A long, rambling magic system thread

[Ice9]

The basic idea is, if you know another wizard's secret you can summon them (even if you yourself are on a vision quest), and if you are of the same tradition you can undo their works and diablerize them highlander style, although this is not easy or automatic.

So Mages of different traditions ally with one another by trading secrets.

This sounds interesting, kind of a true name thing, and it seems like it would work well for groups that are created together. However, I can think of one major issue with it - people who join later / in-play group formation.

Even giving your secret to someone of a different tradition is risky, because they could tell it to someone with the same tradition as you. So there is a level of trust required. Now YMMV, but IME, urban fantasy games tend to bring out the cagey/paranoid side of players. There's often a bit of an awkward dance where the new character is trying to be secretive and shit, and the existing characters are wary of letting anyone into their sanctum. So even though everyone knows OOC they need to join up, it takes a while. Having important secrets that need to be shared seems like it would slow this down further.

[DrPraetor]

Yeah... I hadn't considered that.

Bringing new players to the table is difficult enough for the Scooby Gang even if all you have to do is swear blood oaths to your new ruby-eyed snake god.

I will admit, the pack totems in nWerewolf were a nice idea (insert something about stopped clocks.)

[Grek]

I think you could do with being a bit more explicit about what the True Source will and will not do. Here's my suggestions.

The True Source does not:

• Endorse any particular answers to theological or metaphysical questions. It may listen to your theories and often encourages you to seek out answers, but does not ever give you any answers.
• Personally act to harm, deceive, coerce, rob or control anyone. It may give others powers capable of such, but never uses them.
• Personally act on anyone without their informed consent. It may give others the power to do so, but always asks for either permission or an explicit request before acting on someone.
• Personally reveal the secrets of others. It may direct you to someone with the knowledge of the secret, particularly if they would be willing to share, but does not tell you secrets directly.
• Give someone a power that can only be used for good or only for evil. It only gives powers that can be used for both.
• Reveal the existence of Magic those who have not sought out the True Source. It will not lie if asked, but does not try to spread the knowledge or do things that would make it obvious to everyone that Magic is real.
• Create entities similar in power to Itself. It may create Archons, but these Archons are never the equal of the True Source.

...but it isn't clear whether this is because it is unable to do these things, or because it is unwilling. The True Source refuses to clarify.

The True Source prefers to:

• Act in subtle ways which could be explained by coincidence rather than through overt miracles or magical acts.
• Not use magic to grant wishes when honest answers, instructions or advice will get the wisher what they want.
• Grant the intent of a wish rather than the letter in cases where there is a conflict.
• Inform the wisher if some part of their wish cannot be granted, rather than only granting the parts that can be.
• Warn wishers of unintended or unexpected side effects of their wish instead of blithely granting it.

...but will ignore these preferences if the wisher insists otherwise. Generally, asking for a specific wish three times is enough to convince the True Source you're certain about your choice.

The Mage groups could do with being a bit more fine grained as well. The Technocracy group, for example, could be split in two. I've got:

• Some Mages feel that it is best to rely on the apparent benevolence and wisdom of the True Source and ask directly for plagues, famines and wars and other large scale problems to be ended. Asking to be given power, be it personal or societal, is seen as hubris and doomed to make social problems worse in the long run. They will, however, accept any powers the True Source deems fit to give them.
• Some Mages feel that magical empowerment on the personal scale is the only pragmatic thing to do. Given that any Mage can ask the True Source for nearly anything, only obtaining as much magical power as you can will keep you safe if someone makes a disastrously bad wish. Trying to use magic for global, or even large scale change is seen as dangerous and likely to accidentally destroy the world.
• Some Mages feel that effecting social change and advancement is the best thing to use ones wishes for. Advancing science allows for the underlying problems in the world to be fixed permanently as new technologies make the world a better, safer place to live in. Asking for strictly personal benefits or one time fixes is seen as short-sighted myopia at best and selfish vanity at worst.
• Some Mages feel that we really don't know enough about how the world works, or about the nature of Magic, or about the True Source to be safe or wise about wishes and magic. The prudent thing to do is to go on Vision Quests in order to meet with the True Source and gain greater understanding of it, but to refuse any wishes it offers as too dangerous and too poorly understood to be worth the risks.
• Some Mages feel that the actual problem facing them isn't what to do about the True Source, but rather what to do about all of the evil Archons and mad sorcerers using Archon-granted magic for evil ends. Destroying or binding Terrestrial and Planetary Archons while opposing their mortal followers is not only the right thing to do, but also necessary if any positive change is to occur.

That gives us a total of six factions working for the side of goodness and justice, but who disagree on what should be done to fix the world's problems. I think you can make a satisfying game out of that which is high in conflict but low in grimderp.

[DrPraetor]

I will take/steal most of Grek's suggestions, but I want to add - I think it is better if the True Source is not what philosophers term an agent; basically, it's not a person. So the term "personally" might not quite apply.

That is, although some Vision Quests may involve seemingly-meeting a benevolent deity, this is not always or even usually the case. Your insight both enables you to do things on a Vision Quest which may get you what you seek; and also, your insight enables you to interpret the experience, even if is is utterly cryptic to an external observer (including the other PCs that you may bring along to help). That said, if you seek to do any of the things that the True Source won't do (Grek's list looks good), you get an understanding that you won't get them, and also you get something else.

Or, Grek, is that unsatisfying? Do you think people will prefer to meet the spirit of the Rune Staff whenever they go on a vision quest?

I don't know whether this makes the True Source more or less of a divinity - but a lot of the "you can't ask the True Source for this" instead become "you're insight does not give you any ways of obtaining", and otherwise makes it more difficult to put the True Source on the spot and ask it questions.

[*] Group A - check. Use your insight to try and solve individual major problems directly on vision quests; True Source will give you spell magic if that is the best way to achieve this. Definitely. Any suggestions for what to call this philosophy / faction?

[*] Group B - check. I suppose that, given the True Source will sometimes initiate you into a magic tradition as a means of achieving whatever it was you were seeking, not all PCs need to be in Group B.

[*] Group C - Technocracy, yep. But, it needs a different name.

[*] Group D - I think I want to structure things so that "refusing wishes" is not a thing, because there need not be an explicit offer that you would refuse - but a group that favors, "quest for nothing in particular" or even "approach your visions without any preconceptions" would certainly work. Definitely there are many people who feel that way about life in general, the position would presumably have many adherents among those who have vision quests.

[*] Group E - This seems somewhat independent of the other distinctions. Is this the split off of the Technocracy?

Best,
DrP

[Grek]

Having the True Source be nonpersonified in most interactions seems fine to me. It should definitely be able to make agenty distinctions (like telling what the intent of someone on a Vision Quest is) but actually showing up in person as a person is totally unnecessary. Really, I think this should be a question of how your Tradition says things work. If your Tradition holds that there is a benevolent God who gives Mages their powers, then entities claiming to be either a representative or an enemy of that God, should show up fairly often on Vision Quests.

I'm less sold on having Vision Quests be cryptic to participants. Again, I feel like the Vision Quest should make sense according the Tradition of the person who initiated it. If you're going around as a Virtual Adept analogue where you hack the code of reality, then Vision Quests you start should make some kind of computer-related sense when viewed through the technomagical lens of the Virtual Adept Tradition. But more importantly, the rest of the party should be allowed to join you on your Vision Quest and see the same technological motifs and computer based challenges the Virtual Adept does, even if they have a different Tradition. And likewise, if you are part of a theological tradition and your friends come with you, then your friends get to meet someone a white robe who grants miraculous healing and goes on about free will and faith in the ineffable when asked theological questions.

Group D is less about refusing wishes and more about trying to discern the true nature of the process granting them. They're questing for knowledge, or enlightenment or greater oneness with the universe. If they're part of a nonanthropomorphic Tradition, then this manifests as an exploratory or experimental Quest and the things the True Source grants them are mostly incidental results of whatever it is they were seeking to learn during the Quest. Group E is definitely a different focus than the first four, but I think that is something of a requirement. If we're going to have one of the factions (playable or not) be Angelic Lorax Archons, that faction needs to have political opponents. And, given that we need a playable magic police faction (players will absolutely demand one) having the anti-demon faction also be suspicious and distrustful of the self proclaimed angels seems like a fine idea.

The Technocracy split was between A and C, aka "People who want to use Magic to end this plague." and "People who want to use Magic to learn how to make better antibiotics."

As far as names go, I got no clue.

[Ice9]

As competing philosophies, those factions work. Although Group E seems orthogonal to the disagreement of the rest, since you could fight archons and evil sorcerers using the methodology of Groups B or C and maybe A.

As warring groups, it seems like a problem that some of them have significant personal magic powers and others ... don't. The moment things get 'hot', Group B is going to kick Group A and D's ass, and Group C also - unless they keep the cutting edge tech for themself, but that sort of undermines their "for the good of humanity" thing.

Not that directly fighting each-other has to be the order of the day, just the Technocracy reference led my thoughts in that direction. But it still seems like Group B mages may well say "Fuck this debate, I'm going to teleport to where the action is, you guys have fun not doing that."

Unless everyone ends up with personal magic anyway, because that's how the Source rolls. But in that case, the distinctions don't really seem to fit any more.

[Mask_De_H]

I would assume personal power is part of the deal when one becomes a mage, and the philosophical question becomes what to make of the thing that gave you this power and what do you seek it out for.

This makes sense to me in Nasuverse terms, so I'm going to explain it thusly. The True Source is like the Root, which reaching is the whole point of being a magus. Only instead of ceasing to exist when a magus reaches the Root, they get a wish like the Grail is supposed to grant. The factions debate on what to do when you reach the destination and get this wish. Group A wants to end suffering, Group B wants to eat an energy field larger than their head, Group C wants the nerd Rapture or a sci-fi utopia, Group D wants to actually know the nature of the Source and Group E either doesn't give a fuck or wants to eradicate/contain the Source's bastard spawn. You could do something interesting with Group D wanting to study the Source so they can make their own with blackjack and hookers. Give them a humanist bent.

These reasons can be good enough to throw down over, since the Holy Grail War is about conflicting wishes and viewpoints as much as it is about cockfighting with mythic heroes. You'd have to make getting that wish very difficult if you want to keep the world looking as it does, with the Source cockteasing mages with vision quests.

[Grek]

Ice9: You're forgetting the other sources of spells. Both Terrestrial and Planetary Archons can teach you rote magic without it costing you any wishes, while Sidereal Archons have verb/noun values on par with a Mage. The ability to bind or ally with either represents potential route to personal magical power which does not require spending wishes on it at all. It is assumed that any PCs who follows a "don't wish for personal power" philosophy has a genie or something that they're investing their character points in instead.

[DrPraetor]

Some of this stuff segues into the Why is the world apparently mundane discussion.

There's a bit in American Gods where Shadow (the protagonist) climbs a mountain of skulls and all of the various deities know he does it. This is both how I expect vision quests to go (more acid trip and less "let's go talk to a guy") and also a crucial conceit that is meant to keep the world more or less stable. If you come back from your vision quest with (the clues needed for) cold fusion technology, demons know about this and try to kill you.

So, also the Golden Child.

Grek is of course right about sorcerers having pet genies not needing any of this true source stuff at all; and they would be perfectly competitive as player characters, so that needs to be in there as an option.

[DrPraetor]

I need to go re-read my original post, because some of the design goals are getting lost in the haze. Once I have that fleshed out, back to the discussion of vision quests.

http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/05 ... s-taschen/

Origin	Gets lots; gets some
Mage	Verb/Noun points; permanent magic slots
Sorcerer	permanent magic slots; creature powers
Thing Once Men	Verb/Noun points; creature powers
Risen	creature powers; Verb/Noun points
Dragon	all three equally?

Sorcerers are members of a tradition but did not get magic powers from their vision quest - they got something else and then bargained with archons for magic powers.

Things Once Men bargained with demons for magical powers when they were unenlightened; then got a vision quest and may be tormented about wanting to regain their lost humanity. They are a type of demon who suffer damage if muggles see them in their natural form.

Risen are Demons who successfully became human enough to get a vision quest (they may or may not be occupying reanimated corpses or whatever). They are a type of a demon who can walk around in funky form and humans will not react.

Dragons exist somewhere on the continuum between nagas and mermaids. They are the only true-breeding "species" of sidereal archon. Different traditions of dragons look different, but they're all the same thing and they can all mate. So they can shapechange between a fish/snake form, a naga/mermaid form, and a humanoid form. They aren't human and do not wish to be.

This may be tough to balance since - given the nature of the beast - it will be very difficult to make it so that extra verb/noun points aren't simply better than what you would otherwise get.

[DrPraetor]

I've revised some things about the previous post, and thought some more about how to reach my original design goals.

Edge is renamed Insight; it has most of the same game-mechanical effects and a few others. It is the attribute that makes you a Mage (Sidereal Archons also have it; some Planetary Archons do as well, in which case they are Mages and Demons both at once.)

You gain Insight from Vision Quests (only) - not everyone who goes on a Vision Quest gains Insight, but without it you are unable to usefully or consciously interpret the visions. People without Insight who show up on a vision quest for whatever reason do not know what is happening to them. Insight also means that you do not count as a mundane observer for magical effects.

Having a Potency above 0 causes you to become an Archon of some kind - you either become a Planetary Archon/Demon (and lose some portion of your moral capacity), or a Sidereal Archon/Guardian Spirit (and gain sponsorship of some aspect of the world which becomes your protectorate.)

Additional things that Insight Does:
[*] You can add your Insight to any test of magic knowledge; these are effectively-large specialization bonuses for the Research skill and for any Backgrounds you have that cover magical stuff.
[*] You gain a number of Foci equal to your Insight, but Invocations (generic spell casting) for each Tradition counts as 2 Foci. For the 3rd and 5th points of Insight, you can choose a Focus from any tradition, but not Invocations.

Character Type	Origin Story: Insight / Potency / N+Vp	In Media Res: Insight / Potency / N+Vp / D	Notes
Mage	3 / 0 / 25	4 / 0 / 30 / none	Human - learned magic via vision quest.
Sorcerer	3 / 0 / 16*	4 / 0 / 20* / 1A	Human - tutored by archons, after vision quest.
Thing Once Man	2 / 1 / 11*	3 / 1 / 15* / 1A	You are a planetary Archon - tradition determines type.
Risen	2 / 1 / 20	3 / 1 / 20 / 4B+3A	You are a planetary Archon - tradition determines type.
Dragon	2 / 1 / 20	3 / 1 / 24 / 1A	You are a sidereal Archon - tradition determines type.
Fae	2 / 1 / 11*	3 / 1 / 11* / 4B+3A	You are a sidereal Archon - tradition determines type.

* As a Sorcerer, Thing Once Man or Fae, you get +1 to each Verb and -1 to each Noun, which also gives you more permanent magic slots and makes Foci which work via the Archon-intermediary/Conjuring rules (which don't use Nouns) more desirable.

In an Origin story, you have to wait until your Vision Quest happens to gain your Insight (and thus Foci), and N+V points. In an Origin story, the Archons start out magical but haven't yet had their vision quests.

For Attributes, Active Skills, Backgrounds, Resources, Motivations and Advantages/Disadvantages, refer to the Origin Story and In Media Res entries in After Sundown character generation. Noun/Verb costs are triangular, and the maximum score in any Noun or Verb at character creation is 3 in an Origin story and 4 in an In Media Res story; Sorcerers can start with Verbs one point higher than normal.

In the table above, a Basic Discipline is rated at 0.5 N/V point, and an Advanced Discipline at 1 N/V points; an Insight is rated as equal to 1 Potency. Archons of each tradition get roughly 6 Basic and 3 Advanced powers just for signing up; Mages and Sorcerers of each tradition get 2 basic powers, so the various Archons get 5 fewer N/V points. You get 5 more points in an In Media Res story which is more than the +3 points you get in After Sundown (but you also have a lot more points base.)

The Disciplines, Foci and Noun/Verb points are defined below for individual traditions.

Planetary Archons use most of the rules for Supernaturals in After Sundown. Dragon and Fae don't; they have pretty similar rules though.

Each tradition includes six entries for Disciplines. The Disciplines in After Sundown are all available, and additional Disciplines (Metamagic, Wards, Power Lines - these need different names) are added.

Note that being Insight 2 means you can (and want to, maybe not if you are a Sorcerer) start with Magery and Nouns. Insight 1 means that you can't start with Magery and want to stick with Sorcery instead.

Thus Things Once Men and Dragons are Mage-like; while Risen and Fae are Sorcerer-like in terms of their expected choice of Foci.

[Mage] Foci are noun- and verb-dependent, they use the general engine for describing spell effects.

[Sorcerer] Foci are verb-dependent only, they use the general engine for interacting with Archons.

[Science] I'm still thinking about these. Does the Technocracy get N/V and Insight scores, or not? I'm considering - Technocracy mages are still mages and get one of the traditions below, which are pan-cultural in scope?
Enlightened Sciences are Foci that only use Nouns, and deviate more heavily from the Spells rules. They aren't obviously magical. I was going to make them NPC only but... why do that to people? The Technocracy is really into them, naturally; but player characters may just want to have them.

Regardless of Focus, any combination of effect, target, duration, and range is a Spell.

A potion recipe is a Spell, a particular pattern of symbols that binds demons is a Spell, and so on. You can make up new spells as needed if you have the requisite sphere ratings and time, but you also have spell formulae which you know, that provide additional bonuses for a specific e/t/d/r combination.

Each tradition has a drain/risk mechanic which applies, regardless of which focus you use; but these can all be avoided by spending power points, if you have any. You have to decide before rolling, though. Some powers can't be used without power points.

Either way, PCs will have gotten some magic powers from vision quests.

Traditions:
A:

Guardians of Purity: A mashup of Zoroastrian mages, Shinto priests and African rain-makers (another ritual-purity based magical tradition.) I'm sure there are other folkloric sources.

Inner Furnace Disciples: The central conceit is that they perform internal alchemy, which is a very Chinese thing. Are there other magical traditions to draw on which focus on replicating natural or organic forces inside your own body? Other than generic crazy people who think they should eat metal - although that is certainly part of the schtick.

J:

K:

New Aprocraphists: Heavily influenced by the purists from Shadowfist - as well as numerology of various stripes from around the world.

Qnord: Chaos mages, deal in comedy. "Does random shit" is not a focus, so instead they get foci that deal with the unexpected, with culture and entertainment. Should I remove this tradition because of the risk of Fish Malking?

U:

V:

Wild Hunt: An ecstatic/possession tradition that acts more like H^3. Lots of folkloric support.

X: Secrecy mages; may be lots of organizations, has lots of temporary names that they discard. Having a lot of points in Obscure is obviously useful but everyone can get that - their unique angle is their magic gets special targets of people who do not know what you're doing or why, focuses that depend on ignorance, and so forth. Gnostic and some geas-based folklore (Graegerach? The Pictish guys, however it's spelled) feeds into this.

Young Chaos: Chaos mages. "Does random shit" is not a focus, so instead they get methods that either feed on or create havoc, disorder, rebellion, etc. All Chaos mages are worrisome for fish malking.

Z Group: Businessmen. They get foci that heavily involve the making of promises and actual cash payments; there are several folkloric traditions with elements of this.