Thema: Mage: the Awakening - Gesammelte Infos

[Selganor [n/a]]

Im White Wolf Quarterly finden sich folgende Infos:

Early Awakening

Mage: The Awakening Developer Bill Bridges gives us a peek at the underpinnings of White Wolf's third World of Darkness game. Mage: The
Awakening releases this summer.

White Wolf Quarterly: So, what is a mage?
Bill Bridges: A mage is someone who's Awakened, whose soul has been freed of an ancient curse afflicting mortals. Most people's souls are asleep, unaware of the raw power they can tap to remake their world. The truth has been hidden from them many lifetimes ago; all they know is a lie. Mages can see through the lie and enact humanity's birthright: magic.

WWQ: Thematically, what is Mage about?
Bridges: Mage's core theme is power corrupts. There’s danger in magic. Reweaving the Tapestry of creation can inflate the ego and overwhelm a mage in warped outlooks or lies that he believes to be true. Trapped in a world of his own misperceptions, the mage attempts to rework reality to match his new warped vision. What's real and what's not? A mage's Awakening gives him the power to see the Invisible Truth — and to create new truths. But his own mortal failings might cause him to create falsehoods and virtual realities mistaken for real. What begins as a quest to strip away illusions risks becoming a process of substituting new phantasms for old.

WWQ: How about mood? What does Mage: The Awakening feel like?
Bridges: I'm going for a sense of ancient mystery. The true nature of reality is an enigma always beyond reach. This cosmic Mystery has a powerful pull on the minds of the Awakened. They're drawn to seek it out and solve it, even if solving one aspect only reveals a thousand more unanswered questions.
This mood is a more metaphysical version of the theme of the World of Darkness as a whole — a dark, secret conspiracy beckoning those in the know. Instead of being a theme for Mage, it is a mood: a pervasive atmosphere of ciphers, secrets and looming cosmic revelations.

WWQ: What do mages do?
Bridges: There's a stereotype that mystics mostly contemplate their navels and the awesome secrets of the universe, but that's not what Mage is about. Mages - especially mages portrayed by players in a Storytelling game — are in the thick of things, always at ground zero for the next, great momentous event. They don't just think, they act - by casting magic.
Mage characters are the secret movers and shakers of the world. Their actions affect the tenor of the Tapestry itself - for good or ill. And yet, they act unseen,
their powers invisible to the Sleepers, who are shrouded in their curse, blind to the truth. Worse, if a Sleeper does get a glimpse of the Invisible Truth, the curse reacts to blind him once more - and to punish whomever alerted him.
Mages seek ever more cryptic secrets, the keys to greater power. Their quests
take them into unimaginable realms and landscapes of the mind. As a mage grows in knowledge and power, he understands more about the world - and realizes that it’s vaster and more unfathomable than he ever imagined.
Only a god could possibly master such a universe… and that's exactly what mages intend to become.
The small-mindedness of mortals, however, extends even to the Awakened.
Only a select few are open-minded enough to realize that reality is pliable enough to accept multiple outlooks at once. Reprogramming reality brings a mage up against his rivals: mages who violently disagree with his goals and who seek to stop him. Crossing the territorial borders of other mages can often be construed as an act of war.