History TabletopGame / MageTheAscension

* WeirdnessCensor: Be careful, or Paradox ''will'' bite you on the ass. Best avoided by making your magic covert (fireball bad, "gas tank explosion" good).
** Clever props can justify all kinds of magic, particularly if you play to urban legends or things 'everyone knows'. Casting a fireball with a lighter and a can of hairspray will generally be accepted by the consensus, even if the resulting fireball is far more powerful than it should be. Some sourcebooks even suggest that the physics-breaking stunts in action movies are the results of mages using Hollywood influence to subvert the dominant paradigm.

* WindsOfDestinyChange: The Entropy sphere of magick.

* WrongContextMagic: No two mages have the same view of reality. Because of this, it can be very hard for mages of different Traditions--or sometimes of the same Tradition--to understand how someone else performs their magickal effects, even when using the same Spheres. Doubly so when you compare the Traditions with the Technocratic Conventions: what the Traditions call the Sphere of Spirit, the Conventions call the Sphere of Dimensional Science, and the things that they can do with it are quite amazingly different.

''TabletopGame/MageTheAscension'' is a game of [[CrazyisCool mad, beautiful ideas]]. This is a game where you can have an enlightened martial artist dispatching hungry ghosts from the Chinese Hells, a Hermetic magician preventing demon-worshippers from spreading corruption throughout San Francisco, and a mad scientist dispatching evil gibbering things in the void of space, then have them all get together to strike a blow against the New World Order. It was succeeded in the TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness by ''TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening'', and you could keep your house warm from all the {{flame war}}s that erupt over that choice.

* DisciplinesOfMagic: Magic is separated into nine spheres, and each of the nine Traditions specializes in one of them: Entropy, Forces, Life, Matter, Mind, Prime, Quintessence, Spirit, and Time.

* AgonyBeam: The Cult of Ecstasy likes forcing rapists to [[KickTheSonOfABitch experience the pain they inflicted on their victims]].

* Void Engineers: Astronauts and explorers who chart the far reaches of space, and prevent incursions by the odd EldritchAbomination. After the Avatar Storm, they have become more militaristic.

* AncientAstronauts: The Etherites believe that they visited Earth, left their tech behind, and influenced the predecessors of the Void Engineers. There's evidence that indicates this might not be far from the truth.

* ForScience: From the Sons of Ether, who are ''really'' enthusiastic about what they do. (Which is ''[[WebVideo/TheSpoonyExperiment SCIENCE!!!]]'', of course.) More restrained versions are present in the Iterators, and the Virtual Adepts have a similar view re: code, hacking reality, etc. Void Engineers have a version that goes "For ''DISCOVERY!''" and several mystic Traditions have the same approach to magic.

* HumanoidAbomination: The primary difference between [[{{Muggles}} Sleepers]] and [[{{OurMagesAreDifferent}} Mages]] is that Mages essentially have an entire parallel reality trapped inside their brain, that they can modify and forcibly overlay onto reality. Other psychically sensitive supernaturals (especially [[TabletopGame/HunterTheReckoning Hunters]]) find the mere ''presence'' of mages, with their overwhelming auras of raw potential, to be exhausting and unnerving. What's more, most if not all mage factions believe that humanity is fundamentally a WitchSpecies and that every human possesses the capacity to Awaken under the right circumstances. HumansAreCthulhu indeed...

The basic premise is that while reality apparently has certain basic fundamentals, for the most part, the laws of reality exist [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve because of mankind]] ''[[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve believes]]'' [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve it exists by certain laws]]. Each average human, or "Sleeper," perceives the world in certain terms, and their perception contributes to the Consensus of reality. The Consensus reinforces how reality works, which in turn reinforces the Sleepers' beliefs, and so the cycle continues. Mages are the exception, humans who've Awakened to their innate power: they've realized the truth of the world, and they have the ability to reshape it to their will.

* AscendedMeme: "Mages turning vampires into lawn chairs" gets a page or so worth of space in 20th Anniversary, and even happened in universe once. Of course, it's in mutated form this time; it's no longer a joke about how powerless vampires are, but a cautionary tale: Any mage powerful enough to make this happen ought to be smart enough ''not'' to do it, both because it doesn't stick, because a frenzied vampire can tear an unprepared mage apart, and even if the mage can deal with that, other vampires ''will'' team up to exsanguinate this mage and ensure that it doesn't become common practice. It's also of course ''incredibly vulgar''.

** At character creation, Mages are not the most impressive creatures in the World of Darkness, and it's generally best that they not fight other supernatural beings head-on. Late-game, they can turn elder vampires into lawn chairs.

* {{Realpolitik}}: The Technocracy in the 20th Anniversary Edition, as presented in ''Technocracy Reloaded'', has more-or-less replaced the Pogrom with PragmaticVillainy. They don't like any stripe of Reality Deviant, but their priority is to neutralize threats, which ''can'' mean shooting them until they're dead - but sometimes a polite request (or even [[BigBrotherIsEmployingYou a job offer]]) works better. Some Technocrats even consider vampires generally useful, because their leaders are really good at upholding TheMasquerade and keeping their idiot neonates - and the rest of the World of Darkness - in line.
-->So, when [a Reality Deviant Incident] goes down, one of the first steps we take after outright containment involves touching base with the local RD elders and coming to an agreement about what is to be done about it. It’s rare we don’t come to some sort of consensus, so to speak, about how to handle the offenders in the aftermath of their little shit fit.

*** ''The Fool'': [[TabletopGame/ChangelingTheDreaming Changelings]],
*** ''The Magician'' (renamed ''The Mage'', as seen on the page's image): Virtual Adepts,
*** ''The High Priestess'': Dreamspeakers,
*** ''The Empress'': Verbena,
*** ''The Emperor'': Order of Hermes,
*** ''The Hierophant'': Celestial Chorus,
*** ''The Lovers'': Cult of Ecstasy,
*** ''The Chariot'': Sons of Ether,
*** ''Strength'': [[TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse Werewolves]],
*** ''The Hermit'': Hollow Ones,
*** ''Wheel of Fortune'': Euthanatos,
*** ''Justice'': Akashic Brotherhood,
*** ''The Hanged Man'': Paradox,
*** ''Death'': [[TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade Vampires]],
*** ''Temperance'': [[TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade Golconda]],
*** ''The Devil'': [[TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse the Wyrm]],
*** ''The Tower'': a Chantry,
*** ''The Star'': the Umbra,
*** ''The Moon'' (renamed ''Luna''),
*** ''The Sun'',

*** ''The World'' (renamed ''Gaia'').

* TimeIsDangerous: There are few ways accrue Paradox faster than time travel. No Paradigm in the game can do it totally without fear of Paradox, and most NPC's who attempt it end up so ContinuitySnarl-ed as to be nearly impossible to write about.

* AscendedMeme: "Mages turning vampires into lawn chairs" gets a page or so worth of space in 20th Anniversary, and even happened in universe once. Of course, it's in mutated form this time; it's no longer a joke about how powerless vampires are, but a cautionary tale: Any mage powerful enough to make this happen ought to be smart enough ''not'' to do it, both because it doesn't stick, because a frenzied vampire can tear an unprepared mage apart, and even if the mage can deal with that, other vampires ''will'' team up to exsanguinate this mage and ensure that it doesn't become common practice.

* LostTechnology: Among the other things the Technocracy has suppressed in the modern version of history are: Babylonians trading with AncientAstronauts, ancient Roman and Chinese [[ClockworkCreature automata]], and FlyingSaucer-like devices from ancient India known as ''Vimanas''.

* StrawNihilist: [[GothGirlsKnowMagic The Hollow Ones]]. The [[HollywoodSatanism Nephandi]] take this up to eleven.

* StrawNihilist: [[GothGirlsKnowMagic The Hollow Ones]]. The [[HollywoodSatanism Nephandi]] take this UpToEleven.

* AllMythsAreTrue: In a universe where YourMindMakesItReal, everything ''can'' and ''does'' exist, somewhere.

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Every single Nephandi is an EvilSorcerer who either wants to turn the world into [[DystopiaJustifiesTheMeans some sort of hellish wasteland]] or [[OmnicidalManiac destroy it altogether.]]

* AncientAliens: The Etherites believe that they visited Earth, left their tech behind, and influenced the predecessors of the Void Engineers. There's evidence that indicates this might not be far from the truth.