| Welcome to The Dark Before Dawn. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Mage Vs. Vampire: Political Differences | |
|---|---|
| Topic Started: Feb 8 2011, 08:40 PM (53 Views) | |
| Laraqua | Feb 8 2011, 08:40 PM Post #1 |
|
Administrator
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Just found this document sitting in My Documents. Me and Pieta thought it up to help folks get their mind in the Mage game and to reveal some of the distinctions between how Mage plays compared to how Vampire plays. I was the one who wrote it, though, so forgive me if I'm off at all. VAMPIRE vs. MAGE In Vampire, I am the most important person in my life unless either a Derangement or a Vinculum says otherwise. In Mage, the Group matters more than the Individual and I am likely to make at least small sacrifices for the good of the whole. In Vampire, the Prince has absolute power. Everyone else's status and power requires the Prince to have that absolute power. If someone mouths off to the Prince and other kindred allow it, They had better be planning on a swift coup before people get used to mouthing off at elders. That's presuming the Prince doesn't use their final authority to kill the insolent one. In Mage, the Hierarch isn't the Prince and they don't have absolute power. They are the head of the Consillium which sets both precedent and the five Great Rights of Mage society. In Vampire, status means everything. If you have higher status than me, I can owe you a boon and possibly lose status or suffer some other punishment simply for talking back to you. Other high status people will back them up, even if they don't like them, because otherwise, their status will mean less if precedents are set. In Mage, status doesn't quite mean as much compared to what level of mage you can call yourself based on the highest arcana dots you have. However, status is also much harder to get as mages are paranoid. In Vampire, everything comes at a cost. Hence the boon system which is used when you don't know what you want yet or simply want to attain power in debts owed. In Mage, there is no boon system. As often happens in real life with mortals, people help each other out because their ideologies match, because they have time on their hands, because they just get along with that person, a promise of a future favor, or they don't help. Sometimes money or other goods may be exchanged in a trade but the boon system a series of blank yet readily defined sizes of IOUs staunchly protected by the society is an alien concept in mortal culture. Even somewhat similar human inventions like money or cheques are not equivalent to boons. After all, even if your PS3 cost $1500 in the shop, someone else can't go I have that much money, give it to me. *** While superficially, Orders and Covenants may seem similar, they're not. Kindred are quite selfish beings and their covenants reflect that. Mages are more prone to an emotional ideology that surrounds their own existence. The Silver Ladder may seem like the Invictus, but they have loftier goals that include wanting to build a new mage society, the perfect society, that will only be achieved when the whole world had been enlightened and the lie destroyed. The Free Council may seem like the Carthians but they believe in true democracy and the destruction of the exarchs and all those who would support them. The Mysterium may seem like the Ordo Dracul but they are those who keep the ancient knowledge and restore it only to those who are worthy. The Adamantine Arrow and the Guardians of the Veil bear no resemblance to the other two covenants. These are very simplistic descriptions, read the Mage book for more details, but it does clarify that the Orders cannot be treated like kindred covenants. |
| OOC: Shannon O'Farrell | |
![]() |
|
| « Previous Topic · Random Conversations · Next Topic » |





![]](http://z1.ifrm.com/static/1/pip_r.png)



10:33 AM Jul 11