Magick is what makes Mage: the Ascension what it is, and yet its nature — and the distinction between how it works IC and how it works OOC — is frequently misunderstood. Our hope is to provide an explanation of how we at TowersMUX view these things, and how they work in play here, even if that’s not the same way they work at your local tabletop. You may also want to familiarize yourself with the Focus creation guide on p. 170 of the Book of Secrets, if you have not already done so.
The core book defines a mage as “a person with the power to reshape reality through force of will.” That’s not wrong, but it is incomplete. A better description would be “a person with the power to reshape reality through force of will as filtered through their beliefs.” To the character, those beliefs aren’t just window dressing. A devout Celestial Chorister sincerely believes that the power of their songs stems from faith in the One. A Child of Ether’s gadgetry operates, as far as they’re concerned, under the “scientific principles” they used to design it.
We the players understand that in both cases it’s really their enlightened will driving the whole process, but the characters don’t believe that. As they grow in power, they can sometimes operate without instruments, but even then, the belief structure that led them to those instruments remains in place. The Chorister will still be calling on the One even when they no longer need to sing. As you design your character’s magickal style, keep in mind that it isn’t just a set of gestures and incantations — it’s a whole way of looking at the world in such a way that those gestures and incantations have power.
Focus
“Focus” is a way of describing how a character does magick. It’s the combination of a Paradigm (belief structure), Practices (magickal style), and Instruments (tools), which together make up a (hopefully) coherent system of magick. Some are very simple; some are extremely convoluted. Whatever they look like, they represent the way in which your character works their will on the world, and that, in turn, will color almost every aspect of the character’s life in one way or another. Focus is the single most important aspect of creating a character for the Mage sphere, and the one staff will look at the most closely.
We as players talk about focus, paradigm, practices, and instruments. Characters generally do not (there are of course always exceptions); they tend to use terms that reflect their own knowledge and experience. They’re aware that other people who work magick differently have other ideas about the way things work, although they have different ways of rationalizing it. By far the most common is that while those other ideas are wrong, they nonetheless somehow tap into the essential truth about reality (that is, the way the mage having these thoughts believes things work) — in the same way that one can do a complicated math problem entirely the wrong way, and yet still come up with the right answer.
A focus is not just a skill that the character has picked up and can set aside when they want, or even need to. After all, this set of ideas about the world is powerful enough to them that it’s allowed them to break through the barriers that held them back from changing reality! They’re almost certain to have a strong emotional and psychological attachment to those ideas, and that’s not something that’s easy to set aside, no matter how much the character might want to, or how much they’ve been told by older and wiser characters; it requires a deep level of understanding and acceptance that can only come through self-knowledge.
Ultimately, your character’s focus is the lens through which they see the world. Even after they begin to surpass their instruments, their focus will continue to structure the way the way they use magick. Make it as fun and interesting as you can; it’s going to be with you for the lifetime of the character.
Paradigm
A character’s paradigm is a short statement that describes what it is about reality that allows them to do magick. It’s a bedrock idea, or interconnected set of ideas, about … well, everything. Maybe you believe that the universe is filled with vast and powerful entities who we have no hope of truly understanding or controlling — but whose habits and reflexes can be exploited by the knowledgeable. Maybe you believe that everyone on earth is descended from interdimensional refugees with psychic powers, and that with hard work and practice you can learn their abilities, too. Maybe you believe that the universe is a kind of mirror that reacts to hope and faith with wonders, and to doubt and despair with disaster. Maybe you believe the world is just a collection of narratives, and by acting out a well-established storyline, you can make reality bend toward the way that storyline is “supposed to” end.
Or maybe you believe something else entirely. The two most important things about a paradigm are:
- That it explains, at least in your character’s mind, why they can change the world in ways other people can’t. It doesn’t matter if other people think they’re a crackpot, a moonbat, or a loon, as long as they believe.
- That it’s fun to play. A paradigm can be as well-thought-out and creative as you like, but if you as a player find it boring, depressing, or otherwise unenjoyable, you probably won’t enjoy the character much either.
You can use any of the paradigms listed in the core rulebook or in Book of Secrets, or you can can combine several of them, as long as you can fit them all into a coherent sentence or two that outlines the character’s worldview. (If you want to spend a little more time expanding on that sentence, you’re welcome to do so, but the core of the paradigm should fit into a short statement — if it doesn’t, you may be including things that would fit better under practices or instruments.) The sample characters in Book of Secrets, pp. 176-186, offer examples of how to combine multiple elements into a single cohesive paradigm.
Paradigm and Limitations
Among the things we ask for as part of character creation are examples of things that a character’s paradigm prevents them from doing. What do we mean by that, exactly?
Any explanation of how something works also, by necessity, explains how it doesn’t work. The laws underlying a character’s paradigm are different than the “laws of physics” ordinary people work under, but, just as the laws of physics forbid perpetual motion, the laws of a paradigm inevitably forbid some things as well, in ways that reflect the way the world works under that paradigm.
Take the Ars Magica role-playing game, one of the immediate precursors of Mage. That game stipulates that magic can’t do certain things — overcoming the power of the divine or the infernal, affecting the human soul, and so forth. These restrictions aren’t there just as game mechanical limitations, they also reflect the pre-Renaissance worldview that characters in the game operate under. The Christian God, along with Satan and the forces of angels and demons, is a fundamental part of the Great Chain of Being that lies at the heart of this neoplatonist idea of the nature of reality. Of course wizards can’t defy the will of God, because they’re at a lower level of the Chain. That’s just how the world works.
Most modern-day Mage characters don’t have a medieval paradigm of this sort, and so they won’t operate under the same restrictions that Ars Magica’s Hermetic wizards do. But their worldview will have some restrictions that, to them, are just as real. It’s perfectly OK to develop workarounds for these limitations — Mage is nothing if not a game of finding many different means to accomplish the same ends. Having the limitations, though, is an essential part of creating and understanding the way the character’s paradigm works.
Practices
If a paradigm explains why a character can do magick, practices explain how a character does magick. Let’s say your character has an animistic paradigm under which everything in the world — indeed, everything in the universe — has its own spirit; there are still an almost infinite number of ways in which that belief system can support different types of magick. They might be a blacksmith (the “Craftwork” practice) whose work awakens the power in material objects by bringing them closer to the idealized form of the spirit within. They might treat the higher spirits as entities worthy of veneration (the “Faith” practice) and be granted power over lesser spirits in exchange for homage and offerings. They might bind and command the spirits through careful research and exacting ritual (the “High Ritual Magic” practice). They might even use painstakingly practiced and repeated Martial Arts exercises to draw the power of the spirits into themselves when needed, or develop spirit-powered Cybernetic implants.
A character can have more than one practice (and indeed, most characters do), as long as they fit together under the same paradigm. There’s nothing wrong with having more than one way to affect the functioning of the incomprehensible machinery that runs the universe (the “Mechanistic Cosmos” paradigm) — but a practice that relies on the universe being a loving and generous force probably shouldn’t be one of them. Unless, of course, the character’s paradigm encompasses both those elements!
Practices can be thought of as indicating what sortof mage a particular character is. A technomancer? A shaman? An adept who channels power through physical exertion? An alchemist? Each of these character types conjures a different and distinct image that reflects their associated practices (and each of them almost certainly has more than one), but each has something in common: they represent different ways of translating the character’s paradigm into a way to affect the world around them.
Instruments
Paradigms are the why, practices are the how, but without the ability to direct your willpower to a particular purpose, magick doesn’t happen. Instruments are the way the most common way for mages to accomplish that — like tools, mnemonics, road signs, and so on, they’re like cheat sheets to the character that help them remember how to concentrate their will, and to remind them of how they’ve done it before. Some of them do that via deep-seated cultural symbolism, others do it via symbolism that’s specific to a character.
Since an instrument is a way of putting a practice into action, there is normally a close connection between the two. The aforementioned alchemist might use the “Brews, Potions, Powders, and Other Concoctions” instrument, but that certainly isn’t the only option. A high-tech alchemist might prefer to use “Computers”, running thousands and thousands of simulations to find the precise combination of materials that generate the effect they desire. One shaman might use “Offerings and Sacrifices” to persuade the spirits to help them, while another prefers “Music” to bring their consciousnesses together so that they can each help one another.
Characters never have only one instrument; we require that you define at least seven. This is partly for game-balance reasons, but mostly to keep things interesting. Every act of magick is different, and characters who do them all in the same way can start to feel a bit same-y themselves. Don’t think of instruments as a restriction; think of them, instead, as ways to make the presentation of character’s magick colorful, dramatic, and impressive. Casting magick puts the character in the spotlight, and the way they do it will have a major impact on how other players see them. Subtle instruments are well and good, but memorable instruments are better.
As characters raise their Arete, they become capable of working magick without using an instrument — although many still make use of them anyway. Even when they’re no longer required, they’re still useful, and with all the dangers the World of Darkness has to offer, it’s often a good idea to take every advantage you can. Beyond that benefit, though, characters are often very attached to their instruments, and have trouble letting go of them. Imagine that you’ve grown up only ever driving cars with an automatic transmission — would you want to drive a manual for the first time when fleeing from a hungry monster? Would you be tempted to go with the automatic in stressful situation even if you’d driven a manual before, just to reduce the number of things you could screw up? Maybe even more so if the automatic was a car you’d driven hundreds of times before and knew like an old friend? That’s how a lot of mages feel about even those instruments they’ve technically surpassed.
Always remember that even when your character chooses to do without an instrument — whether because they’ve surpassed it, or because they have no choice and are willing to accept the lessened chance of success — their magick-workings must still conform to their paradigm and their practices. Magick without an instrument isn’t just sitting on the couch willing something to happen (and staff will reject focus writeups that make that practical) — a shaman is still a shaman, an alchemist is still an alchemist, a ritual magician is still a ritual magician, even if they’re not using their sacred herbs, their fuming cauldrons, or their books of incantations.
Standard, Personalized and Unique Instruments
The distinction between the three types of instruments is sometimes confused, so we wanted to try to be as clear as possible.
A standard instrument is one to which the character has no special attachment. It is, for lack of a better word, a generic instrument. If your character has ‘Weapons’ as an instrument, this is an everyday knife, sword, or bow. For ‘Computers’, it’s a laptop, desktop, computer cluster, etc. If you lose one of these instruments, you can move to using another one of the same class without penalty; when your laptop is destroyed in a car accident, all you have to is go online, order a new one, and perhaps install some software or peripherals when it gets there. If you have to drop your ritual knife to avoid questions from the police, no big deal, just get another one!
A personalized instrument is one that has a specific and personal meaning to your character. It’s something that connects them to one particular sphere of magick more closely than normal, that they strongly associate with that sphere. The character with ‘Weapons’ might have woven some particularly important or successful spells using a particular type of weapon — maybe a Buck hunting knife, or an Italian rapier, or a mall-ninja katana. Someone with ‘Computers’ might only use one particular brand and model of laptop, or require some unusual software. It’s an instrument that can be replaced, but that’ll require the character to go to some significant effort to do so — it can’t just be replaced in the middle of a scene. Whatever the specifics, using a personalized instrument is worth -1 difficulty on Arete rolls using the character’s affinity sphere — other characters gain no bonus for using it unless it happens to be a personalized tool for them, as well. Characters may have only one personalized instrument — this restriction may be eased in the future.
A unique instrument is a single specific object that is very closely tied to your character and their ability to work magick. Unlike standard and personalized instruments, a unique instrument cannot, generally speaking, be replaced. It provides a -1 difficulty reduction on Arete rolls for a single sphere, chosen at its creation, for its owner only: other characters gain no bonus for using someone else’s unique instrument. A unique instrument can also be a personalized instrument (in which case it provides a -2 to rolls involving the affinity sphere), or it can be a separate instrument dedicated to a different sphere. If the character doesn’t have their unique instrument, they lose the bonus(es) and are considered to be “Working Without an Instrument” for any Arete rolls on the sphere with which it’s associated, which carries a +3 difficulty to Arete rolls and requires that a Willpower point be spent to cast at all. This penalty can only be removed by recovering the instrument, or by surpassing it — but be warned that because instruments are always surpassed from least to most important, it is very unlikely that staff will allow a character to surpass an instrument that’s so tightly bound up with them.
Sample Mage Focus
Because creating a Focus from scratch can be complicated and challenging, we’re working on putting into place a sample character for players who are new to, or uncertain about, the Mage character creation process.
This example is deliberately tongue-in-cheek, but please don’t mistake that for mockery: rather, we are intentionally picking an unusual example to illustrate how virtually any belief system can serve as the basis for magick, and how to develop the tropes of that system into things like Instruments and Practices. We wanted an example that would be unlikely to overlap with a PC’s chosen Focus, and while yes, it’s a bit ridiculous, there is no reason it couldn’t work within the context of Mage as a game.
Basics
Our sample character is Kevin Brodie, a now-retired U.S. Army Special Forces operative who Awakened after months of watching the “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” animated series with his young daughter. Eventually, seeing it fire up her young imagination triggered something inside him, and he began to research the show and its lore on his own time. His Affinity Sphere is Life, and he initially has dots in the Life, Mind, and Spirit spheres.
Magickal Style
Kevin’s magick is based on invoking the qualities of the individual characters in the My Little Pony mythos — in much the same way that another mage might invoke the qualities of the Greek gods, or a Haitian Voudist might invoke Legba or Baron Samedi. Extensive knowledge of the different ponies and their positive and negative attributes, when creatively applied, provides him with a library of different potential effects that can be drawn on in multiple different ways. Calling on Applejack — a pony known for her painful honesty — in order to tell truth from falsehood, for example, is a very basic effect, but it can be done in more than one way — dressing up as the character, playing video clips from the show that illustrate her honesty and difficulty in lying, retelling stories that do the same, inscribing Applejack’s cutie mark, or even just presenting an Applejack toy are all possible ways to use different Practices and different Instruments to achieve the same effect.
Paradigm
All the World’s a Stage, and the stories it tells Are All Good – Have Faith!
Kevin’s Paradigm is a fundamentally optimistic worldview in which right and good generally prevail, where friendship is the strongest force in the universe, and where moralistic stories accurately describe the arc of history — even if those stories sometimes need a little help when they bump up against the other forces at work in the world today. Understanding the stories and characters that form the structure of the ongoing story that is our reality allows him to push the world toward making those stories and characters come true — sometimes more gently than others.
Practices
The major Practice for Kevin is Chaos Magick — his whole system of magick revolves around a unique, individualistic, and quirky pantheon of new deities to be invoked and propitiated in place of the more classical methods. There’s also a strong element of Mediumship, which results in frequent associations of the qualities of that pantheon with himself and other targets of his spells — drawing down from the empyreal to the physical. Finally, every so often he makes use of High Ritual practices — for instance, dressing in a formal robe marked with the symbols of every pony, burning color-coordinated and scented candles appropriate for the entity being invoked, and having a cheerfully colorful altar atop which sits the pony of his current intent.
Instruments
The entries for Instruments include suggestions for which Spheres they are particularly well-suited for. This is not meant to be prescriptive or restrictive — if you have a good rationale for why a particular Instrument could work for Life, even if the entry only mentions Spirit and Time, then fine! The intent is more for players to think about how they can vary the character’s method of spellcasting than to serve as a straitjacket. We just don’t want characters who cast every single spell in the same way.
- Body Modification: As effective as ephemeral methods are, making major changes to the physical world demands a major sacrifice — even when it comes to somewhat silly and lighthearted forms of magick. Particularly for Matter-based effects, marking oneself with a particular “cutie mark” is how Kevin balances the metaphysical scales required — making the pattern out of a cluster of needles, branding it into his skin, or sometimes even physically cutting himself. This can also be useful for powerful Life effects, but for obvious reasons he prefers to use others where possible.
- Fashion: It might look silly, but performing cosplay or even just wearing individual articles of clothing associated with the show and with its characters is a great way to draw upon their power in the collective consciousness, particularly when done in a ritualized context. Inviting the spirits of the My Little Pony pantheon to inhabit (in some way) the caster is the most effective way to use this particular Instrument — that is, Spirit — but it could also be effective for invoking Correspondence or Time.
- Internet Activity: The internet is rife with devotees of the MLP franchise, content they’ve created, and, metaphysically speaking, the emotion and dedication they’ve invested into it. That means that someone with a sufficiently strong understanding of the fanbase, how they react, and the details of the show can evoke extremely strong and extremely widespread emotional reactions very easily. Kevin will primarily use this method for effects related to Prime — transferring Quintessence, for example, by making public postings that direct community ire or praise toward someone in particular and using that as a channel to direct the Prime energy. It’s not hard to see how the same technique could be used for Forces, Mind or Spirit effects as well.
- Mass Media: In this day and age, content that’s somehow related to the My Little Pony franchise is almost everywhere — perhaps not as pervasive as it was during the initial run of the Friendship is Magic television series, but still common. This makes it a conceptual short-cut to making connections in ways that sidestep the concept of distance entirely — Kevin could use one MLP image or video to view things happening near another or someday even transport himself physically (with enough dots of Correspondence). It might also be used with Time (for viewing things that were witnessed by related imagery) or with Mind.
- Meditation: Although it’s usually more time-consuming than other methods, sometimes simply sitting and contemplating the virtues (or faults — both are equally valid ways to do magick, depending on what one wants to do!) of a pony or group of ponies is enough. Given some peace and quiet and at least a few minutes to meditate, Kevin can cast Time or Correspondence effects (if and when he has the spheres), as well as some Life and Mind magicks, usually those that are internally focused.
- Music: Humming, singing, or playing recordings of the show’s theme tune — or various bits of incidental music that fit the situation — helps connect the higher reality of the ponies with our humdrum everyday world. Most effective with Forces, music can be used to help identify or classify materials by listening to how they resonate with the energy of the theme music, or even provide protection from attacks by harnessing the essential power of friendship in the songs. Music is also a very handy instrument for Mind and sometimes for Spirit.
- Prayers and Invocations: The My Little Pony canon includes a large number of stories with various different morals and messages. Retelling a particular story in the canon that’s appropriate to the situation — or even just invoking a particular pony and something about them that’s relevant — can be used to create magickal effects. Kevin is likely to use this effect most frequently with Entropy effects, once he has that sphere, as well as for Mind.
- Symbols: The “cutie marks” unique to each individual pony are a way to channel the qualities of that pony. Just seeing the right mark can help induce observers to think and feel in a particular way — even if they have no idea what that symbol means, its mystical qualities can still affect them. When hosting a sit-down between two hostile groups, flying a banner with Fluttershy’s cutie mark on it can help convince the attendees to act with kindness rather than with anger. Symbols are a particularly effective instrument for Mind, though they can also be useful with Spirit and Life.
- Toys: Maybe the most obvious instrument for My Little Pony-based magick, the actual toys themselves are very powerful objects in this belief system. While it can be more difficult to have just the right one on hand than it is to draw the right symbol or invoke a particular pony, it’s also a much stronger connection to the spirits they embody. It’s best-suited to working with Life — as Kevin gains in power, some day he may even use Life and Spirit to turn a toy into a life-sized equine protector for himself and his allies — but also well-suited to Matter and Forces.
Sample Effect
A hostile spirit has taken up residence in Kevin’s Chantry — things are going missing, getting broken, and the chantry members are getting suspicious of and hostile toward one another. Kevin, determined not to allow the friendships among the chantry members to be damaged, has decided to contact the ghost and see if he can negotiate a peaceful solution — that is, he needs to be able to see into the Umbra and communicate with the interloper. This is a coincidental effect using the first dot of the Spirit sphere, making the base difficulty 4.
Kevin sets up a ritual circle in his quarters in the Chantry, arranging a circle of My Little Pony toys around a spot in the center of the floor, and decorating the walls, floor, and ceiling with a variety of cutie marks. This makes use of his High Ritual Practice, and the Toys and Symbols instruments. Taking a seat at the center of the circle, he begins to meditate on the lessons of Rainbow Dash, the pony of loyalty, since he’s trying to keep his friends from falling out with one another. He then rolls Perception + Esoterica to represent his efforts to discern the right points in Rainbow Dash’s story, netting two successes — which would lower his difficulty to 2, but the minimum is 3, so he can only apply one success.
Seeing into the spirit world and communicating with spirits are both pretty basic magickal effects, so it’s unlikely that he needs more than one success, two at the absolute most. Of course, being able to communicate with the spirit is just the start of Kevin’s problems — he’ll still have to cajole the spirit into revealing why it’s turned hostile, and work together with it to find a mutually acceptable solution. Fortunately, he’s the right person for the job — after all, magic is friendship as well as vice versa!
Impossible Effects
One thing that is — and always will be — impossible for Kevin is to produce any effects that directly cause harm to a friendship! It’s certainly possible that he might do something that will end up doing so, but the magick of the ponies simply won’t work for him if he’s doing something that he knows — or has good reason to suspect — will result in damaging a friendship.
Additionally, because his paradigm is, after all, based on the worldview of a childrens’ cartoon, he is unable to do anything with magick that would shed blood. He can still cause harm when he needs to — although naturally this is the last resort for any good brony! — but if he absolutely has to do so, his magick will only let him do it in as bloodlessly airbrushed a way as possible.