Double Take
Yesterday, I was walking to my martial arts class when I decided to detour through a part of the neighborhood I had just discovered the day before. In this past week, I had been looking for inspirations for a new Mage: the Awakening campaign I am putting together, and I had been gathering setting for it and related stories for a while now
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It's centered around the Halfway House, one that takes in newly-awakened or newly-magically active teenagers. Players don't play the teenagers so much as they play as staff members loosely affiliated with the Halfway House. In typical stories, Heroes set out into the world in order to save. That is a very adolscent thing to do. In this campaign though, you're not saving the world so much as saving individual's worlds; more cynically, cleaning up the messes made by these kids.
I specifically don't want the head of the House (you can see the Dollhouse influence there) to have formal positions in the head of the local Consilium. She'll be a powerful healer (Life user), along with maybe two other retainers, one being the Gatekeeper similar to Ursula K Le Guin's Earthsea gatekeeper (Fate user); the other controller of a network of sympathetic spells, like a spider.
The House will definitel be a ranked Sanctum. I'm debating a Demanse. If there is one, the House head would have to be a Master of Life, which would make me wonder why she isn't the Heirarch of the region or something similar.
The peice of land I was looking at is one where several conjunctional houses are actually controlled by that cabal, with the (possible) Demanse in the center. The dead-end streets have the space- and mind-based portals for it, but the real key is the Gatekeeper who decides whether someone comes in or not.
The players themselves wouldn't be so much as formal members of the Halfway House cabal so much as their own cabal that is owes alliegence with the Halfway House. It might even be looser than than that. If she (and her retainers) are that powerful, there will be tension with the formal Consilium, especially considering that no one would want to piss her off too much in case they get injured enough to have to come to her for help.
Being a crossroads, she'd actually be fairly well-known to many of the other supernatural powers there. There's very little point in masking resonance except to dampen it down a bit. The space is more to obfuscate the maps. The real key is the Fate -- like how Yuko's House works in xxxHolic. You don't see it unless you need it.
There's several advantages to this story structure. The main one is, with a loose affiliation, I am not as dependent on the players having to show up all the time. I can always story them away if the players cannot make it. I can bring in any number of supernatural elements, including ones I don't particularly care for (long-term), such as Vampires (yeah, errant vampire kid flees to the Halfway House, how much mess would *that* make?).
It *will* require players that have gone beyond the, "I want to be the central character of this story". And therein lies the rub.
Incidentally, what crossed my mind when the kid was saying that was, "Wait, do I have Interconnections on? Is this signfiicant? I dunno, but it is damned freaky."
-Qaexl
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That idea of crossroads fits with the name of the place too.
"Monster of the week" reminded me of what one player described, "So it is like Buffy" "Yeah, except you're essentially playing the Watchers ... for a bunch of different kids"
And yeah, being able to freely introduce and retire (and bring back) characters from different background definitely appeal to me :-D
The setting I was using previously was Torchwood. I don't think I fully read the chapter on the themes in Mage: the Awakening book, but the Torchwood + Dr. Who canon setting emphasies the idea of power, human potential, and corruption very very well. Lots of collateral damage. Everyone had fun with that one, heheh.
I'm still collecting ideas. I'm thinking of having one additional special thing for the mistress of the Halfway House: giving her a form of a Blessing, maybe modeled by Scion mechanics. It would be the same as receiving a (real) blessing or even an outright incarnation after assuming the godform. I have not read enough of Scion mechanics (or the real Yellow-hat rituals for that matter). It'd certainly explain why she would be able to be so powerful yet not take an outright political role, if her purpose on this plane is something radically different (eliminate suffering, Bodhisattva Vows). The same with her retainers. Spirit of the Primal Wild would certainly fit with mastery of Life. I can import the old Mage advantage, "Primal Markings" to give her extra character.
If I have money, I'd also get the Prometheus book, not for PCs so much as one of the NPCs at the Halfway House.
I don't think I'll have her do the same thing Yuko does though, grant wishes related to space-time in exchange for a price, particularly if she is supposed to be scion or a living incarnate of a Bodhisattva.
The Gatekeeper is fuzzier for me, as is the Spider. Still working those out. I'm also trying to figure out how much influence the official Heirarch has. Metro Atlanta is a huge place. It isn't somewhere that the Consilium or the Seers are going to dominate everywhere. And I definitely want to pull in Hunter groups in pockets, particularly in the most rundown, hellacious places and probably folks from the Abyss.
So maybe "Monster of the Week" is the better format. Instead of trying to mix in all the different areas of conflicts on the same board, at the same time, better to make it more episodic or with story arc where we see one conflict and how it affects individuals. And just as players get confortable, introduce another conflict with a different theme.
-Q
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The House mistress's patron would definitely be almost like a land kami, though, so it'd fit well. Might as well make use of the Spirit aspect of the Primal Wild Demanse.
I'm not yet sure how she chooses what to heal. I am sure that I want to milk the moral dilemma of to-intervene-or-not-to-intervene for all it is worth, and put the onus on the player.
I don't have much affinity with the Death/Matter arcanum, so I tend to underutilize them. I see where you're going, Gatekeeper being the guardian of the greatest mystery for mortals: death. Heh, fits with the crossroads theme. I'll have to think about how to incorporate this. Though if I do, it wouldn't be the Gatekeeper's primary arcanum, I think. If you can read the threads of Fate, then you would know how one kind of intervention would affect that person's destiny versus other kinds of interventions; whether the intervention one offers is like trying to move a river: the river still flows on. In Le Guin's Earthsea book, the Gatekeeper accepts a new student to the wizard's academy if (1) the prospective student can actually find the door (he was fated to) and (2) he gives the Gatekeeper his true name. To leave the compound as a graduate (as opposed to a drop-out), the student need only to tell the Gatekeeper the Gatekeeper's true name. I can mine Le Guin's Earthsea book endlessly, it is so freaking Taoist disguised as Tolkien.
-Qaexl
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The original concept was that the Gatekeeper had enough power to manipulate the strands of fate for someone entering or exiting as it relates to receiving healing intervention or not, and the Spider being the complement of that. So the Gatekeeper would be reponsible for things such as, "Occlude Destiny" (for example, that runaway Vampire kid fleeing his Prince), , the occasional "Fabricate Fortune" (exit, probably conjunctional to Spirit), "Grant Fortune's Protection" (exit) ... and if necessary as an Adept instead of a Disciple, "Destroy Bindings" (entry), "Gift of Fortune" (which needs only Space 2 conjunctional; though I may throw in Mind 2 / Spirit 2 conjunctional to draw in people instead of things) and most importantly, "Sanctify Oaths".
Looking through the rotes, with the possible exception of "Portal Keys", most of the interesting stuff happens up to Disciple of Space for the Spider.
However, if the Gatekeeper's role is, as you suggest, that transformation from one life to another, hm, I dunno. The Gatekeeper would then be responsible for maintaining the wards and vetting the people as they come in; the Spider draws people in and sees if there are any chaos in the region from newly magically-active people. That seems to make more sense than my original concepts. Hmm.
-Qaexl
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I may use this setting for that "series of short stories" I've been vaguely trying to put together. My problem then was that I didn't really have plot since what I'm mainly trying to do is encode principles and techniques in there.
It'll take me some time to prepare, and I still need to stabalize my real-world situation before I start running the game. But yeah, I'll keep ya updated.
-Q
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-Q
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