beccaelizabeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccaelizabeth) wrote2010-02-13 04:46 pm
beccaelizabeth) wrote2010-02-13 04:46 pm
Entry tags:
Magic system with story possibilities
I think I've come up with a system of spellcasting that will generate a wide variety of story, including the stuff I want to write.
It would be a bitch to RPG, so I don't know if it will GURPS well, but I think I can use the GURPS rules to pin it down enough to base stuff on.
In GURPS spells are constrained by the time taken to cast them, by the energy needed to cast them, and by the mana levels, which may or may not be aspected so they make some kinds of magic work better than others. Time and skill are a trade off - you can cast fast and sloppy, at a penalty, or you can get really good at a specific spell and not need as much time. Getting good requires a combination of natural talent and studying up. Energy requirements can also be reduced by skill, but by single points, not percentages. That helps a lot with a few simple spells, but it isn't really helpful with the bigger flashier stuff. A mage usually gets energy from their own fatigue or in an emergency their own health (fatigue renews in tens of minutes, health takes days). In standard GURPS there's also powerstones or converting electricity to magical energy, but I don't want those options in my story world. There's also the option of casting ceremonially with supporters to donate a little of their energy each, and that's where it gets interesting.
The system I chose:
To cast a spell you need energy, in either fatigue or hit points, represented by blood.
You need to know the local conditions of magic, the aspect of the mana, and how much of the energy you have gathered is suitable for which elements or colleges of magic.
You need to know a specific spell.
And you need to be physically in place to cast it, which can mean as close as touch range, or the end of a staff, or at the very longest line of sight... but can't mean over CCTV. Distance penalties are a bitch.
What you don't need are all these qualities in one person.
A solo spellcaster needs to provide all the above. They need to gather energy, sense the aspects, decide on the spell, cast it, and not pass out from energy loss, especially since they'll be somewhere their target can see them. It's possible, but for most spells it's *difficult*, and most people don't have enough personal energy to get more than one shot. And they need Magery, which is a rare genetic trait, and cannot be learned; plus learning spells well enough to account for local mana conditions, which takes either a lot of learning or a whole lot of luck.
But a group? They can split up the task.
Supporters donate energy. They don't need Magery, anyone can donate a little. Supporters with Magery can donate more, especially if they study up on how. So a few educated individuals with a genetic gift can equal the energy pool of a lot of ordinary people who never studied... but there's a whole lot of the latter. In theory, you can get a whole stadium full of supporters to donate energy for real magic, though the efficiency goes down as the numbers go up. The main risk to supporters is being too drained. They can be knocked unconscious by their donation... but that just leaves them vulnerable until they wake up. It's pretty safe, even repeated, unless something happens to them while they're out. Energy donation itself is safe, just the consequences it draws might not be.
Researchers perceive energy, and know spells to match it. They need Magery 0, to sense the mana and the aspect of what they're accumulating. They also need to have studied, so they'll be able to pick spells that can function in those conditions. But they don't need to be widely versatile if they work in a group - they could pick one element each and specialise, for instance. It also compensates for some of the more common dangers. If you spend a lot of time staring into the mystical you might get a little disconnected from the day to day. Misperceptions ranging right up to outright delusion can be the consequence of overwork or major mistakes. And simple errors in perceiving the mana can make a right mess of casting a spell. A solo caster takes all that risk on themselves. Researchers working in a team can confirm or compare each perception. A pair would get stuck if they disagreed, so the lowest practical number is usually three. If one of them starts going strange the others can tell them to take a break, or sometimes guide them back. Researchers on their own however will each come up with something different, based on their unique perception of the world. Someone needs to decide which to commit energy to.
The Focus of a group takes all of that energy and all of those suggestions and chooses one spell to cast. They need Magery, the more of it the better. They're the actual spellcaster of the group. All the hazards of critical failures accumulate on them. Failure can distort their relation to the universe in really weird ways, do things only magic can do but magic cannot fix. In most castings they're the fuse in the circuit - get the spell wrong and it's the Focus who burns out. Power and risk are necessarily linked. But as long as they've got the time, the skill, and the concentration, they can do amazing things. Concentration, however, is harder to achieve in the middle of a battle, since injury or just plain fright can break it, and cause a spell to at best disperse its energy and at worst misfire badly. So they found one more element to get around that:
The Chosen One.
This can be anyone.
They don't need Magery, they don't need physical strength, their health and fatigue aren't a prerequisite of casting. They just have to be Chosen, and to Choose in return. If it's not mutual the spells rebound: you can't cast through the unwilling, just on them, and you can't hijack another group.
Anyone can be Chosen, as long as they also Choose.
The trick, of course, is to also survive it. To be the eyes and ears of a group, to help them scry inside a museum to see how a painting was made, or to walk the wards in a hospital looking for someone magic can help, that can be fairly low risk. But there's other sorts of magic. Send someone into a fight? Either they need to be able to hold their own, or their first shot had better be the last they need.
Magic cannot detect who might be or who has been a Chosen One, only who is one right at that moment. Security precautions, mundane or otherwise, cannot know who is about to Choose. They're the ultimate in stealth and cannot be profiled.
But there are spells that block magic, including the magic focused through a Chosen. Some spells are cast on an area, so there's no other magic in that area until the spell is broken. Those spells either have to be maintained by a group of Supporters, Researchers, and a Focus, any of whom can be taken out to break the casting, or there might be magical artefacts in the 'verse. I think I prefer the version that keeps it focused on people, but there's obvious problems with keeping even a group that can relay focused on a particular ritual for any length of time. Either way, someone with no magic would have an advantage in avoiding detection, and a target that would let help get to them. Time for sneaky missions to disrupt the enemy stronghold. Other spells might just put up walls to block spells from crossing that line. In that case an infiltrator would have to balance the benefits of stealth with the benefits of being able to cast their own spells once inside; they could even bring a small team with their own Supporters to power them. Either way, there's roles for different skill sets.
It's not all about the Focus all the time, or all about the Researchers. And Supporters only look like the least powerful until you realise the consequences of them withdrawing their support at the wrong moment, or actively voting against - there's GURPS rules that say one person opposing a ritual, even without any Magery, counts to cancel five active helpers. It doesn't take much to sabotage a group. And it could look like it would be about the Chosen One, the way Buffy going after the Initiative was still pretty much Buffy, but with the perception and choices spread out among the others the problem is rather likely to be the reverse: it would be easy to treat the Chosen as the disposable one. But again, all they have to do is withdraw their consent, and boom, spell rebound. Everyone has their own power and their own risks. The Chosen is the dynamic one in the field, but they have to roll with whatever spells become available to them, and that's not predictable ahead of time. Mana is like the weather - you can tell there's a chance of rain, or Water aspect tonight, but exactly when it will turn up? Not so very known. ... which I guess would make Researchers the ones who have to stick their hands out the window to figure out if it's rain or hail right then...
This variety of spellcasting allows for the independent flashy stuff, but makes teamwork more flexible and effective. It's the captain, crew, and away team. I haven't seen magic worked like that elsewhere, and it's something I miss.
So then there's just deciding who all this magic is going to be aimed at.
First of all: Humans.
I want to tell stories about human choices, powers, inequalities, and consequences.
I don't want to muddle things up by having demons or souls in the mix. It's just people, doing things, and living with it.
You can still use magic to get classic werewolves and vampires to fight. But NO INFECTIOUS ATTACKS. No getting bit and turning evil. It's creepy and freaky in all the wrong ways. In order to be a werewolf or a vampire you have to study up and choose it.
I like the idea of zombie warriors, people who lost a will roll and ended up remote controlled, and they could be shapeshifted from outside. Or the classic Circe's Island thing, men are all beasts... BUT there always has to be room to make a different choice. While there's life, there's free will, and the capacity to change. People might have given up on fighting whatever has a hold on them, but if they choose to fight it there's a chance to break free.
... basically even cybermen can change allegiances, sometimes...
I think the idea of irrevocable deals, with the devil or otherwise, are a really big problem, because where's the incentive to do right again? The idea of irredeemable is a devil trick to keep people on the downslide. And any potion addiction has consequences, yeah, but there must be ways of fighting them. Telling the other story is like telling to give up, and bugger that. Can always just stop doing the messed up things. And take the consequences.
... which are often a pretty big damn problem, but therein lies the tale.
So, adversaries:
Werewolf gangs. Using magic focused on their own bodies to boost strength. Like steroids, only more so. There's responsible and steady ways to do it, short burst abilities, but going too far for too long or deliberately boosting aggression leads to behaviour they might later regret. It's not a simple 'the wolf within' situation, it's that everyone has a wolf, even the ones that never switch shapes. Magically enhanced bodies could do damage that only magic could counter. Guns are as ever a bit of a problem. Shooting people, or blowing them up, tends to work real well... if and only if you consider dead people to be a solution. Dead people are the problem. Magic is the only way to save the wolves. And aimed right they can be great allies.
Vampire clubs. If blood converts to magical energy a Vampire could simply be a Mage who uses supporters who donate. Dangerous, though, so the conversion rate would have to be notably better than the simple fatigue donation... or have other benefits. What if using their blood ties them to the caster in more intimate ways? What if it's a way to see through their eyes, feel with their senses? Now that could be interesting. The Vampire would have supporters who live vicariously through them. Does that make them a leech? Well what are they giving back to their supporters? And what are they doing with all that magic? If it's all hedonism and beauty spells, is it worth it? But what if it's more about letting out your Hyde side... like the Blakes 7 episode where the whole planet watches through the eyes of two fighters, one of them about to die. All those donors feeling it as the Vampire goes to do things they'd never dare... and only the Vampire to take the consequences. Who is leeching on who?
The Magic Factory. To be a Supporter in a spell you need to do repetetive actions and/or speak repetetive words... factory and call center anyone? To be a Supporter you don't need to know what you're doing... And any number of people can Support a spell. What could big business do, if they could get their employees together and a Focus to tap them? What's the ethics, if your employees don't know where their efforts lead? And would they care, as long as they got paid? So it's a boring repetitive kind of pointless and extra exhausting job... aka job, for short. So the boss uses their effort to keep healthy, wealthy and powerful. So what else is new?
Which bits need fighting, and how would you fight them?
It's the most interesting, but the hardest to focus. How do you bespell a corporation?
All these rules and types are not yet characters and plots. But I think you can get a lot of character and plot out of them.
If the government knows about magic, what do they do with it? How do you study it? Are there evening classes, or adult education courses, or degrees? What's the specialities? Does it do pretty much what technology does, only more so? If so, what's the point?
... yeah, once I get to 'what's the point' I need a really good answer before I can make story...
The point of course is that the existing power structures are arranged that way because certain groups have access to necessary resources and can block other groups.
Magic is new (magic is back, rediscovered, as in earlier posts).
Groups with magic have different requirements, different resources, accessed different ways.
That can change the order of thing, rearrange the gatekeepers, empower different groups.
Once it's settled out so there's a new powerful and some oppressed powerless then it's much less interesting, though with more defined where to aim the fights.
Trying to use a new sort of power to even things out with the older sorts, that's the point. And hopefully the fun.
It would be a bitch to RPG, so I don't know if it will GURPS well, but I think I can use the GURPS rules to pin it down enough to base stuff on.
In GURPS spells are constrained by the time taken to cast them, by the energy needed to cast them, and by the mana levels, which may or may not be aspected so they make some kinds of magic work better than others. Time and skill are a trade off - you can cast fast and sloppy, at a penalty, or you can get really good at a specific spell and not need as much time. Getting good requires a combination of natural talent and studying up. Energy requirements can also be reduced by skill, but by single points, not percentages. That helps a lot with a few simple spells, but it isn't really helpful with the bigger flashier stuff. A mage usually gets energy from their own fatigue or in an emergency their own health (fatigue renews in tens of minutes, health takes days). In standard GURPS there's also powerstones or converting electricity to magical energy, but I don't want those options in my story world. There's also the option of casting ceremonially with supporters to donate a little of their energy each, and that's where it gets interesting.
The system I chose:
To cast a spell you need energy, in either fatigue or hit points, represented by blood.
You need to know the local conditions of magic, the aspect of the mana, and how much of the energy you have gathered is suitable for which elements or colleges of magic.
You need to know a specific spell.
And you need to be physically in place to cast it, which can mean as close as touch range, or the end of a staff, or at the very longest line of sight... but can't mean over CCTV. Distance penalties are a bitch.
What you don't need are all these qualities in one person.
A solo spellcaster needs to provide all the above. They need to gather energy, sense the aspects, decide on the spell, cast it, and not pass out from energy loss, especially since they'll be somewhere their target can see them. It's possible, but for most spells it's *difficult*, and most people don't have enough personal energy to get more than one shot. And they need Magery, which is a rare genetic trait, and cannot be learned; plus learning spells well enough to account for local mana conditions, which takes either a lot of learning or a whole lot of luck.
But a group? They can split up the task.
Supporters donate energy. They don't need Magery, anyone can donate a little. Supporters with Magery can donate more, especially if they study up on how. So a few educated individuals with a genetic gift can equal the energy pool of a lot of ordinary people who never studied... but there's a whole lot of the latter. In theory, you can get a whole stadium full of supporters to donate energy for real magic, though the efficiency goes down as the numbers go up. The main risk to supporters is being too drained. They can be knocked unconscious by their donation... but that just leaves them vulnerable until they wake up. It's pretty safe, even repeated, unless something happens to them while they're out. Energy donation itself is safe, just the consequences it draws might not be.
Researchers perceive energy, and know spells to match it. They need Magery 0, to sense the mana and the aspect of what they're accumulating. They also need to have studied, so they'll be able to pick spells that can function in those conditions. But they don't need to be widely versatile if they work in a group - they could pick one element each and specialise, for instance. It also compensates for some of the more common dangers. If you spend a lot of time staring into the mystical you might get a little disconnected from the day to day. Misperceptions ranging right up to outright delusion can be the consequence of overwork or major mistakes. And simple errors in perceiving the mana can make a right mess of casting a spell. A solo caster takes all that risk on themselves. Researchers working in a team can confirm or compare each perception. A pair would get stuck if they disagreed, so the lowest practical number is usually three. If one of them starts going strange the others can tell them to take a break, or sometimes guide them back. Researchers on their own however will each come up with something different, based on their unique perception of the world. Someone needs to decide which to commit energy to.
The Focus of a group takes all of that energy and all of those suggestions and chooses one spell to cast. They need Magery, the more of it the better. They're the actual spellcaster of the group. All the hazards of critical failures accumulate on them. Failure can distort their relation to the universe in really weird ways, do things only magic can do but magic cannot fix. In most castings they're the fuse in the circuit - get the spell wrong and it's the Focus who burns out. Power and risk are necessarily linked. But as long as they've got the time, the skill, and the concentration, they can do amazing things. Concentration, however, is harder to achieve in the middle of a battle, since injury or just plain fright can break it, and cause a spell to at best disperse its energy and at worst misfire badly. So they found one more element to get around that:
The Chosen One.
This can be anyone.
They don't need Magery, they don't need physical strength, their health and fatigue aren't a prerequisite of casting. They just have to be Chosen, and to Choose in return. If it's not mutual the spells rebound: you can't cast through the unwilling, just on them, and you can't hijack another group.
Anyone can be Chosen, as long as they also Choose.
The trick, of course, is to also survive it. To be the eyes and ears of a group, to help them scry inside a museum to see how a painting was made, or to walk the wards in a hospital looking for someone magic can help, that can be fairly low risk. But there's other sorts of magic. Send someone into a fight? Either they need to be able to hold their own, or their first shot had better be the last they need.
Magic cannot detect who might be or who has been a Chosen One, only who is one right at that moment. Security precautions, mundane or otherwise, cannot know who is about to Choose. They're the ultimate in stealth and cannot be profiled.
But there are spells that block magic, including the magic focused through a Chosen. Some spells are cast on an area, so there's no other magic in that area until the spell is broken. Those spells either have to be maintained by a group of Supporters, Researchers, and a Focus, any of whom can be taken out to break the casting, or there might be magical artefacts in the 'verse. I think I prefer the version that keeps it focused on people, but there's obvious problems with keeping even a group that can relay focused on a particular ritual for any length of time. Either way, someone with no magic would have an advantage in avoiding detection, and a target that would let help get to them. Time for sneaky missions to disrupt the enemy stronghold. Other spells might just put up walls to block spells from crossing that line. In that case an infiltrator would have to balance the benefits of stealth with the benefits of being able to cast their own spells once inside; they could even bring a small team with their own Supporters to power them. Either way, there's roles for different skill sets.
It's not all about the Focus all the time, or all about the Researchers. And Supporters only look like the least powerful until you realise the consequences of them withdrawing their support at the wrong moment, or actively voting against - there's GURPS rules that say one person opposing a ritual, even without any Magery, counts to cancel five active helpers. It doesn't take much to sabotage a group. And it could look like it would be about the Chosen One, the way Buffy going after the Initiative was still pretty much Buffy, but with the perception and choices spread out among the others the problem is rather likely to be the reverse: it would be easy to treat the Chosen as the disposable one. But again, all they have to do is withdraw their consent, and boom, spell rebound. Everyone has their own power and their own risks. The Chosen is the dynamic one in the field, but they have to roll with whatever spells become available to them, and that's not predictable ahead of time. Mana is like the weather - you can tell there's a chance of rain, or Water aspect tonight, but exactly when it will turn up? Not so very known. ... which I guess would make Researchers the ones who have to stick their hands out the window to figure out if it's rain or hail right then...
This variety of spellcasting allows for the independent flashy stuff, but makes teamwork more flexible and effective. It's the captain, crew, and away team. I haven't seen magic worked like that elsewhere, and it's something I miss.
So then there's just deciding who all this magic is going to be aimed at.
First of all: Humans.
I want to tell stories about human choices, powers, inequalities, and consequences.
I don't want to muddle things up by having demons or souls in the mix. It's just people, doing things, and living with it.
You can still use magic to get classic werewolves and vampires to fight. But NO INFECTIOUS ATTACKS. No getting bit and turning evil. It's creepy and freaky in all the wrong ways. In order to be a werewolf or a vampire you have to study up and choose it.
I like the idea of zombie warriors, people who lost a will roll and ended up remote controlled, and they could be shapeshifted from outside. Or the classic Circe's Island thing, men are all beasts... BUT there always has to be room to make a different choice. While there's life, there's free will, and the capacity to change. People might have given up on fighting whatever has a hold on them, but if they choose to fight it there's a chance to break free.
... basically even cybermen can change allegiances, sometimes...
I think the idea of irrevocable deals, with the devil or otherwise, are a really big problem, because where's the incentive to do right again? The idea of irredeemable is a devil trick to keep people on the downslide. And any potion addiction has consequences, yeah, but there must be ways of fighting them. Telling the other story is like telling to give up, and bugger that. Can always just stop doing the messed up things. And take the consequences.
... which are often a pretty big damn problem, but therein lies the tale.
So, adversaries:
Werewolf gangs. Using magic focused on their own bodies to boost strength. Like steroids, only more so. There's responsible and steady ways to do it, short burst abilities, but going too far for too long or deliberately boosting aggression leads to behaviour they might later regret. It's not a simple 'the wolf within' situation, it's that everyone has a wolf, even the ones that never switch shapes. Magically enhanced bodies could do damage that only magic could counter. Guns are as ever a bit of a problem. Shooting people, or blowing them up, tends to work real well... if and only if you consider dead people to be a solution. Dead people are the problem. Magic is the only way to save the wolves. And aimed right they can be great allies.
Vampire clubs. If blood converts to magical energy a Vampire could simply be a Mage who uses supporters who donate. Dangerous, though, so the conversion rate would have to be notably better than the simple fatigue donation... or have other benefits. What if using their blood ties them to the caster in more intimate ways? What if it's a way to see through their eyes, feel with their senses? Now that could be interesting. The Vampire would have supporters who live vicariously through them. Does that make them a leech? Well what are they giving back to their supporters? And what are they doing with all that magic? If it's all hedonism and beauty spells, is it worth it? But what if it's more about letting out your Hyde side... like the Blakes 7 episode where the whole planet watches through the eyes of two fighters, one of them about to die. All those donors feeling it as the Vampire goes to do things they'd never dare... and only the Vampire to take the consequences. Who is leeching on who?
The Magic Factory. To be a Supporter in a spell you need to do repetetive actions and/or speak repetetive words... factory and call center anyone? To be a Supporter you don't need to know what you're doing... And any number of people can Support a spell. What could big business do, if they could get their employees together and a Focus to tap them? What's the ethics, if your employees don't know where their efforts lead? And would they care, as long as they got paid? So it's a boring repetitive kind of pointless and extra exhausting job... aka job, for short. So the boss uses their effort to keep healthy, wealthy and powerful. So what else is new?
Which bits need fighting, and how would you fight them?
It's the most interesting, but the hardest to focus. How do you bespell a corporation?
All these rules and types are not yet characters and plots. But I think you can get a lot of character and plot out of them.
If the government knows about magic, what do they do with it? How do you study it? Are there evening classes, or adult education courses, or degrees? What's the specialities? Does it do pretty much what technology does, only more so? If so, what's the point?
... yeah, once I get to 'what's the point' I need a really good answer before I can make story...
The point of course is that the existing power structures are arranged that way because certain groups have access to necessary resources and can block other groups.
Magic is new (magic is back, rediscovered, as in earlier posts).
Groups with magic have different requirements, different resources, accessed different ways.
That can change the order of thing, rearrange the gatekeepers, empower different groups.
Once it's settled out so there's a new powerful and some oppressed powerless then it's much less interesting, though with more defined where to aim the fights.
Trying to use a new sort of power to even things out with the older sorts, that's the point. And hopefully the fun.