Mage: The Ascension 5ish

With Vampire: The Masquerade V6 moving closer to V5, how does this affect Mage: The Ascension which never got a V5 version after years of trying on and off?

Mage is trickier as making an M20 character reminded me, Vampire is a pretty straightforward game with a lot of optional stuff and Mage is a game where the optional stuff can be central. The current edition is 696 pages with two sourcebooks that feel, if not required then strongly encouraged, easily pushing it over 1000.

While Vampire fans may disagree on some major options, I see Mage fans like Doctor Who fans disagreeing on just about everything. Every Whovian has our idea of what wed do, and they’re all wildly different - because the show can do that. Same with this game.

I’m sure some of them would have been happy with a substantially streamlined M5 with Paradox Dice and no playable Technocracy, for example, but probably not a majority.

(Could you shrink Mage down enough that I might consider running it? Sure... it might end up looking more like Eden’s Witchcraft though.)