Subject: Re: Doesn't anybody like the Technocracy? From: [email protected] Date: 1998/04/24 Message-ID: <[email protected]> Newsgroups: alt.games.whitewolf In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Bruce Baugh) wrote: > > In article <[email protected]>, Stunt Borg <[email protected]> wrote: > > >For the 'non-Tech' mage perspective, I do wish that the game had > >focused on something other than the Ascension War and the > >Ascension War faction fighting *don't* grab me. > > Comrade! :) my whole line > of thought about the Ascension War as less fundamental than presented > begins with it. I have to admit that I don't much care for the Ascension War either. Mage has enough plot hooks and interest without such an obvious, open conflict. When Mage first came out, I got the impression that the Technocracy had pretty much already won, and that PC mages would be more along the lines of guerilla fighters and refugees... as suplements came out, it quicly became apparent that the Trads had too much power (just look at the chantries and characters in Book of Chantries & Horizon) for that to be the case. But, in my own game, I let the players stay on the fringes, with the published ubermages fighting the Ascension War as a backdrop. Personally, if White Wolf doesn't do some sort of 'End Times' suplement of thier own in the next few years, I'm planning to end the Ascension War (disasterously, for both sides) in my own Chronicle - 2001 sounds like a good target. :) In a nutshell it would go something like this: Major Nephandic involvement is discovered in the higher ranks of the Technocracy, the NWO instigates massive purges, then the the Pentex-Syndicate link is discovered, Technocratic Civil War follows. The Trads decide to strike while thier enemies are weakest, many mages are killed, Horizon, and many other realms like, are destroyed. Major Nephandic involvement in the Traditions is discovered... Marauders seeing the forces of order weakened, attack. Nephandi make a bid to destroy the world. When the dust settles, all 4 magely factions are much depleted. The Technocracy and Traditions - as even vaguely unified organizations - are destroyed... each Trad and Convention tries to follow it's own agenda, but things are in such a state that individual mages are largely left to thier own devices. Paradox is stronger than ever (it turns out that all those centuries of technological progress were actually working against stasis...) and has some new agents on it's side.... Ultimately, the sleeper world chugs right along as if nothing has happened - in fact things seem more stable and prosperous than ever. ;) Has some amusing ironies. The Technocracy turns out not to have been the force for stasis that everyone (including most Technocrats) thought it was, instead all those years of technolgical progress were keeping paradox down to a manageable level - now the true power of the Consensus is revealed (6 billion sleepers *can't* be wrong). Both sides lose (but that means that Technomancers and Mystics are now actually free to work together or to push thier individual agendas) in spite of accomplishing thier goals: the Trads have broken the power of the Technocracy (and thus lost thier own reason for alliance), and the Technocracy has created a stable world that's safer than ever from supernatural influence - including thier own. :) Anyone else thinking about resolving the War? And, if so, how? > I've also been considering the idea of, um, penumbrae so to speak, > around the orders as profiled, for the folks who aren't fanatical > Ascension War militarities, in addition to altogether new groups. I'd be happy to see such, in cannon or as variants. I really can't picture most mages as being embroiled in the Ascension War. I mean a mage has so much to lose... --- | Blake 1001, Virtual Adept, Disciple ---|-. http://www.geocities.com/Area51/1317/ '-|--- |
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