The Gaming Den

Mages aren't humans any more than vampires are. Mages are explicitly human. Even average humans have the 'reality'-warping power that characterizes Mages - they just don't have it strongly enough to break away from the collective warping of the great masses. Mages are just people who are especially...

It's surprisingly easy to kill humans, period.

My right to property is derived from people's recognition that we have an inherent interest in that sort of thing, manifested in legal protection from the government which derives its powers from said people.

I don't see what 'souls' have to do with anything.

Edit: Also, you already have to say something like "Matter/Energy can't modify things inside people's bodies, at least until very high dots." Otherwise all the existing lethal spells become pointless compared to "make a small amount of electricity/heat/poison inside the target's brai...

If we try to imagine what various Traditions' paradigms would actually look like (as opposed to being rough stereotypes) it's not all that clear that VAs would have much ability to affect the physical world at all. Their worldview is centered around computation - most of the obvious implementations ...

Well, you could get a relatively crude set of effects by messing with a target's body chemistry and physiological reactions. A lot of our 'emotional responses' involve our awareness of body reactions. People who are paralyzed from the neck down often report that their emotions are less intense or mo...

I've gotten a lot of value from this thread. But I do wish to point out that it's inaccurate in at least one way: in oMage, humans have a material essence, a spiritual essence, and a mental essence, but no 'prime' essence. Prime is what the other three are made out of. I have no clear idea of how Ma...

I will note that most of 'reality' actually depending on human belief is one of the objective truths that existence is founded upon. It doesn't matter that virtually everyone does not accept that. Now, if enough people began actively rejecting that idea, deep down, possibly humanity would lose the a...

How does the disappearance of things that can't be bought ruins their life? They're an organization of people, yes? And money is something that can only be implemented by a society, yes? What are the concepts that make a social organization possible? What are the traits that social creatures posses...

And ultimately, that's Hubris - believing that you can make something be true if you only have enough will. Hubris is believing in objectively true facts? That's fair. Let me restate: 'believing that you can make anything be true if you only have enough will'. That's the real problem. Look at the S...

I think the tragedy of the Technocracy is that all of the low-level inductees believe in and practice science. They've been shown evidence of things that most people could barely imagine, and so they are open to more possibilities than many people who reject things they're not already familiar with ...

It requires nuclear reactions *in the paradigm of modern science*. Not necessarily in other paradigms, sure. Which is part of the problem with Mage: there's an implied paradigm in the Spheres. Turning fruit juice or soaked bread into alcoholic beverages was IRL considered a magical event a very long...

Things that are clear about Mage universe: -Everything is made out of Quintessence. -Avatars are angel corpses that got attached to human souls (yes, really). Things that are not clear: -Everything else. I'm afraid you're quite right. The games that people came up with after reading Mage are far mo...

No. Mage runs off the idea that belief shapes reality - there is no objective reality More accurately, Mage runs on the idea that most of the things people consider to be real and absolute, aren't. That doesn't mean that there is no objective reality, it's that it's not what most people think it is...