sounds more
> plausible.

If you don't need a conjunctional sphere to bestow Quintessence, it
seems unreasonable to require one to take it, or any equivalent mojo,
away. Why do only some GMs require one?

> All the same, if Quintessence makes Patterns work, and if Prime 3
> allows you to push Quintessence out of any Pattern, Prime 3 ought to
> allow you to mess everything up, whether it's a living human, a
> vampire, or a steel door.

Well, for the record, MageRev's Prime 3 covers "sublimate Quintessential
Matter and Forces"; Life Patterns require Prime 4. So if you're using
the conjunctional sphere requirement, I guess you could try to whack a
vampire with Prime 3, Matter 3.

> >From those scattered data points, I have trouble drawing a smooth
> curve. (The problem isn't limited to me: various members of my group
> have run Mage, and every single Storyteller has understood the rules
> differently, and come up with rotes that would break the other
> Storytellers' campaigns.)

My question here is: why are you trying to draw a curve using three very
different corebooks? Wouldn't it be simpler to pick the set of rules you
like best and sand the rough edges, rather than trying to amalgamate all
three?

> In the campaigns I have run, Mages *could* survive without a Node, but
> couldn't do big stuff -- and all my players always wanted Nodes anyway.
> But once they had that Node, they found everyone always was trying to
> challenge their ownership/occupation. They always had to fight
> defensive battles to keep their Node, then they had to sortie and
> destroy public documents and records that could imperil their secrecy.

I guess I'm confused here. If you don't like these things about Nodes,
why did you put them in your game?

--
Tyler

m o c t o d o o h a y t a h c t i v o n i l b

Bac>|wards

 

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Tyler Dion wrote:
> In article <1112239450.741975.127480@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
> "Rip Rock" <riprock@adres.nl> wrote:
>
> > So if you're used to using (e.g.) Life 4 Corr 3 to injure distant
> > people, it won't work on vampires. That kind of sphere-exception
has
> > caused major plot twists for my group, and probably for many
others.
>
> I guess it depends on how bothersome you want vampires to be to your
> players. You faintly touched on the point yourself that it's easy
enough
> to declare that a vampire's blood makes them susceptible to Life
magic.
>
> But if you want vampires to pose a more significant problem, I'm not
> seeing a drawback to the Matter magic ruling. The players are thrown.

> They must overcome this unexpected obstacle. And when they do, they
have
> a piece of information they can rely on.

The problem isn't the game, it's my own lack of organization. My group
will come to a consensus that (e.g.) it requires 4 Prime to whack a
vampire, and then we'll forget about it, because we wrote it down and
buried the paper under a pile of other papers, and then we'll get
distracted by a new supplement, etc.

If I could keep my own house in order, I could get my act together.

For a sample of a Storyteller who is ten thousand times more organized
than I am, see:

http://www.onlyonecomic.com/Mage/Mage.htm

If I could distill all my house rules down to a simple website like
that, I'd be satisfied. It's not going to happen any time soon.


>
> > And maybe some refs would say that to drain blood points out of a
> > vampire you need Matter 3 or more, but you don't need Matter to
give
> > someone Quintessence. I myself can't decide which sounds more
> > plausible.
>
> If you don't need a conjunctional sphere to bestow Quintessence, it
> seems unreasonable to require one to take it, or any equivalent mojo,

> away. Why do only some GMs require one?
>

In part we disagree as to how the game balance should go, and in part
we are all bad at remembering what we agreed on two weeks ago, much
less last month.


> > All the same, if Quintessence makes Patterns work, and if Prime 3
> > allows you to push Quintessence out of any Pattern, Prime 3 ought
to
> > allow you to mess everything up, whether it's a living human, a
> > vampire, or a steel door.
>
> Well, for the record, MageRev's Prime 3 covers "sublimate
Quintessential
> Matter and Forces"; Life Patterns require Prime 4. So if you're using

> the conjunctional sphere requirement, I guess you could try to whack
a
> vampire with Prime 3, Matter 3.
>

Thanks for the info. I'll be interested to see the newest Mage, which
I believe will be out in five months. It will probably change more
than a few things, but the Spheres might stay in place.


>
> My question here is: why are you trying to draw a curve using three
very
> different corebooks?

I have this naive notion that White Wolf products will integrate as
seamlessly as Rolemaster products.

I'm not very motivated by just the Mage books. But when I take Mage
and Wraith and Vampire and Werewolf and Changeling, I get the sense
that there is a story to be told. Unfortunately, when dramatic
inspiration strikes, my usually sloppy organizational skills plunge
into sheer chaos.

I whinge a lot about White Wolf, but their new core rules seem to be
simpler and more elegant than their past rules, so I'm hoping that when
their new Mage comes out I will have no regrets about upgrading across
the board.

> Wouldn't it be simpler to pick the set of rules you
> like best and sand the rough edges, rather than trying to amalgamate
all
> three?

Actually, it would be simplest to 1) write down a story "bible" of
non-negotiable rules; 2) get a core of naive playtesters who don't know
Mage and won't argue with me when I amalgamate, and 3) use the naive
playtesters to establish the campaign before introducing my usual
group.



> > In the campaigns I have run, Mages *could* survive without a Node,
but
> > couldn't do big stuff -- and all my players always wanted Nodes
anyway.
> > But once they had that Node, they found everyone always was trying
to
> > challenge their ownership/occupation. They always had to fight
> > defensive battles to keep their Node, then they had to sortie and
> > destroy public documents and records that could imperil their
secrecy.
>
> I guess I'm confused here. If you don't like these things about
Nodes,
> why did you put them in your game?
>

My usual players pretty much insisted on them, and when they pointed to
the original books, I was convinced the rules were on their side.

My current understanding of Mage Revised is that a mage who meditates
in a Node gains a number of Quintessence points equal to his Avatar
Background. One must have 4 or 5 Prime to do the same trick outside a
Node -- 4 Prime if inspired, 5 Prime under any circumstances. Am I
right?

 

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In message <1111994036.021731.279300@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>, Rip
Rock <riprock@adres.nl> writes
>I can imagine a nonlocal source of infinite energy. If you don't have
>the patience to read the fringe science websites, Heinlein's Friday
>(IIRC) has a science-fantasy device called a "shipstone" or something
>which does this.

No, the shipstone is merely (hah! Merely!) an improbably efficient
battery.
--
Michael Cule

 

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In article <1112332456.726002.321540@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>,
"Rip Rock" <riprock@adres.nl> wrote:

> If I could keep my own house in order, I could get my act together.

Ah, I understand your issue now. Good luck with that.

> My current understanding of Mage Revised is that a mage who meditates
> in a Node gains a number of Quintessence points equal to his Avatar
> Background. One must have 4 or 5 Prime to do the same trick outside a
> Node -- 4 Prime if inspired, 5 Prime under any circumstances. Am I
> right?

Honestly, I tend to ignore the Prime sphere entirely.

I really wouldn't mind ruling on Quintessence the same way Inspiration
works in Adventure! "You had a really relaxing/fulfilling day. Have some
Quintessence." But that just goes to show what kind of game I'd run.

--
Tyler

m o c t o d o o h a y t a h c t i v o n i l b

Bac>|wards

 

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Michael Cule wrote:
> In message <1111994036.021731.279300@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
Rip
> Rock <riprock@adres.nl> writes
> >I can imagine a nonlocal source of infinite energy. If you don't
have
> >the patience to read the fringe science websites, Heinlein's Friday
> >(IIRC) has a science-fantasy device called a "shipstone" or
something
> >which does this.
>
> No, the shipstone is merely (hah! Merely!) an improbably efficient
> battery.
> --
> Michael Cule

Ah, then I misunderstood when I was reading.

In any event, I've heard enough zero-point enthusiasts rave about
extracting energy from virtual particles so that I can imagine it.

In fact, when Werewolf first came out and one of my friends was
explaining Crinos form to me, the first thing I said was, "Oh, it
violates the law of conservation of matter and energy. I guess it must
be using all those virtual particles from the quantum foam."

Yes, I'm a geek, and I would be worse if I were competent in physics.

 

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Tyler Dion wrote:

>
> Honestly, I tend to ignore the Prime sphere entirely.
>
> I really wouldn't mind ruling on Quintessence the same way
Inspiration
> works in Adventure! "You had a really relaxing/fulfilling day. Have
some
> Quintessence." But that just goes to show what kind of game I'd run.
>

I am endlessly fascinated with Prime, but it doesn't get into the
actual game as much as I would like.

I am not familiar with Adventure ... I take it that is a different RPG
which uses Inspiration points to lower dice roll difficulties?

 

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In article <1112624791.796922.27660@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>, "Rip
Rock" <riprock@adres.nl> wrote:

> I am not familiar with Adventure ... I take it that is a different RPG
> which uses Inspiration points to lower dice roll difficulties?

That's one thing Inspiration can do mechanically. Adventure! is WW's oft
unnoticed 1920s pulp action game. The default PC is Inspired in some
way, which gives them the skill, grit and wherewithal to pull off the
amazing feats of traditional pulp fiction. They regain Inspiration
points by accomplishing stupendous deeds or otherwise behaving true to
their natures.

Mechanically, Inspiration can, among other things, double dice pools,
give characters a second wind and even retroactively edit the game world
-- not unlike some interpretations of Mage's coincidental magic.

An example of the last would be a group of heroes in a disabled
airplane, about to crash into a mountainside, fortuitously discovering
there are indeed parachutes stowed in a concealed equipment locker.

Man, I love that game.

--
Tyler

m o c t o d o o h a y t a h c t i v o n i l b

Bac>|wards