Well.

The last Mage session I attended (after realizing the point of the game) was a failure. As was the one before it.

The main reason was the fact that the night before the first failure, I was up until 2:00 AM gaming (GMing my Apocylpse campaign). Getting to game at 7:00 and waiting two and a half hours to START actually gaming sucked. The fact that as soon as we began gaming I was left with four other PCs while the GM went upstairs was pretty lame, too.

So, since my character missed a really major adventure, I tried to ask the other players what went on. This failed because the one character who had a shot at explaining things wasn't there; the second the the GM went up to run the new PC's introduction session, James Major dragged Walker across the street to the 7-11 for snacks.

Jim's character was completely useless at conveying information whatsoever, and David's character was too caught up in the fact that he'd been forced to hurt someone to say anything other than the fact that he'd done so.

That pissed me off, I was already tired, and the entire session was looking pretty crappy to me, so I went home.

Last night's session was worse, because I was given a chance to prepare for an assault on a minor non-technocratic compound (filled with technocrats, so ... whatever). My first attempt at an extended rote was three ones on my arete roll. This is called a botch, and when you botch a magical effect in Mage, you gain paradox, which for me, came in the form of four levels of bashing damage. This gives you a friendly -2 die penalty to any action you want to perform.

Just bad luck, but it pissed me off anyway. Nothing that could be done about it. It just sucked.

Whatever. So I press on and wait for the game to start. It takes about an hour for the actual gaming to begin once everyone is around the table and actually there. We started at about 10:00, which is pretty late for me. David had summoned two amazingly powerful spirit warriors to help us out. Jim had prepared a number of super-powereful effects that were coincidental, because Jim knows more about Mage than anyone else except for POSSIBLY Sterling, and Sterling is requiring us all to perform at Jim's knowledge level, or get horribly horribly fucked over by the system.

I'm not sure if this is intentional, but Jim essentially strapped on a jetpack and flew into the atmosphere with the bar, leaving us land-bound mortals to suck exhaust.

So, my character is operating with wound penalties, has no combat skills, and nothing to bring to the party. Unfortunately, not only do other players in the party have every single sphere that my character does, one of them (Walker's character) has every single sphere my character does, AND does them all better. As well as having all of my merits (and their improved varients simultaneously as well).

The only thing my character can do in a combat situation is heal (which Walker will do before I can anyway) or cause direct aggravated damage to someone. Of course, because this is a vulgar magical effect, I'm essentially doing damage to myself to hurt someone else, notwithstanding whatever other paradox backlashes I get to experience.

Oh, and paradox damage can't be healed magically, so I'm extra screwed. Well whatever, I figure I'll press on and--

But wait! Not only is my character useless in combat, the new guy has a difficulty 5 effect that's entirely coincidental to blow people away! Why is my character even here? They've already got a medic who also has a sword of glowing holy energy, and now they've got two techies with high-powered magical rail-pistols which don't cause paradox. Jim's weapon isn't just an effect, it's a Wonder, which is the Mage equivelant of an artifact (well, not quite that powerful, but it makes my character into an even bigger joke).

This all pisses me off, but it's my fault for making such a crappy character design. The only skills and knowledges that I have, and no one else does, exist SOLEY for the purposes of making Jim's character laugh at me, James Major's character tell me I'm an idiot, and Ryan's character roll his eyes at me and walk off.

And then, when Walker electrocuted his character in the carport on accident, and was stunned, I thought, "Finally. I've been as quiet as someone as mouthy as me can be all evening. Now I get a chance to do something." So I tried to wait for a lull in the conversation, but the second Walker takes damage Jim's character goes on about how I should heal Walker.

I was really really pissed off at this point, but, what the fuck. So, now I not only don't get to do anything, when the chance to do something actually DOES come up, I'm told what to do without having a chance to do so. Which is remarkably OOC for Jim's character, as he doesn't believe in magic, and thinks my character is a psychotic crackpot, but apparently amusing roomate. Unless laughing at everything I say and treating my character like a moronic infant is his idea of showing respect (and he's got a charisma of 1, so I'll be willing to give him that, if it is the case).

Anyway. I use the effect I posted a week or so back, and heal Walker's PC. But wait! The fucking SECOND I'm ready to roll, and want to know what my difficulty is, Mike Reed starts asking questions about something (I wasn't paying attention, because I was already having a bad day), and then James Major chimes in with his typically loud, 'fuck you, I'm James Major, and the only important thing in the entire universe' way.

It was, quite possibly, the worst gaming session I've ever been in, with the possible exception of Chis Steinwinder's AR campaign sessions. But at least in those, we were united against an enemy, and it wasn't the other PCs making me feel like crap.

Anyway.

I wrote this long drawn out bitchy rant because I've decided that I whine too much to the people I know. I'm becoming more self-centered and arrogant, and that's ... just a general failure to grow as a person. I've brought myself full-circle, and am right back where I started -- in every sense of the word.

I thought that I was heading towards some spritual and mental zenith where I would just understand everything, and it'd all be perfect, and then I realized that I was managing to distract myself from actual growth.

My philosophy apparently is to make every possible mistake I can, leaving me an inevitable eventual success by virtue of no longer having mistakes to make. I guess being exactly where I started with awareness of what I did to bring myself full-circle is actually a step forward, though. I've always wished I could restart my life from the very beginning while retaining all my memories.

Ironically, I've just recieved my wish, and gotten what I deserved for being so selfish in the process.

And now we come back to self-hatred; this next cycle will be short indeed. I expect, realistically, that after a few days, I'll progress back into the genuine spritual growth phase, to be followed shortly by the realization that I was only deluding myself.

But being aware of it, maybe I can break out of it. And if not, then the NEXT cycle will be even shorter.

Hmm. You know, this isn't really so bad.

But I think I'm going to drop out of that Mage game.

If Sterling starts a new one, that'd be exceptionally cool. It'd be even more awesome if the "You must be at least this clever to play to avoid being ass- raped by paradox" rules of third-ed were toned down. As it stands, though, I've got no reason to stay, and even less reason to be there in the first place.

Right. Sleep.

Aha.

Here we go. This should work.

Ahem:

Life 3: "I hear you."

This rote requires a lot of time to create the focus for, but is usually worth the result. A drop of the target's blood, a sample of their hair, or a scrap of cloth from something that belongs to them makes the core. This specific rote was made with a loose strand of hair collected from one of Boomer's labcoats, which was then tied in a series of celtic knots, and sealed in a tiny lead ball (about 6mm across). This was then attached to an earring. The rote as it's designed is intended to allow the caster to try and understand boomer when he speaks, by altering the caster's audible perception of Boomer any time he speaks.

While Life can alter perceptions, I'm probably not going to be able to pull this off without Mind.

I tried the Mage game again, but I was left in a bad situation. All of the other PCs went on a grand adventure while I was gone. All of the coherent ones didn't come back to the place where my character is staying. I've got a Dreamspeaker who's apparently trying to develop a Quiet (curse that low paradox rating!) and a Son of Ether that's actually designed to suck at explaining anything (he's got a flaw for a penalty on his social rolls that makes him talk too fast, a charisma of one, and no social skills), and a Celestial Choruster who's player leaves the room the second I ask him a direct question.

That kind of sucked, so I ended up going home really early to get some extra sleep.

New job.

YEY!

Also, got my hands on a third ed Mage: the Elitism book. (Not going to buy one, but read through it anyway.)

Read four paragraphs and understood what no one was willing to explain to me.

The long and short of it is that Mage is designed for you to roleplay someone who doesn't understand (initially) a fraction of what they're truly capable of. The system tells you what you can do in plain English. But to properly represent your character, you have to run everything through a mental filter of imposed stupidity.

Instead of using, for example, Life 3 to heal someone, you use a Rote. There's an established rote, but I'm using my own, because I'm crazy messed up in the head like that. Yo.

Anyway:

"Here, Drink This." A Life 3 effect to heal internal/invisible damage. This rote is intended to be coincidental, but may be vulgar with too many successes. The caster of this rote takes a slightly smaller than cough-drop sized ball of honey, and uses it to encapsule a tiny gelatinous pill made out of: pure aloe (for its healing properties), a pinch of powdered mustard seed (for its purification/disinfecting properties), and a drop of the caster's blood. After cooling the capsules until the honey is reasonably firm, they are coated with a thin layer of water and confectioners sugar, heated into a fine paste, and firmed up with powdered plant leaves (belladona, for its numbing/pain relieving qualities). The 'candy' shell will retain the shape of the capsule even if it's exposed to slightly higher than room temperature, but anything hotter than that will render it into a goey mess (which can still be used for healing, but is much more annoying to do). The pills can be passed off as an herbal remedy, as lab testing will reveal levels of belladona that are too minute to cause harm to human beings, aloe, honey, mustard powder, and the elements in human blood. This is likely to raise eyebrows, but can be passed off as what it is -- an encapsulated 'natural remedy' for general pain relief with enough infection-fighting power (in theory) to bring down a fever in the same manner as asprin.

The pills are administered in one of two ways. In a rush situation, someone who is injured will swallow the pill, which works immediately to restore (casters arete) in health levels of damage. It's important to note that this healing begins to restore from the inside of the body, re-setting broken bones, staunching internal bleeding, repairing ruptured organs, etc. before working on more visible. The rote will heal as much as it can, but can often heal critical injuries while leaving superficial ones behind -- with luck, this can render the effects coincidental, though there is no guarantee of this.

The second way that the pills can be administered is to be dropped in hot water, and left heated until the entire pill dissolves into a thin, sweetened tea. This is considered an extended rote (aretex2) for the purposes of healing damage, but the recipient must drink the entire thing for it to work. Generally speaking, this effect is not likely to be coincidental if it is successful. In either case, the medicine must be administered by the practitioner of the spell, or else it's just a sweet lump of honey with aloe, blood, and powdered mustard seed inside, which is actually a pretty crappy tea, though it might put you to sleep.

For the more vulgar and emergency healing, there's the simple forced and traditional plea for help. The practicioner will eschew the complicated setup, and instead carve the sigil of Dana, and the wheel of life into their forearm (or palm, or thigh, or...) and plea with the Goddess to heal the afflicted. Newer Neo-Pagan Verbena would likely instead just trace the symbols in the air, believing that the old ways aren't as neccessary as they once were.

To Rip the Man Body (do damage) the spell is the same -- except that Brigette is invoked instead of Dana, and the spokes on the wheel of life point the opposite direction. Neo pagans find that Brigette is no longer as appropriate to be invoked as she once was -- interpetation has made her too gentle for the task, and bitter about offering aid. Instead, they will usually carve the spokes in a forearm, and then sever a thread (any thread) with the words, "And so is severed a portion of you." While the classic Verbena would allow their own superficial wounds to heal immediately, the neo-pagans often believe that leaving them to heal on their own (or healing them later) is more fitting, as a balance must be preserved in the universe, and it's only just to do so.

I'd have more ... but I'm not playing, so I'll stop there.

Kinda neat, though.

Crisis in White Wolf!

I used to play in a Mage: the Ascension game with some of my friends -- part of White Wolf Wednesday. Lately we've been playing Demon: the Fallen. And Demon is fun, until the GM sprung on me that I've got a dark overlord and master who demands human sacrifice, which I did not know going in. And that's okay, I can spend my character's life opposing his dark lord and master -- trying to find a way to destroy him.

But now I can't play Mage: the Elitism anymore. Mage is, in laymans terms, the Unix of roleplaying games. I have played the game for eight years now -- eight of the ten that second edition has been released. But my existing Mage character is too complex for me to play. The GM asked me to fill out an extended character sheet, and I had always thought that many Mage (or White Wolf) GMs in general are really demanding when it comes to character background, explanation, etc. etc. etc. It's part of having a system that claims to be purely dramatic. And that's fine.

But the stack of sheets I was given looked less like any character sheet I'd ever seen before, and more like a stack of tax forms, with a White Wolf Mage: the Ascension (Verbena) character sheet on top. And when I got to page three (of four), I encountered something about 'style' and 'threads'. I had no clue what this was, so I asked the GM.

And Sterling (the GM), says, "Oh. Well, it's kind of like how the Hermetics have a specific way of doing something. Or the Sons of Ether have a style, too. Kind of like that. And if you can't understand it ... I can't really explain it more clearly than that." This doesn't make sense to me. I know that each tradition uses their effects in a different way, and the character sheet I have says 'Verbana' (my character's Tradition) at the top. So it can't be something as simple as which tradition your character is.

So I turn to Jim, thinking he might know. And all he does is nod knowingly and look away.

This isn't the first aspect of the character in a system which I used to know that I'm forced to blunder through, only now instead of just treating me like I'm ignorant for not knowing (I don't own a 3rd edition Mage book, nor am I inclined to get one), they're actively refusing to even give me an example of what I'm supposed to be writing down.

I already blundered my way through Resonance, which our GM said if we didn't have recorded by such-and-such session, we wouldn't recieve EXP. I honestly have no idea what Resonance is, and expect it (now) to only be revealed as having a purpose when I attempt to pull off a rote and he says, "Sorry, you can't do that, your resonance is such-and-such."

And that seriously pisses me off. When I played Mage, for all that time, all those years, we never bothered with Rotes, because that just slowed the game down. We all, always used dynamic magic. The GM would figure out what was required, tell us, and give us a difficulty. If we already knew how we wanted it to work, instead of just the effect we wanted to achieve, we'd give him that, and the GM would just assign a difficulty.

But now, now you're not allowed to use magic without a rote, unless you want a penalty added to your roll (and it's not really a penalty, but when every other PC and NPC gets the 'I have a rote for this situation, as well as any other' bonus, it works out to the same thing).

And the GM promised me at one point he'd help me figure out rotes, and things I could do to get my character workable.

But in all honesty, I just get the feeling that he doesn't want me to play in his games -- any of them.

And that's just crappy. Especially since I'm running a game that he's in.

I no longer have a job.

I was fired.

Because I don't have a car, ultimately. Truthfully, it was because I couldn't make the commute on Wednesday. But essentially it all boils down to the lack of a car costing me my job.

This is probably better for me.

But man.

It sure sucks. I don't want to be unemployed. -_- I want to be able to hold down a steady job.

Regardless. I've got a potential job spot (if CQC will have me) in May. I could look for work sooner.

But this last blow with dealing with transportation has got me to thinking. I need to pull myself out of the situation I'm in. I need to overcome my fear again, and start driving. I need a car.

Ultimately: I need money.

I'm broke, of course. So I need to assess the feasibility of the following:

1.) Getting a loan.

2.) Getting a car/paying my bills with said loan.

3.) Learning to drive.

This seems like an odd way of doing things, I imagine. But where I am in my life, I've got to improve my situation, and my range of options, by doing SOMETHING.

What that something is, is ... learning to drive. With a car, and the mobility that comes with it, I can get jobs beyond the reach of public transportation (which I'd like to support, but honestly just doesn't cut it, most of the time). I can take classes at Mission College, where I can get an actual degree, instead of settling for DeAnza. I can actually act like an adult instead of always having to depend on others to help me out in that capacity.

I want to be an adult.

I don't want to be a struggling child in an adult's world.