From:	The Digital Mage <mn3rge@****.AC.UK>
Subject:	Re: SR's Poor Magic System, IMHO!
Date:	Thu, 15 Jun 1995 17:41:09 +0100

On Thu, 15 Jun 1995, Luke Kendall wrote:

> > Agreed, but as I said once too often. The only canonical world-view
> > is the one described in the sourcebooks published by FASA.
>
> By which I take it you mean that it's not What You Think Is What You Get.
> It's: What The Majority Believes Is What Mages Get.
Taking a note from Mage:The Ascension, we can see that for a mage to do
anything other than what the majority believe (the dominant paradigm) is
possible (which is anything other than the normal SR magic) the mage must
have an incredible will and tons of enlightenment -and I'm not talking
loads of willpower and sorcery skill I'm talking knowledge of Reality
itself.

Basically SR mage player characters do not have this will and
enlightenment -only the mad (perhaps) and people like Harlequin do (same
thing really :) It is very difficult to impose one's own paradigm over
that of the population. Changes to the dominant paradigm are slow to
come about (ie whenever FASA release a new sourcebook) and only can be
routinely exploited after a lot of practice and "proof" that the new
"power" can work. This proof comes through credible texts,
demonstrations and so forth.

The reason why when the awakening occurred the dominant paradigm changed
so fast was because the emergence of the new dragons was *televised* live
all across the globe. In my SR/WoD crossover that televising was no
accident, it was the work of The Kids of McLuhan whose motto is:
"The Ascension *will* be televised"



The Digital Mage : mn3rge@****.ac.uk
Shadowrun Web Site under construction at
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~mn3rge/Shadowrun.html