Something Wicked This Way Comes

I ran an incredible session of Mage the Awakening (MtA) this weekend. I was lucky enough to
end up with a very competent group who made a mage from each path, and I'm excited to see how it pans out in the long run.

For the readers who don't know what MtA is about, its World of Darkness, and its where all the players create a human who is capable of casting magic and changing reality around them. Spells aren't a limited list like most traditional RPGs with a magic system, although MtA does have many predefined spells in the book. Instead the players can create their own spells based on their mage's abilities and knowledge of certain arcanum. This makes for a very inventive and creative play style.

I have learned a bit about MtA over the years, and each session I run I always walk away with something new. When running MtA you shouldn't be surprised when your players pour over the books looking for cool spells to cast. You should also attempt to encourage the players thinking creatively about how to bypass a situation in an inventive way. The rules allows for a lot of storyteller interpretation and I think one should never say no to anything, just attempt to scale it to fit.

The most valuable lesson I learnt from this session though is how to truly challenge mages, and encourage players to think about casting spells creatively rather then buffing their own stats and turning themselves into combat machines. The trick is to fight them with something they can't see! Being WoD, ghosts fit the mark nicely.

Anyone who's played the Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines will have a good idea of the horror present in the haunted house scene. I attempted to use as much as I could from that, and from some of my favorite ghost movies. That's when it clicked into place, ghosts are so darn terrifying because you cant see them! Even a mage struggles to fight invisible entities and lacking the correct spells damaging them is nearly impossible, especially since they can always run away through walls.

By the end there were a few frightening dangerous encounters with the ghosts, the memorable one being the Spirit/Life mage running away from a rusted upside-down pickup truck. There was plenty of investigation into why the ghosts were haunting the mill in the first place, some of the mages using technology and research skills, others using occult methods to gather information about what had truly happened in the area. The one true combat scene between some of the ghosts and the players happened during a seance and the players really pulled some creative thinking to scare away/kill the ghosts. A final scene of laying the ghosts to rest rounded it all off. I really hope my players enjoyed it as much as I did.

Question of the post...What about ghosts scares the nuggets out of you, and how do you think that aspect of terror could be worked into a rpg game?