Welcome to part 144 of Sphere Mixers! This where we randomly choose two Spheres and two Ranks and brainstorm ideas for...

• Conjunctional Effects using both of these Spheres or
• Two Effects, one of each Rank, that work well together.

This month will be heavy on Life and Prime, by request, so get those ideas ready and make sure you're hitting the Ranks properly.

Life 3

••• Transform Simple Life-Forms / Alter Self / Heal Others

Advanced understanding allows the mage to radically alter simple organisms (turning a tree inside-out); transform one into another (changing fruit into insects); or – with Prime 2 – conjure them from raw energy.

Working with his own Pattern, that mage can work substantial alterations on himself, growing gills, claws, armor and so forth. He remains essentially human, but begins to master the definition of “human.” Meanwhile, he also gains the ability to heal damage to other complex organisms, put them to sleep, or inflict harm upon their living Pattern forms.

Prime 2

•• Fuel Pattern / Construct Patterns / Enchant Patterns / Body of Light

Attaining a degree of control over Prime energies, the mage may divert Quintessence into new or existing forms. Combined with other Spheres, this allows that mage to create new Forces, Life, or Matter Patterns (conjuring them from thin air), and to infuse existing items with Primal Force to strengthen them or enhance their protective or destructive power.

Weapons or attacks infused with Quintessence through Prime 2 Effects may hurt spirits or inflict aggravated damage, and substances infused the same way may protect against such harm. (See Chapter Nine’s Combat section for details.) On a related note, she may also – with Life 2 for simple organisms, or Life 3 for complex ones – consecrate a living thing at this Rank, as if that life-form were an object described above.

Through similar applications of energy, the mage can also conjure a simple Body of Light: an idealized self projected from ephemeral energy. Although this Body of Light has no substance or special properties (unlike the astral form described in Chapter Nine, p. 477), it presents a glowing holograph of the mage herself.

Previous Mixers: Sphere Mixers Summary, feel free to go back and add your new ideas.

I believe it also had some information regarding Arthurian Britain, and one possible future where the Technocracy collapses after humanity colonizes the solar system, and the Traditions reveal themselves, then suffer a schism.

I'm sure there was a sourcebook that fit that description, but I can't seem to remember its name or where to find it. Anyone know which one I'm thinking of?

Welcome to part 143 of Sphere Mixers! This where we randomly choose two Spheres and two Ranks and brainstorm ideas for...

• Conjunctional Effects using both of these Spheres or
• Two Effects, one of each Rank, that work well together.

This month will be heavy on Life and Prime, by request, so get those ideas ready and make sure you're hitting the Ranks properly.

Life 2

•• Alter Simple Life-Forms / Heal Self

Simple organisms – viruses, mollusks, insects, plants, etc. – become clay in the mage’s hands. He learns to adjust their Patterns (giving a crab wings, for example), and heal or kill them. Although he can’t yet transmute them into other states of being, he can cause flowers to bloom or wither, help trees bear fruit, and so on. Focusing on his own Pattern, he can also heal himself or perform small alterations (hair color, skin tone, height, weight, and so on) to his basic form.

Prime 2

•• Fuel Pattern / Construct Patterns / Enchant Patterns / Body of Light

Attaining a degree of control over Prime energies, the mage may divert Quintessence into new or existing forms. Combined with other Spheres, this allows that mage to create new Forces, Life, or Matter Patterns (conjuring them from thin air), and to infuse existing items with Primal Force to strengthen them or enhance their protective or destructive power.

Weapons or attacks infused with Quintessence through Prime 2 Effects may hurt spirits or inflict aggravated damage, and substances infused the same way may protect against such harm. (See Chapter Nine’s Combat section for details.) On a related note, she may also – with Life 2 for simple organisms, or Life 3 for complex ones – consecrate a living thing at this Rank, as if that life-form were an object described above.

Through similar applications of energy, the mage can also conjure a simple Body of Light: an idealized self projected from ephemeral energy. Although this Body of Light has no substance or special properties (unlike the astral form described in Chapter Nine, p. 477), it presents a glowing holograph of the mage herself.

Previous Mixers: Sphere Mixers Summary, feel free to go back and add your new ideas.

I am running a chronicle set in the 15th century(we are starting in 1412 and I intend for but to last for a while)

In m20, it describes several earthly foundations, that is things that are always vulgar regardless of reality zones. I dont like that in general, but one in particular stuck out to me as kinda heinous.

>​Sudden Large Alterations of Physical and Metaphysical Mass or Space: Stacking places on top of one another, disintegrating large structures, changing large masses of physical matter into large emissions of energy (i.e., explosions),...

Does anyone abide by this? Especially with how popular causing an explosion to do coincidental magick attacks are in both the fandom and actual examples in the books, I just dont see how this earthly foundation is applied.

So, long story long, i was running a first session for my friends of Mage the Ascension. I planned us to do a 3 hour session, mostly making the sheet as they are newbies, then their awakening and their banishment into the dreaming. Heyo, fairy adventures ensue.

9 hours

9 FUCKING HOURS

THEY ARE SO INVESTED THEY KEEP WANTING TO PLAY

i ran out of material. 6 hours of improv. They wandered through a "jurassic park" pissed of an elder dinosaur who they need to get a mask for, for his masquerade. The last half an hour was just them arguing with a dmv guy with bipolar political disorder. I dont know what to do. Please help.

(They had a lot of fun but now i need ideas for where to take the story)

For some context, I've played Vampire the Masquerade a fair bit but I've always been curious to branch out into the other WoD splats. My friends and I settled on Mage for our next campaign and so far we are all super excited to try it! The lore is fascinating, and it has some of the most unique gameplay mechanics I've seen in any TTRPG. However, I've run into a rather frustrating problem...

None of the Traditions have really 'clicked' for me.

I want to say that I don't think this is the game's problem. This is definitely a 'me' problem.
After doing some digging on the Traditions they all seem fairly well written and very fun. Hell, all my friends gravitated towards a Tradition of their preference. But...something isn't resonating with me the way it did for some of the VtM Clans. I remember when I first started exploring VtM, there were some clans that just instantly spoke to me and I felt really inspired to make characters for them.

I know for VtM, each clan was designed to encapsulate a specific type of vampire archetype from pop culture. You want to play a sexy vampire, go Toreador. You want to play the vampire bikers from Lost Boys, The Brujah are for you. You want to play the scary ugly Orlok Vampire, then you can play Nosferatu. ect

From what I've seen, the Traditions in MtA were designed in a similar way. Each one is kind of meant to play to the fantasy of a specific type of wizard from pop culture. Verbena are Druids/Witches. Virtual Adepts are magical hackers in the vein of the Matrix movies, ect.

I suppose my big problem is that none of the traditions really 'fit' the archetype of mage that I most enjoy playing/reading about in various media.

My favorite depictions of wizards are how they are portrayed in the stories of Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard. Magic in those stories has this kind of...forbidden Eldritch mystique. It's dirty and unnatural and weird. Magic comes across as otherworldly and visceral so every encounter with it, and the people that can use it, is terrifying.

Looking through the Traditions I found thee that came close to scratching that 'eldritch' itch, but all of them kind of fell short for me in one way or another.

Euthanatoi: Entropy magic sounds really cool and interesting, but they seem to function more like an order of magical assassins than a coven of Necromancers. Kind of give off Dark Brotherhood/Faceless Men vibes. Which is awesome, but not really what I'm looking for

Verbena: While they are life mages, I love how raw and gritty their magic is. They definitely capture that 'visceral' aspect of magic I enjoy. I don't like it when magic is 'too clean'. Both in the physical and spiritual sense. For me, it makes thematic sense that if you want to work great magic, you need to get your hands (And soul) dirty. My problem with the Verbena is that they don't really seem to have that 'otherworldly' aspect to them. Their magic is very much in tune with the natural world and I generally prefer when magic is portrayed as more alien and unnatural.

Order of Hermes: I do love their style of esoteric magic quite a bit, and real world esotericism has always fascinated me. However...Their magic is too clean. Too civilized and standardized for my taste. It's probably the closest to what I'm looking for and probably the closest thing to an 'eldritch' wizard the Traditions have...but it's so academic that it kind of saps the mystique out of the magic for me. On top of that, the Force's sphere feels kind of...well, like a reskin of the Destruction skill from Skyrim. It's largely about manipulating worldly elements to make something explode. Which, while extremely badass, feels a bit at odds with Esoteric magic. Takes some of the 'high strangeness' out of esoteric magic when it is primarily being used to cast firebolt.

There are also the Hollow Ones, but I'm not super into the 'goth/punk street mage' much either.

Now, I know I'm very new to all of this. We're just in the early character creation/planning phase of the Chronicle. I realize I could be waaaay off the mark. I could have a complete misunderstanding of the Traditions. Hell, in some ways I kind of hope I have.

I suppose I'd like to know if anyone has had a similar experience to mine, where they liked the setting, but the factions didn't connect with them? Perhaps I need to adjust my expectations a bit? I'd love to play, but part of me is afraid that 'it might just not be a game for me'.

TL;DR I haven't felt a strong pull towards any Tradition because none of them really use magic in a way that inspires me. Any perspectives or corrections are deeply appreciated.

Im looking to play in mage and I am willing to pay an ST for a solo gane or to join one of their group games if they are doing paid games

Welcome to part 142 of Sphere Mixers! This where we randomly choose two Spheres and two Ranks and brainstorm ideas for...

• Conjunctional Effects using both of these Spheres or
• Two Effects, one of each Rank, that work well together.

This month will be heavy on Life and Prime, by request, so get those ideas ready and make sure you're hitting the Ranks properly.

Correspondence 5

••••• Spatial Mutation / Co-Location

Distance and dimensions become child’s play to a mage at this Rank. She can distort space; alter sizes and stretch or compress objects (Matter), bodies (Life), or forces (Forces); connect different Patterns to one another across intervening space; or even superimpose places or objects on top of one another (extremely vulgar). Combining this Rank with Life 3, the mage may also expand her senses to perceive many different places at once.

Spirit 1

• Spirit Sight / Spirit Sense

To most of humanity, the spirit world remains invisible. Not to a mage who knows the Spirit Sphere. Although he’ll be most attuned to spirits with Resonance similar to his own, that mage can read the local Gauntlet’s thickness, discern auras, sense spirits of all types, peek into the Penumbra through the Vidare (see Chapters Three and Four), and determine whether or not a material object has a spiritual component (as mystic Fetishes do).

Combined with other Spheres, that mage can spot forces, places, or items with unusual ties to the spirit world, such as Awakened objects, elemental spirits, possessed organisms, Shallowings, Nodes, and so forth.

Previous Mixers: Sphere Mixers Summary, feel free to go back and add your new ideas.

OmgwhyamIdoingthis

So okay... I decided to run my first mage game with my polycule. Being the good partner that I am I decided to say "you can make anything you want... no limits so long as it is arte 3"

So one of by boyfriends rolled up with this Idea an E-girl mage who uses their feet to hypnotize and drain people's bank accounts & maybe souls

Basicly using financial domination and foot worship as a paradigm.

Against my better judgement I said yes to the idea. And now I am stuck with the question of how I am gonna help build this monstrosity.

At first I was thinking of something related to the technocratic sindicate as findom is a fucked up hyper-consumerist phenomenon but... I dont think what they hope to achive falls in their perview. Like what faction would this paradigm fall into?

Edit: thank you for all of the advice so far. We decided to have them be a virtual adept because my other bf wants to play a verbena mage that is based on the witch hansel and grettel. and my gf wants to play an escaped progenitor experiment involving the artifcial creation of mages.

So its likley gonna be a 9 traditions game.

I'll post any updates in the future.

Hi guys, as you can see by the title this is another sword based wonder idea from me, specifically my second one. Technically this idea can work with other weapons too but what I’m thinking is a sword enchanted to grant the wielder increased physical attributes as well as increased skill in using the weapon, effectively turning a random string bean nerd mage into a fairly dangerous warrior. It’d cause noticeable changes in the person’s physiology, making them stronger and more agile and using the sword effectively would just come naturally to them. All of this of course relies on them holding the sword in their hands, once the sword is sheathed or otherwise no longer in their hands the effects dissipate instantly.

Now mechanically this would involved creating a wonder with life 3 to cause the physical enhancement but I’m not as sure about the skill aspect, giving someone additional dots in melee and perhaps dodge. I feel like it would be mind but what level of mind?

In terms of wonder I feel like this would also be a trinket as it only does like a very specific thing.

This idea can also be changed to be like a gun, maybe even a smart gun in the case of the technocratic agenda, or colonial marines larpers.

But yeah just wanted to throw the idea out there and get some impressions, this is all for 20th Anniversary of course.

Been thinking of making a son of ether, but I wanted an umbrella as the main "instrument" if not a wonder.

I wanted the umbrella to:
- Shoot, like a gun (batman penguin is an example). An ether engine inside would make with matter different kinds of ammunition, from machine fun, to high impact explosives, to flamethrower gas (or liquid).
- Be really sturdy, opened be a shield
- Be able to fly. By either spinning or propulsion (mary poppins or general with with a turbine umbrella instead of a broom, the part that shoots bullets would take care of propulsion).

And maybe add stuff to if along the way. Almost like a multi tool.

What would I need to make it, if possible.

Welcome to part 141 of Sphere Mixers! This where we randomly choose two Spheres and two Ranks and brainstorm ideas for...

• Conjunctional Effects using both of these Spheres or
• Two Effects, one of each Rank, that work well together.

This month will be heavy on Life and Prime, by request, so get those ideas ready and make sure you're hitting the Ranks properly.

Life 3

••• Transform Simple Life-Forms / Alter Self / Heal Others

Advanced understanding allows the mage to radically alter simple organisms (turning a tree inside-out); transform one into another (changing fruit into insects); or – with Prime 2 – conjure them from raw energy.

Working with his own Pattern, that mage can work substantial alterations on himself, growing gills, claws, armor and so forth. He remains essentially human, but begins to master the definition of “human.” Meanwhile, he also gains the ability to heal damage to other complex organisms, put them to sleep, or inflict harm upon their living Pattern forms.

Prime 1

• Etheric Senses / Consecration / Infuse Personal Quintessence

A beginning study of Prime allows the mage to perceive and channel Quintessence from Nodes, Tass, Wonders, and magickal Effects. She may spot energetic ebbs and flows, can sense and at least try to read Resonance and Synergy signatures, and could also absorb Quintessence into her personal Pattern. Mages without at least one dot in Prime cannot absorb Quintessence beyond their Avatar Background rating. A Prime-skilled mage, however, may do so.

When infusing her Quintessence into an object, that mage may also consecrate the object with her personal energy. When she shapeshifts, steps sideways, or otherwise alters her Pattern’s metaphysical nature, that consecrated object will then change with her. In the process, it also picks up her personal Resonance… which, because it both identifies her and becomes essentially connected to her, is not always a good thing.

Previous Mixers: Sphere Mixers Summary, feel free to go back and add your new ideas.

So I've read through the core book once.

My brain has holes in it now, but I'm just curious if someone can give me an offhand answer mechanically of how rituals work, what they need to have/roll to basically buff themselves in preparation for a fight, and if they can have lingering enchantments on themselves like a force field or something. Also one of my players is -basically- an ex technocrat grunt who doesn't believe in magic but uses hypertech so that's also sort of a hangup lol.

Hi folks

We have an RPG group that runs for a few years now - We mostly play DeD retroclones and one odd V:tM campaign - and I volunteered myself to Narrate a Mage story. This is my 1st time playing Mage and my 1st time storytelling ever.

I'm second guessing myself a lot on the ideas I have, and I'd love your feedback and tips!

My setup is a Dreamspeaker Chantry on a place with low technocratic presence, by the coast, where ppl live off the land. Tourism industry is quickly eroding the local comunities.

The Dreamspeakers try to live in harmony with the community and the spirits, but this changes when a cabal of Hermetics arrive on the region. They have ties with the Tourism industry, have political connections, and basically treat the land and the people as cololonizers would: They'd take as much as they could without having a second thought about the balance or the people who live there.

These Hermetics begin to hunt down spirits to turn them into talens and quintessence reservoirs, which turns the spirits of the land against all mages. The players then are sent in a mission to make amends with the spirits, while trying to deal with the Hermetics.

My main idea here is to mirror the mages' conflict on the sleeper world, playing with both the economic/political power and the animosity of the people towards the outsiders. I hope to show the players that, as Willworkers, how much their decisions matter for everyone around them.

So, what do u guys think about it?
I'm afraid of it being too boring, or too much for our very first story. Any tips on how to narrate this kind of game?

Thanks!

I might be asking a stupid question, because from the titles given to the effect of each rank (control major forces and transmute major forces)- it feels like it should be clear what does each rank do. Force 4 should be a larger version of Forces 2, and Forces 5 should be a larger version of Forces 3.
But inside the description of Forces 4, it says “Our mage may now use the lower-Rank Effects over larger areas”, which can mean it includes Forces 3?

The examples given don’t really help either- Forces 4 can “change weather patterns; conjure darkness; drop or raise temperatures; protect locations… or destroy them” which sounds like control again, but can definitely also be done with transmutation. Right after that it also says “and otherwise employ the previous levels on a much greater scale” with levels in plural, implying it gives a greater scale to both Forces 2 and Forces 3.

Does anyone have any clear answer on where does Forces 4 end and where does Forces 5 begin?