Already Familiar With The Material?

For those who have played Mage: The Ascension as a tabletop game:

The biggest change that was made between the Mage tabletop rules and these LARP rules was the elimination of Dynamic Magic. This was where you would take the Spheres your character knew, and create new magical effects on the fly. It’s one of the most interesting parts of tabletop Mage, and unfortunately one of the first that had to be axed to make the LARP better. Instead, we went with a Rote system, where you have to know a specific magical spell before you can cast it.

In a tabletop setting, when you have a new magic idea, you can immediately ask the Storyteller what he thinks, if it will work, and determine the effects. You have his full attention. In a LARP, an ST might not be immediately available. While you’re hunting him down OOC, the game basically has to freeze around your character. Then the ST, who was probably playing a PC or NPC, has to freeze the game around his character to deal with you. By the time you’ve worked out the details with the ST and actually used the spell, five or ten minutes have gone by. And by that time, another person wants the ST’s attention, and so on…it gets to be where the STs have to spend all their time just handing magic, and don’t get to spend any time running or enjoying the game.

But don’t worry; the power of Rotes has been increased, somewhat, to compensate for the reduced flexibility of magic. This system will also make it easier for players to develop specialties for their characters, since they can develop a series of Rotes which is unique just to them.

Another major difference is that, in tabletop, the ST only has to deal with four or five characters. He can learn how your characters use magic, what their Spheres are, their worldviews, etc. There’s no way an ST can do the same in a game with 30 characters. With the system we have, you still have ample opportunity to create new magical effects and exercise your Paradigm, but it’s moved to the downtime between games – when the ST has a chance to talk to you by e-mail, think over your ideas, adjust them and approve them.

I did run a Mage LARP for nine months that used a full dynamic magic system, and it was exactly as I described above – I spent most of each game just dealing with magic, and dealing with other interpretations of the rules. Most of what I changed in the new LARP system was anything which was vague or required interpretation – which, unfortunately, was quite a bit in Mage. Coincidental and Vulgar magic and Resonance both got reworked. I’m pleased with the result – I feel the reworked systems keep a lot of the mystery and power of the setting, while reducing the amount of ST time and interpretation needed dramatically.

Magic is both less powerful and more powerful than tabletop now. You don’t have the full flexibility of dynamic magic, but at the same time, you know that your Rotes are going to work. Drop the Paradox, and the Rote does what the card says. No worrying about Sphere interpretations, witnesses, casting time, Arete rolls, foci, etc. If you have the Rote, it will work. Of course, I encourage you to explore things such as interpretations and foci during downtime, and try to create a magic system which is unique to your character – but when it comes down to the game itself, and the rules itself, simple is good.

Mage purists would strangle me for this, of course, but I never set out to run a pure Mage game. I set out to run a LARP. When I had to choose between going with what the Mage tabletop books said, and what would work well in a LARP, I decided to enhance the LARP every time.

For those who have played Laws of Ascension, White Wolf’s published rules for Mage LARPing:

Laws of Ascension is a good example of a game which focused itself more on following the Mage tabletop rules, and the White Wolf Mind’s Eye Theater rules, but not really on running a good LARP. Laws of Ascension got bogged down in minutiae, trying to have a system for everything in the tabletop rules, without really focusing on how those rules went together, and how a player would use them.

The game I ran using the Laws of Ascension rules went for about nine months. After that lengthy amount of time, not one of my players had a complete grasp of the rules. All the sections on how to use Abilities, overbids, declining traits, using magic, negative traits – nobody could keep half of it straight.

The Mind’s Eye Theater rules actually work fairly well in a perfect world – where everyone keeps track of how many Attributes and Abilities they’ve lost, and everyone understand how to use retests and overbids. Those rules simulate exhaustion over time well, and keep one character from doing everything and dominating the game. In order to make those rules work, though, a player has to pull out his character sheet and mark off traits any time he wants to do something – which I found, unsurprisingly, was never the case.

I decided to simply abandon the entire system, and start over again, with a LARP system that was both closer to the tabletop and willing to jettison the tabletop rules when necessary. My first playtest with this system had some bugs, but the players agreed that the end result was simply cleaner and more fun to play than the Mind’s Eye Theater rules.

For those who have played Laws of the Night, White Wolf’s published rules for Vampire LARPing:

You may notice that a lot of what has been added to the rules as far as conflict and politics between the Traditions is similar to the politics in Vampire: The Masquerade. This isn’t coincidental; I wanted to introduce a more involving political system to Mage, and I based it off a system which I’ve seen work well in Vampire.

I also took a cue from Vampire in emphasizing the inhumanity of Mages, trying to create a greater rift between the Mages and the masses of humanity. Many Mage games involve the Traditions coming together to make a stand against the Technocracy, which – while it makes an excellent tabletop game – doesn’t make a great LARP, because all the conflicts are coming from outside the group, not inside. So the Technocracy was de-emphasized, and the differences between the Traditions was increased.

With all this, some people have asked, why don’t you just run Vampire? I just like the Mage setting better – while Vampire seems to pull the world down into a pool of darkness, Mage shrouds it in hope and possibility. Mage has an interesting balance between power and safety – the higher you strive, the farther you have to fall.

And furthermore, everyone does Vampire! That means that they bring a lot of expectations and assumptions about how a Vampire LARP will work. I wanted to do something different from the norm.

I hope you enjoy the game!