World of Daftness
Hooboy. I don't know how wankerific this is, but Mariagoner prodded me to post something, so here we are. I post down on the Ex Libris Nocturnis forums, which are dedicated to White-wolf's Storyteller system, and it's World of Darkness (soon to be blowed up) setting primarily. Anyway, this is a Mage wank.

http://www.nocturnis.net/forums/index.php?s=4b4ad59da64c55ec5535a7bddd86f8e8&act=ST&f=4&t=6687&st=0

This is actually the umpeenth million incarnation of the same old wank. Some basic backstory for those who don't know anything about Mage: the Ascension; the third-ranked World of Darkness game in terms of popularity, behind Vampire: the Masquerade and Werewolf: the Apocolypse. In first edition Mage, there were the Traditions, and they were good. Goody good. The Traditions are made up of nine different types of wizards/mages/shamans/true believers/witches/druggies/madscientitists/Neo-wannabes, with a couple whiny goths and misunderstood artists thrown in for good measure. They want a number of things, but they're primarily the protagonist group in the game. They represent the balance between the Nephandi (mages who want to see the World and everything in it get destroyed, either permanently or to jumpstart the Wheel of Ages, but that's a whole 'nother topic), the Marauders (who believe in ultimate chaos and freedom, and want to do whatever the Hell they want, with a few trying to turn the entire World upside down), and the Technocracy (scientists rather than mages, who believe in order and Pattern, and are responsible for the World as it is now, more or less). Now, the other two have their parts to play, but really the big boys of Mage are the Technocracy. They're more powerful than all the others thrown together, they have the numbers, they have the Sleepers (that's us, everyone who's not a Mage) more or less on their side. In First Edition, they were presented as essentially cardboard villains, the bad guys who wanted to crush individuality and freedom and imagination and puppies all for their sadistict greed and need for power. Eventually, the developers of the game got to thinking about it and decided they actually liked the core concept of the Technocracy (guardians of humanity who brought about the rise of science and reason), and by the tail end of Second Edition and right before Revised, they started turning the Technocracy around, back from cheesy bad guys in fedoras and black sunglasses into the defenders of humanity. They did too good a job, and basically ended up making the Traditions look like ineffective, archaic throwbacks trying to plunge the World into the dark ages, and the Technocracy like the noble, long-suffering, ultimately righteous bringers of order and a superior means of living. Then at some point into Revised, they realized they went too far, and have since been trying to juggle the Traditions and Technocracy back and forth, in the process making them look more like reluctant allies than the enemies they used to be. At any rate, because there IS a major break in the continuity of flavor and, in some cases, history of the metagame caused by this, periodically Mage fans will engage in long flame wars about who's "really right". Both sides are really right, simply at different times in the game's history, and neither really has any new argument or revelation to bring to the table, so the argument generally ends up looking something like this;

"The Technocracy are bastards."

"No they're not, they protect humanity."

"But they crush imagination."

"But the Traditions just want to go back to the Dark Ages."

"Oh yeah? Well, the Technocracy are bastards."

"No they're not, they protect humanity."

"But they crush imagination."

"But the Traditions just want to go back to the Dark Ages."

"Oh yeah? Well, the Technocracy are bastards."

"No they're not, they protect humanity."

"But they crush imagination."

"But the Traditions just want to go back to the Dark Ages."

rinse, wash, repeat.