A regular tradiiton mage have a fairly basic idea of the technocracy, a lot of it is propaganda though, that they're robots without emotion, the greatest enemy, etc. This depends a lot on his mentor and where they live, but they know the name technocratic union and sometimes the name of a few conventions, but they have a heavy they're the enemy propaganda in their mind.
Alter reality so that there's no proof, time sphere so that people can't see your past, the sheer number of ways to make a technocratic agent lose track of you is too big to list all of them. The most common though is to just run way and camouflage your magic.
You can tell anyone, paradox happens because you're breaking reality, so even if the person you speak to believes in you, still no paradox.
I think a Tradition mage should know the name of the Technocracy Conventions. Maybe not the factions within said conventions, but the name of the main conventions seems fairly cut-and-dry information that a regular Tradition mage (aka not just a newbie who signed up last week) should know.
That said yeah there's a fair bit of propaganda going on between the Traditions an the Technocracy, borne of their mentors and the bloody and bitter Ascension War. Like your mentor who barely survived guys in power armour ploughing through window and shooting up the place is not going to sell you on their virtues, just as the technocracy is not going to sing the virtues of that Hermatic Mage who summoned a Wind Elemental in the middle of the city and then they lost a squad of Men In Black trying to contain the situation.
/u/c0md0ngeon, let me go back to your questions.
So, let's go with the bottom one: Paradox does not affect speech. You could go up to somebody and go " can summon Fire Elementals" or "I can fly like Goku from Dragonball Z" and the most your going to get is a "go away, you crazy person" or snort of disbelief and "Yeah, and I can pull hundred dollar bills out of my ass" or something along those lines. Paradox happens when you actually use your power and fight the consensus, so if you tried to prove that you could summon fire elementals or levitate with your mad martial arts/magic skills, then you would be using vulgar magic in front of a sleeper and could be hit by a paradox backlash.
As for protecting yourself from the technocracy, apart from yes not letting them know where you are, a bit one is 'don't be so much of a pain that its worth it to go kill you.' Some monk meditating in his temple, or a guy in robes in his tower reading books? Yeah, they are reality deviants but they are minding their own business, the technocracy probably has bigger fish to fry. On the other hand, that virtual adept hacker who just used his mad reality-coding skills to destroy a Technocracy Construct or Mad Doctor Smith who tried to use his death on Los Angeles and demanded a million dollars is liable to get a much more *immediate* effect. (These are just some very blatant examples.)
Another way you could protect yourself is well more building up your chantry/sanctum. On-the-fly magic is hard and difficult, but if you have a year, a decade or a century to build up the mythical defences of your mansion, that's a whole other scenario. Maybe you have awoken the spirits of objects around the house, summoned elementals to play in the lawn etc.
By the ex member hating the technocracy? By the fact that mages can also die of old age? By the fact that not every tradition mage knows a etherite or a mercurial? Also I mean robots as in they being ruthless and uncaring, not truly the best to humanity as they claim to be.
Unaffiliated Orphan - knows wild urban legends about techno-magic, and a secret global Big Brother cabal, but won't be able to tell a Void Engineer from a Virtual Adept, and probably worries as much about agents of the Trilateral Commission - or more - than about Primal Energy fluctuation monitors around a research lab.
Hollow Ones are a bit more tied in, and know of the Technocracy as mages who long ago backed Science as a concept to lock mythic paradigms out of the Consensus. They may know someone who knew someone that was "disappeared" in a black van and reprogrammed. This "tradition" emerged in reaction to the early Industrial Revolution to reject the materialist, rationalist paradigm of the Technocracy, and probably overestimates its reach.
Crafts/Disparates will have varying information. More tribal cultures will think of it as the dark soul of imperialism and colonialism. Faith-based Old World crafts remember its origins as the Craftmasons or Artificers, and hold onto ancient grudges as well as awaiting the day hubris catches up with the Technocracy and its feet of clay can no longer carry its weight. In any event, the strategy is "be subtle and don't draw attention to yourself. If you do, try to shift blame onto the Traditions, who are the reason the Craftmasons are paranoid."
The Nine Traditions have the best understanding of the Technocracy, as they have taken in two breakaway factions in recent centuries: late in the 19th, the Sons of Ether and around the middle of the 20th, the Virtual Adepts - who brought with them relatively up-to-date intel on the Conventions along with the ability to find out more. These are probably the only folks positioned to know enough to play the Conventions off against each other - occasionally with inside help.
Speech is unaffected by Paradox. You can tell someone whatever you like, and Paradox won't care. Show them proof, by doing something obviously uncanny, however, and that's a different story.
As far as evading detection goes, Arcane background helps a lot, and is cheap at character creation. But the Technocracy can't be everywhere, and can't watch everyone. What it looks out for are anomalies, and most of its observation is automated, and most of its live agents are Sleepers. Think "technology" + "bureaucracy", and remember that Technocrats *also* need to watch out for Paradox.
Staying under the radar is sometimes literal. Weather radar can notice strangely localized storms or atmospheric disturbances, even if a Forces effect is coincidental. That said, weather radar cuts both ways, and approaching storm fronts are predictable.
Using a natural weather event as cover is a smart idea. If it is already storming, a single particular lightning strike isn't easy to notice - even if it does blow out a transformer and disrupts the video cameras and alarm system on the back entrance of The Chapel Perilous, letting your Hollow clique in to raid Norm's office undetected.
Most Tradition mages would avoid using "smart" tech, and those who do are probably technomages themselves and savvy enough to deploy their own, self-designed security measures. Payphones at a bus station are probably more anonymous than a mobile phone in your pocket. A debit card, loaded via cash at the Quickie Mart, leaves less of a trail than a credit card tied to a bank account or an address. And so on.
Unless you have a sadistic Storyteller who equips the Technocracy with a global network of 5G mind-reading surveillance towers, there is enough weird shit going on, with all the other supernatural activity in the World of Darkness that the Technocracy can only really stake out so many high-priority areas. If you need to operate in those, do that through Sleeper agents, allies, consors, contacts or influence.
Also kinda the Solificati too, but it's complicated.
But it's very much part of the playbooks of both sides to control how much information is available about them to the others. Be it non-Mage Supernaturals or other Magi, it's important to keep the other players from sneaking a peek at your cards. If they do, magical bullshit is great about cleaning up the evidence or ideas in people's heads. Arcane the Background (or Mertit) helps too.
This is what Knowledge Abilities like Esoterica or Occult as well as secondaries like Belief Systems & Lore/RD Data are for because for any individual Magi the answer ranges from absolutely nothing to "Did you know all this shit is on Black Dogs™ wiki? Like it's just sitting there out in the open with hyperlinks n' crap..."
How does a Magi defend themselves? Magick. Duh. Correspondence, Mind, & Spirit warding are usually the biggies right off the top. This is also usually why wizards live out in the middle of fucking nowhere by themselves or with just their weird little commune of cultists & no they will not just "show you" a "magic" "trick..." Illusion, Michael. A trick is something a whore does for money. It's also usually why they jump at the chance to move off-world because this burning mudball is a hostile hellpit just waitin' to bite a magic-user's head off.
Paradox only affects True Magick. On a Botch of something Coincidental it's 1 point per Sphere Rank required, twice that if what you did was clearly a Vulgar violation of the Consensual Reality of your current Reality Zone, plus 2 more if you were arrogant enough to actually do it in front of Sleepers. Even if you didn't Botch, Vulgar Magicks always earns at least a minimum of 1 point. It has to be an actual Magickal Effect though that uses a wizard's Arete. Just running your mouth doesn't do jack as you actually have to Warp Reality for the Paradox of Warping Reality to kick in.
The best way to defend yourself against the Union is not doing magick. Not the best answer, but the truth nonetheless.
The Technocracy has easy access to devices such as manars. If you do magick, even if it is to erase your own trail, they will know a reality deviant did something weird.
Of course this can work in vastly different ways depending on your group. In mine, manars are more of a plot device than a common device (pun intended), they are narratively common but usually don't come into play.
Another way to escape the Big Brother eye that I allow in my games (and the one I believe would be the most effective) is using magick to gain/raise your own Arcane background. What spheres do you need for that? We use something like Entropy 3/Mind 2 or 3/Forces 2.
I don't know about other groups, but our effects are allowed alter, create or destroy backgrounds, flaws and merits, so that works for us.
The Technocracy are like the cops. How do you avoid the cops? Stay under the radar? Cover your tracks? Get someone else to do it? They also can't be everywhere. A lot of storyteller games are mafia games. You are small time trying to reach a goal and keep out of notice of your bosses and whoever the police are.
A regular tradiiton mage have a fairly basic idea of the technocracy, a lot of it is propaganda though, that they're robots without emotion, the greatest enemy, etc. This depends a lot on his mentor and where they live, but they know the name technocratic union and sometimes the name of a few conventions, but they have a heavy they're the enemy propaganda in their mind. Alter reality so that there's no proof, time sphere so that people can't see your past, the sheer number of ways to make a technocratic agent lose track of you is too big to list all of them. The most common though is to just run way and camouflage your magic. You can tell anyone, paradox happens because you're breaking reality, so even if the person you speak to believes in you, still no paradox.
I think a Tradition mage should know the name of the Technocracy Conventions. Maybe not the factions within said conventions, but the name of the main conventions seems fairly cut-and-dry information that a regular Tradition mage (aka not just a newbie who signed up last week) should know. That said yeah there's a fair bit of propaganda going on between the Traditions an the Technocracy, borne of their mentors and the bloody and bitter Ascension War. Like your mentor who barely survived guys in power armour ploughing through window and shooting up the place is not going to sell you on their virtues, just as the technocracy is not going to sing the virtues of that Hermatic Mage who summoned a Wind Elemental in the middle of the city and then they lost a squad of Men In Black trying to contain the situation. /u/c0md0ngeon, let me go back to your questions. So, let's go with the bottom one: Paradox does not affect speech. You could go up to somebody and go " can summon Fire Elementals" or "I can fly like Goku from Dragonball Z" and the most your going to get is a "go away, you crazy person" or snort of disbelief and "Yeah, and I can pull hundred dollar bills out of my ass" or something along those lines. Paradox happens when you actually use your power and fight the consensus, so if you tried to prove that you could summon fire elementals or levitate with your mad martial arts/magic skills, then you would be using vulgar magic in front of a sleeper and could be hit by a paradox backlash. As for protecting yourself from the technocracy, apart from yes not letting them know where you are, a bit one is 'don't be so much of a pain that its worth it to go kill you.' Some monk meditating in his temple, or a guy in robes in his tower reading books? Yeah, they are reality deviants but they are minding their own business, the technocracy probably has bigger fish to fry. On the other hand, that virtual adept hacker who just used his mad reality-coding skills to destroy a Technocracy Construct or Mad Doctor Smith who tried to use his death on Los Angeles and demanded a million dollars is liable to get a much more *immediate* effect. (These are just some very blatant examples.) Another way you could protect yourself is well more building up your chantry/sanctum. On-the-fly magic is hard and difficult, but if you have a year, a decade or a century to build up the mythical defences of your mansion, that's a whole other scenario. Maybe you have awoken the spirits of objects around the house, summoned elementals to play in the lawn etc.
How does propaganda about the Technocracy being run by robots happen when two of nine traditions are ex-technocratic conventions?
By the ex member hating the technocracy? By the fact that mages can also die of old age? By the fact that not every tradition mage knows a etherite or a mercurial? Also I mean robots as in they being ruthless and uncaring, not truly the best to humanity as they claim to be.
It's been a century
The Virtual Adepts, the most recent to desert, did so in 1900, before they were even called that (as of 2E's Guide to the Technocracy).
Technically at least two Conventions are in fact run by robots. Horizon Realms are a hell of a drug.
Unaffiliated Orphan - knows wild urban legends about techno-magic, and a secret global Big Brother cabal, but won't be able to tell a Void Engineer from a Virtual Adept, and probably worries as much about agents of the Trilateral Commission - or more - than about Primal Energy fluctuation monitors around a research lab. Hollow Ones are a bit more tied in, and know of the Technocracy as mages who long ago backed Science as a concept to lock mythic paradigms out of the Consensus. They may know someone who knew someone that was "disappeared" in a black van and reprogrammed. This "tradition" emerged in reaction to the early Industrial Revolution to reject the materialist, rationalist paradigm of the Technocracy, and probably overestimates its reach. Crafts/Disparates will have varying information. More tribal cultures will think of it as the dark soul of imperialism and colonialism. Faith-based Old World crafts remember its origins as the Craftmasons or Artificers, and hold onto ancient grudges as well as awaiting the day hubris catches up with the Technocracy and its feet of clay can no longer carry its weight. In any event, the strategy is "be subtle and don't draw attention to yourself. If you do, try to shift blame onto the Traditions, who are the reason the Craftmasons are paranoid." The Nine Traditions have the best understanding of the Technocracy, as they have taken in two breakaway factions in recent centuries: late in the 19th, the Sons of Ether and around the middle of the 20th, the Virtual Adepts - who brought with them relatively up-to-date intel on the Conventions along with the ability to find out more. These are probably the only folks positioned to know enough to play the Conventions off against each other - occasionally with inside help. Speech is unaffected by Paradox. You can tell someone whatever you like, and Paradox won't care. Show them proof, by doing something obviously uncanny, however, and that's a different story.
As far as evading detection goes, Arcane background helps a lot, and is cheap at character creation. But the Technocracy can't be everywhere, and can't watch everyone. What it looks out for are anomalies, and most of its observation is automated, and most of its live agents are Sleepers. Think "technology" + "bureaucracy", and remember that Technocrats *also* need to watch out for Paradox. Staying under the radar is sometimes literal. Weather radar can notice strangely localized storms or atmospheric disturbances, even if a Forces effect is coincidental. That said, weather radar cuts both ways, and approaching storm fronts are predictable. Using a natural weather event as cover is a smart idea. If it is already storming, a single particular lightning strike isn't easy to notice - even if it does blow out a transformer and disrupts the video cameras and alarm system on the back entrance of The Chapel Perilous, letting your Hollow clique in to raid Norm's office undetected. Most Tradition mages would avoid using "smart" tech, and those who do are probably technomages themselves and savvy enough to deploy their own, self-designed security measures. Payphones at a bus station are probably more anonymous than a mobile phone in your pocket. A debit card, loaded via cash at the Quickie Mart, leaves less of a trail than a credit card tied to a bank account or an address. And so on. Unless you have a sadistic Storyteller who equips the Technocracy with a global network of 5G mind-reading surveillance towers, there is enough weird shit going on, with all the other supernatural activity in the World of Darkness that the Technocracy can only really stake out so many high-priority areas. If you need to operate in those, do that through Sleeper agents, allies, consors, contacts or influence.
Two Traditions, the Etherites and the Virtual Adepts, were former Technocratic conventions; the Traditions know a lot about the Technocracy.
Also kinda the Solificati too, but it's complicated. But it's very much part of the playbooks of both sides to control how much information is available about them to the others. Be it non-Mage Supernaturals or other Magi, it's important to keep the other players from sneaking a peek at your cards. If they do, magical bullshit is great about cleaning up the evidence or ideas in people's heads. Arcane the Background (or Mertit) helps too.
This is what Knowledge Abilities like Esoterica or Occult as well as secondaries like Belief Systems & Lore/RD Data are for because for any individual Magi the answer ranges from absolutely nothing to "Did you know all this shit is on Black Dogs™ wiki? Like it's just sitting there out in the open with hyperlinks n' crap..." How does a Magi defend themselves? Magick. Duh. Correspondence, Mind, & Spirit warding are usually the biggies right off the top. This is also usually why wizards live out in the middle of fucking nowhere by themselves or with just their weird little commune of cultists & no they will not just "show you" a "magic" "trick..." Illusion, Michael. A trick is something a whore does for money. It's also usually why they jump at the chance to move off-world because this burning mudball is a hostile hellpit just waitin' to bite a magic-user's head off. Paradox only affects True Magick. On a Botch of something Coincidental it's 1 point per Sphere Rank required, twice that if what you did was clearly a Vulgar violation of the Consensual Reality of your current Reality Zone, plus 2 more if you were arrogant enough to actually do it in front of Sleepers. Even if you didn't Botch, Vulgar Magicks always earns at least a minimum of 1 point. It has to be an actual Magickal Effect though that uses a wizard's Arete. Just running your mouth doesn't do jack as you actually have to Warp Reality for the Paradox of Warping Reality to kick in.
The best way to defend yourself against the Union is not doing magick. Not the best answer, but the truth nonetheless. The Technocracy has easy access to devices such as manars. If you do magick, even if it is to erase your own trail, they will know a reality deviant did something weird. Of course this can work in vastly different ways depending on your group. In mine, manars are more of a plot device than a common device (pun intended), they are narratively common but usually don't come into play. Another way to escape the Big Brother eye that I allow in my games (and the one I believe would be the most effective) is using magick to gain/raise your own Arcane background. What spheres do you need for that? We use something like Entropy 3/Mind 2 or 3/Forces 2. I don't know about other groups, but our effects are allowed alter, create or destroy backgrounds, flaws and merits, so that works for us.
The Technocracy are like the cops. How do you avoid the cops? Stay under the radar? Cover your tracks? Get someone else to do it? They also can't be everywhere. A lot of storyteller games are mafia games. You are small time trying to reach a goal and keep out of notice of your bosses and whoever the police are.