In your opinion is Mage too attached to real life politics??

[Baaldam]

Oh absolutely. It's necessary to remember that all those games were created in the 90's, and with that era mentality. Werewolf the Apocalypse is the most 90's environmentalist fantasy of "revenge of mother nature". Vampire is a cynical view of the elites, and Mage is absolutely a criticism against the government, but not just any government, it's against the US government and upon which every possible conspiracy theories are driven into overdrive. Funny how the game didnt took the same consideration in criticizing the communist dictatorships of the USSR or China thou, who were 10.000 times worse and are comparable to Nazi Germany heh?

Rage Across Russia and Book of Wyrm.

[mark]

I wouldn't say that is wrong but, if my understanding of Brucato is correct I also would say it doesn't matter. Without getting to much into the weeds, Brucato whole thing is more about the liberation people through the returning to nature basically. So regardless of what wicca takes influence from, if its not doing sex magic in the woods while worshipping the Mother Goddess then it might be looked down on.

I just don't get this, though. I do not understand what led to this. You'd think, for instance, that the people who wrote, say, guide to the Camarilla, guide to the Sabbat, Dharma book devil tigers, etc, are also against the behaviors described within.
After all, none of the writers was ever accused of carrying big black blood-stained bags in the middle of the night, right?* And they all had some little sidebars "you are not a serial killer, or if you are, please get help" written in the books

So, i don't get why this is missing in the Mage books. It's as if the entire Ventrue book was written by the tiny Ventrue anarch minority.
Or imagine if a member of the Green party was asked to write the Libertarian party platform, and its political positions from his own perspective. (I just chose two random parties mind you)
So the "abolish the income tax" is still there, but with a "helpful" "and here's how these egomaniacal quasi-sociopathic rand fanboy shitheads would run the economy, so please don't vote for them!" Or, at the very least, it is as if the Party Platform was written by outsiders within the party.

The problem is not that the Traditions have an establishment made up of, uhm , "not the best people around". It is the freaking WoD. I would have been weirded if their politics were not like that.

The problem is that the entire line is written down from their opposite perspective
For instance, it is not a coincidence that, say, the ecstatic signature character belongs to the faction that would be closest, ideologically, to the writers. Note, i am not saying every/most/ or even many of the signature characters should not be anti-establishment. This is not a problem. The problem is that every word is written from that perspective. Every in-character word. Every OOC word.
In essence, Mage was the only game* that presumed what kind of character you were going to play, beyond what was enforced by the metaphysics and societal structures of the game.

Again, even ignoring things like race and gender. For the purposes of this entire thread, let us assume that even the most corrupt master is pro lgbt and anti-racist.
Would this have changed more than a few sentences in the books? No, because the problem is structural

Ironically enough, i like DA: Mage a lot more, precisely because this problem is absent.
Anyone who owns DA mage grimoire can verify this by reading any random chapter about the fellowships. It is written from a fashion that is a lot more clinical and detached
Oh sure, you can see some comments being harbingers of future events, but the same can be said in how Guide to the High clans wrote the Brujah. It provides logical context for future events



On a side-note, how are the Traditions presented in Victorian age Mage? I am not asking whether its full of a shitty establishment. But, at the end of the day, did the establishment of the day
even bother to have a propaganda budget?


* Ok maybe mummy too, but there are like a tiny handful of mummies, made by specific people, of specific people etc so it's not illogical.

[Dataweaver]

There's a certain irony to this, considering that Mage is, more than any other WoD game, at least ostensibly about exploring philosophical diversity. One would think that it would be the gameline that makes the most effort to present different perspectives without passing judgment.

[Kakost]

Vampire may be a cynical view of elites, but it is presented from a very cold and detached perspective. That is, it seems to be realistic in its portrayal of how power works, albeit heavily
exaggerated by the realities of being a vampire(such as the fact that your bosses will never retire). Had it been written like mage, however, it would have basically said "here's how your anarch players can change things, because of course you will be an anarch"

So, basically 5th edition?

Except for mage! [+stuff]

I cant disagree here. Mage was basically written as fighting the "good fight" against Bill Clinton and Bill Gates from the 90's. It is... Somewhat childish in the way it was written. It is a game about cringe edgelords "fighting the system", quite literally. I mean, I absolutely love the 1984 / Brave New World Illuminati whackos of the Technocracy, and turning cyborgs and genengineered aliens on dragons and fairies and fighting fireballs with lasers is delicious, but yes, Mage is rather simplistic, and hey Im an Ancap, so I already consider the State to be the enemy of the people. But they gave several cartoonishly depictions of the factions - and yes I agree, most of what it is about the OoH is rather silly and just turn them and the techies into moustache twisting villains

[Kakost]

There's a certain irony to this, considering that Mage is, more than any other WoD game, at least ostensibly about exploring philosophical diversity. One would think that it would be the gameline that makes the most effort to present different perspectives without passing judgment.

I really think that the entire problem resides around the theme chosen for the games. Vampires are the cynical elites, so they are ALL garbage - which allowed the writters to dump upon themselves in a sort of detached way. "Lets just present the worse hedonistic and corrupt behaviors we can think about the RL elites that we can". Werewolf is all about mother nature vs "evil capitalism" - actually against evil "industrial world", but "evil industrial world" in the 90's is basically "evil capitalism". So it's monsters fighting cartoonish moustache twisting villains, so again it's easier to be more detached.

Also, the writters of this games are a bunch of shallow hippies, let us be honest here. Like somebody above mentioned, anything except doing sex in the woods and worshipping mother nature was bad for those new age guys. So they had no problems about shitting on humanity, and when you say about ideas like the Red Talons being genocidal or the Weaver believing that the weaklings should be "culled", and when you say that the authors dont believe that... Well, you know... Im not so sure brother.

On a personal note, my father is a marxist communist, and when those people say that they are all about love and sunshines... I gotta tell you, that sort of people do have pretty genocidal ideas. Ever heard about "Neo Malthusianism"? It's the idea that "Mother Earth" has too many people around, and that is a sort of idea that is absolutely LOVED by those New Age hippies types. And how do you think that "overpopulation" can be solved? Yeah, right.

So, every time I would read about "too many humans" on the WtA games, I would IMMEDIATLY get the hint of the writters that they would PERSONALLY love to have a good old genocide to "reduce the overpopulation".

So no, I absolutely do NOT believe that they DO NOT believe in those ideas.

About Mage however, Mage is a game that got itself a lot closer to real life than the other games, which is why it got a lot more political. First of all, Mages are the most humane of the critters of WoD, in every possible sense. They represent the pinnacle of humanity, for better or worse; Mages dont have a cursed thirsty for blood, nor an unnatural lunacy (from "Luna", the Moon) to turn into a killing monster or any other sort of alien weirdness.

Mages also represent the Hegelian idea (urgh, Hegel, another bastard, and the worse of all who caused all the crap of the 20th century) that cultures and nations are "conducted" by exceptional individuals - because of course, peasants are shit. "The masses" of sheep that blindly follow some "Enlightened" asshole. As such, each Mage represents the "ubermensch" of their respective culture, the Nietzschenian "superman" of each culture, no exceptions.

Therefore, the game basically wrote itself into being something upon which the writters could dump their RL politics upon. Yes, Ventrue are assholes, but they are just stereotypical "generic" elites. A Ventrue could, in theory, represent either a Washington bureocrat but also a japanese Daymio. A Toreador could be a generic decadent Hollywood producer.

But for Mage it's different. The Traditions are culture based, particularly 1ed. Therefore, the Chorus is the evil Catholic Church, the OoH is the evil medieval feudalism. The Verbena are good thou, because they are having orgies in the woods under the full Moon and they are "fighting the system".

And the Technocracy, oh boy, those guys are the absolutely worse, they are evil incarnated with no redeemable traits. Those guys are the Washington bureaucrats, the billionaires and their FBI and CIA and NSA lapdogs, they are the worst! The "pig capitalists", and therefore you should never ever ever want to be them, and Im 100% that the writters regreat having write the Guide to the Technocracy and Im also 100% that they are actually appalled that so many people love them (lets remember, the Union was NOT supposed to be playable on the 1st edition)

[RichT]

Kakost - Please stop attacking and insulting the original creators of the gamelines. You don't know them, nor what they were thinking when they created the works that led to decades of folks having fun and internet arguments, and your extrapolations regarding them are not necessary in discussing those game books. Please keep your discussion about the work, not made-up suppositions as to what a varied and constantly changing group of creators were "really" like. Thanks.

[Kakost]

Kakost - Please stop attacking and insulting the original creators of the gamelines. You don't know them, nor what they were thinking when they created the works that led to decades of folks having fun and internet arguments, and your extrapolations regarding them are not necessary in discussing those game books. Please keep your discussion about the work, not made-up suppositions as to what a varied and constantly changing group of creators were "really" like. Thanks.

Ah yes, the powers to be never appreciate being insulted by the peasants.

Gotcha boss. I'll self censor myself from now on - wouldnt want to insult the lords of the game and get myself in a tough spot.

After all, who cares about what the peasants think right? What matters is what the CEO wants.

You got it boss, Im shutting my mouth right now.

[lladas]

A self described ancap (who also sees themself as a peasant?) complaining about a private owner policing the behavior of consumers who have concensually decided to exist on a forum they privately manage to discuss the owners product is the most on brand thing I've seen in a long time.

I was pretty cynical about where this thread would go, but this definitely took the cake. Like of course Mage is political. Of course it's focused on particular coalitions and forms of pluralistic politics. It was never about diversity and inclusion to all worldviews. It was about underdogs and the strange allies, like the Order of Hermes, they form in resisting hegemony. Sure it doesnt have the most coherent political analysis, but hey if you want to reconcile real political tensions maybe just do that in your life or homebrew it. If someone could make a game based in a setting tangentially based on reality focused on the politics of knowledge and reality that is not polarizing they are either naive or have figured out a way of aligning political projects that warrants a Nobel peace prize.

[Gryffon15]

I think another part of Mage which complicates any political reading is that the territory which Mage is working in, that late 20th century occult mileau, while you can certainly argue that in relation to society it has political significance, within its own internal boundaries it abstracts itself significantly from the material foundations from which actual politics is drawn.

Which isn’t to say that the means of organizing the factions of Mages isn’t interesting or that considering how they and Magick might relate to society in general isn’t interesting, but it’s also difficult to comfortably synthesize politics as such with the abstract realms of consciousness and mystery that occultism is naturally concerned with.

[Ragged Robin]

One of the things a mate of mine noticed is that mage factions don't really mimic irl politics in ways we'd expect. For example the nine Mt's are very individualistic vs the collectivist Union. One of the things I noticed about the disparate crafts is at least one is hard right wing

[Astromancer]

To be fair mage has been really rough to the order of hermes.

Why? They are just a group of highly intellectual mages with a pragmatic utopian ideal. I.E. if everyone is a Mage and has a solid education poverty won't exist. And forms of government based on coercion won't be viable.

I grant you the Order acted like Europeans of their periods. But, ask yourself, how did non-Europeans of those periods act?

If the various other traditions were written to reflect the real world behavior of people from their cultures, we likely hate everyone but the Etherites and the Adepts.

[Ragged Robin]

Why? They are just a group of highly intellectual mages with a pragmatic utopian ideal. I.E. if everyone is a Mage and has a solid education poverty won't exist. And forms of government based on coercion won't be viable.

I grant you the Order acted like Europeans of their periods. But, ask yourself, how did non-Europeans of those periods act?

If the various other traditions were written to reflect the real world behavior of people from their cultures, we likely hate everyone but the Etherites and the Adepts.

Yes if everyone was highly educated and had incredably privilege then then poverty wouldn't exist. Exactly. For example of we work towards unified cohesive theorem of magic we could ensure every has equity.

Awful, For example the euthanatos feel very comfortable playing judge, jury and executioner.

correct.

[Astromancer]

Mage has an important similarity to Science Fiction. It is always hungry for ideas. Any ideas that can't escape get thrown in. This would make a game written by apolitical authors seem political. And Mage wasn't created by apolitical people. So everything got dumped in that was in the area of Mage's authors. We will need to cut them some slack for that.

What we need is better handling of viewpoints forward. Having a Hollow One blast the Order of Hermes for causing the "Whitemare" is one thing. Never having an Hermetic call the Hollow Ones on their smug elitism is another. We need a sense of conflicting viewpoints and values. After all, Mage is about changing the world. And that is always political.

[Dataweaver]

If the various other traditions were written to reflect the real world behavior of people from their cultures, we likely hate everyone but the Etherites and the Adepts.

Why do you exclude the Etherites and Adepts? Victorian Mage points out how both factions started out with problematic elements, too.

[Astromancer]

Why do you exclude the Etherites and Adepts? Victorian Mage points out how both factions started out with problematic elements, too.

It just seems to me that they would be the least obviously obnoxious people in the room. If everyone else is a major league jerk, you can be pretty rude and still come off as the sweet one.