[sorcery] Alternatives to Aging?

[Jeph]

Now, the aging thing is cool and all, but to me seems to be the biggest barrier when porting TRoS (and TRoS-QS, which is probably the only iteration I'll ever get to run) over to other settings. I mean, every last aspect of Riddle is just about perfect for The Black Company--except the aging thing. Even Merlin aged backwards; not forwards.

Are there any alternate mechanics that anyone uses, for any setting, as a penalty for using Sorcery other than aging? Could you tell us a bit about how they work?

Thanks,
--Jeff

[Kilor Di]

In the game I'm working on, aging is both a penalty for certain chronomantic (time magic) spells, and a type of attack (when talking about the elemental spirit of time and temporal dragons).  Of course, in that world, time is one of the six elements.  The way I see it, the way a person ages depends on the type of spell or attack used.  Some would increase age, others would decrease age.  It's all a matter of how time works in TROS as compared to whatever world you convert it to.

As a sidenote, in the world I'm talking about, the aging penalty only occurs when using certain temporal magic spells.  Maybe you could make the penalties for magic correspond to the type of magic used.

[Blankshield]

Now, the aging thing is cool and all, but to me seems to be the biggest barrier when porting TRoS (and TRoS-QS, which is probably the only iteration I'll ever get to run) over to other settings. I mean, every last aspect of Riddle is just about perfect for The Black Company--except the aging thing. Even Merlin aged backwards; not forwards.

Are there any alternate mechanics that anyone uses, for any setting, as a penalty for using Sorcery other than aging? Could you tell us a bit about how they work?

Thanks,
--Jeff

If you are looking at a limitation mechanic for magic in The Black Company, my first instinct is "but there isn't one in the setting".  However, that isn't entirely correct.

How about mental stability?  The more you use magic, the more your personality gravitates to an extreme.  I mean, if there is one constant to the mages in tBC, it's that they are all nucking futs.  Even the little ones like One-Eye and Goblin aren't quite all there.

Just a thought.

James

[Ian.Plumb]

Hi,

Now, the aging thing is cool and all, but to me seems to be the biggest barrier when porting TRoS...

Are there any alternate mechanics that anyone uses, for any setting, as a penalty for using Sorcery other than aging?

We will be using disease for our 14th century Lyon campaign environment.

We haven't finalised the mechanics yet. The spell's CTN will determine which of a range of diseases the mage is resisting. The diseases will be inconvenient and recurring rather than lethal, and explicable in terms of the prevalent diseases of the day.

While the disease will attack the mage most of the time there is a small chance that the disease will bypass the mage and attack someone close to the mage.

Cheers,

[kenjib]

If you want a world where magic use can be real exertion and lack of discipline can be deadly, how about having each month worth of aging instead be applied as a wound level applied randomly ala falling damage?

[Judd]

A few nutty ideas:

1 - Everyone has a Nemesis waiting on the other side of the mirror, looking for a crack, trying to get in.

For every month you would age it is a day your Nemesis is loose, having gotten out of the nearest mirror to wreak havoc on your world.  And he knows everything you know.


2 - Every time you fail up to what would have added up to ten months, God takes away someone who was important to you, kills them.  Because Sorcery is a sin and they need to be away from you.


3 - Every time you fail a Demon is let loose into the world, its power based on the CTN of the failure and the type of spell cast.  Remember kids, Sorcery is an unnatural abomination and a sin!


4 - Every CTN of failure is that many people the Sorcerer has to kill as soon as is humanly possible.


I kinda like 1 and 3.

[Ben Lehman]

The Price of Power... so many possibilities.

One house rule that me and my fellows have ended up playing with is this--
1)  Each mage's Price is defined as per setting, culture, and individual situation (any of the above solutions.)
2)  For Prices which are not immediate (so for things like sacrifice) the mage loses 1 dice from his max Spell Pool for each margin of failure, redeemable when the Price is paid.  So, for instance, say my mage needs to pay his price in human blood.  If he fails a spell by MoF 3, his spell pool is down 3 until he kills enough people.
3)  Paying Price in advance can boost spell pool for casting.

Have fun.

yrs--
--Ben

[contracycle]

We haven't finalised the mechanics yet. The spell's CTN will determine which of a range of diseases the mage is resisting. The diseases will be inconvenient and recurring rather than lethal, and explicable in terms of the prevalent diseases of the day.

An interesting and innovative approach.  In fact, I cannot think of any precedents, which is mildly suprising seeing as this approach could (now that I think of it) be 'deduced' from historical texts.  Do you have a particular rationale as to why this happens, what it means etc?

[StahlMeister]

I like to introduce something for my players to take as a gift (or even better flaw) like the fumbles from Earthdawn RPG. You easily have access to demons and so on and/or physical and/or mental damage.

One flaw which the Fey Elf in my group took was (stolen from Rolemaster) "Friend Slayer". When the Sorcerer fumbles the most damage aging and other disadvantages are divided between the group menbers. He, he!!!

[Lxndr]

Wolfen (Lance) is my GM, and has an aging alternative system.  Unfortunately, he's never written it down and I can't always remember the details.  Instead of aging, my character suffers penalties and bouts of weakness after casting.

I've got to say, I like falling-damage as a quick-change.  Ignores toughness and everything...

I also love the Nemesis idea, although it's obviously flavored for a very few, specific settings (which haven't even been created yet).  And any game that uses it would have to take that into account before play, 'cause you KNOW that historical figures would have had trouble with Nemeses...

[Stephen]

You could say that instead of aging, the character gains a level of Fatigue for every month he would have aged; every level of Fatigue is a -1d penalty to CP, SP and MP, and Fatigue equal to EN x 2 equals a collapse from exhaustion.  So you wind up with a "death spiral" of casting ability, even if you're not in immediate danger of combat -- the first spell you don't cast perfectly reduces your immediate ability to cast further, and too many spells too fast eventually knocks you out as surely as a botched Knockout roll would have.

[Pyske]

One of the nice things about the system is that it so easily lends to a raw margin of failure number (MoF), which you can then convert into whatever you need.  A few more examples:

+ Overchannelling causes dissociation / makes people detached from the world.  They lose one point from an SA for each MoF.

+ Magic drives mages insane.  Failure adds a flaw similar to Greed or Bloodlust which corresponds to the insanity.  The difficulty of resisting is equal to the accumulated MoF.  Multiple insanities are possible, but the PC may no select a new insanity to add points to until the old one equals Willpower.  Notable successes or failures in controlling the insanity may reduce or increase it.

+ Magic makes people unlucky.  It adds "curse" dice which act as a negative SA, activated by the Seneshal.  These dice are removed from the pool when the SA is activated.

+ Magic ravages the body & mind.  MoF accumulates, and can be used to buy down the mage's attributes in the same way SAs would be spent to increase them.

+ Evil hunts mages.  10 - MoF is the TN for Sense Magic tests by the forces of Evil.

+ Overchannelling causes burnout.  MoF is a penalty to the Sorcery Pool.  Each month without increase of the penalty reduces the penalty by 1.

. . . . . . . -- Eric

[Lance D. Allen]

The basics of the system that I use, which Lx mentions, are as follows:

Whenever a spell is cast, the player will suffer CTN (modified by "aging resistance" rolls, familiar, etc.) dice as a penalty to their actions within CTN hours after the spell is cast. The penalties are applied to any actions within that time period at a minimum of 1 dice per action, up to the total remaining, at Seneschal's discretion. Alternately, the player may become "weak" for a period of an hour (meaning during that period all actions are penalized to the maximum).

I really like some of these other suggestions, tho', esp. those by Pyske and Stephen.

[Andrew Mure]

I am thinking about adapting The Riddle of Steel for Greek mythology and magic was one thing that would need development. Anyway what I thought a botch would represent is one of the gods taking an interest in the spell and interferring.

In practise a spell would always be cast however each botch would allow the gm (playing your typical capricious Olympian deity) to add, replace or take away a word from what the player said the spell would do.

For Example.

Seeing that the Greeks who were besieging her city for the last 10 years have disappeared one morning leaving a huge wooden horse outside, Trojan princess (and seeress), Cassandra tries to use her powers of foresight to find out what this means. The spell is.

'TELL ME WHAT THIS WOODEN HORSE MEANS FOR TROY.'

Cassandra rolls her dice and gets three botches. Athena, Goddess of wisdom and ally of the Greeks realises what Cassandra is doing and adds the following words.

-ALL DISBELIEVE ME...


As I've said the idea is currently in its infancy and needs ironing out a bit to make it more game friendly, possibly allowing players to protect certain words, but you can see where I am aiming.

[Ian.Plumb]

Hi,

We haven't finalised the mechanics yet. The spell's CTN will determine which of a range of diseases the mage is resisting. The diseases will be inconvenient and recurring rather than lethal, and explicable in terms of the prevalent diseases of the day.

An interesting and innovative approach.  In fact, I cannot think of any precedents, which is mildly suprising seeing as this approach could (now that I think of it) be 'deduced' from historical texts.  Do you have a particular rationale as to why this happens, what it means etc?

This is one of those questions that has the capacity to result in a very long reply -- so I'll keep it short and if anyone wants the full story they can email me privately.

To answer your question, yes, we have an extensive rationale as to why disease is used as a replacement for aging. Without a doubt the hardest part of producing our historical campaign environment has been the treatment of faith and magic. Everything else, in spite of the difficulty of researching material in a foreign country and foreign language, has been relatively straightforward by comparison.

In creating an historic gaming environment it is important that players be able to see how the gaming environment could have been a precursor to the world we see today. Without that link the material would stray into fantasy or at least alternate-Earth territory. We didn't want that, we wanted reality and historic accuracy.

How then to treat faith and magic? Our material is set in Lyon, "The Second Rome". It is an ancient city, a place where spiritual power and temporal power are in the same hands. The Archbishop and the 32 Canons of the Cathedral Chapter of Saint John the Baptist are also the 33 co-counts of the Barony Lyonnais as defined by the King of France.

In a place that is clearly run by the church it seems obvious to implement the churches' view of the spiritual realm into the House Rules. This wasn't easy to do. We ended up basing our model of the spiritual realm on St Augustine's (as detailed in "City of God") -- not because it was the most accurate representation of 14th century church doctrine (though he was very influential) but rather because he gives a clear view of the spiritual realm that devolves relatively easily into a set of game mechanics. We could have made a more historically accurate model of the spiritual realm at the cost of being less playable.

As a result of implementing this model of the spiritual realm we have a spiritual view of magic. The cost of casting magic is therefore set in spiritual terms (rather than purely physical terms, as aging would be).

Cheers,