The world of Mage: The Awakening is a Fallen Lie of hopeless oppression, a prison for human beings cursed to remain ignorant of the myriad occult forces influencing them. Mages are those few individuals who have Awakened to the truth, seeing the Supernal World hidden behind the Lie. Driven by a need to understand the Fallen World’s secrets, empowered with magic by their insight, they face many dangers in their addiction to mystery, but none more than their own human pride.
The third Chronicles of Darkness game, Mage: The Awakening arrived in 2005 to a devoted following and critical acclaim, winning the ENnie Award for Best Writing the following year. Onyx Path Publishing offers a number of role-playing game fiction, art, and clothing products for Mage: The Awakening, as well as the back-catalog of several dozen original books available as PDF and print-on-demand.
If this sounds interesting to you, Buy Mage: The Awakening now! Mage merchandise is available via our RedBubble store.
Please join us on our Discord!
As selected in last week’s poll, here is the full first draft of Tokyo in Awakening Second Edition’s setting chapter. Along with London, Tucson, Los Angeles, and Salamanca, it serves as an example of how Mage works in a specific setting, rather than the general terms we write most of the books in. Tokyo, as you … Read more
The people have spoken, and so Nimbus it is. Some supernatural beings in the World of Darkness are possessed of an “aura”, a spiritual presence that tells those so sensitive that the being is something else. Vampires have a predatory aura, werewolves have a powerful, feral mein about them. Mages’ souls are wrapped in the stuff … Read more
Wizards We’ve explored a lot of the setting and the character creation options of the game, so now it’s time to make a U-Turn and dig into the Mage Template itself. First up on this tour is Wisdom. Pride’s counter and Gnosis’ counterpart, Wisdom is both an in-world concept (older factions in the Orders call … Read more
It’s another layover week, and there’s one Path left, so it’s time to look at the Thyrsus. (It’s okay, though, we’ve got five Orders to get through before I run-out of emergency fill-in material.) So. The Thyrsus. I know we’re not supposed to have favorites, and from a game design perspective I don’t, but let … Read more
A long time ago – what seems like an incredibly long time to me, but is probably actually about a year and a half, I had a conversation with Ian Watson. I was newly-minted Awakening Developer but still claiming to not be in threads because second edition hadn’t been publicly announced. Ian was recently released … Read more
We’ve spoken a lot about Mysteries and Obsessions so far in this blog, and how mages become attracted to, obsessed by, and sometimes killed by the many supernatural aspects of the World of Darkness. Most such things are unique – central Mysteries that individual chronicles revolve around, like the Secret Concord / Prince of 100,000 … Read more
It’s another layover week, which after last week’s vote means it’s Obrimos time! First, a mood-setter. The Obrimos are unusual in our Path refreshes; they’re the least-changed Path with the most-changed Arcana. We’ve used the opportunity of our two-fold Path schemes to promote non-religious Obrimos as valid characters, but despite or possibly because I’m a … Read more
When You’re Evil Mage is well served for antagonists. The game has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to opposition, and many of them are close to my heart. There’s just something satisfying about a good antagonist. So let’s take a look at the bad side of the road. Before we even get to … Read more
…Is a Polite Society. Some of our World of Darkness games focus hard on individual character groups. You’re not really expected to worry about Prometheans beyond the players’ Throng, and Demons are too paranoid for the majority to be in an Agency. As the most Human supernatural beings, though, mages have a human response to … Read more
We’ve talked about Paths and Legacies already, so we’re past due to talk about the Orders. If Path and Legacy are broad and narrow definitions of magical style, how a mage works her magic, then it’s the job of the last axis of character definition to provide the why, when, and where. From a game … Read more