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[baakyocalder]

Well, if you want Rover, your dog (substitute another ghost employee if you want a different ghost employee) on the payroll, you'd need to subvert the company's payroll system. In auditing in the U.S. according to GAAP and GAAS (Generally Accepted Accounting Practices and Generally Accepted Auditing Standards), we'd be looking at hours employees worked, whether the proper quarterly payroll tax returns were filed by an organization, the amount of payroll and the number of employees from a numbers perspective. We'd probably think about how payroll is prepared and see how that systems works in an...

[baakyocalder]

Cult of Ecstasy nominee: Hugh Hefner. Playboy magazine is pretty much is about men enjoying fashion, good writing and pictures of beautiful women. Hugh sold a whole lifestyle of pleasure. Though if you want him as a Syndicate guy to channel the growing sexual revolution, one might have a case there.

[baakyocalder]

That vampire is probably on Lickstarter or Go Feed Me.

[baakyocalder]

There is a 'crowdfunded diva' character in the Mage Revised Syndicate Convention book. I'd expect we have similar crowd-funding sources and a few that are serious rip-offs. Flamewars over games that are let could get really nasty, especially if a supernatural was involved.

'It's been four years since that *expletive deleted* promised that game to us. He hasn't delivered. Well, then we should ensorcel him to suffer. . .'

[baakyocalder]

We've gotten off on a long digression on Time magick. Suffice it to say that in Mage, how well any sphere works will be up to the imagination of the group.

If you're making a character with a sphere that can be vague in its effects at certain power levels, talk to your group....

[baakyocalder]

The past is colored by our interpretations of it. So, if you see JFK's death from one viewpoint, you may not see the whole picture.

[baakyocalder]

Correspondence 1 is about a city block in range. Also, your Correspondence level limits your use of other spheres--you cannot use another sphere's effects at greater level than your Correspondence level.

As for M20, a lot of the rules make it more of a pain to adjudicate magick use. I go with what the intent is and consider an Ability a way to ask good questions. Any mage may want to get information off someone's computer. A mage who has 3 dots in Computer is going to know a lot more about where on the computer that is stored and how to avoid getting garbage information. Likewise,...

[baakyocalder]

I like the descriptions of earlier editions. They aren't perfect, but they are somewhat more concrete. When I first ran Mage, well I was used to more defined games and spent a lot of time looking at rotes, particularly on Ander's Mage Page. Now, I'm more for a succinct description but a few rotes give players an idea of what they can do. They should be written better than in the M20 How Do You Do That Book.

I concur that if you play the base game, Arete is the optimal buy. Jack your Arete up to 3. Different White Wolf editions and games have given you different options with Knowledges--either...

[baakyocalder]

To learn a language in five minutes, I think you'd need Time magic or Mind. Mind 3 is basically a universal translator.

I'd make the time to pick up a new language using Intelligence and Enigmas based on how close the language is to other languages the mage knows. For example, I took German in high school and remember a little. I've studied Latin American history and know a few Spanish words. I have never studied Chinese, and my exposure to it is pretty much in RPGs. I'm going to have a lot easier time figuring out German or a similar language than I am Chinese and figuring out the...

[baakyocalder]

The Mage 20 core is missing the many pages of sphere effects found in prior iterations of the game. So, for spheres, what you can do is limited by the general five-level scheme:

level 1 notice the sphere. For Forces, you can hear sound better and see kinetic energy and nuclear energy and different wavelengths. Level 1 perception magick is pretty awesome.

level 2 minor manipulations. For Forces, you can jam machines with static, amplify light, do extra kinetic damage and do minor movement effects. Also, you have minor control over heat, too.

level 3 more significant...

[baakyocalder]

Thanks for the information. I'll look for the Drivethrurpg.com sales announcement in the Monday meeting notes.

Sample freeholds plus building rules are quite useful.

[baakyocalder]

Is there anything on freeholds in the Pacific Northwest of the United States in the C20 Book of Freeholds?

Changeling is my second favorite WoD game next to Mage. I missed the Kickstarter and have a Mage 20 game set in Portland, Oregon, so I might be able to use the C20 Book of Freeholds in my game.

[baakyocalder]

Well, you have in the experience section of the characters chapter an extra experience point as a reward for playing your style well (page 335). This is called 'focus.' You could also make the more evocatively described magick using styles coincidental more often in the right zones than than quick 'I do my ritual magick.' So, for the verbena in the jungle summoning jaguar spirits, making it easier to do the effect would be a way to explore that theme.

Also, some of the point of style is to enjoy exploring ideas, which is a metagame. If you don't want to use extra dice or modifiers,...

[baakyocalder]

Simply put, there is little room in the World of Darkness for people who cannot be made into little Technocratic minions or who are powerful rebels. I was also trying to remind everyone that while it is nice imaging ourselves as mages, most of us would be Sleepers. Sleepers without skills that are valued are used as fuel by the Syndicate. So, a person with a humanities degree struggles to get work. They'd work a series of lousy jobs and lose their Quintessence bit by bit until no longer worth keeping alive.

If I was a mage, I'd probably be a New World Order guy trying to get people...

[baakyocalder]

Well, it is Mage, so you are entitled to your opinion. However, I tend to take a view of the Technocracy as a group that seeks to protect humans. There;s a good debate in Native American history about whether there was a 'middle ground' between Europeans and Native Americans. In one book in the debate, Into the American Woods, James Merrill talks about how the spaces in between the forests were known to both Native Americans and early European settlers to be filled with dangerous things. So, while there is no such thing as a 'middle ground,' there was a shared view that the American woods were...

[baakyocalder]

It's the World of Darkness, so being a history major as an undergraduate and suffering from sleep apnea, I'd have been strung along and used by the Progenitors as a Quintessence battery. The Syndicate would decide how long I got to live.

[baakyocalder]

Richard Dunn's Sugar and Slaves is a good history of Jamaica and some other parts of the Caribbean. You'll also probably find many good books under the banner of Atlantic Studies to help you fill out the world.

To me, it seems like there are a few issues with this campaign already, and they need to be addressed in an adult manner before getting too far into the game:

1. You had a very specific game concept the players did not buy into. Why did they not buy into this concept? Are they fundamentally opposed to it, or are there are few changes you can change to create...