If improving their magic isn’t right at the top of their priorities, something has gone badly awry. On one hand I acknowledge, “Rightly so,” because… c’mon. In practice, however, nothing on that list is going to offer anything nearly as interesting or useful as Arcana. In theory, the game offers a vast list of other options for purchase: attributes, skills, skill specializations, merits, rotes, and so on. New dots in Gnosis are also significant steps up in power, though at this point not as significant of steps. Every new dot in Arcana is a major leap in their capabilities. This mindset is not great for me, as the Storyteller. (If they’re close to accumulating enough Arcane XP for a level of Gnosis, they might consider dipping into General XP to finish that out, but it’s not a priority.) With only a few exceptions, I think they’ve come to feel like their only meaningful options for spending XP are their two Ruling Arcana. I doubt seriously that this is adding anything to the game other than keeping them from having to choose between the next level of an Arcanum and the next level of Gnosis. Since my players aren’t dependent on Arcane XP to motivate them or to keep them balanced with other supernatural creatures, Arcane XP are just experience points that they can only spend on Gnosis. I have played in a nWoD crossover game, though I don’t recall at this point whether or not the mage in that game got Arcane XP. The second reason, to keep the mages on par with vampire and werewolf characters, has not the least bit of bearing on my chronicle, but I’m glad they included it. Well, maybe one of them, but the rest of the party can be relied upon to find some kind of trouble. I’m fortunate that my players don’t seem too inclined to do this.
That is to say, they can’t just hole up in their sanctums, use sympathetic magic to screw with their enemies, and remain unthreatened. The stated reasons for the existence of Arcane XP are interesting: firstly, mages have to be out of their sanctums exploring the world (including magical worlds beyond our own) to earn Arcane XP. Mages receive the normal share of experience that all World of Darkness characters receive (“general experience”), as well as earning a secondary pool of Arcane Experience. We’re about fourteen sessions into my Mage: the Awakening chronicle, and I’ve been pondering the game’s system of distributing experience points. 7 Dec, 2011 in Mage tagged experience points / Mage the Awakening by Brandes Stoddard
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