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This is originally the subject I wanted to post about, and I guess I got distracted and forgot. That's what happens when I post at work; such is life.
When I originally got the WoD Corebook, I loved it. Interestingly, I felt like the supernatural was portrayed as being almost common but any kind of cohesive organization was vanishingly rare. I don't recall any specific places where this was said, or anything, but this is the impression that I've carried with me since I first picked up a NWoD book. It's a setting that I really can't call 'new' anymore, but it's taken me a long time to revise my concept of what the gameworld was like.
Fast forward to a few years ago, when I started playing Mage in the Cam. Or maybe, rewind. I don't remember what order this happened it. Anyway, the Cam is all over the place, and there are a bunch of cities and towns that have even more than one chapter devoted to them. When you play a Cam game, there are many more characters (NPC/PC) then there are actual players. Organization is tight, local, but able to extend itself nationally. The Free Council book has a Free Council website where Councilors communicate. There are organization mail lists where members communicate and debate. Dave B's fabulous Actual Play threads have scads of magicians all over the place. (If I'm focusing on Mage more, that's because I'm more invested in it. I still don't even own the Vampire book, but I really should.)
My point is, there are a ton of examples that kind of disprove my 'understanding' of the WoD. Few of these are canonical (Cam isn't, except for in-Cam, Actual Play certainly isn't.), but in order to facilitate the kinds of games people are playing, that level of population and organization is required. You can't have games without characters and the organization is just a side-effect of the Cam's organization in that case, just as an example.
But that's not the kind of game I want to run. Not really.
Many of us, because we're nerds, play the population game occasionally. That is, how many vampires can a population support? How many people do the Gentry kidnap? How many Werewolves can there be before someone notices? In my case, because I'm focusing on Mage, the question becomes 'How common is world-shattering supernatural awareness?'
I think this is an important question to ask before starting a game, because the answer changes the whole dynamic. When it's common, and organization is frequent, you see groups rapidly forming. The more people there are, the more organized. The fewer, the more the question isn't 'how do mages interact with each other and what kind of society do they create' and the more it becomes 'what am I, and what's my place in the world'. The more common, the more the issue is 'which one of these people will tutor me' and the less a character is willing to barter sanity and soul for slivers of precious knowledge. The search for lost knowledge, when the population is low, becomes less about personal power and more about learning what you are and what you place is.
I like to imagine that Mages awaken in groups, for some reason. That when one awakens, several more awaken nearby for good or ill, a burst of Supernal power in the fallen world seeking, like to like. It explains PC groups of nearly the same power, for one, and it's poetic. You can explain how you get two Moros just by acknowledging that in this fallen world, the enlightenment doesn't spurr evenly.
Mages are the easiest to have high populations in because they're not inherantly predatory. They don't need mana like vampires need blood. They don't even have to mess with people like changelings do. An area can support as many as there are people, in theory. It all depends on how common awakening is.
I wanted to run a game where the Orders were decentralized and really existed only amoung the most organized magicians. They might recruit (in fact, they're likely to be recruiting continuously) but the vast majority of mages are going to go undetected. Maybe they're Banishers, maybe they fall to the Abyss, but most are going to be apostates who don't know what's going on. In a big, weird city, even when mages are looking, most are going to fall through the cracks. I like the idea of a loose mage organization where they nominally consider themselves based in a major population hub, but if you look through the entire area, maybe there's 20 mages. I don't have a clear idea of this, yet, though. Fewer mages also changes the dynamic of legacies.
When I originally got the WoD Corebook, I loved it. Interestingly, I felt like the supernatural was portrayed as being almost common but any kind of cohesive organization was vanishingly rare. I don't recall any specific places where this was said, or anything, but this is the impression that I've carried with me since I first picked up a NWoD book. It's a setting that I really can't call 'new' anymore, but it's taken me a long time to revise my concept of what the gameworld was like.
Fast forward to a few years ago, when I started playing Mage in the Cam. Or maybe, rewind. I don't remember what order this happened it. Anyway, the Cam is all over the place, and there are a bunch of cities and towns that have even more than one chapter devoted to them. When you play a Cam game, there are many more characters (NPC/PC) then there are actual players. Organization is tight, local, but able to extend itself nationally. The Free Council book has a Free Council website where Councilors communicate. There are organization mail lists where members communicate and debate. Dave B's fabulous Actual Play threads have scads of magicians all over the place. (If I'm focusing on Mage more, that's because I'm more invested in it. I still don't even own the Vampire book, but I really should.)
My point is, there are a ton of examples that kind of disprove my 'understanding' of the WoD. Few of these are canonical (Cam isn't, except for in-Cam, Actual Play certainly isn't.), but in order to facilitate the kinds of games people are playing, that level of population and organization is required. You can't have games without characters and the organization is just a side-effect of the Cam's organization in that case, just as an example.
But that's not the kind of game I want to run. Not really.
Many of us, because we're nerds, play the population game occasionally. That is, how many vampires can a population support? How many people do the Gentry kidnap? How many Werewolves can there be before someone notices? In my case, because I'm focusing on Mage, the question becomes 'How common is world-shattering supernatural awareness?'
I think this is an important question to ask before starting a game, because the answer changes the whole dynamic. When it's common, and organization is frequent, you see groups rapidly forming. The more people there are, the more organized. The fewer, the more the question isn't 'how do mages interact with each other and what kind of society do they create' and the more it becomes 'what am I, and what's my place in the world'. The more common, the more the issue is 'which one of these people will tutor me' and the less a character is willing to barter sanity and soul for slivers of precious knowledge. The search for lost knowledge, when the population is low, becomes less about personal power and more about learning what you are and what you place is.
I like to imagine that Mages awaken in groups, for some reason. That when one awakens, several more awaken nearby for good or ill, a burst of Supernal power in the fallen world seeking, like to like. It explains PC groups of nearly the same power, for one, and it's poetic. You can explain how you get two Moros just by acknowledging that in this fallen world, the enlightenment doesn't spurr evenly.
Mages are the easiest to have high populations in because they're not inherantly predatory. They don't need mana like vampires need blood. They don't even have to mess with people like changelings do. An area can support as many as there are people, in theory. It all depends on how common awakening is.
I wanted to run a game where the Orders were decentralized and really existed only amoung the most organized magicians. They might recruit (in fact, they're likely to be recruiting continuously) but the vast majority of mages are going to go undetected. Maybe they're Banishers, maybe they fall to the Abyss, but most are going to be apostates who don't know what's going on. In a big, weird city, even when mages are looking, most are going to fall through the cracks. I like the idea of a loose mage organization where they nominally consider themselves based in a major population hub, but if you look through the entire area, maybe there's 20 mages. I don't have a clear idea of this, yet, though. Fewer mages also changes the dynamic of legacies.
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