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Old 10-01-2017, 10:46 AM   #11
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: M:tA chantries

Quote:
Originally Posted by baakyocalder View Post
The Chantry system in Mage has always been wonky, even when the Book of Chantries was the rules set used.

I can see Chantry as having two functions not covered by other Backgrounds:

1. Access to other mages who are not mentors but who could provide assistance. These could be Allies or Backup or other backgrounds, but the power of a chantry is based on its membership. So, like being part of a squatter's chantry with a few weak mages is worth little but being part of an ancestral chantry like the one connected to Second World of the Dine, an old Dreamspeaker chantry, is worth a lot.

2. As noted by whwhs, you could also be buying real estate. Since there are merits for Property and Safehouse in Mage 20: Book of Secrets, which are similar to those in the Book of Shadows, real estate isn't a bad thing for chantry to buy. Sanctum, where the mage's paradigm works, might also be part of this background.
I found the Book of Chantries problematic enough so I didn't hang on to it. It seemed better suited to running a LARP-style campaign that might have a dozen or a score of players who could pool their points to buy a decent chantry. Just buying a bare minimalist chantry is really costly for mages in a campaign with half a dozen players.

I've never liked Merits and Flaws; I find the "buying dots" structure elegant, and having a bolt-on addition that doesn't work that way is unappealing. Both my Mage campaigns have used "negative backgrounds" with values reckoned in negative dots, such as Enemy or Obligation. So I would want either to have a background worth dots for owning real estate, or to fit that into an existing background.
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