A Geek History of Time - Episode 318 - White Wolf Part VII Do You Believe in Magic_ And I Hope You Do

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Wow. You're gonna like this. Oh no I'm not. Because there is no goddamn middle. This is not unlike ancient Rome by the way. Not so much the family circus. Yeah. When I did Mary Shelley I had the same issue with necromancy. A lot of them wanted to create self-sustaining farms and got into crystals. I know. Okay. I understand that. But yeah, I'm reading Livy who is a shitty historian. Because Eerie Guy got her stuff. Others say that because Laurentia's body was common to all the shepherds around, she was called a she-wolf, which is a Latin term for whore. You were audible last season. It just, most of it was you slamming the table. As the Romanists at the table. Well, duh. Obviously. Ipso facto.

Right. You know, to engage in a little bit of my own dog Latin. Ipso facto. You have a sword rat. This is a Geek History of Time, where we connect nerdery to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock. I'm a world history teacher here in Northern California at the middle school level. And, um, I am also working on my master's degree in history at present. And I am nearing the end of a quarter course period.

I don't know how to describe it, um, with the, uh, institution that I'm, that I'm working with. Uh, and I managed to get my first, uh, research proposal, uh, written up and, uh, turned in and, uh, managed to get an A on it. I feel pretty good about that. Um, and, uh, so this coming week, I actually have a week off from my, my masters, stuff,

which I am very much looking forward to because I have a whole lot of like my regular job shit I got to get caught up on. And so that's, that's going to afford me that time. So how about you, sir? Well, I'm Damian Harmony. I'm a high school US history teacher up here in Northern California. And in high school, every kid has a phone.

It is very rare the kid does not have a phone. Every kid has a smartphone because that is the prevalent type of phone. It is very rare the kid does not have a phone. Every kid has a smartphone because that is the prevalent type of phone. Yeah. I imagine there's some math where some of your students don't have phones yet. Not very many of them. Okay.

So it is everywhere. My own children do not have a phone. However, they do have watches by which I can reach them as needs be. Oh, okay, cool. That being said, I was feeling so drained this last week, just completely just, have you seen my Will to Live? Because I seem to have lost it. It's like that kind of vibe, right? Got it, yeah. And then I was scrolling mindlessly

and I ran across a teacher on TikTok who said, here's what's going on in public education. And it was the most affirming and validating thing possible. It was essentially, look, these kids with their smartphones, and it's not like grumpy grumpy, look, these kids with their smartphones, and it's not like grumpy, grumpy, oh, these kids with their smartphones, these kids with their smartphones, grab it. It's the first thing they look at in the morning

and they have it all day. And if you have, you know, theoretically, if they go to school, they're without it on some levels. And she says, and they act like addicts. They're emotionally dysregulated. The slightest thing sets them off for quite some time and they can't help but try to find their phones. Whether they're sneaking it or whatnot,

they're basically getting a hit of internet dopamine. And so while they're in class, they're simultaneously going through withdrawals and basically looking for the next fix. And that's absolutely true, and different teachers on my site have had different ways of dealing with it, et cetera, et cetera,

and I'm very loathe to take a phone away. I'm very loathe to, because that just opens up a whole another Pandora's box I don't want to deal with in my classroom. But I was talking over with a colleague and I think next year we're going to get a rolling cart so we're gonna go around like stewards and stewardesses and say your phone needs to be in this drawer. And then we will then put it behind our desk and then and so as we're giving instructions phones let's go and if a kid doesn't give a phone it's like okay you don't have

a phone today? No I don't. All right the second they pull out a phone after you've done that kick them out and we're actually going to be hard on them because both of us have realized that the second thing that this teacher on TikTok said was really the thing that was killing me, which is you cannot get them information unless it's packaged in one to two minute chunks, bright lights, et cetera. And if you try to lecture just dead eyes, like vacant, they're not there. They don't care. They don't care about their grade. They don't care about any kind of punishment,

they don't care about anything, they don't care, because eventually they're gonna get their phone back and get that little hit of dopamine. And as with most addictions, what used to do it for them doesn't do it anymore. So it used to do a little bit, a little wouldn't do it, but a little got more and more, right? So, and it's just so wild because I started thinking

about it more holistically and looking at how they are when I show up in the morning. Groups of friends sitting around silently staring at their individual screens. Not gossiping, not talking, not rousing each other, not nothing, no conversation. They're parasocially engaged, and I'm not saying that that's not valuable. I'm not saying that that's not valuable,

I'm just saying that that to the, just like a Hershey's kiss is lovely, but three handfuls of Hershey's kisses does not a dinner make. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Polarically, it does, but in no other way. It's part of my problem. Yeah, and that's the thing, like I have the same issue when it comes to other addictions.

I understand addiction. And so then I was looking at when they fight. Well, when they fight, they're obviously emotionally dysregulated. It's almost always about some bullshit that happened online. And their real life is now the digital life. Yeah, they have-

The first instinct for a kid when a fight happens is to run to it and get their phone out because that makes it real. Yeah. So we're in and I'm not a cracking down hard kind of guy, but myself and another colleague who is also similarly minded to me is like, we've seen colleagues do without it and do with it. And the ones who are doing without it are having more success with their kids.

So it's time to do it. So I'm going to be in the market for essentially like a chest of drawers, um, not on wheels, but with a handle. I've, I've got a cart that I can put it on because that way, cause here's the kicker. I'm still going to tell them, all right, if you need to go to the bathroom, take your phone with you if you want to, which sounds counterintuitive,

but it's because if there is some sort of lockdown or shutdown, I want them to still be able to contact their parents, right? Yeah. If there's a drill or an evacuation, I will just grab the chest and say, find me. Yeah. And I'll have all their phones with me.

Yeah. So that's looking like the plan. And so we're going to look at 3D printing a lock, even though you don't really need a lock. It's just that extra layer. It's just it's... And my colleague even said it. He's like, it'll be K-Fabe.

Yeah. I'm getting through to you. Yes. You understand. Yeah. Yeah. So that's where we're at. Yeah. So just out of curiosity, sure. Does your district have any kind of a policy? I'm sure they do. Like a stated. Okay. Oh yeah. But that they don't enforce themselves and that then administration, uh,

enforces for like three weeks and then gets overwhelmed and then, okay. And so it chips away. Speaking of CAFE, it ships away at any credibility that we have. Yeah. I will say one of the things I like about the site that I'm working at right now is we have a clear policy and our administration is very very good about being sure to enforce it consistently. Yes. Which is which is a huge help. Yes. So you also have how many kids? Uh,

I don't remember off the top of my head. 700. Okay. Yeah. So half of what we have. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, you're, you're, you're and middle schoolers for different high schoolers. Like, yeah, there's a whole lot of others. Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. There's, there's a lot of different factors involved, but yeah, you probably have also had the same basic admin team for years and years. We are a revolving door. Yeah, yeah.

So there are a number of things that get in our way and then you have guys like me who are like, I see what you're trying to do, it sounds great, you're not going to enforce it. I'm not going to waste my time. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, yeah. Anyway. So cool. Magic. I am. I, yeah. I, I hope that when I hope

you're able to make that work next year, cause I fully agree with all of those points. Yep. So yeah, when we left off, um, I was, um, waxing, uh, poetic about, uh, Ars Magica and regretting the fact that I never really got to actually like plan a campaign of it because there are so many things about it that are so fascinating to me.

Sure. And, um, it's important for what I'm talking about because it happens to be published by a little company called white wolf. And so ours is magical. Yes. Ours Magica was the first role playing game published by white wolf. Remember that ours Magica came out in 87 and vampire was 91. So remember when in a different context, I went through and kind of talked to when I was

talking about palladium games and rifts. When I talked about, when we had a conversation about the way that like, as a publisher, you needed to get one game off the ground, right. In order to really get established in order to be able to then do other stuff. Right. Ours Magica was in a very big way.

What did that for white wolf? Really? Yeah. Not vampire, not werewolf. They were able to do vampire and werewolf because ours Magica had gotten them enough capital and gotten them off the ground to be able to then say, all

right, look, we have this other set of ideas we want to do and we have, we have enough, you know, we've done enough that we can get investors to, like we can point to Ars Magica and go, Hey, we did this thing. This was successful. I mean, it wasn't a runaway, huge, massive like hit, but it was a solid success.

So now give us the money to do this other thing. And they were, you know, so they, okay. That was, that was what got them the critical mass, be able to do that. They had also been publishing, uh, their own kind of, you know, gaming magazine. Uh, there was, gaming magazine. There was, there was other stuff that they were doing, but ours, Magica was there. Look what we did, you know,

zip thud kind of thing in order to then get the capital, the funding, whatever, in order to then go on and create the world of darkness. Okay. Okay. And when we're talking about magic in the world of darkness, there's another character archetype that I need to mention because he's really important. And I also want to bring him up because I was just recently re-listening to our, uh, built an Avengers team episode and you're kind of distin and I didn't really have the opportunity to, to come out and, and swing in his defense because we were doing things, but, uh, John Constantine

because we were doing things but John Constantine mm-hmm in 1985 first appeared in swamp thing as a supporting character and He's a modern sorcerer with a literal tortured soul a dark past a multiple packaday Smoking habit and a really morally flexible attitude. Mm-hmm He is a punk wizard his attitude is Anti-authoritarian his language is foul

And and his own title hellblazer debuted in 1988 He is overtly political fuck thatcher, uh-huh the tone of the comics is okay, but what are his politics If the right can normalize shit so can we right? Yeah? Hey the right did a hailing somebody is a greeting I say, you know fuck thatcher is a great reader. There you go. Yeah And the Scots would fully agree. Mm-hmm Well, we could keep it close to home fuck Reagan Yeah, we could we could totally nationalize it. so that the tone of the comics is is pitch dark Okay, yeah

He is regularly having to do Traumatic shit in order to save people from literally the princes of hell Okay, like as as a as a sorcerer as a as a magician. That's literally what he's having to do Now that the series is actually categorized frequently categorized as horror because he's literally going up against demons he is a Wizard who is essentially constantly going up against for for context think of the seno bites from hellraiser okay which by the way was originally going to be the title of the comic but because of the hellraiser franchise, they had to change it to Hellblazer.

Okay. So he, he is, it's, it's other worldly entities with that level of malevolence and that level of power that he is regularly having to go up against with just his knowledge of Arcana and his wits. Okay. And so his magic hearkens back to Merlin and John Dee. He's walking around, go ahead, go ahead. No, no, yeah, yeah, I'm listening.

So he's got the natural capabilities, but also there's that layer of, he knows how to put the pressure in the right spots with his magic yes, yeah Good good way of putting it. Yeah Very very much a give me a long enough lever and I can move the world kind of thing like he he He's able to like a recurring trope in In in Hellblazer stories is there's always a bigger fish and he maneuvers in ways that it's like oh yeah no you totally have me pinned but I also know that you have a rival who's more powerful than you And there he is right behind you. Right. Ever got a full,

he's right behind you. What? You know, that, that kind of shit, like all the time, um, in some ways, he's kind of a magical Batman in that, uh, Batman always, always has plan B plan C, right. You know, yeah, you know, know, Constantine, you know, fairly frequently pulls the second plans out of his ass, but he's always, you know, moving, moving, kind of thing. Kind of reminds me of High from Raising Arizona. Yeah.

He's just getting the shit kicked out of him and then he just holds up his hand and it's got the grenade ring on it. Yeah, I was just getting the shit kicked out of him and then he just holds up his hand and it's got the Grenade ring on it. Yeah Sorry That's a great moment And so his his wizardry is is very much Marlon and John D he knows the names of demons. He knows how to trick them.

He knows the symbolism and the ritual necessary to control them. It was the symbols. He knows, you know, all that kind of stuff. He doesn't blast bad guys with rays of light, but he might cast a spell to fill a room full of vampires, full of sunlight. Okay. If, if that, that nuances is coming across clearly. Yeah.

Yeah. And so in some ways, uh, John Constantine is a more historical, more scholarly sorcerer than strange is strange as a superhero. Like if you look at, if you scratch the surface of, of doctors, Dr. Strange, he is, he's, he's, if you scratch the surface of, of doctors, Dr. Strange, he is, he's, he's, uh, the Martian man hunter, uh, or, you know, uh, uh, what's his name? Uh, him, uh, Adam Warlock, right. Okay. Which funny name to come up in this conversation, but you know, um, Constantine,

um, we, as the reader are reminded over and over again, he's just a mortal man. I know it was a lot. Um, it is, it is very difficult to find a, a cover of a Hillblazer comic that does not show him with bandages somewhere visible on his body Because he's gotten a shit kicked out of him. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and, and so that modern wizard kind of idea is very important, I think, to

the visualization and the paradigm. I keep bringing that word. I intentionally use that word several times, uh, in our last episode and I'm using it again, intentionally here, the paradigm of magic in the world of darkness is very heavily, uh, colored by that influenced by that.

And so now we're actually, here we are with mage. So mage came out in 93. Okay. And, uh, vampire was a horror game. Werewolf was kind of a horror game, kind of an action adventure game, uh, that had significant horror elements. Mage could be a horror game, but it really wasn't. Mage, Mage is a, the setting is exactly the same. The tone is very much the same, but you're not looking at the universe

through a horror lens anymore. Okay. With mage. Um, and it introduced a whole new, uh, a whole new world, just like werewolf had, had introduced the Umbra and spirits and, you know, uh, a cosmology to the world of darkness that had not

existed because vampires are, you know, uh, a cosmology to the world of darkness that had not existed because vampires are, you know, intensely materialistic, uh, werewolves had much more to do with the spirit realm. And now mage, uh, stuck with, uh, the same cosmology. It is okay. Yeah, there is a spirit realm. There is the Umbra spirit is one of the things that you can work with as a mage. Um, but then they, they, they introduced a whole new level on which conflict operated in the world of darkness. Okay.

So in Vampire, your antagonists were almost certainly going to be other vampires. Mm-hmm. Okay. It was very, very kind of incestuous that way. Right. Like, you know. You're within a hidden ecology, essentially. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. Very, very good way of putting it. Insular. And yeah, it's insular and there's a certain to me fascinating way in which the narcissism of individual vampires is matched by the narcissism of Vampire society in vampire which is well, yeah, this other shit exists, but who cares? That's right. It's a you know And it'd be like we're worrying about the inner politics of the, the, uh, chicken farm. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Um,

and so in mage, we, we discover, uh, the conflict that you're in, uh, the assumption in mage at the, at the, at the outset of the game, the assumption is you are a newly awakened Magus and you are part of the traditions. Okay. And now I kind of have to figure out which part I want to talk about first. So I think before I get into the, the conflict, I'm going to get into the cosmology. Okay.

Or the, the philosophy or the construction of the universe, uh, the paradigm actually. Um, so in mage, um, the session zero for each individual character is your awakening And as a mage you are a mortal human being Okay as aware when you're born a werewolf You get transformed into a vampire You awaken into being a mage Okay, you are still human but you have a perception of the

fluidity of reality okay for to paint with broad strokes and that analogy is probably going to get changed or described differently because it's, it's a flexible kind of thing. Yeah. So as a starting out character, your very first story, uh, either that you kind of write out and, and you and your storyteller agree on, or you and your storyteller play out as part of a, you know, preliminary session is you as an ordinary

human being suddenly becoming aware of the fact that the world is an awful lot bigger than you thought. Magic is real in whatever way it appears to you. And you become aware of your ability to make the world what you want it to be. Okay. So it's not just you're sensing things newly,

there's also you have a new capability within this as well. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And so you become aware of this and then you get drawn into sorceress, mage society. then you get drawn into sorceress, mage society. Okay. You get, you get pulled into the, the, uh, ascended, well, not ascended because ascension

is the goal, but you get, you get pulled into the awakened world. Okay. And so in a vampire, you had a blood pool in, and you had to worry about your humanity in, in werewolf, you had rage and gnosis in mage. You had to keep that balance. Yeah.

Yeah. Mage, you only have one stat. Okay. Your, your power battery stat is your Aritae, which is taken from Greek, not Latin. Right. Um, and if I'm remembering correctly, which is taken from Greek, not Latin. Right. Um, and if I'm remembering correctly, it is something akin to awakened or, or, you know,

awareness. So there's like a greatness aspect to it though, too, isn't there? I think so. Yeah. Um, and so your erite level as a, as a starting, uh, mage, as a starting, uh, mage usually, um, I, I want to say your, your default Aritae was like an Aritae of two. And that means anytime if you're, if you're trying to do magic, uh, the highest number of dice you can roll is, is two dice. Okay.

So you can do little shit, um, with your starting character creation points, you could, and most everybody I played with always did, you could bump your Arita up to three. Okay. Uh, which, which would allow you to do more impressive shit. Um, and, uh, it opened up, uh, other, other stuff that I'll get to in a minute. But the idea of the way magic worked in mage was that, um, we operate in the world

under consensus. You and I and everybody else in the world, based on our everyday observations, we recognize that gravity is a thing. Right. Right. We all agree gravity is a thing. If I pick up this pencil and I let go of it, you know, which way it's going to go.

Yeah. I know which way it's going to go. Yeah. And, and subconsciously, I know which way it's gonna go. Yeah, and and subconsciously Mm-hmm. I have an understanding of when I drop this pencil this pencil is a relatively light object It's gonna fall on on the desk. It's not gonna break anything. It's not gonna, you know, dude's I have a

subconscious understanding That you and I and everybody else in the world agree on right about what I can expect if I drop this pencil right right so you and I and every other non awakened person on earth create that reality every day by our perpetual and agreed upon subconscious belief in it Yes, okay, so gravity is a lie agreed upon Yes, okay

And so that is the paradigm of consensus, okay, okay When you awaken as a wizard as a mage mm-hmm you connect to the reality beyond the veil You connect to the understanding that that is the way it is Because everybody agrees on it Okay So like money yeah okay and yes and that actually gets touched on huh I'll get into that in a minute

too so the Cooney answer you're a fine answer you well fine man remember if you're a member of the Syndicate, yes, you are. We'll get into that. So as a beginning character in Mage, when the book first came out, you are a member of the traditions. And that means you have a belief in the individual ability and the value of the individual ability, uh, for, for somebody who is awakened to do things. Okay. To use magic. Sure. Sure.

Um, and there are nine traditions, sort of 10. There's a 10th tradition that isn't really recognized as a tradition. And there, each of the traditions focuses on a particular element of reality that is their specialty thing to, to work with. And I'll get into how the magic system works here in a minute. So the traditions, work with and I'll get into how the magic system works here in a minute. So the traditions, um, everybody who's awakened agrees, uh, on the idea of ascension.

And ascension means different things to different mages for the traditions. Ascension is fundamentally an individual thing. When you get to irrititae, mechanically, when you get to Aritae of 10, you achieve a level of, greater, you know, even greater awareness of, of, of reality, of, of the universe. You, you ascend into a higher, uh, level of existence. It's like the quickening.

Kind of, man, kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and, and for, for the traditions, this is essentially an individual quest. This is this. Now the other, the major primary and usually the first antagonist that you past of the, of the setting of maids, the technocracy believed nobody ascends until we all ascend. So we have to, okay, we have to, uh, we have to agree. We have to enforce and agreed upon paradigm.

Right. We have to create a paradigm comes in. We have to create a consensus. We have to nurture a consensus and we have to pull all of the sleepers with us. And we also need to protect the sleepers because magical beings are dangerous and wizards who are being selfish are dangerous. In the modern era, um, the technocracy are the antagonists because they somewhere along the way gave up on bringing everybody with them and they decided, no, no, it's much safer to keep all the sleepers asleep.

Okay. And we're not just going to try to protect sleepers from magical forces. We need to hunt down and eliminate anything that deviates from consensus. Okay. And so far it's given a very cold war vibes. Very much. Yes. Yeah. Cause you know, 93, so create a consensus, eliminate any who disagree. Yeah. It's like, you know,

and depending on which part of the technocracy you're talking about, there's also a level of corruption and I'm going to get mine while I'm doing this that gets into it. Sure. You mentioned money. I did. And what I, what I, what I, what I love about you bringing that up is one of the factions of the technocracy was the syndicate who were the, um, corporate financiers and the people who maintained capitalism as an exploitative

system in order to keep the sleepers under control. And by the way, if we happen to just wind up on top as a result of doing that in our, you know, gold plated mansions and our super yachts, then, you know, I mean it's the perks of the job, right? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. This aint bad. Yeah. And, and one of the things that they could do was utilize the consensual paradigm of money as a magical tool.

So like as part of their style of working magic, which for them was always going to be, or almost always going to be a coincidental, I'll get into that in a second. Um, just by getting on a phone and calling somebody making, you know, stock trades, whatever they can make shit happen because money is this fluid, fictitious, but consensual part of our universal paradigm. Right. Um, another one of the factions, the tech and actually was iteration X who, um, they're, they're, they're kind of the brosters of the technocracy.

They are the, uh, cybernetics, uh, you know, laser cannons, uh, kind of end of things. And they're, they're the, they're the, the faction of the technocracy most likely to engage in, in vulgar magic in order to blast people. Okay. But I'll get to that. So in the traditions, you have groups like the Order of Hermes, which you may remember from Ars Magica. You have the Celestial Chorus, who are their paradigm of magic is one of the divine. Okay.

You have the Akashic brotherhood who, uh, their sphere of, of, uh, control their specialty sphere is mind and their, their style and their paradigm is rooted in, um, the Akashic record and ideas out of Eastern philosophy. The euthanatose are masters of entropy. Right. Um, and I'll get into all the spheres in a minute, but they come out of the, there's a little bit of Greek and a little bit of their, their kind of a, uh,

their cultural roots are a combination of Greek and Indian. Okay. And their, their fundamental philosophy is one that in order for there to be growth, there has to be death, something, something has to die. Okay, the given the take. Yeah. Yeah. And, and you Thanatos good death, you know, something has to die. Okay. The given the take. Yeah. Yeah. And, and you, Thanatos good death, you know, the Verbena are the descendants of Druids and folk magicians who are tied to the sphere of life and those, those styles of magic. So the animal shape shifters, the, you know, think modern druids. Sure.

It's the shorthand. And so the traditions and the technocracy are engaged in the Ascension War. They are fighting, often literally behind the scenes in the shadows, hidden away from the eyes of sleepers as much as possible, to see whose paradigm is going to wind up winning. And the technocracy holds all the cards. The technocracy has all the money, all the consensus behind them. You know, the, the paradigm that you and I operate under is the technocracy's paradigm. And so tradition mages are the underdogs and depending on the group of players you have and who your

storyteller is and how you want to do it, the, um, the goal of resistance of the technocracy could be rooted in different aspects of this conflict. And your goals could be very small scale or they could be really large scale, depending on what kind of game you wanted to play. Sure. And so the traditions are hampered by the fact that for a very long time, they did not get along with each other. And, and they're, they're kind of forced to get along with each other now, but they still don't always think highly of one another, particularly. Some of them are more likely to think of themselves as the smartest ones in the room. Others of them are more likely to think of themselves as the most enlightened or what have you.

And so the traditions in the technocracy are fighting for the, the traditions, the traditions line is we are fighting for the freedom of sleepers to wonder because at its, at its, at its extreme, the technocratic paradigm is one where imagination has to go away. Differentiation has to go away. Individual expression has to go away. Differentiation has to go away. Individual expression has to go away.

Uniformity is the key to consensus and control to make everybody safe. Right. You know, and, and so that's, that's the tradition's side of the argument. Later on, as the game got older and other additions came out and source books came out, the technocratic side of the argument came out and it's like, all of these guys are a bunch of selfish, you

know, narcissist assholes who, you know, just want to be able to run around and, you know, uh, fulfill their superhero wish fulfillment and cause trouble for everybody. You know, they're messing around with forces that, that, you know, none of us really fully understand because it's all based on what you can do, right? You know, if, if you are a will worker, you can literally make shit go, however you want it to do, and they're not getting with the fucking program, you know? They're not getting with the fucking program

You know, um and Of course you could have bad guys who were Tradition Magi who were selfish assholes who you know used and abused sleepers And you could have you know hardline technocrats who were you know full-on no no Individuality is a cancer, you know the extremes existed, but the truth was some, you know, what was actually kind of somewhere in the middle. And you know, there's this ideological and magical war for

where reality is going to go. Now, there's two other forces that are in the mix. There are the marauders. Marauders are mages whose awakenings go wrong. Okay. And they go mad, um, because they, they, they have lost their tether to reality, which makes them really powerful as mages because they now fully believe whatever their madness is. If that makes sense.

Yeah. I mean, since the whole thing is based on Kfabe yeah, yeah, yeah reality is kfabe. Yeah, so these these marauders are the ones who believe their own hype They believe they get so enmeshed in their character. They think that they are their character They think the audience is cheering them because they are a superhero Yeah, yeah, yeah and so they are, they are untethered and the, uh, technocracy and the traditions both look at them and go, Oh fuck. Um, and you know,

they they're dangerous to everybody. Right. And then another group and, and marauders don't really care about Ascension because they're not tethered enough to anything to care about Ascension. They're, they're already there. As far as they're concerned, they've ascended, whatever, you know, sure. They're, they're locked in whatever their, their madness is. There's a fourth faction and that's the Nifendi. Nifendi believe in a dark Ascension. They believe in the dark ascension. They believe in the unmaking of reality.

Okay. They are corruptors. They are often also described as being in their own way mad, but they for whatever reason, they have something deeply broken inside of them, and they want to break everything else. Now that's interesting because Nefandi is a gerundive, or no, it's actually a gerund, a genitive, you typically use the genitive, uh, gerund as a gerund of purpose. Okay. Um, and so to, you know, it, that, that all tracks with what you're saying. Their purpose is that of heinousness. Yeah. See how that works. Yeah. Yeah.

And so, um, tradition mages or technocratic mages who go evil, uh, and, and, you know, uh, make contact with, you know, um, extra dimensional deep Umbra kind of, kind of beings, uh, can, can wind up, you know, being corrupted by that and become Nifondi. Um, now in this universe, when I talk about the Nifondi, this brings up this note in this universe, every human being has an avatar. Your avatar is your connection to whatever prime reality is. Okay. And it is not quite the same thing as your soul, but it is tethered to your soul. Okay. And

your awakening is you, you is, is the awakening of your avatar. Essentially it is, it is your, your connection to prime reality, whatever that is, waking up and making itself known to you. Okay. And to become a nephandos, your avatar has to be broken. Okay. Like tortured and twisted and turned into a bleeding

mangled thing. You know, the, the new, the new, uh, uh, a cannon about red Kyber crystals, right? Or Tolkien's idea of what orcs were. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so let's see, that's, that's those basics. So now with that understanding of kind of how the universe works, we can now kind of get talking into how, how you do magic in mage.

how, how you do magic in mage. And, um, so in, remember in arse, Magica, you had the, um, forms and the verbs, the nouns and the verbs, you had the techniques and the forms, um, and now I've got to look up. All right. So in mage, the system was kind of simplified in that, uh, all you had to worry about were spheres. Okay.

And there are nine spheres. Okay. And I'm trying to find the list of them here so I can just go through it. But, um, They're like spheres are So you don't have combinations so much as you have I'm just gonna guess you don't have combinations so much as you have like areas of expertise You do have areas of expertise yes, but getting doing stuff very frequently involves more than one

sphere at a time. Okay. So for example, so the nine spheres are correspondence, which is space, okay, interrelationship between things. So with correspondence, correspondence is how you would look at something very far away you know a traditional magician's trick of looking into a scrying pool and seeing something many many miles away oh that's correspondence okay teleportation is also correspondence oh interesting okay because you're connecting between distances yeah being in two places at once is correspondence okay okay so anything so so space is correspondence entropy is

the sphere of fate and and decay so how things will end how things will end. How things will end or manipulating the rate at which entropy operates on things. Sure, I'm just thinking in terms of fate, because fate is kind of, I don't wanna say inherently, because I don't know that that's true, but it carries a connotation of order. It is fated from the beginning. But then again,

the fate merely tells you the ending. So I don't know that that's necessarily order unless you would say that entropy is its own order because rates of decay are rates of decay. Yeah. And so to give you an idea like at that level one for entropy, when you have one dot in entropy, you can sense fate and fortune. Disciples of entropy learn to examine each thing and discern its strengths and weaknesses, examining what it is and what it does. The mage begins to sense the current of destiny and can discern what is significant and what is not, what is true or untrue.

Given this knowledge, the mage can pick a lucky horse, since if a lock has some defect or choose the original between two identical items. Fate, however, is a fickle thing and fortune even more so. These insights are not perfect, just advanced. Sure. So then at level two, you're able to start controlling probability. Blow on a pair of dice. Right. Right. Oh, hey, that door was just you know

They left it unlocked I find that when you just sit down and rest and think for a minute the problem the solution presents itself Yes. Yeah, the Henry Jones method. Yeah So that's that's entropy sure Forces So that's that's entropy sure Forces Forces are any any form of energy electricity heat light Sound waves. Okay, all of these things are forces. Okay, look so lightning bolts fireballs thunderous booms,

sure. Kinetic energy like telekinesis. Right. Forces. Life. Now in Ars Magica, life was broken up into affecting animals and affecting humans. Life is life is life.

Okay. If it's a plant, if it's a person, if it's an animal, the only difference is how complicated is its life pattern. Okay. And so like at level one, I can sense things about something like I can, you know, diagnosis is, is one of the level one, uh, life senses. So if you're plain image, who was a physician, like you can, you can use your magical, you know, perception to be able to detect what's the disturbance in their pattern. Why are they sick? Right? Okay. At level two, you can heal yourself by stitching up your pattern at level three.

You can heal other people by stitching up your pattern at level three. You can heal other people by stitching up their pattern. Okay. At level three, you can also start, you know, causing problems for other people, you know? Um, so that's life. disrupt their pattern. Yeah. Right. Matter. Matter is any non-living matter. Pretty straightforward. Okay. matter is any nonliving matter. Pretty straightforward. Okay. So transmuting things from the table to melt.

I can, uh, yeah, I can, yeah, I can, I can change its state. I can change its chemical makeup. I can, right. You know, just density. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Then mind. That's pretty obvious. Getting into people's heads, reading their thoughts, controlling their thoughts. Yeah. Yeah. Prime. Prime is the mage version of Weim from Ars Magica. Okay. So everything, so, so pattern in the, the, uh, paradigm under which all mages basically agree the way shit works is everything in the universe has a

pattern and they'll use different language to describe what that, what that is or how it works, but everything has a pattern and that pattern is made real by prime. Prime is, is the, the, the raw reality of reality. Okay. Um, so let's see in the concrete kind of thing. Uh, kind of, um, let's see. Prime concrete kind of thing kind of Let's see prime is the study of quintessence literally the fifth essence exalted above the other four elements of Western hermetic magic

The cult of ecstasy refers to it as manai the jewel of the lotus one of the five Hindu taught was Also known as akasha the black egg from which all springs quintessence is also known as ether for the sons of ether who are former technocrats who are now part of the traditions Because all of the other technocrats got together and said no ether doesn't exist And they said fuck you We're going home Odilic force the underlying nature of the fabric of reality, the first essence or prime. So it's a hard concept to explain, but essentially that's how it works. If that makes sense. I'm struggling with it to be

perfectly honest. So do so do many players. Okay. So it's almost, it feels kind of like, you remember we all played sign on, um, which I think was along the same kind of system. Yeah. It feels like the, the, the Japanese Pantheon where there's a spirit in everything. Kind of. Yeah. Kind of, um, it's not a consciousness, but it's like, it's that same concept though.

Yeah. Um, yeah. So essentially manipulating, manipulating the underlying realness of things is prime. So if you look at an object and you pull prime out of it, you make it less real. If that makes sense, you can, you can make something go away by pulling, by you can unmake it completely, unmake it by pulling prime out of its pattern. Um, by the same token, for example, if you're, if you know, you're going to have to go up against some kind of supernatural baddie, right?

And let's say you have made some very poor life choices and you're now going to have to go, uh, fight, uh, uh, you're going to have to go fight a vampire. Mm hmm. Well, you're a mage. You're in trouble because vampires are basically, you know, they can heal from almost anything you throw at them by studying blood points. You can use prime to put more reality into a weapon.

You can infuse a knife or a magazine full of bullets or whatever. To make it knifer. To make it, yes, yes, to make it more platonically ideal. Okay. And it can then cause aggravated damage to those supernatural enemies. Okay. Or if you're fighting a ghost or a spirit, you can create a weapon that can actually hurt that spirit by doing the same thing.

So yeah, it's, um, uh, disciples. So to give you an idea of kind of how it works, a level one effect, um, you effect, you can use prime for an effect called heart's blood. A disciple of prime can sense the flow of contestants, his life energy through his own body in desperate times, major skilled in prime can push themselves beyond their limits, taking

the additional health levels as points of quintessence, uh, above and beyond what is stored in their avatars. the additional health levels as points of quintessence above and beyond what is stored in their avatars. So you can trade out your life force for prime and by spending quintessence points, which is like pawns of weas in Ars Magica, you can do stuff flashier, bigger or bigger more powerful that kind of stuff So you can you can trade health levels, which is like hit points for magic with level one prime So kind of give you an idea of sort of kind of how that works

Next sphere is spirit again. That is that is interacting with the veil the division between the physical and the spirit world and Talking with manipulating working with doing stuff with or two spirits. Okay, that makes sense Time is yeah. Yeah, you're straight forward. Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the dream speakers. Uh, prime is the celestial chorus who I mentioned before. So, um, as a mage character, when you start out, you get one free dot in whatever your traditions, uh, sphere is.

Okay. And then you have a total of, you get a total of five dots out the gate One free one and then four other ones Okay, yeah, and so like at level one for basically all spheres level one if you have one dot in something You're able to sense that thing so matter One means you can take a look at an object and know what material it's made out of you You never have to wonder is this plastic or metal right right? You know you're you're able to tell you know if you roll well you might be able to tell yeah

That's that's solid enough. That's gonna be like fully bulletproof. We're gonna have a hard time dealing with this right right with time one we're going to have a hard time dealing with this, right? Right. With time one, you always know exactly what time it is, wherever you are, right? You are able to track time perfectly. So like at first you've listened to time level one. It's like, yeah, I have a watch. What the fuck do I need? But when you really think about like your perception of time is perfect. Yeah. You know, so it's, it's, you know, beyond just,

uh, you know, the, the mundane kind of, kind of way that kind of sounds at first, uh, with forces, you can, um, you know, you, you never need to worry about, uh, knowing which breakers are on and which breakers are off. Cause you can, you can feel or even see, depending on what your characters, you know, uh, style is you can, you can sense one way or the other, the, the electricity in the circuits. Sure. You know, uh, you can tell exactly, you know, how many pounds of force are being exerted in any given, you know, kind of situation or whatever. Right. At level two, you start being able to manipulate whatever that thing is. And at level three, um, you start being able to transmute. So at level three in forces, one of the things I did in a game at one point, I had an order of Hermes character. going up against technocrats and they had a weapon that was going to blast us

and a whole bunch of other people with some kind of radiation, like, like X X X-ray radiation. And I, you know, cast about trying to figure out what I could do about that. And I said, okay, you know, I run up to the, to the vehicle and, you know, I slapped my, my hand on the side of it. And I'm chatting rapidly in Latin and, you know, I got a piece of chalk in my hand. I'm drawing a signal on the side of it. And what I want to do is I want to change the radiation that I can tell that thing is going to put out. I'm going to change that into

sound waves. Sure. And I want to point it straight up. So, because the, the, the pointing it straight up as a level two effect, I can, I can, I can point that somewhere, but I also want to make sure that it's not lethal. So I'm going to turn it into sound waves. And then, as far as anybody on the street would tell, the effect was not anything anybody would see, so it was coincidental. So I was able to roll more dice that way.

And I mostly succeeded. I didn't quite manage to pull it off completely, but I mostly succeeded. And I was very proud of thinking about that in the moment. Sure. So, um, and you need to worry about whether things are, so as, as your level in spheres,

I need to finish this before I go on to the next point. As your level in a sphere goes up, the shit you were able to do becomes more profound. Okay. And by combining spheres, there's all kinds of stuff you can do. And I'll talk about combining spheres, but actually I'll talk about it right now. So if you want to conjure something out of nowhere, right? So I'm a wizard and a pretty standard wizard trick is you know, I want to Make a small object appear in my hand out of nowhere

Okay, right. I want to conjure up Let's say I'm a I'm a verb a. I'm a life wizard and I want to I need I need some kind of small animal to do something. So I'm going to create a mouse to do that. I probably need to have at least level three in life because a mouse is a relatively simple life pattern. I'm also going to need level two in prime because I am making something that was not there before. Okay. So I need to infuse, I need to take raw reality and infuse it into the pattern I create. If I don't have the prime, I can't actually make the thing real. You can't make, you can't give it an essence. Yeah. The spark of life. The breath of life. Yeah, yeah in that sense. You can't make you can't give it an essence Yeah, the spark of yeah the perfect. Yeah. Yeah in that sense you can't now the God thing Yeah, yeah, yeah as a

Hermetic mage Let's say I'm angry and I want to I want to make somebody else pay for my emotional state So I want I want to throw a lightning bolt well electricity is something I can manipulate at level three of Forces but in order to make that electricity come out of nowhere Mm-hmm. I need to have prime two. Okay Same thing so forces three prime two lightning bolt now at forces level two Something I can do that's kind of tricky is instead of being all flashy. I can punch somebody

Okay, and I can use forces to to concentrate all of the energy of my fist into a point the size of a pinhead, turning what would normally be a bludgeoning attack into a lethal one. Right. And now that's an important distinction. I'm combining spheres to do it.

Okay. Or well, in that case, I'm not, I'm only using one sphere, but I'm probably going to want to do the level two effect I just described more often than I'm going to want to actually just, you know, decide, fuck it, we ball. Right. And I punch somebody and rock their shit That's reasonable, right? Right. That's okay, you know Bad things happen when people get into fights, you know, yeah, it's explicable at least. Yeah, it's it's it's explicable. It's coincidental

if I applicable. It's coincidental. If I, you know, pull my hand out, shout, cryo, ouram, and all of a sudden I fling, you know, a blue white bolt of lightning at somebody. If I do that, reality, that's, that's what's called a vulgar effect. Right. That is there is no, there is no logical explanation for that. Uh, that, that can't be a coincidence. That's, that's, that's weird. Sure. And so that is a, uh, vulgar effect and that is going to invoke paradox. So paradox is what happens to mages when they break the laws of consensual reality. And it hurts. Mechanically what happens is there are a certain number of points of crime points of quintessence, which is like a pawns of weese that you can, that you can be carrying in your person, like your,

your avatar based on your air to score your avatar basically is able to, you know, hold onto a battery as it were of, of quintessence. you know, hold onto a battery as it were of, of quintessence. Every point of paradox you pick up, um, takes up space and prevents you. It hurts your avatar and it prevents you from carrying one, one point of quintessence. And then after a certain point, the storyteller, and there's no strict mechanic for this, but the storyteller is going to keep tabs on who has how much

paradox in the group. And if you build up enough paradox, reality is going to send somebody to punish you. You're going, in addition to whoever, whatever other antagonist you're going to send somebody to punish you You're going in addition to whoever whatever other antagonist you're gonna have to deal with The the storyteller is going to throw a paradox spirit at you Okay, and the paradox spirit that comes after you is going to be thematically tied to what you did to make reality angry So if for some reason you decide to create a chair out of nothing, um, and you,

I don't know how you, I don't, I don't understand how you're making things angry, like with making objects out of nothing or things like that. Well, it's, it's because it's you're, you're making things angry like with making objects out of nothing or things like that Well, it's it's because it you're making so the universe The the laws of the universe allow for a certain amount of flexion of of the consensual paradigm, okay, okay and When you violate the rules of the paradigm and different traditions have

different, have different explanations of why paradox happens, nobody has a lock on an actual, like in universe, we know this is the facts of what paradox it is, but everybody knows if you do vulgar shit, bad things happen to you. Right. Okay. So like maybe it's karma. Sure.

Maybe it's, uh, you know, the, the celestial chorus would argue that, you know, there is whatever, whatever the overarching, uh, divine being is, is like, you know, you're being arrogant and prideful and I need to knock you down a peg You know others being sold like oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's just Okay, because there's all kinds of shit you can do man, I guess but like it's I Don't know there there's yes, there's all kinds of shit you can do but it seems overly complex and Quite frankly limited by your own imagination Which I could absolutely see working for one group, but not most people who are into role-playing games

So here's part of the secret of mage's success. By the time mage came out, you already had vampire and werewolf. Right. And this is the point at which you start seeing things being written in a, no, no, this is the world of darkness kind of way. So if you had a group that was like, we're three people who want to run vampires, but

there's a fourth guy who's like, I don't want to be a fucking bloodsucker. That sucks. I don't want to do that. You know, now you have other options. Okay. If you have a party full of people who are like, yeah, man, werewolves, you know, uh, of Wolf and man, dude, Metallica, you know, whatever. Right. Um, you know, you, you have people who are, you know, totally on board with the, you know, um board with the anti-corporate message of werewolf and they totally want to stick it to Pentex.

It's like, okay, yeah, you can all do that. And the one guy who doesn't want to be a hairball can be a mage. Be harder to have a vampire in that group. But you can figure out a way to make it work. Even with that math, it sounds like few of the people who enjoyed the other things would enjoy this. The complexities of those other things are much more encoded and much more, I can step into this and I know where it's going. Whereas this one is, you want to take a train from here to Leeds?

Okay. You have to first design the road, and then you have to invent steam engines. Then once you've done that, you can get on the rocket. And as long as you don't upset the universe too much, it will take you there. Now if you wanted to go more than 25 miles an hour, you will, like it's so much of that,

whereas like with the werewolf, it's like, hey look, there's these five or six different kinds, I forget how many, of werewolves, right? And gang rules do this, and this kind of vampire, Nosferatu, do that. And if you're gonna do the werewolfves, right? And gang girls do this, and this kind of vampire, Nosferatu do that, and if you're gonna do the werewolf shit, then you could do this, or this, or this, or this. Which template do you want?

And you're like, ah, I don't know much about these things, I can learn through gaming, here we go. Whereas the other one, you have to like fucking measure out vectors practically. Like, again, I totally, I've known people who like games where you have to measure out vectors and shit, but there's very few of them. And then even when you're telling me like,

oh yeah, well, the other ones came out first, but like somebody didn't wanna play a thing. So then that one person who might be in the group would want this. And it's like like that doesn't seem like a viable Marketing scheme now, obviously you even said that because of the success of this the other two Even though they came out first the other two suddenly got popular some Or did I mix up? No, you know what I was saying earlier was ours Magica oh

that one bankrolled the others yeah was the one yeah that was my confusion but anyway this one is like even that one seems way more template II and accessible that's the issue this one seems thoroughly inaccessible unless you have read 300 pages of lore and then you have a protractor or or a starting. What I will say is the explanation I'm giving right now is an explanation from the point of view of somebody who played the game a lot, who spent a lot of time thinking about this shit. Right.

And in actual practical fact, playing the game, there was a lot of, I will say that the philosophy major in our group was the best one at figuring out new shit he could get away with In this in the system, and it really hit his his academic career was a real help to him but The stories that we were that we were playing and the there there was not there was not the same level of complexity in our experience as I'm making it sound

I'm not doing a great job explaining it all. Yeah, in fairness, you explained to me the nine spheres. You're able to give me a, I even pulled them up here. I'm looking at them right now. Yeah. You gave me a good synopsis of each. I struggled with prime, cool, whatever. Like I understand essencesness.

I've seen the skeksis, drain podlings. I get it. Okay Yeah, no, I like I get it and also like, you know, there's there's Existentialism is exactly about this like what makes that thing a chair, you know, and yes the ship of Theseus, etc It's that right. Oh, yeah, I get it. Yeah on some levels at least on functional levels, I get it. That being said, what I'm seeing in front of me, compared to your explanations of vampiriness and werewolfness, it just seems like the cooperative aspect of role playing with this system

seems to only be between you the player and the GM, none of the other guys at the table. All the rest of them are just stacking dice while you're figuring out the cleverest way to do this. If you have a whole group of people like that, I mean, it's like the million man autism march. They're all marching for a million different things Listening to their own music, you know, yeah. No, I I

Get what you're saying. Yeah, and I'm just stunned that this yes old. Yeah. No in in the games that I played. Mm-hmm What it what it boiled down to and I think what what sold it to a lot of people was the idea that Number one at the table you're talking about, you know, it's it's a UN UN the storyteller, you know I'm having your thing and everybody else stacking dice Most of the time most of the stuff that we wound up using magic for was pretty Like we we had kind of figured out ahead of time. Oh, hey by doing this and this I can do this thing

And so there wasn't an awful lot of time at the table spent And so there wasn't an awful lot of time at the table spent Tried like at the table away from the table talking with each other about the game It's like how many ways can I do this thing in the game? You know how many ways can I fuck up a vampire? Oh, well, you could you know? But at the table it was like okay, so we have the one guy who He is he's not actually attached to a tradition. He's what's called an orphan. Um, and his, his whole paradigm, uh,

is he's, he's an entropy mage primarily. That's, that's his main thing. And everything he does is coincidental because everything he does is level two or lower. And it's always always just oh, hey, you know I just figured out if you bump this if you bump the door this way, right? From the inhumans, you know, yeah, you know my You know main mage character was a son of ether and not son of ether I keep wanting to say that in order of her medic Megas

and his, his, uh, you know, his stuff, I had two or three different things that I knew how to do. Problem was of the list, more than half of them were vulgar. I always had to worry about paradox, but I still had a shit ton of fun doing it. Um, and you know, we, we had, you know, everybody had kind of the, Oh, hey, here's this cool thing. Here's this, here's this character that has these things. He can, that breaks reality in these ways.

And then the people that ran our storyteller games, um, the, the couple of people that I, that I ran campaigns with, uh, one of them being friend of the show, Sean, he'd listen to us describe who our characters were and he'd go, okay, I know exactly how I'm going to be able to create a story that's going to pull all of you into shit that's going to get you way over your heads. And it was, at least in the way I played the game and what I what I gather from The stuff that I read from other people talking about their campaigns online

it's very very character heavy and the the mechanic of how am I going to make my magic work is Something you mentally masturbate with each other about away from the table. If that makes sense. And when you come to the table, you, you don't have to, you don't spend a lot of time with that. Right. You know what it is, if that makes sense. Yeah.

And it's, it's a very because of the Because the fluidity of that system because of as you say the you know imagination the level of of Imaginative thinking, you know thinking outside the box whatever you want to call it that's involved in that it allows for you to say, okay Look I'm going to have a character Who you know they they were? You can create somebody from just about any any kind of background and find a way to make them a wizard and

Then bounce them off of all of the other shit in the world of darkness from that point of view If that makes sense yeah, yeah and You know a lot of The stuff that we wound up doing I know I know the games we played we spent a lot of time in places where You know we we didn't spend a lot of time in places where, you know, we, we didn't spend a lot of time worrying about paradox, uh, because our storytellers didn't want to have to deal

with it until they wanted it to be a plot point. Like, okay, you've gotten away with doing too much shit. So now we're in a story where, you know, your usual, you know, ways of avoiding, you know, getting in trouble with reality or not going to work for you anymore And now you actually have to you know, think about that shit sure You know a lot of the time we were in the middle of you know technocratic You know Mirror realms, you know sort of pocket dimensions where it was like

You know, they want to enforce the technocratic paradigm, but there are no ordinary humans around and they know we're wizards. So this isn't actually vulgar. Like they know, we know. So like, I'm not going to get in trouble for anything. Like I can, I can blast them a lot. I want to, um, you know, that kind of stuff. Um, so, you know, that kind of stuff. Um, so, you know, the, the game is, um, about possibility. Um, the game is about, in the end, um, you know, I

started out saying, you know, vampires, a horror game, werewolf is an action adventure game with horror elements. Mage is can be a lot of things, but the central theme of it is, um, reality and identity and, uh, possibility. reality and identity and Possibility and

The idea Behind it that's too close to real life Okay, yeah, you're playing Bob the accountant on some levels like Because because I mean isn't that isn't that what we do in school isn't that what we teach kids You know we open up their minds to new possibilities we give them, okay, you know mental Wi-Fi, you know it there's There's not enough for them to be space wizards in in this system So it's just the other ones you are in this system. So it just, the other ones, you are transformed

to something that is not you. This one is, you're still you, but like, you know, what if you could like, you know, make pebbles turn into sparks? And again, a person who had that capability in this planet, holy fucking shit. Like any spell from D&D, like the minorest of cantrips, like if somebody had Thaumaturgy,

you'd be like, what the fuck? Like, I mean in many ways, that's what got Hitler to power was Thaumaturgy. Like somebody invented a microphone, you know? You know? And tiny ass like just flavor cantrips. So I'm not saying that they wouldn't be like earth shattering and the person would be studied for the rest of their life, or they'd run an industrialized country with just the ability to do that.

But at the end of the day, it's like, oh, hey, I get to play a human who's got better skills at this thing that I am, as a human, unable to imagine, or it's as good as my ability to imagine it. And it's still limited by me instead of like, well, I'm going to play a guy who can leap 30 feet. You can play a guy who can leap 30 feet. Well, you can play a guy who can leap 30 feet,

right? Forces or life or, you know, sure. But do you see the difference? Yeah, I kind of, I get, I get, I do get what you're saying. Yeah. Um, it seems too grounded in reality to be perfectly honest. Well Which is odd because these are a man. I'm not yeah, I I'm not I'm not quite describing the scope That's possible

As a as a starting out beginning character in this game there there is definitely a power curve which is kind of part of the problem because I'm not I Haven't talked about you know when you get to adept level where you have four you know level four in a sphere There's all kinds of crazy shit. You can you can accomplish sure but You know you you can play a game in which you are Like depending on what you and the storyteller and your players all agree on you can play a game that is a magically fueled Cold War you know spy versus spy kind of game between you and

You know elements of the technocracy, right? You can play a game that is heavily horror influenced going up against vampires or an a Fendi. And you know, you are, uh, you know, playing the role of, of those, those, you know, uh, magically gifted agents against those evils. Right. You know, keeping everyone safe. Yeah. You're the men in black. the magically gifted agents against those evils. Right. Keeping everyone safe. Yeah. You're the men in black.

You're the men in black. Yeah. And if you're, if you're playing a technocracy campaign, you actually are the men in black. You know, you can play a game in which nearly everything you do takes place in, in a, uh, uh, in the, in the near Umbra, in the spirit realm, either because you have a dream speaker in your group or because you have a son of ether with an ether ship who, you know, you can go, you know, visit, you know, the parallel version of Mars in the spirit realm that actually looks like John Carter Okay, sure um

There you know you can wind up like one of the one of the first published adventures that was involved that was put out for the game Took place in San Francisco but it was very Terry Gilliam, which movie is that I'm thinking of Fisher King. You know, kind of magical realism, emphasis on the magical. If you remember the scenes from the Fisher King with the red night, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And in, in that film, Robin Williams is, you know, mentally ill, you know, he is, he is, he's hallucinating. Yeah. Yeah. In this game,

that's that's that's real, real. That's actually happening. That, that level of, of, uh, surreality is real. And so that, you know, there's, there's a whole lot of stuff that is, that is possible. One of, one of my favorite, uh, my favorite You know games that that I played in mage I Was with friend of the show Sean running it he he wound up deciding to Have all of us Have to deal with hell house from The horror film and it was okay. You guys all think you're hot shit You're now in a horror film and it was, okay, you guys all think you're hot shit. Um, you're now in a horror film.

Um, and you know, this, because of what may just capable of doing how, you know, this, this is how we're going to, you know, this is, this is how we're going to, you know, uh, translate that into this. And you know, it scared the shit out of me, but I had a good time. I had an awful lot of fun playing it. Um, and so there, all of the world of darkness games have about the same level of groundedness in reality. And I get what you're saying about the idea that, you know here you're still just a mortal individual right um You you may or may not have really liked hunter which I'm gonna get into next time

Because if you think this is grounded in reality boy son But boy son. Um, uh, but you know what, what this, what, what makes mage interesting within the context of the rest of the world of darkness is this a, as a basic part of its DNA, horror isn't there. Okay. You know, this, this is a modern fantasy role playing game that you can choose to play horror stuff in. And the setting is still our world only grimmer, because that's, that's what the world of darkness is. Right. But there is an underlying tone of rebellion and underlying with mage. I kind of think a little bit of you remember there's there's the meme that goes around that explains different genres

of music. You know, everything sucks and right, right. You know, um, and Scott is described as everything sucks and I have a trumpet. Right. Uh, and, and I actually, everything sucks. And I have a trumpet would be changeling, but you know, uh, mage is everything sucks, but there's more to reality than what sucks. You know, um, vampire is we are personally all doomed. We're, we're monsters. Werewolf is the planet is doomed and, and we're just going to try to go down fighting and, you know, take as many of them with us as we can.

Mage is the first game where it's like, no, no, we are, we are fighting a war to try to save the world. Okay. We're going to, we're going to fix this shit. Like, no, this, this, yes, the world is fucked up. People are too busy being lulled to sleep by the, by, you know, their TV sets and, you know, all of the shit of modern life, we're,

we're going to try to build a world that is more wonderful in the sense of full of wonder. And so that's, for me, that was, that was part of what made this my favorite one of the games. Okay, and You know, this is again This came out in 93 So this is for me personally. This was the year I graduated from high school And So there was a,

there was an emotional resonance for me in this was when I was heading off to college, I was not a kid anymore, right? Which, you know, I say now on the threshold of my 50th birthday, like, yeah, I was still a kid. I was, I was 18 years old. Are like, yeah, I was still a kid. I was, I was 18 years old. Are you kidding me? I was such a child, but you know, uh, legally and in my role in society and everything else, you know, I wasn't a, I wasn't a child anymore. And, um, you know, the, the themes of possibility, the themes of changing the world, the themes of all of those things were really, uh, uh, pointed to me.

Yeah. Especially in 1983. Yeah. Cold war ended. Yeah. You know, yeah. What a new hegemony. Yeah.

Yeah. yeah you know hegemony yeah yeah so you know and you know this is the very very very nascent most you know earliest beginnings of the internet right you know one of the traditions are the virtual adept and they are they are computer wizards they are they are, essentially the inventors of the internet. They take correspondence. Yeah. Technomancers and their realm, their sphere is correspondence. Right. So, you know, being multiple places at once, seeing things, you know, um, you know, and, and, so that's,

And, and so that's, those are the things about the game that appealed to me then and still do now. Okay. And, um, it's a, it's an interesting inflection point in the development of the world of darkness. Uh, because from here we then wind up seeing Wraith. And then after Wraith we have Changeling. And after Changeling we have Hunter.

And I'm going to talk about those. Okay. Next time. And I'm gonna talk about those. Okay next time But mage is the point where We're fighting for not just the planet but reality If that makes sense it does it Yeah, it does it just there's there are, it could just be a genre I don't dig. And I'm thinking back to how many times reality was questioned in the 90s, but we didn't have the tech

for the movies for it. And then the 2000s we did because Johnny Mnemonic just did it in a cyberspace you know. And how do you know your memories are yours? Etc. Etc. And then I think 12 Bunkies was the late 90s. Yes. Jacob's Ladder was 1991 or 92.

Which that was a mind bender of a fucking movie, and that absolutely had to do with what is real and what isn't and what's a dream and what's not, and so on. And so just, you start to see non-continuity in movies, I think a couple years after this comes out, Pulp Fiction comes out. Yeah.

Also, I think one year after this comes out pulp fiction comes out. Yeah Also, I think one year after this came out maybe two The usual suspects came out Yeah, and you are you're getting a lot of playing with reality kinds of Yeah films. Yes, so So I think that is That is the best summary that I can give right now certainly cool for for mage specifically and again next time

Because so so mage is the point at which we get to the biggest scale. Uh-huh of of the universe because mage is life the universe and everything in a role playing game. And then we move on to Wraith and that's kind of bringing us back to vampire in a very different and far more emo way And the in the scale and the focus And I think this is just me, but I think the stakes Get much smaller from from here, okay So yeah, that's that's where I think I'm gonna end it this time sure

So at this point, what are your what are your thoughts? What's your takeaway? I I think there are going to be things that are hits and misses for me that are not for other people and I totally get That like I love superhero Stuff like we talked about the Brave New World a while back and stuff like that. I love that. And none of my friends have been into that at all. And when he, you know, cause we interviewed the creator of Brave New World

and the whole story of the Omegas and the crossroads and stuff like that, the aliens and the, and that's when I started being like, oh no, I don't want that, I just wanted the superhero things. It's kind of, it reminds me of in wrestling when a wrestler goes from being a good guy to a bad guy

and it hits you out of nowhere, it's a fucking oh my God. And then a few weeks, you know, a few months later, it turns out he was a good guy all along. And then a few months later, no, I did that so I could trick you so I could do that. And it's what's called over-swerve. Okay. And you get whiplash to the point where you're just like,

ah. Okay, yeah. There's a hidden world? Oh, cool, cool. What is this hidden world? There's vampires. Oh shit, really? You know, there's different kinds of vampires. All right, I like taxonomy. Let's go There's a hidden world. Yeah. No, I heard that I heard that it's werewolves to them. Oh fuck. There's okay There's werewolves and vipers. This is alright. Cool. It's like tell me more. Well, there's different kinds

There's different bands and there's different bands, and there's different reasons, and oh wow, cool, all right. There's a hidden world, no, no, I know, there's a hidden world, and there's magicians. Oh, okay, they do cool shit, yeah, yeah, there's all these spheres, but they can interact with each other, but you're good at some and not others. I'm losing the narrative here, um, because I had vampires and I had werewolves and there's already humans and and the vampires and werewolves were made from the humans and now there's humans who

can do magic. Yeah, okay, okay, and and they're on par with these vampires and werewolves. Absolutely. All right right cool. Love that good for balance Tell me more about their power well There's these spheres. Yeah. Yeah, no I love this Tell me more and then it's like okay But here's this this sphere has to interact with this sphere in this way, and then it interlides. Oh Can I just have gotten scratched? Call it good?

Like, and- Is it like radioactive spider? Yeah. Like, you know, well you could have the same power as that. Oh, cool, I'm down for it. How do I do that? Well, okay, you gotta get these three, and then you gotta dunk them in lead,

and then it's, ooh. Okay, there's people that like that oh yeah yeah the gym over there oh fuck Jim's gonna be on our team all right fine like it just I was cool with the other two and then yeah it feels like this one's an over swerve to me okay you know I hopefully changeling will be different because it's fairies and again there there's another world. All right, cool, and there's fairies and shit Oh cool. Okay. So like the Feywild Kinda

All right. Tell me more and I'm very curious and then there's another world So we've heard um, which one is this? Well, there's Wraiths like demons and shit ghosts ghosts Oh, okay ghosts and shit. Okay. Um Wait, can they all see each other? Yeah alright, cool, um Are they're gonna be you know, like There's another world. No, so I've heard What is it this time humans who hunt all these things? Oh my god, I don't give like seriously

We've already seen the puns. Yeah, I thought I thought the punch line there was going to be, Oh, fuck, finally, really? No, because I don't want to be human when I play these shotgun. Okay. Yeah. I don't, I don't want to fantasy role play gun porn. Like that was like the part I liked least about brave new world. I'm like, Oh, cool. Guy who's good with guns. What a superpower. Like, and again, I love Hawkeye, but like, yeah, but there's different overtones when you're, when you're dealing with a bow rather than a firearm. Yes. You know,

I don't automatically, that's very different. Yeah. Well, you know, and it's good you don't. Yeah. Yeah. But like Nomad was a character that I loved and you know what he used all the time fucking sawed off shotgun But you know what else he used the discs that steve rogers had given him and he kind of had superpowers because he kind of had A corroded version of the super soldier serum. So he's still a fucking hero but like when it's You know Yeah

When it's somebody just you know, I I didn't, you know, I didn't mind Iron Man as a power guy because his suit and all that and he knew cool shit. Same thing with Dwayne Taylor, like, you know, Night Thrasher, cool. I didn't really like Cord or although he was the guy in the chair, but he was just a mentor, so that was fine. But then when Hindsight Lad joined the team, forced his way onto the team, he had no powers. He had a stupid helmet. And I was like, oh, okay. So yeah, I don't like role-playing humans. I'll NPC the shit out of a human for my kids games, because you get cool stuff, but I don't like playing humans in most games that I play.

My Star Wars games, I never, PCs were never humans, although my NPCs for my kids have, a couple of them have been humans. D&D, I never liked playing humans, what's the fucking point? Even though there's a lot of really cool benefits to being a human. Um, and yeah, what, when, when I was in the D and D campaign, were you, were you a half elf? Now I'm trying to remember.

No, he was a human. He was the first human. Oh wait, the sorcerer. Yeah. Oh, um, yeah, he was the second human I ever played. Okay. Yeah. And then in the party we had that got TPK'd, the monkey were playing. Yeah, he was a human who was pretending he was blind. Okay, yeah. Yeah.

So they had a gimmick. Yeah. You know. Had to have something. Right. But like, oh cool, I get to hunt these things with the guns like So I bet you I bet you I'm gonna like changeling more than Wraith and I'm gonna like Wraith more than Hunter Just based on what's being presented in them

Just like I could have told you that I like werewolf more than vampire and I would have liked vampire more than mage Yeah, although you almost got me the Latin But yeah I would have liked werewolf more than vampire, and I would have liked vampire more than mage. Although you almost got me with the Latin. But. Yeah, well, yeah. So, yeah, I don't know. It just, obviously there's different strokes for different folks, right? And so I guess the takeaway is I do love that they,

what is that, a total of like six or seven things that they offered people through these books? Yeah. And you could have a party made up of multiple of those? Yeah. Yeah. As a storyteller, that's part of what I'll cover in episode X, Miscellania. Storytelling a group that was made up of, you know, four different factions out of the world of darkness would get complicated. But I can't imagine being in a group where everybody wanted to play the same thing either, even though there's five different kinds of this and four different kinds of that. You know, it's like, um, what you, what you find. Well, all right. In my particular circles that I

Run in ran in The one time that we played world of darkness where everybody was one thing Was a mage game Because it was easy for all of us to conceptualize Being coming together to save reality. The stakes make sense. Yeah. Well, it's, it's, it's the stakes. And it was also the fact that it was like, okay, fundamentally my, my worldview is human plus plus, right? Whereas a vampire, you, you,

none of us wanted to be a monster, right? Like in, in vampire, you know? Sure. Um, and there were a couple of us who were, who were very excited about the power fantasy of being a werewolf. But, uh, when, when we were all together playing in the manage campaign, the ones that, that were, you know, hyped for that, uh, we the ones that that were you know hyped for that we're like okay you know I'll do I'll do this thing you know in in this in this game and then we we expanded from there and it turned into

several mages and a werewolf and then it kind of went from there okay so I mean we're coming at it from two diametrically opposed positions then kind of yeah You know and you know, like you said different stars for different folks. I'm When we wound up getting into hunter That was a okay. No We're we're we're all we're all mortals because based on the way Hunter works, uh, or based on the, on the, on the paradigm, as it were of Hunter, um, it would be very hard to have a group of hunters or, or have a Hunter in a

group where you had super naturals without there being like irreconcilable conflicts. Sure. You know, uh, I mean, you know, think about, uh, when, Oh darn it. And I'm forgetting the actor's name, which is a damn shame cause he was amazing. And I'm forgetting the character's name, but in supernatural, uh, the hunter who, who became an enemy of Sam and Dean who became a vampire.

Was he the one in like season one or two who like took him to like almost seemed like a movie set and he was trying to, he was the African-American fellow with the cool car and the guns. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah You know he he Started as one thing became the other one and you know for story reasons they had to kill him like right, you know That's that's just not something that could that could you know? In in in that universe based on the way that worked,

right? You know, it had Gordon Walker, Gordon Walker. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. You know, an amazing character and an incredible performance. Um, but like, you know, as compelling as the character was narratively speaking, he kind of had to die in a similar kind of way. If there's a hunter present, like you might be able to find a way to kind of convince him that, okay, look, I can do hinky shit, but I'm still human. Like maybe, but so I could see that working. By the way, he's played by Sterling K. Brown. Yeah, Sterling K. Brown, who has never had a bad performance ever. No.

He played Killmonger's dad, right? Yeah, he did. Yeah, oh my god. That was fucking A. Yeah. Like, how do you stand out in that movie? Jesus Christ, there's that just like no misses there. No, not a clink for the bunch.

And he still brought a whole different flavor. So I could see, okay, so I could see my enjoyment of Hunter going above Wraith, quite honestly, because if it's you as humans trying to hold back forces that are more powerful than you mm-hmm okay I'm here for it like and I could see why you would think that I would dig that yeah I would yeah there are now the thing is there are two different there are two very different editions of Okay. The first one in the first one, you have like you as a normal human, you wind up becoming aware one way or the other, you witness a werewolf attack.

Sure. You, you see a vamp, like one of one of the background stories in the source material is a woman witnessing a vampire killing a woman on the subway. Sure, sure. And the thing is, the way the universe has been built up to that point, ordinary mortals who witnessed these things are paralyzed with fear. Like if you witness a werewolf attack, I, I talked about the veil. Right. It was, it was, you know, some kind of horrible, you know, animal came out of

the woods, whatever. Well, if you were in that edition of the game, if you are a hunter, something happens and, and they never got around. I'm kind of disappointed. They never got around to explaining exactly what the, what the mechanism was. They were, they were like leading up to it. And then they came out with a new edition that

could totally change the way it worked. Anyway, I can get into that when I talk about Hunter, but in the first edition, there is an element of the supernatural about your abilities as a hunter. You are still fully human, but there is a gift involved. Like it's preternatural.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so anyway, we'll get into that. No, I get it. Like, like Michael Jordan's ability to score. Yeah. Yeah. How'd he do that?

He switched hands, turned around twice. Yeah. Yeah. Like, no, I could, I could see that. I could see that. Um, no, that sounds exciting and interesting. Um, mage, not so much. I don't know. You know what, though? Uh, mage, uh, you have power that others don't. Hunter, you're fighting the powerful. I mean, if we're talking what's gonna attract Damien. Yeah, there you go. I think we found it. There we go. Cool, well, okay, so you're two for three

as far as convincing me to play games with you in this system. Oh, yeah, okay, in this system, because I had you sold and rift. Absolutely, yeah. No, rifts I'm down for. We still have to play that samurai game Oh, yeah, okay in the system because like I had other games rift. Absolutely. Yeah, no riffs I'm down for we still have to play that samurai game that I bought you three or four years ago for your birthday Yeah, I'm gonna start stop buying you games for your birthday. I think yeah, well, I'm learning. Okay. Yeah, yeah, so

but Yeah, no, it's it's yeah, some of these sound cool. Yeah, so Cool. Well, what are you to recommend for people to read? Uh, this time around, I'm going to recommend that people find the original run of hellblazer. Oh, cool. Um, John Constantine, uh, did not deserve the dismissal, uh, that he got from you in our, and you can't,

no, you can't bring up John Constantine or some shit. I'm like, how dare you, sir. Oh, very dare you. Um, John is my man. Um, I'm, uh, yeah, I'm John Constantine fanboy. Um, I'm so sad. I am so sad that the Constantine TV series didn't go anywhere. I, Oh my God. So anyway, um, fine. Uh, the original run, uh, of hell blazer. It is, um, a, a, it's, it's a great series. He's an amazing character and it is a really remarkable time capsule. It's a great series. He's an amazing character and it is a really remarkable time capsule of its era.

The cultural references, the tone, it is, yeah, it's brilliant and I highly recommend it. Go check it out. What about you? I'm going to recommend a book by Teresa Halverson, Halvor-sen, not Hal-ver-son. So H-A-L-V-O-R-S-E-N. All right. Called Warehouse Dreams. It's essentially about kids growing up in a world where psychics exist.

And there are actual schools, havens that are created in the warehouse district. Kind of like, did you ever want a grittier version of the X mansion without as much spandex? Not until now. Right, but it's, yeah, a woman who's running a, a school for these kinds of kids. Okay. So, you know, people who have an awakening, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, yeah. So I figured, I figured that would be appropriate. Nice. All right. So where can they find us? We, collectively, can be found on our website at wubba wubba wubba dot geek history time.com and uh, we can be found on the apple podcast app on Spotify on the Amazon podcast app and wherever you have found us,

please take the time to give us a five star review that you know we've earned. And please also make sure to subscribe. And where can you be found, sir? Well, before we get to me, I promised to make up for the fact that we did not plug Dr. Cruz when we had him on for two episodes in a row. And we just got so, we got so into the weeds on his book that we ended up not plugging him. So I will point out yet again that Dr. Cruise,

a guest from our show from way back when with The Punisher, a little bit less way back when I did Speedball, and then also he came on to discuss his book over the last couple episodes a little while back. Anyway, he is part of a podcast with Barry came on to discuss his book over the last couple episodes a little while back. Anyway, he is part of a podcast with Barry called Office Hours with Dr. C. That can be found anywhere you find our podcast.

Theirs is 30 minutes at a time, but if you prefer the long range stuff like that we do, they also have longer form stuff that they do. And it's on Patreon for just five bucks a month. You can subscribe. They're college professors, so they don't make as much money as we public school teachers do out here in California. So they need the scratch.

Yeah, because we just make it rain. Yeah, we I mean, we get to, you know, do podcasts about fancy chickens. They have to do useful stuff so Pay them so for five bucks a month. Yeah hook them up It's it's a really good podcast and the lengthened versions are even more fun I prefer to you know go for a long time, but if you want a quickie, then you can just listen to their Regular episodes that are found on the podcast apps.

So that's Office Hours with Dr. C. You can find me live and in person. Let's see, June 6th may have already happened. So July 11th, very, very important time. So July 11th, 9 p.m., Comedy Spot in Sacramento. You can go to the saccomed 9 p.m. Comedy spot in Sacramento you can go to the sack comedy spot com Go to the calendar section buy your ticket 15 bucks a ticket. It's one of the most important Shows that we're going to have this year if you can't make it to that one then make sure you make it to August 1st As well and another very important show, so please come out, support us. We got new shirts.

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So, well for a Geek History of Time, I'm Damian Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock and until next time, keep rolling 20s.