Editing Mage: The Ascension (section)

== Paradox, Or Why Being a Mage Sucks ==
Congratulations. You're an arrogant dick who got a hold of God's power tools! Now what's stopping you from Wingardiam Leviosaing some skirts and summoning succubi to worship your tiny manhood? Well, while magic is cool, it only works well when no one can see you do it. Like all awesome things, the moment you try to show off to impress your friends, it backfires on you. Since reality functions on Consensus (whatever is believed by the most people is "true") in ''MtA'', and since doing most magic involves at least swimming against the currents of reality a little, flagrantly breaking the laws of what is commonly believed to be possible generates something called "Paradox." This is called vulgar magic. Such as:

The moment an "awakened" Mage tries to throw a fireball in front of a "sleeper" (an average person), bad things happen. Backlash happens. Backlash allows your [[GM]] to work out their sadistic streak and protect their special [[NPC]] at the same time, turning a fireball of plot derailment into an exploding lighter that sets your character on fire. On a good day. On a bad day, all of your character's futuristic prosthetic organs fail when an NPC so much as glances at them. Then they explode and set your character on fire. Paradox backlash wasn't as severe during periods where superstition and belief in the supernatural were more common, but became increasingly difficult for mages as technomages pushed their own form of Enlightened Science on the masses as being "true".

To avoid Paradox, mages (and technocrats) develop methods to avoid the effect. Of course, a fireball in public would be Paradox rich as hell (unless humanity collectively believes humans can cast fireballs at will), but it would be far less dangerous if, say, said mage caused a gas main underneath their enemy to explode (whether or not there was actually a gas main to blow up is immaterial). The closer their magic is to consensual physics, the easier it is for your average person to rationalize, the less chance Paradox is invoked. 

As opposed to the mystical practices of most mages, the technomages of the Technocracy practice Enlightened Science (magic with a digipunk coat of paint). The Technocracy has terminator robots and spaceships, proton guns that melt your face, bio-engineered superhumans, and cyborgs. How? Most of it operates CLOSE to actual science - and is easy for your average sleeper to rationalize. It's likewise important to note that the Technocracy has carefully groomed society to believe in their type of magic as being possible - and so, most of their effects can easily pass as not supernatural (with magic that causes Paradox being strictly punished). Said technologies, however, would NOT work in the hands of a non-Awakened, such as a nanobot-rich healing canister that would be used by a Progenitor easily. Non-awakened Technocracy personnel think it's a fingerprint system so reality isn't threatened. So basically Awakened people stretch the limits of existence without making it too obvious.

Unfortunately, their campaign has worked ''too'' well, and while they have done a very good job at getting people not to believe in magic, they have found it harder and harder to make people believe in science, with the end result that Consensus is calcifying all technology at the modern level, forming a stodgy stasis around the status quo and making advancement harder.  Worse, some of them ''like'' it that way, just as the mages they once overthrew liked it when the muggles they ruled over were broken slaves who couldn't dream of a better tomorrow.

Then there are Zoroastrian mage assholes that flout it entirely, but we'll get to that.