Addicted to Mystery: What do you want to see in the Fallen World Chronicles?

[McBaine]

It's widely regarded as the weakest arcanum

Forces?! I have literally never heard, read or perceived this ever before...
Other people already pointed out how incredibly versatile Forces is on low levels. Sure, some arcana can do the same or a similar effects, but not everything.

Why do I need Forces 4 to throw a bolt of fire when I can do the same thing with Prime 3?

Forces is able to cause the same effect as Prime 3 (doing ranged bashing damage) at Forces 3 (via telekinesis). Neither is (real) fire. The four-dot versions both do lethal damage, but the Forces one is real fire and can ignite things on top of that. I really don't understand your critique in this case...

@Radiation stuff:
I also don't get your problem with the Radiation spell. Radiation sickness is not instant death...
Have a look at this link: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/rad...CTION=symptoms
Acording to the information on this site, I would say the spell effect is considered somewhere between severe exposure (6-8 Gy) or very severe exposure (8-10 Gy or higher). I think that is appropriate for generating a zone of radiation.
Forces 4 has with "Invisible Fire" an aimed spell that ignores armor and can cause aggravated damage by radiation burns without the need of mastery.
If you want an "area of quick death" use Forces 4 "Firestarter" and add Forces 3 "Control Fire".

I'm talking about more than just D&D. There's a ton of systems and settings where "magical flashlight" is the first thing a new magic user learns to do. Mage might not be "under [an] obligation" to do anything, but if you're allocating spell effects you should probably take a hint from that which came before you.

Why? While it is true that for many other RPGs a light spell is one of the easiest low level spells - because they are a gimmick that is not game breaking - I admire that Mage is true to its own background in regards to that spell. It has to do with the practices. creating something out of nothing is hard. In the case of light, that might be inconvinient, but I see no reason why you should change this perfectly explained spell. Imho certainly not because many other games did it differently.

I can count the number of times I have wanted to ignite something in combat on one hand while holding my coffee in that hand.

The Obrimos in my group wants to do that all the time so he can Influence the heat the fire and burn things to crisp in seconds. see above.

[Qu1nc45]

Creating is a big deal.
The low points you get from Force arcana, you still get from every gross arcana in this game. If you don't have someting witch thta arcana can influence, you will make extremely low efects or no efect at all.
That's why there isn't Technocracy in this game, because every mage has to use elements around him to make impressive efects.
You may say that space 2 and matter 2 can make light, but i say that is just because you have something witch that arcana que influency on this levels, such as a liquid or some place wicht you have sympathetic link. The same is true to forces, if theres is some kind of light source in your perception range you can change it's direction and it's intensity with forces 2. Yeah it is not a flashligth, it is a mother******** show light, wicht just get bigger.

I realy hope and want the practices and spells-factors are better explained in this new core book.
Sorry for bad english.

[Scutarii]

Is Fate going to be changed to make you more likely to succeed or is it going to retain its 'get more successes' leanings?

It's one of the things that irked me that some of the iconic Fate spells gave you X-again (i.e.: made the competent even more so) rather than made you more likely to succeed in the first place (i.e.: reduced penalties, gave more dice).

Kind of like fate should let the random guy from the audience pull off the crazy trick shot rather than make the professional better at trick shots.

--

Also. Spirit magic. Will any wordcount be spent on making it easier to use? We essentially intuited and house ruled how to apply finding a spirit, dealing with a spirit, how common spirits are, what you have to do to keep them happy vs. dominating them, etc.

Someting like a Spirit Mage 101. You want to summon your first Spirit to help you break into that secure office to alter the data on their servers. How to go about doing that?

[McBaine]

The same holds true with the Death Arcanum and Ghosts - not to the extend of Spirit, but it is there. On top of that, the mage book lacks information to the underworld. I read snippets about the underworld, avernian gates and so on in the God machine chronicles, and I guess a Death mage is able to open (or at mastery even create) ways to the underworld, but I didn't find anything further. If I want to know about that kind of stuff, should I grab Geist or will the new Mage have an overview on these topics?

[Dave Brookshaw]

The Underworld was talked about in Mage books long before Geist came out! There's a spell that summons ghosts back from it in the original Mage core, even.

In broad terms, under the current Mage rules


Death 1 to detect a Gate

Death 2 to divine the key
Death 3 to open one as if you had the key
Death 5 to create a new gate from nothing, leading to the destination in the Underworld of your choice, or summon a ghost back through to Earth from it.

As the Underworld is "blue book" property and mages have been known to go spelunking, it will get coverage in Fallen World Chronicle. Less than the Shadow, though, as we'd rather save redeveloping the Underworld for hypothetical future Geist books (if only, eh?). And the Shadow will have just been redone in Idigam Chronicle.

[Octavo]

The same holds true with the Death Arcanum and Ghosts - not to the extend of Spirit, but it is there. On top of that, the mage book lacks information to the underworld. I read snippets about the underworld, avernian gates and so on in the God machine chronicles, and I guess a Death mage is able to open (or at mastery even create) ways to the underworld, but I didn't find anything further. If I want to know about that kind of stuff, should I grab Geist or will the new Mage have an overview on these topics?

I recently picked up Book of the Dead, which is both A) The second Geist book. B) A general book on the underworld with specific info for Mortals, Mages, Vampires, Werewolves, Changelings, Sin-Eaters, and Prometheans. I definitely recommend it, even if some of its info ends up being invalidated by later books.

[McBaine]

The Underworld was talked about in Mage books long before Geist came out! There's a spell that summons ghosts back from it in the original Mage core, even.

Yeah, I know. That's what I meant by snippets. But apart from that and that mages believe it is a place where ghosts without anchors go, there is not really any further information about the underworld (at least not that I saw) in the current book. The term "Avernian Gate" was not in the mage core book as far as I remember (and I assumed that it came with Geist along with Kerberoi and what not when the Underworld was expanded on). Be that as it may, I appreciate your overview and info. I'm glad that it will be adressed a bit more in the FWC. I guess with word count limits and so on it is hard to do the mage chronicle because mages have so much to explore. Underworld, the Shadow, Astral Space - and the more mundane parts of the fallen world.

@Octavo: Great, thanks, I will check it out.

[glamourweaver]

Ritual and sacraments being made a more central element of the game - so that discovery and knowledge of mystic secrets matters more. Being able to just "will" things should be primarily reserved for Attainments IMO.

[Raikirah]

And weather, velocity, friction, conduction…

All forms and/or applications of energy. Weather as the result of electromagnetic energy and the interplay between masses of air with different levels of thermal energy, Velocity as a result of kinetic energy, etc... and Matter is used for Altering Conductivity, iirc.

I'm not giving up the visual of an Obrimos on a frosty mountaintop surrounded by aurorae and ice-skating uphill for a non-reason like that.

So don't give it up... leave Forces with the ability to control the presence of thermal energy, but give Death the ability to directly influence its negative; much like Forces affects light, but Death has the purview of shadows.

Modern science is woefully incomplete from the perspective of the Arcana, but that doesn't seem like a credible rationale for working backwards in such a clinical manner to place what falls within the domain of sorting categories for resonant symbolism.

Death and the concept of cold are tied intrinsically in symbolism.

It deals with souls, actually. Not for nothing does Egyptian religion resonate with Stygia.

But Egyptology is not the whole of Death's resonance. See the Norse concept of the "Underworld".

Your shadow is one of the things that confirms your humanity, death has mythic resonance as a supernatural force to the degree that it and fertility are basically the two oldest chthonic gods around, and cold… isn't either of those things.

This is a non sequitur argument denying the antecedent. "Life and death are important as supernatural forces. Cold is not life or death. Therefore cold is not an important supernatural force."

Creative Thaumaturgy permits spells like sending your shadow to strike a nearby character or object, so this is rather solving a problem that doesn't exist.

The combat applications are a tangential consequence of the limitation of Death's purview, not the main thrust of the argument. In game terminology, Forces deals with the manipulation of energy. "Cold" is not a type of energy, but rather the absence of thermal energy. Death, as an Arcanum, has within its purview things that exist only as a negation. Therefore, cold should be within the purview of Death.

[Sakii]

The combat applications are a tangential consequence of the limitation of Death's purview, not the main thrust of the argument. In game terminology, Forces deals with the manipulation of energy. "Cold" is not a type of energy, but rather the absence of thermal energy. Death, as an Arcanum, has within its purview things that exist only as a negation. Therefore, cold should be within the purview of Death.

why not both??

[Raikirah]

That was the gist of the earlier part of that post -- much like Forces can *cause* shadows, but does not directly manipulate them except by manipulating a light source, so too should it be able to *cause* cold, but not directly manipulate it except by manipulating a heat source. Death should have direct control of cold, like it does with shadows. I'm arguing that cold should have the same gravity in Atlantean cosmology that shadow does, and that it should likewise be tied to Death, the Arcanum of negations.

This would allow the Necromancer to do things like summon a fog from the air (which could then be manipulated by Matter) by decreasing the temperature and thus the air's capacity to hold moisture, as well as other applications both combat and non-combat related.

[That Other Guy]

Oh, just had a thought - I wouldn't kick a simplified Alchemy system in the core book out of bed, metaphorically speaking.

[Strill]

Oh, just had a thought - I wouldn't kick a simplified Alchemy system in the core book out of bed, metaphorically speaking.

And I wouldn't force it to brush its teeth, metaphorically speaking.

[glamourweaver]

Stronger more diverse paradox (I'd go as far to just drop the "take it as damage" option - paradox is always more interesting than that). Obviously the "beat" system will serve to reinforce that paradox isn't about penalizing player fun, but rather serve as a carrot for dealing with interesting problems inherent in the game.

[glamourweaver]

More diversity for Mages up front. Spend wordcount discussing how well the Supernal/Phenomenal dualism jives with the concept of Maya - and how Vajrayana Buddhist Mages believe "Shambhala" not to be a past event, but a current one they are in exile from. The point is, I don't want to sit through 5,000 online rants about how Mage is strictly Platonic Hermeticism and all other mysticism is deluded.

Straight up say some Mages call "Atlantis" names like "Babel", "Shambhala", "Kumari Kandam" "Ys" or "Atzlan". It's just that "Atlantis" is the dominant name in cross-cultural mystic discourse because of Western Imperialism.