Everything

Under the Shifting the Zone option, groups of players may achieve influence within a Localized Reality zone. Depending upon the chronicle, they might even expand that influence across several zones, gradually tipping the Technocratic or Primal balance in their favor. Doing so, however, should be a story-based process, not a dice-rolling contest. After all, if a few dozen successes could dominate Reality, then everyone on Earth would be some Oracle’s bitch.

So how can a handful of mages begin to turn Localized Reality in their favor? Typically, such paradigm shifts involve winning the Masses over to a certain vision through one or more of the following tactics:

• Make life better for the people, and credit those improvements to your paradigm.

• Make life worse for the people, encouraging them to do things your way.

• Blame problems on scapegoats and offer an alternative.

• Give the people something to fear and hate; profit from the results.

• Undermine everything and take advantage of the chaos.

• Offer salvation for the Masses’ pain.

• Create or reveal something so impressive and/ or beautiful that the Masses will remember it.

• Present a pleasing alternative to an unpleasant status quo.

• Circulate a meme so compelling that the Masses will embrace it. (See Memes, p. 594.)

• Present innovations so radical that they accomplish one or more of the other feats. (cf. television, the Internet, nukes, democracy.)

All of the previous examples, incidentally, are based on things that have brought about real-life, real-world paradigm shifts.

Like personal and cultural paradigms, a reality shift must meet the needs of normal people – an elite group of especially influential people, perhaps, but still “normal” people who have enough cultural clout to tip the balance of belief in their favor. Concepts like “trickle-down economics,” for instance, meet the needs of a small group of people while going against the needs of the Masses, and yet that particular concept maintains a hold upon reality because a lot of people believe themselves to be members of that elite group even when facts and evidence suggest otherwise. As the section about Creating Other Paradigms points out (see pp. 571-572), enduring beliefs follow needs, withstand challenges, and depend upon evidence. If your mages wish to shift the localized reality toward their designs, then they must create a reality that serves people other than themselves.

In game terms, check out The Reality Challenge in Chapter Nine for suggestions about how player characters might bring about a local paradigm shift. Such challenges, after all, are decided by changing the local reality in the Masses’ favor.

As a general rule, assume that paradigm shifts come more from social influence and technical or artistic innovations than through beating someone’s ass. The idea that overthrowing one reality by force will immediately lead to the reality you prefer is nice in theory… but, as history shows, it never really works that way.