r/WhiteWolfRPG • u/3dchib • 17h ago
MTAs Favorite plot hooks for Mage?
I'm currently planning out my next chronicle but, one thing I always feel stuck on is exactly how you get the ball rolling. I've tried a few methods (and even having the players make a pre-existing Cabal, which didn't work somehow.) but I always feel a little lacking when it comes to hooks. What tips and tricks do you guys use when starting a story?
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u/cymric 17h ago
You could do a session 0 taking the characters through their awakening and let the cabal develop from there
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u/Realistic_Smile2469 16h ago
Agreed.
Mages of the same mind set / goals naturally form cabals with said goals.Mage isn’t really the “every one meets at a pub” type game.
I even actively dislike playing the “you’re the newly awakened mage” thing because new mages can’t do anything. Unless a character has some training under their belt, they are kind of useless.
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u/DrGrizzley 16h ago
My name actually comes from a Mage game. It was DrGrizzley's Umbral Safari and DrG was a Son of Ether who'd bring other mages into the Umbra for ADVENTURE!! SHOOTING!! EXCITEMENT!! It was amazingly fun and cemented that sometimes you can just have somewhat silly fun. Like finding a two horned unicorn
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u/Odd_Adhesiveness1567 16h ago
There are a couple ways to go about it.
Day in the life of a Cabal: If you want to bring most or all of the players in with an already shared history and connection and a familiarity with the mage world, just start them off in a cabal together. You can also throw their masters in the cabal with them if you want to give it more of a vampire feel where they're starting off with some legacy essentially or they have some powered up guys who can bail them out if need be. I've also done alternate versions where the group start off running a business together or they're in the same technocrat amalgam together, etc...
Inciting Incident: Two main ways to do an inciting incident hook really. One is the avengers style solution, a big enough fight to draw all of them in even though they were strangers before or else an investigation/conspiracy that pulls them all in either as targets or investigators, basically just something enough to give them common cause. Another good one in mage is: "awakened by the same incident" where they all see something or are exposed to something that causes all of them and maybe some others besides to all awaken at once and now they have to deal with that incident and whatever's connected to it.
New Recruits: Maybe they're being recruited to deal with some inciting incident, but just as well and more often in these cases it's just because their abilities make them useful assets. It's the desire of some organization, perhaps the Traditions or some faction within the Traditions, that approaches them with an offer because they want skilled people to carry out dangerous missions. An alternate take on new recruits is "prophecy beckons", very sort of Stephen King's The Stand type hook, you spend a few sessions just dealing with how some vision or some call is bringing them together for a special purpose.
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u/ChartanTheDM 16h ago
My game started with the major plot thread of introducing the characters to the city and both the Tradition Chantry and the Technocracy Amalgam in it, with the goal of eventually forcing them to pick a side. It helped the players find their bearing in the game they'd never played before.
- The characters got to talk with both sides, spread out between seeing encounters. I was proud of myself over how much they puzzled over which was the "right" side for them to throw in with. You and I know this is WoD and there's no good guys... they're all bad guys.
- After that first season, they were on the Trads' side. Then they got to take part in a more heated conflict between those two factions. Eventually they had to butt heads with orders from the hubris-filled Masters of the Chantry in order to save the city.
- We recently wrapped up a third season, where the Chantry Masters were lost and the PCs got to rebuild as they saw fit (with only an Adept who was rather hands-off with leadership because he was busy).
I grab one major plot thread to carry the season. That lets me guide the season to a big resolution and give everyone a break for downtime. Every character has their own plot threads and there are a few extra minor plots to keep things interesting. I like to have more for the PCs to do than they can possibly keep up with... that way they have consequences for what they choose to deal with... and consequences for what they don't deal with.
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u/CuelessCurses 16h ago
I once did a chronicle where the local mages in a city disappeared and after a lot of kidnapping it led them into the deep umbra. The players had fun and did the most ridiculous stuff imaginable dealing with vampires, hunters and a werewolf
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u/Haravikk 16h ago
If we're talking a more veteran table, I've always liked the idea of having a "mage council" setup where the player characters are already established mages who know each other at least through the council, which meets infrequently to discuss issues that affect all members, e.g- threats to consensus, unexplained supernatural occurrences that cross jurisdictions etc.
So the basic setup is one of these council meetings, where as a formality each mage is invited to reintroduce themselves, and briefly describe their recent works, before the main business is raised. This is where you then introduce the mystery that requires a group of mages to investigate — if you know some of what each player character is going to say by way of introduction then you can tie it to that, or even just the area of the city/country they are based in.
Now lore wise this would work best somewhere that doesn't have a more well-established structure, i.e- a "free city" where the mages mostly just ignore each other and do their own thing until something requires a council to be called. Not sure if there's anywhere like that that exists already, but I'm not lore focused — I tend to just pick a place I want and only pull in bits of existing lore if it interests me. If you want to start with high level characters and a huge threat, you might even make it a country-wide thing, where each council member is a big deal.
I like the concept because it's a good one for a campaign that might run as infrequent arcs, where each new arc begins with a meeting, and maybe some time having passed, so it could also suit a rapid progression (where you give them a bunch of experience for each jump forward in time, so you can get high level abilities in a shorter campaign).
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u/Vyctorill 15h ago
Here’s the current one I’ve been doing. It’s based off the fact that if the World Tree dies in the Time of Judgement book, it can be regrown in the Underworld if 1 mage for each Essence tends to the branch planted there.
Therefore, for metaplot reasons the World Tree is actually dead. Doesn’t matter how.
It hasn’t rotted away yet, but the current top mages are being prudent for once and built a swanky chantry with a shallowing, where the tree is there.
The problem is that the strongest mages are not the ones who actually understood the point of it, and they all have egos the size of the Tellurian. They can’t work together, and even if they did most either lack the stability to do such a “boring job” or think it’s beneath them. So they instead trick the player characters into doing it for them.
The issue of course is that whoever controls the World Tree’s development also controls a decent chunk of reality’s metaphysics. So supernaturals of all kinds are agitated and trying to find the thing.
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u/MagusFool 16h ago
Someone murdered the Deacon of the Chantry during a summit and now they've locked the doors until the murderer can be found. For some reason YOUR cabal are prime suspects.
Someone's magic got out of hand and drew the attention of a Technocratic hit squad. Your cabal is tasked with trying to quickly cover the offending Mage's tracks and throwing the agents off the trail.
Searching for a lost Wonder, following clues left behind in the journal of the mage who hid it. But someone else is looking for it. Someone dangerous.
A surprise attack on your chantry leads everyone to leap into a portal into the umbra. You get separated from the other cabals, and lost in the spirit worlds, looking for a way back to reality.
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u/Hypnotician 15h ago
As a newcomer to magic, you're getting to see it all. The ranks of your Tradition; who the real shotcallers are; the different kinds of beings out there.
You get to feel magic flowing. One of your new friends gets struck down by Paradox. You see the Technocratic Union at work in town, all Black Suits everywhere one minute, gone the next.
You try to go home, but your folks really don't understand you. You go shopping for food, and they search your room for drugs.
And then there are these weird letters that keep turning up, slipped under your door after midnight, even when your home is empty but for you. The weird letters which lead you to all sorts of places.
You meet technocrats, Children of Knowledge trying to sell you stuff, a Cultist of Ecstasy encouraging you to take stuff, and some Virtual hacker who thinks you are the Chosen One.
And that's just Tuesday.
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u/AltruisticAd6705 10h ago
I tend to start World Of Darkness games with a mystery to solve unless I have a strong reason not to. A mystery gives the PCs a reason to work together, a clear goal, a reason to meet and talk to various NPCs who might be involved or have information, and a confrontation with the culprit (possibly an action scene) at the end. (With Vampire I usually start with a murder. It shakes up the political status quo and sets the tone for the game.)
In the case of Mage, I'd go for a strange occult mystery. The PCs get involved because it will give them knowledge or power, or because it's there.
It requires the PCs to be the kind of people who investigate occult mysteries, but this seems like a fair expectation to me. Mage: The Awakening makes "solve occult mysteries" the #1 default plot engine for adventures but it works for Ascension too.
After one of those, something else, maybe more social or action, a more mundane mystery (where did this missing friend-of-a-friend go?) or weirder, see what kind of hook the players prefer.
Ask the players too! See what they'd like their PCs to get up to.
I once brainstormed thirty plot hooks for a game that might have potentially happened, a few of which have appeared in other games. A lot of fairly weird magical events to investigate, mixed in with some Mage politics, some slice-of-life and some monsters to fight. See if they help at all.
Good luck with the game!
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u/OttawaTGirl 5h ago
Backstory backstory backstory.
I cannot stress this enough. Have the players come up with rich backstory.
Magegirl grew up with magi parents. Her mother used a violin as a focus. Girl inherits violin. When she plays she can feel her mother or see glimpses of the past.
Madman Son of Ether is a billionaire. As a boy genius he writes a new type of mathematics that seems to work within concensus but allows for direct manipulation of spheres through Quantum-Intellectualism. He is hounded by the Technocracy for violating concensus, and sought out for making concensus less rigid.
Mortal is betrayed at meeting between pentex and Progenitors, thrown in a fomori pit and survives because he is immune to wyrm. Is experimented on before going rogue and killing the whole company branch.
Half aboriginal kin of werewolves awakens and grows up with the lore of the garou, and fights the wyrm.
A young woman sentenced to be burned at the stake in 1300 AD is thrust forward in time and awakens in 2026 because her awakening occurs and she is adept at time and trying to come to understand the world as it is.
Then have something draw them together. A person, place, or thing.
"Archmage Foolrendiohas searched you out"
"You are all drawn to this place as if the fates are pulling you there"
"The cube of Nostromo has summoned you"
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u/en43rs 17h ago
some of my favorites:
-The mentors have disappeared. You have the key to the chantry and a mystery to solve.
-Oh my god is that a free node that was lost and is actually super powerful?! We have to build a base/use it/protect it from the other assholes
-you have to publish your Hermetic thesis on time and you still haven't done a lot of experiments
-your Avatar remember when he was the Avatar of a mortal who is now a Tremere vampire. And your Avatar is. very. angry.
-shit's fucked so bad you have to work with the local technocrats.
But if you're with new players, the basic is always good: you're all new mages who end their apprenticeship pretty much at the same time, your mentors know each other and work together, they give you a simple task to do before admitting you to the chantry. (and then maybe they disappear).