Hello Rpolians! I am on the hunt for that most elusive of creatures: an ST for Mage the Ascension. Mage is by far my favourite RPG of all time, but (as anyone who loves it knows) it's very hard to get a game together.

So I figured if I'm going to throw a Hail Mary, I might as well throw it all the way. So this is my wishlist. None of these are out-and-out dealbreakers, more like starting points for a conversation.

• Solo or duo game (trio at the most). Smaller groups tend to be better for focusing on character development and personal goals.
• Some focus on the growth and development of the characters' paradigms. This is really important to me. I think Mage is at its most intriguing when magic is tightly bound to paradigm and is impacted by the change and shift in that paradigm over time.
• At least moderate levels of interaction with the mundane world. Of all the World of Darkness lines, Mages are the closest to mortals in proximity and nature and I'd love a sense that my character has a real life and actual goals that Mage Stuff^TM keeps getting in the way of, rather than my whole life being wall-to-wall Mage Stuff^TM with occasional appearances by real life.
• Better than starting characters. Advancement in Mage is glacial anyway, and PbP is even more so. So I would really like to start with all the dots I need and have the game be more about pursuing goals.

In return for all this, I am totally willing to GM/DM/ST a game for you. I'm conversant with D&D (all editions), any oWoD game, old-school MSH (and its newer retroclone FASERIP), most of the Star Wars systems, anything Palladium, any Powered by the Apocalypse game, 2d20 Star Trek or Dune from Mophidius, and lots of others. I'm even willing to learn a new system if there's something you want that I don't know (so long as it's not super intense).

That's it. If any of this seems like your jam and you'd like to talk about it some more, send me an rMail let's talk!

What are you looking for out of the Mage game?

Thank you for asking. I'd like two broad, amorphous features:

1. A character with an established life that's as much a factor in the game as cyborgs or Horizon realms. I'd like a game that feels less like D&D (going from place to place doing things with no real relation to each other) and more like a superhero story (operating in a single location, leading a divided life, keeping secrets, managing competing priorities).

2. Some focus on the quest for Ascension and/or growth of Arete as a metaphor for enlightenment. I don't need the game to become a Zen parable or anything, but in the same way that I think Jedi are more intriguing when the Force is more about 'unlearning what you have learned' and less about midichlorian counts, I like Mage better when it's about the progression from someone who has a skill into someone who is art.

Other than that, I'm up for a wide variety of themes and moods and conflicts. I'll make a character with strong goals and strong motivations. And I'd love it if at least some of the game was about the pursuit of those goals.

Does that make sense?

If you are thinking of a 'duo' I'd like to jump in and say 'me me!'. I share most of truemane's likes.

I can work with this.

Here, why don't you two pop into this game and we can discuss in more detail there, yeah?
This message was last edited by the user at 13:26, Wed 07 June 2023.