[OSSR] Guide to the Technocracy
Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2017 7:18 pm
OSSR: Guide to the Technocracy
Okay, so let's jump into this shall we. This is an OSSR of Guide to the Technocracy, a supplement for Mage: The Ascension. As such, anyone who's made it here should read the Mage vs. Mage OSSR by Ancient History and FrankTrollman first, to get an idea of where things are.
The Book
My eyes. The tie, it does WTF
Personally I've always felt that Mage had the weirdest art of the White-Wolf games, which was at least thematically appropriate. This particular cover though, I will never understand. The funky abstract symbol font, sure, okay, the old school suit type atop abstract background, okay, but that tie man, I don't even...
In fairness to cover artist Scott Baxa, it is a memorable design - you will remember that the Guide to the Technocracy is the book with the tie guy probably more than anything else. Still, it's a rather odd opening for what is actually among the more grounded titles in the product line.
Weird cover art aside, this is a mostly typical White Wolf hardcover. 250 pages of black and white printed, somewhat unexpectedly the paper is matte, not glossy, which is a break from pretty much all later Mage hardcovers. The design is mostly fairly minimalist, simple geometric margin designs, black of white and black of gray text with no crazy fonts.
You might notice the little 'Year of the Reckoning' bit on the bottom. This book was technically part of one of the themed Year lines that White Wolf did. 1999 got the Reckoning, and this book was part of that because it was released in 1999. The year lines themed books were a stupid idea, but I have to talk about it because unlike some of the other ones, the Reckoning was actually a big deal. Essentially the Reckoning covered the set of metaplot events that involved the destruction of Wraith: the Oblivion as an actual game, the death of the Ravnos antideluvian, and the transition from Mage 2nd edition to Mage Revised (which meant the Avatar Storm and a bunch of other important shit went down). As a result this specific book occupies a kind of unique and weird lace in-between two editions. Nominally it's part of 2nd edition - since Mage Revised didn't come out till 2000, but a lot of the big changes have already been written into the DNA so to speak. The book is written with the events of the Week of Nightmares having already happened - in typical White Wolf fashion they didn't write the book about the guys with the power to drop nukes in the oWoD until after they'd actually dropped the nukes.
really should have the nukes in the strategic picture from the start
One of the more visually apparent aspects of this weird 2.5e status is that all references to magic in this book are spelled 'magic' not 'magick' (praise be to our robotic overlords).
The credits are actually on page 12, after the opening fiction, because reasons. Regardless they credit 2 developers, 5 authors, and 1 additional writer - Phil Brucato apparently developed and wrote, while Jess Heinig didn't bother with any of the writing. My guess is that Bill "Mister Technocracy" Campbell (yes his name is actually printed that way in the credits) was the principle writer on this particular project. He was a veteran WW writer by this point. Five writers doesn't seem like an unreasonable number for a book of this size, and Campbell apparently cared about the material.
The credits also reveal that there were actual playtesters for this material, if you can believe that. Heck WW managed to marshal a whole two campaigns to test out their gigantic expansion of the MtA universe. Two! The fact that I find this surprising (it's not one) is a good idea of the curve we're grading on here.
this is, regrettably, a step up
The table of contents reveals that there's the intro fiction, an introduction, eight chapters, and an appendix. So we're going to be here for a while. Note that while this book apes the structure of a typical WW core game book, it is ostensibly an expansion. There are plenty of new rules and even a character creation chapter, but essentially no new mechanics. In many ways it is similar to the various Werewolf breed books - you use the same rules, but it's not exactly the same game.
Opening Fiction
While we're here, I'll talk about the opening fiction, which occupies pages 3-11 and includes three half-page illustrations of story events. Now, I've read a lot of opening fiction from White Wolf and most of it is at best serviceable mood setting. This piece qualifies at that but it also does something else - it almost, kinda, maybe serves as an example of play. I mean, sure it's stuck in narrative format, but the story itself is about three Technocrats who get put on a mission and then carry out that mission. There is an investigation, there are scene transitions, magic, er, enlightened science, is used. There is even, miracle of miracles, combat. People shoot other people, with guns. There is conspiratorial double-dealing. Stuff happens.
It is great no. But is it a completely waste of space, also no.
construction is ongoing, may not be a total disaster
Next up, the Introduction.
Okay, so let's jump into this shall we. This is an OSSR of Guide to the Technocracy, a supplement for Mage: The Ascension. As such, anyone who's made it here should read the Mage vs. Mage OSSR by Ancient History and FrankTrollman first, to get an idea of where things are.
The Book
My eyes. The tie, it does WTF
Personally I've always felt that Mage had the weirdest art of the White-Wolf games, which was at least thematically appropriate. This particular cover though, I will never understand. The funky abstract symbol font, sure, okay, the old school suit type atop abstract background, okay, but that tie man, I don't even...
In fairness to cover artist Scott Baxa, it is a memorable design - you will remember that the Guide to the Technocracy is the book with the tie guy probably more than anything else. Still, it's a rather odd opening for what is actually among the more grounded titles in the product line.
Weird cover art aside, this is a mostly typical White Wolf hardcover. 250 pages of black and white printed, somewhat unexpectedly the paper is matte, not glossy, which is a break from pretty much all later Mage hardcovers. The design is mostly fairly minimalist, simple geometric margin designs, black of white and black of gray text with no crazy fonts.
You might notice the little 'Year of the Reckoning' bit on the bottom. This book was technically part of one of the themed Year lines that White Wolf did. 1999 got the Reckoning, and this book was part of that because it was released in 1999. The year lines themed books were a stupid idea, but I have to talk about it because unlike some of the other ones, the Reckoning was actually a big deal. Essentially the Reckoning covered the set of metaplot events that involved the destruction of Wraith: the Oblivion as an actual game, the death of the Ravnos antideluvian, and the transition from Mage 2nd edition to Mage Revised (which meant the Avatar Storm and a bunch of other important shit went down). As a result this specific book occupies a kind of unique and weird lace in-between two editions. Nominally it's part of 2nd edition - since Mage Revised didn't come out till 2000, but a lot of the big changes have already been written into the DNA so to speak. The book is written with the events of the Week of Nightmares having already happened - in typical White Wolf fashion they didn't write the book about the guys with the power to drop nukes in the oWoD until after they'd actually dropped the nukes.
really should have the nukes in the strategic picture from the start
One of the more visually apparent aspects of this weird 2.5e status is that all references to magic in this book are spelled 'magic' not 'magick' (praise be to our robotic overlords).
The credits are actually on page 12, after the opening fiction, because reasons. Regardless they credit 2 developers, 5 authors, and 1 additional writer - Phil Brucato apparently developed and wrote, while Jess Heinig didn't bother with any of the writing. My guess is that Bill "Mister Technocracy" Campbell (yes his name is actually printed that way in the credits) was the principle writer on this particular project. He was a veteran WW writer by this point. Five writers doesn't seem like an unreasonable number for a book of this size, and Campbell apparently cared about the material.
The credits also reveal that there were actual playtesters for this material, if you can believe that. Heck WW managed to marshal a whole two campaigns to test out their gigantic expansion of the MtA universe. Two! The fact that I find this surprising (it's not one) is a good idea of the curve we're grading on here.
this is, regrettably, a step up
The table of contents reveals that there's the intro fiction, an introduction, eight chapters, and an appendix. So we're going to be here for a while. Note that while this book apes the structure of a typical WW core game book, it is ostensibly an expansion. There are plenty of new rules and even a character creation chapter, but essentially no new mechanics. In many ways it is similar to the various Werewolf breed books - you use the same rules, but it's not exactly the same game.
Opening Fiction
While we're here, I'll talk about the opening fiction, which occupies pages 3-11 and includes three half-page illustrations of story events. Now, I've read a lot of opening fiction from White Wolf and most of it is at best serviceable mood setting. This piece qualifies at that but it also does something else - it almost, kinda, maybe serves as an example of play. I mean, sure it's stuck in narrative format, but the story itself is about three Technocrats who get put on a mission and then carry out that mission. There is an investigation, there are scene transitions, magic, er, enlightened science, is used. There is even, miracle of miracles, combat. People shoot other people, with guns. There is conspiratorial double-dealing. Stuff happens.
It is great no. But is it a completely waste of space, also no.
construction is ongoing, may not be a total disaster
Next up, the Introduction.