Hi guys,

I was thinking about hacking Mage: The Ascension as the original rules don't appeal to me, nor do any houserules I did in the past. Thinking about what to do about the Traditions, it hit me: Mage is a game about perception. So move the perception move, which is pretty standardized over many games, into the splats. So the move is always the same, but the questions to be asked are different. I like this idea very well, because even if all players want to look at things, they can still roll.

Things I came up with include:

The Hermetic
What here has been touched by the Art?
What forces bind them?
To what form can this be distilled?

The Ecstatic
What holds them back?
Where can I find bliss?
What's going to happen next?

The Virtual Adept / Mercurial Elite
What information is encoded here?
How can we communicate?
How can I overcome this?

The Verbena
What here is pure or wicked?
What sickness afflicts them?


I'm not sure about how this strategy fits other PbtA games, but I always thought about how "investigating a mystery" in MotW got same-y quite fast.