Mage: The Awakening/YMMV


 * Alternate Character Interpretation: The more one reads about the Exarchs and Seers of the Throne, the more they seem like the good guys who wanted the world less supernatural so the common man could live without being in fear or under the control of the tyrannical Mages of Atlantis.
 * ... Until one remembers that the Seers' tenets include "Regulate the Abyss" and "Divide Humanity," it's not clear if the Exarchs even really exist, and every attempt to create a new Atlantis has met with bizarre and/or catastrophic failure even without the involvement of the Seers.
 * Even if that hypothesis is true, it would have been the only option till around the Industrial Revolution. If they sincerely felt about protecting people from tyrannical mages from Atlantis, the best thing would be to join the Free Council.
 * Crazy Awesome: The Ancient Lands Pentology, from the Grimorie of Grimories-a very popular High Fantasy series, authored by a radical member of the Free Council. The Diamond Orders find it offensive, both because its villains are uncomfortable Expys of their dark sides... and because more than a few copies are encoded spellbooks that seem to be an attempt to induce Awakening-- that is actually effective. There's even a merit for fans of the book who became mages because of it!
 * If you become an archmaster, you are now encouraged to be this trope. Turn your soul into a Genius Loci! Take a vacation in the Abyss! Visit the Supernal Realms to change history just by being there!
 * Game Breaker: For the beginner mage, Extended Casting's geometric progression of effects can be horribly abused. By the time you get to master-level magic you can break the game into tiny little pieces without even trying too hard.
 * Even with that in mind, all along the progression of power, the Mind Arcanum is just plain better.
 * Time and Fate Arcanum together can make a lot of non-combat encounters trivial, and at higher levels combat itself becomes a joke. Being both the ruling Arcanum of the Acanthus Path just piles on more cheese potential.
 * Every spell in the Time Arcanum above three-dots might as well be named "Derail Plot" in the hands of a sufficiently intelligent and motivated player.
 * Technically every Arcanum is a Game Breaker at the higher levels, especially when as many as four or more are used together, but that's the point really: Why should a Mage play by reality's rules?
 * This gets balanced out by Paradox, and the fact that all your enemies can do the same things you can. They may not have the exact same powers, but that just makes them more unpredictable. And let's not get started on the beasties which come out of the Abyss.
 * Another balancing factor is the Pax Arcanum. Simply put, all of the really high-level Mages, whether or not they agree with each other, have in place a kind of mutually assured destruction pact that is rather aggressively moderated. While there is a great deal of play in what a Mage can and can't do, going too crazy with high-level magic is a really fantastic way to get a group of Archmages to blow up your face.
 * High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Abyssal intruders. See Eldritch Abomination above.
 * The Outer Reaches also have some pretty bizarre beings.
 * Possession is fun.
 * The acamoth. Literally.
 * Read some of the entries in Intruders: Encounters With The Abyss at night, all alone, no small reason why it's considered the number one sourcebook by the Mage community.
 * For more Abyssal goodness, the Hildebrand Recording from Grimoire of Grimoires. Some poor sucker ends up holding a recorded seance, and we get to read about what happens when an Abyssal intruder picks up instead. And yes, there are snippets. The recording itself allows mages to perceive things through the filter of the Abyss, but it's also an object of fascination for mortal occultists, who will do anything - anything - to get their hands on it...
 * And one of those occultists? A Russian mob boss who used to play it for laughs, and once cut off the limbs of people who offended him.
 * Mary Sue: The Unbidden parodies the hell out of them with False Awakenings. The sufferer believes they have awakened on a path no one has ever heard of before. They gain power at an amazing rate (read: from Gnosis 1 to Gnosis 9 in a week)-- and ultimately destroy themselves and a sizable portion of the surrounding landscape trying to reach the Supernal. Poor deluded bastards.
 * To a lesser extent this applies to Low Wisdom, High Gnosis Mages, in their own heads... To everyone else it's just A God Am I with real god-like powers.
 * They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Many fans feel that, in comparison to the previous game, this one is more generic fantasy, and a little over the top on the grimdark-- probably because Ascension was almost always played as a straight superhero game. Intruders: Encounters With The Abyss is proof that the game is not light, considering it includes  The switch in main villains from the Technocracy, which can easily be spun as sympathetic and well-intentioned, to the initially banal and selfish Seers, as well as from the post-modern, philosophical exploration of the nature of reality to a fixed gnostic styling, probably didn't help. Later supplements and the 2nd Edition core have further fleshed out the setting and villains and thus helped change some minds.