Here is some information for the Mage chronicle starting on Wednesday. As of right now, I'm thinking that we could meet at Kafe Kerouac at 5:00PM. Alternatively, we could get a classroom reserved for the same time, or even something else. Thomas has told me that he would rather us do this for parking reasons, but the advantage that the coffee shop has is that it is easier to get food from there. Everyone who is playing should vote in the poll above or post something in this thread to indicate a preference. If we are to use a classroom, we will probably need to get one reserved soon.
About the Chonicle
The name of the game is Masters and Apprentices. Each player will make an apprentice character to work at Club Magnus, a nightclub in Chicago that is run by the players' masters. The masters and the players form a (large and powerful) cabal that is relatively new to Chicago, although many of the characters probably lived in the city before the cabal formed. The overall goal of the cabal is to have the club be a place for controlled relations between mages and other supernatural beings (primarily vampires, but including other things). Each master has his or her own reasons for wanting to achieve this goal, and not all of them are going to be comprehensible to individuals with less insight than them. The apprentices will have their own goals, but their actions should be guided and informed by the masters.
Mechanically, the apprentices are starting mages with no bonus experience and a Gnosis of 1 who must use some of their starting merit dots to get at least one dot in the Mentor merit. Each master will be created as a starting character and then given 200 experience, and each must have at 5 dots in at least one arcanum and a Gnosis of at least 3. You do not need to create your master, but you should at least have a fleshed out concept, a rough personality, an order (that must be the same for master and apprentice), and an agenda for the master. Wisdom dots can be traded at creation for masters and apprentices for bonus experience. Apprentices get 5 experience for each dot of Wisdom traded (up to 10 total), while masters get 10 experience for each dot traded (up to 40 total).
Masters may start with legacies and demenses, but there is a price to pay. A legacy requires the master to pay 10 experience per attainment (Gnosis 3/5/7 required for attainments 1/2/3 respectively) and to be beholden to his own mentor. Alternatively, the master can create his own legacy by spending 8 experience and upping the Gnosis requirement for each attainment by 1. A master can create a demense by spending 8 experience points and sacrificing a dot of Wisdom (the master cannot start with less then Wisdom 3, however). If an apprentice wishes to share access to a master's demense, then the apprentice must either sacrifice a Wisdom dot or have a high Mentor rating.
As for merits, the following will hold globally. The cabal has one shared sanctum that the masters buy merit dots for. It should have size 4 and security 5 total (this will be Club Magnus). The apprentices may either live in this sanctum or have their own private sanctums, and living in this sanctum will entail reduced levels of privacy and autonomy. There is certainly room within this sanctum for all of the apprentices. There is a 5 dot hallow (mostly controlled by the masters) located on the restricted access roof of the club, and access to it will be determined primarily by who has put the most dots into it. Every character is allowed to spend dots to get a private hallos, but doing so requires a private sanctum. Each character may also purchase dots in Artifact, which is as good as Hallow if not better.
About M:tA in General
In this game, there are five magical orders and five paths. The orders are primarily political organizations for mages, while the paths are general mage archetype. Path determines what sorts of magic a mage is good at, while order determines how a mage's basic support network works and what rote specialties a mage has access to.
The paths go roughly as follows:
Arcanthus: Enchanters, fey mages; flaky
Mastigos: Warlocks, mind-takers; creepy
Moros: Necromancers, transmuters; serious
Obrimos: Theurges, fire-tamers; zealots
Thyrsus: Shamans, healers; wild
The Atlantean orders go roughly as follows:
Adamantine Arrow: Mages who specialize in combat and feel that they should follow a code of honor
Free Council: Mages that believe that magic should be informed by new technology
Guardians of the Veil: Mages who believe that magic should be kept away form the unworthy
Mysterium: Mages who believe that the secrets of the path should be uncovered to benefit all mages
Silver Ladder: Mages who believe that they should have authority over other mages and that mages should have authority over the world
There is a non-Atlantean order called the Seers of the Throne. They believe that magic should be kept away from everyone (especially Atlantean mages) so that they can please their Supernal masters and eventually ascend to the aeons. There is also a seventh "order" known as the Banishers. Their focus is on destroying the supernatural, primarily other mages. They tend to be violent, paranoid, and alone.
House rules
I think that rotes are generally too expensive for what they do. Normally, learning a rote costs 2 experience per dot. For example, any four-dot rote costs 8 experience. For this game, a rote will cost half that much experience if it has covert aspect and its primary arcanum one of the character's ruling arcana. If only one of these requirements is met, the rote will cost three-fourths its normal cost.
I also plan to have paradox work a little differently then how it is explained in the source book. Normally, a character's base Paradox dice pool is half the character's Gnosis rating. For this chronicle, it will be equal to the character's full Gnosis rating. However, casting a vulgar spell by rote or using an appropriate magical tool will reduce a character's paradox pool by either 1 die or half of the character's Gnosis (rounded up), whichever is higher. Using both of these at once will reduce Paradox pools by either two dice or the character's full Gnosis rating, whichever is higher. Casting a spell that forces a Paradox roll will increase the character's Paradox pool for the scene by either one or two dice. Each point of Mana spent to reduce Paradox will reduce it by two dice instead of the usual one. Demenses still negate all paradox that is not caused by the presence of sleeper witnesses, and absorbing paradox as backlash damage still inflicts one level of resistant bashing damage per success soaked.
You will be able to exceed your arcana levels from time to time. Doing so requires you to spend one Willpower point and spend one experience point toward raising the arcana in which you are trying to exceed your understanding, possibly creating experience debt. You make a roll as for an improvised spell (you cannot spend Willpower on this, but you may use High Speech) to cast the spell. If the spell would normally cause a paradox roll, then your cumulative paradox pool is increased by three dice instead of one die by this spell. Otherwise, the spell requires you to make a paradox roll at your base level. Characters can only act as though they have one extra dot in this manner.
Powergaming is not something that I appreciate. I will let you do it to a certain extent, but you may find your power helping you less than you had hoped and entertaining the other players more than you had expected. I want the player characters to come together to make an interesting story. While interesting stories sometimes involve violence and powerful characters, they always involve interesting plots and interesting characters.
Experience awards
Experience awards will be determined in the following way:
Base session award: 3 points for each character
Session roleplaying award, player vote: 2 points total
Session roleplaying award, my decision: up to 2 points total
Story achievement award: +25%-50% of all session awards for each player
Bonus Arcane experience: up to 1 point for each important discovery made
Bonus "bluebooking" award: 1-4+ points per session
If a story lasts for three sessions and a player is awarded a total of 15 experience over these sessions, then that player receives a story bonus of 4-8 experience points, depending on how well the story goals were achieved (goals may differ for different characters). Arcane experience and "bluebooking" awards do not contribute to the story award. Arcane experience is a special form of experience that may only be applied toward raising the Gnosis trait. I will award "bluebooking" experience for writing character histories, describing downtime activities especially well, getting a character portrait, or any similar thing. I will be pretty generous with this sort of thing.
Poll