Addicted To Mysteries

Mage: The Awakening, Open Development

Mage: The Awakening is a big game. It’ll be nine years old this August, and despite the second-largest product line of the new World of Darkness, we haven’t yet revisited everything in that great big turquoise corebook. Over the years, Awakening has developed into a distinct voice from its big brother Ascension. We’ve explored the orders, wandered the Astral Realms, seen the creatures Summoners bring into the world, been tempted by the Left Hand Path and learned the Imperial Mysteries.

It’s time to take Mage back to its core. Like the Strix and Idigam Chronicles for Vampire and Werewolf, we’re writing a new corebook for Awakening that takes the lessons we’ve learned over the line, our sense of what Awakening is, and presents it loud and clear. To focus this big, complicated game into something that can hook new players without sacrificing the rich world it’s established for its existing fans.

Mage is a game about secret knowledge and hubristic pride, about knowing too much, becoming separated from your peers by special insight into the incomprehensible forces and twisting occult conspiracies behind the World of Darkness. Mage is a game of power and hubris, of the temptation to allow your reach to exceed your grasp, of knowledge outpacing Wisdom. It’s a game about obsession, turning away from comfortable Sleep to chase the weird and the occult. It’s mages as Occult Detectives, confronting the supernatural of a gnostic world.

It’s about being Addicted To Mysteries.

The Fallen World Chronicle brings Mage into the God-Machine era of the World of Darkness. Getting here – to the point this blog starts – has been a labor of love, just over two years so far since I was brought onto God-Machine Chronicle as a freelancer and asked if the other games would be updated, too. It’s the book I became Awakening Developer to make, ably supported by a crack team of writers ranging from pillars of the Awakening world like Matt McFarland and Malcolm Sheppard, to returning freelancers from the traditional publishing days like Danielle Harper-Lauzon, Filamena Young, Eric Zawadzki, and Travis Stout, to newer faces like Tristan Tarwater, N Conte, Neall Raemonn Price, and Lauren Roy. I’m keenly aware of the big boots I’m stepping into – the list of Awakening Developers reads like a who’s who of White Wolf. Matt, Ethan Skemp, Eddy Webb, Bill Bridges, and more. Hell of an act to follow.

From here on out, Fallen World will be partly developed on this blog. I can’t promise a regular schedule for now, but I’ll try to give you something every week until release. Although “Supernal Saturday” has a ring to it, now I think about it.

As with Stew’s Idigam blog, the direction of the blog depends on your votes. At the end of each entry, I’ll give two choices about the next topic. Comment about which you’d prefer to see, but don’t worry if you get outvoted – everything will be revealed in the fullness of time. Also, be aware that while writers are writing some parts of the game will still be baking, and I’ll be keeping those topics “back” until later in the blog – so if you’re wondering why your pet topic never seems to come up as one of the choices, it’s probably because we’re still hammering on it backstage!

Next Blog, the eternal dichotomy: The Fallen World, or the Supernal World? Choose wisely.