2015 - Mage - Jason Place
Introduction and Background:
Administrative Experience:
My first, and probably most relevant bit of experience is that of serving successfully as Mage coord before. As mentioned, I have served for six terms before. Especially in the past few years, we've made large strides with Mage. Most people were barely aware of the Mage presence in OWBN before that, even though 20% of games claimed at least one Mage PC on their books. Now, we have a handful of ~20 player (or more) Mage games and satellites in the org, a significant number of Storytellers who are now willing to allow Mages into their Vampire/Garou/etc chronicles on a limited basis, and a visible presence both in the org as a whole and at a number of event games (Midwinter, Nonklaive, Beltane). Professionally, I am a network engineer and the lead systems architect for a large company. I'm very familiar with organizing small teams in order to develop resources for a large number of users. I've learned when to delegate, when to handle something myself, and how to set reasonable goals in an appropriate timeframe.
Personal Statement:
My approach as a coord has always been to provide more tools than restrictions. I am a big believer in putting out baseline systems and concepts which storytellers can adopt or not, as they choose. Only in some of the most egregious/easily abused, rare, or genre-critical instances do I think that we need a hard drawn line. I have no plans on increasing the amount of regulation surrounding Mage, unless a particular instance crops up that demands attention.
One of my most common jobs has been serving as a resource for non-Mage STs who want to integrate Mage and/or Hedge Magic into their games. I'm encouraged to see how many more STs are willing to integrate these sort of themes into their game in a responsible manner. Mage has gotten a bad reputation in the past because some people have used them as an all but omnipotent storyteller excuse to smack down players. In turn, that made other storytellers and players view Mage as "overpowered." And while there is certainly a large amount of power to be had in Mage, a storyteller who understands the limitations of the system should have no problem keeping things reasonable.
Given all that, I think ST education is the best tool I have at my disposal. The more I get storytellers to a point where they understand the setting and at least the rough outlines of what Mages can accomplish, the less regulation I need, and the closer we stick to the core themes of the game.
Goals:
My first goal is to bring the Mage setting and IC political structure up to date. I've said this before, but then the announcement of M20 came, and that put our plans on hold. Currently, with M20 expected this year, we should get to see the current state of affairs in the WoD as far as mages are concerned. And then we can introduce a series of plots and measures to bring OWBN into alignment, rather than languishing in the haphazard environment we were left in 10 years ago at the end of the original WoD run.
Second, I want to continue increasing the Mage presence in the org. Our player base is growing at a reasonable and steady rate, and I have no reason to expect it to do anything but continue. There is some talk of a Mage-centric event, and while I don't think we have quite the population to pull it off yet, this year may be the year we can finally make arrangements to do it next year.
Finally, I'd like to create a resource packet for STs, that goes further into mechanics, power standards, and so on. This will not be binding, but will hopefully set a baseline expectation. For example, how powerful can/should Wonders be? At what point is it reasonable for a character to be a Master, and how common should Masters be? How difficult should it be to obtain quintessence? Etc, etc.
I'm sure will be a number of smaller things for us to accomplish during the year, but those three are my 'hit list,' so to speak.