<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Without question the most cerebral of the World of Darkness Games, White Wolf’s Mage: The Ascension tackled themes of creativity, individuality and the nature of reality itself. Players took the role of mages, individuals who possess the power to bend reality to their will. Each mage belonged to a different faction that espoused its own philosophy and view of reality, with each one vying with the rest to impose its agenda on mankind. Since mages understood that “reality” was a matter of subjectivity and consensus (e.g. the sky is blue because everyone agrees it is so), the factions sought to impose their will by changing the way humanity viewed itself and the world. The current consensus reality favored a faction known as the Technocracy, which shaped humanity’s worldview along a communal, science-based paradigm. When mages of other factions attempted to work their own versions of magic within this paradigm they risked a backlash called Paradox, which basically represented the consensus reality attempting to reassert itself in the face of the mage’s efforts. Paradox could injure or kill an unwary mage, or worse, strip her of her magical abilities.

Mage: The Ascension was a high-concept game about creativity and ideas, and the rules that players used to perform their characters’ magic was very freeform. Characters possessed knowledge in one or more Spheres of magic, each of which dealt with one of the fundamental forces of reality. A “spell” combined specific Spheres to produce a desired effect. As a result, a character’s ability to work magic was limited only by a player’s imagination and the Spheres the character possessed. Many role-players, accustomed to a more systematic, objective approach to magic (such as Dungeons and Dragons’ spell lists) were put off by the loose and freeform approach to magic, but the game developed a die-hard fan base that kept the game among White Wolf’s top sellers until its end in 2004. In late 2005 White Wolf released a completely new version of the game titled Mage: The Awakening that keeps many of the strengths of the old game while doing away with its contentious back-story.