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What is Mage?

Imagine a world where reality isn’t fixed, it changes depending on what people believe. In Mage: The Ascension, ordinary people awaken to the terrifying possibility that consensus shapes existence, and that with enough understanding and willpower, they can rewrite reality itself.

Unlike most fantasy roleplaying games, Mage isn’t about memorizing spells or leveling up. It’s about philosophy, belief, imagination, and the consequences of having the power to change the world. Every magical act asks a question: What do you believe is possible?

Whether you’re discovering Mage for the first time or returning after years away, Mage: The Podcast is your guide to one of tabletop gaming’s richest and most rewarding settings. We explore the game’s lore, rules, history, books, storytelling techniques, and the people who helped create it—all with the goal of helping you become a better player, Storyteller, and world builder.

Start with These Episodes

These five episodes are the best introduction to what makes Mage so unique. They cover the game’s core ideas, its origins, practical advice for your table, and some of the most fascinating corners of the World of Darkness.

If you’re only going to listen to one episode, start with What is Mage: The Ascension? featuring co-creator Satyros Brucato. It’s the perfect introduction to the game, and to everything that follows.

1. What is Mage: The Ascension?

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Start here if you’re new to Mage

New to Mage? This is the perfect place to begin. Mage: The Ascension co-creator Satyros Brucato joins us to explain what makes Mage unlike any other roleplaying game—and why, decades later, players are still debating its ideas.

Perfect for: New players New players

2. The Gift, Twilight, and Grogs: Systems and Setting from Ars Magica

Before there was Mage, there was Ars Magica. Join Thrice Great as we explore the game that inspired Mage’s DNA—from troupe-style play and Covenants to a radically different vision of magic, wisdom, and consequences.

Perfect for: RPG Historians & Mage Veterans

3. Tomes of Magick: World of Darkness: Sorcerer

Not every magician is Awakened. Discover the hidden world of hedge wizards, miracle workers, alchemists, and occult practitioners as we unpack one of the most versatile, and often overlooked, magic systems in the World of Darkness.

Perfect for: Storytellers & World Builders

4. One Dot Sphere Effects

Think one-dot Spheres are weak? Think again. Charles and Terry break down every one-dot Sphere effect in M20, showing how the smallest magical abilities can become some of the most creative tools at your table.

Perfect for: Players & Storytellers

5. Tomes of Magick: M20 Book of the Fallen

The Nephandi are more than villains–they’re the nightmare at the heart of Mage. We explore Book of the Fallen, unpacking their philosophy, terrifying cosmology, and the storytelling tools that make them some of the most compelling antagonists in the World of Darkness.

Perfect for: Storytellers

Beginner Playlist: Learn Mage Without Getting Lost

New to Mage: The Ascension? Start here. These episodes explain the core idea of Mage, how magick works, what new characters can actually do, and how to bring the game to the table without getting buried in 700 pages of lore.

Contact us at magethepodcast@gmail.com with feedback and comments, and please help extend the reach of the show by sharing it with friends.

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Mage, Reality, and Looking Back at That First Interview

Mage, Reality, and Looking Back at That First Interview

When I started Mage: The Podcast back in 2018, I was nervous.

Not butterflies nervous. More like, okay, you know when you’ve committed to something out loud before you’ve fully thought it through and then you just have to live in that for a while? That kind.

Which, I’ve since decided, is probably the correct amount of nervous for anything involving Mage: The Ascension.

I’d only just found the game. I’d been poking around for podcasts the way you do, found stuff for Vampire, for Werewolf, even one for Changeling (which, sidebar, still criminally underrated, we’ll get there someday) but nothing really dedicated to Mage. I wanted to understand it. I wanted someone to just talk to me about it.

So I figured, well. If nobody’s doing it, I guess that’s me now.

I want to be clear that I was not the wise old guy with the sourcebooks. I was the guy at the table with too many questions and a soda he’d forgotten about. You know that feeling when someone starts explaining a game and something just clicks open in your brain? Not because they have The Official Answer, but because they have a way in? That’s what I was hoping to find. That’s what I wanted the show to be.

For the first episode I sat down with Satyros Phil Brucato, one of the main creative forces behind Mage. I asked him the dumb obvious question. What is this game, actually?

He said: Mage is a game about reality on the brink.

I’ve been chewing on that ever since. Because it was true in the ‘90s when the game came out. It was true in 2018 when we talked. And honestly, in 2026 it might be the most true it’s ever been, which is either exciting or alarming depending on the day.

Let me explain.

The original game grew out of this incredible weird moment — occult bookstores, goth clubs, zines, cyberpunk, a very specific ‘90s flavor of paranoia and possibility, that feeling like the world was maybe about to wake up or maybe about to eat itself. Mage took all of that and asked: what if your beliefs aren’t just your own private business? What if they push back on the world? What if reality is something people are actually fighting over, all the time, and most of us just can’t see it?

By 2018 that question had gotten a lot less abstract. Nobody needed to explain anymore why two people could look at the same event and come away with completely different versions of what happened. That was just Tuesday. Mage stopped feeling like a ‘90s artifact and started feeling like somebody had snuck a warning label onto the decade.

Now it's 2026 and look, I’m not trying to be gloomy here, but the situation has gotten genuinely strange. We’re not just fighting about what’s true. We’re fighting about what was made by a person, what was generated, what was edited, what some algorithm fed you because it figured you’d stay on the app another thirty seconds. I don’t think Mage fully saw that coming. Honestly that just makes it more interesting to me. The game keeps finding new ways to be relevant without trying.

One thing that stuck with me from that first interview — Satyros wasn’t precious about the old stuff. He said yeah, the ‘90s books were great (they really were), and they were very much products of the ‘90s. Some things were ahead of their time. Some cultural portrayals were made with good intentions and not enough understanding. He was just honest about it. And I appreciated that, because a game fundamentally about belief and power and who gets to define reality cannot be the kind of thing that sits in amber and says nope, we got it right, no notes.

The world moves. The game has to move. Otherwise what are we even doing.

Roleplaying in general has changed in ways nobody really mapped out ahead of time. Your game used to live at your table. Maybe a con. Now it lives on Twitch, on Discord (oh, and join our community on Discord), on a crowdfunding page, in a three-hour actual play video that somehow has a million views. A house rule can become a whole discourse before you’ve had your second coffee. It’s a lot.

Very Mage, honestly.

The thing I keep coming back to is the concept of focus in Mage 20. Paradigm, practice, instruments. Your mage has a specific belief about how reality works, acts on it in a specific way, and uses tools that fit their worldview. Not generic spell slots. Your prayer. Your code. Your tarot deck, your lab equipment, your old family story, the cigarette you light before things get bad, the conspiracy board in your kitchen that your roommate keeps asking about.

All of that is character. All of that is identity. All of that is yours.

That’s where Mage still gets me. It makes power personal. It doesn’t just ask what you can do. It asks why you think you’re the one who gets to do it. That’s a harder question. A better one.

Going back to that first episode now, I expected it to feel dated. I thought I’d cringe a little, you know how it is. Instead it just felt like opening a box and finding out whatever’s inside never actually stopped running.

What is real? Who gets to say? What do you believe, and what does believing it cost you?

You might think those were Mage questions.

Turns out they’re just questions. The game got there first, is all.

Contact us at magethepodcast@gmail.com with feedback and comments, and please help extend the reach of the show by sharing it with friends.

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In Defense of Prime

In Defense of Prime

Adam and Heilong talk all about Prime, the Sphere that turns Quintessence from airy theory into table-ready trouble. They tackle the “Sphere tax,” node-scrubbing, Primal Utility, Platonic ideals, and why Prime makes Mage’s reality-wrangling feel real enough to kick the furniture, and maybe rewrite the town.

📄 Transcript of In Defense of Prime

Show Notes

Executive Producers

Oracles

Bad Company • Buck Gregory • Christopher Phillips • Derek Semsick • DrawnCap • DrunkDez • Jason Vines • Rebecca Pool • Sean Gallagher • Spartacus • The Krewe of Erebuss

Archmasters

Berto • Brad-O-the Blue • Dan Svensson • Glacial Indifference • Jeffois • Leroy Bryce • Morgan Aran • Wolf Larryson

Acolytes

Aleks • Alexia • Ambiversion • Anders S • Ben Bandelow • Blaise Hebert • Bruno Teixeira • Bryce Perry • Bubba, The Pale One • Chartan • Cig • Curtis Hendricks • Darren Hennessey • Daniel Cuppen • Daniel Scribner • Dan Svensson • David Röhe • Ean Robertson • EBG • Eric Schwenke • Gray -Trilug- H • Guy Stewart • Ia Bull • James B • Jason Kennedy • Jenna F • Jeremy Z • Jervis Johnson • Kathleen Hailperin • Kevin Fitzpatrick • Khris Kinner • Leslie Weatherstone • Lolz & stuff • Loren Jensen • Manel Canós • Matthew Proehl • Maurice Hopkins • Melissa Krause • Michael Parker • Nebero • Nikita Kleymenov • Patrick McNamara • RobH • Ryan • Ryan Kendy • Ryan Stray • Samuel Tobin • Sev Nessus • Shell Konch • Starfish • Stefan Carton • Tyler Bryan • Will Vincent • Ygard

Become a supporter of Mage: The Podcast.

Contact us at magethepodcast@gmail.com with feedback and comments, and please help extend the reach of the show by sharing it with friends.

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Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

Join our Discord server.

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Tower of Babel

Tower of Babel

We climb John H. Steele’s Tower of Babel, a Mage novel full of creators, characters, conspiracies, and reality getting mighty leaky around the edges. It’s metafiction, Technocracy trouble, dream-tower theology, and one poor writer learning that when your fiction talks back, maybe don’t answer after drinking.

Show Notes

  • Tower of Babel – Book man invents fascist action guy. Fascist action guy becomes real. Magic happens. Bureaucrats get spooky. Reality files a complaint.
  • John H. Steele – wrote lots of White Wolf fiction, helped shape the Clan Novel Saga, and used the pen name Gherbod Fleming.

Executive Producers

Oracles

Bad Company • Buck Gregory • Christopher Phillips • Derek Semsick • DrawnCap • DrunkDez • Jason Vines • Rebecca Pool • Sean Gallagher • Spartacus • The Krewe of Erebuss

Archmasters

Berto • Brad-O-the Blue • Dan Svensson • Glacial Indifference • Jeffois • Leroy Bryce • Morgan Aran • Wolf Larryson

Acolytes

Aleks • Alexia • Ambiversion • Anders S • Ben Bandelow • Blaise Hebert • Bruno Teixeira • Bryce Perry • Bubba, The Pale One • Chartan • Cig • Curtis Hendricks • Darren Hennessey • Daniel Cuppen • Daniel Scribner • Dan Svensson • David Röhe • Ean Robertson • EBG • Eric Schwenke • Gray -Trilug- H • Guy Stewart • Ia Bull • James B • Jason Kennedy • Jenna F • Jeremy Z • Jervis Johnson • Kathleen Hailperin • Kevin Fitzpatrick • Khris Kinner • Leslie Weatherstone • Lolz & stuff • Loren Jensen • Manel Canós • Matthew Proehl • Maurice Hopkins • Melissa Krause • Michael Parker • Nebero • Nikita Kleymenov • Patrick McNamara • RobH • Ryan • Ryan Kendy • Ryan Stray • Samuel Tobin • Sev Nessus • Shell Konch • Starfish • Stefan Carton • Tyler Bryan • Will Vincent • Ygard

Become a supporter of Mage: The Podcast.

Contact us at magethepodcast@gmail.com with feedback and comments, and please help extend the reach of the show by sharing it with friends.

Follow Us

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

Join our Discord server.

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The Sound of Awakening: Building Atmosphere in Your Mage Chronicle

”The first spell your players experience isn't cast by a character. It's cast by the room.”

Rules matter. Characters matter. Your city matters.

But there’s another tool that's surprisingly powerful, and surprisingly underused.

Music.

Not background noise. Not a random Spotify playlist.

Atmosphere.

The right soundtrack tells your players what kind of reality they’ve stepped into before anyone says a word.

Every Chronicle Has a Sound

Mage: The Ascension isn’t just a game about magic. It’s a game about hidden truths. Urban myths. Conspiracy. Spiritual awakening. Decaying cities. Impossible technology. Late-night diners. Rain-soaked streets. Abandoned subway stations. Boardrooms where reality is negotiated one quarterly report at a time.

Your soundtrack should reflect that.

The music you choose teaches your players how to feel about the world.

Don’t Build a Playlist. Build Emotional States.

Instead of creating one giant playlist, organize your music by mood.

Awakening

Wonder. Curiosity. The impossible becoming possible.

The moment a Sleeper realizes the world isn’t what they were told.

Look for music that feels spacious, mysterious, and slightly transcendent.

Investigation

Libraries. Archives. Old maps. Occult bookstores. Corporate servers.

The quiet excitement of discovering a clue nobody was supposed to find.

Subtle ambient music works better than dramatic scores.

Urban Dread

The city at 2:00 a.m. Empty trains. Neon reflections on wet pavement. Something following you, but never quite visible.

This is where dark ambient, trip-hop, noir jazz, and industrial textures shine.

The Umbra

The Umbra should never sound comfortable.

It should feel ancient. Alien. Sacred. Beautiful. Dangerous.

Think choirs, drones, ritual percussion, and sounds that don’t quite belong to the modern world.

The Technocracy

Order. Precision. Efficiency. Control.

Minimal electronic music, glitch textures, deep drones, and sterile soundscapes help reinforce the Union’s worldview.

The Technocracy doesn’t think it's evil. It thinks it’s necessary. Its music should feel the same way.

The Traditions

Each Tradition deserves its own musical identity.

The Virtual Adepts shouldn’t sound like the Verbena.

The Akashayana shouldn’t sound like the Sons of Ether.

The Cult of Ecstasy almost certainly shouldn’t sound like anyone else.

Let your players recognize a faction before an NPC even speaks.

Our Recommendations

These artists and labels consistently capture the emotional landscape of Mage.

Cryo Chamber

Cryo Chamber may be one of the best labels for Mage atmosphere, especially if your chronicle leans toward the Umbra, Technocracy ruins, cosmic horror, abandoned constructs, occult investigation, or Nephandi dread.

The label specializes in cinematic dark ambient: deep drones, haunted soundscapes, ritual textures, post-human cities, and the feeling that reality has been quietly compromised.

Best for: Umbra scenes, Nephandi horror, Technocracy facilities, abandoned chantries, dream sequences, strange archives, and moments when players realize the world is much older and less stable than they thought.

Start with:

Use Cryo Chamber when you don’t want music to “score” a scene so much as infect it.

Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails is Industrial tension. Isolation. Technology. Transformation.

Perfect for Technocracy operations, abandoned laboratories, and chronicles where the machinery of Consensus is beginning to crack.

Massive Attack

Massive Attack is urban melancholy. Secrets. Late-night cities.

The feeling that someone is watching.

Ideal for investigative chronicles, street-level mysteries, and cabals who meet in bad apartments above worse nightclubs.

Dead Can Dance

Dead Can Dance is ancient ritual. Sacred mystery. The Umbra. Dreams.

Perfect for Spirit chronicles, ecstatic visions, funerary rites, forgotten temples, and moments of transcendence.

Coil

Coil is occult experimentation made audible.

Uncomfortable. Beautiful. Strange.

If any band accidentally wrote a soundtrack for Mage, it might be Coil.

Use carefully. Coil can turn a normal scene into something unstable very quickly.

Bohren & der Club of Gore

Imagine jazz playing in an empty city where reality has quietly stopped working. That’s Bohren & der Club of Gore.

Slow. Patient. Uneasy.

Excellent for detective stories, supernatural noir, late-night investigations, and conversations with people who know more than they should.

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross

Modern dread. Minimalism. Psychological pressure.

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross works beautifully during investigation scenes and quiet conversations where everyone knows something terrible is coming.

Beyond Music

Atmosphere isn’t only sound.

Consider adding:

  • Rain against windows
  • Train stations
  • Cathedral echoes
  • CRT monitor hum
  • Coffee shop ambience
  • Distant church bells
  • Industrial machinery
  • Electrical interference
  • Wind through abandoned buildings
  • Tape hiss
  • Radio static
  • Elevator drones
  • Server-room noise
  • Subway brakes
  • Distant sirens

Small sounds can make your world feel larger than your table.

How to Use Music Without Overpowering the Game

The best soundtrack supports the scene without fighting the players.

Keep it low.

Avoid lyrics during important dialogue unless the song is meant to dominate the moment.

Use different playlists for different emotional states.

And don’t be afraid of silence.

In Mage, silence can be as powerful as music.

A sudden lack of sound can tell players something has changed before they understand what.

A Soundtrack Is Worldbuilding

Players remember feelings longer than they remember mechanics.

Years from now they may not remember exactly how Correspondence worked.

They will remember that one piece of music that played while they stepped into the Umbra for the first time.

Or the track that was quietly playing when they realized their mentor had been lying to them for months.

That’s atmosphere. That’s storytelling. That’s Mage.

We’d Love to Hear Yours

Every Storyteller has discovered an artist, album, or playlist that somehow feels like Mage. Tell us what belongs on the soundtrack to Awakening.

Share your recommendations in our Discord, or tag us on social media. We’ll keep expanding this list as the community discovers new sounds that make the Tellurian come alive.

Because every chronicle has a soundtrack.

The only question is whether you’ve chosen it yet.

Contact us at magethepodcast@gmail.com with feedback and comments, and please help extend the reach of the show by sharing it with friends.

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Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

Join our Discord server.

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Crossover: Rokea in Mage

Crossover: Rokea in Mage

Adam swims with the sharks to bring you information and ideas to help you add the Rokea, the shape shifting sharks of the World of Darkness, to your games. What are the Kahu hiding?  What lies at the bottom of ocean trenches? Why don’t sharks floss? Tune in and find out.

📄 Transcript of Crossover: Rokea in Mage

Show Notes

  • Rokea – Immortal weresharks, ancient sea-born shapeshifters who form Slews, use electric “Sending,” heal in saltwater, and ally with Mokolé.

Executive Producers

Oracles

Bad Company • Buck Gregory • Christopher Phillips • Derek Semsick • DrawnCap • DrunkDez • Jason Vines • Rebecca Pool • Sean Gallagher • Spartacus • The Krewe of Erebuss

Archmasters

Berto • Brad-O-the Blue • Dan Svensson • Glacial Indifference • Jeffois • Leroy Bryce • Morgan Aran • Wolf Larryson

Acolytes

Aleks • Alexia • Ambiversion • Anders S • Ben Bandelow • Blaise Hebert • Bruno Teixeira • Bryce Perry • Bubba, The Pale One • Chartan • Cig • Curtis Hendricks • Darren Hennessey • Daniel Cuppen • Daniel Scribner • Dan Svensson • David Röhe • Ean Robertson • EBG • Eric Schwenke • Gray -Trilug- H • Guy Stewart • Ia Bull • James B • Jason Kennedy • Jenna F • Jeremy Z • Jervis Johnson • Kathleen Hailperin • Kevin Fitzpatrick • Khris Kinner • Leslie Weatherstone • Lolz & stuff • Loren Jensen • Manel Canós • Matthew Proehl • Maurice Hopkins • Melissa Krause • Michael Parker • Nebero • Nikita Kleymenov • Patrick McNamara • RobH • Ryan • Ryan Kendy • Ryan Stray • Samuel Tobin • Sev Nessus • Shell Konch • Starfish • Stefan Carton • Tyler Bryan • Will Vincent • Ygard

Become a supporter of Mage: The Podcast.

Contact us at magethepodcast@gmail.com with feedback and comments, and please help extend the reach of the show by sharing it with friends.

Follow Us

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

Join our Discord server.

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Reality Deviants Book Club: Dark City

Reality Deviants Book Club: Dark City

Adam and Pooka discuss Dark City (1998). Another movie that paints the World of Darkness on the screen for you to see. This one aligns so closely with Mage: The Ascension (First Edition) ; watch out for Paradox. Can this inspire you to portray Sphere effects in your game? Is it a good example of a mage’s Awakening? Can bald, creepy kids boost your game to the next level? Tune in and find out!

📄 Transcript of Reality Deviants Book Club: Dark City

Show Notes

  • Dark City (1998) – An amnesiac fugitive hunts his identity while evading police and reality-warping “Strangers.”
  • The Paradox Wheel – An online resource for Mage fans by DrunkDez.

Executive Producers

Oracles

Bad Company • Buck Gregory • Christopher Phillips • Derek Semsick • DrawnCap • DrunkDez • Jason Vines • Rebecca Pool • Sean Gallagher • Spartacus • The Krewe of Erebuss

Archmasters

Berto • Brad-O-the Blue • Dan Svensson • Glacial Indifference • Jeffois • Leroy Bryce • Morgan Aran • Wolf Larryson

Acolytes

Aleks • Alexia • Ambiversion • Anders S • Ben Bandelow • Blaise Hebert • Bruno Teixeira • Bryce Perry • Bubba, The Pale One • Chartan • Cig • Curtis Hendricks • Darren Hennessey • Daniel Cuppen • Daniel Scribner • Dan Svensson • David Röhe • Ean Robertson • EBG • Eric Schwenke • Gray -Trilug- H • Guy Stewart • Ia Bull • James B • Jason Kennedy • Jenna F • Jeremy Z • Jervis Johnson • Kathleen Hailperin • Kevin Fitzpatrick • Khris Kinner • Leslie Weatherstone • Lolz & stuff • Loren Jensen • Manel Canós • Matthew Proehl • Maurice Hopkins • Melissa Krause • Michael Parker • Nebero • Nikita Kleymenov • Patrick McNamara • RobH • Ryan • Ryan Kendy • Ryan Stray • Samuel Tobin • Sev Nessus • Shell Konch • Starfish • Stefan Carton • Tyler Bryan • Will Vincent • Ygard

Become a supporter of Mage: The Podcast.

Contact us at magethepodcast@gmail.com with feedback and comments, and please help extend the reach of the show by sharing it with friends.

Follow Us

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

Join our Discord server.

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Chronicle Planning: Building Mage Campaigns That Change the Way Your Players See Reality

”A Mage chronicle isn’t about saving the world. It's about discovering which world you're actually living in.”

One of the biggest mistakes new Storytellers make is trying to write a Mage-chronicle like it’s a fantasy adventure.

A villain. A quest. Three acts. A final battle.

Mage-can certainly tell stories like that, but the game’s greatest strength lies somewhere else.

Mage-asks questions.

What is reality?

Who decides what’s true?

What would you sacrifice to change the world?

What happens when your deepest beliefs collide with someone else’s?

The best chronicles don’t begin with a plot. They begin with a question.

Start With a Theme, Not a Villain

Before you write your first scene, ask yourself:

What is this chronicle really about?

Not what happens. What it means.

Examples:

  • The price of certainty
  • Technology replacing faith
  • Tradition versus progress
  • Identity in the digital age
  • The corruption of good intentions
  • Memory versus history
  • What happens when everyone believes a comforting lie?

Once you know the question, every NPC, faction, and mystery begins orbiting that central idea.

Build a City, Not a Dungeon

Mage-thrives in places that already feel alive.

Your city isn’t just a backdrop.

It's another character.

Ask yourself:

  • Who secretly controls this city?
  • Where do mages gather?
  • Which neighborhoods feel haunted?
  • What happened here fifty years ago?
  • Where does the Gauntlet feel thin?
  • What does the Technocracy own?
  • What stories do Sleepers tell themselves that aren't quite true?

When players care about the city, every victory, and every loss, feels personal.

Create Factions With Competing Truths

One of Mage’s greatest strengths is that nearly everyone believes they’re right.

The Traditions aren’t “good.” The Technocracy isn’t “evil. The Nephandi don’t think they’re monsters.

Build every faction around a worldview rather than an alignment.

Ask:

  • What do they believe?
  • Why are they convinced they're saving the world?
  • What would make them compromise?
  • What line will they never cross?

Conflict becomes far more interesting when everyone has a point.

Think in Mysteries, Not Encounters

Players rarely remember combat. They remember revelations.

Instead of asking:

"What fight happens next?"

Ask:

"What truth do they discover next?"

Perhaps the local chantry is secretly funded by Pentex. Maybe their mentor isn’t Awakened at all. Possibly the Marauder they’ve been hunting is the only person telling the truth.

Mage is at its best when every answer creates two new questions.

Let the Cabal Drive the Story

Don’t write a story for your players. Write a world that reacts to them.

Every character should arrive with:

  • A belief worth challenging
  • Someone they trust
  • Someone they fear
  • Someone who wants something from them
  • A personal mystery
  • A reason to Awaken

When players make meaningful choices, your chronicle becomes theirs, not yours.

Embrace Consequences

Reality pushes back. Not just through Paradox. Every magical decision changes relationships.

Political alliances. The Consensus. The Umbra.

Even small victories should leave ripples behind.

The world should remember what the cabal has done.

Use Atmosphere as a Storytelling Tool

Chronicle planning isn’t only maps and NPCs. It’s mood.

What does your city sound like? What colors define it? What music plays during quiet conversations? What smells linger inside abandoned chantries?

When your players remember a chronicle years later, they’ll remember how it felt-more than how many successes they rolled.

Build Layers

The best Mage chronicles reward curiosity. Create mysteries inside mysteries.

The abandoned church isn’t just haunted. It’s built over a forgotten Node. The Node isn’t just powerful. It’s connected to an impossible place in the Umbra. That place isn’t just dangerous. Someone has been hiding there for decades.

Every discovery should make the world feel larger.

Recommended Mage: The Podcast Episodes

Looking for inspiration? These episodes pair especially well with chronicle planning:

What Is Mage: The Ascension?

If you’re introducing new players or rediscovering the game yourself, this is the best place to start. It lays the philosophical foundation for everything that follows.

Guide to the Traditions

A deep dive into the Traditions and the competing worldviews that shape Mage. Essential listening when designing factions, mentors, and political conflicts.

Technocracy Reloaded

Want to create memorable antagonists? This discussion explores the modern Technocracy and why its members often believe they’re the heroes of the story.

One-Dot Sphere Effects

Perfect for Storytellers who want to encourage creative magic instead of treating Spheres like a spell list.

The Perils of Paradox

Paradox isn’t just punishment. It’s one of the game’s most powerful storytelling tools. This episode explores how reality itself responds when mages push too far.

Top 5 Books to Run a Mage Chronicle

Our recommendations for the supplements that will give your chronicles more depth, better antagonists, stronger themes, and richer stories.

Read Widely

Some of the best Mage inspiration isn’t found in Mage books.

Read philosophy. Study comparative religion. Browse conspiracy history. Visit art museums. Read cyberpunk. Walk unfamiliar neighborhoods. Listen to strange music. Collect blog posts. Follow threads that don't seem connected.

Mage rewards curiosity. So should its Storytellers.

The World Is Already Strange

The best Mage chronicles don’t ask players to imagine an impossible world.

They ask them to look at the real one a little differently.

Once your players start questioning what’s behind the next door, beneath the next city block, or hidden inside the next news story…

…you’ve succeeded.

Continue Your Journey

Looking for more tools?

-Read our Storytelling Tools-guide.

-Explore our Music & Atmosphere-recommendations.

-Browse our Plot Hooks-collection.

-Join our Discord and swap chronicle ideas with Storytellers from around the world.

Reality is negotiable.

Your chronicle should be too.

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Paradigm Shift: Stygian Library

Paradigm Shift: Stygian Library

Adam talks about Emmy Allen’s Stygian Library, the library that doesn’t end. Will your players find the knowledge they’re looking for? Can they evade the mysterious librarians and their super computer? The sister volume to Gardens of Ynn is full of ideas that may find a place in your Mage games. Just watch out for the ink blots. They stain.

Show Notes

  • Stygian Library overview (DriveThruRPG) – A strange old place, part haunted mansion, part endless library tucked outside the world.
  • Coins and Scrolls – OSR procedural dungeon design basics
  • Mage: The Ascension (White Wolf overview) – At its heart, Mage is all about the long road to Ascension. Nt just for one soul, but for all of humanity. Trouble is, nobody’s pinned down exactly what that means or how you get there.
  • Umbral Realms & High Umbra concepts – Folks also call it the Spirit World, the Shadow, or the Velvet Shadow, one of those places that’s right there beside our world, even if you can’t quite touch it. It runs alongside the everyday, separate but close, like a reflection in a dark window just waiting to be noticed.
  • Procedural generation in RPGs (design concepts)– “Xandering” a dungeon means designing it like the old-school masters did (full of branching paths, secret routes, and meaningful choices) so players truly explore and shape their own adventure instead of being led down a straight, railroaded path.
  • Ternary computing background (for Virtual Adept ideas) – A ternary (sometimes folks say trinary) computer is just a machine that counts a little different than most. Instead of using the usual on-or-off binary way of thinking, it works in threes. So where regular computers use bits, these use “trits,” giving them an extra option to work with each step of the way.

Executive Producers

Oracles

Bad Company • Buck Gregory • Christopher Phillips • Derek Semsick • DrawnCap • DrunkDez • Jason Vines • Rebecca Pool • Sean Gallagher • Spartacus • The Krewe of Erebuss

Archmasters

Berto • Brad-O-the Blue • Dan Svensson • Glacial Indifference • Jeffois • Leroy Bryce • Morgan Aran • Wolf Larryson

Acolytes

Aleks • Alexia • Ambiversion • Anders S • Ben Bandelow • Blaise Hebert • Bruno Teixeira • Bryce Perry • Bubba, The Pale One • Chartan • Cig • Curtis Hendricks • Darren Hennessey • Daniel Cuppen • Daniel Scribner • Dan Svensson • David Röhe • Ean Robertson • EBG • Eric Schwenke • Gray -Trilug- H • Guy Stewart • Ia Bull • James B • Jason Kennedy • Jenna F • Jeremy Z • Jervis Johnson • Kathleen Hailperin • Kevin Fitzpatrick • Khris Kinner • Leslie Weatherstone • Lolz & stuff • Loren Jensen • Manel Canós • Matthew Proehl • Maurice Hopkins • Melissa Krause • Michael Parker • Nebero • Nikita Kleymenov • Patrick McNamara • RobH • Ryan • Ryan Kendy • Ryan Stray • Samuel Tobin • Sev Nessus • Shell Konch • Starfish • Stefan Carton • Tyler Bryan • Will Vincent • Ygard

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Contact us at magethepodcast@gmail.com with feedback and comments, and please help extend the reach of the show by sharing it with friends.

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Such Pain

Such Pain

Pooka and Lee discuss Such Pain, the first Mage novel published in 1995.  Can novel-length stories help you envision the world of Mage?  Did the author hit it out of the park with this one?  Hear Pooka and Lee’s review of the book.  Their commentary highlights how the World of Darkness was a little different during Mage’s first edition.

Show Notes

  • Such Pain – Playboy Aaron Barry inherits an empire, fires his father’s allies, courts a reporter, and returns to a haunted home he fears.
  • Don Bassingthwaite – Born in Ontario, Bassingthwaite excelled in school, won awards, studied anthropology at Toronto, and began a publishing career while playing D&D.
  • Truth Until Paradox (short story collection) – Reality is mutable; mages shape it. In a dark mirror of our world, stories explore power, truth, and rival visions of Ascension.
  • Mage: The Ascension (RPG) – ou play reality-bending mages using belief to shape the world while battling rival factions and risking paradox.
  • Dragonlance Chronicles – Dragons return to Krynn, bringing war. A band of friends—knight, mage, and more—rise as unlikely heroes to seek the legendary Dragonlance.
  • The Holy Mountain – 1973 surreal film by Alejandro Jodorowsky, funded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono; shown at festivals like Cannes Film Festival. A Christ-like thief meets an alchemist, joins seekers, and climbs a holy mountain, only to learn the quest is illusion and reality lies beyond.

Executive Producers

Oracles

Bad Company • Buck Gregory • Christopher Phillips • Derek Semsick • DrawnCap • DrunkDez • Jason Vines • Rebecca Pool • Sean Gallagher • Spartacus • The Krewe of Erebuss

Archmasters

Berto • Brad-O-the Blue • Dan Svensson • Glacial Indifference • Jeffois • Leroy Bryce • Morgan Aran • Wolf Larryson

Acolytes

Aleks • Alexia • Ambiversion • Anders S • Ben Bandelow • Blaise Hebert • Bruno Teixeira • Bryce Perry • Bubba, The Pale One • Chartan • Cig • Curtis Hendricks • Darren Hennessey • Daniel Cuppen • Daniel Scribner • Dan Svensson • David Röhe • Ean Robertson • EBG • Eric Schwenke • Gray -Trilug- H • Guy Stewart • Ia Bull • James B • Jason Kennedy • Jenna F • Jeremy Z • Jervis Johnson • Kathleen Hailperin • Kevin Fitzpatrick • Khris Kinner • Leslie Weatherstone • Lolz & stuff • Loren Jensen • Manel Canós • Matthew Proehl • Maurice Hopkins • Melissa Krause • Michael Parker • Nebero • Nikita Kleymenov • Patrick McNamara • RobH • Ryan • Ryan Kendy • Ryan Stray • Samuel Tobin • Sev Nessus • Shell Konch • Starfish • Stefan Carton • Tyler Bryan • Will Vincent • Ygard

Become a supporter of Mage: The Podcast.

Contact us at magethepodcast@gmail.com with feedback and comments, and please help extend the reach of the show by sharing it with friends.

Follow Us

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

Join our Discord server.