Welcome back, faithful readers!
Since we opened Open Development on Signs of Sorcery, Mage: The Awakening Second Edition has moved through layout and proofing to the final approval by White Wolf. Those of you who read our last post will have already seen the second edition Mage Sight rules, though (if you haven’t, go read them here – you’ll need them to understand today’s Open Dev document.)
When we were designing new Mage Sight, we wanted to unify the old Sight spells under a Mage Template system, divide it into three levels of awareness (Peripheral, Active, and Focused) and give the system for scrutinizing information about Mysteries. Matt McFarland crammed an awful lot into what turns out to be four and a half pages, but there’s some permutations, exceptions, and curious circumstances you might come up against. How can magic affect the process, now it isn’t a spell itself? What happens when you try to have multiple mages scrutinizing the same thing? How does it interact with the Investigation subsystem introduced in the Chronicles of Darkness corebook?
To that end, Chapter One of Signs of Sorcery contains a section on advanced Mage Sight rules, for when things get really strange or you as a Storyteller want an extra helping hand. You can find it here:
Signs of Sorcery Open Development 1: Mage Sight
The linked document has not been to an editor, so please don’t waste my time and yours flagging spelling and grammar mistakes. I will be most pleased to hear from people who try some of these advanced rules out in their own games; if comments on this blog close, feel free to PM me on the Onyx Path forums.
Next time on the blog
At this rate, will be the post-release material for Awakening 2e. We won’t forget about Signs, though, don’t worry.
Comments
23 responses to “I can see for miles and miles [Mage: The Awakening]”
The burning question, did the Awakened use the name Camera Obscura before or after Fatal Frame came out 🙂
Yes I know the term existed before the game 😛
I was building Camera Obscuras for science museums in the 1970s, and I never heard of the movie Fatal Frame until just now. They’ve been around as long as recorded history, going back into antiquity.
Can’t help but feel that’s what a Free Councillor wild say to a Guardian for plausible deniability. “No I didn’t drunkenly ramble to a Sleeper at a bar after that night at Himuro Mansion”
As for the movie, at least they didn’t give to Uwe Boll.
Awesome! Can’t wait for MAw 2e!
I confess that I’m not sure what I think of the mystery rules in general, but I’m sure it will make more sense when 2E is out. At first glance, it looked like mages will just sit and stare at stuff to solve mysteries, but this preview shows that the writers are aware of that and have added (and are adding) more depth to that system.
My favorite things in this document are the permutations Locked Opacity and Linked Opacity. I think that both of those have the potential to really add to the complexity of an investigative story. Thank you for sharing!
The spell Shared sight gives someone under the effects of “Apocalypse” prime sight. However if the effect of that spell is the same as the one that was posted in the blog post, “Apocalypse” gives Obrimes mage sight, which contains Prime as default. Isn’t it reduntant ?
In the chasm of time since that blog, Apocalypse was changed to give the Mage Sight of the caster – as well as its value in making Sleepwalkers, it then becomes a means by which a mage can show mages not on the same Path what they’re looking at.
Oh, I like that – I feel like it helps reinforce the fact that Prime is a part of all the Realms, not just the Aether.
Question about Merit: Piercing Glance (•• or ••••)
If the Storyteller tells a player to roll clash of wills when there’s nothing obviously magical going on, isn’t that the same thing as telling them that their peripheral mage sight alerted them?
I mean, on some level most players know to separate in character/out of character knowledge, but it might help to advise storytellers to make the roll privately, perhaps?
Well, if the players are that meta-intensive, there is a simple solution: Do fake rolls every now and then.
You can always roll FOR them, too, without saying why (STs make unseen rolls all the time). Just make sure to keep track of your PCs’ Clash dice pools if they have abilities like that.
It makes sense the coming of a supernal being would alert any mages on the general vicinity.
Can a supernal beings step into earth withou being summoned by magic?
Its neat to see a more robust ruleset giving Prime more things to do.
Piercing Glance seems really good. It uses the same Clash of Wills pool as active mage sight?
Supernal Taxonomy also seems really, really good.
The usefulness of the Reach bonus of Path of Jerusalem seems unreliable given that opposition will always have the Rote-Action bonus in the circumstances in which it applies.
Question about Spell Camera Obscura and others in that format: is it correct that the spell *always* cost 1 Mana, meaning the Reach option would cost 2?
Yes
will there be a pre-release / preorder version of Mage the Awakening like there has been for Werewolf the Forsaken 2nd ed, and the like?
It will have an advance version, where we’re still open to errata before the final printed version is locked off, yes.
“A mage can even see the presence of a Mystery in a photograph or a video”
– I see a lot of potential in this little tidbit… having Peripheral MS triggered by things like photos could be a good way to get characters to go places they wouldn’t normally go, plant backstory details, hooks, generate future plot seeds, start side investigations where a mage tries to figure out where the photo was taken so they can see if the Mystery is still there, or who’s in the photo….
Can this be used to identify Demon’s (DtD)? does it cause a compromise roll?
I really appreciate the new merits. 1e definitely seemed to be lacking in merits that were obviously useful (not universally, but in general).
Also, I like that the complexities of mage sight are getting their due attention. This new material is going to take some time for me to chew on. Excellent!
I’m confused about Opacity. Is it a property intrinsic to a Mystery, or is it a relative property tied to a single person’s understanding of that mystery?
If three mages (not necessarily allies using teamwork) all want to understand the Mysterious Tower, do they all need to individually scrutinize it, yielding three different changing Opacity ratings? Or the Mysterious Tower get fundamentally less mysterious as people study it?
Regarding Teamwork:
Seems like in most cases teamwork is a bad deal. Assuming all the team members are approximately equally skilled, three teamwork rolls is as valuable as one leader’s roll, but two teamwork rolls contaminate the scene as much as one leader’s roll.
Unless…
1) Using teamwork allows everyone to unravel the Mystery together, eliminating the need to have every member of a team individually scrutinize. Maybe this even saves some willpower points? Not sure.
2) Teamwork might let multiple people combine differing Arcana on one effort?
3) Teamwork might allow more mana to be poured into a Scrutiny (though this is probably a pretty bad deal, since the effectiveness of teamwork mana will be reduced by 3).