Character Background

Every Mage has a story – they don’t just appear out of nowhere. Before you were Awakened, you were a normal person – maybe with a job, a family. You thought you had it all figured out. Now, you’ve left that life behind to embrace both the power and the responsibility that magic has given you.

I recommend you work on your character’s background in two phases. First, think of them before their Awakening – what kind of human were they? How did they live? What did they want? Once you know who you were, you can think about what the Awakening did to you – how did magic change your worldview? How has your Tradition shaped you?

However, don’t simply create a normal human, with magic tacked on as an afterthought. The Awakening unlocks so much more potential than that. A Mage is a creature of legend – powerful magic users have inspired just as many myths as vampires, werewolves, spirits, and demons. Mages are not human – they are something more, something powerful and primal, something enlightened yet uncontrollable.

Becoming Awakened can enhance your virtues, but it can also exacerbate your faults. In particular, Mages fall victim to Hubris. Take a look at this page, and try to understand that magic is both a blessing and a curse.

(Add Hubris tag to Paradigm)

Length: I ask your character history be at least one page long (about 400 words), although I encourage you to write more than that. However, my limit is about two pages of text – if you need more space than that to describe your character, you’re going into too much detail.

Organization: When writing your background, please use some kind of organization – give each paragraph a boldface header, such as ‘Childhood’, ‘Awakening’, ‘Philosophy’, etc. If I want to know, for example, what your sister’s name was, I want to be able to load up your background a year from now and find the facts I need without any trouble.

If you need some help fleshing out your character, take a look at some of the character questions I’ve collected off the web. These may give you some inspiration for increasing your character’s depth.

I’ve put a lot of guidelines here, but if you have a character concept that needs to go against the guidelines, just bring it up with an ST. I want to be open to all kinds of characters, as diverse as possible! But at the same time, I’m trying to avoid some of the pitfalls that I’ve seen slow the roleplay down before.

Who you know: Keeping the PCs at the center of the story

For the most part, I want you to have to rely on the other players in our group, rather than getting information and assistance from Non-Player Characters. What this means is:

- The Council of Nine, and many of the Masters of Horizon, are busy with their politics and debates. If you have a Mentor, you are their student – nothing more. They don’t owe you any favors, and they may have other students who are also asking for help.

- You don’t have quick access to any Mages other than yourself and the other PCs. Again, this is to prevent you from calling in favors, having other people do your fighting or your research. Your Contacts and Allies do not need to be Awakened Mages.

- Your parents don’t need to be Mages. It’s not genetic. Mage couples are very rare, and the chance that their child will become Awakened is the same as any other couple – very, very, very slim.

Keep in mind that the ratio of Mages to humans is somewhere around 1 in 150,000. In a world of 6 billion, that’s 40,000 Awakened. Over half of those are Technocracy, Nephandi, and Marauders, so less than 20,000 Tradition Mages. 10 Traditions, so that means that there are only around 2,000 members of your Tradition in the entire world.

There are around 300 million people in the United States. That means 2,000 Mages, only 1,000 of them Tradition Mages. That leaves 100 for each Tradition, only two per state. Now do you see why it can be a little hard for you to get in contact with other Awakened?

Note that these numbers are just for Awakened Mages. Traditions actually can include Sleepers, often many more than the Awakened Mages! These are humans who believe the Tradition ideology, perhaps even mimic their magic, but lack the true inspiration that makes an Awakened Mage. Your contacts can include these people – but just because they’re technically in your Tradition doesn’t mean they owe you any favors.

For the same reason, you should not be related to, taught by, or buddies with any other supernatural entities from other White Wolf books, such as Vampires, Wraiths, Werewolves, or Changelings.

PC Mentors: If you’re new to the game, you might try asking another player to serve as your Mentor. That way you’ll have someone to teach you the rules and setting, identify who the major players in the game are, and watch your back. Of course, a good Mentor should expect some heavy favors in return. (Vampire players, this is somewhat equivalent to Sires/Childer.)

Friends and Family: It’s very difficult to maintain relationships with Sleepers (non-Mages) after your Awakening. The Mage and his Avatar, freed from the confinement of modern reality, radiate a definite aura of ‘otherness’ that puts most people on edge. Any Sleeper relationship in your character’s story should be filled with difficulty and misunderstanding – after all, how can you really empathize with Sleepers, their eyes blind to truth, living out their lives like so many sheep? Very few Mages can manage to keep their old jobs, stay in touch with their family, or even love their spouses after their Awakening.

Suggested Questions to Answer

Although I’d like your character’s background to be thorough, you don’t have to ramble on for pages and pages if you don’t want to. Just talk about the high points of your Mage’s life – what makes you who you are, and what makes you unique. If you’d like some ideas to elaborate and flesh out your character, check out the page of Questions for over 200 questions to aid you. The questions I’ve listed below are some good starting points.

These questions are suggestions, not a checklist to be filled out line-by-line. Be selective, pick and choose questions which you have interesting answers for. Introduce new questions and answer them. Tell me what’s interesting and unique about your character, what defines them. Make them come alive through their background.

- The usual descriptions: Character name, age, where you were born, where you grew up, where you live, what you do for a living besides being a Mage. Very few mages can manage to fully withdraw themselves from the outside world.

- What religion are you? How faithful are you? What political party are you? What sexual preference? Are you single, dating, married? Do you consider yourself to have a racial or cultural background? How important is your family to you?

- How did you come by your Abilities? How did you learn any Abilities you have at 3 or above?

- Tell me about your Backgrounds. Who are your Allies, your Contacts? How did you come by your Resources or Authority? And if you have a Wonder, how did your possession of that come about?

- The story of your Awakening. This should be the sole most important event in any Mage’s life, the moment you realized that you were no longer a slave to simple chance and fate. When did you realize you could do Magic? What opened your eyes to the fact that you’re not just a passive observer – you can do something to change the world? What effect did that have on you? How do you view Magic? When did you realize that you weren’t like everyone else in the world?

- Who was your Mentor? Who introduced you to your Tradition? Did you get along well with your Mentor and Tradition, or have you had a shaky relationship? Were you taught well, or did you only get the basics?

- The Paradigm page has some guidelines for defining your Paradigm. I’d like you to give me a Paradigm in that format first, then you may elaborate further if you want. Some questions to ask yourself are: Does Magic come from within myself, or do I call on outside forces? Can Magic be explained and studied, or is it by nature unexplainable? Do you create the Magical energy, or just direct it? Can Science and Technology be Magic, or are they separate things? When you do Magic, what exactly are you doing?

- Your Tradition. Tell me why you belong to this particular Tradition, what they mean to you. Tell me why your Faction suits you.

- Which of the Cabals of Horizon invited you to serve alongside them during the Council Meeting, and why?

- What is your Tradition’s Specialty Sphere, and why is it significant to them? Describe your Tradition’s philosophy from your character’s point of view. Does your character prefer to study a different Sphere? Why does he follow/go against his Tradition’s specialties?

- In your character’s own words, what is Ascension?

- What are your goals? What do you want to do? Why are you here? What is your purpose? Why are you in the middle of these world-shaking events, rather than hiding at home and saving your own skin? What keeps you going, what drives you? What do you give a damn about?

- If someone owed you a favor, what would you want them to do?

- Who, or what, is important to you? What would you fight for? What would you die for?

- What destiny do you pursue? What’s your greatest goal? Do you feel like you have an outside destiny guiding your actions? If I told you that you did have a destiny, and everything inevitably led up to that foreordained end, how would you react?

- Everyone has secrets and bad memories. Tell me one of your worst. What period in your life would you rather forget? What’s the worst thing you’ve done, and what have you done to atone for it?

- Your failings. What holds you back? What can’t you do? What is your hidden weakness, your fatal flaw, your source of endless frustration?

- Name some conflicts that might arise. What kinds of people piss your character off? What will you absolutely not do? Which Traditions do you dislike? Are there any situations you don’t like or that make you uncomfortable? Are there any places, like graveyards or office buildings, you refuse to enter?

- Pick one Tradition, other than your own, you get along with. Their philosophy is a little off, but they’re alright.

- Now pick one Tradition you most dislike. Not only are they dead wrong, but their broken view of the magical world corrupts and limits everyone they interact with. What would you do when confronted with a member of your most hated Tradition spreading his lies and propaganda?

- What would it take to make you betray your friends? What would it take to make you betray your Tradition?

- What do you, as a player, want to do? What do you want this game to be about? What do you want your character to become? What can I, as the Storyteller, do to make this a good game for you? Are you more in favor of combat and action, or social maneuvering and politics? What kind of stories do you like, what kind of books do you read?

- Which political position do you think your character would want to hold? Which one would he do best at?

- Give me a short-term goal (looking 1-4 weeks ahead) for your character, and tell me what motivates your character to achieve it.

- Give me a medium-term goal (looking 1-4 months ahead) for your character, and tell me what motivates your character to achieve it.

- Give me a long-term goal (looking 1-4 years ahead) for your character, and tell me what motivates your character to achieve it.

- Where does your character see him/herself in a year? In five years? In 20 years? In 100 years?