Mage: the Ascension - Magic
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.ย. 2024
- Magic is the purview of the Mage. While other creatures of the night may have their own powers and spell-like abilities, none of them can produce the sort of raw creative force that a wielder of the arcane arts have at their fingertips.
In this episode we will take a closer look at the trappings of magic, their tools and paradigms, their processes and spheres. We will also distinguish the three typical distinctive forms of magic and discuss who wields them and their strengths and weaknesses.
Whether you are a Technocratic Field Agent looking to brush up on your Reality Deviants, or a Tradition Mage just starting out, I hope you will find this informative and inspirational.
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Thank you to thornedembers for making my avatar! If you're looking for an amazing artist, go check them out on twitter! / thornedembers
Props to Ian Watson / @VonAether on Twitter for being an absolute star and supplying me with hi-res Mage logos!
-Relaxing Piano Improvisation by Alexander Nakarada
Link: filmmusic.io/s...
-Misty Lights by Rafael Krux
Link: filmmusic.io/s...
-Particles by Rafael Krux
Link: filmmusic.io/s...
-Inspirational Piano And Orchestra by Rafael Krux
Link: filmmusic.io/s...
License: creativecommons...
Main Ambiece from World of Darkness: Preludes.
“Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of White Wolf Entertainment AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit white-wolf.com.”
Just imagine inviting your buddy who is in college studying physics to play.
Ouch... yeah, I have a trained chemist friend and he would be lethal in Mage; McGuyver'ing tear gas out of like a scissor or something.
When I picked up Mage at 17 (give or take a year) is blew my fucking mind! It's a heavily philosophical game/setting and the way it explored perception, paradigm, and the nature of reality had a massive impact on the way I view and understand the real world. I would argue it was mostly for the better. In any case, I have a deep nostalgic appreciation for this game!
Thank you for sharing that cool story!
It’s a kind of Magic
HIGHLANDER
I am so glad to see a WOD TH-camr covering Mage. Not enough do and those that do are usually VERY amateur. Thank you for this
Glad you enjoyed it! I'm surprised at the positive response I've gotten so definitely expect more Mage content in the future!
@@ThePrimogen that would be awesome. More of Mage, please!
@@ThePrimogen Nephandi pls 🥺
It's a great video, it adds up to the first one about MtAs, and the quot about "to a true master of magic there is no spheres only wills" still echos in my head, it's there.
I'm really glad you enjoyed it! Yeah I was initially going to do a video about the Traditions, but I thought I needed to delve further into the system itself before I do that! :D
@@ThePrimogen it was a good choice making this follow up video, and maybe you can do an actual video about sorcery because there is/was a rumer that tremere was a sorcerer and not an actual mage yet he had his house in the order of hermies, was it why he didn't care much about turning to vampire cause he already can't use the dynamic magic so it was all the same?
As I'm pondering about starting a Mage campaign when we finish our current Blades in the Dark one, these videos are invaluable to us. Thank you, Mr. Primogen!
Glad I could help! I hope your campaign will go well!
I've been playing Mage since last year and only now, with your video, I understood many concepts of the game! Thank you a lot!
Thank you for dropping by to make a comment, I'm so happy I could help!
Lovely video really nails the meta view of magick that made MtAs so unique when it came out still to this day. The added unintentional benefit that making a Mage playable character also lets you create your own magic system really made the line stand out in modern lines
Thank you! I agree, Mage really stands out as a cool and interesting take on the Storytelling system, and the magic system in general is super cool!
I'm currently obsessed with the Spheres. So much so that I just got the "How do you DO that?" supplement for M20 which goes into them in much more detail.
It's a great book, I need to sit down at some point and REALLY read it.
so TH-cam just recommended this to me..and I don't dislike it, I actually like it a lot, love it even..TH-cam, did you take some enhancements drugs?
I'm glad you found it, thanks Algorithms!
I started playing mage before matrix movie. It blew my mind.
Ever played any of the videogames in the "Persona" series? The personas in that are very similar to the Avatars in Mage, and would actually be a good example of a Mage Chronicle for Japanese kids in high school. Especially Persona 3, which is the darkest one.
I absolutely love Persona and I can see the parallels :D
Shin Megami Tensei has fucking awesome magic.
Oh and Persona is alright too, I guess.
Ok so I just realized, this video is gonna spoil the hell out of me? i need more Mage related videos now...
There will be at least one more, potentially two. :3c
bro you have a gift of speech...very eloquent and succinct...you sound like an impassioned professor revealing nuggets of truth to your students...awesome...and i can't help thinking how some of the folks i used to try and explain the concepts of mage to would turn cross-eyed listening to something like this...lol...absolutely brilliant
Thank you! I really appreciate that!
I find so much of this lore fascinating and I want to present it in the best way possible and it means a lot to read a comment like yours!
@@ThePrimogen well i'm just happy knowing there are other folks that actually grasp it's wonder...so thank you my friend...nice to know i ain't the only one ...shame it took 20+ years to find someone...lol
this reminded a little bit about the pre-socratic phylosophers and how they focused and finding explanations for the world and nature and how stuff worked. Heraclitus and Parmenides had really contrasting perceptions of reallity. Heraclitus believed that everything changed all the time and that movement was the natural state of the universe ("you cannot step into the same river twice"). While Parmenides believed that the universe was estatic, and that movement amd change only clouded our perceptions of what was actully real. They definitely would never be able to get along with such different perceptions of the world.
I agree wholeheartedly; I love debates that go to the very core of what reality actually is. It illustrates the power of human comprehension and imagination so well.
“No single mage is a master of all spheres.”
Me: Laughs in my old LARP let me get away with too much
I can’t wait until you a Hunter series one day! Great video! 😊
Maybe one day! There's a lot of lore left in WoD to cover!
I wanna play a Celestial Chorister who gets embraced as a Tremere against their will and their major goal is to achieve Golchonda and return to humanity so as to reunite with their lost Avatar.
One of my favorite mage characters I’ve played was a Celestial Chorus magi who had the Twin Souls merit with my friend and I had Manifest Avatar and he had Circumspect Avatar. We are very clever >.>
Thanks! This is an awesome video and a really comprehensive breakdown.
Glad you enjoyed it and thank you! I tried my best and it's *such* a massive setting.
Notice the Progenitors symbol at the end. Conventions of the Technocratic Union, for the next video? X)
"Oops" ;)
Thanks for the video, I love mage.
I could have used these videos in ~2017 when I was very confused by this game :)
also growing Jills got me for some reason 11:47
Hahaha, the plague of being ESL, I sometimes mess up words and I felt so embarrassed about the jills think, because I didn't catch it until I saw the video live XD
I'm hoping lots of people will find my videos a useful introduction to the lore, it can be heavy sometimes
@@ThePrimogen With enough correspondence and life and you CAN be a few Jills. :)
Don't sweat the small stuff!
So, basically the Mages in WoD are extremely OP?
Oooooooh yeah.
They're essentially gods compared to vampires and werewolves.
Now this making wounder how this works with true faith
There are rules for that in-system. And for how magic interacts with other Night-Folk, such as vampires, etc.
Thank you. I’m delving into Mage lore for the first time, and it’s a treat. Only read up on Ars Magica till now (as people tend to say it has the best magic system to be found in TTRPGs), and I assume that one is largely retconed in new lore.
Also, I don’t know if you have these written down, but could you write me the artist names for 6:32 and 9:08 ? I love the art and want to see more of it, however google reverse image search failed me.
Thank you, I'm glad you're enjoying these! :D And yeah, afaik Ars Magica's system couldn't be used because I think WW didn't have the rights to them anymore, or they worked on it but it wasn't WW property, I can't quite remember.
Also, all the art I'm using is official White Wolf artwork available on the Storyteller's Vault (storytellersvault.com); those pieces specifically are from the Mage 20th Anniversary Edition.
Thanks a lot for the response. ^^ If compared, lore wise I think I prefer Mage from what I’ve seen. Change from wizard’s twilight (which isn’t properly explained and feels like it’s there just so they keep some sort of internal character threat) to Paradox is definitely an improvement, despite the fact that from my limited knowledge it still doesn’t feel completely right in context of abilities of other supernaturals.
Also I’ll take vamp Tremeres over mage Tremeres everytime I get a chance, even though I understand why they backed out of the vamp subplot in AM because it derails the game and makes them primary antagonists way too often.
Very good video, I'm excited to see a video on the Traditions. Society of Ether FTW.
Coming soon! Just gotta finish the freakin' Werewolves first *sweats*
@@ThePrimogen Good luck and glory to Gaia
@@ZelphTheWebmancer Thank you! :D
I love the free form nature of magic within the mage system (and have used it to cause some hell for an ST of mine). Great video, but I feel compelled to ask. Any chance we may see some videos on wraith or dreaming (some of my favorite WOD systems)?
Thank you so much for the question! I agree, Mage has a cool system, it's just easy to get mired in the details. Wraith content you will unfortunately not see from me for a while, I'm afraid, unless there'll be a new book in the pipelines for The Onyx Path or White Wolf, same with Dreaming.
I can highly suggest you follow Huddyvonschland though, here on TH-cam, as I happen to know she's looking into covering some of the other Splats.
@@ThePrimogen thank you I will look into their channel.
3:35 Wait so you're telling me that the mages in WoD are basically Stand Users? 😆
Stands, matrix, and a touch of Dr strange.
When are we getting a game about mage ascension
I’m curious can vampires do this magic to
Vampires are unable to do dynamic magic like mages, as the Embrace destroys their Avatar. The closest to doing magic are the Tremere and Banu Haqim who practice Blood sorcery.
Cool Tshirt.
Oh boi... just what I needed to prepare for my first Mage-Game.
And only uploaded 2h before I came here.
Is this Entropy at work?
:) Sometimes your Will can alter reality without your knowledge.
I would say it came in really good Time
@@ZelphTheWebmancer I see what you did there!
@@ThePrimogen Jokes aside, that's hella common in terms of the moment of Awakening. That initial reach well beyond what your Sphere levels will permit for a long time thereafter!
5:44
True, according to 3rd edition for ever Arete a mage gets above 5 they can abandon one Sphere’s focus.
in the 20th, already at the 3rd point, you can abandon the focus. I'm sorry if it's not quite right, English is not my native language.
the way a lot of this actually exists in real magic amuses me
What I really want to know is what do the OTHER walkers of the WoD think of mages? Vampires with the haughty we-are-the-inheritors-of-the-night must find the mere existence of mortals who's power outstrips even antediluvians an intolerable offense. Werewolves must see mages as horrible enablers of humanity's despoilment of the natural world... the very idea of a mage's magic is about placing their will above the natural order after all. Waiths must see mages, especially those skilled in Spirit, as opportunities and threats in equal measure. Who knows what the Qui-Jin think of anything... and would the Hunters peceive any difference between themselves and mages?
Hi all, I got a good amount of WoD books and want to learn them so that I can be a better Storyteller eventually. I'm weird in that I only want to play/learn the games that I have real books for, not PDFs. I really want to get into these games, but need a helping hand. I have FRI/SAT off, but have an every other week Playing board games on SAT. The following books I have and want to learn, flexible on discord by Voice
Mage the ascending 20th
Wraith: The Oblivion 20th
Changeling the dreaming 20th
If anyone out there wants to start a group/mentor me/teach me so I can become a better Storyteller, that would be awesome. If not, no worries, I will try to learn on my own as well. Thanks for reading!
This is so complicated 😭. Why would anyone do this for fun? Thanks for the explanation though. Hopefully, I can do an adequate job to make my friend happy
Awww ysss Mage
Finger-lickin' good mages
I don't get it.... we all make magic... but if action equals magic as an outcome.... why would it not work for other. If waving your arms and saying "woobitywoo" makes fire appear.... why doesn't that work for anyone but me?
sounds like the mage avatar relationship is the human perception of the demon host relationship in demons the fallen are they explicitly disconnected in the lore?
and by the logic of consensus does that mean the technology we use was an intentional limitation by the consensus? puts me in mind of the creed of nicea and it's warhammer 40k equivalent which has a similar name, some event where a council formed to inhibit psykers in that universes abilities to flourish and even humanities awareness as a whole about psychic powers, seems like there's some crossover, the creed of nicea too is a set in stone codified rules of thought about Christianity, a doctrine that is enforced to this day
So basically Chaos Magick.
That cartoon looks really f-cking smug
Now how could a Mage that is a skeptic work?
They wouldn't. Or they would maybe become a Technocrat, but being a Mage is about belief and conviction.
I put a spell on you and now you’re mine
2:30 aww I was hoping you’d go with static dynamic and Qilppothic magic
Was looking for a video explaining how to actually use the magic system in Mage, found this completely useless. Thanks.
what a perfect opportunity for you to get into video making yourself!
@@ThePrimogen That's a very dumb idea, though the fact that you think its a good idea does help explain why you released a video on the Mage Magick system that makes no attempt to explain anything useful.
😂