mal-luck asked you:
2012-02-21 04:22

Could you elaborate on the P&P Tabletop players/Mages and video game players/Technocracy analogy? I’m not that familiar with Mage the Ascension.

Im less familiar with Mage than I am with Vampire. In my youth and angst I obsessed and I now own almost all of the V:tM books while owning only the core book for Mage.

Mages are archaic. They cling to old ways, traditions passed down through the years, and they are powerful. The way they use magic is specific to each different tradition (much like the ruleset or system is different with each RPG.) Magic in Mage is fluid, shapeless, without form or structure. With discipline one may take harness of this energy and shape it, and reality itself, according to their will, like a Game Master crates a world and fills it with people and history and rules of their own creation.

The Technocracy is static. It has concrete rules that do not vary and adhere to the laws of nature and science. It believes itself the superior as its tools (technology: ie Video Games) can be used by everybody. The vast majority of humanity supports and relies upon technology, disbelieving in any sort of “Magic” that is sprouted by the crazy people. Everything in a video game is predetermined by the programmers. They are static. For example if I want to kill someone in Skyrim that the game has labeled “essential” I am simply unable to kill said person. Of course there are mods and hacks and such for video games, but whomever plays those hacks/mods are then subject and limited by THOSE rules and limitations and so on…

So many people play video games, and many of those look down upon tabletop games like D&D as inferior, lame, and more importantly, socially unacceptable. Of course this viewpoint is changing, but very slowly.

So often, I see people who profess themselves as “Gamers.” Their credits are all video games. “Zelda… Tetris… That’s kinda a big question.” For me, when I hear the word “Gamer” I think dice, and minis, grid maps, and piles and piles of books.

Don’t get me wrong, I like video games, and think the are totally valid. I just think tabletop gets the shaft from a cultural perspective.