2e Changeling and Mage- Arcadia

[Dataweaver]

No disrespect intended, but: well, duh. That said, fanon exists for a reason, and it's not a bad reason.

[Tessie]

Presumably this is because of its newfound connection to dreams.

Eh. I'm not a fan of requiring conjunctional use of Arcana for this sort of thing: if you can use Spirit to enter the Shadow and Death to enter the Underworld, I'm fine with using just Fate to enter the Hedge. Yes, it's got some elements that would seem to relate to Mind; but so does the Shadow. And I'm fine with using Mind when in the Hedge to access peoples' dreams; but unlike CtD's Dreaming, the Hedge itself is not peoples' dreams.

If I had to pick a Realm Invisible that is accessible using Mind, I'd pick Astral Space — except that mages can access that without using any Arcana. As is, I still use Mind for nontraditional access to the Astral, like forcing your way into a Beast's Lair.

I think you prefer that because you're just used to realms aligning with specific Arcana. The Astral, the Shadow and the Underworld are unique in that they fall wholesale into the purview of their respective associated Arcana (which might be a result of them being ephemeral realms composed of a type of ephemera tied to specific Arcana; I'd imagine if the G-M had its own realm it would be accessed with the same conjunctional combo that has been suggested for casting spells on angels). Other realms do not have such a strong connection to a specific Arcanum, and if we had more examples of other realms (other than Lower Depths that can't be accessed with Arcana below archmastery) we'd likely have a lot more conjunctional prerequisites for dealing with them.

[Dataweaver]

I think you prefer that because you're just used to realms aligning with specific Arcana. The Astral, the Shadow and the Underworld are unique in that they fall wholesale into the purview of their respective associated Arcana (which might be a result of them being ephemeral realms composed of a type of ephemera tied to specific Arcana; I'd imagine if the G-M had its own realm it would be accessed with the same conjunctional combo that has been suggested for casting spells on angels). Other realms do not have such a strong connection to a specific Arcanum, and if we had more examples of other realms (other than Lower Depths that can't be accessed with Arcana below archmastery) we'd likely have a lot more conjunctional prerequisites for dealing with them.

No, I prefer that because I have a general distaste for requiring conjunctional use of Arcana: it results in a steeper cost to gain access to things when you have to invest in two Arcana instead of just one. Why should the Hedge be harder to get into (requiring two different Arcana) than the Shadow or the Underworld (requiring one Arcanum each)? Especially since the official stance is that the Shadow and the Underworld don't align neatly with Spirit and Death, respectively, as pointed out by Dave's post in this very thread that they're not “Fallen reflections of the Primal Wild and Stygia” (whatever that's supposed to mean). Really, the only Realms Invisible that do align with individual Arcana are the Supernal Emanation Realms. But that doesn't stop you from accessing the Shadow and Underworld with just one Arcanum each.

And for what it's worth, this distaste of conjunctional effects extends to the requirement of multiple Arcana to affect various supernatural entities: I disagree with the notion that the God-Machine's Angels should be harder to affect with Arcana than ghosts and spirits, and personally rule that you only need Prime to affect them. Ditto with qashmallim, and I likewise rule that Hedge Ghosts fall under the purview of Fate, not Death.

[Tessie]

They're not reflections of the Supernal Realms, but it's literally in the book that the Astral, Shadow and Underworld falls under the purview of Mind, Spirit and Death, respectively. They do not accurately reflect the symbolism of Pandemonium, Primal Wilds or Stygia (if they were reflections you'd instead need conjunctional Space, Life and Matter to affect them), but they are still very much tied to the Arcana.

I personally don't see any problem with requiring multiple Arcana for realms other than the main three. The variable ease of accessing them fits with how common or rare it is for mages to explore them and how much Mage-related material there is available for them. The big three are described in the Mage core book while the Hedge will get its first Magey material (for second edition; don't know if it's had any first edition material) in an upcoming supplement focused on other realms.
It also confirms that mages cannot simply slot everything in the Fallen into neat little categories. Hell, I'm not averse to letting things (such as non-ghost/spirit/goetia ephemeral entities) be completely disconnected to the ten Arcana. (That is not to say unaffected: In the case of ephemeral entities you could still use Prime to interact with them regardless of Twilight "frequency" and Mind to mess with their minds, but no Arcanum or Arcana combination manages to summon them or reshape their corpus or nature.)

[Dataweaver]

They're not reflections of the Supernal Realms, but it's literally in the book that the Astral, Shadow and Underworld falls under the purview of Mind, Spirit and Death, respectively. They do not accurately reflect the symbolism of Pandemonium, Primal Wilds or Stygia (if they were reflections you'd instead need conjunctional Space, Life and Matter to affect them), but they are still very much tied to the Arcana.

You do realize that we're not disagreeing on this, right?

I personally don't see any problem with requiring multiple Arcana for realms other than the main three. The variable ease of accessing them fits with how common or rare it is for mages to explore them and how much Mage-related material there is available for them. The big three are described in the Mage core book while the Hedge will get its first Magey material (for second edition; don't know if it's had any first edition material) in an upcoming supplement focused on other realms.
It also confirms that mages cannot simply slot everything in the Fallen into neat little categories.

I don't buy into the “big three” narrative. How common or rare it is for mages to explore the Realms Invisible is a completely subjective thing that's varies from one gaming group to the next. I, for one, have far more interest in the Hedge than in either the Shadow or the Underworld; so my Mage games are far more likely to see exploration of the Hedge than the other two. Others have different priorities, which is fine. But I flat out don't buy that the Hedge is less important to mages than the Shadow or the Underworld are. If anything, there's a “big two” for mages (the Astral, which every mage can meditate into, and the Supernal Emanations, because of their direct and intimate ties to the Arcana), then the Hedge, Shadow, and Underworld (and any other Realms Invisible that might be found in the Fallen World), and finally the Lower Depths (which are in a sense the anti-Supernal Emanations, defined more by what Arcana they lack than by what Arcana they resonate with).

Hell, I'm not averse to letting things (such as non-ghost/spirit/goetia ephemeral entities) be completely disconnected to the ten Arcana. (That is not to say unaffected: In the case of ephemeral entities you could still use Prime to interact with them regardless of Twilight “frequency” and Mind to mess with their minds, but no Arcanum or Arcana combination manages to summon them or reshape their corpus or nature.)

If that works for you, go for it. In the past, I've advocated for something similar when it came to qashmallim in particular and the Divine Fire in general. But these days, I'm more inclined to go with the notion that everything in the Fallen World has Supernal symbols associated with it, and that the ten Arcana do indeed encompass every phenomenon in the Fallen World.

[proindrakenzol]

Because of the way the Hedge works, gates open potentially any time someone indulges their Vice, I'd say it's probably one of the easiest realms for a Mage to simply stumble upon, no Arcana needed.

And opening an existing Hedge gate is probably a relatively trivial bit of magic, Compelling or Ruling in Fate.

[ArcaneArts]

No disrespect intended, but: well, duh. That said, fanon exists for a reason, and it's not a bad reason.

Equally meaning no disrespect, but fanon also is the source of a lot of problems with these conversations to begin with. Hell, half of the problems of Mage/Changeling arguement threads are rooted in a fanon understanding.

A whole lot of fanon is very often like a wave-particle function-it works "fine" until it's actually looked at, at which point it rapidly collapses. The other problem is that since a lot of people look for surface answers because they are quick and easy, the type of fanon described spreads like wildfire and becomes the popular understanding, which just makes problems when it become apparent with even a shred more of questioning (as often happens with question threads, as much as people look for the surface answer) the answer so many accept as "canon" is actually wrong.

Fanon's fine at the table, and I get the appeal of ease for it-I, too, once mapped the Supernal to every other gameline as a one-to-one-but when people are discussing the actual text in a shared context that isn't centered on your table, bad fanon can fuck that conversation, and I've seen it happen so much for Chronicles alone that I could easily describe a lot of conversation on this site as "No one shot the fanon early and now we have to deal with this shit."

[Ashenrogue]

No, I prefer that because I have a general distaste for requiring conjunctional use of Arcana: it results in a steeper cost to gain access to things when you have to invest in two Arcana instead of just one. Why should the Hedge be harder to get into (requiring two different Arcana) than the Shadow or the Underworld (requiring one Arcanum each)? Especially since the official stance is that the Shadow and the Underworld don't align neatly with Spirit and Death, respectively, as pointed out by Dave's post in this very thread that they're not “Fallen reflections of the Primal Wild and Stygia” (whatever that's supposed to mean). Really, the only Realms Invisible that do align with individual Arcana are the Supernal Emanation Realms. But that doesn't stop you from accessing the Shadow and Underworld with just one Arcanum each.

And for what it's worth, this distaste of conjunctional effects extends to the requirement of multiple Arcana to affect various supernatural entities: I disagree with the notion that the God-Machine's Angels should be harder to affect with Arcana than ghosts and spirits, and personally rule that you only need Prime to affect them. Ditto with qashmallim, and I likewise rule that Hedge Ghosts fall under the purview of Fate, not Death.

This is, generally, the way I also handle these things. I try to avoid the use of conjunctional requirements as much as possible. The only time I really feel that they might be necessary is turning one thing into another thing. The Hedge tends to map close enough to the Shadow/Underworld in how they match up the the arcana that I don't see any point in making how they handle opening/creating doors to the place any differently. I mean I would accept arguments as to which arcana, Mind or Fate, was the one used to do it, but I definitely wouldn't require both. But if everything else doesn't require conjunctional Space I don't see a reason to make anything else require conjunctional other stuff.

[Tessie]

Because of the way the Hedge works, gates potentially any time someone indulges their Vice, I'd say it's probably one of the easiest realms for a Mage to simply stumble upon, no Arcana needed.

And opening an existing Hedge gate is probably a relatively trivial bit of magic, Compelling or Ruling in Fate.

Opening a portal with a spell bypasses the Key (word applied to both its regular Key and indulging a Vice in this case). Just because the Key is easy to find/create doesn't mean the portal will be any easier to force open without it. What you could potentially do at lower dot levels is to facilitate the Key, but in the case of indulging a Vice the Hedgeway won't open most of the time, and if it does open it'll slams shut once the person has entered rather than staying open for the duration of your spell.

Hedgeways are generally one-way for non-Fae (indulging a Vice only works from ironside, and the proper Key is generally not the same from both sides) so once in the Hedge the mage would still require having the right Arcana for getting out, unless they find someone who can open a Hedgeway for them.

[Gurkhal]

Personally I don't care what the official statements are. I love the idea of C:tL Arcadia being where one of the Watchtowers are located and so that's how I roll with it. I am aware that I am wrong, officially, but I don't care. I'm sticking to my guns.

[Ramnesis]

Equally meaning no disrespect, but fanon also is the source of a lot of problems with these conversations to begin with. Hell, half of the problems of Mage/Changeling arguement threads are rooted in a fanon understanding.

A whole lot of fanon is very often like a wave-particle function-it works "fine" until it's actually looked at, at which point it rapidly collapses. The other problem is that since a lot of people look for surface answers because they are quick and easy, the type of fanon described spreads like wildfire and becomes the popular understanding, which just makes problems when it become apparent with even a shred more of questioning (as often happens with question threads, as much as people look for the surface answer) the answer so many accept as "canon" is actually wrong.

Fanon's fine at the table, and I get the appeal of ease for it-I, too, once mapped the Supernal to every other gameline as a one-to-one-but when people are discussing the actual text in a shared context that isn't centered on your table, bad fanon can fuck that conversation, and I've seen it happen so much for Chronicles alone that I could easily describe a lot of conversation on this site as "No one shot the fanon early and now we have to deal with this shit."

All true, and I've certainly seen that happen more than a few times. I do think phrases like "I tend to go with the idea" are sufficient to highlight that the idea is head canon or fanon, though.

[ArcaneArts]

Personally I don't care what the official statements are. I love the idea of C:tL Arcadia being where one of the Watchtowers are located and so that's how I roll with it. I am aware that I am wrong, officially, but I don't care. I'm sticking to my guns.

That's fine, just remember that this is useless in anything outside of conversations of "So what if Changeling Arcadia were Mage Arcadia?" because most other questions rely on all of us working off the same canon and this ain't it.

[Gurkhal]

That's fine, just remember that this is useless in anything outside of conversations of "So what if Changeling Arcadia were Mage Arcadia?" because most other questions rely on all of us working off the same canon and this ain't it.

Well, I usually don't have a problem separating my headcanon from the lore canon of a setting, so I don't think this will be any different.

[Michael]

I can't say I can remember this ever coming up in any other context.

[Dataweaver]

I'll have to disagree. There was a widely held belief for quite some time that Prometheans and Promethean-related phenomena were largely outside the scope of the Arcana. This came from a misreading of some sections of the Promethean line, and it eventually even made it into print in a manner of speaking: Imperial Mysteries included a brief section on the Empyrean, a hypothetical state of being “above” even the Supernal, that was suggested as a possible source of the qashmallim; and the same book, when describing how Imperial Practices are able to mess with templates, listed what Arcana would be needed to mess with the various templates in the setting, such as vampires or changelings; but it left out anything relating to Promethean. That was a case of fanon that got confused as canon.

In their defense, the proponents of this idea didn't think that it was fanon; they thought that the books actually supported it (as I said, a misreading of text from a Promethean supplement) and talked about it as fact rather than as personal preference. So ArcaneArts certainly has a point — but so does Ramnesis, in that it doesn't take much to make it clear when you're talking about fanon vs. canon.