Mage, the third release in White Wolf's Storyteller system, holds many attractions to me as a roleplayer. Having grown up cutting my teeth on Dungeons and Dragons, the lack of a game where truly world-shattering spells could be thrown around was something of a disappointment. Granted that Ars Magica, another firm favourite, has possibly one of the best magic systems of any roleplaying game, it was still lacking the "zing" I was looking for. Then I discovered Mage.

OK, so first edition was clunky (was there any other first edition White Wolf product that wasn't?) but once you got your head around the fact that the coincidence that you use to explain your magickal effect does not have to be in the slightest bit related to the magick you are using, things start to fall into place.

Take the classic scenario: a mage falls from a building and is about to become pavement pizza. There are many ways around this for a well-rounded willworker using Forces, Matter, Correspondence, Time etc. But what of the explanation? "I fall into the back of a passing truck which happens to be carrying mattresses" — did the mage use Mind to affect the driver's sense of direction, Entropy to increase the chance of the truck being there, Correspondence to summon the truck from somewhere else? Does is matter? Well, the answer is debatable but that's the essence of Mage. It's fluid enough to handle these questions.

With the modern age setting, albeit in a World of Darkness, source material is easy to come by. You want to know the layout of a city? Buy an A-Z. What was it like in the 19th Century? Check out the history books. And for the really lazy referee (who? me? never!) you can forget the whole thing and set it in your home town and use those decades of experience you've amassed without really noticing. Equally there is no need to bother working out the cost of items and how much money someone has to be classed as rich. It's all real world - well, real enough.

Like all White Wolf games, your players are on one of the sides of a multi-faceted conflict. In this case, the loosing side. The Technocracy have control of most of the world and the Traditions, to whom the players are associated, have an uphill struggle to gain a level playing field. If that were not enough trouble you have the demon-tainted Nephandi and the completely mad Marauders to deal with. Mix in the odd vampire, a squad of Garou, some highly-unpredictable Umbral spirits and you have a ref's dream world and a player's nightmare campaign.

Noted

One thing has to be noted. As a referee, you must decide who controls the world in your game. For instance, it is logistically impossible for the Syndicate (Technocracy), the Ventrue (Camarilla), the Lasombra (Sabat) and several others to all have the largest share of the business world pie. It cannot work. World Wars III, IV, V and VI would probably have already been fought if this was the case. So, if you intend to run a Mage campaign, decide who controls which portions of the world and its assets. And it does not necessarily have to be the Syndicate who control the financial sector. It can be the vampires if you desire – and won't that confuse your players who have also read all the source books they can lay their grubby little hands on?

Of all the Storyteller games that I've experienced, Mage is the one that gives the referee the largest scope of protagonists. You can more easily entangle a mage in street politics, romantic links, social problems and so on. You can hardly imagine a vampire giving more than the idlest seconds of thought towards the kidnapping of a local child.

What place does it have in the Jyhad? Would a werewolf really be bothered trying to find out who organised the riot last night when there is a hive of Black Spirals to be slaughtered?

Bottom Line

The bottom line is that mages are human (shoot an unsuspecting mage with an AK-47 and watch the outcome to prove that) and can more easily be caught up in human concerns. That's not to say that the vampire or werewolf in the above instances wouldn't care, but they do tend to look at the big picture. Mages can afford to be distracted by the individuals as they can relate to them on the human level.

So, I was asked to say why I enjoy Mage and I've rambled on enough without really explaining my reasons. As a referee, I find that Mage gives me a framework to run the game without making a straight-jacket for my ideas. I can pick and choose the bits I want, remove those bits I hate, change the bits that are nice but won't work in my campaign and above all allow me to go where I want to go.

As a player, it gives a huge choice of character options from generation through play. The magic system is flexible enough to cope with most situations, it can be employed both subtly and with gross effect, it can be subverted and dampened by others (sometimes required by a referee but always damned frustrating) and the entertainment value of some of the "explanations" go down in roleplaying legend.

So if you've not played Mage, especially those Ars Magica aficionados who refuse to acknowledge its existence (and you know who you are), borrow a copy and give it a whirl. And don't worry about the headache when you try to use the magic system for the first time, a simple Life