Victorian Mage will be Crowdfunded by OPP on Indiegogo instead of KS

[Nicolas Milioni]

The first manuscript preview is out to backers!

Thank you!

[Nicolas Milioni]

Guys,The Verbena gritting their teeth and vowing to resist their enemy is one of the most awesome things I've seen in a while

[AkatsukiLeader13]

I mention this because I don't buy the idea that the fledgeling Technocracy was as bad as the introductory blurb makes it out to be: the Victorian Age isn't just Explorators, Lightkeepers, and Invisible Exchequers spreading Empire all over the world; it's also the Electrodyne Engineers and the Analytical Reckoners (and likely significant factions of the International Brotherhood of Mechanicians and the Æsculapian Order as well) who at worst aren't interested in world domination and at best are trying to curb the Union's control freak tendencies and to channel its energies in a more positive direction.

There's also Prince Albert, who had a reputation for championing the downtrodden and in general trying to make the world a better place, and who was instrumental in the founding of the Technocratic Union. Had he not died a mere decade later, the Union may well have turned out quite differently.

I too was a little worried about that but today's update on VM has diminished those concerns. For those that haven't seen it yet, it's called 'The Cost of Technological Progress' and it's all about the Order and the advancements of the Victorian World, the Good and the Bad. The Order is not the modern Technocracy but the seeds of what the Order would become were planted ago and are now sprouting. Their connections to the European Empires of the time as well as the rapid technological advances being made have affected them. They see their Paradigm growing and spreading among the Sleepers and they get excited which leads many to thinking the wrong ideas about it. Worse, the whole thing has become a giant feedback loop. The Sleepers get excited about new technologies and advancements, causing a demand for more which in turn becomes a demand for more resources which leads to more industrialization and colonial exploitation which leads the Daedaleans thinking that their way is working and that this is how to spread it and grow it among the Sleepers. Which in turn leads to the propagation of terrible ideas and practices.

For some, it is unfortunate such pain and suffering those efforts are causing but view it as a short term sacrifice for a better future. Others however don't care and only see it as a means to increase their own power and wealth. But there are also those opposed to the methods and the suffering it's caused. A forerunner to groups within the Union in the years to come. The pragmatic, the selfish and the idealists.

And much like the Order, it talks about technological progress and industrialization in good and bad terms, making it all a rather ambiguous moral question. The technological advancements are helping people but also causing more and new forms of suffering.

After all while the Good may not absolve the Bad, the Bad does not wash away the Good either.

The first manuscript preview is out to backers!

They're supposed to be emailed out to all backers right?

[Dataweaver]

I'm really hoping that Victorian Mage will do something with the Batini that's been hinted at but never actually done in any other Mage book, anywhere: actually get into Mount Qaf as an active story element. Modern Mage games always talk about what a great loss the Batini suffered when they lost access to Mount Qaf in the early 20th century, and Sorcerers Crusade and Dark Ages presumably take place long before the Batini started talking full advantage of what Mount Qaf had to offer — at least, that's the only explanation I can think of as to why the Mountain barely gets a mention in either of those games. But Victorian Mage doesn't have either of those excuses: it's still at least half a century before the destruction of Mount Qaf; and if the Batini haven't actively made use of it by this point, they literally never will, and it merely has an overblown reputation.

[Dataweaver]

They're supposed to be emailed out to all backers right?

Check your spam folder; that's where I found mine.

[marin]

I'm really hoping that Victorian Mage will do something with the Batini that's been hinted at but never actually done in any other Mage book, anywhere: actually get into Mount Qaf as an active story element. Modern Mage games always talk about what a great loss the Batini suffered when they lost access to Mount Qaf in the early 20th century, and Sorcerers Crusade and Dark Ages presumably take place long before the Batini started talking full advantage of what Mount Qaf had to offer — at least, that's the only explanation I can think of as to why the Mountain barely gets a mention in either of those games. But Victorian Mage doesn't have either of those excuses: it's still at least half a century before the destruction of Mount Qaf; and if the Batini haven't actively made use of it by this point, they literally never will, and it merely has an overblown reputation.

There's an interesting mention in the main Batini writeup about them using the mysteries of Qaf to see and travel anywhere in an instant. Mainly, however, it focuses on Qaf's spiritual importance to the Batini, seeking to understand its hidden truths, and sharing the wisdom they gain from it with the world.

[Dataweaver]

For what it's worth, instantaneous travel is something that's a standard part of Correspondence. What I'm looking for is something along the lines of what Mount Qaf itself is like, and how to integrate visits to Mount Qaf into a story. Remember, Mount Qaf is the spiritual antecedent of the Digital Web; and if you believe the stories about the Matterhorn, it may still be there in modern times. The Difference Engineers/Analytical Reckoners have not yet discovered the Digital Web, and won't until well into the 20th century, long after the Victorian Age is over; so if you want something vaguely along the lines of Victorian Age “netrunning”, the closest you're going to get is Mount Qaf.

In short, I'm hoping for a “Mount Qaf: Digital Web 0.0”, as it were, with a compare and contrast between Mount Qaf and the Digital Web that will eventually replace it (conceptually, and possibly literally).

I have some thoughts about how it might differ, one of which harkens to the fact that the Batini focus on both Correspondence and Mind: in my head-canon, Mount Qaf is connected to human minds the way that the Digital Web will be connected to computers; and the Batini don't just go there to navel-gaze, but to actively explore. Because with the right Sympathetic connections, some sort of access to other people's minds may be possible. For example:

Existing descriptions of Mount Qaf tell of how mages from other Traditions, when brought there, described setting their Avatars beckoning them from its slopes; maybe they're not actually Avatars in the Mage sense, but are kinda sorta “avatars” in the Digital Web sense (and take the appearance of the person's Avatar for the same reason that the Avatar does); and if a Batini can locate one (a task that should be comparable to using Correspondence to establish a connection to the subject), he can converse with it and possibly use Mind to extract secrets from or influence the person in question. If Mount Qaf was around in modern days, I might even go for the notion of using sufficiently advanced Mind Magick from Mount Qaf to enter a person's mindscape, Inception-like; but that would almost certainly be too much for the Victorian Age.

Mount Qaf also makes for a very natural “Sanctum in the Storm” for the Ahl-i-Batin; and I wouldn't mind if the talk about the Scions of Babylon would get a brief mention of Mount Qaf thrown in.

[AkatsukiLeader13]

We'll probably have to wait until manuscript gets to Chapter 9 to see if Mount Qaf gets any serious exploration in the book. The Batin write-up does talk about it and it's importance so I would be utterly surprised if we didn't get more talk about it in the book beyond that. And depending on the Stretch Goals we get, we could see more written about it in supplements.

Check your spam folder; that's where I found mine.

Yeah I found it shortly after I posted that.

[Dataweaver]

It's niché enough and potentially lengthy enough that I won't be surprised if the core book doesn't cover it (though I'll be happy if proven wrong); but if not, including it in the Companion (assuming there is one) would be the next best thing.

[Daredevil]

In that regard, I have concerns; of there's a way to change your Perk or to alter your selection of Add-ons, I don't know what it is. As things stand, I'm looking at waiting until Backerkit to make these adjustments, which means waiting until the campaign is over.

I've had a much easier time adjusting perks & add-ons with Indigogo then Kickstarter but a large margin. It's not perfect, but it was a lot more flexible in Indigogo.

[No One of Consequence]

It'd be interesting, IMO at least, to have a companion book with specific chapters about the Middle East, India, Africa, China, Japan, Australia, the Pacific, South America, the Caribbean, the Wild West, Eastern Europe, and the Great Frozen North, and what the setting looks like in each of those areas, which factions/groups are there and what they are doing, and how people from those areas view the period.

[Dataweaver]

And what strange locations exist there that the Order of Reason hasn't yet mapped out of Conventional Space and into the Umbra.

[glamourweaver]

And what strange locations exist there that the Order of Reason hasn't yet mapped out of Conventional Space and into the Umbra.

It’s technically early for Romantic Fantasy Mars isn’t it? I guess it’s just the War of the Worlds invaders getting ready (which works pretty thematically well when you consider that Wells whole point was to communicate to his British audience what having your home invaded by imperial colonizers might feel like).

[Dataweaver]

1897/1898; right when the TU is doing its Grand Housecleaning, for what it's worth.

[Dataweaver]

That said, while Barsoom was written in the early 20th century, it took place in the late 19th century, around the early 1890s. Still late Victorian; but also still Victorian.