Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.storyteller
Subject: [Mage] A View of Paradox, With an Actual Post This Time
From: JROSENDA@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Jason Rosendale     )
Date: 21 Nov 95 10:23:51 CST
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    Not only does my troupe subscribe to the 'soft' school of paradox, 
I'm not even a Storyteller, and I only have access to the main Mage book.
Please take everything I say below with a grain of salt.  Consider 
yourselves duly warned.

    The main idea behind my proposed system of paradox is that the vast 
majority of coincidences affect people negatively.  I don't think I ever 
saw someone explain a mind possession as "He's acting that way because 
he just won the lottery".  If someone's spazzing around drawing attention 
away from the characters, they more likely have just been stabbed, are 
epileptic, etc.  What if the characters were made to realize the full
impact their coincidences are really having on people?  Suddenly, the 
mages would realize that every use of coincidental magic is having bad 
repurcusions on the world.  By flexing their power, they are making the 
lives of people more and more miserable.  Are they any better than 
the Technocracy?  Are they better off dead?  I think Mage missed this type
of personal angst that was captured so well in the other four books.  
This system might capture a bit of it.  

    Whenever a character buys a flaw or receives a paradox backlash,
don't curdle milk or do something even more incredible than the magic
that caused it in the first place.  Make the coincidental effects of 
other mages, or the characters themselves, affect them.
    Remember last year when Ishmael used a coincidental matter effect to 
disintegrate that lock?  Well, the same company that manufactured that
line of faulty, easily-breakable locks made the locks on the door of
Ishmael's house.  When he returns, he's been robbed..
    What about the faulty system of gas mains in New York that 
caused series of deadly explosions last week?  Now, when it really 
counts, he's having trouble getting across town.  Those construction 
crews can hold up traffic for hours.
    The players could also be affected by coincidental effects they
were never previously aware of.  Perhaps a coincidental control of a 
car's kinetic motion (Forces 4 or 5) was explained as the result of an
incompetent brake repairman at the J&J Automotive Center, the same
shop that serviced a PC's car.  Or another mage created money,
coincidentally siphoning it from the character's bank account.
A high-level flaw could see the character receiving AIDS-infected
blood from the Red Cross because of another mage's life effect.

    As I see it, this system would have three main advantages.  First, 
it would allow mages to be punished for overzealously manipulating 
reality in a way that doesn't overzealously manipulate reality.  Second, 
It would make mages think about how their magic affects the lives of 
others.  Third, by using the imagination of the players against their 
own characters, it might actually cause the characters to be frightened 
of paradox.  Or at least, that's the idea.