Heyo. I'm back from the dead, and hopefully better and minimizing workload and preventing burnout. Not sure if any of the people I know from years past are still here, but I had the idea and figured I'd at least write it down and see who shows up. Looking for somewhere between 4 and 8 people for this, details down below.
For best results, read in Cave Johnson's voice.
All of you wake up in a grassy field, with missing memories. (At least, you assume they're missing.) You have some vague idea of who you were before, but everything seems blurry, practically illegible in your mind. Just feelings and flashes. The sky above you seems to be a deep blue, with only the wispiest of clouds. Despite the fact that there is clearly no sun visible in said sky, the area seems to be lit like its high noon.
Before anyone can react, a disembodied, booming voice rings out across the field. "Ah, yes." There's a sound of shuffling paperwork. "Now that you've all signed the consent forms, we can begin. I'll refresh your memory for you." You note the voice sounds rather average, volume aside. "You're all here, in this pocket dimension, because you've agreed to help me delve the depths of magic. You were all, in your past lives, the best and brightest mages in the world." He coughed, and then muttered to himself. "Well, not the
best, after all none of the other archmages were willing to let me strip them of their defenses and memories and lock them in a pocket dimension for some reason. Paranoid bastards. But like, second best. Maybe third. Yeah, let's go with third." He cleared his throat again. "Anyways. Having delved the depths of magic as far as I can go, it is my hope that taking talented individuals and forcing them to work from the ground up will lead to new, even unprecedented magical discoveries. Just imagine! You all could rewrite the very laws of magic that we base our spellcasting on. No preconceived notion of how things should work, no stereotypes, and hardly any ability to even sense mana yet. Just raw talent."
"So that was our deal. You're here until you relearn magic well enough to force your way out of this pocket dimension. It won't be easy, mind you, but don't worry if it takes you awhile. The pocket's self sustaining, so there's no time limit. The whole things quite ingenious, really. All natural systems are either located inside, or duplicated well enough with dimensional trickery. There's plenty of raw resources to refine for enchanting or magical equipment, and that shed on the edge of the forest has a decent chunk of starting gear, nonmagically speaking. You won't have to worry about having a single change of clothes. No worries about starving either, there's plenty of fruiting trees, bugs, plants, animals. Oh! To keep things authentic, I did include a number of wild magical beasts. Look out for those, engage with caution, yadda yadda yadda. Don't piss off the blink deer, avoid the siren spiders, et cetera. If one of you do die, however, don't worry! We've got replacements."
"While I did strip your memories, intuition remains. Not going to make you all rediscover the concept of agriculture or metal tools, just the details." Another cough. "Well that's all for now. Time to get cracking! I'll check back in with you all at the end of the week. Well, end of the week for me, not for you. The whole damn thing's under time dilation, because I've not figured out immortality yet. Actually, scratch that, I'd time dilate it anyways. I'm impatient, and there's Science! to do. See you all in a month. Your time, that is."
Hmm. Just what have you signed yourself up for?
Vaguely inspired by a couple of other older RTDs on here, such as that one Enchanter one, and Dwayna's "Survive!" Your goal is to escape the pocket dimension, learn magic, and hopefully not die. I've got a magic system in mind, and you get to figure out what it is. The survival aspects will be mostly fluffed out, at least after the initial phase. You won't need to worry about disease or winters, but you will need to find food and make gear from... pretty much scratch. First step bronze, I suppose? Hopefully magic will make the whole thing faster, once you start figuring that out.
Each turn takes roughly 4 hours. 4 turns makes a day, with 8 hours to sleep. You can put multiple actions into a single turn, though of course spending that time on a single task will give more or a better result.
Just standard 1d6, 1 being a complete fail and 6 being an oversuccess. Combat against other people or magical creatures is just 1d6 vs 1d6. Something that bugs me in rtds like the old Roll To Magic, is mages failing on a comparatively simple spell for no real reason beyond dice. I have a solution for this: Familiarity. As you become more familiar with a particular spell, and spellcasting in general, the consequences for fails and oversuccess will shift closer to the middle outcome. A baby mage casting a new spell for the first time might have the whole thing detonate in their face, whereas a relatively competent spellcaster learning a new spell might just have it fizzle, for example. At really high levels of spell familiarity, rolling a 1 means your spell performs something like 15% under par, as long as you're not trying anything funky or new. I can go into more detail here if people request it, feel free to ask if you want examples. This familiarity concept applies to nonmagical tasks as well, such as farming, assuming you're using the right tools.
Step one would presumably be figuring out how to sense your magic, or the ambient mana in the world. Learning magic (or writing a new enchantment, or a ward, or anything) involves the same 1d6 used for combat, or for crafting nonmagical equipment, etc. When trying to learn a new spell, or new skill, describe what you think needs to happen. The more speculation on how your character thinks a given thing works, the better. (To a point, I don't need 8000 word essays for a single spell of course.) I'll then roll for you studying on that turn, and describe how things go. If you roll well you might succeed, or at least get a hint towards some mechanic, or where you should maybe be looking. Lower rolls will accumulate progress but not give any actual results on their own unless you're spot on with how you think a given spell or skill works. Might make more sense to see in action, or less, who knows.
Name: (Whatever you call yourself)
Description: (Both physical, and a vague backstory)
Status: (Any ongoing afflictions? Let me know here)
HP: 10/10 (try to keep this one above zero)
Hunger: 10/10 (this one too)
Mana: 10/10 (this one might be ok to hit 0, you're not sure)
Inventory: (Any and all items and equipment that you're carrying. Keep it up to date.)
Current Location:
Skills: (Leave empty for now)
Spells and magical knowledge: (Leave empty for now)
Make sure to include this as a spoiler in every post where you make an action. And keep it up to date, please!
Just need a name, age, description, and a vague backstory. Assume you were all quite competent mages in your past life, be it combat mage, enchanter, generalist, bookworm, whatever. This game won't have explicit physical stats, or even magic ones , (you're all talented mages, after all,) but your backstory and physical description may play into certain rolls' outcomes.
Everyone starts with 10 health, 10 hunger, and 10 mana, so do be sure to include that. Starting equipment is just the clothes on your back, all nonmagical. And whatever is in the shed, but you all haven't looted that yet. If the game has 8 people already, go ahead and make a character anyways! I'll add you to the waitlist, for in the event of Unexplained Character Death.
Part of what has sucked my soul dry on previous games is bookkeeping. Spending two hours just copy pasting stuff and making sure it's formatted, etc. To (hopefully) simplify things and reduce formatting time, I'll be tracking everyone and everything on a single doc on my end. I won't be posting this to the forum, or fiddling with formatting. It's suggested you keep your character details and things such as known spells or equipment in a spoiler at the end of your posts. My goal is to put out a turn every 3 days at the worst. I can't see how I would possibly fail to do this with the way things are planned, but then again I've said that in the past, so I suppose we'll see.
Depending on how many and how quickly people sign on, first turn might be as early as tonight, though tomorrow is far more likely. If signons are slow, first turn will be Wednesday assuming I have four by then. If I don't have four by then, I suppose the game could be considered closed. I've almost certainly forgot some critical detail or rule, but hopefully not! Been awhile since I've done one of these, but the idea of fleshing out my magical system from being more than just a framework as players try to uncover and break it sounded like a fun idea.
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Topic: Roll to learn magic (5/8) Day 5 (Read 17457 times)