Post by xaria on Feb 26, 2020 14:01:35 GMT -6
Axis of Coincidence
Various examples of coincidence throughout Mage’s history have muddied the waters considerably. Correspondence magick, for example, does not summon taxi cabs, nor do whiskey flasks materialize in a person’s pocket without a Matter 2/ Prime 2 Effect and several successes rolled to create one from thin air (or a similar, Correspondence-based Effect to move the flask from its location to the pocket). The gray areas between coincidental and vulgar magick might be Mage’s most controversial element; with absolutely zero help from Mage 1st Edition, arguments about vampiric soap bubbles and taxis from nowhere have surrounded the game for over 20 years. And though no sidebar can conclusively end all arguments, we can present a few guidelines here.
As a general rule, please assume that if a Hypothetical Average Bystander (HAB) saw you doing something and that something looked possible under his or her worldview, then your Effect is coincidental. Yes, you could pull a gun or business card from your pocket and have it appear to be a coincidence even if there hadn’t been one there beforehand. (This, of course, assumes that no one has gone through your pockets or otherwise proved them to be empty. If you’ve just taken your pants out of the laundry, you can’t pull a gun from the front pocket. Also, that gun would still have to be small enough to fit in a pants pocket in the first place; yanking a Desert Eagle from a pair of Daisy Dukes is not gonna fly.) Any conjured object, however, has to either come from somewhere via a Correspondence/ Matter Effect or else be created from Matter and Prime Effects… and such acts are often more difficult than carrying that object in the first place – see the Chapter Nine section regarding The Technological World and the creation or invention of sophisticated working objects.
On a related note, conjured objects do need to come from somewhere – not-so-random chance will not simply place them in your pocket at the proper time. As an overall guideline, Mage 20 assumes a Process-Based Determinism (PBD), which means that the process you follow determines the results you get.
Returning to the summoned taxi example, a mage would have to:
• Employ the Spheres necessary to grab an existing taxi (maybe Correspondence 3 to find a taxi, Mind 2 to nudge the driver in your direction, and Entropy 2 to tilt the odds of finding a taxi in your favor);
• Employ the Spheres necessary to create a taxi and driver from thin air (Matter 4 to conjure the complicated mix of materials; Forces 3 to propel them using internal combustion and electrical currents and to conjure them from nothing; Life 5/ Mind 5 to create a capable driver; Prime 2 to fuel the entire mess; several dots in various Crafts and Science with specialties in Biology and Human Anatomy; and a metric shit-ton of successes scored on an incredibly vulgar Effect); or…
• Employ Entropy 2 to tilt the odds in your favor; score a LOT of successes unless you’re in a busy urban area; and expect to be waiting a while before getting whatever happens to arrive.
Merely tossing out a Correspondence 3 teleportation Effect and then hailing a taxi as the coincidence that happens to manifest in time to transport you to your destination will not do the job.
HAB/ HOO/ HYP and RBD/PBD
A popular analogy on the Mage forums involves the double axis of HAB/ HOO/ HYP on one spectrum, and RBD/ PBD on the other. HAB and PBD just got covered above. HOO stands for Hypothetical Omniscient Observer (translation: Reality is the ultimate judge of coincidence, can see in your pockets, and has eyes everywhere); RBD means Result-Based Determinism (result is the only thing that matters, not how you got that result); and HYP translates to Harass Yonder Passerby (which is a joke).Under HOO, nothing a mage can do counts as a coincidence, because Reality is a godlike observer who judges your activities. And under RBD, you can conjure a taxi from nowhere with a Correspondence spell because the only thing that matters is getting from Point A to Point B. (Mages tend to HYP as a matter of course. Yes, mages can be real dicks.)
Ultimately, you – the players and the Storytellers of individual Mage chronicles – provide the final decisions about whether coincidence follows a HAB or HOO model, and whether Effects get decided by RBD or PBD. As far as Mage 20’s default position goes, however, our rules favor a HAB/ PBD approach: the Hypothetical Average Bystander decides whether or not something is possible (and she cannot see what you’ve got in your pocketses), and the results of your Effects depend upon the process you use to make them manifest.
Hopefully, this helps settle a few long-running arguments… around your gaming table, if not on the Internet. (As any Virtual Adept can tell you, nothing truly settles arguments on the Internet.)
Successes and Consequences
Another source of endless arguments around Mage’s magick has already been addressed above: theoretically, anything is possible if you’ve got the Spheres, Arete, and imagination to pull it off. What, then, stops mages from conjuring wealth and turning vampires into lawn chairs or soap bubbles?
Successes and consequences.
Yes, a wizard with the Spheres and Abilities listed above could theoretically conjure a taxi and its driver from thin air. That is possible. Now, just make a few Crafts rolls (lots of successes – you’re building a car); some Science rolls (likewise – you’re creating a functional, humanoid life-form, plus a working internal-combustion engine). If all that goes well, then roll 20 or 30 successes on a vulgar Effect (base difficulty 9 if you’re in the middle of nowhere, otherwise 10, with a reduction no lower than difficulty 6 if every single factor goes in your favor). Don’t botch, incidentally – the potential Paradox backlash could blow you to atoms.Not that simple, is it?
The same rule runs true on smaller, less obvious complexities… conjuring money, for example. Modern currency is incredibly sophisticated, filled with tiny cues, subtle colors, complex designs, electronic strips, holographic marks, and so forth. You want to make a wad of twenties from thin air? How many successes, exactly, do you think it’ll take to craft even one passable
duplicate of a $20.00 bill? Does your mage have several dots in Crafts and a specialty in Counterfeiting? And if so, which currency has he memorized down to the smallest details? Will that money feel right, or will it have a telltale slick, rough, or otherwise unusual texture that would tip off a cashier? Even if you can fool a cashier with that fake cash, do you think a human being's memory can fool a teller machine’s cash scanner? Not bloody likely. After all, the Technocracy and other non-mage agencies have worked hard to protect their institutions from influxes of fake cash. Things that sound easy in theory are damned difficult in practice… and thus, they demand phenomenal numbers of successes, often at epic difficulty ratings.
That Which You Do, Returns to You…
On a related note, magick does not happen in a vacuum. Changing one thing dramatically has dramatic effects on other things around it. If you conjure a localized thunderstorm, you also affect the weather patterns on a grand scale. Turn Count Dracula into kitchenware, and his minions will have your ass… and so will he, once that spell wears off. Yes, a Hollower can drain a local bank machine; you think the Syndicate won’t notice that, though, even if she has an Arcane of 5 with which to blur the camera on that ATM? Think some street kid can get away with passing off $100 bills at every store counter? Not in this social climate, she can’t! Dramatic activities have dramatic blowback, and magick does not shield mages from such consequences. As anyone who studies metaphysics can tell you, it’s often quite the opposite.
The obvious (and sometimes not so obvious) effects of Paradox reflect the echoes of a mage’s actions. Large, flashy workings get mages slammed to the mat, and smaller ones generate uncanny Resonance or accumulate tiny increments of Paradox until the player abruptly realizes that she’s got eight or 10 Paradox points on her sheet. Hypothetical Average Bystanders might be fooled, but Reality will have its due one way or another. Even when cast in low-Paradox environments (Sanctums, Chantries, the Otherworlds), large spells remain challenging. Rolling 20 successes is still difficult, risky, and time-consuming when the difficulty of that roll is 6 instead of 9, and Paradox can still smack you if you screw up in outer space. Beyond Paradox, of course, other consequences still exist, and there’s still that matter of scoring enough successes to pull off an Effect to begin with.
A Storyteller is not only allowed but also advised to use successes and consequences as limiters on abusive levels of magick. The Magickal Feats chart provides guidelines for drastic acts of reality hacking, so if someone’s trying to whip up a basement nuke or turn his co-workers into hordes of screaming minions, the Storyteller has the option of making such feats so difficult and risky that our budding Voldemort is better off trying a more subtle approach to life. Sure, there are times when flashy magick is totally appropriate – the game is called Mage, after all. By bearing in mind the successes and consequences involved, however, you can keep things from getting out of hand.