In Mage the Ascension you play as one of the Awakened who is doing magic by realizing life is a dream and as such they can lucid dream in real life. However, it is a shared dream, and if you do something that doesn’t fit into what everyone else thinks reality is, like shooting lightning from your fingers or turning into a T-Rex, reality itself will tell you to stop by giving you points of Paradox. It’s better to be subtle and make magic look like something the Sleepers accept. For example, instead of using a fire spell to heat your food, you put it in a “microwave” to heat it. If you accrue enough Paradox, bad things happen, ranging from being picked up and thrown around like a doll to the reality cops showing up and putting you in reality jail.