Returning to the Mage Game

As many of you know I tried to run a game of Mage the Awakening awhile back with disatrerous results. More recently however, I am working on a new, more organized coherent idea for a game of Mage the Awakening. As my first run into the world of running World of Darkness games, I am getting very ambitious as I am going to be setting it preferabbly over a period of 22 years and it is going to start in the year 1923. This is going to give me my own chance to interpret the world of Mage the Awakening, mostly by writing about the early history of the Free Council after it joined up with the Atlantean Orders. (Before the counterculture-technology and magic are compatable Mages joined up with the Mages who trace there origin back to Atlantis). It also gives me a chance to have adventures with all sorts of fun stuff like Modernism, Alistair Crowley and Occult Nazis, the last two of which are unavoidable when writing a Mage game in this relative time period in my opinion. I'm also changing from usual World of Darkness format in that the game will not take wholley in a single city. I am in fact planning on setting it across most of Europe, especially in Paris and Weimar Berlin, with various possible detours in America, Spain and the Soviet Union. I've got a pretty good idea for the general direction, and I'm working in various little sub-plots and things that will happen, since I'm working with the idea that the characters are going to Forrest Gump their way thorugh history, getting into drunken boxing matches with Hemingway, inspiring Einstein's theory of relativity, having Crowley look over your shoulder every once in awhile for the Pentacle, stuff like that.
However, I am thinking about setting the story in a single city to start with and at the moment I'm torn between Paris and Weimar Berlin. Paris is, well Paris, but I think in the long run Weimar Berlin will be a better choice. Paris in the 1920s appeals to me mostly because I'm a writer and Paris in the 1920s to me is all about James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway and stuff like that. Weimar Berlin however, along with being artistic, has the advantage of being a veritable powder-keg politically. In between the Cabarets and sex you have facsists and communists fighting each other in the streets, and what's more it would . I think it would appeal more to the players since I feel I can do more in Berlin then just the Lost Generation. The characters could easily play that angle, but they could also do, say the science angle since Albert Einstein was also alive at this time. They could also play the political angle, and join up with the various political aspects. They could also go into the occult thing since I'm boning up on the occult roots of Nazism, but I doubt that any of the players will do that. I'm the guy most likely to play an occultist. I do hope that most of the characters were in World War One though, because I'd like most of the characters to be similar in some respect.

Again, I'm going to play a lot with the Mage order of the Free Council, which in game is still a recent development. So far I'm thinking that they are currently the most powerful order in Berlin, mostly because they fit well with Weimar Berlin. I believe that Paris is going to be a Silver Ladder city, but the Free Council is also very popular there. I've also decided that Alistair Crowley is going to be (at least nominally) a member of the Free Council as I have decided that in game terms he is an actual Mage, in fact a fairly powerful Mage but I don't think he's going to be that involved in Mage politics as he is more concerned with Thelema. I still don't know exactly what to do with the Free Council, except that I want to explore it as an order.

Sorry for dropping so much lingo for you.