I've come here today to tell you about a magic system I've come back to recently. It's called;
Magic System I've Come Back to Recently
I. Aspects
Thought---Soul---Body---Primal---Blood---Entropy---Oblivion
The magic system is built around six Aspects and their use. Aspects are the 'materials' of magic, which would-be mages need to store within themselves to put into spells. A mage can only possess so much energy at a time, so how much of each, if any, they take is very much important, and needs to be chosen according to their magic style and the situation they face. A mage expecting a battle, for example, could anchor himself with a lot of Primal, which is the basic building block of all 'elemental' spells, which are raw, powerful, and unfocused. A mage embarking on a spirit journey would take on a lot of Soul, not just to begin such a journey, but also to protect himself against malevolent spirits and forces. And so forth and so forth.
THOUGHT: The intellect; illusions, altering thoughts and memories, precision, complex emotions, thinking.
SOUL: The spirit, emotional; base reactions, raw emotion, spirit, essence, projections.
BODY: Flesh and bone, the physical host; physical alterations, granting new speed, strength, toughness, sight.
PRIMAL: The primordial forces. Earth, fire, wind, water, motion, heat and cold. Primitive, simple, unfocused.
BLOOD: The source of life; bestial nature, primal rituals and the raw, brutish animal power. Pain, pleasure, instincts, and the force of destroying nature.
ENTROPY: Death, time; the decay of all things, the end of everything. Loss, forgetting, absolution, the dark gift of the earth.
OBLIVION: The void; the absence of life and magic. Every use is a wound in the heart of the world.
A mage replenishes his energies through communion with the earth. All magic and life comes from it, and the closer the connection, the better. Contact with the soil is usually preferred by mages; in urban environments, a circle of dirt on your floor is used just as well as lying on the earth in the countryside.
A player/mage will need to replenish him or herself fairly often, so choosing the specific 'armament' for the job at hand is key. If you're caught in a bad spot with no juice for the spells you need to get out of it, you'd better start running instead. Even if you are, there's only so much energy you have for casting spells, so better make them count. If you charge up on 3 Body, and then need to cast a spell that costs 4 Body Aspects, you're in trouble.
That said, there are ways of decreasing the cost of using magic. The most important are Anchors, which can be anything from key phrases to magical objects. These are imbued with magical energy of a certain type, which essentially fills in to any spell you use. For example, a spell could cost 2 Entropy, but while using an Anchor imbued with 1 Entropy, the spell would only cost -1. The energy of an Anchor does not decrease in this way, so in essence Anchors decrease the cost of spells. Powerful anchors might make certain spells free completely.
Some Anchors are specific to one spell, usually created by the mage after meditation and work. This could be, for example, shouting Ignis! to decrease the Primal cost of a certain fire spell. Overuse of phrase and word-Anchors will usually reduce their effectiveness, so they should be limited to the tightest spots. Other Anchors simply decrease the cost of all spells using a magic type, essentially.
There are also Cosmic Anchors, accessible by all, even those without magic. These are things such as the phrase 'I love you', spoken truly.
Some Anchors are temporary, and are called Wells. These have limited uses, and lend you more extra juice rather than decreasing the cost of using it.
II. Tools of Magic
Learning spells is not child's play, and mere human mages can only hold so much magical energy at a time. Over-reliance on magic can be fatal to a human. However, more power is found in magical objects. These are essentially powerful Anchors, which have been suffused with the energies and forces of the earth, and the collective feelings, ideas and thoughts of living beings around them. Tools of magic can range from staffs to swords, to shields, bracelets, rings, flutes, harps - everything human-crafted.
The origin and journeys of this kind of magic tool grant it varying levels of power and affinity. A staff carved from a bloody wood crackles with the energy of that thirsting, hateful place. A bracelet of bone fashioned from the skull piles of the Red Khmer radiates chilling desperation and stillness. A healer's rod crafted from the plastic and wrappings of a maternity ward, full with the gentle afterglow of a new life. A horn built in the epicenter of the aftermath of a nuclear explosion echoes with apocalyptic primal power.
The world changes. The land dries, or grows more verdant, and the people who tend to it fill it with their lives and emotions. Old tools of magic are powerful not only because power grows with age, but also because they become unique; one of a kind.
Tools of magic have three stats or factors, in-game, which determine their power, their affinities and the spells they grant.
Origin: Perhaps the most important; it determines the affinity of the item and its base potency. Places of high energy, dark or light, dust-and-blood primordial or steel-and-synthetic technological, of hope or of fear – these are the places of powerful tools. A tool crafted out of moon dust and Neil Armstrong's boot has tremendous power, but is useful for totally different purposes than something melted down from the gates of Auschwitz.
Form: A staff is fundamentally different to a sword as a source of power; simply the idea of a weapon will grant a killing edge to a tool, an utilitarian one that of industry, a healer's rod a curing touch.
Influences: The wielders and the uses of a magic tool leave their mark upon it. The older the piece, the more marks, flairs and subtle nuances – always a little of something left from previous users and those around them, and the spells put through the item.
For the player characters, tools of magic are hella important. Nations have gone to war over objects of great power, and dark magi have been rumoured to orchestrate events of great infamy and shock in the collective human psyche, simply for the purpose of creating something imbued with the spiritual energy created. The tools of the trade are varied, so mages should seek out or create tools suited for their style and needs.
Creating magic tools takes time and energy, but there's nothing better than a personalized object of power. Of course, if you manage to instead get your hands on something ancient and terrifyingly powerful, lucky you - though, naturally, everyone else will now be after you to get it for themselves. The society of mages is somewhat of a cutthroat one, and that's not even considering all the other supernatural species, spirits and beings who might take an interest. Magic items are not simply sources of power, but also authority in the supernatural world.
In the example below, the Tool of Magic serves as an Anchor of 2 Thought, 4 Soul, 0 Body, 4 Primal, 3 Blood, 4 Entropy and -1 Oblivion. In the last case, costs of using Oblivion are actually increased, as the Anchor is innately hostile to such a form of magic. In this case, a spell costing 2 Oblivion would cost 3 from the caster. The staff also grants access to spells of its own; combined with the Anchored magic, some of them cost nothing, essentially functions of the staff itself.
The Grey Wind [T+2/S+4/Bo+0/P+4/Bl+3/E+4/O-1]
ORIGIN:
Steppe Wanderer (+4 Entropy +2 Primal, +2 Soul, +1 Thought)
This staff has been put together from little pieces taken from across a vast steppe; discarded things, forgotten things, dead things. Horse hair from a nomad mount has been used to strew it all together, tied hard and fast, sturdy and rugged for use in the unforgiving wastes. It has come to be in desolation, in a vast, lone land, with only the whispering of the wind to keep its creators company...
+Grants Spell: Sky-Sight [Soul 1] (
To truly see the land, transcend flesh.)
+Grants Spell: Stillness [Entropy 1, Oblivion 1] (
Suffer not sound nor motion here.)
+Grants Spell: Stone Soul [Soul 1, Thought 1] (
Here lies the bastion of the spirit.)
FORM:
Shaman's Staff (+2 Soul, +2 Primal, -3 Oblivion)
A sturdy, utilitarian staff composed of little bits and pieces scavenged from across the steppe, from broken rock to frayed bowstrings, fragments of horse bone, remnants of lives swept aside by the wind and loss. This staff speaks for a people long gone; it was once a shaman's tool, dedicated to that people's survival with covenants with the spirits of the land.
INFLUENCES:
Ancient (3 Influences)
- Kinslayer's Bane (+3 Blood)
In the hands of one dark magi, a youth filled with hate and envy, this tool slew many in open murder, including the boy's own flesh and blood – and in the end, it would be his own downfall, drinking his blood as readily as it had his victims'.
+Grants Spell: Strangler Hex [1 Body, 2 Blood] (Bind them, crush them, end them.)
+Grants Spell: Bloodbane [1 Body, 1 Blood] (Poison in our veins is the cruelest death of them all...) - The Long Silence (+2 Oblivion)
For a century, this weapon waited, forgotten, letting time pass by. No woman or man laid eyes upon it, none even drawing near – a silence that still lives on, a void in the heart of it all.
+Grants Spell: Spell of Absolution [5 Thought, 3 Oblivion, 1 Entropy] (A mind rid of memories is a dark prospect.) - Unforgiving Justice (+1 Thought)
A few decades ago, this staff passed into the possession of a Hunter of the Council of Shakhi; an iron-willed judge and executioner of absolute resolution and morality. Hundreds died under the justice he administered, no mercy ever given. This Hunter did not suffer even the briefest flicker of doubt at his absolute right over life and death; he stood above all, executing his masters' will...
+Grants Spell: Mark of Torment [1 Soul, 1 Body, 1 Blood] (An eternal brand, on the flesh and soul of the wicked.)
+Grants Spell: Inquisitor's Touch [2 Thought] (No secrets are safe from our cutting sight.)
III. Spells and Other Mechanics
Spells require expending a number of Aspects, and have an effect. Spells can be ranged, ranged-and-following, on touch, on self, around the caster etc., depending on the specific spell. Actual RPG mechanics for the effects of spells are still pending, sssh, but they'll have a variety of effects. For example, the
Strangler Hex [1 Body, 2 Blood] is a thrown burst of focused energy that catches a target (if it hits), wrapping them up in a steel vice and then crushing them to death. In game terms, it could cause 5 damage on hit, then continuing, +1 increasing damage every turn until the target is dead, as well as dealing movement- and action-impairing effects. Succeeding in a strength roll to break through or dispelling would be needed to escape.
Mechanics are still a bit iffy here, but it'll work out. I'm thinking of going with a number of your usual RPG stats - Strength, Toughness, Agility, plus magic stats which influence how many Aspects you can store at a time, your basic power, etc., which would allow for a variety of player builds. Suggestions, ideas, etc. welcome, if you have 'em.
The game would probably go in rounds of weeks, where you could allocate your actions, such as meditation, Anchoring a spell, crafting a weapon, doing research, and doing missions, investigating things, dealing with surprise visitors and getting involved in stuff that will end up in a quick death if you're lucky. It's a nasty world out there, I'm afraid. Either at the start of a week or the start of each day you could choose your Aspects for that time.
I'd probably have to keep the players together, because dealing with keeping the passage of time the same with separated players is hell, as I've noticed time and time again. Somehow, this makes me visualize an apartment full of magician roomies. I haven't decided on the focus of the game yet (so that would be possible, or the Wizard Council idea I had way back), so a variety of ideas could go with the same system.
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Yeah, I think that's all. I wrote this after waking up, so it might be a bit unclear at points. You have my sympathies.
Comments, shows of interest, questions etc. welcome!
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Topic: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block) (Read 418975 times)