omgcros.blogg.se - Fate magic system toolkit

Contrast that with magic having some risk associated with it. They might be literal or symbolic, but when they’re present then the subtext is usually that power has a price. For some, it is essential that magic have a cost, that there be tradeoffs made for power. The second factor is one that speaks to the cost of magic use. On the other hand, if magic actually summons or channels these beings, then the actual manifestation of magic may be shaped by their opinions. There’s a lot of room for nuance here-the magic might be neutral in its use, but the source might be opinionated. Whoever they are, they have agendas, and magic is a tool for them to drive those agendas.

Maybe it’s a god or angel, maybe it’s a horrible monstrosity outside of time and space. For example, fire tends to burn, earth tends to be stable. In this case, the magic is not necessarily an intelligent force, but it has tendencies. The most common example of this is a magic that tends towards the dark and the light, and which perhaps operates differently at each end of the spectrum. Neutral magic is a force, like electricity or gravity, which is simply implemented like a tool, while a flavored force either responds to or is inclined towards certain outcomes. The first factor speaks to the nature of magic itself.

Availability: Is magic universally available, so everyone in a setting might have it? Is it rare enough that only some people have it, possibly including all the PCs? Or is it rare enough that only one or two PCs might have access to it?.

Limits: Does magic follow strict rules? Is it flexible and open-ended? What are the limits on magic?.

Cost: Does magic demand a price, a risk, or neither?.

Tone: Is magic a neutral force, a flavored force, or something with opinions?.

You’d still be missing things, but for ease of application we’re going to seize upon a few key threads and boil it down to these five factors: You could consider it something that comes from someone else-someone horrible or wonderful, depending. You could treat it as a system of prices, risks, and rewards. Clarke and just treat it as a different kind of science. You could say magic is a way to do things that are otherwise impossible, or an alternate means of doing things that are possible, but that falls short. There’s no single answer to that, and while that’s rather the point, it’s also intensely frustrating. Magic says incredibly important things about your game and your setting, and if you don’t think those things through, you are going to end up with a thinly painted-on layer of magic that will quickly chip and fade. To put it another way, magic is not just an excuse to add spells to your game. The trap to avoid is not to base your magic on someone else’s interpretation of Vance. If you want to base your magic on Vance, then you’re picking some great source material. This should be familiar as the basis for magic in D&D, and whatever one thinks of its implementation in D&D and related games, it definitely instituted a number of rules-spellbooks, spells per level, and so on-to capture that idea.

The greatest example of a magic system is “Vancian” magic, called such because it’s based off the books of the late, great Jack Vance, where wizards memorize spells, then forget them after casting. Coming up with the mechanical basis for a magic system is a lot of fun, and it is often the first thing we do with a new system, but this largely ends up perpetuating magic systems we already know from games where ideas and rules don’t mesh. This is backwards from the way a lot of games feel. The simple test for this is whether or not your magic system makes sense without the game.

If you can find the spot where those two priorities overlap, then you’ve got the workings of a great magic system. Giving magic rules is not just good gaming, it’s good fiction. While it’s true that magic is a convenience of authors, those who use it willy-nilly produce tepid, mushy fantasy. The good news is that there’s a sweet spot that you can aim for. The consistency of rules makes behavior-without rhyme or reason, it’s just madness. Magic is, by its nature, a creation of fiction, and writers and creators are more interested in how it helps them tell stories than any kind of internal rules. So we try to find rules and logic that make the magical more familiar to us, and that’s something of a paradox.

We don’t have the same foundation of experience to reference when we start throwing around thunder and lighting. Sufficiently misunderstood action is indistinguishable from magic.