Mage: The Ascension is a role-playing game based in the World of Darkness, and was published by White Wolf Game Studio in 1993. The characters portrayed in the game are referred to as mages, and are capable of acts of magic. Magic in Mage is subjective as it incorporates a diverse range of ideas and mystical practices, as well as science and religion. A mage's ability to change reality is based on what they believe rather than a static system.
Mage was influenced by the White Wolf game Ars Magica, but the two games have different settings and premises.[1] Similarly, White Wolf released Mage: The Awakening in 2005 for the new World of Darkness series. The new game features some of the same mechanics but uses a different premise and setting.
Following the release of Vampire: The Masquerade, White Wolf released a new roleplaying game each year for the next four years, all of them set in the same World of Darkness of Vampire, and using its Storyteller rule system: Werewolf: The Apocalypse (1992), Mage: The Ascension (1993), Wraith: The Oblivion (1994), and Changeling: The Dreaming (1995).[1]: 217–218 Mage was the first World of Darkness game that Mark Rein-Hagen was not directly involved with, although it featured the Order of Hermes from his Ars Magica as one of its many traditions.[1]: 218
The first edition of the game was released by White Wolf Publishing on August 19, 1993, at the Gen Con Gaming Convention;[2][3] they followed it with a second edition in December 1995,[4][5] and with Revised Edition in March 2000.[6] Onyx Path Publishing released a fourth version, the 20th Anniversary Edition, on September 23, 2015.[7]
In Mage: The Ascension players play the role of mages, and discover they have the ability to shape reality through magic. The process of this discovery is referred to as Awakening. Awakening is a mysterious, often traumatic experience wherein a person's Avatar, a kind of tutelary consciousness or Daemon, "wakes up" within the mage, granting them magical abilities. Once Awakened, mages can learn to change reality via will, beliefs, and specific magical techniques, but the differences in how they do this form the central conflict of the game.
There are four factions: the Technocracy, the Marauders, the Nephandi, and the Traditions, all of whom struggle against one another on all levels to covertly persuade the "un-awakened" masses that their beliefs are best. This struggle is called the Ascension War, wherein the four factions vie for control of reality.