Comments

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  RaseCidraen

  Posts: 890 October 2012

  Hello there Enantiodromos!
  
  I'm currently running a nWoD MTAw story, so I'll weigh in here and let you know how I'd see things.
  
  1.) I think it'd be filtered through the Mage and their experience - if they're newborn, they might discuss things about how they have figured out how to make themselves exceptionally lucky (Early Fate), or if they come into more understanding of their power, it might progress to the point where they are aware and can discuss the fact that they can "manipulate the strands of fate" - more discussion via descriptor. I feel that each of the primary spheres views the others in distinct and subtle ways. Fate might see Death as something heavy handed and cursed/unlucky, where they might see Spirit as full of potential, Prime as a method of enacting change, etc. Everything colored by experience and knowledge.
  
  2.) Quick and dirty - Vulgar is if you (as a normal person) can't rationalize it immediately. If you see someone punch someone else and they start bleeding from a slash or stab, that's Vulgar. If a television explodes, Vulgar. If you hit a rooftop crane with some heavy Prime/Forces (Vulgar) and if sleepers witness it and the crane falls and crushes someone/something, I'd rule it as not Vulgar. It's all to do with perception, IMHO.
  
  3.) Not sure about paradigm, but in nWoD, there's a big role of Ruling Arcana - you can do pretty much anything with Magic if you're talented enough (Gnosis), but it's a lot easier to work in your known Arcana.
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  Enantiodromos

  Posts: 6 October 2012

  Thanks for your feedback, Rase! It's interesting to hear!
  
  I dunno how I managed to name this thread wrong, meant to reference ascension, not awakening. I have awakening at home, and will have to take another look.
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  Enantiodromos

  Posts: 6 October 2012

  OK, so, to give these questions an answer of my own in case there's anybody like-minded here with re: MtAscension who might want to bring me into their chronicle or start one up (bear in mind these views are specific to OWOD/Mage: The aSCENSION):
  
  1. Mages recognize other-paradigmatic magic, mechanically speaking, more- or less-easily depending on their awareness talent rating.
  
  When they observe magical methods (foci) different from their own, they are inevitably going to understand "why that works" in terms of their own paradigm. A shaman will see technomagic as a (corrupt, inefficient, ignorant, etc) use of shamantic principles, and a technomancer will see shamantic techniques as (corrupt, inefficient, ignorant, etc) use of scientific principles.
  
  IOW, mages interpret the mechanisms of other paradigms via their own paradigm. They won't ever do magic via somebody else's paradigm, because that would essentially amount to doing it their own way, but with added elements that are at best a waste of time, and at worst, unsafe.
  
  A bright line distinction has to be made, however, between these special methods (foci) that bring about awakened effects, and the RESULTS of those methods: the effects themselves. The results of awakened magic are objectively real, and no mage ever fails to or refuses to see those results because "his paradigm doesn't believe in that stuff."
  
  Anyway, the point is, mixed-paradigm PC groups are inevitable in MtAscension, and a lot of the fun has always come from how characters interact over differences in paradigm, not to mention ethics, culture, and goals. But that fun often devolved into flavorless universal in-character "sphere" theories of magic.
  
  Giving a clear answer to "how you see other-paradigmatic magic," that does not lead down an inevitable path toward characters realizing "paradigm doesn't matter," is very important for fun Mage.
  
  In my house rules, I spice this up a bit by giving each of the four essences a slightly different take on how to understand others' paradigms.
  
  
  
  2. "Vulgar" is distinct from "percieved."
  
  Hiding something behind a screen and fast-talking somebody into believing something was "just a hidden chamber in the table," or whatever, are essentially the same thing. In either case there was nobody to observe what "really" (according to the paradigm that enacted it) went on.
  
  
  The "vulgar" distinction has to differ from this. An effect is vulgar, then, when it fails to hew "close enough" to conventional reality. That may SEEM like an impossible standard to apply. Mage didn't make this part easy except as it relies on GM discretion, but I think I have a pretty workable test, the hypothetical 8-year-old test:
  
  Suppose you showed and explained how you actually did the effect, according to your own paradigm, to an 8 year old. Would they buy it?
  
  The idea behind the "hypothetical 8 year old" it that it captures the idea of someone who has a lot of experience with the day-to-day world as it is, but hasn't been nailed down to all the assumptions of the technomantic/scientific paradigm.
  
  See also #4 below.
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  Enantiodromos

  Posts: 6 October 2012

  3. Paradigm should play no role in limiting what a player can or can't do with magic:
  
  a. Whatever happens, whether through ordinary means or as the result of awakened magic, is objectively real.
  
  b. Every paradigm sufficiently powerful for someone to awaken to it, has the power to explain (and duplicate, in the case of magic) everything that is objectively real. (Though individual mages may not have sufficient knowledge [spheres] or prowess [arete] to duplicate it.)
  
  I grant that how hard it is to come up for a convincing paradigmatic explanation of an effect varies by paradigm and effect.
  
  But of course, magic isn't real, so no paradigm's methods can really stand up to scrutiny for long, and every effort to explain an effect within paradigm is really an opportunity to creatively narrate. I don't want to see players' characters punished mechanically for a momentary lapse of creativity.
  
  I may very well HELP you explain how your paradigm achieves an effect, and in fact I think that sort of thing is fun to table-talk. But I'm not going to ever say "you can't do that unless you can convince me it 'makes sense in your paradigm.'"
  
  
  
  As an added bonus:
  
  4. What about wonder-magic and "chaos"-magic? What about "letting go of the magical impulse and letting reality do it whatever way works best [coincidentally]?"
  
  If you want to do magic along these lines, the answer is that you add conjunctional Spirit and Entropy sphere knowledge to your repertoire.
  
  Conjunctional effects with fate/chance (entropy) can often allow you to exchange a bit of exact control for results that are perhaps a little more flexible. Similarly, synchronizing them with a "living reality" or the underlying meaning of things (spirit) may add similar oomph. (Mind and other spheres also sometimes play a similar role.)
  
  Bringing your intended effect, spiritual elements/meaning, and fate/chance, all together in synchrony, can make effects unusually powerful and usually unwitnessed, at the cost of sacrificing some control, and often, some immediacy. Unintended consequences can really shine forth with this approach, too. If that kind of magic is for you, consider a few dots in spirit and entropy.
  
  BTW, #2 and #4 are linked: there was a lot of ambiguity in published Mage: the Ascension, especially after Revised muddied the water, as to whether people could just shove incidental parts of reality around in order to achieve a "coincidental" effect. For example:
  
  People would often give the example: "I use correspondence 3 to travel across the city, coincidentally, because a cab shows up." The problem is, a cab is objectively real, its travel time is real, the money you pay the cabbie is real, the cab itself is a giant matter pattern, and the cabbie a giant life/mind pattern. Changing the cabbie's mind is a mind effect, moving the cab is a Correspondence 4 effect, etc. You can't do that stuff with just correspondence 3.