Merits & Flaws

You really fucking hate those people, whoever “those people” happen to be. Those people probably don’t like you either. Okay, maybe you don’t make your feelings obvious, but your conviction that those people are inferior troublemakers who are Everything Wrong with the World Goddammit comes through in your actions and decisions even if you say nothing of the kind out loud. Such prejudices determine your choice of friends and enemies, guide your beliefs, influence your politics, and tend to spill out at inconvenient times if you lose your temper. (See

Short Fuse, above.) You might end up changing your mind someday, but for the moment, bigotry is the lens through which you view your world… and especially for mages, that sort of thing means quite a bit to the world at large.

Despite the conventional (and not inaccurate) view of bigots as raging racists, sexists, and homophobes, supposedly liberal people can be bigots too; the worst kinds of bigots, in fact, are often self-righteous folks whose claims of open-mindedness get undercut by a quiet yet implacable prejudice against those people. Older versions of this Flaw rated it at only two points; in the twenty-first century, however, bigotry is more likely to get you in trouble if and when it’s revealed, especially on the Internet or in mass media… unless, of course, you’re running for president, or otherwise speaking up for folks who share your views, in which case you become a saint to some people and a demon to others.

It’s worth noting that bigots tend to have understandable reasons for their prejudices. Those reasons could stem from personal grievances, cultural bias, racial anxieties, scriptural proclamations, psychic trauma, gender clashes, philosophical paradigms, and – especially within Mage’s world – physical and metaphysical distinctions between “us” and “them.” Those reasons probably seem like bullshit to most people, but remain perfectly justified to the bigot in question.

It’s also worth noting that this Flaw should not in any way be taken as a license to abuse your fellow players. As with other ma­ ture-audience subjects, a character’s prejudices might become a trigger for real-life tensions within the group, and should thus be handled carefully, as described under the Problems and

Triggers sections of Mage 20, pp. 344-345.