3rd Edition: Gurps Mage The Ascension

[Angle]

I recently acquired a copy of GURPS Mage The Ascension, and I was wondering what people thought of it? How well does the magic system work? Could I drop the mechanics into fourth edition, if I was so inclined?

[SRoach]

I got a copy, but really only skimmed it, and am new to GURPS.

That said, it looks reasonably faithful to the source, and Sphere magic works pretty well, if you know what you're doing.

From a VERY brief reading, it appears that Rotes have more emphasis. There are other things I noticed, but I may have misread a few things, or not taken the probabilities into proper account, considering both that I was skimming, and I haven't actually played any GURPS yet.

That said, I've been following a thread on RPM, and from what they've been mentioning, it may be as flexible as Sphere magic for off-the-cuff casting.

[Flyndaran]

Gurps White Wolf products are the weakest of nearly the entire Gurps line. There are balance issues that problems, and 3rd in general are magnified in them.
But still, the worst Gurps is still better than the best of many other systems.

[Anaraxes]

For 4e, you could drop in the MtA system. Or get GURPS Thaumatology, where along with a number of other major and minor variants and ideas, you'll find "Realm" magic, which will probably seem a teensy bit familiar.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

For 4e, you could drop in the MtA system. Or get GURPS Thaumatology, where along with a number of other major and minor variants and ideas, you'll find "Realm" magic, which will probably seem a teensy bit familiar.

Certainly the "best" most balanced option would be switching to 4th ed. Thaumatology. But not everyone's ready to plunk down the money for that or deal with the work it requires to mold an entire magic system. Even if much of the heavy lifting is already done.

[Mr_Sandman]

A 3e GURPS Mage the Ascension game I ran was one of my favorite and longest running campaign. I didn't find any particularly bad balance issues with a party of all mages. I think because with sphere magic and the effects of paradox, inventive thinking in using magic was as important as sphere and skill levels. I think in a mixed party that included sleepers, werewolves or vampires along with mages, the balance issues would have been more apparent.

More recently, I ran a game updated to 4e. Here's a thread discussing the update. I think it went fine system-wise. The group was somewhat less into the setting though.

[khorboth]

I ran this in 4th ed. Thaumatalogy realm magic was the basis of the points, and the rest was flavor. I just hand-waved the fatigue cost away, and we went.

I found the rest of the book quite useful. Additional advantages, disadvantages, and enemies were all very nice, and translated to 4th ed very easily.

[Phil Masters]

I ran a couple of quite successful campaigns using the system, one with Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade elements kludged in that updated from 3e to 4e in flight without serious trouble. I even put some notes online about using the sphere system for Discworld games, though I never used that myself. (Did it influence the magic system in Discworld 2e? You'll just have to wait and see, won't you?) At its heart, the sphere system is a pretty good representation of a certain flexible sort of fantasy magic.