I’m credited as Malcolm Sheppard on a bunch of games and books and one research project and a couple of other things. I’ve been writing for money for what, 17 years now?
Contact me through Twitter @MalcolmSheppard or email mob united media g mail com with no spaces, an “at” symbol, and a dot in the right places. I am available to do all sorts of writing, or talk.
Note: The Lucre
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you're always being judged 
Hello, I am a fan of your Mage work, including your Mage (The Dirty Version) and a few of your houserules that you’ve mentioned for Mage: the Ascension. I would like to know more, as I have ideas of my own for my “rules-fix”, and would like to get advice form an expert. (Or at least someone who is more of an expert than I am, which qualifies many, many people for the job.)
Go ahead and shoot. I’ll probably set up my reply and a general discussion on another page, though.
Are you going to repost your comments about Imperial Mysteries? I thought your description of the Aswadim’s motivations were very interesting.
Unfortunately, they’re locked up in the archives for the old blog, which are in a form (WordPress php tables) I can’t unscramble. But if you ask me a question on the White Wolf forums or SomethingAwful, I can answer there. Thanks!
Mr Sheppard, is there any way to make Mage: the Dirty Version available again?
Kind regards
Neil
Hi Neil,
Unfortunately, all my old articles are stuck in a backup from my old self-hosted blog, which irrevocably crashed. I have not yet been able to find the person or tools to take care of it.
That is terrible news! Good luck with getting it sorted. Have to admit to being a little devastated!
KR
Neil
Although it doesn’t have tags and such, that material is back–it was hiding in an RSS feed I redirected back to this blog.
I’m pretty sure I have a bunch of the Mage: Dirty Version posts saved in a Word doc somewhere, if that’s a help at all…
If you send it, I’ll post it with acknowledgments, probably as a PDF. Been working a lot, sorry I didn’t reply sooner!
The Mage: The Dirty version posts were cross-posted to the livejournal blog.
Hope you manage to find someone who knows how to code WordPress databases.
I have yet to find a way to convert what I have to wxr.
Can you create a wxr file? Or someone could gover your database tables and reconstruct.
Malcom, I have nominated you for a Versatile Blogger Award. As always, I am a fan of your work.
Hey, I’m having a debate with some friends about magic versus science. My friends say that any non-random magic system is quantifiable using the scientific method and that it’s impossible to have a magic system that isn’t and still be useful for actually doing stuff. In other words, if it exists in a society that uses the scientific method and is testable under experimental conditions, magic will become science.
Do you happen to have any recorded debates or papers or something that argues for and explains how a magic system can be both useable and an anti-science that can cinch the argument for me?
My friends also stated that intangibles like morality or purity of heart don’t change the application of the scientific method because you can test those in an experiment to quantify them. It doesn’t matter if only certain people can perform magic or that magic can’t be mass-produced, as long as it is testable under experimental conditions. Even if the magic is an effort of will then it’s subject to sociology and psychology, and real world science is pretty much an application of will as well (plus all the equipment and materials to make that will into reality, making magic no more than a mere shortcut).
Malcolm was there ever any luck in recovering all of the M:tA “Dirty Version” content? I’ve found some of it on this blog, but not much in the way of mechanical advice other than having Flat difficulties for Sphere effects. Did you ever have any other advice? I’m very curious now that M20 has been released. 🙂