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If I'm going to be honest, I don't really want to run Mage tonight. I am, generally, not sure I really want to run it at all at this point. It hasn't been going badly. Quite the contrary, in fact. But there are a few elements in the way the sessions come out that kind limit my enjoyment of the game.
There's a saying that a plan never survives first contact. I've definitely seen that borne out in my plans for the game. I really wanted a sprawling city, and in my head, it's there. Every now and then, I'm able to insert a new place or new environment, but for the most part, any new location is pretty much immediately destroyed - in many cases, without further investigation. I got away with exactly one mysterious location at the very beginning of the story. The game itself mostly takes place in roughly the same three or four locations, kind of like my whole life right at the moment incidentally.
What'd I learn from this? Well, number one is that PCs need somewhere to call home. In this case, I made a small mistake in giving the PCs a place to easily draw mana in the form of a demense. There wasn't really supposed to be a 6th demense in the city - not even a weak one like the fortified warehouse that the PCs lay their head in, but I didn't see the harm and I gave it to 'em. Well, that pretty much makes the manses the 5 NPC cabals have moot. The PCs don't have to curry favor to get mana, so they don't.
Unlike some games, equipment is nice but not really needed. That means the NPCs I set up to function as suppliers for medicines, tools, equipment, weapons, and misc. other stuff are really extraneous as well. when one PC has magic better then any doctor and another can literally manufacturer enchanted weapons and armor, being able to buy hunting rifles at Wal-Mart under the table isn't particularly impressive.
These are all things that would be more useful in a lower-powered game. I was concerned that the players would balk at being schlubs in an environment with too many high-powered mages. Well, that's another problem. Frankly, I doled out exp like ridiculous trinkets early on, and the PCs predictably sank it into their awesome magic stats. Well, it's not so bad with 3 out of 5 of them, but I've literally got the Retired Anti-Social Marine playing, and his foil The Dude, If He Were A Ninja With Life 4.
This does create a scenerio where I have two nearly invincible bad-asses and three regular-ish people. It's not like those three are Zeppos, or anything, but it's genuinely frustrating to make a combat that can threaten Seraph the Obrimos or Dr Feelgood* the Thyrsus that won't accidentally annihilate the others just by being nearby.
So, what'd I learn from that? Well, I'm a guy that hates to say no. Honestly, I struggled with capping experience points earned from writing stories even when I had one or two people that would regularly churn out modestly good prose in exchange for experience points, no matter how paltry. And really, if I have a problem player, it's probably Seraph, and it's not really the players fault. This was all stuff I green-lighted. I tend to want to keep things short, kind of intense, and modestly powered. Mage is a game where you can make yourself fly or turn into a bear or turn corn into bees, or make glass into steel.
This is probably something I should have seen coming.
Nevertheless, they're all ridiculously powerful, so I'm going to introduce them to the Minister of the Gate tonight for the lulz.
* Yes, really. And it's awesome, thanks.
There's a saying that a plan never survives first contact. I've definitely seen that borne out in my plans for the game. I really wanted a sprawling city, and in my head, it's there. Every now and then, I'm able to insert a new place or new environment, but for the most part, any new location is pretty much immediately destroyed - in many cases, without further investigation. I got away with exactly one mysterious location at the very beginning of the story. The game itself mostly takes place in roughly the same three or four locations, kind of like my whole life right at the moment incidentally.
What'd I learn from this? Well, number one is that PCs need somewhere to call home. In this case, I made a small mistake in giving the PCs a place to easily draw mana in the form of a demense. There wasn't really supposed to be a 6th demense in the city - not even a weak one like the fortified warehouse that the PCs lay their head in, but I didn't see the harm and I gave it to 'em. Well, that pretty much makes the manses the 5 NPC cabals have moot. The PCs don't have to curry favor to get mana, so they don't.
Unlike some games, equipment is nice but not really needed. That means the NPCs I set up to function as suppliers for medicines, tools, equipment, weapons, and misc. other stuff are really extraneous as well. when one PC has magic better then any doctor and another can literally manufacturer enchanted weapons and armor, being able to buy hunting rifles at Wal-Mart under the table isn't particularly impressive.
These are all things that would be more useful in a lower-powered game. I was concerned that the players would balk at being schlubs in an environment with too many high-powered mages. Well, that's another problem. Frankly, I doled out exp like ridiculous trinkets early on, and the PCs predictably sank it into their awesome magic stats. Well, it's not so bad with 3 out of 5 of them, but I've literally got the Retired Anti-Social Marine playing, and his foil The Dude, If He Were A Ninja With Life 4.
This does create a scenerio where I have two nearly invincible bad-asses and three regular-ish people. It's not like those three are Zeppos, or anything, but it's genuinely frustrating to make a combat that can threaten Seraph the Obrimos or Dr Feelgood* the Thyrsus that won't accidentally annihilate the others just by being nearby.
So, what'd I learn from that? Well, I'm a guy that hates to say no. Honestly, I struggled with capping experience points earned from writing stories even when I had one or two people that would regularly churn out modestly good prose in exchange for experience points, no matter how paltry. And really, if I have a problem player, it's probably Seraph, and it's not really the players fault. This was all stuff I green-lighted. I tend to want to keep things short, kind of intense, and modestly powered. Mage is a game where you can make yourself fly or turn into a bear or turn corn into bees, or make glass into steel.
This is probably something I should have seen coming.
Nevertheless, they're all ridiculously powerful, so I'm going to introduce them to the Minister of the Gate tonight for the lulz.
* Yes, really. And it's awesome, thanks.
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