Mage: The Ascension is most fondly remembered as a game of mad, beautiful ideas. Do anything that's too explicitly magic, flaunt your ability to alter the way things have become, and Reality will give you a wedgie. This leads to the final hurdle between the mages and their goals: Paradox. And it's working, because if enough humans agree with the world you're giving them Reality Itself changes to match that view. and the free-will/wonderment of magic and human potential with it.

In the modern day the Technocracy has turned into a semi-fascist and nigh-unstoppable conglomerate set on squashing any 'Reality Deviants' who threaten the status of the world. Well, they won-And in the process they went a tad too far, until they had largely succeeded in stamping out any other reality save the non-magical worldview they endorsed. In response, a group of scholars/knights/builders/etc decided to team up as the Order of Reason and fight the sorcerers (and vampires, and were-things and evil spirits, and so on) with Science/Art/Religion/ Not Magic to make the world better for the average Joe and Jane. Long ago, when the mages actually did have their magical playground, there were a few too many getting their Sorcerous Overlord on and making life even harder for the hapless majority of Muggles.

But they kind of have to, because of the second reason: The Technocracy. First, there are the competing paradigms: Every mage understands magic in different terms (be it 'hyper-advanced science,' 'the divine emanations of the Almighty,' or 'the Old Ways'), so trying to get any two mages to agree on anything is tricky.

Mages are humans who've Awakened: They've realized the truth of the world, and have the ability to reshape it to their will.Ī few things stand between mages and the magical playground of reality, of course. Each average human, or 'Sleeper,' perceives the world in certain terms, and these terms go to the consensus make-up of reality. Rather, reality exists by certain laws because mankind believes it exists by certain laws. The basic premise is that reality does not operate by any set law. (Not to be confused with the other Game of Philosophical Knife-Fights, or the game of philosophers with clubs.) A tabletop game in the Old World of Darkness, which might as well have been subtitled 'A Storytelling Game of Philosophical Knife-Fights.'

Akashic brotherhood foci