Magic: The Rules of the Game, Part 2

Last time, I found the Dresden Files RPG magic system and began changing it to suit my purposes. Since then, I've had an opportunity to playtest some of these changes in an actual tabletop environment. First -- surprise. I had put this system (and character generation as a whole) together to allow for a variety of character types. Like the D&D classes, but more flexible (more on this in a later post), my "Archetypes" laid out character options: soldier, philosopher, courtier, athlete -- and Crafter. Among 14 archetypes, only 3 included Crafting as part of their default package. I expected most of my PCs to be fairly mundane, with perhaps a minor Craft ability thrown in here or there, and one or two full Crafter.


I miscalculated. By granting full magical power for the cost of one stunt, I had opened the floodgates. The soldier was also a fully capable Flameshaper and Blightshifter; the demolitionist decided to do half her tricks via Relicshaping. The diplomat happened to be a Realmshifter nonpareil. I was faced with a conundrum -- is this good? Evidence that my magic system is exciting and attractive, and should I just assume that every person in the City of Lives wield magical power -- like the populace of Xanth, or the Tales of Alvin Maker? Or did I make a mistake? Was this abundance of magic diluting the players' original character concepts? Had it become a matter of peer pressure -- "well, their characters can sling spells, so should mine"? Were they relying on the magic too much, and showing a lack of needed diversity in the party? 


The answer to these questions is none too clear, but my gut tells me magic is too easy. The soldier and athlete hardly ever show the skills they had designed their characters around. The philosopher and demolitionist both seem to have taken magical skills out of peer pressure -- neither are comfortable with the rules behind them, and the magic has diluted their character concepts: the philosopher was meant to be a skeptic, and the demolitionist to rely on her ability to "MacGyver" a way out of any dilemma. And yet, when danger rears its head, they all reach for their spell lists.


So, to my mind, there is a problem. And I think I've found a solution. It might turn out that I'm wrong, that a fully magic-rich universe is exactly what this setting needs to be, a version of Mage: the Awakening or a fantasy Champions, or my solutions may not solve the problem, instead just forming new ones. But it's worth a try.


Let's analyze the problem: the characters are overpowered (more on this earlier), and the character concepts are becoming diluted by magic. These two problems can actually be solved at once, by making Crafting more expensive. Instead of costing one stunt to gain full access to a Craft, maybe it should cost a character two or three, but then I still don't really like the idea of stunts that cost multiple slots. So, what to do? Thankfully, one of my players has the answer: associate stunts with summoning power. Instead of determining how much power a Crafter can summon by Conviction  (as in DFRPG) or one of the various Control Skills (as established last time), one stunt allows a Crafter to summon two degrees of power, or Fair (+2) on the ladder. 


Suddenly, there is a definitive difference between a dabbler and a serious Crafter. A soldier who wants to fling a little flame can spend a single stunt on Fair Flameshaping, giving them the ability to summon Fair (+2) power -- and a full-time elementalist is going to buy Fair Flameshaping, then Great Flameshaping, and then Fantastic Flameshaping, allowing them to summon Fantastic (+6) power, or six degrees. We can also model the idea that magic is mundane in the City without being overwhelming, by giving every character the option of gaining a free Fair Crafting stunt as part of their bloodline.


At this point, we have a new, revised system to test. In some future post, I will reveal the effect of these new rules. Until then, join me next time for the first part of Character Generation: Archetypes.

Magic: The Rules of the Game, Part 1

Over the past week, we've gone through my thoughts creating a conceptual, in-world framework for a magic system. However, these philosophical ideas are useless without a rules system to support them in play. Since Spirit of the Century had no magic system, I was forced to range farther afield. I was uncomfortable and overwhelmed with the idea of creating a magic system from scratch, so I ran to the Internet to find a system to modify. At the time I first tackled this problem, there were two professional products based on the Fate system released after Spirit of the Century: Diaspora and Starblazer Adventures. Both are space-faring sci-fi, so there was no magic to be found there. On the other hand, there is a chapter on mutations and alien abilities in Starblazer that could easily be transformed into magic rules -- but I hate them. The system proposes adding a host of new Skills to Fate, one for every potential special ability -- for my purposes, a "Blightshifting" Skill, a "Flameshaping" Skill, etc. I dislike both a) the addition of sixteen skills to an already-full Skill list, and b) Skills that are only useful for one thing rub me the wrong way. Additionally, Starblazer makes their aliens (and my Crafters) spend Fate points to use their abilities. Since my characters will have quite a bit fewer Fate points than in Starblazer (for reasons we will get into in a future post), this makes me uncomfortable and means the Crafters will be incredibly limited, unbalancing them vs. the other characters.

So, published materials set aside, I searched for unofficial material on fan-sites and message boards. I found a whole host of ideas, but few that seemed appropriate: one fellow posted a system to Faterpg.com that proposes an extremely simple magic system allowing the mage to place Aspects on a scene -- simple and elegant, but much too limited for the spell-flinging Crafters I envision; another, in Fate of the Rings from the Fate Yahoo group, models spells in the same way as the "Universal Gadget" and "Weird/Mad Science" rules from Spirit of the Century -- simple and easy to convert, but complex to use in play and stylistically wrong for high fantasy. The most promising appeared in similar form in two places: Spirit of Steam & Sorcery from the Yahoo group (an adaptation of the old Castle Falkenstein RPG), and Mike Olson's blog Spirit of the [blank], where he proposed a very flexible and modular magic system (ironically enough, in an attempt to mimic the D&D system I was trying to avoid). These systems, particularly Mike Olson's take on it, had two ideas I loved: First, instead of adding Skills, characters would use their existing Skills for both mundane and mystical uses: "Artificing" govern both conventional engineering and crafting magical items, "Lore" would cover both mundane scholarship and rune work, etc. Second, Olson's magic is made up of little pieces that can be combined to make a spell more effective, but also more difficult: a spell can simply hurt someone, and it's easy -- or it can hurt them and set them on fire, and now it's quite a bit more difficult, but if the mage needs to cast an easy version of the spell, they can just drop the fire aspect without having to "re-memorize" it or any such bollocks. This system, however, ended up being unwieldy -- working out a half-dozen different variables on the fly can be both daunting and slow down the game.

I was stymied. What system to use? None seemed simple enough to fit the rules-light nature of Fate. Then, suddenly: salvation! Evil Hat Productions, the originators of the Fate system and publishers of Spirit of the Century, finally finished their monster project, the Dresden Files RPG. Based on Jim Butcher's popular urban fantasy Dresden Files series, centering on the only wizard listed in the Chicago Yellow Pages, the DFRPG had a complete, flexible, and simple magic system.

When casting a spell, a wizard in DFRPG chooses how much power to summon up, chooses one of a couple simple mechanical effects (Attack, Block, Counterspell, or Maneuver - which places a temporary Aspect on the target), the element it's associated with, and rolls their Discipline to see if they successfully control the amount of power they summon.

For more complex spell,s what DFRPG calls Thaumaturgy, the wizard has to take their time, invoking Aspects, adding ingredients, taking Consequences (a type of purely negative Aspect usually suffered in combat), or actually sitting out of play while they cast the incantation. A bit more complicated for the players, but still manageable.

Now that I found a system I liked, I needed to modify it to suit my purposes. The DFRPG system was good, but a few pieces were inappropriate for The City of Lives. First was the element system. In DFRPG, a wizard can gain command over all four elements with fairly little difficulty. In CoL, a Crafter is defined by their Craft -- gaining a second or third Craft should be difficult -- controlling all 16, impossible. To accommodate this, I made two changes: to Skills, and Stunts.

Skills

The DFRPG magic is based around two Skills: Conviction, representing force of will, which determines how much power a wizard can summon up as well as resisting mental stress; and Discipline, representing, well discipline, which determines how much power a wizard can control, as well as controlling emotion, resisting interrogation, etc. For CoL, I felt Discipline didn't fit every type of Craft: Flamecrafting should be ruled by Creativity; Bloodshifting is logically related to Vigor; Mindsharing

Chaos	Order
Shaping	Shaping
Creativity	Discipline
Flameshaping	Waveshaping
Skyshaping	Worldshaping
Forceshaping	Relicshaping
Sharing	Sharing
Empathy	Rapport
Soulsharing	Mindsharing
Dreamsharing	Farsharing
Shifting	Shifting
Vigor	Conviction
Bloodshifting	Blightshifting
Wildshifting	Realmshifting
Shadowshifting	Lightshifting

You'll notice I assigned Conviction as a control Skill rather than for summoning energy. That's all right, we'll just let one Skill function for both summoning and control -- its unbalancing effect should be counterbalanced by its more limited nature in controlling only a single Craft instead of four elements.

Stunts

The Dresden Files RPG is designed to be low fantasy: living in a hidden world beneath our own, wizards of major power are not only rare, but almost unique. This is reflected in its rule system: for each stunt a DFRPG character takes, their maximum Fate Point total goes down by one, with a maximum of 9 stunts, leaving only one Fate Point left to influence the world. A DFRPG wizard has to spend seven stunts on their magic, reflecting that it takes up most of their life, and that they will never be able to throw around magic like a D&D spellcaster. In the world of CoL, magic is mundane -- a large portion of the population has at least some skill at Crafting, and becoming a Crafter is no different from being an artist or engineer in our own world -- and the most powerful can shift the world like molding clay. Additionally, I didn't like the mechanics of stunts costing multiple slots, as the wizarding abilities in DFRPG do -- so, I radically reduced the cost of things. Instead of a 4-stunt power of Thaumaturgy and 3-stunt Sorcery, I simplified it down to one stunt per Craft, with the additional cost of an Aspect related to how that mystical energy changes how the Crafter sees the world.

As a starting point, this looks good. However, everything needs playtesting and editing -- meet me next time for Magic: The Rules of the Game, Part 2, as we take a look at what works and doesn't around the gaming table.

Magic: The Rules of the World, Part 2

Welcome back to the magic brainstorm. So far, we've got 16 "disciplines -- broad purviews that guide and limit a wizard (or "crafter")'s abilities. We've divided them into Order and Chaos, but the resulting lists are still rather overwhelming -- for both organization and world flavor. Let's divide them further. First, four of them -- telepathy, empathy, clairvoyance, and illusion -- are obviously mental abilities, so let's set them aside.

Chaos	Order
Fire	Water
Air	Earth
Telekinesis	?
Healing	Necromancy
?	Teleportation
Animal/Plant Control	?
Shadow Control	Light Control
?	Magical Item Creation
Mental	Mental
Empathy	Telepathy
Illusions	Clairvoyance

Next: The elements are fundamental forces in a fantasy setting, so let's set them aside. Any other fundamental forces? Well, telekinesis can be seen as manipulating "Force," that mythical fifth element, so let's put that in there. What else? Well, animals and plants could work, as could light and dark... but maybe they belong in a different category. The fundamentals look like they're "Shaping" the world, manipulating it in an unsubtle fashion. This other group -- healing and transformation, animal and plant control, and necromancy are more about changing the natural world, "Shifting" bodies both living and dead. So now we've got got "Shaping" and "Shifting," and the mental disciplines... "Sharing."

Chaos	Order
Shaping	Shaping
Fire	Water
Air	Earth
Telekinesis	?
Sharing	Sharing
Empathy	Telepathy
Illusions	Clairvoyance
Shifting	Shifting
Healing	Necromancy
Animal/Plant Control	?
unclassified	unclassified
?	Teleportation
Shadow Control	Light Control
?	Magical Item Creation

We've got a couple awkward leftovers, but I'll bet we can find a place for them: teleportation -- that seems like more of a "shift" and manipulation of bodies, so we'll put that opposite Animal & Plant Control --the static "first here, then there" movement of teleportation opposed by the constant, chaotic movement of the wild. And making magical items -- that's infusing objects with the fundamental energies, so we can place it across from telekinesis. Manipulating shadow and light could go either in shaping (fundamental) or shifting (subtly changing the natural world), but since Shaping is already pretty full, we'll stick 'em in "Shifting." I'm not sure they fit thematically, bu this is a work in progress. Feel free to sound off in the comments!

So the disciplines are laid out. A bit more brainstorming leads to some catchy, fantasy-sounding names, working off Shaping, Sharing, and Shifting as suffixes:

Chaos	Order
Shaping	Shaping
Flameshaping	Waveshaping
Skyshaping	Worldshaping
Forceshaping	Relicshaping
Sharing	Sharing
Soulsharing	Mindsharing
Dreamsharing	Farsharing
Shifting	Shifting
Bloodshifting	Blightshifting
Wildshifting	Realmshifting
Shadowshifting	Lightshifting

Now every type of Crafter will have an individual role and identity: a Blightshifter can raise corpses, talk to spirits, and make an enemy's skin rot off; they tend to be quiet and dour, unwilling to make a close friend of someone they know will soon be dead. A Mindsharer can read thoughts, communicate silently, and force their will upon another; they tend to be great communicators, and obsessed with ordered though. A Skyshaper can summon tornadoes, rainstorms, and fly effortlessly; they tend to be flighty and quick to change both mind and mood. 

So now we have our "cuisines" complete. A quick return to the "ingredients" portion of the magic conversation results in... nothing more certain. Still uncertain if Crafters should mutter incantations or silently summon up energy. Well, perhaps some edification will come as we examine... Magic: The Rules of the Game.

Magic: The Rules of the World, Part 1

Any good fantasy setting has, as one of its defining features, a distinctive magic system. Harry Potter has wands, pseudo-Latin, and magical ingredients; in D&D and its inspiration The Dying Earth, spells vanish from the wizard's mind once cast, and have to be laboriously memorized over and over; The Earthsea Trilogy and The Name of the Wind state that everything in the world can be controlled by their True Names. So, what would my magic be like?

First, I wanted to avoid the D&D tropes as much as possible, because their ideas have always seemed unnatural and unsatisfying. D&D's spells are laid out in a list, with the precise effect and limits laid out and unchangeable, where casting a spell is like picking off a  restaurant menu: when you cast "Magic Missile," it will always have exactly the same ingredients put together in exactly the same way -- the targets, damage, range, and effect are all exactly the same every time the spell is cast, with no leeway in changing it. I wanted my magic to be fluid, flexible, and to reward creativity -- I wanted the PCs to be chefs, cooking from scratch.

However, every chef needs ingredients and a cuisine. For magical ingredients, I was temporarily flummoxed -- I wasn't sure if I wanted the classic "words and gestures," and I was fairly certain I didn't want materials like eye of newt and toe of frog -- but what did I want? Energy from ley lines? Runes? True Names? I set that aside for the time being and moved on to the "cuisines" of magic. I wanted there to be more choice and flavor than "a wizard" able to do anything and everything -- a given magic-user should have a specialty, that informs not only what they are capable of, but who they are.

I started with a central division, between two fundamental concepts of the universe: Order and Chaos. So, every cuisine -- let's call them "disciplines," why not -- will fall under the auspices of Order or Chaos. Sounds like a good start. A good division, provides a central conflict between two types of mages/wizards -- let's call them "Crafters" -- without the moral difficulties of Good vs. Evil. So, what kind of magics should my world include?

We begin with the obvious: Elementalism. Since we're working on a dualistic system, we'll use the traditional Western 4-element system (Fire, Water, Wind, Earth) rather than the Eastern 5-element system (Fire, Water, Earth, Wood, Metal). So which belongs on which side of the dividing line? Fire is obviously Chaos -- and since Water is its opposite, that means Water is Order. Similarly, Earth is obviously Order, which makes Air Chaos.

So for now it looks like this:

Chaos	Order
Fire	Water
Air	Earth

So, another handful of ideas, with a sense of where they go on Order and Chaos: Teleportation/Summoning, Telekinesis, Telepathy, Illusions, Necromancy, and Healing. And it seems like every discipline should have an opposite.

Chaos	Order
Fire	Water
Air	Earth
Telekinesis	?
Healing?	Necromancy?
Necromancy?	Healing?
?	Teleportation
?	Telepathy
Illusions	?

Okay, so we've got something here -- though necromancy can be seen as either Chaos (controlling the forces of entropy and corruption) or Order (what's more ordered than dead people?), and since I like the idea of healing also including body modifications and transformation, it can also be seen as either Chaos or Order.

So let's fill this out a little more, with some fairly obvious opposites (or, at least, they're obvious to me...), and a few more disciplines I'm looking for in my game.

Chaos	Order
Fire	Water
Air	Earth
Telekinesis	?
Healing?	Necromancy?
Necromancy?	Healing?
?	Teleportation
Empathy	Telepathy
Illusions Shadow Control Animal/Plant Control ?	Clairvoyance Light Control ? Magical Item Creation

Okay, so we've got a fair start here. But there are a couple places missing opposites, and the question is what goes where -- and there should be more divisions than just Order vs. Chaos -- there's an obvious division between physical and mental, but maybe we can do something else...

Join me next time for Magic: The Rules of the World, Part 2 to determine the answers to these dilemmas.