Sometimes having too many choices can be worse than not having enough. Mage is a game that offers a lot of possibilities for who, or what, the PCs might find themselves opposing, or might find themselves being opposed by. We encourage our players to come up with their own ideas, create stories around those ideas, and run with them (see Storytelling), but we also want to provide some of our own that we think are a particularly good fit for the London setting. Our plan is to update this page (and the equivalent pages for other spheres) on a regular basis, as things happen in-game that bring new antagonists to the forefront. The most up-to-date information will probably always be found on the in-game bulletin boards, however.
Mage, as the core rulebook points out, is very rarely a game of black and white, good and evil. Antagonists for Mage stories should almost always be people, or creatures, who think they’re doing the right thing — and ideally, they should be right about that, at least from their own perspective. The best antagonists for a Mage storyline are those who could just as easily be the heroes if looked at in a slightly different light.
Mundane Antagonists
In a lot of ways, the real “bad guy” of Mage is the human condition itself. People don’t just do bad things for cartoonishly evil reasons; they follow their self-interest even when it leads them to Hell, sometimes (in the case of the Nephandi) very literally. The Technocracy didn’t become the juggernaut it is today by bullying, threatening, or brainwashing the Sleepers; they did it by selling them a set of ideas about how to make their lives better that didn’t require them to do the very difficult mental labor that the Traditions’ worldview demands. Fighting against human nature can be frustrating, because there’s no real victory — the most you can hope for is to push the darkness back for a little while. But it can also be deeply satisfying, because most other venues for conflict are ultimately just stand-ins for the real reason that magick has been going out of the world.
Despair
The World of Darkness is getting worse all the time. Dishonesty gets the promotion and the recognition, rather than honesty. Faith in politicians, religious figures, businessmen, and friends is routinely rewarded with betrayal. People cheat on their loved ones and trample on their feelings without remorse. Corporations dump filth into the sea, the sky, and the earth while vying with each other to see who can most easily captivate the masses with brainless, divisive drivel. It’s hard to see yourself making any real change in a world where everything seems to be against you. Maybe it’s better to just give up.
It’s a tempting idea, and it’s one that many, many people succumb to every day. It’s a major part of why the Technocracy is winning (that and ‘Indolence’, below). They lose hope, and the Union’s pawns (or, worse, the Fallen) salve away the feeling that something is missing from their life with consumerism, Instagram fitness “influencers,” and World of Grindcraft. And it’s something that’s extremely difficult to combat on the large scale, mostly because finding something that gives hope back to a whole group of despairing people is really hard, and something that’s likely to either be fought back against by people who view despair as being in their best interests, or else co-opted by people who’re happy to take the credit for it.
But, difficult as it is, it’s also extremely important. Stories that revolve around finding ways to prevent ordinary people who are, or might be, key figures in the Ascension War from falling into despair, or bringing them back out of it, are a great way to explore some of the essential ideas behind Mage as a game. They can be as action-focused as a running fight through Subterranean London to recover (or destroy) video that would out a widely liked and trusted figure as someone unworthy of either, or as quiet as figuring out how to engineer the right “accidents” to help someone remember that maybe the world isn’t a hopeless place after all.
Ignorance
A city as large as London is crammed full to the brim with problems caused by ignorance. Even at the best of times, people have a hard time understanding one another, and when people from dozens of different nations and cultures all find themselves in one place, it’s all but impossible. People who want one thing don’t understand why others want something different. People who think one thing is appalling don’t understand why others are much more concerned about something else. All too often, people don’t bother talking to one another at all, and then wonder why there are so many problems that only ever seem to get worse.
And that’s just what people bring on themselves. In the background of everyday life is the constant drumbeat of fear-mongering and division that the Union uses to keep the masses quiet, and the Fallen use to push them toward anger, violence, and ever more inhumane treatment of others. By the time the average person in the street gets through their day, there isn’t much space left in their lives for any possibilities other than the way things are and the way they’ve always been — and that plays right into the hands of the Technocracy.
Finding ways to help Sleepers overcome the mistrust and misunderstandings that pervade society isn’t easy — it’s not usually something that can be fixed with a quick jolt of Mind magick. (That doesn’t actually solve the problem, just temporarily masks it.) And it can also be very dangerous to the magi who’re attempting it; it’s awfully easy to make the mistake of thinking your preferred way is the right way, and push people toward it rather than helping them find their own understandings. Still, finding common ground that two political foes can agree on, showing people that an outsider group they perceive as a threat is really a lot like them underneath, or even just finding a way to get someone thinking about how life could be better, even if some of those ideas sound a little crazy, are all excellent opportunities for Mage storylines.
Indolence
Okay, you’ve kept people from just plain giving up on the idea of making the world a better place. Good. And you’ve helped them understand why the problems they’re facing aren’t as simple and straightforward as the talking heads on their favorite podcast would like them to believe. Excellent! Now you just have to do something harder than both of those put together: convince them to actually do something, and get other people to join them in doing it, in a way that won’t fall apart the moment you stop paying attention to it or the Mind spells wear off. Good luck with that.
Because there are an awful lot of powerful people who like the direction the world is going just fine. They don’t want anyone to start determining the direction of their own lives; they’d much rather that the masses just accept the story that they’ve decided to tell and not raise a fuss. Quite a lot of them even think a “thank-you” wouldn’t be out of place. And they’ve built up a whole infrastructure to encourage the masses to follow along where they lead. When the reward is getting to enjoy all the hedonistic pleasures imaginable, and when going against the grain can lose you your job, your home, your family, and the camaraderie of your fellow drones — sorry, “friends” — it’s no surprise that most people choose the former.
Still, there is hope. It’s just not easy. Convincing someone to run for office despite their fear that the outrage machine will find something less than 100 percent perfect in their background, getting an artist to finish that piece that might be brilliant but will definitely get him ostracized by the establishment, or helping someone ignore everything they’ve been taught since kindergarten to follow where their passion leads them; these are just a handful of the ways to push back against the tide of apathy.
Supernatural Antagonists
The Technocracy
Arguably the iconic Mage antagonist, the Technocratic Union makes for a great bad guy — it’s hostile, it’s powerful, and it’s so big that you could spend a whole campaign fighting against them and still have them be a viable foe at the end. Using the Union as the bad guys is a classic choice — just please bear in mind the setting details found under The Technocracy in London, and steer away from stories that involve the PCs attacking the Union itself. Frustrating their political aims, exposing their agents, rescuing captive magi from their clutches, destroying a piece of experimental Union technology — those are all fine ideas for stories. This kind of back-and-forth doesn’t really bother the Union, even if their agents get roughed up in the process, or even if their agents get killed in the process, just as long as it’s something that happens as an accident or as part of a fight over something else, rather than deliberate premeditated murder.
At the same time, it’s a good idea to remember that, however bad the relationship between the Technocracy and the Traditions may be, they both still consider themselves to be on the side of humanity. The Union has, in the past, come to the Traditions to warn them about activity by some of the other antagonist factions, and vice versa. They’re the antagonist who can lose to you, and who you can lose to, without it being an existential defeat, and so they’re best used as rivals rather than as mortal enemies.
The Marauders
To the Traditions, the Mad are a frustrating but compelling enigma. Yes, they’re destructive vortices of magick and insanity in human form, and yes, they’re impossible to reason with or sometimes even communicate with except from their own skewed perspective. And yet … they do some astoundingly vulgar feats of magick without suffering any real consequences from Paradox. If only the Traditions could figure out how to do that without losing their sanity, the Technocracy would really be in for it. No, there aren’t a lot of magi who are willing to say so out loud, but there are an awful lot of them who are thinking it.
Be cautious when using Marauders as antagonists — most storylines that involve them should focus on dealing with the aftermath of their presence and the patterns of madness that tend to follow in their wake, rather than directly confronting one. (That’s something that’s best saved for the climax of an extended storyline.) The “Sanity Sinks” and “Reality Vortices” sections in the core rulebook (pp. 238-240) are great for ideas about this sort of thing; localized pockets of madness are an excellent way to create a problem that can’t usually be solved just by punching the right person in the face. More overt use of Marauders is better suited to parts of Subterranean London — rumor has it that there’s at least one mage down there who’s convinced that the underworld is really just a great big fantasy adventure, and is busy drawing unsuspecting Sleepers into playing various roles in the evil wizard’s dungeon fortress.
The Nephandi
Everyone hates the Nephandi. There’s a better-than-even chance that a Technocrat and a Traditions mage with a long history of mutual hatred will team up to deal with one of the Fallen, and every single colleague each of them has will nod with knowing appreciation if they hear about it. Bagging a Nephandus is a ticket to free drinks from any gathering of mages in creation, and will garner respect from even the stuffiest Hermetic around. The problem is finding them, and the Nephandi are very, very good at not being found. Even more so than Marauders and far more so than Technocrats, actual confrontation with a Nephandi is extremely rare.
Confrontation with their pawns, on the other hand, happens all the time. The Fallen are hard to find, but they’re watching closely, and if they see an opportunity to hamstring the opposition, or trick the opposition into hamstringing itself, or just make the world a worse place, they’ll take it without a second thought. Corrupt politicians, serial killers, untrustworthy media figures, everyday working-people throwing shoes into the gears of a baby-formula manufacturer, any of them could be Nephandic pawns, and any of them could be completely unaware of it and sincerely convinced they’re doing the right thing. A storyline that revolves around fighting the Nephandi should be composed of about 90% trying to figure out what the actual problem is, and 10% solving it.
A Fallen mage who knows he’s working against a group of free-thinking Ecstatics isn’t going to use religious fundamentalists against them; he knows they probably already consider them the bad guys. Rather, he’ll find someone to do his dirty work who his opponents think of themselves being on the same team with. If the Traditions don’t look too closely at the “good people”, his plot’ll probably succeed, and if they do look closely, he’ll have a lever to pry at their own self-doubt and uncertainty with in the future. The best Nephandi plots are fiendishly difficult to thwart without giving the Fallen, at minimum, a consolation prize.
Unnatural Horrors
Vampires, werewolves, wizards and the fey aren’t the only supernatural creatures still hiding themselves in the modern world; far from it. Players are welcome to invent others to use in their own storylines, so long as they comply with the requirements listed in Storytelling, and so long as they are presented as single creatures or small groups — if you want to create something that has a larger presence in the IC world, please discuss your ideas with staff beforehand so we can find a spot that they fit into.
The Spirit World
Spirits make for great antagonists — they have their own agenda, and often don’t even understand, much less agree with, the human perspective. Making use of them in play provides an opportunity for players to have a truly alien viewpoint to deal with, and to try to understand how to solve the problems that it causes in a way that won’t lead to it recurring. Even in stories that revolve around dealing with malevolent Bane spirits, just getting rid of the Bane(s) isn’t really a solution to the problem — unless the situation that caused them to manifest in the first place is resolved, eventually, more of them will come along.
There are parts of Subterranean London where spirits can easily cross into the material world (or vice versa), but, outside these areas, be careful when preparing storylines where spirits play a major part; make sure that the PCs who’ll be participating have enough proficiency with the Spirit sphere that trying to deal with spirit antagonists doesn’t become just a source of frustration.
Other Spheres
As outlined in Storytelling, it’s okay to use antagonists from other spheres — just be careful what you use and how you use them. Tracking down and destroying a vampire who’s lost to Wassail and is now an inhuman monster, or fighting a self-destructive fomor who’s trying to take as many lives as they can with them, are both perfectly okay! (Be careful to stat them out so they’re a challenge for the PCs, rather than instant death — but the idea is perfectly okay.)
The key thing to remember is to avoid using PC factions unless explicitly OK’d by staff — don’t run a story that revolves around tracking down and destroying a Brujah anarchist, for instance. When something like that happens, it often results in inter-sphere escalation — it’s not reasonable to expect the Brujah PCs to shrug off the death of one of their own rather than reacting in-character just because their players know, OOC, that it was just an NPC.
Sanctioned Storytellers (see Storytelling) can use PC factions as antagonists when appropriate, so long as they take care to craft stories that don’t lead to this kind of escalation. If you’re not sure, please check with staff for help.