Atlantis. To many believers, Atlantis excites the mind, conjuring images of pyroclasts and sinking cities, of the mysterious (though debunked) Bimini Road underneath the Caribbean Sea, of an advanced civilization lost to myth. Seekers of the lost city gained footing in the Victorian era, claiming Atlantis to be a lost continent and the keystone of human civilization, looking for any clue to the validity of their claims. Then, as now, the public at large has looked at Atlantis with the skeptic’s eye, a myth, a tale told by the Greeks thousands of years past that has simply latched onto the minds of the West with an unparalleled fervor. Both sides have hotly debated the issue for well over a century now, with only the pro-Atlantis side dropping the Lost Continent venue. Some still cling to the idea as readily as people reject it as fantasy.

There is actually a shadowy third party to the Atlantis issue: gamers. Atlantis has been embraced by gaming culture and by authors as an exciting pulp-adventure setting for years. Ye Olde Warhammer, Rifts, Scion, Hollow Earth Expedition, and many more game lines have taken the Atlantis myth wholecloth or used the template of an advanced culture lost to cataclysm time and again. Always charms us, doesn’t it? Though, there is one company that has run into heavy resistance to the Atlantis myth in their game. And that’s White Wolf.

My question is this: why is there so much crying over this? I’ve not received a sufficient answer.

RPG.net and White Wolf’s forums were a minefield, strewn with the corpses of many a poster from either side. One could slip up at any time and doom a whole topic by simply mentioning the phrase ‘I kind of like’ with the words ‘Mage’ and ‘Atlantis’. The resulting continent-sized firestorm of nerd rage would engulf your soul.

Truly, only White Wolf’s popular Exalted outdoes the Mage-Atlantis flame wars that have erupted since the release of Mage: The Awakening (henceforth M:tA) in 2005. The notion of Atlantis being the legendary home and birthplace of mages within the setting has caused many to invoke the time honored ‘changed it, now it sucks’ baying common to any group with a cherished game they don’t want to give up.

The old World of Darkness once had M:tA’s predecessor, Mage: The Ascension, still time honoured and loved by many. It had been running since 1993, carrying the white whale of a metaplot that all of White Wolf’s flagship game lines had. That metaplot being the Traditions versus the Technocratic Union story, the duality of imposed order and free choice. That was changed and heaped upon across three editions White Wolf shoveled out until 2003 with the Time of Judgment that ended the old World of Darkness. To many mage players, the ending book, Ascension, was a wonderful ending to the chaotic tale of the Traditions and Technocracy, savouring it like a fine wine.

Enter the new World of Darkness in 2004, featuring a unified Storyteller system greatly streamlined and metaplot free, with the WoD core being mortal characters only. The traditional Big Three (Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage) were released as core books specifically tailored to the template. This already caused rumblings, with everything being ‘dumbed down’ in power. Werewolf experienced tribulation with this in relation to its previous incarnation in the old World of Darkness.

Then out comes new Mage in 2005. You’d swear the world had ended.

The Atlantean Empire in the Mage past is built on the mage’s own legends and vague hints of history that has passed down through the ages, much like the werewolves’ oral tradition. The isle of the dragon dreams which awoke humanity’s souls to the Supernal, a legacy that for the most part is unattainable again, like Pangaea for the werewolves. The story of Atlantis is wrought with what White Wolf players have come to love; the epic empires, fallen glory, the hubris of man, the inevitable battle of two shades of gray personified by the Exarchs and the Oracles, the climb of the Celestial Ladder and the shattering of the two worlds, leading to the separation and the birth of the Abyss. This is not unlike Werewolf’s take on the death of Father Wolf as he grew weak and the spirit world separated from the world of the flesh. But not for some, oh no.

Atlantis was derided, damned, and called so many colorful words that the late George Carlin would have turned green with envy. Some considered giving the mages a concrete (compared to others) back story destroying the carefully vague and multiple choice history most of the World of Darkness had built up at that point - more on this in a moment. Many simply thought having Atlantis was stupid and foolish (cheerfully ignoring the fact that Atlantis was one of many names for the Awakened City, just one that survived the cataclysm). A small minority liked it, but they were shouted down quite regularly amidst the flames.

The echoes of the sentiment continue, though not as loudly as it once had. I recall just one week ago on my usual play-by-post forum online, a discussion of Google Wave and online gaming came up. Someone mentioned new World of Darkness online, they left M:tA out. Another poster pointed this out, leading to calm and scathing comments on the Atlantis history from three others. Two of the Atlantis-haters are friends of mine.

And I always ask myself: why? What in the world caused this bitter hatred of the Atlantis myth in a game?

I’ve discussed this with one of them. He abhors the Atlantis inclusion like it’ll reach out and infect him. He is a part of the ‘it ruins the WoD canon’ faction, claiming that with one concrete (if hazy) back story for Mage all the others must cleave to the Mage history. I don’t see the logic. Of the current new World of Darkness lines, only Werewolf: The Forsaken, Mage: the Awakening, and Changeling: The Lost go into any sort of talk about history reaching back beyond the Roman Empire and humanities origins. Most of the others only hit Rome and stop there.

And yet, my friend doesn’t discount the story in Werewolf: The Forsaken’s own back story about Father Wolf and Mother Luna, and when spirit and man interacted in their misty Pangaea. No White Wolf fans seem to cry foul there. Not one. And yet people refuse to see any connections. All of the Big Three and company have hazy histories for a reason, and are accepted. Mage having near the same thing with Atlantis turns all of this around completely?

Gray is the color of the new World of Darkness and M:tA captures this perfectly. The legacy of Atlantis is no glittering jewel for mages; the Atlantean empire grew more authoritarian in its twilight years, making the jump to full-on totalitarian, oppressive to all non-islander natives of the world. There is no true divide beyond the ideological amongst the protagonist Pentacle Orders and the antagonistic Seers of the Throne, and that is a lovely thing. There are two sides of the coin with the Pentacle mages, the player characters, strong connections to old Atlantis and the goal to bring humanity to ascension through their own quiet means; then there are the antagonistic Seers, blindly following their Exarch masters, who are trying to keep humanity blind to magic and from Awakening through strengthening the Abyss.

There are even some hints that these stories can indeed mesh. The unity of spirits and men in the werewolf world matches with the unity of the Supernal and Fallen Worlds in Mage, and the talk of the odd cultures away from the shores of Atlantis. Even a Changeling supplement, Equinox Road, talks about this at some length, between the Arcadia of the Fae and the Arcadia of the Supernal, albeit with multiple choice paths. And that’s fine! There’s nothing wrong with multiple choice and Storyteller fiat when it comes to what they envision the history of the world to be. It was never written in stone that any of these pasts were the official canon past, and yet, they can fit together rather seamlessly.

But you can never simply say ‘I like the Atlantis history for M:tA.’ That is the way of the heretic.

The derision and immediate bashing is extraordinary in my experience, and all for a name and an author’s unfortunate idea that it may add depth to his game. Atlantis is seen as a crappy joke, as the lofty dream of xenoarchaeologists who still say the pyramids were built with the aid of gray men in shiny saucer ships. It’s fodder for fantasy and crackpot authors…and this somehow makes it the most horrid thing White Wolf has ever written for the World of Darkness?

Ridiculous.

The fiction is tight, well-written and compares just as well with the other gamelines. There is far too much crying, whining and gnashing of teeth on the internet because of a name. Close your eyes and call it the Awakened City and see how much that changes your opinion. The mage is a savvy creature. They can make the Changeling and the Vampire look like fools with their courtly politics and their covetous, inwardly focused power-hogging. This is no mere thrust for political gain; this is a game where your inheritance is written in reality and has been ever since those faded days when the Awakened City was one with the world in front of our eyes. And that? That’s something to toss in the waste bin, apparently. Wading through the Mage forums once upon a time was like being let into a hall of petulant children who had been made to eat vegetables with dinner. For what?

Atlantis won’t slither out from under your bed and drag you down to its dark domain! There is a rich, coherent and finely tuned setting there waiting. Though, some would say, it is a flawed and debased creature, not worthy of reading or acknowledgement, leading many to lament M:tA for this supposed shortcoming. Atlantis and its mages are more than a worthy addition to the new order. The story is vibrant, the stakes worthy of epic and personal adventure, and no, the history does not kill your multi-choice backgrounds and carefully crafted personal worlds nor the flavor of the World of Darkness. It is not the elephant in the room. Accepting the new history and the new texture and taste of M:tA would open many eyes to a game that’s gone decried and shunned for far too long.