electricpaladin

I wrote this one up a while ago, right before my computer stopped scanning altogether. Now that that problem is finally solved, it seems appropriate to throw it up. After all, Mage: the Awakening is one of my favorite games, up there with Mage: the Ascension, Changeling: the Dreaming, and Exalted.

The Game: Mage: the Awakening
Publisher: White Wolf
Familiarity: High. It sure as hell better be.

Mage: the Awakening is a very straightforward and tight modern occult horror game. You play someone who has awakened to the secret of the Supernal Realms, the higher world whose themes and patterns influence this, Fallen World.

How did the World Fall? Funny story, that. You see, back in the day, a bunch of mages decided it would be nifty to reach the Supernal Realms bodily, rather than just through vision quests. So they built a spiritual tower. Other mages tried to stop them, believing that it was wrong and mistrusting what their fellows would do once they had the power to stick their hands into the workings of reality and mess with things.

Well, the good guys lost. The Celestial Ladder broke, trapping the arrogant mages and the humble ones who chased them up the Ladder on the far side. Now the world is separated from its soul by an Abyss of madness and ruled by the Exarchs, the now-godlike arrogant mages who remain in the Supernal Realms. Fortunately, the other mages became the equally godlike Oracles and created five watchtowers in five of the Supernal Realms. Following the light of those Watchtowers, humans can still awaken to magic.

Mage: the Awakening is about being a person with power in a world full of madness and conspiracies. It’s part Mage: the Ascension, part Changeling: the Dreaming, part The Matrix, and part… well, it’s part a lot of things. I think you get the point.

( My Will Be Done )

In retrospect, there is one thing I'd change about this character (well, two actually, only the other was so dumb I fixed it already). The rotes Ephemeral Armor and Second Sight are both a little too easy for him to cast off the top of his head. It isn't worth it for him to have rotes for them, and the points would be better spent elsewhere. The other thing was that I originally had two points in Mind, not Matter, so David could "convince" recalcitrant spirits, but I have since realized that you don't need Mind to mind control spirits, Spirit does it just fine. One of the quirks of Awakening - like Ascension before it - is that humans and other animals are made of multiple Arcana Mind for the mind, Life for the Body, and Death for the soul (for humans), but most other things - spirits, ghosts - are made of only one Arcana. Weird, but there you have it.

And that’s it. Mage: the Awakening. I’m very fond of this character, possibly the most fond of any so far. I’d like to play him one day.

The Game: Houses of the Blooded
Publisher: Wicked Dead Brewing Company
Familiarity: Low, but growing. I’m probably going to run a one-shot of this one, soon.

Houses of the Blooded is about playing one of the ven, a beautiful and passionate people who existed in the time between the fall of the sorcerer kings and the rise of Atlantis. For a while, they ruled the world. Then, they vanished, setting the stage for the rise of the early human nations.

The Ven are passionate, obsessed with dichotomies. They don’t have crushes, they have Romance. They don’t have enemies, they have Revenge. The ven are everything I want out of a roleplaying game: passionate, interesting people doing really stupid things for the sake of their desires, ideals, and ambitions, getting into trouble… and then having to get out of it. Or dying of it. Houses of the Blooded, after all, is a game about tragedies.

( Ambition, Lust, Revenge )

So, what do you all think? This is my first attempt at a Houses of the Blooded character, and while I like to think I got it all right, I know I probably didn’t.

I want to say that making this character was remarkably easy and fun. Something about the Aspects really helps a character jump out and bite. And the random part was a lot more fun than I expected. I may sit around with the charts and a d6 and see what comes out.

*Sigh* I really like this game. If only someone else around me did, too. Even Abby isn’t fond of it.

Up next… I don’t want to use all my new games up right away, so I think I’ll do Mage: the Awakening. Got an idea and everything.

Fucking temping. I cannot wait until I’m not doing this anymore.

I’m not going to unload the entire story on you all (not that I’m not tempted to), but let’s just say that getting the wrong address, forgetting my cell phone at home (today of all days), and having a rep who refuses to acknowledge the possibility that she screwed up is a lousy combination.

Argh.

Anyway, I’m going to seek some catharsis by making a character. Today is Werewolf: the Forsaken. Werewolf is good for catharsis.

The Game: Werewolf: the Forsaken
Publisher: White Wolf
Familiarity: Medium. I’ve read the corebook and many of the supplements cover to cover, run a game, and played in a (frankly lackluster) one-shot at GenCon.

So, what is Werewolf: the Forsaken?

Simply put, it’s a game about savagery and spirituality. You play a werewolf, a half-spirit, half-flesh member of an ancestral subculture hiding within modern human society. Your mandate is to police the border between the spirit world and the human world, trying to keep humans from abusing spirits and spirits from abusing humans. Your enemies include powerful spirits with an interest in abusing the human world, humans with an interest in abusing the spirit world, your own kin – werewolves called the Pure who have abandoned their role as spirit cops in favor of trying to remake the world as a primordial paradise – and all sorts of other weirdness.

I think Forsaken compares favorably to Apocalypse. Don’t get me wrong, Apocalypse was a great game, but Forsaken is darker, grittier, and more complex in all the right ways.

( We Are Forsaken )

I feel better.

The Game: Changeling: the Dreaming
Publisher: White Wolf
Familiarity: Incredible! I have read every book I can get my hands on and I have played in three games, one that ran nine months , one that ran four months, and one that ran a year and a half. I’ve never tried to run it (though I really want to), except for one kind of abortive attempt. This game is one of my favorites and I love it dearly.

In Changeling, you play a fragile faerie soul who has survived the thousands of years since faerie homeland, Arcadia, was cut off from earth by the growing power of human disbelief. Faeries survived by becoming “changelings,” faeries souls that entered into a symbiosis with a human soul so that the resulting being could live in both worlds, at the cost of some measure of amnesia on the part of the faerie side. Fey society was recently thrown into turmoil by the exile to Earth of several houses of fey nobles in 1969. These Sidhe don’t coexist with human souls, they boot them out, meaning they are, in some sense, different creatures altogether.

Changeling is a game about balancing two radically different identities and points of view – the human and the fey – and trying to build a life that works in both worlds. It is a game about mortality: the beauty of childhood, the power of adulthood, and the wisdom and tragedy of old age. It is a game about the fragility and tenacity of wonder in a world that seems to have forgotten it.

( The Right to Dream )

And that’s it for Changeling. Next up, one of my new GenCon aquisitions... Hunter: the Vigil!

The Game: Changeling: the Lost
Publisher: White Wolf
Familiarity: Medium. I’ve read the core and every book produced thus far (except Lords of Summer, which we haven’t bought yet) and I’d love to run it one day soon. If only I had more players…

What is Changeling: the Lost? In my mind, it’s a game about being abused. Not just by parental or authority figures, but by life. It’s a game about how the worst thing about being hurt is that the thing that hurts you gets into you, becomes a part of you, changes you.

All changelings are hurt, all of them have a bit of what hurt them inside them, and all of them have been changed.

That’s the long of it. The short of it is that in Changeling, you play a poor goon kidnapped by faeries. They took you away and did horrible things to you (or were just their horrible selves, which probably wasn’t good for you).

I'd like to note that this is one of my favorite games in the New World of Darkness line, surpassed only by Mage and Promethean. Overall, it's a great game, and I can't wait to get a chance to actually play with it.

( Where will you go, now that you are Lost? )

And if you don’t think the violin can rock, check out:



And:



Up next? Probably I’ll post that Call of Cthulhu character I made already. Then? Probably back to the schedule with Changeling: the Dreaming followed by Dark Ages: Fae and CthulhuTech, or as I like to call it EvangelionTechRun Plus: The Apocaypse :P.

The Game: Angel
Publisher: Eden Studios, Inc.
Familiarity: Medium. I’ve never actually played Angel, exactly, but I’ve played the Buffy roleplaying game about four times, one of them as the "Director." I’ve seen a handful of episodes of the television show.

If you’ve seen Angel, the TV show, you know what the game is about. If you haven’t, let me tell you a little. The game is a dark modern fantasy, urban and gritty, with serious noir influences. There’s a thread of the whacky running through the story, too. There are demons living in alternate dimensions that want to eat you in some creative way, but there are other demons who run karaoke bars. There is power available to mortals that can drive them mad, but there are heroic ensouled vampires who want to be human again so they can go back to their girlfriends.

( Fighting the Good Fight )

Up next: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, followed by my first serious classic… Call of Cthulhu!

The Game: Ars Magica 5th Edition
Publisher: Atlas Games
Familiarity: Zero. I flipped through it once and thought “oh, it’s kind of like the high mythic age of Mage: the Ascension, only not quite” and that was it. The book was originally Abigail’s. She bought it at Gencon.

That’s part of what’s fun about this whole process, though, isn’t it?

( Ave Hermes! )

I would like to say that Ars Magica gets the ‘least user friendly character generation so far’ award. So many points! Tables and charts used during character creation! Arcane rules! It’s like being a member of the Order of Hermes, without the magic powers. I’m pretty sure this character is missing important things, possibly so badly as to be unviable in a real game. Ars Magica is clearly one of those games that takes a lot of learning.

That being said, I would totally play it. I’m not sure I’d run it, mind you (at least not until after I’ve played it), but I’d give it a fair shot.

Up next: Blue Rose

The Game: Aberrant
Publisher: White Wolf
Degree of Familiarity: Low. I’ve made Aberrant characters before, but it was a while ago, and I’ve never actually run or played it. Abby wants me to, though…

( Freak! )

EDIT: I swear, I'm not usually even remotely this derivative. I promise. My next character will be completely original ant not in any way resemble anything anyone else has even thought of. It's true.

Really.