Fantasy worlds vs Real Worlds, Major Differences!

 We forget often about the flow on effects of everyday life in roleplay games. Treating things like a peer to peer equal of medieval earth, but often in conversations around the table we discover how different things NEED to be, to give that sense of magical whimsy, and make our games feel more live

Magical Worlds Differences

This might be a re-occurring talking point, since it seems to me, most RPG games ignore it, most writers ignore it, most GMs and DMs ignore it, and yet, it should be common and used regularly, and I'm very interested in it enough to deep dive into the whys and hows of these differences.

Lets start with a common one. Lighting, in Towns.

Many magic spells lists have some form of continuous light as a low level spell. Mages need high to very high incomes or wealth to afford the costly materials, so they should be hiring themselves out, even as apprentices, with their abilities that the common public need but can't do.

I see Mages as programmers. Once in the 1990s we realised that 'math' could be done for accountants on a localised PC, average business could transfer their whole systems from paper to digital, do their accounts 10x faster, hire less book keepers, make less mistakes, hire cheaper uni student programmers to make ad-hoc programs to help, to now where we have massive dynamic systems that can cope with billions of businesses details.

Magic is on par with this kind of technology upgrades to lives, depending on your world, and your mages, it makes no sense that supremely high level magic is tied up in a university of spell casters, and the rest of the world is completely unaware of magic. That puts magic back into the University Univac of the 1960s, and what happened back then? people tinkered in their sheds, and invented Microsoft and Apple.

So the world builder need to take into account, where there magic is, Unis and Sheds? the start of Win 95? the dot com boom? 

So lets return to magic lighting. Kids, with some magic talent are born, they get to apprenticeship age, and the schools come say they'll sponsor a kid, but his parents are poor, so the kid needs to earn some living. 

Nearby the nobles are occasionally being robbed by very clever theives, and the guards that are hired, complain they can't properly see by lantern light. someone somehow remembers that continous light is a low level spell, and suggests that mages apprentices are hired to light up street lanterns at nightfall, and again X hours later, when the spell begins to fade (light lamp lighters in the 1800s)

Within a few years, an enterprising Mage, has a 'street lamps' business, where they hire out lanterns that last for 12 hours, being cast by apprentices, charged by apprentices, and the spell improved on by masters to last longer.

Now, noble families sleep better, having paid the lamplighters build for 12hour street lights that also glow red when someone moves nearby, or when someone with a low morale score comes close to their property.

Would theft become scarce if every street had cameras? automated detection systems? face recognition systems? no.. the theives will counter it, IF the worth is high enough to try. So the rogue career doesn't end, it just gets more interesting. 

Another: Light, nearby Healing.

Admittedly, healing isn't usually a low level spell, in some systems, it might be a d4 and stop death, giving the victim enough time to be taken elsewhere for deadlier blows, but the fact that a mortal wound is now negated under controlled conditions.. Warriors can train at full strength, like they do in Anime, not fearing serious damage or death, because one, both or also a nearby priest, has a healing spell that can do enough to pause bleeding or prevent death, giving them time to do greater healing.

So with Two warriors, fighting at full pelt, sure, pulling blows to help the situation, but accidental deaths will be mitigated, reduced to a manageable number, they're learn faster, and be better, much quicker than 'practice bouts' that we have to do.

What DOES light healing do? will it prevent a cold? diahorea? pregnancy? Is the morning after pill as easy as ducking down to the local church and speaking to a priest? There are gods of sex in some games, so surely those participants even have healing spells that prevent pregnancy, and are more than willing to provide that service to the public, (for a coin)

If cantrips that kill diseases and germs can be cast by even non mages, would it make sense that some young hedge wizard or druid or bard is employed at all food markets, to "clense" the tables each morning?

I think you get my drift.. So my idea for a few blogs and podcasts is to go through the general spells lists and discuss how they 'should' have changed your game world, and the continued after affects of generational usage.

Seriously, consider just how a cheap, non consumable, no flammable, light source, would have prevented the fires of Rome, the library of Alexandria, and the effect of those lost knowledge's. If the last 2 thousand years had retained those studies, would technology be leaps and bounds ahead of where we are today?   

Detection Magic

While designing an adventure, I needed my players to have an excuse to cast 'detect Poison' on several items. Knowing that the spell is a little expensive, I felt that plausibly something could be done, sure, I could make it more obvious, by giving them a scroll or two, or have someone teach the spell to a mage in the party, but even then it needs to be used more often.

And I asked myself.. What is Detect Poison? What is Detect Magic?

What is detection magic:

Consider first, how does it work. Is the magic sending out sound waves, when it hits the target object, it detects 'waves' of magic, and sends back to the caster some feedback his/her brain interprets as an Aura, and lets them know, YES this is magical?

Is it then, that they take that skill, and further it, identifying the particular waves to determine what KIND of magic it is? 

What about the other direction, if they reduced its ability, and lessened the cost. could the spell merely detect 'something'?

Side Note: Would Detect Magic, detect Radiation? would a caster assume its 'magic' but of unknown variant, and take it home, expecting to find out from a more powerful mage, and slowly become sick?

Would it make more sense, that the early mage, in learning the spell, would have gone through the weaker version? 'detect something'?

In which case, would it make far more sense that a "detect" Spell be learnt far earlier? and that spell likely improved on also.

I'd like to think, given that magical items are rare, that its far more cost effective for a mage to learn to cast 'detect' far in advance of 'detect magic/poison/undead/evil'

I give you the Detection Spells:

Detect

Base Cost: 5mp
Possible components: glass prism/lens/obj smaller than 4cm  - consumed 50% reduction.
Range: Touch
Initiative: 1 Round.

Caster concentrates and absorbs the sense of the object, If the Object is imbued with any effect, or is of pure metal, it will give a positive feeling to the casters hand.

Detect- Enhanced

Base Cost: 5mp [-10%mp*]
Possible components: glass prism/lens/obj smaller than 4cm  - consumed 50% reduction. [+10%]
Additional components: 5% gestures, +5% somantic CR
Range: Touch [+1/2m]
Effect: [directional focus: 180o 120o 90o 75o, etc]
Multiple senses: [+1]
Initiative: [Half Round, Action, Half Action, Free Action]

As Above, the Enhanced spell can be improved to detect objects at a distance, using the component to search in a direction or a whole room. A Caster could in effect search a room for 'any' effected item, and sense the direction of the items.

Example: Search Room, lvl 4
Base Cost: 17mp. & 20% imperfection. Final Cost 2mp.
Components: glass lens [-8mp], 4 small candles[-3mp], small rug[-1mp] and humming the incantus majori[-3mp]. 
Range: 5 x 5m room

Caster seated on the small rug, a lit candle in each cardinal direction, peering with one eye through the monocle, and humming the incantus majori, concentrates for 3 rounds and absorbs the sense of the room. If any item of importance exists in the room, the candle nearest will glow, giving the caster (and anyone watching) the direction of the most powerful object in the room.

Quick Detect lvl 1
Base Cost: 2mp,  & 3% imperfection. Final Cost 1mp.
Components: glass/crystal object [-1mp]. 
Range: Touch

With a small quarts crystal in hand, The caster quickly detects the item in the same hand, is effected of some force. Most magi would take their detect spell to this level with only 3 restudies.

But if they want to take it further:

Free and Easy Detect: lvl 6.

Base Cost: 0mp,  & 30% imperfection.
Range: 1.5m, no line of sight

As a Free Action, The Mage is able to hold their hand within a metre and a half of an object and detect if it may have an effect. This is a more likely end point to such a spell, taking it further to search rooms comes at such cost to negate the effectiveness without serious levels of study. 

Conclusion of Detect Magic 

As you can see, having some improved level of magic detection, which is inexpensive, is far more effective than attempting to cast 'detect magic' on every single item. The cost of studying 'free and easy detect' might seem worth it, yet, given a mage has limited study time between adventures, the player has to determine if indeed this is worthwhile, and is maybe influenced by how often you include small to mundane magical items in your campaigns.

So What of detect Poison? Undead? Evil? or just plain 'pure' metal?

In theory, they should have some kind of similarity, yet we have a few modifiers.

Undead and or Evil, might have tell tale signs before the mage/priest/monk even attempts the ability to detect, and the detection merely confirms what they suspect. Where for example a mage might look at a glowing stone, and assume its magical, so the exertion to determine is quickly ascertained as a yes, should mean some kind of feedback cost reduction. 

i.e. if the meta-physics is that mid expenditure of power, you confirm what you already expect, you can cancel the spell before it comes to completion. So then we need to add to the above spells, casting on already obviously magical items can have a -1 cost to cast. This allows GMs some good story telling arcs and plot paths, where maybe the item is glowing from paint, small bugs or some other bioluminescence, and the players just assume its magical. The Mage casts 'detect' and gets nothing, either assuming he failed the roll, or that the item has counter magic on it, to prevent detection. So they need to track down a better mage to properly counter the magic. Along the way they can meet other people for other plot paths.

   

Some Magic Items, are not cursed, just.. expensive..

Looking at some of the movies and the artefacts they give us, can influence or create ideas:

StormBreaker: the Cursed Axe

Our Hero, finds this massive axe, finding he has the strength to wield it, he enters battle, and mid fight, when the player rolls a double 12, the GM determines that this "double bad" can mean the discovery of the "curse" of the axe.

The GM asks the player, you know this is bad, so I'll get you to roll a d6, but I'll let you add a number to it of your choice, which will affect the power of this axe. The Player chooses 10, and rolls a 5. 

The Axe flies from his hands, lightning crackles from its metallic sheen, the axe embeds itself into the opponent, taking 225 damage, yet microseconds later, the opponent disintegrates the axe slowed, still continues its arc into the ground, and within a 15ft radius, all creatures take 15 damage, they are mostly killed.

The character though, our hero, is drained by 15 magic points, magic he doesn't fully have, this, according to magic rules, causes some physical damage, and severely hampers his ability to regain magic (the negative modifier cancels out any natural regeneration rate, and % chance to learn)

Stormbreaker is just a regular axe, mostly. It only becomes dangerous when you try to actually channel power through it.

Captain America was able to swing it, when needed, as a plain axe, no lightning going off.

Thor understood that the Axe would drain off power, to cause its effect and thought "their bodies would crumble and their minds collapse" 

Mjolnir, has its own, internal MP to enact its powers, but Stormbreaker conjures lightning bolts and open portals, siphoning off your own power.

If you have no MP to give Stormbreaker, you’d be literally draining your lifeforce (blood magic). Your very natural essence would be drained away, and you would die.

For a god like Thor, or anyone else who has loads of energy stored inside of them, that’s no problem. The weapon would just amplify and project whatever power you normally produce without it.

But for non magic users, it’s very dangerous.

This gives GMs a whole set of 'effects' that create magic items, that act like curses. Draining the life force of a person, causing negative effects, where else have I seen that?

Harry Potter, carrying the Horcrux, he and his companions, magic users at least, were being constantly drained, and an effect of it was a poisonous effect on their mind. Doesn't need to be a 'curse' effect that is laid upon a player, instead its a result of the negative MP score. 

The story might have a magic item, something like a bracelet, that makes the player 'feel more powerful' maybe bestowing a +1 STR value, BUT each time the STR component might be needed, the GM imposes a -1MP modifier, the object is draining the players magic to 'cause' it to work. if the player is not a magic user, the effect is recorded by the GM but the affected hero would feel the results.

any Strength task that is at least half of the STR value of the character, would trigger, minus a MP from them, and slowly, be draining their life as per blood magic rules.

The player would only get informed of the modifier once they reached the -1 effect to their character sheet. Taking the bracelet off won't affect the drain, since the drain is on the character, The player might think they are cursed, go to a shaman or healer, and have the curse lifted. no effect. the player, unaware or unsure, but put the bracelet back on. 

Only if they put the bracelet on a magic user, who then uses their strength to perform an action will notice the subtle change, the MP cost, and realise, the 'cursed' character is actually just magic drained.

The Beauty of this, the players have discovered a negative, they search out the negative, and if they experiment with the bracelet, they'll stumble on the clue and realise what's happened. The MP can be restored with rest & channeling from the mage, the players all learn something about the rules of magic, the players figure it out for themselves, instead of the GM force-feeding them the knowledge, and it can last several sessions, the 'fighter' being "ill" for several sessions, not knowing how / why, but in effect being a whole level worth of stats lower than usual, forcing the group to rethink their game plan for several sessions. 

World-build-tober Part II

Its World-Build-Tober: 

Tuesday the 2nd - World-build-tober

Draw an Example of magic usage in your world.

p.s. The Updated World-build-tober says 'draw or describe.. 

I've been building up a few articles on my worlds magic, so I don't want to give away spoilers, but heres a teaser.

There are over 50 leylines, They cross-cross the world in weird and strange ways, but every now and then, some magi notice that they align, They (the magi) have tracked some of these moving lines and formulated patterns that might happen.. 

Yet like a child's kaleidoscope, predicting patterns based on a few visible elements, doesn't always work out when you turn the knob.

Players will rarely be affected by the leylines, The magic within a leyline recharges the planets natural magical elements in a predictive pattern, in elemental and non-elemental forces.. the effect of any given leyline on any one individual would be bare .1%, if we were to assign a point based system of magic, where a fireball were to cost 10 points, even a rare event of being in a cross-over leyline event, in the right place, would adjust the 10 point cost either up to 11 or down to 9, Magi have been known to feel a surge or a drain from time to time from many known and unknown forces (GMs take note) So the likely hood any magi could harness or benefit from such an event is small, yet some have tried.

One such event, where great magic users from around the coyn, came together to a place which may have been the central nexus for over 20 leylines, with the hope to tap into those powers and unlock potential magics for the world.. while some 'strange and bizarre' things happened, the majority of what actually happened was that instantaneously, thousands of non magic users suddenly were able to cast a wish spell, and minutes later, were once again normal mortals.

The Next such event is due to happen sometime soon, Magi from Earth, probably trapped there as Earth has no magical fields, might be planning to tap into the power in the year Two Thousands and Nineteen on their calendar, in the Eighth month on the Eighth Day between the Eighth Hour of the morning and the Eighth hour of the evening, To open a portal to be able to return home to their world. Maybe.. 

Craft Based Roleplay - the Missing Element

     While some might think its a bad idea to reveal your ideas, lest someone steal them for themselves, I don't think that either my idea is new, nor unique, just that I'll be adding it in a way that hasn't really been done in roleplay games. Crafting for adventurers...

Crafting for your Roleplay Group

     One thing that irked me in many systems for years was the inability to really make a half decent magical weapon. At least with a semi-realistic sense of the idea.

     My first encounter with the crafting rules was from Dragon Warriors, Book 2: Simplistic at best, once a Mystic reaches 4th rank, they can begin to craft +1 items, 6th for +2 and 9th for +3. The mystic must go off to a place to remain in solitude, and fast in order to 'attune' themselves to the mystical powers and then begin the 'creation' of an item. There is no talk of 'costs' other than time, 25 days to make a +1 arrow, 100 days for +1 weapon or armour, up to 1500 days for a +3 weapon..

     Yes its simplistic and flawed, A party could leave their 9th ranked Mystic off in some wilderness 'creating' the Warrior a +3 set of Studded Leather armour, and the group returns 1500 days later, now all 15th ranked characters, having acquired several other +2 and +3 sets of armour that are as good if not better from quests and such.. sorta defeated the purpose of creating magical items in the first place.

     Sure a GM could attempt to balance the system, but what ever you do, you'd probably be spending hundreds of hours coming up with some kind of specialized algorithm, that'd break either game balance or usability.. 25 days for a +1 arrow? just to be shot and lost in the very next combat? It only gives +1 to attack, ABR and Damage, its not all that good.

     Dungeons and Dragons does it just as bad, there are countless blogs talking about it just seems to be a kind of 'cash sink' for the GM to ensure the players have a reason to go out looking for more quests, rather than retiring.. even though 12+ level characters are pretty much expected to retire (according to the older forms of the rules, it can be argued) and are only brought out for epic world ending events.

    Rolemaster, Tunnels and Trolls, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, they have their own rules & houserules, blogs about it, but at the end of the day its pretty much the same.. Heroes acquire treasure, heroes get rich, heroes have little need to quest for the mundane magical items such as +1 items, but they still have a basci need for them, heroes sink cash into NPCs that make the items, or they sink less cash but more time OR experience points (another sink system to keep mages from getting TOO powerful) into making magical items with broader choices.

     Seems like not many people really got into the whole crafting side of things... 

Could be just your experience

Yes, I understand, I haven't played every single game with every single GM, and there are likely some half-decent games that are all about creating interesting items. Yet if you read up on this, by the very creators of D&D it seems that I'm on par:

     "The statement "I want to make a magic item" has the power to freeze a DM's blood. Players, too, can find the item creation process intimidating. Sometimes these fears are justified, especially when someone invents an entirely new item and then wants to sit down and make it - Skip Williams"

    I have crafted some adventures where players are trying to acquire the material components of weird and wonderous items, while I agree that they should have some kind of 'cost' to acquire, I am more of the opinion that it should be a cost of risk vs reward rather than a physical cost.

     I would rather stick to the idea that making a sword, be it magical, mystical or mundane, should approximately be of the same time of a real sword, 2-3 days for the weapon & 2+ weeks for the flair, but its more about "getting it right" because maybe forging a sword and getting it wrong just means melting down the blade and starting again, but if your using elementium steel, then it likely involves a few enchanted tools, some runes of protection against it (so it doesn't freeze or burn you while forging) and you'd only want to deal with it once, rather than risking deadly burns or life altering frostbite twice.

     So instead the "cost" to acquire goods, is for the group to acquire the magical forge, the mystical hammer, the tongs of fire, the cooling Pools of the frostbanes and several kilos of Elementium, Elysiuum Wood, Gems of Brightfire and Rubies of Blood. Once acquired, the Blacksmith/Mage/Mystic of the group gets to work, while the heroes rest their wounds and 3-6 weeks later, the Smith presents the Leader/Warrior of the group with "FleshForger the Magnificent" with all the bonuses (and possible flaws) of the new weapon.

Yeah, we all do that.. so whats your point?    

     Recently, (well, ok, 3 years ago now) We were tasked at Uni to make a game, and my group agreed to try making a "potion making game", We only had 13 days in total to make it (well its over 13 weeks, we had 1 day a week assigned to the task, because of other subjects, exams, studies etc) so in the end we made a game where you chose 3 ingredients and dependent on how you mixed it, it would come up with 1 of 9 possible potions/poisons.

     Now, the key underlying aspect of the game, was to experiment


---------------------------------- APOLOGIES TO READERS------------------------
Due to Google downgrading their system, this post was lost, I managed to find this much via some fancy caching, but from this point forward, I am mostly trying to remember what I wrote, appologies if it seems out of sync. Originally Published 08/04/2017
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The Game

The Experimentation of how each 'part' worked, was the process of the game. In the 'morning' You acquired the 3 ingredients from the forest, randomly, mostly it gave you a 1:5 chance, twice, either gaining the whole plant, the roots, the leaves or the flower, or nothing( 2 chances). You'd return to your workshop by the end of the day, if you had purchased food from town you ate it, else you could eat the leaves or boil the roots as a substitute, no ill effects, just the loss of your days work looking for it.
Lastly, you could try to 'experiment' on your potions. Each of the three ingredients could be fried, boiled or crushed (for oils), no other information was given.
Oh and also you could go to town, in town you could buy food for 1 copper coin each meal, and meals could last 4 days (so you could buy 4 max) but while in town, you heard rumours.. someone was sick, someone had a toothache, someone wanted to poison her evil husband.
The only thing we had in the game was that all three paid money (3 copper), the 'bad' job would pay even for failed poisons, but a copper if you failed and 3 if you succeeded.
So each night, you'd make up some potions/poisons, and when you had a few, you could go to town, and try them out. The 'experiment' was on the evil husband, if he died, you knew it was a legit poison, if he didn't it sometimes made him happy, or angry or no effect.
This was the litmus test. Angry.. probably ill effects, happy, likely good effects, dead, most definitely poison.
Now at the heart of this, was percentile effects, Boil the root and you got soup, you knew this from your own experience, eat the leaves, its not killing you either, So boil the leaves? fry the leaves? crush the leaves? Each has an effect: From memory, Boiling, drew out the potent qualities, but not the oil effects, Frying would destroy the potent qualities, but keep the oil effects, and crushing, gave you a 50/50 effect of both, while eating it raw, would give you half of the potent effect, but all of the oil, So it became a maths puzzle..
Roots had 25% poisonous Oil, but 100% Nutitional Potent,
Leaves had 0% poisonous Oil and 25% healing Potent.
The Flower had 75% numbing Oil, and 10% Poison.

If you boiled the Roots and Leaves and fried the Flower, and threw away the Roots and boiled it again, you'd get a healing potion,
If you crushed the flower, added some raw, boiled the leaves and then threw out the leaves, you got a tooth numbing agent, so they could pull the tooth
and if you Boiled the flower several times, and fried the roots several times, then crushed the Boiled flowers into the roots, you got a deadly poison.   
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The Key to it was trying out different combinations, on yourself, and the evil husband to figure out what did what, and how it came together.

In Roleplay

Firstly, to get this to work in roleplay, you need to have the ability of your group to get stuff made. Like stated before, getting the 'ingredients' is part one of the game, Having your players procure a Firebird feather, a Core of Sphagnum and a Dedicated Crystal, is the adventure that they get to go on.

But having the Unique Powerful item, is only interesting if it is Unique AND Powerful.

To Create this, you have to have more control over the flow of goods and services.

If your players like the idea of crafting their own gear, upgrading it, improving it, then make sure your setting works, Making standard items less common, with technological advances, just recently discovered.

Cavemen/Minecraft: The Most interesting 'inventions' game would be starting from scratch, players probably already know about sharpening stones & attaching them to sticks with vines, but how about baking clay to make moulds to heating fire hot enough to melt ores to even make metals.. Playing the game in a minecraft like environment might even be your players thing.

Shift of Ages: As the Bronze Age was in decline and the Iron Age beginning, we see a whole area of roleplay barely played. Have your entire group in the fall of rome, as the Gauls have just discovered Iron and Steel swords are a brand new thing. The Aquisition of Iron Ore becomes an adventure of its own. Or if your more inclined, Steampunk, as all manner of steam powered things get invented, and usually ones that would never work, steam powered mobile phone anyone?

Post apoc: My favourite (and one I'm building a new campaign for) When everything has gone to hell, and your players can't even get a decent weapon, unless the bring back some scrap metal from outside the safe zone.. This one ties in nicely with fantasy: The players have steel sword, but how to get EarthElementium? or Plogistonium. Bring back a chunk of Ever-cold Metal and have your blacksmith forge up one of those as a Cleaver! or Chukrum!

So, now that you've got the setting, Have an NPC in town, controlled by your rules lawyer/ numbers cruncher, 'experiment' with the numbers, What does Plgistonium do? well its fire based Elementium, All Elementiums are harder than normal steel by 2 magnitudes, Plus they do Elemental based damage, they should cut through armour, like a knife through butter. Cool that's your end point, but now, you have to decide how long are they prepared to wait?

For simplicity, since we have 4 values to go with, 2x harder, knife through butter & fire damage, then we need our blacksmith to experiment with at least 4 variables, so we'll need to get him at least 4 sets of the Ore. Then you make skill checks for the Blacksmith, if he passes, he's made progress on 1 of those 4 areas, Or maybe you can't wait that long.. how about mixing it with normal steel, and halving the final properties.. halving the experimentation time.

See this is where I got bogged down in other systems, Because weapons don't typically have hardness values or sharpness values, or strength abilities, and weapons don't cut through armour, the player dodges & the armour deflects & the person cops some of the damage, but not as real damage, but as exhaustion & its all rolled into one roll or one saving throw.. it takes away the players, and the GMs ability to make cool stuff, unless you know the whole formula for THAC0, or such.

This is why I made my system, Because Elementium can easily have +2 damage, without needing to increase the Initiative costs, it can have a 'ignores 2 points of enemies metal armour' for the ABR and it can have 'flaming weapon if exposed to air' and 'is 80.c', so players know the blade is hot, it burns, flamable objects will ignite, water will slowly boil (or at least start to get hot) and each of these areas can be 'learnt' by the blacksmith as skills:
Active Skill: Manufacture - Elementium - Fire - +1 Damage, no Inititaive cost. 
Once learnt, then he can start to take on the next skill.

This all works for the HUB system of my game, where players have an NPC friend, back in town, that they get to level up and choose his skills between adventures, so that you have a plausible way for players to be getting much better weapons, without needing handwavium or bullsh*t Ecomonic systems. 

     

The Lit Streets Issue

I might come back and edit this, but for now:

Why would Fantasy Medieval Streets be unlit?

Or Trapped Fairies? - Art by Aimee Stewart

In a fantasy city, that includes some kind of magic using group of skilled or talented people, there would exist an early understanding of creating fire, through magic. Most, if not all decent systems of magic have a ways and means of casting a spell, so that it can become permanent.

So, given these two premises, there is no reason to not have street lamps, with permanent cast flames
or light sources. With a metal cage around it, to protect, both the flame and the user, maybe the inclusion of glass, some little engineering to provide reflection, flow of air (if need be) The idea is pretty much a stable concept, if not in every city, at least the higher ranking streets of the capital (or the main castle).

This is the concept that a lot of Games designers forget to think about when inventing spells, powers, magical artefacts and the like. The effect it has on society.

These little things are what makes a world real, alive, rich and interesting.

So you've probably gotten here from a link to this, where I brief on the subject or go further into how, this is not supposed to spoil the game, not supposed to have any negative effect, far from it, its the requirement of its inclusion. Without considering Lit Street Issues, you're just building a dull boring, unplanned, unthought-out generic world.

Worldbuilding your Magic

Magic In Relation to World Building

One thing I think we all forget when worldbuilding, is how things started, how things exist, how they work with each other. Magic is a fairly big upset to anything and everything. If magic existed from the start, can anyone, in all logical conclusion, say that their world would look anything like Medieval Europe?

Now sure, There were charlatans that claimed that magic existed, and used it to profit, or make a living. Soothsayers, Fortune Tellers, Witch Doctors. For the most part, they used perception tricks, fakery and general human power of belief to cause things to happen.

In that, we had witch burnings, and the inquisition. So imagine if those things were actually real?

A lot of recent discussion n the topic caused me to create this thread and jot down notes in it..

yeah, looks like a random search on google images

Here's what I came up with.

The Early Caveman had Shamans. [Why isn't it Shamen?]Usually a herbalist, soothsayer, most likely predicting events based on his age, experience with things.. The Cave Shaman was the Ancient version of Google. Now imagine if said Shaman had actual powers, not just perceived powers based on wisdom.

Soothsayers predicting weather more accurately with fish bones, means decreased deaths in storms, possibly more predictable travel across oceans.. smaller boats with a weather shamans are now hundreds of years in advance of our history. The Vikings would have become more efficient raiders 200+ years earlier.

Tribes were ruled by Brawn (assumed), would now magic become a more dominant trait? just that one path alone.. ignore all else, and nerds become rulers of society pre-iron-age, God-Kings are not just called God-kings, they are most likely bred together with witches to ensure magic in the royal blood.

Though Magic + Brains becomes the eventual power, the Brawn still has the upper hand in the first few years, would bullies become victims in the later years? would the alpha males be eradicated in favour of the Beta-mages. There was an article recently about a group of monkeys who lost their alpha males to poisoning, and within a generation, the tribe was peaceful, had little to no abuse, females were treated as equals. Would society mature and become utopia without the brutal power hungry alpha?

Assume that Brawn remains equally Dominant, or that Alpha Mages (Brawn + Magic) become leaders,. would now early society break far more into the Elite and the Slaves? The Elite breed with Mages Only to maintain the power, quashing all independent magical bloodlines.

The concept of the Advisor in many societies now becomes the mage, far more real than fictional variants, his/her spells are used to determine visitors/diplomats are being truthful, whole militant situations fall apart when the mage can force the diplomat to reveal all secrets.

On the subject of Wars, would you really arm hundreds of men to fight battles when you can send out a couple of sorcerers and their private guards? Imagine a Game of Civ without armies, because your opponent could just cast flame strike, now instead you need to just hire your own mage, and maybe an assassin+mage to take out his mage.

A lot of writers would probably want to 'balance' the magic, costs to cast, to ensure that the 'world' remains closer to their medieval history + magic vision. Things like, magic costs the user, the ability to procreate, or magic users are one in a million..They have their own work-arounds..

So, given that your brother is a mage, you're likely to be a mage, the council, asks you to not be a mage.. but instead marry a woman who is also asked not to be a mage. because genetically, you're both likely to have double-mage children.

If Magic Users are one in a million, then being the king who has a mage, now becomes supremely important, but careful that the mage doesn't want to be king himself.

When I talk of Wars and Advisors and Diplomats and such, I'm thinking Medieval in my head, but I really should be thinking ancient Greek or earlier.. because of my first few posts about magic coming in much earlier with cavemen, wouldn't it be safe to assume that this culture of magical Advisor to the King, or God-King exists far earlier than Knights on Horseback..moreso because there are more than a few thousand articles on the ideas that Technological advances in warfare came about because of warfare. They invented ways to get around what the enemy had invented, and in turn the enemy invented ways to thwart the new inventions.

Speculation that a "spell slinger" would make Armoured Knight obsolete as what Guns did in our History, should be taken back quite a few steps, where spell slinger comes in pre-Mesopotamia. Would anyone bother to make leather armour if a fireball is going to annihilate you anyway?

In my own world, I saw gunpowder being a very big danger to mages, an invention that gives non-mages the ability to take down a mage, as fast, if not faster than the mage can cast a protective spell, and being mages, they decided that it should not be invented. They dedicated a cult of magic users who learn several specific spells, such as Dimension Door, Scry, Mind-wipe and the like, so if (and when) Gunpowder is invented, they turn up, and erase the idea from the inventor, and destroy the laboratory. Of course a secret cult has developed it in secret, and have begun their development of the Gun, which makes a great back-drop for a campaign that I run.

There are so many possible ways that magic would interrupt, cause, hinder, help, change history, it makes little sense to try and make a medieval+magic fantasy trope.. and yet, if you go too far off from the trope, a lot of readers will not grasp what you're doing and you limit your audience..

I'm looking to put together a massive multi-player game of Civilization, which will explore this concept further, I'm not 100% sure of my approach, and how it will come about.. but stay tuned.  

Thought of the day, There are no Magicians in Harry Potter

A common question from my play testers and groups is : Can I do X in your game? how would that work?

I've said it a few times, I developed the system to be compatible with all known books on the subject, and am constantly updating, tweaking the parts that I know I haven't spent a lot of time on.

Train hormonal teenagers with nuclear level powers? I don't think so

I have also vocalized my dislike for the Harry Potter system/world, reducing magic to a school subject that children learn is probably the reason why the world is in such peril to begin with, As I belong more to the group that prefer Gandalf and Merlin style worlds, the rare few that can truly understand magic, while a handful of hedge wizards scramble around with a few rabbits & hats.

But all that changed when someone asked, If all systems can fit in your system..

How does Harry Potter match your system...?

The discussion started with how mages cast spells.

Firstly there is conjuration, the usage of 'mage power' or 'mana', difficult to master, rare to be a master in. We don't see magic glowing from their fingers.. so that's not it.

Then there are incantations, The words of magic learnt by the mage, cause the spells to activate the inner magic or mana.. usually this is a string of variables infused into the magic, causing an algo-rhythm of magic to create the desired effects.. at first this looks like HP magic.. but it isn't, since the kids rarely create the spells, they merely say a final word.. 

But wait, isn't that (not actually vancian) D&D style 'activation' word? do the kids pre-cast their spells and then activate them? no..

 Ok, so Material spell components? I remember some classes being about potions and plants, but the bulk of wizards just wave a wand.. so surely then it must be..

Magical Items! Of course.. the Wands, magical items that store magic, and are used to focus spells or cast spells for the user.. quite often a wand has pre-built spells into them allowing lower level magic users access to a wider range of spells, rather than having them learn said spells over years and year.. Oh wait.. what's going on here... The wands.. they are 'chosen' to ensure the least dangerous effects to the child.. the wands cast spells that the kids say the 'activation word' for, the child never actually casts a spell, it's always the wands.

Not only do the children use wands, adults do too, and have done for years.. the school has been around for centuries, they all have wands, it seems that only the goblins & house elves have anything to do with any real magic, and that appears to be limited (though wandless)

In Conclusion

I can only surmise that the Harry Potter world and its magics were somehow accessed by someone years ago, who had actual magic (Merlin?) and wanted to train the gifted into spell casters, but finding that humans for the most part divided into muggles, who were unable to use even wands, and mages who could, but couldn't be trusted to learn real magic, because it's far too powerful, decided to ensure the survival of the species, by creating a society in which mages are 'shunted' off into the HP world, where the residual magics allow the fantastic creatures to exist, all spells have been 'pre-scribed' into wands, made by the goblins, allowing these mages 'magic' but in a controlled fashion.. and it's been going on so long, no-one knows anymore that real magic can do so much more..

Except Maybe This guy, 

Maybe the guy stirring his coffee with his finger.. reading a book on time by stephen hawking

Topics to Discuss - Pandoras Box

I thought I might get down some Ideas that I'm keen to discuss, both in gaming general and in relation to DungeonWorld(tm). Having worked on a Dungeonworlds game engine for 20+ years, through iterations of complexity, then simplifying, then complexifying again, There are many small nuances to game development that I've studied, read about or even just played with the basic mechanics.

If anyone has some key point they'd like me to address over the next few months, feel free to add it to the List. I know many of these topics are things other gamesmasters and designers have discussed, so sometimes they'll be my own 2 cents, I like to think that pretty much every GM/Designer that decides to blog has to cover these topics to establish themselves first.. but maybe a few will be unique

In No Particular Order, I would like to discuss:

• Encumbrance, backpacks and Lists vs Encumbrance Points.
• Electronic Character Sheets, good or evil?
• What to do in downtime? Why Healing Spells suck!
• NPCs and Levelling the non-Hero
• Hit Points, health and Falling off Cliffs
• City Campaigns, Do Politics?
• Weapons Hit Points.. Will your Sword break
• Ammunition boxes or chips?
• Time Tracking between 7 Gamesmasters & 50+ characters
• Perception, Lighting, Smells and Intuition
• Player Morales & Roleplay Decisions
• Killing Everything, just in case, doesn't make me evil.. Right?
• Mega Games & Rumours
• Should GMs ever let players see the Monsters Manual?
• Is an Orc Always Evil, Should a Paladin Always kill him?
• As the world shuns violence, will roleplay games cease to exist?
• Toilet Time, should GMs inform players, mid dungeon, that its time for no.2?
• Initiative vs Peasant Rail Gun
• Non Magic effect Tower Shields of Invisibility
• Minecraft tree to Stick rules of D&D Crafting
• Rule Zero vs Physics

I May add more to the List, I encourage others to add to the list, things that you've seen or read in other GM blogs. (or just stuff that would be fun to read about)

Laylines, Gallifreyan Circles and Magic

LayLines

Quick Clarification: LeyLines are lines formed from existing places for spiritual & mystical energies on earth, of which I am not talking about, Instead like the Fishing Lay Line, Magical LayLines have points that are either fixed or move, and 'catch' up residual magic, dragging it into nets of magic such as Circles and Spirals and Symbols of magic, permeating the Land and Nature and Magic and causing some weird and wondrous things from time to time. LayLines are Harnessable by intelligent beings for their own purposes, be they malevolent or benevolent.

This could be a snapshot of my Layline Project.. If I visualised it.

He-man/pony Master of the Ponyverse

I think, Like any decent geek, its fun to take one idea, that we all love, and use it to represent something else, that we all love, and this blend can sometimes be awesome or interesting or some kind of facinating idea that sparks more ideas.. or sometimes awful, sometimes brilliantly awful, cringe-worthy. Depends on your point of view(I'll let you figure out which one He-Pony is)

So I was looking at Gallifreyan language the other day, and it got me thinking.. That's a nice way of representing circle lore. And since I

Credit to Sirkles

use circle lore for Ley-Lines it just clicked..

So I started researching Circle Languages. Gallifreyan has been done by several individuals, each adding their own take on it. Mostly its English in a funny pattern, like when you visit an Asian country and have your name written in their characters. It makes little to no sense in their language (although it can, my Chinese name means 'your friendly teacher of the people)

I'm a bit of a student of Language, Having taught English in several countries, mostly in Russia, I would often ask student to compare the words to their own language, compare to the flow, the style and the way its spoken vs written. So it comes easier for me to ask questions like, how does the grammar work, do verbs have tenses (like English), genders (like German), prepositional suffixes or prefixes (like Finnish, with 27 of them), do the sentences run in ordered structure (Germanic) or are structureless and use other rules (Russian)

While I'd love to blog about how Gallifreyan should be properly put together by someone with more insight than a few teenagers, like J.R.R.Tolkien for example.. (if I get enough posts requesting this, I could.. I have been researching for months)

This blog is about something else that's been on the horizon.

Maybe you've read about the mathmatical model I was building about Laylines, but then gave up and just wrote a program instead. In that I decided on some key factors about magic and laylines.. but only recently did I pull out all those notes and theres a pretty big reason why..

The Convergence

So, about 3 weeks ago, I was glancing over my roleplay notes for an upcoming game, where one of our group thinks she might be a lycanthrope. None of the "normal" attempts at discovery worked.. because.. lycan = wolf, so they figured it was something else. One plausible suggestion was that a layline might have infected her, and as each layline passed through camp, she was turning into something.. only to return to form the next morning.

Not an actual screenshot

So, I remembered I had a program somewhere which was tracking laylines in real time.. and I noticed something. sometime soon, there was going to be a convergence of many laylines.. and It might be world changing.

But I didn't have them properly sorted or structured in the database.. just a nice graphic of spinning circles & symbols showing pretty colours...

Must Investigate!

It Didn't take me long to find out that while I was right, I was wrong.. I didn't have the right 'symbols' in the system yet. Something I had put off for later and now I was getting stuck for time.

The Problem being.. I had put this together years ago and left it running, I could have missed other convergences, and probably have, so I don't want to miss this next one (I sped up the program to check, and won't see another for 2 years)

But no-one is anywhere near this.. and I don't have any players, playing mages to truely enjoy the experience... its like I'm the only person on the planet, and I've just spotted a quadripple rainbow!

So I asked them.. do you want to be mages for a day?

A resounding YES.

So, I am now on the quest to ensure the perfect storm will have some spectators.

The majority of the Laylines.. are exactly that.. laylines.. lines of magic that move around the planet at different speeds, directions and possibly (yes even now I'll not give away true details) different pivot points or angles of flow.

Maybe they flow in straight lines, maybe they move up and down with the terrain, or through terrain.. surely water magic would use water and fire magic, use lava.. who knows?

but now maybe some will.. its even more fun.. because the greatest magicians in the world (well.. ok.. a bunch of pre-made NPCs used by players for an afternoon of conjecture) are going to try an harness the magical storm for their own crazy nefarious projects.. and probably fight about it until its too late.

I'll record the conversation and maybe if its worth it, write a story from it

So, with 80% of laylines already structured, I was stuck deciding on what to do about the last 20%.. I had notes, and sketches, but had nothing concrete. Until I remembered Gallifreyan circles.

Simplistic, but this is one of several layers..

Now, a quick pop over to Lorens webpage, structure some quick images, load them into the layline engine and viola. Freaky looking beasts that they are.

See, I can write "Illusion" into the engine he's built and Viola.. instant magic circle.

Combine this with 16 forms of magic, 16 power laylines, circles, pools, null magic fields and sacred artefacts in the world .. and this picture gets pretty messy.

What do they Do?

Typically 3 Layline crossings will cause a lump of rock at the crux of the crossing, to become magical. maybe it had ore in it, that becomes magical metal, maybe a small seedling would become magical wood (sought out by sorcerers for wands and staves) This happens once every week or so, I saw 11 in one day.. but I only monitor places near my players...

But there are hundreds of these happened daily.. so they're not vitally important (yet), as you can see here in a screenshot, all the brighter areas are usually criss-crosses of lines & circles and such

If all laylines were visible, this would be a blur

So, now I have my laylines, and circles and spirals and symbols and glyphs and they're all circling around this world.. causing all manner of mischief.. 

and the biggest mischief of all.. is coming.. just after March, but closer to August. My players will create 100-200th level Magi, they'll be assigned values based on their choices of race, creed, religion, beliefs and location both birth and current. Then they'll all have to be versed in the basic arts of using laylines to travel (else how would they all get here?) they'll be given a list of clues as to what could happen.. 75% true, and 25% false.. with comparison and conversation, they should be able to determine which truths are absolute, and which lies are bent truths, until they understand the best that they can.. and harness the wave of power.. to do something awe.... -some or -ful, I don't know yet.

Programming Addendum:

My Initial Foray into this was simply using Javascript to 'spin' the images. Each image was a very transparent white line (or lines/elipses/shapes) or coloured (for specific types) on a black background. When 2+ lines crossed each other they glowed more, the more lines, the more "white". The bigger problem was that this layering didn't allow the coloured lines to mix/enhance the white (pastels instead)

So, the 2nd attempt was using C# to write a 3D program using the Graphics card to 'draw' lines in 3D space, and then multiply the colours against each other if they intersected. It then outputs an image. Useful to know on a given day/time what laylines will cross.

The Problem with both of these is that there is no 'prediction' I can type in co-ordinates of players, for the scheduled gaming session, but I have no idea where any of these lines are going.. unless I type in the next 'second' or 'minute' and spit out the image and compare.. brute force.

It was more luck than skill that I found this 'Convergence' I mistyped a date, and saw a bright spot.. then I ran it over and over.. to get the 2-3 hours either side of that 'moment' which lead me to do that again for several 'hours' after.. to find that an even brighter event happened 3 hours and 7 minutes after the first.

After that, I wrote a script to run the program and find 'pixels' greater in brightness than 50%.. but I intend to rewrite the program to run realtime and map out events in the mapping database so GMs will be able to plan ahead for local mini & maxi convergences. 

Spells, Spellcrafting and Components

This is more of an overview as Andreas raised some thoughts on the subject and I wanted to expand on my ideas, without cluttering his blog discussion.

For World-Builders

First, sorry for posting this in World-builders, not exactly the right group for this, but then I thought, ok, If we preface some points, its still pertinent. So:

Where I say 'you' the player, switch to 'mages in this world', if I'm talking about specific gaming stats, then think of instead as your notes for your characters in your world, I think its important to understand that in your world, that you created, its just as important that you follow your own rules, your canon, your defined reality, because if you break it, your readers (and for gaming, players) are going to break their sense of disbelief, and ruin the experience.

Introduction

My System is fairly robust, As you might know from reading the blog so far, I have included almost every single system that existed in the 90's and amalgamated, I've added all possible styles & types from books that I've read over the last 30 years, Every player who asks: Do you know X-system, or such and such style from this Author, and I say, ok.. describe it.. and the answer is always. Yes that very possible and doable.. So I think its rather robust because no-one has been able to break it yet.

Possibly after writing this, and you read it, you may find a way to break it, upon which the answer would most likely be: I must not have made it clear in my post.. I'll try and clear that up for you.

Spell Casting

When you cast a spell, Depending on how you learnt it, you wave your arms, and/or use ingrediants and/or speak special words and/or commune with nature, demons, elements or 

such and invoke the powers to make the magic happen. 

In Game terms, I use Magic Points.. but I also have sub points called Exhaustion, Persistence, Torpor, Regeneration Rate and Burnout. All Spells have a value assigned to them, typically a Magic Point cost, but any spell can include E, P, T or even Reg as cost too. On top of that, or instead of it, Points can be reduced in their costs, based on external factors, such as gestures, words, components, lost knowledges or gifted aspects from nature, demons, elements or other.. (more on these points later)

Confused? Lets Look at some examples:

Dweguri, Dark Elf Mage, was taught to cast Cave Lights using glow mushrooms, but, if need be, he can summon the inner strength to cast the spell from his magic alone.
Cave Lights, Lvl 1: Magic Points: 3, Component: Glow Mushrooms: Mp reduction 3mp, increases the glow of all cave mould and surfaces by 2 light levels.

NiWalke, Fire Mage, uses fireball as his go-to spell.. he learnt it in the college of fire, and understands its intricate workings, to the point where he can cast small, medium or large fireballs, and throw them great distances on occasion. NiWalke finds himself drained of much of his magic, but facing off against an Ogre, he spots some sulphur on the ground, remembering back to his college years, he manages to scrape together two handfuls of the powder, just in time to throw a great flame into the beast, enough to aid his companions to escape

Fireball (College of Fire, lvl 4: 10 Magic Points Base + 1 Exhaustion: Component: Sulphur -4mp per handful, Coaldust - 3mp per handful) NiWalke, studied Fireball x3 times, reducing base MP to 8 and -2 exhaustion & -2 Torpor) 

While in both cases, I'm using material components, dependant on the school, the culture, the style of your game, any one of these could be replaced with other 'cost reducers'

Spell Crafting

In All Spells, There are basic structures of logic, Whats the basis of the spell, what does it do, outside the normal physical world, then all the nitty gritty: how far will the spell go, whats it do, who/what does it do it to, how fast is it, how hard is it to dodge/resist/unweave.

Then look at Who is crafting this spell. If its a college of magic who have the resources to study this spell and its types, groups, styles, schools, effects, over and over to improve it, get the components right, or more effective, vs if its a Hermit in the woods, who devoted their life to one single spell in one direction.

This usually results in a specific spell value.

Except from my Excel Character Sheet

The Magic Points are related to how much of the physics of the world are being bent to make it happen. Exhaustion is how much power drain the caster is going to feel, (persistance is how much Exhaustion this particular player/character has in store, before it begins to affect him), Torpor is his limit to any given spells power.. a maximum level if you will, and Regeneration, relates to how many magic points he'll gain back after a full nights rest.

Components in Play

So, while you can and probably should use components in some form, it can be time consuming, both for the character, in terms of actions and initiative to get out the components, or prepare them or make them happen, and in battle, you only ever care about MP & time.. Most spells are 'built' with the concept of casting in 1 combat round.. well.. Battle magic is, 

Spells which are far less likely to be used in the heat of battle, will be cast over minutes or even hours.. the better spells, costing hundreds or even thousands of magic points to cast correctly.. impossible in a single round... But.. in a ritualistic manner, reducing the cost to cast (each Combat round is considered a 'component' to reduce MP costs), using candles, materials, and/or including other magi or natively magical creatures, such as fey, demon, elementals or other.. can reduce this 'cost' to a realistic level.. explaining 90% of fantasy authors usage.

I won't go into it deeply, but, using someone elses magic, freely or against their will, your or their blood, or life essence as a component to spell casting, and sacrifice, either willing or otherwise are other aspects of 'components'

So, At the end of the day.. A player decides during character creation, did he get his/her magic from a school, some cult or group, a hermit or is self taught.. (from left to right, with increasing difficulty to create your character, but more freedom of choice) which obviously affects which spells they start with, how they have access to new spells as play progresses but most importantly.. were they taught to cast spells with components.. or just plain magic.

Original Stats: The Mage

When we first started looking at putting together the Mage in our system, we had 3 players who tried magic, Mattius the Thaumaturge, was an experimenter, he had no real spells, just things he picked up along the way, Reym the Elven Mage/Fighter, who had some augmentation for combat, and finally Sutekh, the sprite, who had a range of natural abilities, but not specific magics.

Remember, this was back in 2nd Edition Rules, The Amalgamation of all systems had begun, but magic was far down the list.. so in order to make a playable game, I just hobbled together the spell lists, averaged out some spells and levels to match something clean, and ended up with a hodgepodge of mismatched rules that made little to no real sense..

which is magic, when you think about it.

Magic is either science or its Not

My First big problem was that I was reading far too much Science Fiction at the time, Issac Asimovs stories of Azazel the 'Demon' using high level technology to create the effects, which seemed like magic. 

In '96 I went to a community college to get a degree on Computer Science and was learning about databases.. one thing I put together was a structure of 'cause & effect' for spells.

Then at the Same College I met some teachers, who put me onto some Professors at University, who were very keen to discuss how magic could work under the laws of Thermodynamics, Electromagnetism and Looking into Spirituality and how it could be represented in a magical system.

Now, while I have remade the rules of Combat several times, Archery several times, Stealth several times, Magic remained the same system for many many years..

Here's how it worked then, and still does for Version 3..

All spells, based on their school, had a difficulty level to study, A Study requirement, an Imperfection level to cast spells. The Caster would roll for cast spell, if passed, they had an imperfection chance %, but if failed, this value was increased by the spell difficulty x The failure result.

Back then, Magic worked on a number of d8s  x the spell level. so 1st level spells could fail up to 8 pts (if you had no score) and the highest 16th level spells, could theoretically fail by 128pts. We were experimenting with varied dice pools at the time.. my colleague was trying to make a 3d8 version of the whole system, arguing if 2 dice gave a good bell curve, 3 dice would be better.

Again though, Maybe because the magic was so broken, or so difficult to learn a spell, or the number of players I had was so limited, I needed a group to play some mages..

So the OS team were born.. 5 Mages, down on their luck, driven out of town after town for some shocking trickster attempts, vowed to return to vent their revenge, sought out some powerful magics and blew themselves to smithereens when the imperfection failed far too much. But in that time, I did manage to clean up the magic rules from v2 to v3.

v3.5 is another story for another day..