What's a mage game?

Mage: The Ascension, a tabletop/live action game from White Wolf (http://white-wolf.com). I run the live action game for The House of the Unknown (http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~cam/index.html).

So you're a mage? What do you do as a mage? Cast spells? How do you act that out?

The basic principle of Mage: The Ascension is that reality is consensual. Belief defines reality. Certain people who understand this principle -- Mages -- are capable of replacing the reality defined by the perceptions of six billion people with their *own* reality.

In short, a Mage can theoretically accomplish anything. In practice this is limited by the Mage's enlightenment (Arete) and Sphere, which dictate what said Mage knows how to affect, and the degree to which he can affect them. Correspondance, Entropy, Forces, Life, Matter, Mind, Prime, Spirit, Time.

To actually perform a magickal Effect requires either a dice roll or a rock-paper-scissors challenge, depending on if you're playing tabletop or LARP. The Effect, assuming it succeeds and affects the person, place, or thing it is intended to, is then narrated out or otherwise described.

It's remarkably complicated, because the system is so open-ended, and in an average game there are fifteen people running around who can all change reality. It makes me long for the simple days of D&D..