While I never really got into the original World of Darkness when it was all the rage, I did have Vampire: The Masquerade, and I recognized why and how it was good. Still, at the time, I had also just discovered WitchCraftRPG (next week!), so that was the game I had chosen to scratch my Modern-Supernatural itches.
I remember picking up a copy of Vampire the Masquerade back in the early 90s and thinking it looked interesting, but nothing I was going to play really. Though my thought did go to moving the whole thing over to Ravenloft. It wasn't until I had moved to Chicago to work on my Ph.D. that I found Mage.
The ground floor of the commuter train station had a bookstore in it. One of the pure joys of my daily commute. I picked up a copy of Mage: The Ascension (Revised) and thought that it was fantastic. While I would ultimately stick with WitchCraft, Mage continued to have a fascination for me. Moving back and forth between the systems, I ultimately landed on the idea that a "Mage" was an evolved form of a "Witch." I did some refinements, mostly after Mage the Awakening was released, so eventually came to the idea of an "Imbolc Mage," the term borrowed from a friend who wrote about "Ascended witches." IT worked for me. Even in my D&D 3.0 days, an Imbolc Mage was a witch prestige class. Even today I have a Mystic Class Starship kitbash called "The Imbolc Mage."
Though I did really like Mage. A lot. I really like Sorcerer's Crusade; it was a cool idea and much more interesting to me than Mage: The Ascension at first. That led me to Sorcerer: The Hedge Wizard's Handbook, which is not part of Sorcerer's Crusade, but part of modern Mage. But I am glad I made that mistake, since I really liked this book, and it made me look again at the World of Darkness.
While Mage: The Ascension grabbed my attention, it was Mage: The Awakening that I created more material for. I soon figured out why: it felt very similar to WitchCraft. I wanted to do something that took the best aspects, or more to the point my favorite aspects, of both games and use them together. I grabbed the Mage Translation Guide with great glee, but I never really did anything with it. With the release of Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition (and its nearly 700 pages), I just dropped all the work I was doing with Mage: The Awakening.
Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition
The 20th Anniversary Edition of Mage: The Ascension is a massive, beautifully crafted tome that brings every prior vision of the game into focus. It’s not just a revision of the rules; it’s a celebration of what Mage has always been: the meeting of philosophy and passion, of science and sorcery, of power and the price of using it.
It’s also the most “complete” version of Mage ever written. M20 doesn’t erase the differences between editions; it embraces them. The Traditions feel ancient and mythic again, the Technocracy has teeth and ideology, and even the Marauders and Nephandi have more depth than ever before, a LOT more depth. The lore isn’t presented as dogma but as perspective, filtered through the unreliable narrators who populate the Ascension War. This is hit home time and time again. Reality is what you make it.
Reading it feels like walking through every era of the game’s evolution: the raw wonder of 1st Edition, the sleek paranoia of Revised (my previous favorite), the fiery metaphysics of Awakening, all of it bound together by the idea that belief shapes reality. If you’ve ever argued about whether magic is real, or what truth even means, M20 will make you feel like those questions matter again.
Plus the physical book is just so damn attractive.
Magic, Philosophy, and Price
What I’ve always loved about Mage, especially the 20th Anniversary Edition, is that it treats magic as both metaphor and mechanism. Every paradigm is true, and none of them are. The more you understand, the more dangerous it becomes to believe in only one truth.
That’s why Larina fits here so naturally. In earlier games, she learned that magic has limits. In Mage, she learns that those limits are hers.
The system itself still shines. M20’s rules strike a balance between the freeform wonder of 1st Edition and the structured precision of Revised. The magic system remains one of my favorites of any RPG ever written, not because it’s powerful but because it demands creativity and consequence. Every effect has a cost, every belief has friction, and paradox is always waiting for the arrogant.
This is where Mage transcends its own mechanics. It’s not just about bending the universe; it’s about how much of yourself you’re willing to give up to make that change. Every roll feels like a wager between your vision and the world’s resistance. It’s a game of philosophy disguised as spellcraft, where your paradigm defines not only your powers but your purpose.
In that way, it’s the most dangerous kind of fantasy: the kind that makes you ask, What if I’m the one who’s asleep?
The Mature Stage of the Lifespan Campaign
If Little Fears represents childhood beliefs, Monsterhearts embodies teenage Sturm und Drang, and Chill signifies early adulthood resilience, then Mage is mid-life transcendence.
By the time a character reaches Mage, the world has stopped being mysterious because they have seen too much of it. They’ve fought the Unknown, lost friends, made mistakes, and realized that survival is only the beginning. Mage is what happens when you stop reacting to horror and start defining reality for yourself.
For Larina, this is the phase where the witch becomes the magus. She’s no longer the frightened girl with ghosts in her room or the grad student who stumbled into S.A.V.E. She’s a woman in her mid-40s who has survived every shadow the multiverse could throw at her, and learned that power without wisdom is just another kind of curse.
Her story at this stage isn’t about discovery; it’s about integration. Every past incarnation, every spell, every trauma, they all thread together into something greater. The act of Ascension isn’t about escaping mortality; it’s about embracing it as sacred.
Like the rules, I want to integrate all the disparate threads of her life here.
Larina Nichols in Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition (2015)
By 2000 or so, Larina had returned to the States and lived quietly in Chicago. She teaches folklore and comparative mythology at a small liberal arts college, but that’s just the daylight cover. At night, she works as an independent consultant for the Traditions, specifically the Verbena, though she maintains uneasy friendships among the Dreamspeakers and Hollow Ones.
In the context of my Lifespan Campaign, this is Larina’s middle-age chapter, the reckoning after experience, when all her past choices catch up to her. The ghosts from Little Fears, the stress of Monsterhearts, the agents of S.A.V.E. from Chill, even fragments of her other lives like Lowis from Dark Ages, they all echo here.
Mage lets me weave those threads together into something coherent. Maybe those different incarnations were just past lives of the same soul, or echoes across parallel worlds. In Mage, that kind of metaphysical bleed makes sense. It’s one of the only games where her story could become mythic without losing its human edge.
At 45 (2015 in this build), Larina is a seasoned practitioner who has seen the price of awakening. She knows that every act of will leaves ripples in the world. She teaches her students that folklore endures because it speaks to something real, and when she’s alone, she can still hear the faint hum of the Tapestry, like a heartbeat under the world.
She’s part scholar, part witch, part weary survivor. The Ascension War has become quieter, now fought through memes, corporate sponsorships, and disinformation rather than fireballs and paradox spirits. Larina has learned that the Technocracy doesn’t always need to win; reality often fights their battles for them.
But she keeps the candle burning anyway.
Her focus remains rooted in belief: the Old Faith, the Goddess, the sacred cycles of life and death, but expanded now to the Universal and Multi-versal scale. She has studied Hermetic theory and understands the language of the Ethers, yet she still draws her strength from the soil, the stars, and the blood that ties them together. In M20 terms, she is a Verbena, a witch who believes in creation’s divinity but refuses to kneel to any monotheistic god.
She works minor wonders through old rites: candle flame, herbs, whispered prayers, moonlight on water, spreads of her well-worn tarot cards. Her paradigm has grown sophisticated; witchcraft, psychology, and spirit all merge into her personal practice. Where she once used spells, she now shapes Correspondences.
Her Avatar is older now, too, no longer the reckless maiden or disappointed wife, but a patient, keen-eyed woman who sometimes calls herself the Lady of Crossroads.
Chronicle: The New Millennium
Nature: Questing
Demeanor: Traditionalist
Essence: Visionary
Affiliation: The Traditions
Sect: Verbena
Concept: Mystic
Attributes
Physical
Strength ••, Dexterity ••, Stamina •••
Social
Charisma •••, Manipulation ••, Appearance ••••
Mental
Perception ••••, Intelligence ••••, Wits •••
Abilities
Talents
Alertness ••, Art •, Awareness •••, Empathy ••, Expression •, Streetwise •
Skills
Crafts •, Drive ••, Etiquette •, Research •••, Survival •••, Technology •
Knowledges
Academics ••••, Cosmology ••, Enigmas ••, Esoterica •, Investigation •, Medicine •, Occult ••••, Science •
Spheres
Correspondence ••
Entropy 0
Forces •••
Life •••
Matter •
Mind ••••
Prime •
Spirit •••
Time ••
Advantages
Backgrounds
Allies ••
Avatar •••••
Dream •
Library ••••
Past Lives •••
Wonder •
Other Traits
High Ritual ••••
Seduction ••
Area Knowledge ••
Arete ••••• ••
Willpower ••••• ••
Quintessence xxxxx
Rotes
Talons (••• Life, • Prime or • Matter)
Far Speak (•• Mind, •• Spirit)
Astral Projection (••••Mind, • Spirit)
Past Life (•• Correspondence, •• Spirit)
Focus
Paradigm: Creation is Divine and Alive
Practices: Witchcraft
Instruments: Books, ritual tools, tarot
Wonder
Athame
Merits & Flaws
Languages (Celtic, Greek, Italian, Latin, Russian) 5, True Faith 2
Echoes -1
Age: 45, Apparent age: late 30s
Sex: Female
Ethnicity: White (Caucasian)
Hair: Red
Eye color: Blue
Height: 5'4"
Weight: 125 lbs
DOB: October 25, 1969
Equipment
2005 purple VW Beetle
2013 Macbook Pro (Core i7, 2.6 ghz, 13.3" screen, 256gb ssd, 8gb RAM), silver
Notes: One thing I have not decided yet is whether or not this Larina has a 3-year-old daughter "Taryn" as her WitchCraftRPG counterpart would have at this point (Taryn born Dec 21, 2012, when the Meso-American calendar ran out.) I would like to think so, but I have not played this particular character to that point.
This is obviously not a starting character. I figured she began as a Mage character when I first discovered Mage (circa 1999) and she has had 15 years of experience since then. Granted, maybe she would be more powerful, but she had a lot going on in her life that was not Mage-related.
I have always played my Mage and WitchCraft versions as similar, but separate universes. This Larina may be the Larina that keeps the others connected to the whole cabal/coven of them all. Actually, I really like this idea. Maybe I should reach out to Phil Brucato, "That Mage Guy," and ask him how he would craft such a character.
Final Thoughts
Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition isn’t just a rulebook. It’s a philosophy text disguised as a game manual, a challenge to imagine what reality could be if you dared to believe differently. It captures everything I love about urban fantasy, the collision of magic and modernity, of belief and disbelief, of hope against entropy.
For me, Mage represents the mature stage of the horror-fantasy journey. It’s not about surviving the darkness anymore. It’s about illuminating it, understanding it, and, if you’re brave enough, even becoming it.
Larina has learned that the Ascension War was never about gods or Technocrats. It was always about the soul’s struggle to stay awake.
And after all these years, she’s still standing at the crossroads, candle in hand, whispering to the night: "So mote it be."
Links
- Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition, DriveThruRPG
- Mage: The Ascension (Wikipedia)
- Mage: The Ascendion (White Wolf Wiki)
- Mage: The Ascension (RPG.net)
- Mage: The Awakening
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