Mage: The Ascension is White Wolf’s game of modern magick. It asks the question: if you were granted the ability to change reality, what would you do with that power? How would you change the world, and how would the world change you? Like Plato’s parable of the Ring of Gyges, Mage is ultimately more about the discovery of one’s own self than it is about any particular actions one takes.

Of the four World of Darkness games supported on TowersMUX, Mage is generally the least pessimistic — while the world is still in bad shape, there is at least the possibility that it could be improved, however unlikely it might be.  Magick is on the wane, individualism is at risk, and the world is either on the verge of becoming a totalitarian dystopia or has already become one, but there are at least a few bright spots, and a chance that the tables might turn.

What Should I Expect From The Mage Sphere?

The TowersMUX vision of Mage is as a game of activism, exploration, and discovery. More than any other World of Darkness game, problems in Mage can’t be solved just by punching bad guys. Don’t get us wrong, punching bad guys is fun, and it’s very much one element of problem solving — but don’t expect that it’s going to be able to put things right on its own. Mage is a game about grappling with big ideas, about learning how to work with others, about understanding that your view of the world is not the only one — and probably not even the best one, or at least not the best one for everyone.

The fact is that moderately experienced Mage characters can solve most problems that magick is capable of solving. For that very reason, the really big, important problems in the sphere are those that magick isn’t capable of solving — those that revolve around moral dilemmas, people who are neither entirely in the right or entirely in the wrong, and adventures that are much less about the destination than they are about the journey.