Rogue Council

This is a crossposting from Jogadores de Papel. This is a post intending to do a cultural manifest  of what is possible with will and revolt against the abandon of a publication - and even with the work the previous rogues sudenly stopped doing. Nevertheless, the owner of the rights might at any time request for removal from this post and will be attended if send a note to me: onneiroz@gmail.com (Rafael Mastromauro).

Agradeço a confiança e o empenho de vocês, muito obrigado pelo que fizeram para a cena!

É com imenso prazer que os Jogadores de Papel lançam em primeiríssima mão o Manual do Narrador para Mago: A Ascensão. Livro que nos deu muito prazer em traduzi-lo e esperamos que traga muito prazer aos que lerem-no. Cordiais saudações aos colaboradores dos Jogadores de Papel, principalmente Nickson Jeanmerson.

Iniciação nos Mistérios
Confuso pelo Paradoxo e Paradigma? Não está certo sobre quais conflitos e lutas passam os magos modernos? Quer conduzir seus jogadores por Procuras mas não sabe por onde começar? Estas e mais questões são respondidas aqui, junto com dicas para fazer de Mago tudo que quiser - aqui estão as ferramentas. Seja feita sua vontade.

Puxando as Cortinas
Mais do que apenas conselhos Narrativos e explicações de regras, o Manual do Narrador de Mago cobre muitos e variados ângulos de abordagem do jogo. Examine as formas de conduzir um jogo numa linha de tempo totalmente diferente. Reconstrua as Tradições e o cenário para se adaptarem aos seus desejos. Jogue crossovers com outros jogos do Mundo das Trevas. Abra as comportas da criatividade e faça de Mago o jogo que você sempre quis jogar. Tudo é possível!

[Nota: Infelizmente o material original de que dispúnhamos para fazer esta tradução não contava com as páginas 153-154. Pedimos desculpas aos rpgistas perfeccionistas por não contemplar suas expectativas, mas este trabalho está aberto a contribuições.]

Welcome back again to the fourth installment of our five-part interview with “Satyr” Phil Brucato.  

In previous installments, Part I covered Phil’s career before White Wolf; Part II explored his early days with the line, while Part III detailed the process and stories behind several popular Mage supplements. In this portion, we’ll cover Mage 3rd Edition, the work Phil has done with White Wolf since then, and the collaborators who helped make Mage: The Ascension great.
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Q: The direction of Mage, as a series, changed radically between Mage 1st Edition and Mage Revised (3rd) Edition. In Revised Edition, the magick is weaker and seems more “democratic,” as opposed to the elitism that the Traditions and Technocracy displayed in previous editions. I’m referring to the way in which the Traditions essentially “lost” the Ascension War, the theme of the Technocracy’s “cracked wall,” and the more “everyman metaphysics” of that edition (as opposed to old Hermetic wizards puttering around in Dossitep or flying off, like Amanda, across the Horizon Realms).

What’s your opinion of that “fall of magick” concept? What do you think of the direction of the Mage metaplot after you left? Would you have done something like this yourself, making your players struggle for magic the way you later did in Deliria: Faerie Tales for a New Millennium? And was this change toward “streetwise” magick part of your plan?  

As I mention in Part III of this interview, I know very little about the design decisions behind Mage 3rd Edition. I’ve heard a lot of stories about it, but I wasn’t involved at all. It was Mage Revised, however, that gave us Sphere Levels 7-10. I had drawn the line at Sixth-Level Spheres, and that was only because Book of Chantries had a typo that gave Porthos Forces 6 instead of Forces 5! Otherwise, they’d have stayed capped off at 5.

Personally, I found the “larger-than-life” quality of Mage’s setting to be an awkward compromise. Someone asked me once what Mage would have been like had I designed the game from the very beginning; I replied that it would have been more like Cult of Ecstasy and Technocracy: Syndicate than like Sons of Ether or The Book of Worlds. Many of Mage’s wilder elements were set in place by the time I was hired, though, and I had to make them work. If you look at the original first-edition Mage Storyteller’s Screen, you’ll see that even those elements had been toned down considerably by the time the first rulebook was released. The grand scale of Mage was a mixed blessing to everyone concerned.

That being said, I had a blast with the epic scope of Mage. Sure, it was a pain sometimes, but I loved having such a vast playground and so many weird toys! One of the coolest things about Mage was that you could run a street-level saga out of Destiny’s Price, hop aboard an Umbral starship, or throw down with HIT Marks in the middle of Times Square. The possibilities were as open as magick itself, and I got to have fun with them all… occasionally tearing my hair out over them all, as well.

As for the “fall of magick” theme and the idea that the Traditions lost the War, I didn’t like it at all. As I mention elsewhere in this interview, I felt that if anyone was to lose, it would be the Technocracy. I did start “cleaning house” in my last years with the game, pruning out elements I felt had grown cumbersome. That said, I think Mage 3rd went too far. The Avatar Storm seemed like a cool idea if you didn’t play Mage, but it wrecked the game for plenty of fans. It would not have been my choice, and I’m glad no one ever tried to push me into such decisions.



Q: Why did you leave the Line Developer position, and White Wolf itself?

That’s a tricky question. Even though time and reconciliation have healed most of the bad feelings, it’s no secret that I did not leave on good terms. It’s all old business now – almost 12 years past. Still, I hear that question a lot, and Mage fans deserve an honest answer.

The simplest honest answer is that years of constant work and financial turmoil strained everyone on staff. We all changed, and usually not for the better. All of us were young and stupid, too – the oldest person in White Wolf was around 35 when I left. Those factors took a toll on everyone, and I was no exception.

After working on over 60 projects in less than six years, I burned out. By 1998, I was writing at home, going in once or twice a week for meetings. I feel the last dozen or so books I did for Mage and Sorcerers Crusade were the best in the line’s history, but my standards had risen to a level that exhausted everyone involved. I was also sick of working on things I didn’t own; White Wolf retains the rights to everything created for the World of Darkness, and I didn’t have enough time or energy to create things for myself.
 
And then there was the nature of the World of Darkness itself: put bluntly, I was sick of it. The constant angst got on my nerves, and many things, like were-dinosaurs, were just plain silly. I felt the World of Darkness had grown stagnant… and as any Mage fan knows, Stasis leads to Entropy and destruction. I needed to keep things Dynamic, so we trashed Dosseitep, crashed the Digital Web, killed large portions of the backstory cast and presented Sorcerers Crusade as a “reboot” in which the future didn’t need to happen at all. If you look closely at Mage books from 1997 onward, you can see me kicking out the foundations of everything we had built. On certain levels, that destructiveness mirrored how I felt about my job.

On a business level, too, there were decisions being made “upstairs” with which I disagreed. I could have handled those disagreements better than I did, and although time proved me right on most points, I’ll take responsibility for how I acted. By 1998, I wanted to get out of White Wolf and, for certain people, that feeling was mutual.

I had already planned to turn Ascension over to Jesse Heinig. He and I were good friends, and I felt that he understood Mage better than anyone else on staff. I wanted to pursue Sorcerers Crusade – and my own projects, too – so leaving the line worked out well. On Ken Cliffe’s suggestion, I collaborated with Jesse on the half-dozen books that were already in progress – the last of which was Guide of the Technocracy. Mike Tinney – now White Wolf’s CEO – took over a batch of lines that Steve Wieck cancelled. One of those lines was Sorcerers Crusade, and Mike offered me a freelance Line Developer position managing that line. I accepted, and for a while things looked good.

And then there was Mage 3rd Edition. About that book, I’ll just say this: things were handled badly that could have been handled better. Poor Jesse got stuck in a rotten position, and many of the complaints fans have made about 3rd Edition were not Jesse Heinig’s fault. Time and distance allow me to blame the bad decisions on burnout and youthful tempers. At the time, though, I could not stomach working with the Wolf any longer. In the middle of the Witches and Pagans supplement, I handed Sorcerers Crusade off to my friend R. Sabrina Udell, and stepped away from White Wolf completely.  


Q: You contributed to several Mage books after you left the company. Could you tell us more about that?

For a while, I found myself unable to write at all. I’d spent so long putting so much effort into the World of Darkness that I felt like a runner who’s stepped suddenly off a speeding treadmill and fallen on his face. Although I spent lots of time beating on my keyboard, very little good came of it. I’ll speak more about those days in the next installment of this interview, but for now let’s just say it took me some time to recover and move on.  

By that time, Steve Wieck had stepped down as White Wolf’s CEO. Mike Tinney replaced him, and Mike and I have always gotten along pretty well. Bill Bridges replaced Jesse on Mage, and he asked me to help out on the   “revised” Order of Hermes Tradition book. After some reflection, I agreed. This was shortly after 9/11, and I brought that image – the falling Tower of the Tarot mirrored in the fall of Dosseitep, the World Trade Center, and my own career at White Wolf – as a central theme in that book. Anger turned to renewal. Combined with Delira: Faerie Tales for a New Millennium, that book helped me wash the bad blood away.

A few years later, I ran into Richard Thomas at a White Wolf party at the Origins convention. He bought me a beer and we ended up talking about the good old days. We agreed that I should work for the Wolf again, and about a year later we took each other up on that sentiment. World of Darkness: Changing Breeds was the result, and while it’s not the best book I’ve ever done for the company, I had fun doing it.

Will I do more books for White Wolf? Maybe – who knows? We’re on good terms now, but these days I prefer create original projects rather than work-for-hire projects to which other people own the rights. As far as the Wolf and me in general, we’re fine. Past is past, and whatever we do from here on out, the future looks good for us both.


Q: Could you tell us if the Mage story was planned toward a conclusion during your time with the line? Did you have directions that you passed on to Jesse?

I didn’t, no. Although we had been discussing a Mage 3rd Edition while I was still managing the line, I had no intention of ending the series. Actually, Jesse and I planned out half-a-decade’s worth of Mage books and backstory before I quit the line for good. Although I’m disappointed that many of them were never realized, I can’t tell you what those ideas had been – it’s been over 10 years since those discussions, and I’ve forgotten most of it by now!

That said, I do recall wanting to bring the Nephandi/ Invictus storyline into the forefront, shaking the Technocracy to its foundations. I’d wanted the Traditions to assume greater strength after the purgation of Dosseitep, and was annoyed by the decision to weaken them instead. The whole “spirit nuke” thing bugged me, the Avatar Storm even more. By then, though, I was out of the picture and working on my own projects instead.

Back around 1996, we had discussed the possibility of ending the original World of Darkness (oWoD) in the year 2000, but decided against doing so. After all, why should we tell people, “Hey, folks – thanks for playing, but your game just ended”? And why destroy a world that, especially in 1996, was still incredibly popular? As it was, the “End Times” series wound up being quite controversial even though it came out around 2004 or so. Even now, lots of fans remain angry about it, and refuse to acknowledge the new World of Darkness at all.

Personally, I think CEO Mike Tinney made the right decision when he decided to end the oWoD. By the time the End Times hit, that WoD consisted of several hundred sourcebooks, many of which were out of print. The 1990s were over, and the oWoD looked like a relic of that decade. Frankly, I think things had just grown silly. The “reboot” was a good idea, in my opinion, and although I feel the nWoD lacks the bizarre anarchistic imagination and mythic aura of the early days, it’s a much cleaner and more manageable setting. The system, though legalistic, is much smoother and more consistent. When I did Changing Breeds, I was surprised by how much I liked the changes. Although I have some issues with the nWoD (I think it’s too bleak, for example, and not nearly as much fun) several of the newer projects, especially Changeling: The Lost, are better than the work we did back in the Good Old Days.

A few years ago, I did consider running one last “end of the world” scenario at GenCon. Sean Patrick Fannon had asked me to run a Mage game for him there, and I’d brainstormed up an epic conclusion with my then-partner Ann Lenore Taylor.

The idea was this: In the ruins of Horizon, a small, desperate pack of Tradition, Technocracy and Marauder mages make a last stand. The Middle East War has escalated into World War III, and the Nephandi use the chaos to break the wards that held them outside of our reality. Titanic demons rule the world, and almost every Horizon Realm has been either destroyed, corrupted, or set free to float off into the Otherworlds. Horizon is the final stronghold against this assault. Could the surviving mages work out their differences, or would they do the Nephandi’s work for them? Each player was supposed to have registered a few months before the event; everyone would be given a character, and a group of Storytellers would lead the event as an epic combination of live-action and table-top gaming.

In the end, though, the project was just too big to manage. I didn’t have the patience or energy to spend GenCon running a huge scenario, especially considering since I could not have profited from the event. I junked the idea, although I’m still fascinated by the concept. If someone else wants to run it, I’d love to hear how it turns out!


Q: Many White Wolf writers held back pre-created material, with plans to release it later, because of the imminent end of the original WoD. Do you have anything left over from the oWoD, something you have never published? If so, will this remain “on hold” forever, or do you have some plains of releasing it in some way?

Sorry. All the material I wrote back then is long gone. It was written on a Macintosh computer that died almost a decade ago, and the backups were kept on floppy discs that went blank not long after that. That whole period of my writing exists only between the pages of those books.

Even if I did have long-lost Mage material, I could not publish it – nor could anyone else unless they changed all the names and other significant details. White Wolf still owns all the rights to the original World of Darkness, and publishing it would violate their copyright on the setting.

I am tempted, occasionally, to revisit Sorcerers Crusade – I had lots of plans that were never realized. Even so, I prefer to look ahead rather than back. Mage was fun, and I had a great time with it. We were exactly what we both needed at the time, and I’m happy and grateful to see that so many people got so enjoyment and inspiration from the work we all did together.


Q: Who were your favorite people to work with in the White Wolf days? Kathy Ryan? Bill Bridges? I'm not asking you to play favorites – just share with us, if possible, your best experiences writing, developing or even talking about Mage with those wonderful folks at White Wolf.

As I’ve mentioned, I was fortunate enough to have a vast array of collaborators on Mage. The majority of them weren’t actually part of White Wolf’s office staff – they were freelancers, not employees. Some of them, like Alex Sheikman and Omar Ryyan, I have yet to meet in person. Most, though, became close friends of mine, and plenty of them remain so to this day. Among these folks, I would count:

-    Bill Bridges: Bill is one of the greats. When the definitive history of roleplaying games is written, Bill deserves a place of honor in its pages. Perhaps the most diplomatic game designer I’ve ever known, Bill can work with damned near anybody and get great results. He and I have been friends for almost 30 years, and most of what I learned about game design, I learned from him. Before I’d even heard about Mage, Bill was part of its original design team; later, he picked up when Jesse and I left off, creating the new Mage: The Awakened in addition to finishing Ascension. I value Bill more than words can describe. My life, and Mage, would have been much poorer without his involvement in both.

-    Brian Campbell: Brilliant, temperamental and funny as hell, Brian was – like Bill, Sam and Kathy – part of Mage’s creative core even before I arrived. He and I shared an apartment during my first two years at the Wolf, with Kathy Ryan living there for several months as well. Between the three of us, we worked out much of the line’s metaphysical weirdness during late-night brainstorming sessions and occasional shouting matches.

Brian got Technocracy duty almost by default; although he’s anything but a Technocrat himself, no other author understood their tarnished virtue as well as he does. He and I bonded immediately through our barefoot snarkiness, distrust of authority figures, and fondness for gloomy music. We shared a half-serious competition called “Byron points”; whenever one of us did something sufficiently angstful (like brooding in the rain, sleeping with fans, or wandering around the neighborhood at 3:00 AM), we’d claim “Byron points” –
 named for the infamous dark Romantic poet. Although he left White Wolf around 1995, Brian worked on the line longer than I did. He authored the final Sorcerers Crusade book, Order of Reason, after my departure from that line as well. These days, Brian and I both live in Seattle, where we don’t spend nearly as much time hanging out together as we should.

-    Jackie Cassada: Although she’s more commonly identified with Changeling, Jackie and her partner Nicky wrote more Mage material than anyone other than Brian Campbell, Beth Fischi and myself. She has a prodigious imagination and a steady writing hand. Jackie’s the one who turned me on to the Waterboys song “The Return of Pan,” which inspired both the Immortal Eyes saga and my “Satyr” nickname. More recently, she authored a large chunk of Changing Breeds. We’re still friends, and I’d gladly work with her again.

-    Sam Chupp: As I mentioned earlier, Sam was one of the spiritual guiding forces behind Mage… behind Werewolf, too, for that matter. I’ve often said that Sam “walks in light” more than almost any other person I’ve known. When we created the backstory for Mage’s world in The Book of Shadows, the core of Tradition Council history came from Sam. He and I brainstormed together about the magical elements of Wraith and Changeling as well as Mage, and we shared many metaphysical ideas. Although he left White Wolf early in Mage’s run, Sam’s influence carried through into Sorcerers Crusade and beyond.

-    Beth Fischi: As I mentioned earlier, Beth is one of the most learned members of the classic Mage team. Originally, I had hired her to clarify some of the game’s trickier metaphysical elements in The Book of Shadows. I was so impressed with the short stories she wrote for those entries, and so pleased with her clean writing and strong style, that Beth became one of my “go-to” authors for the line. We became close friends during the White Wolf days, and while we haven’t seen one another in a decade, we remain in touch through the Internet today.

-    Mark Jackson: In many ways the brother I never had, Mark has literally left his mark on me. The “laughing pan” tattoo on my left shoulder is Mark’s design, and the many discussions we’ve shared over the years laid the foundations for much of my later work.

Many elements of Deliria: Faerie Tales for a New Millennium originated with Golgotha, a comic book project Mark and I envisioned in the late 1990s; I drew my screenplay Crossways from characters and settings in that project as well. Although Golgotha never panned out, Mark and I have collaborated on a number of projects, including Deliria itself. Up until recently, Mark has been my closest graphic-art partner, and we can (and do) talk for many hours at a time. We used to have a holiday tradition wherein we’d meet each year at a pizza parlor in Alexandria, Virginia, pigging out and talking until closing time. Sadly, that place closed for good last year, and he and I live at opposite ends of the country now. Still, Mark remains one of my best friends. He’s always had an uncanny talent for drawing what I envision in my head, and making it look better than I had imagined.

-    Deena McKinney: An old friend of Jackie and Nicky, Deena submitted a story to me as I was gearing up to produce Mage 2nd Edition. I was so pleased with what she wrote that I made her the “go-to” person for flavor fiction when I didn’t have the time or inspiration to write it myself. Although she wrote very little “game text” for Mage – the primary exception being the opening chapter of The Book of Mirrors, which was a fictionalized version of the gaming group she and I shared with Wayne Peacock – Deena was a joy to work with, and lots of fun to game with as well.

-    Heather J. McKinney: Now going by the name Echo Chernick (aka Echo-X) Heather was my second-closest graphic collaborator. She joined the team with The Fragile Path, and immediately became one of my favorite artists. I felt she understood what I had in mind better than most artists we worked with; her work is sensual, gorgeous, mystical and often surreal. She and I met at GenCon ’95, and became instant friends. We’re still friends these days; she contributed two illustrations to Ravens in the Library, and wants to do the cover for whatever book we publish next.

-    Jim Moore: If I recall correctly, Jim and I made our White Wolf debuts together in Valkenberg Foundation. He was a wonderful help on my first few projects, and a constant contributor to the line throughout my involvement. A huge burly dude with a great big heart, Jim is one of the most professional people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. Beyond the writing, he’s a great guy in general. After leaving White Wolf, I worked with him for a little while at a bookstore he was managing at the time. These days, he’s a full-time novelist, writing under the name James A. Moore. If you can find his work, check it out!

-    Nicky Rea: Jackie’s partner-in-crime, Nicky was one of the main Mage authors throughout my run. If I recall correctly, she and Jackie still contribute to the new Mage line. Nicky took on one of the most challenging feats in Awakened history: creating a guided tour of the Mage-o-verse in Mage 2nd Edition, to my exacting and often frustrating specifications. She succeeded wildly at it, too… even if she was a bit grumpy about the task. Nicky and Jackie designed the Mage Tarot; wrote the Dreamspeakers and Verbena books (the latter in less than two weeks); authored large chunks of Ascension’s Right Hand, The Book of Mirrors, Sorcerers Crusade Companion, Bygone Bestiary and much more. A great friend and potent fantastist, Nicky remains one of the most prolific authors in White Wolf’s history. Although she and Jackie are not at all what people expect from White Wolf authors (which has caused amusing scenes at various conventions), their effect on the World of Darkness cannot be overstated.

-    Kathleen Ryan: Ah, Marauder Girl! Another barefoot malcontent, Kathy remains one of the most intelligent, creative, passionate, temperamental, complicated, frustrating, playful, intense and all-round brilliant people I have ever known. We sometimes lived together, usually worked together, and occasionally fought like crazy during the five-plus years we spent on Mage. Kathy and I hit it off immediately when I came to Atlanta, and we got on each other’s nerves almost as quickly. Our creative process was rarely easy, but was incredibly rewarding.

Part of the original Mage 1st Edition design team, Kathy possessed an intuitive grasp of the strange realms I wanted to explore with the series. She, Brian and I rambled, sometimes till dawn, about metaphysical weirdness and the ways in which we could get it across in a game. Her creativity could slide from the whimsy of the fire-breathing sapient gerboas of The Book of Madness to the stark tragedy of the Mercy/ Amanda/ Gericault romance and the sublime terror of the Euthanatos. As a graphic designer, Kathy also established many elements of the “classic Mage” look during its 2nd Edition period; the poster she made out of Mark Jackson’s “Join the Battle for Reality” image remains one of my cherished possessions. She is an amazingly gifted writer, artist and friend, not to mention an accomplished martial artist. Kathy and I haven’t seen one another in years, and our friendship was always a contentious one. Still, my respect for her will never fade. Of all the figures in Mage: The Ascension’s pantheon, Kathleen Ryan deserves the brightest praise.

Other folks who really deserve shout-outs for their contributions to Mage include:

-    Rob Hatch (who taught me most of what I know about editing)
-    Ed Hall (who taught me even more)
-    Cynthia Summers (who became the calm “default” editor during Mage’s middle period)
-    Cary Goff (who took over during my later days with the line)
-    Katie McCaskill (Mage’s Graphic Designer during my last year with the line, and who endured my most difficult attitudes as a result)
-    Richard Thomas (who established the Tarot card theme, and broke the whitebread gaming stereotype by putting a cool Black dude at the center of our rulebook cover)
-    Travis Williams (who created Dante, the cool Black dude in question, and who was one of my strongest supporters in those rough early days with Mage)
-    James Estes (who was my go-to guy for religious history)
-    Allen Varney (THE most professional author I have ever worked with, bar none!)
-    Rebecca Shaeffer (for introducing me to the Atlanta nightclub scene)
-    Wayne Peacock (who taught me how to enjoy actually PLAYING Mage)
-    Ken Cliffe (the best manager I’ve worked with anywhere)
-    Dan Greenberg (who provided an early infusion of philosophical strangeness)
-    Andrew Greenberg (for throwing his considerable influence behind me when I needed it early on)
-    Steve Brown (for creating so damned much in that single Book of Chantries… and for not quitting on me as soon as I got the job!)
-    Sam Inabinet (another VCU friend who created the Ahl-i-Batin and provided substance for the Nephandi)
-    Judith Miller (who gave the Technocracy much of its real-life foundation)
-    Richard Dansky (who gave Sorcerers Crusade its name, and proved to be my musical kindred spirit)
-    Jennifer Hartshorn (for bringing an astute romanticism to her work on Wraith and Vampire… and, by extension, to Mage and Deliria as well)
-    Kenneth Hite (who saved my ass on Sorcerers Crusade by writing The Chapter That Could Not Be Written, otherwise known as the first half of Chapter II)
-    Lindsay Woodcock (who stepped in toward the end of my run to provide invaluable help, friendship and perspective… and, years later, for editing Deliria and its supplements)
-    Jesse Heinig (for stepping in when I needed to step out – and doing a much better job than he’s often given credit for)
-    J. Porter Wiseman (who provided invaluable help with the backstories of Euthanatos, Cult of Ecstasy and Sorcerers Crusade)
-    Clayton Oliver (for introducing us to his friend Porter)
-    Mike Tinney (for taking up the Sorcerers Crusade, and for providing an often snarky but valuable perspective on things – even when I didn’t appreciate it at the time)
-    Steve, Stewart and Mark (for getting the whole mess running in the first place, and for letting me manage Mage my way once things got going)

I’d also really like to thank someone who’s almost always forgotten in the Mage histories because she never worked at White Wolf:

-    Wendy Blacksin, my partner and wife during almost all of my time on Mage. For seven years, Wendy shared everything with me, including the best and worst days of my tenure on Mage and the shattering period after I left White Wolf. She was my Heart & Home, and although that element rarely winds up on the credit pages of books, I tell you that no artist can create without it.

Wendy listened to my complaints, cheered my successes, held me during long hard nights, and stood beside me as a friend, lover, critic and collaborator. Although our lives wound up taking us in different directions, I still love her like I have loved no one else. Although my friends and collaborators from White Wolf deserve plenty of credit for my work on Mage, the one who mattered most to me back then was the one who was my Home. THAT is a magick beyond rule systems or philosophies, and Wendy Blacksin must be recognized if you want to understand the rest of it at all.

Q: Rich Dansky told me and my friends, “There must be about six people in the world who understand how Mage: The Ascension works!” I can’t recall if it was you who told him that, or if someone else had said it. What do you think about that observation? Do you agree? What was your thought about that back during your days developing the series?

*laugh* Well, Rich was sort of exaggerating. He wasn’t wrong, though.  Mage was either something you understood easily, or it wasn’t something you understood at all. There wasn’t a lot of middle ground. Jesse understood it. I don’t think a lot of people involved with Revised Edition’s design really did. Some people just never wrapped their heads around it. Other folks did. I think Mage was kinda like a Rorschach test – your perception of it depended a lot on what you expected to see.

There were times, back then, that I literally said, “I wish I had the SIMPLE game line!” I didn’t really mean it, though. When Andrew Greenberg resigned from Vampire, he offered the job of running that line to me. I considered it – I mean, Vampire was the world’s sexiest roleplaying game, and the most successful RPG since D&D. In the end, though, Vampire wasn’t really my style. Mage was. For better and worse, “the world’s most pretentious roleplaying game” (as we dubbed it, half-seriously) suited my mindset, and my mindset suited Mage.


Q: Would it make things simpler if you could turn back time?

Nope. Although there are a few things I would do differently if I had a cosmic miracle do-over chance (most of which would involve a handful of really dumb mistakes) I’m happy, overall, with what we did and how we did it. If I could have looked forward into the next six years back that summer in 1993, I suspect it would have scared the shit out of me. That said, I’d have done it anyway. And while Mage is my past, not my future, if I had a chance to do it over again, there’s no question – I surely would.

Q: So, what’s your favorite RPG setting ever? What’s your favorite roleplaying game ever?

Well, as far as White Wolf games went, my favorite was always Werewolf. I related closely with its themes of rage, wilderness, “the good fight” and transformation. My favorite RPG ever was Champions, which I played constantly for a decade and which seduced me away from D&D in 1983. (I hated the original D&D system intensely, and junked the game as soon as I discovered something better… in this case, the HERO System.)

As for “settings,” I always preferred the ones my friends and I created, as opposed to the “official” ones created by gaming companies. Some of that, I imagine, came from the period in which I started gaming. I played my first game of D&D around 1978, when game settings were almost non-existent. By the time something better than that Judge’s Guild crap came around, my group had already been telling our own stories for years.

(For those who’ve never heard of Judge’s Guild, they produced a line of D&D modules and settings in the late 1970s and very early ‘80s. Although I must commend the guys for giving the primitive game market something to work with, their modules were pretty terrible.)

My “classic gaming group” from college – John, Laurie, Jennifer, myself, and occasionally Scott, Cathi and Grey – created a running series of RPG campaigns that we alternated for over five years. These campaigns all used the HERO System, and ranged from swashbuckling intrigue in the French courts to a street-level Champions game, a Star Wars campaign, and a Fantasy Hero saga that, as far I know, is still running today, almost 18 years after I left for Atlanta.


Q: How often during the 1990s did you play RPGs yourself? I don’t imagine you had much time for gaming, given how many books you did back then. Out of curiosity, can you tell us about some of the playtesting sessions for White Wolf games?

Most of that time, I gamed very little. You’re right – we were just too busy, and when games are your profession, they’re not terribly relaxing! Most of our playtesting was done out-of-house, by volunteers and freelance authors. We did a little bit of in-house playtesting for Street Fighter (which was more fun than it had any right to be!) but that was about it.

When I first arrived at White Wolf in 1993, Sam Chupp ran a short-lived Mage game. At that point, we needed to figure out how the damn game actually worked – there hadn’t been much playtesting for the original rules! My character Jennifer Rollins originated in that Chronicle, but it didn’t last long. Years later, Deena McKinney convinced me to join her gaming group while we worked on Mage 2nd Edition. I ran Jennifer in that game as well, and several of the incidents referred to various Mage books happened during that Chronicle. That group ran once a month for several years, and appeared as the first chapter of The Book of Mirrors (see Part III of this interview). By the time that group broke up, the ‘90s were over, I’d left White Wolf, and I wanted nothing to do with gaming. Aside for a brief Deliria playtest saga run by Julianne Lepp in 2002-2003, I didn’t game again regularly until around 2006. The game that got me gaming again? Dungeons & Dragons 3.5. Go figure…

Last year, I started gaming with my friend and collaborator Bryan Syme, his wife and their friends, and my partner Sandi Buskirk. A few months ago, someone suggested that Bryan run a Mage game. When he asked me if I’d be cool with that, I replied, “How about a Sorcerers Crusade Chronicle?” He jumped on the idea, and we’ve been alternating between Sorcerers Crusade and Werewolf (both run by Bryan) and Deliria (run by me) ever since. I haven’t had this much fun gaming since the early ‘90s, and that Chronicle let me enjoy my old work for the first time in over a decade. Thanks, Bryan - that game helps me remember everything I loved about those days! J


(The conclusion of this interview series follows Phil’s work after the Mage series, including his current work, Laughing Pan Productions, and Deliria: Faerie Tales for a New Millennium. Come on back shortly – We’ll wrap things up soon!)

Welcome back to the five-part interview with Phil Brucato, also known as “SatyrPhil Brucato,” “Satyrblade” and simply “Satyr.”

Part I dealt with his early career. Part II explored his early work with White Wolf Game Studio. This portion continues that discussion, describing the process that went into many of the line’s most popular works.
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Q: Could you please tell us how you created Mage books?

I’d be glad to. :)

Here’s an overview of the process I use, even now, when putting a book together:

-    Schedule: To begin with, I brainstorm up a list of the projects I wish to create in the next year or so. This usually includes the authors I want to work with, and brief notes about the book itself – including its estimated page length, word count and retail cost. At a publishing company, these lists form the basis for the company’s release schedule. From there, all other resources are based on that schedule. When a project goes off-schedule, those resources must be re-allocated. At White Wolf, that happened almost every month.
 
-    Brainstorming & Outline: From there, I produce an extensive outline, usually 3-5 pages in length but occasionally longer. The outline presents my ideas about the book, and informs my collaborators (if there are any involved) what I need from them, which sections they’re supposed to write, and what formats they should employ in their work.

-    Contracting and Discussion: Each collaborator must be contracted for the project; after that, I discuss (often for many hours) what I want from the book and what they’d like to do with the sections they write for it. Some books have a single collaborator; a few have none; most game supplements have several, and a large one can have a dozen or more. Each collaborator must be coordinated so that their work fits together. Inevitably, though, their sections must still be “Frankensteined” together once all the drafts arrive.

-    Drafts and Notes: Each author writes stuff and sends it in. Ideally, we can work through two or three drafts before the final work arrives. More often, an author turns in a single draft. When possible, the Line Developer goes over those drafts and gives notes to the authors. Personally, this is my least-favorite part of the process – it’s time-consuming, frustrating and very, very tricky because you don’t want to hurt a collaborator’s feelings. That’s easier with some authors than it is with others.

-    Development & Art Notes: After the final drafts have arrived, I “Frankenstein” the different parts together into a whole manuscript. As I mentioned earlier, this involves writing between 5000 and 50,000 words (occasionally more) of what I call “raw text” – that is, stuff that no writer had yet written because we didn’t realize what would be necessary until all the pieces had arrived. During this stage, I ask myself, “If I’d paid money for this supplement – what would I want from it?” Within the allotted word count, I try to give my inner customer what he wants.

At this point, art notes are made and handed off to the Art Director so that she can commission illustrators for the book. This stage often includes a fair amount of re-writing, either because an author’s writing isn’t working out, or because I need to establish a certain unified “voice” for the project as a whole. This part, too, is tricky; some authors understand that your project must be consistent, while others get justifiably upset when their work gets re-written. At White Wolf, I tended to re-write my authors heavily; from 1997 to 1999, I simply wound up writing the majority of each book myself. Gee, no wonder I burnt out!  

-    Editing & Redlines: Once I’m finished with that manuscript, the files go to an Editor. Again, that Editor may do a large amount of re-writing, though I preferred to avoid that whenever possible. During that process, I meet with the Editor to discuss the “redlines” – that is, the red-inked printouts that an Editor uses to find and correct mistakes; this process becomes a diplomatic balancing act because, once again, egos and visions are on the line.

Ideally, the Editor and Line Developer agree on the changes that need to be made. Once the redlines are approved, the Editor inputs those changes directly onto the files and sends them off to Layout. Personally, I always ask the Editor what I can do better next time, and then bring that person’s observations and expertise to my next project. Doing so can drive you crazy (in my case, it eventually did), but it also makes you far better at your job.

-    Layout & Proofing: The Graphic Designer takes the files and lays them out with the illustrations to create the final work. Ideally, we get to print out a number of drafts, and then go over each draft to find the mistakes that inevitably creep in.

More often than not, though, we managed to produce only one or two proofreading drafts before the book had to go off to print. If and when a book goes out late, it screws up the schedule and makes customers upset. This explains the large amount of errors that show up in roleplaying game books (and, more often these days, in books of all kinds). The unfortunate Graphic Designer is the last person in the process; during White Wolf’s peak, that person would be lucky to get more than two weeks with a book, regardless of its size!  

-    Printing, Distribution & Support: The files go off to the printer, and the process begins again. A few weeks after those files leave, an advance proof copy arrives at the office, and the Line Developer and art Director (or Graphic Designer) goes over that proof copy to make sure that nothing is seriously wrong with it. Mistakes can be corrected at this stage, but it’s really expensive to do so. The copy of Mage I received from Ken Cliffe upon my arrival at White Wolf was the advance proof copy. We didn’t see the final books until we unpacked them at our booth during Gencon ‘93.

Meanwhile, someone writes advertising copy and sends it off to the Art Department in order to market the book. Most often, this person is the Line Developer. Without marketing and distribution, folks won’t know your book exists or be able to get a copy themselves. The “support” process involves promoting that book at conventions, talking about it with fans, tracking reviews, and answering the inevitable comments and criticisms about it.

Bear in mind that this was – and remains – the process for every single book, card game, portfolio and what-have-you that we produced at White Wolf. With very few variations, it’s the process followed by every single book or game you’ve ever seen. Each Line Developer, Editor, Art Director and Graphic Designer went through this process once or twice a month during White Wolf’s peak period (1992-2000). It’s not hard, then, to see why we often burned out and blew up… a factor I’ll discuss later in this interview.

So, what about the books themselves? Let’s see…

Q: The Fragile Path: Testaments of the First Cabal. We see this as a Book of Nod for Mage. Was that your intention? Was it a limited edition book? How long did it take to make this book, especially the musical “Song of Bernadette”? I’ve always wanted to gather a group together to perform this song. Is there any place I could find a version of that song actually being performed? Also, not to be indiscrete, but did Fragile Path (which I consider one of most astonishing fantasy books ever made) sell many copies?

First off, thank you! The Fragile Path remains one of my all-time favorite projects, and I’m glad it’s remembered so fondly.

Yes, Fragile Path was intended to be Mage’s Book of Nod. The incredible success (both commercial and artistic) of the “vampire bible” prompted us to plan similar projects for all the lines. Although Werewolf had its Chronicle of the Black Labyrinth, Dark Ages had The Erciyes Fragments, and Vampire got Revelations of the Dark Mother (which I co-authored with R. Sabrina Udell), neither Wraith nor Changeling had such a book as I recall. None of those other books came anywhere near Book of Nod’s popularity, however. Personally, I consider BoN to be one of the hallmarks of White Wolf’s classic era. On several occasions, we had fans demanding to speak to the “real authors” of the book, believing it to be a true bible. That’s flattering I guess… although it’s sad and scary, too!

As for Fragile Path, I wanted to use it to solidify Mage’s sense of mystic history. To that end, I contacted the best writers I could get, telling them I wanted to create a story book, not a game book. Inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon (a huge influence on Mage in general), I wanted to present “testaments” from six of the people involved, each one different and contradictory.

As I’ve often said, objective “truth” is non-existent. Even in the most well-documented matters, the “truth” differs from observer to observer. Each person experiences his or her own “truth,” and the ones who write the story get the last word. Porthos was old enough, passionate enough and mad enough (both in terms of sanity and anger) to realize the innate paradox of Truth, and so he put The Fragile Path together to remind younger mages what they faced and why they must understand that paradox if they’re to understand their lives at all.

And yeah – although I wrote his sections “in character,” I totally meant what I wrote.

Unlike most other supplements, Fragile Path enjoyed a very long, detailed and well-planned creation process. I hashed out the basic story with Sam Chupp, Jim Moore, Owl Goingback and (as I recall) Jennifer Hartshorn and Kathy Ryan. From there, the various authors worked up their characters and exchanged notes, via the Internet, about the relationships between them. We all brainstormed heavily, running up large phone bills in the process. From start to finish, Fragile Path took roughly a year, maybe longer, and was worth every minute of that time.  

Each author was left to tell her or her story his or her way. I left the things they wrote pretty much intact. I authored the Porthos sections; Jim Moore wrote Heylel’s testimony; “The Song of Bernadette” came from Tina Jens, who crafted all the musical elements herself, while Nancy Kilpatrick brought her background in erotic horror to the tragic tale of Eloine. Beth Fischi used her Classical Literature background to create Akrites Solonikas, and Owl Goingback evoked genuine sorrow for his “Oratory of Walking Hawk.” Richard Thomas and Larry Snelly secured the artists; Rich devised the idea of using different paper stocks and type fonts for the various stories. Kathy Ryan undertook the monumental task of making the whole thing work, and she succeeded admirably. In the interest of maintaining the fiction, I made a diplomatic error by crediting the stories to the characters not to the actual authors. Owl, Nancy and Tina were quite annoyed by that – they discovered it the hard way at DragonCon that year. I learned a valuable lesson there: No matter how clever you think you are, always give your author a prominent byline!

Regarding the music, I don’t actually know. I’ve been told it’s unperformable, and I’ve been told that people have performed it. I’ve never heard a recording of it myself, but I’d love to hear one someday.

The Fragile Path had two print runs. The first one got a red cover thanks to a mistake at the printing company; I liked that edition better. The second print run got the purple cover we had planned for; on that one, though, the title and cover design got lost. As I recall, the first print run involved roughly 5000 copies. That one sold out quickly. I have no idea how many “purple cover” copies sold. For all I know, a third print run was made, but I doubt it. During my last trip to the White Wolf warehouse in 1998, there were still plenty of them left, and I know they’re all long gone by now.

This book remains one of the most acclaimed supplements for the line. Allen Varney wrote a rapturous review of it for Pyramid or Dragon magazine (I don’t recall which one), calling it a great example of transcending the pitfalls of “game fiction.” Even so, Fragile Path was expensive to produce, thanks to the different textured paper stocks. It was more of a prestige product than a best-seller; one of the luxuries we enjoyed in the early days was the ability to experiment with such joyful decadence.  

Incidentally, the “Bibliography” on page 16 is loaded with inside jokes. Every book on that list is fictional, of course, and several of them are pretty funny if you understand the references. My favorite was the book credited to “Peart, N.” – that is, Neil Peart, the drummer/ lyricist for the band Rush. “The God of Balance you shall Be” is one of the last lines of Rush’s epic song “Cygnus X-1, Book II: Hemispheres.” Rush has inspired my imagination since high school, and the band’s albums – especially Hemispheres, Permanent Waves, 2112 and Moving Pictures – clearly influenced my work on Mage. (There’s also a pun on “the god of balance” verses the balanced symbolism yet unbalanced reality of Heylel; we scattered lots of stuff like that throughout the Mage series, and through the World of Darkness as a whole.)

Q: Digital Web and Digital Web 2.0: How did you create the terminology for that book? I’m still trying to figure out how to translate it for some friends of mine who don’t understand much English. If a new Digital Web edition was written today, would you use the current Internet jargon?

Digital Web was one of the titles on the original brainstorming list I submitted to White Wolf when I applied for the Mage job. (See Part II.) The image reflected my impression of a magickal Internet, and I knew that a book about our virtual reality had to be one of the first supplements in the line. At the time, however, I didn’t know a damn thing about the Internet – I didn’t even own a computer! (It was 1993 – most people didn’t own computers.) Shortly after I got the job, Dan Greenberg and Darren McKeeman gave me a crash-course in the virtual world. Much of the early material about the Digital Web and Virtual Adepts came from those guys, with inspiration added by a pile of Mondo 2000 and Wired magazines I got from various friends.

I’ve always felt that consciousness is the 5th dimension of reality, and we explored that idea in the Digital Web books. The core idea behind Mage’s Internet is that computer users interface with the Web through a form of astral projection; some folks are just better at doing so than most people, and those folks can create “selves” based on their minds, not their bodies. As a result of all the life-force involved, the Web has attained a form of sentience itself – it is literally “alive” in ways that no one, not even its most active participants, truly understands.

As I recall, about half of the terminology in the first Digital Web was real; the rest, we invented. Dan and Darren came up with many of the ideas about the magickal Web and its parameters – I was still just learning how to use Word 3.0! As usual, there was a great deal of satire involved; I wish I remembered the details, but it’s been over 15 years since then. The layers of inside jokes were so dense that most of us didn’t get them all! It’s no wonder you have a hard time translating those ideas. Some of the references make sense only to the people who created them.
 
The original Digital Web made my brain hurt, and I was happy to “reboot” it years later, when I understood more about the cultures and workings of Information Technology. Digital Web 2.0 was a far more focused and informed work. By then, I’d been on the net for years and had a decent understanding of its culture. As I did with many Mage books around that time (1997) I trashed the previous establishment and used that destruction as a comment on the nature of pride. In Digital Web 2.0, the Virtual Adepts faced a choice: remain true to their roots and let their creation destroy itself, or impose some order and become what they had hated about the old order?  It’s not hard, is it, to see where I was making parallels between Mage’s world and my own job? Once again, the terminology was about half-real and half-invented. If I ever did another Digital Web book – which I won’t, because the line no longer exists and I don’t own any rights to it – I would update the concepts and technology, and probably invent stuff on an even larger scale than before.

As I mentioned, Digital Web is filled with inside jokes. The most obvious sits at the center of both books: the Spy’s Demise. We based the Spy’s Demise on the Safe House, a club that used to exist in downtown Milwaukee, near where GenCon was held. The real club wasn’t nearly that spectacular, but it was a lot of fun to visit! That club’s house specialty was a concoction called “the Spy’s Demise” – a delicious yet powerful mixed drink. I gave a copy of Digital Web to the manager of the Safe House the year that book came out. He laughed. A lot.


Q: Book of Chantries: Many elements of the Mage metaplot originated in this book, correct? Also, I’m curious: How was GenCon for you on the year that Mage came out?

I discussed the mad rush toward Chantries back in Part III. To this day, I continue to be amazed by how influential that book became to Mage as a whole. I knew even then that the first major supplement would set the tone for the rest of the line, and so I practically sweated blood to make it as good as possible given the tight schedule. Add to that element the fact that I was learning how to do a brand-new job, laying the groundwork for three other supplements, mastering a new technology (desktop computers) through trial-and-error, and writing the Black Furies Tribebook at the same time (among other things) and it’s amazing that Chantries, flawed as it is, turned out so well.  

As for GenCon 93, it’s a blur. I recall the funeral we held for Prince Lodin; the lines of people eager to buy the brand-new Mage; the dozens (if not hundreds) of questions I answered about the line and my plans for it; the sudden rush of attention I got as a freshly-established Line Editor at the hottest gaming company on earth; sleeping on a cot in a jam-packed room at the hotel… like I said, it was a five-day blur.

One thing stands out, however: The other hot-ticket item at GenCon that year was Magic: The Gathering, which had premiered about two months earlier at Origins. Because White Wolf was, at the time, more famous than Wizards of the Coast, and because of the similarity of names between Mage: the Ascension and Magic: The Gathering (not to mention the Tarot card on Mage’s cover), lots of people confused the two products. Folks came looking for the non-existent Mage Tarot Deck (which inspired us to create that deck a few years later), and peppered me with questions about Magic: The Gathering, which I hadn’t even heard of up until then! The kicker came when Peter Atkinson brought a box or two of Magic cards by the White Wolf booth. Our two companies were very close and friendly in those days, and Peter gave us a bunch of free Magic decks. Most of the White Wolf folks jumped at the gift like… well, like wolves; I wasn’t into card games, so although Peter told me to take some for myself, I declined.

Yeah – a chance to get free first-run Magic: The Gathering cards, and I turned it down. I guess I hadn’t yet learned how to use Time 2 to look ahead; if I had, I’d have grabbed a bunch of those damn cards and secured my financial future! :)


Q: The Book of Mirrors: One of best - if not THE best - books directed to a Storyteller that I've ever seen. I have almost memorized your FAQ for discussions in Mage forums. That book helped me a lot in my games, Thanks!

And thank YOU. I really appreciate that!

Yeah, The Book of Mirrors remains one of my prouder moments. Sam Chupp suggested the title, and although it became problematic (the book would have sold better if we’d called it The Mage Storyteller’s Guide) I still think it fits. Jason Felix’s cover captured the book’s essence perfectly. Even today, there’s very little about Mirrors I would change… except, perhaps, for that name.

The opening chapter depicts a slightly embellished version of the gaming group shared by Deena McKinney, Wayne Peacock, myself and other people at that time. The quotes all came from actual gaming sessions and, aside from me, every player appears under his or her real name. (I’m “Susan Pradha,” of course.) After years of people asking, “How should I run such-and-such situation?” I figured it would be fun and helpful to show an actual gaming group handling those situations through play. The narrative was fictional but the group was not. Deena and I combined many different experiences from various groups (and made up several along the way) in order to show people, rather than tell people, how best to handle Mage.

Everyone, I feel, was in top form for that book. Mark Jackson crafted wonderful full-page illustrations, Robert MacNeil turned in gorgeous scratchboard-and-ink images, and Heather J. McKinney did lovely portraits of different Tradition mages. (The artwork, unfortunately, was scanned in at the wrong setting – the original pieces looked far better.) Our intern Laurah Norton deserves special praise for helping me track down and catalog all the rotes, Effects, Traits and rules scattered through several dozen Mage supplements. I also enjoyed giving a forum to my old gaming partner John R. Robey; from the mid-‘80s to the early ‘90s, John and I shared Gamemaster duties in our group, often co-running the same campaigns in alternating GM shifts. (See the essay “Sharing the Spotlight” for details.) Sadly, I had a falling-out with a friend of mine who wrote a section that had to be cut out; Christine Morris authored an essay about the different “faces” we assume while gaming (I think that was the subject, anyway), but in the end, it just didn’t fit. I wish I still had a copy of what she wrote; even more, I wish we had remained friends.

Sorcerers Crusade and The Book of Mirrors represent the peak of my Mage work; soon afterward, my work load and increasingly high standards burned me out. (More on that subject later…) In a book of approximately 110,000 words, I wrote well over half the material. My collaborators authored large portions of their assigned sections; in roughly a month-and-a-half’s time, I finished the rest.

The Book of Mirrors was a huge undertaking. It took longer, and ran longer, than anyone expected, but in the end I feel it was worth it. That damn title, unfortunately, kept the book from selling as well as it would have otherwise. Like I said, the title fit; still, creativity must sometimes bow to commerce, and that’s a lesson worth learning for anyone in the field.

As far as other great books for Game Masters, I heartily recommend Robin’s Laws of Good Gaming by Robin Laws; Love Beyond Death by Jennifer Hartshorn, Harry Heckel and myself; and Strike Force by Aaron Allston. Robin’s book is probably the best of the lot; Aaron’s is dated, but it’s a classic that set the tone for much of my own work. As for Love Beyond Death, it shows just how far ahead of the curve Jennifer’s vision was. Without the Wraith-specific scenarios, it’s still a great guide to managing the trickier elements of roleplaying games.


Q: This question comes from a great friend of mine, Bachelor of Literature Pedro Fuscaldo: Sometimes, Mage seems like more “just a game.” It has messages between the lines, and that’s what makes it the fantastic game that it is.

In some White Wolf books, we find quotes from Joseph Campbell; in your books, we see real explanations of Campbell's ideas. Those who know only the theme of Campbell's books (or, more often, just their titles) picture the Hero’s Journey in terms of a “black and white” Manichean duality. As someone who has studied literature, however, I recognize that Mage is all about the “gray area” – the idea that there are no “right” points of view, only multiple perspectives – rather than the simplistic popular concept of “Good vs Evil.” Now, Campbell used the myth of Icarus to exemplify the relationship between the aspirations of science (Icarus) and the ideals of scientific achievement (Daedalus). Would the Deadalus figure, as proposed by Campbell, be one of the “answers” for the conflict within Mage, both for its Traditions and the Technocracy?

First of all… thank you, Pedro! You are absolutely right – I worked many layers of meaning into Mage, and into Deliria and my other projects as well. Simplistic things and easy answers just don’t interest me at all (which is probably obvious to anyone reading this interview…). Mage, in particular, was complex by default – that’s one of the things I enjoyed about it. Fantasy makes a wonderful platform for ideas, and I’ve often said that if I created something that DIDN’T look like some kind of thematic onion, then I wouldn’t have done my job right!

I’ve already mentioned how the work of Joseph Campbell led directly to my work on Mage. Although good old Joe was a product of his time (which is to say, he was an Edwardian academic whose spiritual vision was essentially one big boys’ club), his insight into common mystic themes galvanized a lot of things that had been running around in my head at the time. His challenge to “follow your bliss” was exactly what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it, and I took it very much to heart.

As for Daedalus and Icarus, once again you’re correct. I used that myth throughout the series, even naming our Renaissance Technomancers “Daedaleans” and having the Hermetic mages call them “Icari” for spite. The Classical Greek idea of hubris (the fatal pride that killed Icarus and robbed Daedalus of his son) was part of my original outline even before I got the job. Later, I made hubris into a central element of my “magical Path” concept, adding mythic weight to our postmodern antics.  

As you’ve probably noticed, I used the Hero’s Journey as a model for a mage’s journey from Sleep to transcendence. That symbolic and spiritual Path is not only a reflection of real-life mystic practices, but a story-guide for Mage players, their characters, and the Storytellers who manage their adventures. Rather than simply give a bunch of powers to people and tell them, “Hey, kids – messing with Reality is fun!” I preferred to present an authentic magical “road map” of the perils and rewards of power. As any true mystic will tell you, power for its own sake is a trap; to reach beyond your limitations, you must abandon the desire for power or be destroyed by it instead. This gave Mage a philosophical, even spiritual, center that it originally lacked; it also provided a framework for Mage Chronicles that went beyond, “Kick Technomancer ass, and then repeat as necessary.”

(Phil’s Note: I had to paraphrase the original question in order to answer it. I hope I understood the question correctly, and if I mangled or misunderstood your question, Pedro, I apologize.)


Q: Mage: The Ascension is a huge game with almost infinite possibilities. One of the elements some fans never felt secure about using is Hubris. What did you guys have in mind when designing this element of the game, and how do you think it turned out? Was this inspired by Robert Pirsig's Lila, or were you using the old Greek definition?

When I added hubris and Resonance to Mage in Book of Chantries, I was referring to the Classical Greek impression of hubris as overwhelming pride. With Resonance, I referred to the magical law of contagion: the idea that all things are connected and the effects of your actions spread out beyond your immediate reach, often in unexpected ways. These principles can be best understood by two simple expressions: “Don’t let things go to your head,” and “You reap what you sow.”

When I first took up the Developer position, I wanted to add some mythic heft to what was originally a very abstract, amoral system. People who study magick know that the things you do, do NOT happen without consequences. Hubris and Resonance added consequences beyond the elusive whims of Paradox, and tied those consequences into the behavior of the mage. This wasn’t just a matter of “game balance,” either – in very real ways, those principles are true to my beliefs about magick, life, and Creation as a whole.

As I mention below, the idea that magic is an extension of the mage was one of my favorite elements of Mage. Hubris and Resonance emphasized that relationship as well. Even so, I had intended hubris and Resonance to be story elements, not game systems. As far as I was concerned, Mage was complicated enough already! In Sorcerers Crusade, I used those ideas as the foundations for the Scourge; even then, though, I avoided adding more traits to a complicated system. Later, in Mage Revised, they were added anyway. That wasn’t my call, though, and in my opinion it was overkill.


Q: How do you see Mage 1st Edition as opposed to Sorcerers Crusade, Mage 2nd Edition and Mage Revised? Could you define their history in few words like: "Mage 1st: Reality Warper," and "Mage 2nd: Oscillating Wildly Between Epic External Conflicts and Faith-Crushing Internal Ones"?

Heh – I like your descriptions! :)

Well, Mage 1st Edition set the pace for us. Nothing else could have happened without it. That book presented many of the game’s core concepts – the Ascension War, the Spheres, the idea of improvisational magick as an extension of the mage’s will, and so forth.

For me, that final element was greatest idea to come out of that book; until Mage 1st Edition, “magic” in roleplaying games was defined as a set of rigidly defined effects that helped a magic-user either wreck shit or keep shit from being wrecked. Books were filled with lists of spells, but there wasn’t much that was truly “magical” about them. Despite absurd claims that roleplaying games contained occult instructions, previous magic systems were mathematical superpowers that clearly showed their wargame roots. Mage 1st Edition changed that. To me, the most exciting element of Mage was its idea that MAGICK IS AN EXTENSION OF THE MAGE. That element of creativity was truly magical, and although it presented many challenges for the game itself, it was also the core of its brilliance.

That said, it drove me utterly batshit. Mage 1st Edition was a mess. Its rules didn’t work. Its text rambled, repeated and contradicted itself in all the wrong places. Most core concepts had no explanation, or were explained in columns of pretentious metaphysics. There was no sense of history behind the factions, nor much of a human element at all. Beyond a vague theme of “science is BAD!” there was no metaplot to speak of. Without myth, there is no magic, and despite its metaphysical tone, the original rulebook lacked a sense of mysticism. Mage 1st Edition offered up grand ideas, but as Ken Cliffe told me, not even its creators knew what to do with them.

That became my job. So long as I didn’t throw the rulebook and setting out completely, I could do whatever I wanted or needed to do in order to make the line succeed. Thankfully, the large gaps in Mage 1st Edition gave me and my collaborators plenty of room to move. We could not have created that complex, fascinating world if we’d been constrained by an existing backstory, and so many of Mage 1st Edition’s flaws worked to our advantage.

Mage 1st Edition’s tagline was “Truth until Paradox.” When working on 2nd Edition, I asked Stewart what he’d meant by that. “I don’t remember,” he told me. “I think it just sounded neat.” That, in a nutshell, is Mage 1st Edition: a cool concept that did not yet make sense.

Mage 2nd Edition’s tagline was simpler: “Pride. Power. Paradox.” In three words, that summed up my approach to the game. First edition was metaphysical; second edition was personal. No matter how wild his adventures might become, the core of a mage’s world was the mage himself.
 
Like Werewolf 2nd Edition, Mage 2nd Edition took a deeply flawed, if brilliant, beginning and then realized its potential. We fixed the rules, united the setting, fleshed out the ratty bones and worked in two years’ worth of supplements in order to bring the game to life. Beyond those changes, however, I made sure that Mage 2nd Edition remained personal. From Kathy’s opening story to the “human touch” we used throughout the rules descriptions, that book reflects the passion behind the power. My theme throughout Mage, most especially in that second-edition rulebook, was this: “If you attained the power of a god, what would you do with it… and what would IT do with YOU?”

(In between those first and second edition rulebooks, I used The Book of Shadows as a sort of Mage 1.5. Many of the changes made “official” in Mage 2nd Edition appeared first in that supplement. After 2nd Edition came out, The Book of Shadows became obsolete; I wanted to create a second edition Players Guide, but that didn’t happen during my management of the line.)

Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade remains my proudest achievement in the gaming field. Taglined “Magick, Faith and Science,” it reflected the volatile world of the Renaissance, a period that shares many similarities with our own time. It was an exhausting project to assemble; Chapter II broke three authors of historical fiction before Kenneth Hite managed to strike the proper balance between history text, historical fiction and game sourcebook. I gathered experts from across the western hemisphere to check our facts and assemble our lore. All told, Sorcerers Crusade demanded almost two years of work, perhaps more. To this day, there’s very little about it I would change. Despite occasional criticism that I’d created a swashbuckling historic fantasy, not an “authentic” historical fiction, Sorcerers Crusade is exactly what I wanted it to be. My only real regret is that we never really got to explore the line’s potential. Although nine Sorcerers Crusade books were released (one of them, Witches and Pagans, on PDF), plus Bygone Bestiary as a tenth, I had over two dozen books planned for the line at the time of its release. I wish we’d gotten to create them. Sadly, circumstances dictated otherwise.

(For the record, those never-written supplements included a “Lodge War” campaign book; a witch-hunt campaign book; a “Crays and Chantries” project; a Skyriggers-in-space sourcebook; a religions-of-the-Renaissance guide; a Camarilla crossover; sourcebooks for the Middle East, Far East, African Empires and the Americas; and “handbooks” for healers, alchemists, explorers, Masons and more. Oh, well – maybe they’ll come into being in some other world. I can’t create them in this world, as I don’t own the rights to Sorcerers Crusade and don’t have the funds to buy them even if they were for sale… which as far as I know, they’re not.)

I’ll deal with Mage Revised in our next installment. Honestly, I was not a part of that book, so I couldn’t tell you what was going on. By my understanding, Jesse was given a set of parameters and ideas by people who weren’t familiar with Mage, and then told to “make it so.” If that account is accurate, it explains a lot about that revision and its related controversies.


Q: You gained a lot of respect from me in your Author Notes for Infernalism: The Path of Screams. There, you wrote about the craft of being a fantasy roleplaying game writer, the risk of being confused with some kind of fanatic, and the need to write certain things in order to get paid. Those notes granted me a clearer view (less fantastic, yet fascinating) of your profession. Nevertheless, your work on certain books, such as Infernalism and the second edition of Order of Hermes, seems much more realistic than your work on others. Why is that?

Thanks. Infernalism was a challenging book for me, not because it was hard to write, but because it was so easy to get into that mindset. (My then-recent departure from White Wolf had something to do with that, I suppose…) I had always said I would never do a Nephandi Players Guide, and although that book was distinctly and deliberately NOT oriented toward player characters, I knew that some people would consider it one anyway. (Naturally, some folks did; I’m still catching flack about that, over ten years after the book appeared.)

Why had I refused to create a Nephandi Players Guide? Because black magic is real. People practice it – I’ve met some of them, I don’t like them, and I didn’t want to encourage people to join them. I understood the Fallen from a philosophical and metaphysical point of view, but I did not want to endorse them. When you create a roleplaying game, you essentially tell people, “You’re a [FILL IN THE BLANK] – ain’t it COOL?!?” I don’t think malignant occultism is cool. I have seen its effects first-hand, and whether or not you believe in “real magic,” it’s impossible to dismiss the effects such practices have on people’s minds.

So why did I write Infernalism? Because I knew that if I didn’t, someone else would. Someone who probably wouldn’t be as cautious, and yet authentic, about its presentation. Someone who might turn it into either crude booga-booga junk, make the Path of Screams seem appealing, or perhaps even worse. When you want something done right, do it yourself. So I did. And yeah – I got paid a decent amount of money for it, too. By doing the book properly, I earned it.  

With Mage, I always strove to be authentically magical in essence without turning the game into a series of occult textbooks. For me, that meant capturing the essence of mysticism without trying to present “real magic lore.” I refused to do that, too – both because I felt it would be irresponsible to put such things into a game, and because I don’t believe there’s “one real way” toward anything. Hell, priests and magicians have been arguing over the “right” path to God or magic for millennia, and Mage was in many levels a satire of that belief. There were practical concerns involved as well; if you tried to put “real occult spellwork” into a game, the rulebooks would look like phonebooks… and even then, you couldn’t even scratch the surface of real magical practices in our world, much less detail imaginary ones as well.

(Also, as a sidenote, real occult texts are usually incoherent and inevitably boring. Try reading Crowley sometime and you’ll see what I mean. And let’s not even get started on the subject of offending people because your take on a magical practice isn’t their take on that magical practice…)

Even so, I tried to capture the essence, history and elements of real practices without getting too specific. Most times, I did okay; occasionally, as with the original Akashic Brotherhood book, I blew it spectacularly. In the early days, I was just trying to meet my deadlines and make the system work; later, I strove to be authentic. I learned more about our subjects, got better sources, employed more educated authors (like James Estes and J. Porter Wiseman), and fact-checked my authors better than I had on earlier books. The culmination of that progress was Sorcerers Crusade; for that line, I had over a dozen experts checking everything from my Chinese terminology to my descriptions of Renaissance cooking. That level of detail, however, demanded time and effort. As my standards rose, my energy burned out.

TO BE CONTINUED…

(Next time up, we’ll explore the Revised Edition controversy, the Mage legacy, and the collaborators who left their mark on Mage.)

Y’all come back soon, y’hear! :)

Welcome back to our five-part interview with Phil Brucato, also known as “SatyrPhil Brucato,” “Satyrblade” and simply “Satyr.” Part I dealt with his early career. The next three portions cover his most famous work to date: Phil’s tenure with White Wolf Game Studios, which ran from 1992 to 2000, with several additional projects since then.

Although his work on the original World of Darkness (or oWoD) line included design and writing contributions on every line, Phil is known best as the co-creator, primary author and Line Editor (also called Line Developer) for Mage: The Ascension and Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade. This portion of the interview focuses primary on Phil’s early days with the company, as well as the concepts and characters of Mage.
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Good question! I’ve sometimes wondered that myself. Seriously, there was a strange alchemy of effort, timing, risk, connection, chance, affinity for the line, and perhaps something even more than that involved. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call the whole thing an act of magick in itself!

To start with, I went to college with Bill Bridges (the original Line Developer for Werewolf: The Apocalypse), his brother John, and our friend Daniel Greenberg. Dan co-founded our campus roleplaying club, Gamesmasters, a year or so before we arrived there at Virginia Commonwealth University. I met Bill, John and Daniel in 1983, and met Dan’s younger brother Andrew sometime after that. Bill, John and I gamed together throughout college, and I lived with Bill for several years while we were in school together (1983-1987).

In 1990, Andrew and Dan got involved in the formation of White Wolf Game Studio. Andrew became the Line Developer for Vampire: The Masquerade in 1991, and he invited Bill to start writing for that line. By then, I had begun writing professionally myself (see Part I of this interview). The following year, Bill joined White Wolf’s staff to manage Werewolf. I reminded him that I was a professional author, and he hired me to contribute to Book of the Wyrm and Valkenburg Foundation. Bill liked my work; I liked writing for White Wolf. By the spring of 1993, I had contributed to half-a-dozen books, including the first-edition Werewolf Players Guide, for which I had – with help from my then-wife Cathi Jones – created the Bastet werecats.

By that time, my life was a mess. The details aren’t important, but I needed to make major changes. With the paycheck from Werewolf Players Guide, I took a trip to San Francisco to visit my college girlfriend and longtime gaming buddy Jennifer Starling and her then-boyfriend Ryck. With help from our mutual friend Sam Shirley – another VCU Gamesmasters veteran who was working with Chaosium in those days – I embarked on a short but powerful visonquest in the Bay Area. Through that journey, I realized that my life as I understood it then had to “die” so that I could move on to a better stage. I went home to Richmond feeling frightened and depressed. Cathi and I started fighting again within hours of my return, and I knew I had to do something drastic in order to change my life.
 
Around that time, White Wolf was struggling to produce the original rulebook for Mage: The Ascension. Again, the details aren’t important, nor could I give you an accurate account of them. In any case, the project was in danger. Several members of the Mage team held a vigil and asked for guidance with Mage’s future. As I understand it, that vigil occurred the same weekend I was doing my visionquest in San Francisco. When I went down to White Wolf a few weeks later for an interview, Sam Chupp (the leader of that vigil) looked at me and said, “You’re him. You’re the one we asked for.”

Between that visionquest and my interview, I took a very hard look at where I was, who I was, and what I needed to do to change those things. Around that time, I had been listening to recordings of the Power of Myth interview series between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell. I’d also been contracted to write a Technocracy sourcebook for Mage… but Mage wasn’t finished yet, and no one could tell me what I was supposed to write. Bill mentioned that they didn’t even know who was going to manage the line when they were done with it. Finally, I told him: “I want the job.”

So I applied. Had the interview. Met the staff. Got the manuscript. In three days, I read it and wrote a long evaluation of the game’s pros and cons, said what I would do as the Line Developer, presented a series of potential supplements (most of were later produced), and offered an outline for the first Technocracy sourcebook, Progenitors.

Three or four weeks later – and four or five days before GenCon ’93 began – I got the call. I was hired.

Roughly 72 hours later, I was in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Ken Cliffe, the manager of our Editing & Development department, handed me the first copy of Mage to arrive from the press. “It’s all yours,” he said. “We don’t have the slightest idea what to do with it.”

Within less than an hour after that, I was on the phone with Steve Brown, talking him out of quitting his work on Book of Chantries. Like me, he had received a contract and a deadline, but had no idea what he was supposed to write. With Steve’s notes as a guideline, we essentially made the book up off the top of our heads. Over the next few hours, I met my new White Wolf family – especially my soon-to-be roommates Kathleen Ryan and Brian Campbell, both of whom had been instrumental in Mage’s creation. We packed the trucks and I bundled into Kathy’s car for the long ride to GenCon.

Kathy and I debated magic, music, metaphysics, philosophy, spirituality, pop culture and almost everything else we could think of for the next 12 hours or so… which says a lot about the brilliant and often volatile chemistry she and I brought to our collaborations on Mage.

By that time, the first edition Mage Storyteller’s Screen had gone to press. The wild space battle painted across its front looked nothing like Mage as it was portrayed in the rulebook, and even less like the line I planned to run. Throwing away an existing list of suggested supplements, I remade the product schedule from scratch and began talking to prospective authors at GenCon during the week of Mage’s release. That week was one of the busiest times of my life… and the pace didn’t let up for almost five years beyond that!

I’ll talk more about this subject later, but it’s worth noting here: From the beginning, I was given almost total creative freedom with Mage. Although many folks had suggestions for books they thought I should do, no one ever forced me to do a project if I didn’t want to do it. This says a lot about the atmosphere at White Wolf during those days, and I remain grateful to Ken Cliffe, Mark Rein●Hagen, and most especially Steve and Stewart Wieck for offering me the free rein I had with the line.

Bill Bridges, Andrew Greenberg, Sam Chupp, Kathy Ryan, Brian Campbell, Rob Hatch, Travis Williams and Richard Thomas also deserve a lot of credit there as well. When I was worried about what to do, when I felt overwhelmed with the enormity of the task, when people wondered if I could handle Mage after all, those people, and others (notably Rebecca Schaefer, William Spencer Hale, Dan Greenberg, and Lyndi and Darren McKeeman) gave me confidence, support and endless hours of help. As I soon discovered, managing a line of books is a titanic amount of work. I could not have accomplished it without a huge degree of assistance and the free hand I was given with the line.

Between Autumn 1993 and Autumn 1999, I produced approximately a project a month for Mage and its associated lines (Sorcerers Crusade and World of Darkness). I wrote for all the other lines as well, most notably Werewolf, Changeling and Vampire: The Dark Ages. After the first-edition rulebook and Storyteller’s Screen, each Mage book was my baby. Although two other supplements were in progress by the time I got the job (Loom of Fate and Book of Chantries), every book in the line began with my outline and ended with my development work – an element I call “Frankensteining,” wherein all the pieces of the book are cobbled together into their final form. This element alone usually involved between 5000 and 50,000 words worth of writing on my end… sometimes, as in Sorcerers Crusade and Mage 2nd Edition, far more than that. Although I formally left White Wolf’s in-house staff at the end of 1998, my work on the line continued in collaboration with Jesse Heinig until Guide to the Technocracy was finished in late 1999. 

So, as a short answer to that question: I was hired to manage Mage because I was an established professional writer who knew the right people at the right time and turned out to be the right person for the job. By then, I had already proven myself with White Wolf and showed how hard I was willing to work to get and keep that position. My background and personality wound up being the perfect match for Mage, and thanks to the creative freedom I was given, I remained enthusiastic about it to the end. Although I wound up burning out from the amount of work and passion involved with that job, for over five years Mage and I exactly what one another needed.


Q: Regarding the metaplot and metaphysics of game lines: In Mage 2nd Edition, the various game lines (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, etc.) seemed more closely related to each other than they had been in their first editions. Later on, I’ve noticed, the lines grew more distant from one another again. Is that correct?

Pretty much. When the World of Darkness was originally created, each game line was supposed to be a stand-alone series. Vampires, werewolves and so forth existed in the same world, but each series was intended to reflect the viewpoint of its title creature (vampires, werewolves, mages and so forth), not to support a unified setting. Mage reflected the world of mages, for example, not werewolves. In those first editions, the games didn’t even share the same system – the rules worked slightly different for each line!

Shortly after Mage came out, Bill, Andrew and I decided that we needed to unify the systems. Players, we had noticed, liked to drop a Garou into their vampire group, and then add a Hermetic mage or two. We decided that all the lines should have the same rules, and so Bill worked closely with Andrew to make Werewolf 2nd Edition’s rules consistent with Vampire 2nd Edition. We did the same thing with Wraith from the beginning, making it the first truly “crossover-friendly” first-edition rulebook. Soon afterward, I followed Bill’s example, adding a few refinements to Mage 2nd Edition that became more or less the template for the rulebooks after that.

(Market forces messed things up when we designed Changeling’s first-edition rules. At the time, Collectable Card Games dominated the game market, and several of our distributors refused to stock Changeling unless it included a Collectable Card Game feature! This wound up being a really bad idea, and that system was junked for Changeling 2nd Edition, which was released after the CCG boom had busted.)

Even with that unity, though, we wanted – often over the objections from our players! – to keep the lines thematically separate. Each series contained ideas and elements that didn’t fit in with the other lines, and each supernatural “critter” had a different perception of their world. We didn’t think that creatures of the night should know much about their fellow creatures, and so we shrouded our books in deliberate misdirection and thematic conflict. After all, a mage (and her player) would be more likely to be intimidated by a ten-foot-tall shaggy clawed horror than by a 3rd-rank Bone Gnawer Ragabash dedicated to fighting against the Wyrm! When you know too much, you fear too little.

Later, we felt that the World of Darkness had become too “chummy.” Everyone, it seemed, had HIT Marks hanging around with Brujah antitribu, unseelie satyrs, Simba werelions and the occasional mummy. (The poor wraiths wound up getting left out in the cold…again!) In an effort to return mystery to the World of Darkness, the core line developers at that time – Rob Hatch and Justin Achilli (Vampire), Ethan Skemp (Werewolf), Rich Dansky (Wraith and Dark Ages), Ian Lemke (Changeling) and myself – worked to emphasize the alien nature of our critters. The third edition “revised” books were supposed to employ the same rules systems, but eliminate that “world-wide monster party” atmosphere. I don’t think they were terribly successful at that, though… but then, when Mage’s “revised” edition was created, I wasn’t involved anyway. By the time I left white wolf, the other original Line Developers were all gone and the original sense of creative freedom and control had left with us. Sales & Marketing decided to blend the metaplots together, and personally I feel a lot of mistakes were made in the process.


Q: So when it came down to choosing between the metaplot (that is, the background story behind the World of Darkness) and something I call "the essence of the game” (that is, the personality of the individual game lines), I think you often chose to follow the essence of Mage. Am I right?

Yes. To me, Mage was a very personal game. The series reflected a lot of my own beliefs, including my assertion that “reality” is what you perceive it to be and that everyone perceives it differently. I deliberately loaded the metaplot with contradictions: Was the Technocracy evil incarnate, were Technocrats our misguided saviors, or did they happen to have the right idea even if they went about things the wrong way? Was Porthos insane, or did he have the clearest vision of them all? Did the Traditions and Technocracy share a common history that went back to ancient Egypt, or were they metaphysical opposites that could never reconcile? And what the hell was Rasputin, anyway? (Yes – Rasputin, the poor guy, was our intentional in-house joke.) My “Mage gospel” – spelled out across the series – was that everyone is both right and wrong, and that the “enlightened Truth of Reality” appears when you’re enlightened enough to stop trying to figure out what “real truth” is!

Mage’s complex metaplots wove their way through every book in the series. Each of them reflected certain themes within the game. The Nephandic corruption within the Technocracy, and Project Invictus’s secret struggle against it, reflected the mixed potential of technology. The madness of Archmage Porthos reflected the mind-bending possibilities of knowing and caring too much. The streetwise antics of Bitch Queen Vannoy reflected my hatred for authority, while Jennifer Rollins (my own personal Mage character) refused to choose sides with anyone. The House of Helekar, the Horizon War, Jodie Blake and Kathy’s Amanda saga… they all had thematic significance within Mage.

At the same time, I resisted the idea that a Mage group HAD to include the backstory in their games at all. As far as I was concerned, you could even junk the Ascension War itself so long as you had a powerful conflict dynamic driving your Chronicle. In my “official” capacity as Line Developer, I told people to change, scrap or ignore any element in Mage that didn’t fit in with the game they wanted to play. Yes, I’d said, there is an “official” backstory, but you’re not forced to observe it yourselves.

Dark as it was – and yeah, Mage could get quite dark! – Ascension was the most optimistic World of Darkness series. Essentially, I told every player that it was their destiny to help change the world… and gave them the power to do so! This, obviously, ran totally contrary to the gloomy perspective of werewolves and vampires, for whom The End Of All Things™ was literally breathing down their necks. Wraiths were obviously damned, changelings were losing their magic, but mages had the ability to transcend it all… if and when they got their heads out of their collective ass! This was a comment of my own about the human condition as a whole.


Q: Even so, Changeling and Mage (especially Sorcerers Crusade) always seemed like "sister game lines” to me, unaffected by the distance between the others. How true is this impression?

Funny – I always felt closest to Werewolf, myself. I guess Mage and Changeling employed a lot of the same “subjective reality” ideas, and both focused on personal enchantment.

There was certainly a lot of dramatic crossover, especially in books like Isle of the Mighty and the Immortal Eyes series. That, however, was due more to the involvement of Mage/ Changeling authors Nicky Rea, Jackie Cassada, Deena McKinney, Angel Leigh McCoy and Wayne Peacock than it was to collaboration between Ian and myself. Although I wrote the original Kith section in Changeling 1st Edition, and most of the material dealing with satyrs up until the Kithbook itself, I didn’t deal much with Changeling beyond that. Yes, I adopted my “Satyr” nickname by way of Changeling (as detailed in Part V), but was never that fond of the line as a whole. Personally, I prefer the new Changeling: The Lost, which I feel is a much stronger approach to the material and remains one of White Wolf’s finest releases ever.


Q: Can you tell us how much creative freedom you had with Mage? Did Mark Rein•Hagen dictate any restrictions on the process?

Not at all. I had near-total creative freedom from my first Mage book to my last. Mark left the line utterly alone, and was very supportive of my work on it.

The real gift came by way of Stewart and Steve Wieck; the original creators of Mage let me run free with their brainchild. After a brief discussion following my first two books, they both left Mage entirely to me. Although I had differences with them during my later years at the Wolf, Stewart and Steve trusted my vision of the line. I like to think I made that trust worthwhile.

The closest thing to “upper office interference” I experienced on Mage involved the Samuel Haight crossover series. Andrew, Bill and I were each supposed to do a supplement featuring Sam’s rise and fall. Chaos Factor was not a book I would have done on my own initiative, and it remains my least-favorite entry in the line. Jim Moore and I did what we could to make an awkward premise work, but we were all pretty sick of ol’ Sam by that point and it was our great pleasure to kill the bastard off at last.


Q: One of the things that always appealed me about the WoD was its resemblance to the works of Neil Gaiman. Do you know him? Do you know if he’s familiar with your works? If so, which ones?
 
Oh, yeah. Neil and I met back in the mid-1990s, when White Wolf published his book The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish. I had already been a fan of his Sandman work, which I encountered shortly after the series first appeared. Yes, his work influenced our own, and although we never did “the Sandman supplement,” almost everyone in White Wolf was fond of Neil’s storytelling. 

He and I first met, as I remember, at Dragoncon ’95 or ‘96. Afterward, Kathy Ryan gave him a copy of Mage 2nd Edition. Neil soon showed just how cool a person he is by sending Kathy a fan letter for her work on the book. She literally bounced down the hall on her toes that day, holding the note and yelping, “NEIL GAIMAN SENT ME A FAN LETTER! NEIL GAIMAN SENT ME A FAN LETTER!”

Although I didn’t get a fan letter from Neil for Mage myself, I recently got something even better. Last year, my partner Sandi Buskirk and I put together a benefit anthology called Ravens in the Library. (See Part V for details.) Neil was one of the first people to contribute a story to it, and his name helped us attract a ton of customers and contributors. He also floored my friend Angel Leigh McCoy by not only greeting her but recognizing her work when I introduced them at World HorrorCon in 1999 or 2000. Neil, in my experience, has always been a stand-up guy. He is gracious, funny, and one hell of a nice dude.


Q: From your “Satyr” nickname, and from some of your other works, I assume that – of all the Nine Traditions within the original Mage series – you're most aligned with the Cult of Ecstasy. I also saw Jesse Heinig’s work on the Mage series, and I had noticed that he also had a special way of writing in the voice of Cultist characters. Why is that? Did the Cult provide appealing characters for the developers to write? Is this affinity for the Cult a result of the group’s seductive nature, or even the strong influence of Robert Pirsig within the game?

*virtual laughter* Well, I suppose that any group composed of tripped-out sex shamans is going to be fun to write about!

Personally, I didn’t find Pirsig’s Lila to be especially “ecstatic.” Aside from some interesting philosophical and metaphysical ideas – most especially the idea that dynamic “outlaws” break the rules so that mainstream society can avoid stagnation – I found the book dull, pedantic, repetitious and poorly written. (Some folks, of course, have also applied the same criticisms to Mage…) Pirsig’s ideas certainly inspired core concepts within the line, but he wasn’t an especially strong an influence beyond that.

The CoE seemed to puzzle its original authors. Mage 1st Edition portrays the Cult as a pack of disreputable stoners, too hung up on their “vices” to be worth much to anyone. I disagreed with that impression. When I decided to use The Book of Shadows as a sort of Mage 1.5 and “reboot” certain groups that needed redefinition, the Cult, Verbena and Euthanatos were at the top of that list. Dan Greenberg and I collaborated on a section in that book that gave the CoE a foundation in real-life metaphysics. In a way, that entry recalled our days at Virginia Commonwealth University, during which our group of friends often tripped on various substances and debated the nature of existence through lenses of Chaos Theory, Aleister Crowley, H.P Lovecraft and Robert Anton Wilson. (This explains a lot about Mage in general, by the way; although Bill Bridges avoided the drugs, he was very much a part of that scene.) To Dan’s philosophical approach, I added my own mystic experientialism; together, we gave the Cult a vibrant cool validity. When I wound up writing the Tradition book two years later, I realized that I’d been one of them all along.

For all intents and purposes, I am a Cultist of Ecstasy. Large chunks of the original 1996 Tradition book were drawn from my own experiences and beliefs. I love camping, dance, music and sex. I’d studied Tantra for years before that book was written, and have explored it a great deal more since then. Although I’ve never been a big fan of drugs, I’ve used psychotropics in ritual and recreational situations; the past/ present/ future narrative device was based on an experience I had while stoned in college, during which I remembered what I had done as I was doing it, noticed what I was doing while I was doing it, and thought about what I was about to do as I was in the process of doing it – a state of mind you might have to be stoned to even understand! The sex-club scene was set in a club I went to almost every weekend, and the “desert festival” climax was based on my trip to Burning Man several months before I wrote that book. Cult of Ecstasy was written in slightly over two weeks, and remains one of the most personal works I’ve authored.

On some levels, Cult of Ecstasy was a self-fulfilling prophecy. At the time I wrote it, I was working too hard to have much of a life beyond nightclubbing and the occasional camping trip. I wanted to hit the road and live by my wits, something I wound up doing a few years later, in part because I had already taken that journey in the book. To this day, I relate deeply with poor Cassie, who’s ready to jump out of her skin but scared of what will happen when she does. Since high school, my idols have included Jim Morrison, Isadora Duncan, Janis Joplin and Henry Rollins – people who’ve lived with such intensity that, in all but one case, it consumed them. (Rollins, bliss him, is still around.) I’m fascinated by what such people do, and have spent most of my adult life trying to burn brightly without setting everything on fire. And like any good Ecstatic, I try to illuminate everyone else’s world in the process.

(As for Jesse, I couldn’t give you an accurate answer. He is not, to my knowledge, much of an Ecstatic himself – he certainly wasn’t when we lived in Atlanta! Jesse’s “Tradition” was the Akashic Brotherhood. Back then, he was a martial artist with a solid code of honor and a straight-edge approach to life. I don’t even recall him drinking alcohol, much less anything else! I suspect that Jesse either channeled his wild side when he was writing Ecstatic characters, or had some other author write those sections.)

So yeah – if you asked me, “What world of Darkness character are you?” the most accurate answer, for better and worse, would be “A Cultist of Ecstasy hanging out with the satyrs and trying to get the Black Furies to chill!”


Q: Your character Porthos Fitz-Empress is quite popular among us. He's a mad and powerful man. I love the history behind the characters of Heylel and Akrites, too. So, who are your favorite characters from Mage? From the other World of Darkness series? In general? And why do you like them so much?

Thanks. Porthos remains one of my favorites, too. Rather unintentionally, he became one of my “mouthpiece” characters – those characters I used when I wanted to make a statement about Mage’s world through the voice of someone living in it. The mouthpiece characters presented an essential design choice of mine: I chose to make Mage more intense by showing the world through the perspective of the people living in it. With something as complex as Mage, it’s way too easy to get lost in abstract esoterica. I wanted to make Mage passionate and immediate. I wanted it to MATTER. And so I let the characters speak for themselves, and used their collective voice as a dramatic device throughout the line.

Porthos originated, as so many things in Mage’s setting did, in the frantic rush to write Book of Chantries. As I mentioned earlier, Steve Brown and I wrote that book (with help from Kathy Ryan, Jim Moore and Rob Hatch) in slightly over two months. Steve and I hashed out a skeleton for the book’s contents, and then fleshed it out. Steve created a dizzying array of places and characters; I detailed them, presenting my view of Mage’s dark mystical world. We didn’t have time to think about things very much; like Cult of Ecstasy and many other White Wolf books of that period, Chantries rushed out of us in an almost stream-of-consciousness fashion. Rob Hatch added a few flourishes (the Kali aspect of Voormas, for example, came from him), Jim Moore brought in Samuel Haight, and Kathy Ryan and I decided to make Amanda’s ongoing adventures a permanent feature of the “Book of Whatever” supplements. The result is a beautifully messy book from which we borrowed extensively for the next six years.

Porthos began as just another batty archmage; as I recall, Steve wrote the elements involving his lost family and his sleepwalking, and I expanded on his madness. The way I figured it, anyone as old, as powerful and as wracked with tragedy and intrigue as Porthos was must be fundamentally insane. Even so, he’s one of the good guys. When writing about him, I approached the character as an actor would, looking for his personal motivations and obstacles. Before I knew it, Porthos became one of my mouthpiece characters.

A year or so later, Porthos provided the obvious focus for The Fragile Path. Again like an actor, I got inside his head, assumed his “voice,” and moved him to the center-left stage of Mage’s backstory. Later, when I created Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade, a much younger Porthos was supposed to be a major figure in the setting; sadly, we never got to do many of the things I had wanted to do with that line. And when Bob Weinberg started the Ascension Warrior trilogy, I insisted that Porthos had to die, defending the main characters, protecting Creation from the worst effects of Dossietep’s destruction, and heroically resolving his long, tormented life.

Heylel emerged from many long discussions between Jim Moore and myself. Unlike Book of Chantries, The Fragile Path involved a long and deliberate process. We thought out almost every element of that book in advance, and each collaborator shared his or her thoughts about the characters and their relationships. I’ll go into more details about that book in this interview’s next installment; we realized, though, that the story needed a villain, and Heylel assumed that role.

In a world where everybody has their own version of reality, nothing is simple. One of the key themes in Mage is that everyone is the hero in his or her own story. What, then, would make our villain heroic? Jim and I wanted to make Heylel a villain of Shakespearean scope… and so we went, of course, to Shakespeare himself. Heylel was inspired, in part, by Edmund in King Lear, Macbeth in “The Scottish Play,” and Iago in Othello. I drew heavily on Edmund’s “stand up for bastards” speech in Lear when establishing Heylel’s motivations. Jim provided the element of love – love for Eloine, love for Akrites, even love for the Traditions themselves. I think it was Jim’s idea to make Heylel an alchemist, and mine to make the character a hermaphrodite. In alchemy, a hermaphrodite is a symbolically perfect being – an equal unity of male and female; in the human world, a hermaphrodite is a freak, part of neither world. It was that essential paradox – the perfectly imperfect being – that became the core of Heylel’s character, and the core of The Fragile Path itself. Heylel literally embodied the state of being a mage in Mage’s world: part of two worlds (mortal and Awakened), larger than both and at odds with both, perfect in theory but fallible in reality, balanced yet perpetually out of balance. In many ways, Heylel and Porthos were the centerpieces of my take on Mage: titanic figures of awesome yet tragic power, elevated by their vision and yet damned by their humanity.
 
For Heylel’s last testament, Jim wrote what I feel is one of the strongest pieces of writing ever to appear in Mage. I began to cry while reading it for the first time. Jim captured a brilliant sense of defiance, love and loss. We had our Shakespearean villain, and s/he remains one of my all-time favorite characters. Years later, when Bob Weinberg and I hashed out the Ascension Warrior storyline, I wanted the main villain to appear as Heylel, yet be proved as an imposter in the end. Heylel was too good a character to be cheapened by the comic-book device of endless resurrection. Sometimes, the dead must stay dead.

Akrites the Seer was almost entirely the creation of Beth Fischi. One of my favorite collaborators, Beth has a degree in Classical Literature. Combined with her marvelously complex imagination, Beth’s academic background helped her envision an educated seer who thinks too much for his own good. As I mentioned earlier, the various authors involved with The Fragile Path worked out a lot of the details pertaining to their characters and relationships, then came to me with the results. As I remember, Beth gave me a four-or five page outline of Akrites’ background, motivations, history, powers and problems. The final character appeared almost exactly as she had described him in those notes. When Bob Weinberg employed the character in his trilogy, I gave him those notes and he followed them rather faithfully. I can’t take credit for Akrites. He’s Beth’s baby to the core.

Detailed descriptions of my favorite Mage characters would double the size of this interview. The most notable ones, however, include:

-    Jennifer Rollins: When I played Mage, I played Jennifer Rollins. Originally created for Sam Chupp’s in-house Mage Chronicle, this character was named for my old girlfriend and gaming partner Jennifer Starling, and my idol Henry Rollins. Like both people, she’s full of attitude, guts and streetwise sincerity; the real-life Jennifer once confronted a pack of guys who were destroying a car during a riot; she yelled that they should be ashamed of themselves for wrecking an innocent person’s car, and they ran away!

The character was literally drawn from a Tarot deck; Sam suggested that I pull three cards to inspire my Mage character, and two out of three were female – the High Priestess, the Fool and Strength, as I recall. Over the years, I’ve made Jennifer the protagonist of my Mage comic strip “Embracing the Mask,” brought her into Wayne Peacock’s Mage saga, and dropped her into almost every Mage game I have played in or run. I love Jennifer because she refuses to choose sides. To her – and to me – all extremes are flawed. The finest path to balance runs through the middle of them all.

-    Secret Agent John Courage: The heroic Man In Black began as one of Brian Campbell’s jokes. A bunch of us were bar-hopping, and Brian suggested that we take on “secret agent code names” based on the names of various beers. Brian was Secret Agent John Courage, and that name stuck. Courage became Brian’s alter-ego, a disruptive force of heroic disorder who understood the Technocratic mission yet refused to be bound by its limitations. Courage is entirely Brian’s creation; as I recall, every appearance that character made in the series was written up by Brian.

-    Amanda: Another alter-ego, Amanda is the creation of Kathleen Ryan – in real life, a skilled martial artist. Originally appearing in Mage 1st Edition, the character – like Kathy herself – immediately won my affection and respect. We decided to use Amanda as a surrogate for Mage players, exploring the setting (and herself) through the various “Book of Whatever” supplements. A writer of profound talent, Kathy jumped through many hoops to weave Amanda’s saga throughout the Mage landscape. Despite her nickname of “Marauder Girl,” I immediately associate Kathy with Amanda, not with her other mad creations.

-    Jodi Blake: Another member of Jim Moore’s dysfunctional brood, Jodi was temptation incarnate. We used her to illustrate the pitfalls of the Awakened Path and the ultimate enlightenment that even evil can attain. Jodi knows exactly what she’s doing, she likes it, and she’s literally damned good at it. Jim crafts magnificent villains, and Jodi has always been one of my favorites.

-    Bitch Queen Vannoy: Another Book of Chantries veteran, Vannoy was my enlightened Goth kid. Steve created the Nightmare Theatre, but I created its residents. Before I joined the White Wolf crew, I used to hang out with squatters, did time in the local Punk and Metal scenes, and spent way too much time in trash-littered crash pads. I damn near wound up on the streets a few times myself, and I drew on those experiences to craft Vannoy and her Nightmare Theatre kids. I liked her attitude even as I realized that “the bitch queen” would be unspeakably annoying in real life. Among my mouthpiece characters, Vannoy was the ultimate “fuck you” to the power structures – all of them! 

There are many other great characters – Sam Chupp’s Nightshade, Kevin Andrew Murphy’s Penny Dreadful, Bill Bridges’ Doc Eon and Owl Goingback’s Walking Hawk. There are folks I created but never got to run with – Tezghul the Insane, General Windgarde, Gaspar the Alchemist and more. There are characters who appeared once or twice, but whose existence served vital purposes – Cassie, Aria and Wolf from Cult of Ecstasy; Niaoba, Star-of-Eagles, Sh’zar and the Vision-Mocker; Gericault, Heasha Morninglade… so many, really. And then there are those I scattered throughout the line – Marianna of Balador, Dr. Volcano (who originated as a Dick Tracy-style doodle back in 7th grade!), X344, Voormas and so on – whose presence made Mage feel more “real.” Like I said earlier, I wanted Mage to be personal. The setting’s huge array of characters brought the line to life.

As far as the other lines go, I wasn’t really connected with them intimately and so I didn’t build up much connection to their characters. My favorites were probably Rucksack Mary (who originally appeared in Bastet, and made a cameo at the end of World of Darkness: Changing Breeds), Black Tooth (also from Bastet) and Prince Lodin (from the Chicago Vampire saga). Interestingly enough, my first GenCon featured a funeral for Prince Lodin as a publicity stunt at our booth. I guess I like Lodin because he was a transitional figure for my time at White Wolf. I discovered him as a fan of Vampire, and saw him buried as I joined the staff myself.


Q: This question refers to one of your old Hermetic characters, Getúlio Vargas São Cristovão. I understand he claims to be quite a bit older than Getúlio, the old Brazilian president. Is that truth on the context of the plot? Why did you choose this name?

Honestly, I didn’t. I don’t remember who created that character, although I suspect it was either Steve Brown (in Book of Chantries) or Beth Fischi and Allen Varney, the authors of Horizon: Stronghold of Hope and the first-edition Order of Hermes book. As I recall, Getúlio Vargas São Cristovão appeared in those supplements. I can’t remember, though, which ones it was. Those books are all in storage now, and I haven’t looked at them in years. Sorry!


Q: What contact had you had, at that time, with Brazilian culture (mystic or otherwise)?

None whatsoever, I’m afraid. I know that Brazil has a large, vital and diverse culture and some of the most beautiful places on earth. That said, I’ve never been to Brazil, nor did I know anyone, until recently, who had been there, either. I was once invited to a Brazilian convention, but although I had wanted to attend, White Wolf sent Mark and Steve instead (see below).


Q: When I interviewed Malcolm Sheppard, he stated that the closest he had ever gotten to Brazilian culture was being kicked in the head by a "capoeirista" (a Brazilian fighter) in a fighting convention. Also, when Steve Wieck came to Brazil, he was hit by a soccer ball in a quite painful area. Is that a curse on you guys? Ha ha – just kidding! But well… have you ever been stroked, punched, or hit by any aspect of Brazilian culture?

Not yet. We may have to work on that! :)


TO BE CONTINUED…
------------------------
In the next two installments, we explore various books in the line, discuss the various collaborators on Mage, and deal with the controversial “revised version,” Mage 3rd Edition.

Come back soon and check it out!

I can barely describe my excitement after seeing Phil online and get this wonderful answers! This is the interview with Phil Brucato, dancer, musician, writer and former Laughin Pan and White Wolf developer, recognized by his great works in Mage: The Ascension, Changeling: The Dreaming Wraith: the Oblivion and Deliria/Everyday Heroes and many others!

Phil, I am sorry for my poor english and chaotic lines! Again, thank you very much!.

The portuguese translation will be done as soon as possible, but the contribution of the people from Page of Mirrors, Rogue Council and the whole community of Mage: The Ascension fans gave ground basis for a great part of it.

A tradução será feita o mais rápido possível! , mas a contribuição das pessoas da Page of Mirrors, Rogue Council e toda a comunidade de fãs de Mago a Ascensão deram base para grande parte dessa entrevista.

Enjoy!

 

Phil Brucato Interview

Part I

　

PART I: BEFORE THE WOLF

Q: Some people just happen, by nature, to be outrageously good at the craft of writing. Others reach that level by wake-dreaming so much, by placing so much effort behind their work, that they end up achieving what they wanted. I have this dream of becoming a professional fantasy writer someday. Many friends of mine have this same dream, too, and I'm sure many people get inspiration from guys like you. So what’s the history of your early days? In school, were you always recognized for your writing talent? Do you have a formal college degree in Literature or something like that? Who was "Phil" before he became famous?

Big questions, with big answers. (

In my case, I suspect my writing ability comes from a combination of natural talent; an affinity for storytelling; an innate sense of pacing and rhythm; a love of people; an appreciation of the world around me; an unusually acute (and sometimes very strange) sense of perception; a lifelong love of reading; my background in live theatre; and tons of on-the-job training.

To break that down and explain what I mean:

• Talent, Reading and an Affinity for Stories: I’ve been telling stories since I learned to speak. I also learned – in spite of my dyslexia – to read at a very young age (three years old or so). My parents used to read to me all the time as well, and so story-telling came naturally to me. My Dad has a tape of me telling him a story, and I was three or four years old at the time. Even then, I had a knack for time, rhythm and language – as well as a pretty decent vocabulary for a kid!

• Love of People: Often despite myself, I am in love with the terrible and ridiculous splendor of human beings. I adore what we can do and I’m appalled by what we so often choose to do. People fascinate me; I so often want us to be better than we are that I’m driven – in art and life – to hold up a mirror and show other folks what I see. In my audience, I strive to inspire hope, knowledge, insight, laughs, terror, sadness, and most of all wonder… because, really, that’s how I feel about us, too.

• Appreciation of the World: I have an even deeper fascination for the world around us. Nature, animals, humanity, man-made achievements, even the spiritual realm – I can’t look away from them, and rarely want to do so. I draw my Pagan spirituality from that appreciation for Creation in general. With or without human influence, we exist in an eternal miracle of Life, Death and Renewal. It’s not always kind or pretty, but it’s always impressive to me. Again, I try to get other folks to see what I see, and to appreciate it on a deeper level than we all so often do.

• Acute Perceptions: My perceptions are unusually sensitive and sometimes tricky. Especially on tactile and emotional levels, I’m told that I feel things more intensely than many people do. Occasionally, my perceptions go haywire, too – they shift, and give me "false readings" of my surroundings or circumstances. When I was a kid, this sensitivity caused me lots of problems; later, I learned to enjoy it, refine it, and deepen it. At times now, I crave really intense stimulation;jij those shifting perceptions: dyslexia and dyscalculia, two information-processing disorders that scramble the input my senses receive. 365 becomes 536 (always fun during Math class!); buried becomes burned; Nichole becomes Natalie, and the names of people I’ve known for years "lock up" in my memory. These issues force me to think carefully and methodically, to examine things more deeply, and to look for the reasons and patterns behind them. Those disorders also give me weird bursts of inspiration. My brain sometimes feeds me some pretty weird shit, and I’ve learned to turn that shit into gold (or, given my income, at least bronze).

• Live Theatre: I used to be a shy, excitable and often reclusive kid. In my teenage years, though, I got tired of spending my life in books and my room. I had always loved movies and storytelling, so in 8th Grade I gravitated toward the Drama department. The next year, I got involved in school plays – first as a stage-tech, then as an actor. Combined with my love of roleplaying games (which I’d encountered a year or two earlier), acting became my favorite thing in the world. I spent most of my free time working on school theatre projects, local theatre productions, and student video films. Through acting, I found an outlet for my imagination, a safe place to be intense, and a great way to pick up girls. (It took me a while, though, to figure out what to do with them afterward…) Later, when I started writing, I approached that craft like an actor: by getting into a character’s head, I could see and portray that character’s world. That, in turn, has been a HUGE gift for my career as a writer of roleplaying games.

Sadly, I don’t feel I had the talent to become a professional actor. After over 10 years in that field, I realized that I wasn’t enjoying it any longer. I learned how to play electric bass guitar, joined a few bands, and did some gigging; again, though, I wasn’t good enough to go far. An attempt at being a photographer went the same way; however, my stint with a local newspaper led to my first professional writing job…and THAT career has been my success.

• On-The-Job Training: As a result of the stuff I mentioned above, I’ve been involved with the creative arts since childhood. I have worked professionally in those arts since my teenage years, and you just don’t last in that field without a LOT of training, discipline and resilience. You need a sharp mind, a thick skin, and a way to sort legitimate critiques from mean-spirited attacks. As I tell my students, anyone who wants to work in the arts must maintain a strong work ethic, learn from his or her mistakes, cultivate a good critical eye, and figure out when and how to take criticism. During my time at White Wolf, I worked on around 80 books in roughly seven years, plus articles and projects for other publishers. That pace, believe me, provided tons of on-the-job training in every aspect of my arts!

As for my background as an author and editor, I never studied creative writing or literature in a formal sense. Sure, I’ve gone to lots of workshops and read dozens, if not hundreds, of books and articles on those subjects. I’ve always loved reading for its own sake, and I enjoy thinking and talking about the deeper levels of literature and film. All the same, I never wanted to pursue those subjects in school. I felt, in a way, that I would lose my love for them if I had to spend all my time with assigned reading, writing and study. I read and write because I want to do those things, not because I’m required to do them.

Yes, my talent with words was recognized early on. My father had a friend who was a professional author, and he declared that I would probably be a writer when I grew up. At the time, I was about eight years old; even then, he encouraged me to write my stories down. I had a knack, too, for making up silly (and often obscene) satires of popular songs; at times, I tried writing poems, too. I wrote two stories for my 6th-grade newspaper, but the teacher in charge told me she wouldn’t publish them because she couldn’t believe someone my age could have written them! That accusation – combined with the sheer difficulty I had with writing – soured me on writing until late high school.

Two friends of mine really deserve mention here: my classmate Stefani Olsen, and her mother Mary Olsen. When I was 16, Stef and I became friends. We both enjoyed telling stories, and she was (and still is) a fantastic writer herself. To impress her, I started writing stories, too. She and Mary encouraged me, and I found a new way to impress girls. If Stef and Mary hadn’t recognized and inspired me the way they did, I don’t know what would have happened. As it things were, writing at that time was still a very difficult thing for me.

Before personal computers came along in the 1980s, I couldn’t really have been a writer. My handwriting and spelling were terrible, my typing was slow, and I made too many errors. Writing, for me, was a deeply frustrating process. It wasn’t until after college that I actually tried to pursue writing beyond the occasional story for my friends or a literary magazine. Until I got a correctable word processor in 1988, writing was just too much work.

So yeah – when I went to college in 1983, I chose to study Theatre rather than English. "If I go for an English degree," I figured, "I’ll spend college buried in books; if I go for Theatre, I’ll get to learn and experience things I might never get a chance to experience again!" I was right, and although the English degree might have been more "practical," I’ve never regretted the things I learned in Theatre. Those skills and experiences have made me a far better writer than I might have been otherwise.

As a kid, I enjoyed reading, building models, painting little soldiers, and making up stories with plastic dinosaurs and G.I. Joes. In my early teens, I discovered Heavy Metal music, pulp fantasy, religion, and roleplaying games. My middle teen years got me involved with theatre, film and Punk Rock, and by college I had been introduced to metaphysics, dance, New Wave (it was the early 1980s), urban subcultures, medieval recreation groups, and psychoactive… er, substances. All of those influences and experiences find their way into my writing now, and everything since then just gives me more inspiration to work with.

(Like I said, long answer!)

　Q: Before becoming a professional writer, were your early works always directed at neo-pagan fantasy and sci-fi subjects? Do you still get nostalgic feelings about these tales? Have you written about your early/ old characters in any of your famous works?

*laugh* I think my interest in romantic fantasy began when my father gave me a big plastic castle filled with little plastic knights. I was four or five years old at the time, and something just "clicked" for me then. I loved dinosaurs, too, and I soon had dinosaurs fighting knights. It’s not far, is it, from those games to a love of high fantasy?

(Dad’s also a lifetime Horror and Fantasy fan. He raised me on comic books, monster movies, rock-n-roll and Playboy Magazine, so I came by those tastes honestly! Dad also had the old 1965 Ballantine "panorama" edition of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (see "http://derhobbit-film.de/img/buecher/lotrballantine.jpg" "http://derhobbit-film.de/img/buecher/lotrballantine.jpg"), which I found fascinating as a kid. I didn’t read it until my early teens, but the images lodged deep in the mythic places of my brain. ()

Actually, I never really liked Science Fiction. Aside from the work of Harlan Ellison (my all-time favorite author), Kurt Vonnegut, Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson, I prefer Fantasy and Horror over SF. Even then, of course, Ellison, Vonnegut, Butler and Hopkinson are not "traditional sci-fi" writers. Ellison has always preferred the term Speculative Fiction, and I think that term applies to the other authors as well. That kind of SF, I adore. Of the writers I enjoy, only Elizabeth Moon, Robert Heinlein and Neil Stephenson fit the "traditional" Science Fiction mold.

As far as my early works, yes and no. My very first publications were a poem titled "The Skull" (in 5th Grade) and one titled "The Amazon Huntress" (in 10th Grade). Obviously, they both involved Fantasy/ Horror themes. After that, though, I focused on "realistic" fiction and poems. My first published story appeared in the high school literary magazine Onerada 1983; called "Between Friends," it portrayed a contentious three-way friendship between a guy, a girl, and her female roommate. I wrote a similar play later that year; called "Waiting Inside the Rain," it featured an angry bunch of people arguing and eventually fighting with each other in a bus station, waiting for a bus that never arrives. (Yes, I was deeply influenced by avant-garde theatre at the time; I also couldn’t write good dialog to save my life!) I was writing fantasy too, though, and in the end I enjoyed that genre more than I liked writing realistic tales.

That said, I still prefer to "tell the truth even in the midst of fantasy." My best work involves urban fantasy stories with painfully human characters. Tales like "I Feel Lucky," "Loopholes," "Ravenous" and Cassie’s vagabond quest in Cult of Ecstasy are all drawn from events in my life. For me, magic is most potent when it’s grounded in human reality. I’ve tried writing Sword & Sorcery-style high fantasy, but it rarely "clicks" for me as an author.

Am I nostalgic about my early work? Kinda, but not really. I can appreciate the writer I would later become, but his writing isn’t very good. A few of the tales I wrote in my mid-20s still read well, especially "Elynne Dragonchild" and the as-yet-unpublished "Clown Balloons." Beyond that, though, the only stories I’d share from my early-writer period would be "I Find My Life’s Goal" and "The Terrible Tavern of Tezal Tabernacle the Third" (see below). I’ll probably include those two stories when and if I release an anthology of my work.

And yeah, as you might have guessed from the title of that last one, I do often feature inside jokes within my stories. My most recent short story, "Echo Chamber," is practically one long 10,000-word inside joke about my days in the gaming business. (For readers who didn’t spot the reference, the Sorcerers Crusade villain Tezghul the Insane drew his name from Tezal Tabernacle the Third, and his overall personality from the ax-crazy barbarian in that story.)

As for stories featuring older characters – again, yes and no. I can’t, by contract, write about groups and characters from my White Wolf days. They own that stuff – I don’t. And because of that work-for-hire relationship, I didn’t put anything from my outside writing into those books unless I had altered it first, as I did with Tezal/ Tezghul. There are quite a few inside references to my old roleplaying campaigns scattered throughout the White Wolf books, but if I told you what they were, I’d have to surrender ownership of them to White Wolf’s lawyers!

Beyond White Wolf and the handful of projects I’ve done for other gaming companies, I own the rights to my characters and settings. And yes, I do stick people and places from one story into others. A fan of Deliria could have a field day tracing characters and settings from that world through my other work, especially once some of my recent projects like "Echo Chamber," my novel Holy Creatures To and Fro and my webcomic "Arpeggio" appear. As far as I’m concerned, most of my non-World of Darkness stories take place in one of two worlds: the high fantasy world seen in my serial Stormada, and the urban fantasy realm where Holy Creatures, "Loopholes," "Ravenous," "Echo Chamber" and Deliria take place. There, the crossovers are very subtle, but obvious to someone to pays attention to names and events.

　

Q: How did you get your first published professional work with Marion Zimmer Bradley? That tale, "Elynne Dragonchild" (featured in Sword & Sorceress IX, if my memory and research do not betray me) is your oldest published one, correct? How did that happen? Had you shared a previous contact with Marion’s crew? Was this tale collected in any kind of forum, or was it written by request?

Neither one. "Elynne Dragonchild" was a combination of timing, knowledge and luck. No, I didn’t know anyone involved with Marion Zimmer Bradley at the time. (I met Mercedes Lackey later on, after the book came out.) I’d had a number of the Sword & Sorceress books in my collection, though, and after I wrote "Elynne," I figured that I might as well start trying to get it published there. Thankfully, it was accepted on the first try, and my professional career began without the usual rejection-slip phase.

Before I submitted the story, I read up on professional submission standards. That’s where the "knowledge" element comes in. I made a point of following all the professional rules; I had other people check the grammar and spelling, I revised the manuscript several times before I sent it out, and I’d included a short, concise cover letter with my work. Before sending "Elynne" to MZB for publication, I had learned the art and craft of writing well. As I tell my students, a submission that is clean and engaging beats 90% of the stuff in any publisher’s slush pile. That gives you an edge every time.

I had broken one rule, though, and I took a calculated risk while doing it. At the time, most stories with the word "dragon" in them were bad Pern rip-offs. Marion had seen so many of them that she said she’d never accept a dragon-based story unless it showed her something she’d never read before. I took her up on that challenge. "Elynne" features a girl who’d been adopted by a dragon and raised as her foster-daughter; the girl gets "rescued" by a clueless prince who kills the dragon. He thinks he’s doing her a favor. He’s not, and she hates him for it. Played dead-serious, this story took a potentially comical situation and turned it into a meditation on identity. Marion loved the story, and I still have the letter in which she congratulates me for breaking her "no dragons" rule. Point is, I made sure that "Elynne" was a good story before taking that risk. And yeah – aside for a few too many adjectives and some overly descriptive prose, that tale still holds up today.

Your research, incidentally, does not betray you. I did have a few stories published before "Elynne Dragonchild," but they weren’t released professionally in mass-market editions. For the record, these stories are:

• "Between Friends" (noted above; Onerada 1983)

• "I Find My Life’s Goal" (Richmond Writer’s Corner, Autumn Edition 1984 or ’85) A short, snarky story about a guy who decides to be the Antichrist, goes on a killing spree and gets off on a legal technicality, this tale was written in high school and handed in to the Writer’s Corner on a whim. It won that year’s Best Fiction award for the magazine, which says some funny things about both my story and the other ones that must have appeared.

• "The Terrible Tavern of Tezal Tabernacle the Third" (The Morning Star, somewhere around 1987) Another one I wrote in high school and later revised, this story is a profane satire of Sword & Sorcery. I gave it to my friend John Robey as a submission for his friends-only journal The Morning Star. Subtitled "Part I in the Never-Ending Chronicle of Vulgar the Barbarian" (no, there’s never been a Part II), this story is every bit as adolescent as you’d expect. Still, I think it’s pretty amusing… which says some funny things about my sense of humor. (

Incidentally, John Robey has a webcomic these days. Called "The Suburban Jungle," it can be found here  (http://suburbanjungle.com/about.html). He and I also worked together on several projects for the Mage and Street Fighter game lines. The gaming group he and I shared with our friends Laurie, Jennifer, Grey, Scott and Cathi was, to date, the best I’ve ever belonged to.

Actually, my professional career began with a movie review column I used to write for a local magazine called Night Moves. I also wrote a political opinion column for Agenda, another local magazine, and published an article or two in a small-press horror magazine called The Tomb. Writing for those periodicals taught me plenty about how publishing works. By the time Marion bought "Elynne Dragonchild," I’d already been writing professionally for almost two years.

I’ve written a bunch of other tales, too, but they’ve never seen publication and probably never will. Thanks to obsolete back-up systems, most of those stories are lost now. I don’t recall them being very good to start with, though, so it’s really no big loss!

(Part II of this interview concerns White Wolf Game Studio, Mage The Ascension, and Phil’s affinity for the Cult of Ecstasy.)

 

Essa é uma tradução de um fragmento do Dead Magic II sobre a abordagem oficial do Lich em Mago: A Ascensão. Um sistema bastante interessante para adicionar para diversas crônicas



Um agradecimento especial ao Folha de Outono, um dos maiores nomes na cena nacional das traduções

E sim, eu sei que essa imagem não é de Ascension, mas desenhos de Lich de D&D tendem a ser legais :P

Download as páginas clicando aqui

Um ano silencioso chegando ao fim.

Estavamos parados?

Acredite, não.

Esse ano desenvolvemos mais mesas, artigos e traduções que todos os anos anteriores somados.

O que faltou? Finalização, todos os projetos estão prestes a serem terminados, mas os 8 iniciados nesse ano tomaram todo meu tempo ocioso. 

Dentre os mais legais estão as camisas do RC, design do Dri, grande amigo nosso que ainda nem veio pra ca pegar a dele.



Um grande salve deve ser dado para nosso irritante, mimizento porém camarada, Squall pela:

- Idealização do Rogue Meeting
- A iniciativa de mandar fazer as camisetas.
- Finalizar seus próprios projetos pessoais (Fianna & Exalted)
- De nos proporcionar grandes risadas por razões várias.
- De apesar de tudo, ainda ser um dos Rogues mais ativos ever.
- Por ter sobrevivido ao capote espetacular do busão do Paraná pra Sampa.
- Por ter o único personagem Ascendido de todas as minhas crônicas até agora.
- E por ter presenciado toda a magia do Capoeira Spirits virando um  filme de verdade.

Obrigado, Squall!



E vamos ao que interessa!


Quem não conhece o toque personalizado nos trabalhos do RC? A idéia é sempre trazer algo a mais que a obra original dentro do mesmo escopo. Dependendo do livro colocamos alguns fatores interessantes e a coisa foi crescendo. Ano retrasado entrevistei Malcolm Sheppard (Akasha, Time of Judgement: Ascension etc.) o por mail, Richard Dansky (Wraith the Oblivion 2nd edition) pessoalmente o que foi me dando idéias em série. Esse ano eu apelei. Graças ao facebook e minha nerdice e sorte desgraçada, o próximo entrevistado do RC é nada menos que Phil Brucato.





Aqui estão os acertos para a entrevista, com as perguntas já enviadas para ele:


"Phil enviou uma mensagem para você.

--------------------
Assunto: BIG Interview!

Hello, Rafael!

I've been working on the interview for you. It's HUGE - over 3000 words before I got started, and it'll probably exceed 10,000 by the time I'm done with it.

I suggest posting it in segments. That way, people can read it without getting exausted, and they have a compelling reason to keep returing to your site.

I'd like to re-post this project on my blogs as well. Is that okay with you?

Must run!

Thanks again - it's a fun, if massive, project!

Happy Holidays!

- Phil



===========================
Tradução:
"Olá Rafael

Eu estive trabalhando na entrevista pra você. É ENORME - mais de 3 mil palavras antes de eu começar e provavelmente vai exceder as 10 mil quando eu terminar.

Eu sugiro que poste em partes. Dessa forma as pessoas podem ler sem ficar exautos e terão uma boa razão para retornar ao site.

Eu gostaria de re-postar esse projeto em meus blogs também. Ok pra você?

Tenho que correr!

Obrigado novamente - é um projeto divertido e gigantesco.

Boas festas!

- Phil "




===========================================
Em breve traremos novidades!
===========================================


Mais um gostinho da próxima divulgação do RC:




 

Jogar um jogo de Mago gostoso e atraente é um trabalho duro! O Narrador – você – deve colocar muito pensamento sobre o que o jogo trata, como executá-lo, e quais áreas do tema e do clima se focar. Isso pode não parecer muito à primeira vista, mas é só impressão. Seus personagens do Narrador têm o padrão certo para capturar o clima do jogo? A Ressonância realmente funciona do jeito que seus jogadores dizem que faz? Que diabos o grupo de desenvolvimento e escrita estava pensando, afinal?

                Vamos começar por baixo, com as regrinhas, e então ir para o grande momento: as suposições por trás de por que Mago não funciona do jeito que deveria, mas tem produzido muitos livros como tem.

 

Questões Frequentes

Visitantes no site da White Wolf reconhecerão questões das Questões Frequentemente Feitas do jogo Mago aqui. Em alguns casos elas são expandidas, quando necessário. Você também encontrará respostas para várias outras questões que podem surgir no curso de uma crônica de longa duração.

                O que aconteceu com os números na coluna dos livros?

                Os números nas colunas de vários livros de Mago: A Ascensão, tipos reminiscentes dos números Halo de vários CDs e vídeos do Nine Inch Nails, provêm um método de manter um caminho de quais livros de Mago você tem e não tem. Os números existiam há muuuito tempo nos primeiros livros, mas eles não são mais usados.

                Em muitos casos um número na coluna causaria mais problemas do que benefícios. Eles nunca tinham muito uso (“Eu preciso do livro de Mago = 21!”) e eles causavam alguma confusão quando eventos estranhos aconteciam – algo como livros saindo de ordem devido a mudança em datas de lançamento, a livros com os números errados!

                Com a edição Revisada, foram abolidos os números de coluna, embora talvez um saboroso capricho, não servia a muitos propósitos ainda que inversamente pudessem causar problemas (Sim, as pessoas realmente reclamavam quando um tipo levava a um número de coluna duplicado numa impressão.)

                Talvez mais digno de nota, alguns livros de Mago – os livros de Tradição – nunca tiveram um número de coluna, então não havia como adaptá-los em qualquer tipo de lista compreensiva.

                A lista inclui todos eles, incluindo edições que não são mais impressas:

01 Mago (primeira edição)

02 Escudo do Narrador para Mago (primeira edição)

03 Livro das Capelas

04 Tear do Destino

05 Progenitores

06 Teia Digital

07 Livro das Sombras

08 Fator Caos

09 Iteração X

10 Livro da Loucura

11 Nova Ordem Mundial

12 Braço Direito da Ascensão

13 Mago (segunda edição)

14 Escudo e Companheiro do Narrador para Mago (segunda edição)

15 Engenheiros do Vácuo

16 Horizonte: Fortaleza de Esperança

17 Livro dos Ofícios

18 Livro dos Mundos

19 Livro dos Espelhos

20 Sindicato

21 Caixa de Brinquedos do Tecnomante

22 Teia Digital 2.0 (numerado errado como 21)

23 Guia de Sobrevivência dos Órfãos

24 Contos de Mágika: Aventura Sombria

25 Guia da Tecnocracia

26 Iniciados da Arte

27 Caminhos Espirituais

28 Mestres da Arte

 

                O que aconteceu com (meu material favorito que não estava em qualquer livro)?

                Vítimas da contagem de palavras. Mago revisado, por exemplo, marcava mais de 90.000 palavras que poderíamos imprimir. Por causa da referência, é aproximadamente 160 páginas extras de material que não cabia no livro principal. É pena mas também é uma lei de publicação. É de praxe para o editor decidir o que é essencial e o que pode ser guardado para depois. Então se você pensou em algo que estava no cerne de Mago mas não vê no livro, as chances são de que tenha sido guardado para um lançamento posterior.

                Claro, com o lançamento dos livros revisados e Guias atualizados, muito material foi finalmente impresso. Ainda, de vez em quando algo não cabe por causa do espaço (Qualidades e Defeitos em Leis da Ascensão) ou jeitos de deslizar pelas rachaduras na obscuridade (como os Leões de Zion, que nunca apareceu no Companheiro do Narrador revisado).

                Estou confuso com o novo sistema de Paradoxo. O Paradoxo sempre causa choque de retorno? Ele sempre acumula a quantidade inteira? A descrição parece contraditória.

                O Paradoxo é uma força inconstante. Às vezes causa choque de retorno; às vezes espera. Às vezes é um martelo e às vezes é como uma lixa contra sua pele.

                O Paradoxo normalmente queima enquanto é armazenado mas nem sempre. Imagine uma chance de dez por cento que o Paradoxo irá agarrar um mago ao invés de causar o choque imediatamente. Claro, o jogador pode sempre gastar Força de Vontade para evitar o Paradoxo de cair todo de uma vez. No final das contas fica a cargo do Narrador decidir se o Paradoxo explode enquanto se reúne ou se ele reúne em equilíbrio.

                Quando o Paradoxo causa o choque de retorno, é normalmente mais fácil simplificar o fogo sobre todo o Paradoxo acumulado de uma vez e procura os resultados no dano apropriado e tabelas de defeitos. Se você quer correr com mais incerteza em seu Paradoxo, você pode jogar uma quantidade de dados igual à contagem de Paradoxo do mago; cada sucesso (6 ou mais) causa um ponto de Paradoxo para descarregar da parada num choque de retorno. (Paradoxo permanente ainda pode descarregar neste caso, mas nem sempre vai embora.) Tome os resultados para a quantidade de Paradoxo total do choque: o mago guarda o resto.

                Na eventualidade de um mago ter algum Paradoxo em sua parada, ele ainda se dispersa à taxa de um ponto por semana, como declarado nas regras.

                Qual é a diferença entre magia vulgar e coincidente? O que acontece quando um mago lança magia coincidente, e quanto o jogador tem que descrever? As regras parecem um tanto incompletas.

                Magia vulgar e coincidente são descritas em Mago nas páginas 137-138, mas as descrições deixam um ponto aberto. No final das contas, os limites completos do que significa “vulgar” versus o que é “coincidente” ficam a critério do jogo que o Narrador quer narrar.

                Em resumo, magia coincidente é qualquer coisa que razoavelmente possa acontecer sem a intervenção de magia. Se um mago faz um mojo e uns carros batem, bem, eles poderiam ter batido de qualquer forma; é uma coincidência. Da mesma forma, se o mago ora por intervenção enquanto um inimigo o está perseguindo e de repente o elevador do inimigo fica preso, é uma coincidência – não porque todos os milagres sejam coincidentes mas porque um elevador pode concebivelmente calhar de ficar preso.

                Magia vulgaré algo fora dos saltos da coincidência. O mago arremessa raios de seus dedos – isso não poderia acontecer de forma aceitável no mundo real, então obviamente é magia! Similarmente, se um mago entra num banheiro em uma cidade e sai no banheiro de outra cidade, é claramente algo que não poderia “apenas acontecer”, e é magia vulgar.

                As fronteiras da coincidência e da vulgaridade não são claras. O Consenso tem algum efeito: o que as pessoas acreditam que seja possível molda o que é possível. Assim, se um mago consegue convencer as pessoas de que ele tem um gizmo incrível que realmente funciona e deixa ele aparecer para lançar raios, o efeito pode ser bem coincidente – o mago faz sua mágica e balança suas mãos, mas o aparelho está fazendo o trabalho, certo? Tanto quanto as pessoas possam dizer. Similarmente, um mago pode ter conhecimento especial sobre algum “fato” pouco conhecido de ciência que ele apoia, mas se não é amplamente difundido e acreditado, não parecerá ser uma parte natural do que poderia ter acontecido, então será magia ou ciência vulgar.

                Quando um mago faz magia vulgar, ele afrouxa a realidade com um efeito e dispara algo que claramente viola a ordem natural. Simples. Entretanto, um efeito coincidente é normalmente muito mais sutil. O mago estabelece a magia em movimento mas então tece aquela magia na Trama. A magia conduz os eventos numa certa direção; aqueles sem magia não podem nem mesmo dizer que algo incomum aconteceu. O mago poderia nem mesmo saber o que está acontecendo! O jogador deveria descrever uma coincidência plausível, mas o mago meramente estabelece os eventos e provavelmente nem mesmo saiba se o resultado final veio da casualidade ou da mágica. Por exemplo, um mago hermético poderia invocar o poder de Forças para golpear um inimigo coincidentemente. O mago tece a magia na Trama e espera que funcione. Bem ou mal, um cabo de força cortado acerta o inimigo e lhe dá um choque. Incomum, mas pode acontecer, então é uma coincidência, e ninguém pode realmente dizer se foi magia ou não. O jogador sabia ao rolar os dados, e o jogador descreveu a coincidência plausível (sujeita à aprovação do Narrador), mas o mago só sabe que ele confiou na magia, ele acreditou, e bem, seu inimigo foi derrubado.

                Narradores em particular devem jogar com as fronteiras da coincidência como se adaptar à natureza do jogo. Coincidência e vulgaridade variarão de tempos em tempos, de lugar em lugar e de pessoa em pessoa, também.

                O que é Paradoxo permanente, como você o consegue, o que ele faz e é a mesma coisa que o Defeito Paradoxo permanente?

                O Paradoxo permanente resulta quando um personagem tem algum tipo de alteração massivamente incomum que consistentemente e constantemente viola as “regras” da realidade.

                Por exemplo, um mago pode, usando mágica de Vida, conseguir músculos melhores. Normalmente este uso é de curta duração para dar um impulso temporário; o mago armazena uma pequena quantidade de Paradoxo e sofre um vazamento de Padrão por causa do estresse de alterar seu Padrão pessoal. Por outro lado, um Mestre de Vida poderia usar mágica para se conservar além da expectativa de vida humana, retendo a juventude e o vigor por um século. Este uso claramente viola as “leis” da existência humana convencional. Por que o Mestre não sofre um vazamento de Padrão? Por que ao invés de alongar temporariamente seu Padrão, ele o reescreve permanentemente. O problema é que ele o reescreve num meio que a realidade não aceita, então ele constantemente tem a ameaça do Paradoxo pairando sobre ele. Em termos de jogo, ele tem Paradoxo permanente.

                Se seu mago armazena Paradoxo permanente, marque-o preenchendo (não apenas com um X) a(s) caixa(s) de Paradoxo. Esse Paradoxo sempre conta nos choques de retorno do Paradoxo do personagem – o que significa choques de retorno piores e mais dano – mas isso nem sempre é assim. Ele não pode ser removido com magia de Primórdio. Ele só se dissipa se o mago desfizer a coisa que o causou (tal como remover um aprimoramento cibernético) ou se o Consenso mudar para permiti-lo (tal como se o Consenso viesse a aceitar aprimoramentos cibernéticos como “normais”). Uma vez que isso aconteça ele se converte em Paradoxo normal e pode ser dispersado.

                Paradoxo permanente não é a mesma coisa que o Defeito Paradoxo Permanente. Os resultados posteriores de um sórdido choque de retorno dão ao mago alguns obstáculos que permanentemente o estorvam: uma mão murcha, cabelo branco-morto, uma Perturbação ou algum problema similar.

            Certo, espertinho, então se o Consenso disser “realidade é aquilo em que as pessoas acreditam”, então como o Consenso funciona? Muitas pessoas não acreditam que a realidade é tudo o que elas querem acreditar, então não deveria ser assim, certo?

                O Consenso é um efeito secundário da criação da Tellurian. Como a existência de energia primordial, não está realmente sujeito à interpretação. Energia primordial (Quintessência) existe a despeito do fato que muitas pessoas normais não acreditam nela. Em alguns casos existem coisa que apenas “parecem ser”, seja devido a inércia histórica ou constantes cosmológicas.

                Em Mago, a crença, canalizada pela vontade, cria a realidade. Os magos podem fazer isto conscientemente pois eles são Despertos. Os adormecidos fazem isso apenas nos níveis mais profundos de inconsciência, tal que a crença individual vale de pouco, mas a mistura de tais convicções inconscientes é forte o bastante para atar a realidade de um modo particular de ser – para fazê-lo seguir certas regras do que é aceitável e o que não é. Uma vez que é um processo inconsciente, as pessoas não podem simplesmente desejar que as coisas sejam diferentes (a menos que sejam Despertas). Em adição, muitos conteúdos neuróticos desta inconsciência coletiva podem muito bem fazer seu caminho pela realidade consensual, mesmo se ninguém em seu juízo perfeito conscientemente deixasse tal coisa existir. Por isso, vampiros e outras feras noturnas espreitam no mundo real.

                O “mundo real” é o mundo material. Qualquer coisa pode existir na Umbra, a despeito da crença consensual (embora mesmo aqui existam certas leis, e consequentemente Paradoxo). Parece que os filtros da realidade apenas realmente atacam o mundo material, assim como o próprio ego de um indivíduo não se tornará consciente, banindo-os para o inconsciente para reaparecer depois como sonhos ou deslizes freudianos.

                Claro, você pode brincar com a ideia de quem exatamente constrói o Consenso. Não são necessariamente só os humanos. Talvez espíritos, animais ou até outros desconhecidos participem desta trama imperiosa chamada Consenso. Embora a crença afete o Consenso, ela necessariamente não o cria. Algumas “leis” da natureza podem existir independente de crença, e outras podem mudar com variados graus de facilidade e velocidade.

                Quando se percorre atalhos, a Tempestade de Avatares causa dano sobre os dados de Espírito que obtêm falha, ou exige um teste aparte de Arete + Paradoxo? E a Tempestade afeta qualquer coisa além de magos?

                É Arete + Paradoxo permanente. A Tempestade afeta apenas indivíduos e criações iluminadas – ou seja, magos e Talismãs.

            Então como a Tempestade de Avatares não afeta os metamorfos, espíritos, ou o que quer que seja?

                A Tempestade de Avatares é atraída por Avatares fortes e poderosos. É como um raio atingindo um magneto. Os metamorfos não são exatamente humanos e certamente não têm Avatares no sentido de Mago (eles têm espíritos, mas são parte espíritos). Entidades espirituais, pelo mesmo motivo, não são necessariamente Avatares.

            Por que a Tempestade de Avatares aconteceu do jeito que aconteceu? Parece como uma golpe para tirar os Mestres e a Umbra do jogo.

                Algumas pessoas pensam que a Tempestade de Avatares é só um mecanismo de enredo que veio de lugar nenhum. Bem, múltiplos dispositivos nucleares atingiram o Mundo Inferior. O Sexto Maelstrom chegou. Doissetep caiu na maior amostra de Forças da história. A Teia Digital quebrou e foi resetada. A fortaleza tradicional de Concórdia/Horizonte foi invadida e caiu! E as pessoas pensam que o resultado lógico destes eventos sobre o mundo espiritual dever ser nada acontece?

                Num sentido do mundo do jogo, a Tempestade de Avatares é uma consequência pesada: é uma lembrança da iminente Sexta Era/Armagedom e um tapa na cara dos magos arrogantes (e outros) que pensavam que poderiam se intrometer com forças cosmicamente destrutivas.

                Num sentido de tema/clima, a Tempestade de Avatares ajuda a deixar a Umbra mais isolada e misteriosa. Ela também separa os Mestres da Terra, mudando assim a dinâmica de poder do jogo.

                Veja também o metaenredo nas páginas XX-XX.

                Parece realmente difícil construir um Efeito rápido. Com penalidades para execução rápida, sucessos necessários e coisa e tal, muitos magos terão problemas em conseguir mais do que um ou dois sucessos num turno.

                Esta regra é deliberada; os magos devem levar tempo para preparar, lançar seus Efeitos sabiamente e usar cérebros, não força bruta. A magia transforma o universo na sua cabeça – não é algo feito rapidamente ou facilmente! A mágica não é uma panaceia instantânea para tudo. Um mago não pode confiar apenas na magia para lidar com todos os seus problemas.

                Um mago sob estresse provavelmente se sairá melhor usando alguma mágica sutil para revolver os eventos a seu favor ou dividir paradas de dados para ter um Efeito pessoal simples se voltando a uma condição normal. Trabalhos realmente titânicos exigirão tempo e esforço. Se um mago tem que fazer algo fenomenal em um turno, deve gastar Força de Vontade e Quintessência. Lembre-se, também, que se tudo que seu mago quer fazer é matar alguém com magia vulgar aqueles sucessos na jogada de ataque adicionam ao dano como qualquer outro tipo de ataque, então uma rajada de fogo de um sucesso pode infligir um dano mais forte com um bom tiro.

                Se o Narrador quiser deixar os magos construírem Efeitos mais rápidos, é mais fácil liberar a penalidade de dificuldade para execução rápida e flexibilizar a tabela de sucessos para que um ou dois sucessos ainda possam garantir resultados úteis.

                Agora você sabe o que se queria – que a magia fosse uma arte exigente mas recompensadora. Se você quer mudar isso, você pode.

                Uhm, afinal, quais são as Convenções da Tecnocracia?

                Droga, aquela caixa não funcionou em Mago Revisado. Em resumo, a Tecnocracia tem cinco Convenções: Iteração X, preocupada com computadores e ciências materiais; Nova Ordem Mundial, que trabalha com engenharia social e distribuição de informação; Progenitores, que praticam medicina; o Sindicato, que trabalha com dinheiro e economia; e os Engenheiros do Vácuo, que exploram e mapeiam lugares e dimensões desconhecidos. Juntos eles apoiam os Preceitos de Damian, um conjunto de diretrizes que os exortam a proteger a humanidade e explorar o cosmo.

                Qual o nível de mágica de Vida para curar outras pessoas?

                Como incluído em Vida 3, “Sobre criaturas mais complexas, ele pode aplicar alterações, obrigando-as a crescer ou se adaptar conforme sua vontade” um mago pode curar ou ferir outras pessoas (e animais complexos) com Vida 3. Transformar o Padrão em algo diferente exige Vida 4.

                Qual é a do metaenredo?

                Veja as páginas XX-XX para uma discussão de tudo sobre metaenredo.

                Como funcionam os Débitos (Mago Revisado páginas 298-299)?

                Um Defeito Débito reduz o valor de uma Qualidade ou Defeito correspondente. A tabela de pontos, infelizmente, ficou para trás. Então se você tiver um Débito simples, vale 1 ponto – ele reduz o custo de uma Qualidade ou Defeito apenas um pouco, pois não é improvável que você consiga quebrá-lo e assim é improvável que perca a Qualidade ou sofra o Defeito. Se você tem um débito muito sórdido, ele pode valer 5 pontos – ele mitigaria uma Qualidade pois é quase certo que você a perca. Claro, o valor de um débito nunca pode ser mais do que um a menos do valor de sua Qualidade ou Defeito correspondente.

                Um exemplo direto: digamos que seu mago tenha Esfera Natural: Espírito (uma Qualidade de 5 pontos). Então digamos que o personagem tenha um débito de sempre deixar um pequeno sacrifício de comida para os espíritos quando come – um débito menor, que vale aproximadamente 2 pontos. O custo da Qualidade Esfera Natural é agora apenas 3 pontos, mas se o mago falhe em cumprir o débito, ele perde a Qualidade.

                Como um Defeito, considere um mago com o Defeito Componente Crucial: luz do sol. Este Defeito é de 2 pontos. O mago também tem um débito: sempre comer vegetais, um débito de 1 ponto. O mago obtém um ponto de bônus para o Defeito, mas se falhar em comer vegetais, ele sofre do Defeito no futuro. (Neste caso, você está obtendo pontos por um Defeito do qual você não sofre a menos que quebre o débito. Muito bom.)

                Um mago pode mudar de Tradição?

                Condicionalmente, sim. Um mago que passe por diferentes Tradições durante o início de seu treinamento obtém a Qualidade Tradição Dupla (veja p.298 de Mago). Similarmente, um mago pode obter esta Qualidade durante o curso do jogo a um custo de 14 pontos de experiência e muita interpretação. O mago obtém o doutrinamento e as habilidades de ambas Tradições de uma vez, motivo pelo qual esta é uma Qualidade tão cara.

                Um mago pode mudar para uma Tradição completamente diferente e abandonar a antiga em algum ponto. O mago provavelmente obtém o Defeito Membro em Aprovação ou uma penalidade social similar. Fazer tal mudança é semelhante a uma experiência de mudança de vida como “entrar na religião” ou sofrer uma mudança de personalidade. O mago não está apenas aprendendo uma forma diferente de magia; o personagem está rasgando o que ele sabia ser verdade sobre o universo e tentando colocar outra coisa em seu lugar.

                O Arete do mago não cai como resultado, mas é muito provável que o conhecimento de Esferas do mago possa sofrer. Afinal, um mago hermético treinado sabe que ao abrir os portais apropriados e entoar os feitiços de invocação dos poderes angelicais certos ele pode conjurar fogo, mas se esse mago hermético descarta esta informação como lixo inútil e ao invés disso tenta aprender a usar tecnologia intuitiva como um Filho do Éter, ele deve essencialmente reaprender, do nada, suas Esferas.

                O melhor caminho para lidar com esta situação é usar as regras para um mago que perde um foco único (veja Mago pp. 203) ou queira aprender a usar outros focos em adição a um foco único. O mago tem duas opções: ele pode lançar efeitos ao “superar focos” e forçar a mágica a funcionar, ou ele pode começar a aprender um novo foco – o conjunto de focos da nova Tradição – para uma Esfera ao recomprar seus pontos existentes à metade do custo. Sim, é uma proposição muito cara, que representa quanto trabalho leva para mudar as visões de mundo tão drasticamente e mostra por que os magos tão raramente tentam mudar tudo.

                O mago retém conhecimento, habilidades mundanas e antecedentes místicos. A Ressonância quase certamente aumenta ou muda como resultado de tal mudança.

                O que acontece quando um mago tradicional é Condicionado pela Tecnocracia (ou vice versa)?

                Veja as regras para mudança de Tradição, acima: o mago essencialmente aprende uma nova forma de fazer as coisas, mas o velho conhecimento das Esferas está inacessível até o mago conseguir imaginar como aplicar as novas ferramentas. A experiência do mago não está totalmente perdida – afinal, o mago está apenas pagando metade do custo para reobter as Esferas – mas ainda é uma longa jornada.

                Claro, tal personagem também ganha o Defeito Membro em Provação. Magos que caem na Tecnocracia quase certamente sofrem um alto nível de Condicionamento (veja Guia da Tecnocracia).

                Isso é ainda melhor do que tentar Despertar alguém do nada, e é mais fácil para um antigo tradicionalista reaprender velhas Esferas do que para um operativo recém Iluminado aprendê-las, o que explica por que a Tecnocracia recompensa a captura e o recondicionamento de magos tradicionalistas ao invés de sempre matá-los. (Este hábito também dá a você grandes ganchos para “resgatar nosso amigo antes que seja Condicionado”.)

                Diga, eu posso usar estas regras acima para mudar os focos de meu mago?

                Pode apostar. Você pode superar a necessidade de um foco único e substituí-lo pelos limites de foco normal da Tradição ao pagar um extra de 50% do custo de cada nível de Esfera naquela Esfera. Isso retira as penalidades para os focos únicos e permite que o personagem use o padrão normal da Tradição. Por quê você faria isso? Por que você ainda guarda todos os bônus para usar o foco único original, se você mantiver-los

                O que a Ressonância faz? Por que me preocupar em colocá-la se é tão vaga?

                Ressonância é expandida no Guia das Tradições. É listada como uma estatística principalmente para chamar a atenção: uma vez que a Ressonância existia nas edições anteriores de Mago, haviam literalmente dúzias de pessoas se coçando por aí, pensando que era uma grande nova regra única para a edição revisada.

                A ideia básica por trás da Ressonância é que os objetivos, emoções e personalidade do mago afetam sua mágica. As estatísticas de Ressonância ajudam a mostrar o que estas emoções são e quanto forte elas podem ser. Um mago muito, muito furioso tem muita Ressonância irada – e seus efeitos mágicos mostram isso!

                Similarmente, a Ressonância é um “aroma” ou “sabor” mágico. Os efeitos de um mago têm esse tipo de Ressonância e é quase sempre único. Lembra quando Darth Vader sentiu a presença de Obi-Wan na Estrela da Morte em Star Wars? A Ressonância é mais ou menos assim – seu mago lança um efeito e de repente seu velho inimigo o reconhece devido à Ressonância.

                Por a Ressonância representar a emoção e o desejo canalizado através da mágica, ela muda em resposta a elas. Magos que têm muito estresse mágico ou que têm muito poder tendem a ter muita Ressonância, então os magos normalmente obtém Ressonância de Silêncios ou Buscas. Magos que têm episódios emocionais traumáticos profundos ou que tenham mudanças de personalidade podem obter novos tipos de Ressonância.

                Você pode ter múltiplos tipos de Ressonância na mesma categoria (como Entrópica)?

                Sim; veja as regras opcionais, abaixo.

                Por que os magos fazem isso (coisas aleatórias e estúpidas)?

                Por que os magos também são humanos. Eles cometem erros. Às vezes eles fazem coisas porque “parecia uma boa ideia”. Os magos têm habilidades especiais, mas eles não são onipotentes ou infalíveis.

                Por que os Tecnocratas e a Umbra não estão mais no livro principal? Como você joga um jogo sem o mundo espiritual ou os principais antagonistas?!?

                Não se supõe que os Tecnocratas sejam mais os principais antagonistas. Em edições anteriores eles tinham uma caricatura muito unidimensional dos “chapéus pretos”, pintando-os como vilões lúridos contra as Tradições. Com o lançamento de livros como Guia da Tecnocracia, eles agora são jogáveis como humanos maltratados com suas próprias agendas. Uma vez que eles não são “o inimigo”, eles não correspondem realmente à posição adversa das regras principais, e colocá-los lá apenas propagaria a ideia de que eles ainda são “o inimigo”. Ao invés disso, “o inimigo” para os magos é muitos mais universal e sutil – ele pode ser qualquer coisa desde assuntos pessoais que o mago deve enfrentar no mundo real até a tentativa de conquistar os corações dos Adormecidos do Consenso de apatia. Veja o Capítulo Dois: A Luta Desperta para ideias de muitos conflitos que os magos enfrentam.

                A Umbra é de fato um reino muito grande e vibrante, um lugar que está muito distante de muitas das tragédias que acontecem na Terra. Para melhor ou pior, os magos modernos têm de lidar com seus problemas em casa. Lutar no mundo espiritual não ajudaria a fazer as coisas que as Tradições precisam fazer. Por este motivo, a Umbra apresenta uma grande vista para jogar, mas não é mais o chão para magos recém Despertos, que ainda têm todos seus velhos problemas mas agora têm novas formas para lidar com eles. Similarmente, o longo alcance e complexidade da Umbra não fazem justiça realmente ao deixá-la em duas páginas de texto. A Umbra terá seu próprio livro de referência. A Trama Infinita (em breve).

                O livro principal de Mago é, essencialmente, um livro para alguém que jogue com um novo mago. Magos recém Despertos não têm uma história de disputas com a Tecnocracia (você normalmente não é caçado até depois que comece a fazer mágica), nem têm a experiência de ir passear pelo mundo espiritual.

            As regras de experiência dizem “novo nível x” para Mago, mas elas dizem “nível atual” em outros jogos. Foi um erro, certo?

                Não. Como Justin Achilli explicou durante o desenvolvimento de Vampiro Revsiado, ele sempre compreendeu que “nível atual” significa “nível que você está atualmente comprando”. Faz mais sentido para algumas pessoas que aprender mais de uma habilidade (o segundo ponto) é mais difícil do que aprender os fundamentos rudimentares (o primeiro ponto) ao invés da outra forma, que era um estranho artefato do velho sistema. Também parece apropriado para Mago, mas a nova palavra foi adotada para deixar mais claro.

                Claro, você está livre para usar qual sistema de experiência que melhor lhe convier, então pode usar “atual” se preferir. Você deve provavelmente usar a mesma definição “atual” ou “novo” para todos os personagens em seu jogo, então seus jogadores não se sentirão injustiçados. Ethan Skemp preferiu o sistema “nível atual” e o deixou intacto em Lobisomem Revisado.

                Qual a relação de Ars Magica e Mago?

                O velho jogo Ars Magica foi originalmente feito por algumas das mesmas pessoas que depois formaram a White wolf e foi publicado por um tempo na White Wolf. Embora certamente tenha influenciado Mago no início, ArM desde então seguiu outros rumos. Os dois jogos divergiram, e mesmo que tenham alguns elementos em comum não é realmente correto assumir que ArM é a “história” de Mago neste ponto.

                O livro de regras Idade das Trevas: Mago pesquisa esta história, ilustrando as lutas que os magos enfrentaram no início do século XIII – antes que existissem as Tradições como nós as conhecemos ou mesmo o conceito das Esferas mágicas.

                Como a realidade de Mago se adapta com os outros jogos?

                Não muito bem, realmente. A ideia de leis do mundo influenciadas pelo consenso da crença humana não é necessariamente a mesma ideia de um mundo que cobre as maquinações de vampiros, ou um mundo dos metamorfos (ao menos lobos) que têm muito a dizer sobre a “verdade” das coisas como humanos.

                Mago dispõe um mundo onde os humanos têm importância central mas não o sabem exceto em alguns casos raros. Em Vampiro os humanos são vítimas; eles têm monstros predadores desconhecidos em seu meio. Em Lobisomem existe uma forma muito específica que o cosmos funciona, com bem e mal delineados.

                Apesar disso, estes jogos podem concebivelmente tomar lugar no mesmo mundo, mas um mundo onde nem todo mundo está sempre certo. Mesmo as crenças convictas dos lobisomens na supremacia do mundo natural não estão necessariamente corretas num mundo pós-moderno e subjetivo. Por outro lado, os magos podem achar que não apenas os humanos decidem o que é e o que não é real – espíritos desconhecidos podem ter tanto (se não mais) a dizer sobre essa questão.

                Misturar os mundos devidamente, sem favorecer um sobre outro, exige um audaz senso de diversidade e uma vontade de suspender questões definitivas sobre realidade. Temas concernentes a conflitos entre estas visões de mundo (e a possível resolução delas) podem se tornar proeminentes.

                Claro, você pode apenas decidir que Mago é o único jogo “certo” e que os outros devem de alguma forma se adaptar a suas verdades.

                Por que as regras para carniçais magos são tão severas?

                O encarniçamento é uma forma de servidão parasitária. Um carniçal depende essencialmente dos caprichos do mestre vampiro para sua sobrevivência e poder – é uma maldição. Os magos, por outro lado, são mortais que conseguem mudar a realidade por meio de sua vontade. Os dois estados são incompatíveis – um é um estado de escravidão, o outro um estado de total libertação.

                Como os caçadores têm o papel de guardiões da humanidade quando isso é feito pelos magos?

                Tecnicamente, os magos não são os guardiões da humanidade. Eles são o próximo passo do potencial humano, verdade – mas nada diz que os magos precisam usar isso para o bem da humanidade. Alguns magos se comprometem em ajudar e desenvolver a humanidade. Outros acreditam que devem usar seus poderes para seu próprio desenvolvimento pessoal.

                Caçadores, por outro lado, têm seus dons dados por entidades com metas muito específicas em mente (veja o Manual do Narrador para Caçadores). Estas agendas não significam necessariamente sempre proteger a humanidade... mas elas são mais focadas do que os magos, que podem usar seus poderes por qualquer motivo.

                Lembre-se que mesmo se os personagens magos dos jogadores sejam heroicos, o mesmo não é necessariamente verdade para a comunidade dos magos como um todo. A existência dos magos como Voormass e Jodi Blake deve sublinhar este ponto.

                Você pode pensar os caçadores como pessoas comuns que têm poderes extraordinários, enquanto os magos são pessoas extraordinárias (são Despertos) com poderes extraordinários (mágica).

                A Umbra é a mesma coisa que o espaço sideral?

                Não. Entretanto, a Película é extremamente fina no espaço, tanto que é fácil passar de um lugar a outro. Os magos além de Marte podem muitas vezes passar para a Umbra como se ela fosse insignificante. Ainda assim, os lugares na Umbra não são visíveis no espaço terrestre – caso contrário astrólogos amadores teriam localizado a guerra Tradições-Tecnocracia além de Júpiter no início dos anos 1990!

                Por que os magos com as Qualidades sangue feérico ou parentesco metamorfo não podem usar Dons ou alçadas?

                Por que seus poderes sobrenaturais não funcionam dessa forma. Um mago Desperto não tem os mesmos laços à Gaia-cosmos como um lobisomem, ou ao Sonhar como um changeling. Ele se torna algo diferente – algo humano, ainda que no limite do que significa ser humano. Tal ser está em contato com poderes internos, não com dons de alguma outra herança.

                Ainda, um mago pode usar as Esferas para simular Dons ou alçadas que tenha visto. Sob as devidas condições, este uso pode até mesmo ser coincidente (“Outro parente pode fazer isso, então eu posso!”).

                Meu amigo disse que os Adeptos da Virtualidade são tecnomantes. Eu, obviamente, disse que eles eram Tradicionalistas. Quem está certo?

                Os dois. Um tecnomante (com t minúsculo) é apenas um mago que usa tecnologia com fins mágicos. Tal mago pode ser um Adepto da Virtualidade, um tecno-xamã Orador dos Sonhos, ou um Eutanatos dos Lhakmistas. Por outro lado, alguns Adeptos da Virtualidade evitam completamente o misticismo e usam mais adequadamente a Ciência Iluminada.

                Para piorar a confusão está o fato de que edições anteriores às vezes se referiam a personagens da Tecnocracia como “tecnomantes”. Esta terminologia foi desde então abandonada – os tecnomantes usam tecnologia para fins místicos; os tecnocratas usam tecnologia para fins não-místicos.

                O meu mago pode ser tornar um vampiro ou lobisomem e manter sua mágica?

                Não; um mago que se torne um vampiro morre e perde seu Avatar. Lobisomens nascem com sua predisposição e alguém destinado a se tornar um lobisomem nunca Despertará como um mago pois sua alma já é parte da cosmologia de Gaia.

                Também, Samuel Haight nunca foi um mago, tecnicamente. Ele simplesmente teve um item mágico com alguns poderes mágicos presos nele.

                Quando a White Wolf irá publicar um grande livro com regras cruzadas?

                Não é provável que isso aconteça, por vários motivos.

                Primeiramente está a complexidade do assunto. Direcionar todas as combinações únicas de poderes e fraquezas é uma tarefa quase impossível. Considere a dificuldade de direcionar as combinações possíveis de poderes existentes, Qualidades e outros atributos dentro de uma linha de jogo. Um “compêndio completo de cruzamentos” seria enciclopédico.

                Em segundo lugar, os jogos têm elementos temáticos e disposições diferentes. Mago tipicamente gira em torno de humanos lutando para se capacitar e ascender. Vampiro, por contraste, se foca na natureza monstruosa dos personagens centrais agora mortos vivos. Uma vez que os dois nem sempre são mutuamente exclusivos, eles colidem – tendo os vampiros que sofrem sob o fardo da espiral descendente da Humanidade enquanto seus aliados magos matam oponentes friamente devido a uma diferença de opinião que não é apenas injusta mas realmente desagradável. Em termos de antecedentes existe um problema similar – se você usa o cenário de Mago, então assume a existência do Consenso, a Tellurian e todos os ornamentos disso. Se você usa o cenário de Vampiro, assume a existência de Antediluvianos, clãs e muito possivelmente a noção bíblica de Caim e uma interpretação da deidade judaico-cristã. Os dois não se misturam bem ou facilmente. Se existe um Deus, então alguns magos estão errados sobre axiomas fundamentais do cosmos. Se não existe, então de onde os vampiros vieram e qual é a real história por trás deles? Estas questões exigem que se force uma reorganização do cenário.

                Isso leva ao terceiro problema: materiais de enredo. Cada cenário tem certos princípios que exigiriam muito esforço para descartar e retrabalhar para se ter compatibilidade. Cada um é um mundo completo em si e apropriadamente tem um designer de jogo individual para supervisionar as complexidades. Ter livros completos de cruzamentos significaria descartar todos elementos específicos de cenário e transformá-los em versões genéricas, muitas vezes sem o “tato” já desenvolvido. Além do mais, significaria que cada designer de jogo teria que ser completamente fluente com cada regra, convenção e excentricidade histórica de cada linha de jogo, ao invés de prestar atenção e ordenar apenas um. É pedir muito a um único ser humano!

                Se você, como Narrador, quer carregar esses fardos, é bem-vindo a fazê-lo... só esteja ciente da escala da dificuldade que você potencialmente confrontará.

Xandoca Squall volta e meia mostra que presta e faz uma coisinha legalzinha bem marromenos. Zoei. Ideos brincou junto.
Hehehehe, brincadeiras à parte, aqui tem uma comics traduzida por ele e diagramada pelo Ideos. Enjoy!

Olá caros rogues e queridos leitores!

Essa postagem é um informativo sobre a situação atual do grupo, dos projetos e alguns assuntos permeando o cenário do RPG nacional sob os olhos desse diácono solitário em seu sanctum. Não tenho a pretensão de suplantar a eficiência de nenhum outro informativo ou blog, apenas desejo firmar alguns pareceres aqui.

Como dito no vídeo manifesto, andamos investindo na atitude efetiva de criar mesas, ajudar narradores e players iniciantes, não somente traduzindo, revisando e diagramando livros que não existem aqui. Estou rodando cerca de 6 mesas e os outros membro rodando outras em vários locais do Brasil. Dentro da linha Mago: A Ascensão o ofício de narrar é bem diferente do normal e exige uma certa prática como jogador pra ter um tato de como lidar com cada jogador e envolver seus temas intrincados. Há também a prática de mesas menos profundas e - em geral - mais divertidas. O RC tem estado mais silencioso, pois colocamos a mão na massa como promovedores do RPG em si desde o final do ano passado.

Isso não significa que paramos de traduzir, eu pelo menos não parei e estou com os meus  projetos dentro e fora do Rogue, fora os mais de 10 entre os que o Rogue colabora e/ou dirige.

No que tange a esclarecer qualquer dúvida dentro da linha Mago: A Ascensão eu estou pessoalmente prestando serviço nos seguintes foruns/comunidades junto com todos os Rogues:

Comunidade de Orkut: Mago A Ascensão (em português).  

Essa tem sido um ponto de encontro e suporte vital para os jogadores da série, essencialmente os iniciantes envolvendo até os degraus para narrativas mais complexas. Desde dúvidas nas regras básicas, até discussões filosóficas e expansões do próprio sistema/cenáio. Futuramente pretendo extrair as postagens de lá e fazer delas parte da futura Page of Mirrors, ou até mesmo desse blog.

Shadownessence.com (em Inglês) > Shadownessence » Discussion Areas » WoD Classic (oWoD) » Mage: The Ascension

Não que exista a nescessidade da assistência de qualquer um de nós, os próprios escritores vez por outra postam por ali, mas fica ai a dica pra quem já souber falar inglês e precisar de uma ajuda mais avançada. Em todo caso estamos lá também.

Omegageek.com (em português)

   Omega Geek > Canais Geek > RPGeeks 
 Sistema Mago: a Ascensão 

Um forum de geeks que periodicamente visitamos e prestamos assistência. Conforme a demanda da informação estaremos mais por ali.

A Page of Mirrors está entre meus projetos, pretendo em data não distante voltar a revisar as matérias pra fazê-la a base de dados definitiva para jogadores da linha. Evidente, não vamos fazer isso sozinhos, os fórums são as fontes de discussão para afiarmos o que será publicados.

 

Projetos de Tradução.

Bem, atualmente estou pessoalmente ajudando em Masters of the Art, que está sob a direção de Pescaldo, Initiates of the Art, que está sob minha direção com a Patrícia Junqueira (:P) caminhando para o fim. Também sob a direção de Pescaldo temos o Verbena Revised que ele tem a liberdade para dar o update quando a monografia dele permitir. Fora do RC eu estou contribuindo para a pós-revisão do Oradores dos Sonhos e revisão do Infinite Tapestry ambos pelo Nova Concórdia. Ainda participo do Dictum Mortum e do In Flammis Scriptum, respectivamente - e respeitosamente - pelo manual básico e o Companheiro Narrador dessas linhas. Na esfera de projetos pessoais eu estou trabalhando nos TBs Ordem de Hermes e Culto do Êxtase, ambos com os meus irmãos, a cabala Necrobar. Com o Squall temos o BR (título em segredo) e o Digital Web 2.0. Renam infelizmente está impossibilidade de exercer seu papel no momento. Tenho outros projetos inacabados comigo, mas mantenho-os em segredo.

Sobre as Ajudas externas:

Estamos em um estado de cautela para aceitar ajuda externa, não muito tempo atrás recebemos uma grande proposta de um grupo de Minas Gerais que retraiu por completo sua iniciativa e foi deveras frustrante. Mais recente recebemos uma boa proposta dos Jogadores de Papel para ajudar a gente em um projeto ambicioso que mantive em segredo por anos. Não obtive a resposta deles até o presente momento dessa postagem, mas aguardo ansioso.

Sobre recrutamentos no Rogue Council.

Para os recrutamentos, estamos fechados no momento pela indisponibilidade de algum diretor que possa acompanhar o empenho e o compromisso de um hipotético aspira através de um periodo longo de tempo. Alianças muito curtas não rendem muitos frutos e a intenção do RC não é a pressa de publicar, sim a dedicação profunda em um trabalho. No entanto, se você ler isso e realmente estiver interessado em ajudar, tendo um bom skill em inglês e português, ou diagramação, mande um mail para roguecouncil@gmail.com que avaliaremos você conforme a possibilidade. Tenha em mente que não somos uma instituição que angaria lucros, é um trabalho que fazemos pelos que não tem acesso ao idioma inglês, nós não fazemos pelo nome, nem por nada que não seja a promoção da linha Mago: A Ascensão e o RPG em geral no Brasil.

- EIRPG & Cenário Geral

Como não houve o Encontro Internacional de RPG, nosso encontro foi cancelado, mas pretendo futuramente fazer algum tipo de festa ou encontro de fórums pra suplantar essa nescessidade. Ando pensando em usar o RPG no Bobs na capital de SP, ou as dependências do Centro Cultural Vergueiro. Gostaria de dar um grande HAIL para a Graci que está na mesma luta pela divulgação e ajuda desse hobbie no Brasil. Também os tantos outros como Jaime Daniel, o pessoal do D3 system (sim, agradeço o trampo deles também!), pessoal da Ludus, e todos os nossos amados Grupos de Tradução que tem seguido a tendência de promover mesas também por ai.

Dentro desse ambiente eu continuo pedindo a todos que suportem o RPG, não apenas o RPG mais voltado pra jogabilidade, nem somente o interpretativo, somos poucos e não podemos nos dar ao luxo de subsessões e divisões demais. Isso enfraqueceria todas as iniciativas. Você conhece bastante do seu sistema? Crie um Narrador, você é Narrador? Crie mesas! Vá jogar em locais públicos aonde existe essa cultura de RPG aonde outras mesas possam interagir - em OFF de preferência :D.

Acredito que mesmo com a perda do evento que marcou época, nossa contra-cultura ficou mais forte, alimentada por revolta, paixão, contra ou a favor uns os outros todos estão contribuindo pelo hobbie e isso é louvável por si.

Obrigado!

Rafael "Kaichkull" Mastromauro

Rogue Council Deacon

Ainda em fase de pos revisão, Oradores dos Sonhos está ai pra quem quiser conferi. ^^

O Livro dos Oradores dos Sonhos, edição revisada

Por: Murilo Sarno (Fale RPG)

Escrito por Bruce Baugh e John Snead
Ilustrações de Leiff Jones, Ron Brown, Alex Sheikman e Drew tucker

O livro é bem escrito, mantendo a qualidade dos Revisados, com uma maior pesquisa sobre o xamanismo e animismo ao redor do mundo ao invés de centrar apenas na África e América do norte.

No prólogo - O retorno do paciente - conhecemos Robert, ex paciente psiquiátrico que retorna ao antigo sanatório para tentar ajudar um mago ainda em fase de despertar. Serve de referência aos despertar de muitos xamãs no mundo moderno.

Introdução - Visões - oferece um resumo sobre o que o livro irá apresentar e sobre o tema (Movendo-se em círculos) e o clima (Sonhos encontrando a realidade). Legalzinho, especialmente por ter cortado boa parte dos termos oficiais da Tradição presentes na primeira edição. Mais adiante veremos porque isso é bom.

Capítulo 1 - O objetivo, O Mundo

Conta a estória do Mundo, não dos Oradores, no Dia Do Mundo, segundo narração feita pelo espírito de uma baleia anciã. Nesse capítulo, os espíritos tomam a frente na educação dos Oradores, e nós temos a chance de ver melhor como os espíritos falam - algo importante para os oradores (dica,nem sempre eles falam alguns verbos, tempos ou mesmo conjugações iguais à nossa).

A seguir, um tour pelo mundo dos xamãs, cortesia do espírito beija flor (que é incapaz de entender o verbo Ser), no qual descobrimos q o número de xamãs está aumentando, independente da Tempestade Avatar, e que isso ocorre em todas as partes do planeta. Muitas surpresas aguardam os Oradores,e em geral,são boas.

Uma breve conversa entre Robert e um hermético sobre a opinião dos oradores sobre os outros (nada muito novo,exceto pelo fato de que os lupinos ODEIAm os Oradores), e um texto sobre filosofia e xamanismo encerram este capítulo.

Capítulo 2 - A Estrada, Mágica

Mostra como é a vida de um xamã e nos apresenta as facções dentro da Tradição :

Os Baruti - guardiões das estórias antigas e dos mitos, contadores de estórias e atuais líderes da Tradição.

Os Independentes - os xamãs que despertaram e se educaram sozinhos ou com a ajuda de um espírito.

A Sociedade da Roda Fantasma - Trapaceiros, boêmios e guias espirituais dos centros urbanos.

Os Guardiões da Chama Sagrada - Preservadores dos costumes e lendas antigas, atuação mais acadêmica do que os Baruti.

A sociedade da Lança Vermelha - a facção guerreira dos oradores. Curiosamente,a que mais possui contatos com as outras Tradições.

Os Ferreiros Espirituais - criadores de fetiches e de tecno-animismo. Deixam com inveja qualquer Garou.

Solitários - são os xamãs que escolheram viver afastados de tudo e de todos, acompanhados apenas pelo sonhar.

A seguir uma discussão sobre o papel do Orador, de intermediário entre o mundo espiritual e material. Uma apresentação sobre as esferas no paradigma dos Oradores (Vida e Matéria, Correspondência e Tempo sendo similares). Um texto sobre Xamãs tradicionais, Urbanos e Tecno-xamãs, mais informações sobre itens despertos (Com Espírito 3), novos Antecedentes (Totem e Aliado Espiritual) e Xamãs feiticeiros (magia limitada). Por fim, uma lista de novas Rotas, fetiches e talismãs. Muito bom esse capítulo,inclusive por abordar o xamã transexual ou travesti, comum em muitas das culturas pré cristãs.

Capítulo 3 - Os Andarilhos, Xamãs e os outros.

Este capítulo apresenta alguns notáveis oradores, como Tasygan, a atual líder dos Baruti e mais velha entre os Oradores; Netsilak Raymond, dos ferreiros espirituais e líder do movimento  modernista; e Xoca, o guerrilheiro maia,e personagem referência da Tradição. Dicas para crônicas com Oradores, uma cabala apenas de xamãs e por fim dez exemplos de personagens, sendo os mais curiosos a Conselheira Cultural e o Espião Espiritual. O Pirata de Xangô tá muito mal feito.

No geral eu gostei do livro, ainda não foi tão bom quanto o Akasha, mas está bem escrito e informativo, auxiliando tanto os jogadores quanto narradores na interpretação dos xamãs (e dos espíritos) dentro do mundo moderno.

Tradução - Nova Concórdia -

Artigo de Garras da Lua (Fale RPG)

Download? Clique Aqui

    Nate observou-os entrando, um a um. Caras legais o suficiente, pensou. Ele os deu aulas de reforço em uma das universidades locais. Ele nunca se incomodou em perguntar, ao invés disso deixava sua imaginação o preencher. Nate se imaginou um escritor, e essas pessoas tinham uma história.

    Eles se encontravam assim uma vez por mês em media, às vezes mais, embora houvesse uma vez, há alguns anos, em que não viu nenhum deles por nove meses. Eles eram fieis às reuniões, e cumprimentavam uns aos outros como se fossem melhores amigos. Dois deles com certeza já estavam casados agora, e dois se mudaram, ou morreram.

    Eles acenaram para Nate conforme entravam, e ele serviu seus drinks e aperitivos de sempre. Ele os proporcionou toda a privacidade necessária, deixando-os usar os fundos da loja e esperou por eles pessoalmente, para que nenhum dos garçons ficasse bisbilhotando. Essa bisbilhotice é ruim para os negócios, e enquanto eles sentassem e falassem por horas a fio, eles seriam bons para os negócios. Eles pagam bem pelo tempo de Nate e até permitiram uma foto para um anuncio uma vez, embora não desse pra ver seus rostos direito. Isso não importava. Era da atmosfera que ele precisava, não de seus rostos.

    Sir Lawrence White sorriu para Nate enquanto entrava na sala. Ele podia sentir os pensamentos do pequeno irlandês, e estava impressionado. Lawrence gostava de Nate, e embora se sentisse culpado por ser capaz de colher seus pensamentos com um simples olhar, era revigorante sentir sensações tão... boas. Nate era um cara simples, com uma vida simples, que tinha prazer em sonhar acordado com a vida de outras pessoas. Lawrence o invejou.

    Os outros já estavam lá, sentados e aguardando. Lawrence sorriu para eles e tomou seu lugar. Ao seu redor estava Jessa, ainda ostentando seus tops curtos e saias longas (ele estava feliz de ver que ela havia abandonado seu visual gótico finalmente, uma vez que ela nunca foi realmente aquilo), seu longo cabelo negro preso num rabo de cavalo. Ryan, digitando como um louco em seu laptop, olhava ocasionalmente para saber quem estava falando. Lee Ann, sentada pacientemente ao lado dele, falando com um de cada vez, dificilmente denunciando a confusão permanente em que ela realmente estava. Dent, que costumava ser quieto e pensativo, tentava ignorar a falação sem fim de Lee Ann. E Marcus sentou-se nervosamente austero com as mãos prendendo uma pasta da NASA.

    Lawrence se sentou e olhou para todos. Lee Ann fez silêncio enquanto ele se preparava para falar. O silencio foi quase reverencial, e Lawrence teria se sentido tocado se não tivesse ouvido Lee Ann ligeiramente sussurrando “Todos Saúdem o Líder” sob sua respiração. Ele decidiu quebrar a tensão momentânea com um sorriso.

    Jessa tossiu suavemente para chamar a atenção de Lee Ann. Lee Ann olhou para a outra garota sorrindo, ainda sussurrando. Lawrence conteve uma risada e observou Jessa primeiro ficar com raiva e depois simplesmente suspirar. Parece que a Vazia finalmente aprendeu. Lee Ann fará como ela quiser – ela sempre foi assim.

“Para que estamos aqui?” Dent Perguntou. Lee Ann pulou, claramente não esperando o homem silencioso falar. Na verdade, ninguém esperava isso dele. Dent era um homem de poucas palavras e raramente falava a não ser que fosse pedido.

“Nós sempre nos encontramos,” Lee Ann disse. “Nós nos reunimos e falamos sobre o clima, e imaginamos como as coisas poderiam ser se todos nós tivéssemos um vida.”

    Ryan achou aquilo um pouco engraçado. Sir Lawrence não conseguiu entender, mas percebeu que o jovem estava começando a desenvolver algo um pouco mais parecido com senso de humor – ao menos, um normal.

“Sim, mas ele tem um motivo dessa vez,” Dent disse, prestando atenção em Sir Lawrence. Lawrence sorriu mais amplamente, uma parte de seu dente dava a ele um ar predatório. “Um motivo? Talvez eu tenha. Talvez eu tenha desde que nos conhecemos,” ele disse. Todos prestaram atenção nele. Ele se levantou, segurando um pequeno livro nas mãos. “Eu tenho uma motivo,” ele disse olhando para cada um de seus amigos. Ele posou o livro sobre mesa. “E é esse.”

 

Como usar este livro

    Eu descobri que se eu sentar e tentar explicar a função de um aprendiz a um novo iniciado, eu viro um homem de poucas palavras. Não por que eu não tenha idéia sobre o que estou falando, eu só tenho problemas em articular o pensamento. Eu sempre acho que estou deixando algo de fora. Eu estou esquecendo aquele detalhe importante, e deixando ele de fora, alguém morrerá.

    Difícil, pra ser sincero. Por isso eu juntei tudo aqui. Ele simplesmente é o que o nome diz. É um livro para aprendizes sobre aprendizado. É também para todos vocês caras que acham que sabem de tudo. Acreditem, vocês não sabem. Vocês podem dizer que não precisam desse livro, mas veremos quando se encontrarem sozinhos em beco escuro, olhando para um garoto assustado que matou 20 pessoas simplesmente por que Despertou para um mundo mais aterrorizante que sua existência adormecida. Você pode já ter passado por isso, mas há muitos que não.

    Bem, uma vez que tenho a chance de editar minhas palavras, o que é aprendizado? Para simplificar, é colocar alguém sob a tutela de outro para aprender seu oficio. Para aqueles como nós, o oficio á a magia, e é um oficio ardiloso. É também um oficio recompensador e distrativo. Expressando-me nesses termos, me sinto como um vendedor.

    Entretanto não há nada para vender aqui. Seja você mago ou não. Teoricamente, todos podem Despertar. Infelizmente, o Avatar da maioria das pessoas não é forte o suficiente para juntar a energia para o Despertar. Algumas vezes até mesmo os que conseguem não são fortes o suficiente para canalizar a energia que alimenta nossas magias. Em um mundo perfeito, todos poderiam ser magos, mas a energia necessária para tal Despertar seria excepcional.

    Nós chamamos esse Despertar em massa de Ascensão, e é a isso que aspiramos... bem, na visão geral. Honestamente, nós só tentamos fazer nossos próprios mundinhos melhores. Muitos de nos podem alterar as coisas ao nosso redor, mas são raros os magos que mudam o mundo. O que mais irrita os idealistas é que existem magos capazes de alterar o universo, mas não o fazem. Essa é a chance que temos, e o preço que o mundo paga.

    Então, você acha que seria confuso se todo mundo pudesse fazer isso? Bem, você deve entender uma coisa: A magia não é o que você acha que é. Não são feitiços, embora você vá usá-los no início. Um dia você verá que não precisa de feitiços, ou quinquilharias ou qualquer outra coisa. Um dia a magia simplesmente fluirá por você, obediente à sua vontade. É isso que desejamos ao mundo: que todos abram seus olhos e Despertem para o que está ao redor deles. Seria um mundo de potencial e oportunidades sem fim.

    Bem, você Despertou. Se você tem esse livro, provavelmente você tem um mentor. Acredite, isso poder ser uma benção e uma maldição. Mentores podem ser bons para aprender e para te tirar de enrascadas. Eles também são fontes constantes de trabalhos diários, estudos sem fim, tarefas tediosas e missões perigosas. Eu perdi a conta de quantas vezes vi mentores mandarem jovens magos ao suicídio. Algumas vezes é desencorajador. Ainda assim, se você não tem um mentor, eu sugiro que arrume um. Sem dúvida, ao contrário disso, um individuo notável desses pode te achar.

    Uma vez que tiver um mentor, vai ter que mostrar serviço Tente se divertir – não é fácil ser um novo mago. Todos lhe observarão, todos irão te testar e alguns esperarão que você falhe. Se você for bom o suficiente (ou sortudo o suficiente, como alguns dizem) para ter sucesso, então parabéns.

    Eu, entretanto, não receberia os parabéns com muitos sorrisos.  A magia tem um alto preço que poucos podem imaginar. Você pode ter que desistir de algumas das coisas que você mais ama. Você será forçado a tomar decisões difíceis, e às vezes se sentirá como se tivesse vendido sua alma. Nunca é fácil. Para piorar, você nunca vai saber em quem pode confiar. Nem todos que vem lhe ajudar são honestos, sinceros, ou estão preocupados com a sua evolução e a do mundo. Você imaginava outra coisa? A magia não torna ninguém infalível ou moral, apenas Avisa. Quando escolher seus amigos – aliados, sua rodinha, amantes, um mentor (ou alunos, para quem interessa), é melhor você ter certeza de quem são. Senão, você vai estar na pior situação que pode imaginar.

Agora, acabou a introdução. Leia bem as estas palavras, pois elas também podem salvar sua vida.

 

Clima: O Mundo Inexplorado

    Para um iniciado, tudo é novinho em folha de novo. A realidade mundana é levada em um flash súbito de magnificência que traz um plano maior, mais cruel e mais vibrante à vista. Uma vez que você tenha aceitado a magia, não tem volta: O mundo estará sempre ali na esquina agora que você mudou. Um aprendiz deve prestar mais atenção a estas esquinas se espera sobreviver no subitamente perigoso mundo da magia. Logo ali estão coisas mais assustadoras que qualquer mortal possa imaginar... mas cada passo traz o iniciado mais próximo do verdadeiro entendimento. Se o mundo não te quebrar, você deve viver para ver o suficiente. Suficiente de que? Boa pergunta...

 

Tema: A Jornada à Descoberta

    Veja o primeiro passo – é magnífico. Cada ação do iniciado abre uma centena de caminhos. Na maioria dos casos, as fraquezas que levam os magos à corrupção, insanidade ou morte podem ser reconhecidas durante o aprendizado. É trabalho de o iniciado superar tais obstáculos, para aprender as lições não só sobre a magia mas sobre o seu interior e sua auto-suficiência. Um mago que não pode ou não muda o mundo – ou ele mesmo – está perdendo a mais poderosa magia de todas. O iniciado aprende em cada tarefa, em cada falha e de sua própria reação às revelações dadas pela sua visão investigativa. Iniciados podem não ter o poder para quebrar mundos, mas de certa maneira, eles têm algo mais valioso: Eles têm potencial. Um mago tradicionalista sabe o que ele pode ou não fazer, tem noções pré-estabelecidas sobre inimigos, aliados e magia, e segue um caminho fixo rumo ao maior entendimento. O iniciado não tem nenhum desses pré-julgamentos – o mundo inteiro é sem forma, e o iniciado escolhe como ver a magia sobre ele. Se ele evitar a insanidade, a preguiça, a corrupção ou a morte, seu destino é desconhecido e sem limites. Sem o cesto de idéias feitas e “verdades” que os outros magos abraçam, o destino do iniciado é totalmente feito por ele.

Em Texto Plano

    Como um livro de aprendiz, o Iniciados na Arte descreve a vida e as tribulações de um recém desperto ao poder de um mago. Um mago experiente pode compartilhar muito de seu conhecimento, mas tem mais na magia que invocar umas rotinas e se juntar a uma cabala. Os processos do estudo da magia – os fundamentos que formam a tradição de um mago, seu estilo, técnicas e crenças – estarão com ele para sempre. É durante o aprendizado que o mago explora a direção que seu poder irá tomar e forma sua opinião sobre outros grupos e práticas mágicas. É também durante o treinamento que o mago cria elos com seus companheiros e instrutores que irão guiá-lo, ajudá-lo ou combatê-lo durante suas carreiras.

    Não é o suficiente apenas sentar numa Capela e assistir televisão. Um aprendiz deve corresponder a padrões rigorosos. Este livro é sobre sobreviver a estes testes – surgindo do fogo, forjado e endurecido em uma afiada e potente lamina capaz de fatiar as próprias tramas da realidade. Nem todos conseguem. Para aqueles que sobrevivem e vão especializar suas Artes, as raízes podem sempre ser seguidas até o início.

 ● Capitulo Um: Despertar descreve o momento de súbita consciência, iluminação súbita que atinge e transforma uma pessoa, na maioria dos aspectos, normal (ou não tão normal) em um mago. O que provoca o Despertar? Como o futuro mago reage à infusão súbita de conhecimentos incríveis, sabedoria insana e poder de dobrar a realidade? O Avatar, uma vez despertado de seu descanso, dá um grande grito e tira seus pijamas. Agora é hora de o mago encarar o mundo frio e sombrio.

 ● Capitulo Dois: Achando Seu Chão é um conselho de vários magos sobre mergulhar na sociedade dos magos. Uma vez que o mago Desperta, ele tem um potencial sem limites. Entretanto, nem sempre tem alguém por perto para direcionar o mago à exploração de seu recém descoberto talento. Achar um mentor, sobreviver à iniciação em uma Tradição ou Convenção, ou apenas ir por um caminho Discrepante – cada uma é uma dura decisão, e com a qual todo iniciado deve lidar. Junto com a sociedade dos magos e mentores, iniciados tem de lidar com a influencia súbita do Avatar, levando-os a buscas interiores e atraindo-os a direções impressionantes. Todo iniciado deve aprender a lidar com esse demônio, ou será consumido por ele.

 ● Capitulo Três: Vida Como Aprendiz acompanha o trabalho diário de um iniciado. Só por que você Despertou não significa que suas contas serão subitamente pagas, seus companheiros de quarto menos negligentes ou seu trabalho mais fácil. Amigos, família, inimigos, outros magos e toda essa merda diária que vem ao Desperto, todos têm lugar na vida do aprendiz. Sem o poder bruto de um mago experiente, o aprendiz tem um malabarismo cuidadoso à frente, tentando equilibrar os riscos do aprendizado sobrenatural com os perigos da vida.

 ● Capitulo Quatro: Resolução explica aonde um aprendiz vai depois de passado o choque inicial. Nem todos sobrevivem para virarem magos, e muitos nem passam do aprendizado. Alguns apenas desistem, ignorando seus Avatares e tentando se encaixar de volta numa vida medíocre. Outros são mortos ou ficam loucos. Ninguém disse que ser um mago seria fácil! Na verdade, a magia faz a vida mais difícil... mas aqueles que sobrevivem tem um vislumbre do verdadeiro poder. Como o aprendiz passa pelas primeiras provas determina para sempre o caminho que irá traçar rumo à Ascensão.

 ● Apêndice: Pelos Números cobre as mecânicas de jogo para aprendizes: rotinas simples e pratica mágica, manifestações mínimas de Paradoxo e regras para criar personagens aprendizes (e, com sorte, transformá-los em magos completos).

 

É um longo e difícil caminho. Boa sorte.

 

 

Vi que esse multiply estava formal demais, é como se tivessemos alguma obrigação de uma concordância perfeita, uma frequência, um molde. Como a personagem de Dostoiévski que fingia escrever seu próprio registro pessoal para terceiros visando escrever sobre si de forma bem pontuada motivado pelo embaraço social.


Não é assim, também não sou apenas eu que tomo frente ao opinar aqui, apesar de eu exercer a função de representar o grupo ao exterior dele isto não é um diário. O que também não me obriga a pontuar corretamente, muito menos seguir o paradigma de journal publication.






Li hoje uma excelente produção de Vampiro: O Réquiem de uma Bloodline (perdão, não li como se deu a tradução desse termo) e me inspirei a dissertar um pouco sobre o cenário geral.


Chequei o mail, a comunidade, concertei os links aqui, rotinas.Noto, que gasto a maior parte do tempo hábil organizando a cena ao invés de produzir nela. É um tanto triste, pois houvesse alguém para fazê-lo com a frequência que faço, eu teria a feliz satisfação de contribuir com os tijolos quintessenciais da inspiração da linha Mago: A Ascensão: a tradução propriamente dita. Vejo também que não sou o Capitão Nascimento, não faço um serviço exímio e o que me separa de meus aspiras é apenas a mera.. frequência imediata.

Alguém tem que fazer o que faço, ou a idéia perde força, não serão elos de uma corrente, mas forjados dispersos com um abismo no limbo separando um gomo metálico do outro.

Essa frequência imediata surge exatamente dessa compulsão que tenho pela noção de continuidade da ideia e não da corrente. Essa enfeitaria um pescoço e serviria para salvar um pingente, não todos que as usam para o que foram feitas, segurarem o ente mnemônico primal (ou "primacial" no neologismo de autoria de Franklin Smith), a razão metafísica da existência (e persistência) da série: novos jogadores, novas ideias dentro do escopo e dai para o além, a expansão da ideia original,

Expansão da ideia....




Eis que surgiu um súbito e uma constatação, é mentira que gasto mais tempo organizando, pois no que trata da linha eu gasto ainda mais desta frequencia tirando dúvidas diversas sobre a série. Delas me surgem espelhos, aonde disserto novas idéias e expando o que tenho em mim.



Produção? Talvez mais um desatamento de nós do que produção. As vezes uma ausência de statement - deveras frequente no WoD - me faz criar algo por força de exemplo e ai enxergo o propósito em escrever.
















A economia das dúvidas é maior inimiga da criação do que a ausência de respostas.

Para quem quiser conferir a original Bloodline feita por Kael, clique aqui .A traduzida está anexa a postagem.

O Nação Garou reforça seu compromisso com as minorias sobrenaturais do Mundo das Trevas e traz para seu público uma versãodo Screen (Escudo do Narrador) que acompanha todos os livros "Storyteller Companion" (Companheiro do Narrador).
Neste tópico, apresentamos a vocês a nossa versão para o Mage Storyteller Screen Revised.
Espero que nossos companheiros gostem, que nosso novo público goste.

Caso você queria saber o que pode estar entre seus dados e os olhos dos jogadores, clique AQUI.

Chegou o fim de qualquer rivalidade que possa ficar na frente do objetivo de divulgação da linha. De agora em diante reuniremos os lançamentos de Mago feitos por projetos pessoais e grupos quaisquer, desde que zelem pela excelente qualidade desse trabalho e o objetivo comum com o nosso: divulgar sem passar por cima de nenhum direito. A Nação Garou sempre foi exemplo técnico e organizacional, sobretudo perseverança e garra. Obrigado pela ajuda a todos os fãs de Mago.

Venho acompanhando certa repercussão ao meu video que fora assistido nem 100 vezes somando o youtube e aqui, ele foi caracterizado por meus reclamantes de "alarde".

O feedback que recebo é justamente uma fogueira pra uma brincadeira praticada aqui no Blog do Rogue Council e quem é acusado de fazer alarde e de má fé sou eu. O alarde veio de fontes formais quando o simples fato é um grupo de amigos demonstrando um evento que acontece vez por outra e que o próprio video atesta isso.

É realmente engraçado e recomendo que busquem em dicionários o significado da palavra "alarde" e também a semântica da expressão "fogueira". Observem também quem fez o que. Eu postando 2 vídeos, ou notas formais?

Uma brincadeira, uma mensagem  buscando criticar, sem intenção de prejudício material.

Uso aqui do direito inferido a todo cidadão brasileiro pela Constituição de 1988, cujo qual pessoas morreram para garantir e que vejo quase um bullying virtual por parte de seus colaboradores mais assíduos - aos quais estou ciente que ela não pode se responsabilizar, mas também cabe aqui a nota do evento todo.

Busco antes esclarecer meu poder: é o de simples cidadão, que pode expressar o que sente e pensa, o Artigo 5 da Constituição me assegura o direito de expressão sendo vetado apenas o anonimato. Não serei limitado desse direito por posição politica, religiosa e principalmente não preciso de licensa para exercê-lo.

No que tange o fenômeno em si, também cabe ressaltar a irrefutabilidade do objeto do assunto, o vídeo aonde eu e meus amigos expomos um defeito que surgiu em mais um livro a Devir e que não foi a primeiro, nem o segundo ocorrido. Torna-se  relevante dizer que em momento algum foi dito que todos os livros da Devir apresentam os mesmos defeitos: eles são aleatórios e variados, mas não são em todos e nem em maioria. Evidentemente isso não livra a Devir de sua obrigação, nem eu de meu direito de consumidor e de brasileiro querendo se expressar e fazendo isso livre de censura. Também não foi imposto a mim a obrigação de saber o estado de cada livro daquela edição, tão pouco a fonte do problema.

Sendo um problema de gráfica ou não, não cabe ao consumidor avaliar isso, tão pouco ele fica vetado de expor da forma como bem entender seu pensamento sobre o objeto do assunto, sendo vetado nessa figura legal o anonimato e a intenção de prejudício: Essa não existe.

A possível consequencia se me é permitido deduzir, seria a de outro cidadão, ou grupo passar em uma livraria e fazerem o exame de livros da editora. Esse exame não teria outro efeito - em seus livros que são vendidos ABERTOS - que não a constatação de um padrão. Se a Devir zela por sua qualidade como seus colaboladores gostam de zelar pela vida alheia e acredito que ela se pronfitifica a isso, não há qualquer prejudício, nem moral, nem material.

Este cidadão fora acusado por colaboradores da Devir no blog da RedeRPG de calúnia, má fé e anonimato. Não fosse isso, essa postagem seria um pedido de desculpas formal, mas entendo com o fenômeno que eles não querem comunicação, nem mesmo eu como cliente, então fico livre dessa obrigação moral, visto que não há também prejudício material.


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Rafael "Kaichkull" Mastromauro