Mage: the Ascension is widely acclaimed as perhaps the most thoughtful and deep of all White Wolf games (amongst others as one of things that inspired Matrix), yet here on RPoL it is extremely difficult to find one. How come?

Because of all those mages with high arcane?

I would say that the answer to that question is fairly simple; it is a hard game to run. I have seen a few come and go over the years but no-one really seems to be able to last for long.

Funny, I never considered it too difficult to run. It almost seems as all Mage games follow the same pattern. First you throw a satanic cult at the characters, then, once they defeat the nephandus (or demon or whatever led the cult), have technocrats chase them away and once they escape tell them that they by chance discovered a portal to Umbra and invent some reason why they must explore it. Once in, they run into Jasson the argonaut or St. Paul or Lo Pan, who sends them to investigate Falls of Arcadia (which is on the dark side of the Moon if I remember correctly) or star destroyer orbiting Mars... and they never care to return to Earth.

See, that's the problem in my mind: it's too easy.  Plots become redundant.  It's also embarrassingly easy to twink out Mages to the point that it's hard to challenge the players.  Folks that try to keep things in balance (or STs that require it) find their PC is far behind other character types instead.  So you either have mages that are insanely powerful or insanely weak in my experience.  Either way, plots tend to fall into ruts more than in other games.

But that's just me  ^-^

I've been in one good game playing a mage in a mixed setting (not here), and I'm in one rather slow, but good mixed game playing a mage game here. I've started, but not gone far in a couple others here.

Mage isn't particularly hard, nor is mage any more twinkyable than werewolf or vamp (and the ST should stop those characters at sheet level). There are just fewer good ST's for mage because a mage is very different from a vampire and the ST's tend to be in over their heads when they go from vamps to mages.

I'd say there's also an issue of raw popularity. My impression has always been that Vampire was the most popular, followed by Werewolf and only then Mage. It's also harder to run in the sense that a Vampire or Werewolf ST has a very set list of powers his players have while a Mage ST must try to take into account the whole range of things his players can do with their spheres. In my experience it takes a different attitude towards Storytelling to do that.

I would certainly agree that Mage lacks the popularity of Vampire and Werewolf. Most likely it is due to the fact that it lacks sexual undertone of Vampire and rage of Werewolf. Still, Mage has a certain sense of maturity unlike any other game I know. Of course, maturity and roleplay tend to be antonyms at time, which makes Mage a borderline alternative game.

Powers just might be the weakest part of the game and are a whole new can of worms. Compared to powers from Demon, Vampire or even its own precursor, Ars Magica, Spheres seem bland and uninspiring, more fitting to a New Age bedtime story than a roleplaying game. This is especially true for a game which advertises itself with flashy rooftop duels with flaming swords, lightning or jets of flame. The rules of Mage are ill suited for a world which includes far more than just "magic". After all it is a multiverse with pockets whose genre conventions range as widely as their landscapes; from verdant plains inhabited by unicorns and pegasai to terrible factories that grind human souls just as effectively as metal.

I will certainly revisit the issue of "fixing" Mage rules, but for now I would prefer to ask a question: What does it take to run a successful Mage game?

A firm beginning, middle and end of the plot. At least to begin with. If the players are working towards an attainable goal as their first "mission" together, the open-ended save-the-world stuff can come later. Trying to save the world on the first go around is putting the cart before the horse for Old Mage.

Any other thoughts, or should we move the subject to issues of fixing Mage rules?

For what it's worth, I think the Mage rules were effectively fixed with the Awakening rules. I've played both games and found Ascension's magic rules HIGHLY confusing compared to Awakening's. Awakening has more detailed rules, but somehow I find them easier to understand. The inclusion of the Practices helps, I think.

Anyhow, people have successfully converted the old magic system to the new one, giving the Euthanatos Fate and making the Hollow Ones a full-fledged order with the Death arcana...

The Awakening rules strike me as somewhat gurps like, a step toward D&D. I think a lot of the flavor of WoD was lost in Awakening.

Could you elaborate?

Yeah, I'm also interested. I see D&D and GURPS at somewhat opposite ends of the spectrum. GURPS is all about customization and D&D is all about playing to templates and experience levels.

Awakening has a much more structured, more limiting system of magic, with emphasis on pre-made spells rather than fuzzy magic, both in the form of rotes and the improvised spells, these are very much like gurps and D&D spell based systems.

The thing I liked about oWoD was figuring out how to get an effect from your spheres for a particular situation, now it's pick from a spell list. Even paradox is spelled out.