consequences of magic

[madelf]

I need a sounding board, and you folks always work well for that sort of thing.

I'm trying to chase down an idea that's floating around in my head about creating a magic system that would carry the "things man was not meant to know" idea to the level of real consequences of importance to not just the character but to the player.

This isn't entirely original. Call of Cthulu has sanity loss caused by looking in the wrong ancient tomes, Sorceror (as I understand it at least) has loss of humanity caused by playing with demons. I'm sure there are others.

I'd like something slightly different. Something a little... fae.
Let me throw some ideas around and see where they stick.

There is some sort of shadowland, or mists, or otherwise otherworldly place that is just a little out of synch with our world. This is where the faerie creatures and monsters and magic comes from. There are thin areas where things overlap, the unnatural can wander into our world and if we're not careful we can wander into theirs.
"Strange things" tend to happen in these thin places, in the shadows or the mists.
Magic (whatever magic might be) leaks through these thin areas and may be accessed from our world. Maybe using the magic even makes these thin areas grow, causing more weirdness to escape into our world.
Magic can be a handy tool, great fun to play with, but there's a cost. The magic being channeled through you alters you in some way. If you use magic too much or too recklessly, you become a Changeling, half-fae yourself and out of touch with our reality. Some people will fear you, some people will respect you for you now have even greater power...but at what price?

Now...
How would I go about emulating these ideas mechanically? My ideas are too vague. So you become "changed"... so what? What does that mean? How do I quantify what is changed in the scope of game mechanics? What does "out of touch with reality" mean? Insane? Not quite. Non-human, but still human. Tuned in to a different station than the rest of humanity.
Might be physical changes too, or people just feel like you're "creepy".

I guess I need to find some sources for inspiration.
Any thoughts?
Any suggestions?

[Jaik]

Offhand, this sounds exactly like a Sorcerer setup.  Aside from actually using Sorcerer in a customized setting, I think we'd need at least a starting system on which to tweak.

[madelf]

Offhand, this sounds exactly like a Sorcerer setup.  Aside from actually using Sorcerer in a customized setting, I think we'd need at least a starting system on which to tweak.

Huh....

I guess I may have to take a closer look at Sorceror. I'm either not explaining my thoughts well or Sorceror is something rather different than I thought it was.

Wonder which it is?
:)


As a starting system on which to tweak, this...
http://www.madelf.net/angor/angor_pt_32304.zip
would be the base system. (not the same setting, but the basic system structure is probably what I would be working from).
You could ignore most of it and just look at the magic section (pg 61 of the PDF) unless you're a real glutton for punishment.

[Victor Gijsbers]

Madelf, I think you have to force yourself to be quite a lot more specific concerning the nature of magic and the strange world on the other side. (On a side note: reading your story about a paralel world inhabited by strange beings, and so forth, conjured up a very strong image in my mind. It was strong enough that I think I remembered this idea from something I read long ago, but I truly don't know what. Anyway, it is an interesting concept.)

Let me write down the key concepts from your post:
* Real consequences
* Out of synch with our world
* Strange things
* Weirdness
* There is a cost
* Out of touch with reality

Ah! Too vague, too vague! So it's strange, so it's different from our world, but different in what way? You have not even hinted at it. :) It's far too early to even think about mechanics, you'll first have to become a lot more specific about what this weirdness amounts to, what kind of thing the cost is. It might be a good idea just to write down images and words that occur to you, no matter how vague, and see if a picture begins to emerge.

Its hard for outsiders to help at this stage of the creative process, but I want to be perhaps a bit more helpful than merely saying "you've got to work this out!". So the following are questions you might wish to consider:
* Is the other realm connected with evil? If so, is it the understandable, human variety of evil (greed, hate, pride, [fill in your favourite sin], etcetera); or rather evil as the Nothing, the completely Other?
* Are the denizens of the other realm mindless forces? If so, monsters driven by bestial hate and lust, or rather abstract beings with metaphorical significance? Or are the denizens thinking beings? If so, can one talk with them? Can they be trusted? Can they be understood? Could one learn to like them personally, or are they too strange? Do they have real individuality?
* What kinds of effect does the magic from the other realm have in our world? Can it kill? Bend minds to your will? Change fate?

Most importantly, I think you need to find out the Premise which with all this is tied in. "Will you accept power no matter what the consequences?" is a possibility which is hinted at by some of your remarks, but if your idea is anything like the vague notions which are currently floating around in my mind, this is too mundane. Anyway, never mind my vague notions - have fun developing your ideas. :)

[madelf]

Madelf, I think you have to force yourself to be quite a lot more specific concerning the nature of magic and the strange world on the other side.

That's what I'm working on. I'm just throwing in mechanics as I tend to try and think of both the effect I'm seeking and the means of representing it at the same time.

Basically I've found in the past that this forum is quite handy for helping me focus my mind. I sit here and my mind spins in circles and I don't even know the questions to the answers I'm seeking.

By throwing my initial thoughts out and seeing people's reactions to them it helps me narrow things down. I can say, "yes somthing like that but more this way" or "no, not that way at all, but maybe more like this.

Your responses are perfect for what I'm seeking. It gives me questions that trigger answers and bring me closer to definining what I want.

Evil?
Perceived as evil. In general probably and by the church certainly (though the church might actually use the same energy through prayer and "miracles" without even realizing it). In actual practice probably not so evil as much as "other", ammoral as opposed to immoral. Beyond mortal ken, as it were.

Denizens?
A mixed group probably. Some would be bestial, driven by hunger for human blood (or souls?) hunting the realms of the light during the darkness, when the shadows make the barriers between worlds thin. Others would be thinking beings, the dominant life form of the other world. Like us, perhaps, but weird and frightening. Again, perhaps they take from our world for some reason, if only sport.
They would only rarely be trusted. Perhaps their word is binding (magically), but even then they will twist it in any way possible. Or they might chose to be kind, or honorable for a moment if it amuses them. They should be inexplicable. They might be very likable to the right sort of person, particularly to one who has become a Changeling and like unto them. Perhaps the Changeling has come to understand them or perhaps a greater truth, and this is why the Changeling is so strange to us, who see a different world.

Effects of magic?
Change reality. Make the living dead, the dead living, bend minds to your will or break the mind entirely. Magic can do the impossible, but only at the price of tainting your body and soul from contact with the other world.

Premise.
Always the hard question.
Power at any cost? Partly. But I agree, not enough. It's more about the nature of the power.
Power from greater understanding which makes your conscience disjointed from this reality? Perhaps you've attained a different state of being, if not actually a higher state of being. How much of your soul will you sell to become a "greater being"? Will it make you lesser or more? Hmmm...
Is this something desirable, or to be avoided? Is there a universal answer to that question, or is it a personal truth that may be different for everyone.

Wait... I'm supposed to be answering questions, not asking them.

Ah well, one more...
What do the players do?
Are they seeking ancient knowledge that may damn them to the half-life of a Changeling for the greater good of holding back the forces of the other world? Is it a heroic sacrifice? How much is too much to save the world?
Are they witchhunters, fighting to stamp out the practitioners of magic that threaten our very reality by drawing more and more of the "other" into our world?
Are they changelings, or wannabe changelings working to bring magic back to the world? (Perhaps the worlds were one, long ago, but somehow seperated and the changelings are the new breed, the natural order, working to remake the world as it should be).

Oops, I said one more didn't I?
And now I've got three different game concepts.

Now to let it simmer in my brain.

Comments welcome.

(On a side note: reading your story about a paralel world inhabited by strange beings, and so forth, conjured up a very strong image in my mind. It was strong enough that I think I remembered this idea from something I read long ago, but I truly don't know what. Anyway, it is an interesting concept.)

My ideas go back to several sources. The island lost in a half-world of its own, overlapping the "real" world, from "Mists of Avalon".
Celtic fairy folklore, underhill and such.
A book I read many, many years ago which I can only barely remember (and whose title is long lost to me and which I wish I could find again) that had a race of elves that lived in an adjacent reality and a half-elf boy who could see both worlds. (If anyone has the vaguest clue what that book might be, help tracking it down would be appreciated. I'd like to read it again, but I've never been able to find it)
A background story my wife and I knocked together about a Shadowmage she was running in a D&D game. There was a lot of talk about shadow magic being corrupting in that game, but nothing was ever done with it. We had something about shadow elves that befriended the character as a child and granted him the ability to see and manipulate the "shadow of the weave" and use a different type of magic. (Weirdly this predated very parallel developments that WotC implemented for shadow magic. We still joke about the bugs that the D&D designers have concealed in the DM's kitchen)

And probably some other influences I can't think of off the top of my head.



I'm leaning toward flavoring the whole thing with the celtic folktales concept of the Land of Fairy, Thomas the Rymer kind of stuff... but dark. People don't appease the fairies to keep the milk from souring, they appease the fairies because they're sacred to death of them.

[beingfrank]

I've seen it done in a similiar manner to Humanity in Sorceror, where the key componant is Control.  In a setting with Light and Dark Fae there are 3 sorts of magic, Light, Dark and Wild.  The first two a defined by rules.

In Light magic power comes from following the rules.  The player says "this is my magic, and these are my rules."  As long as they stick to those, all is hunky dory.  Kind of like Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm.

In Dark magic power comes from breaking the rules, from the willingness to push beyond the boundaries.  More can be done, but more is lost.  The sacrifice is control, both of the magic, and of the self.  In time the magic comes to control you, rather than you the magic.  The player says "this is my magic, these are the rules, this is how I break them, this is the effect is has on me."

Wild magic has no rules and cannot be controlled.  Mess with it at your own peril.

In the example I've seen, there are no mechanics as such, but I imagine that you could get this effect in a number of ways.

[M. J. Young]

Good to see you again, Calvin.

What strikes me is that the first problem with "this affects you in these ways" is that I have to know why that matters. That is, I can devise any of a dozen mechanical ways of causing changes to interfere with the relationships the player characters have with non-player characters, but why do they care?

Thus for the sorts of affects you're envisioning to have meaning, there has to be something at stake in connection with character relationships. It's easy to suggest ways to "control" the player character's ability to influence, befriend, and otherwise interact with non-player characters; it's a lot harder to make that matter to the player.

--M. J. Young

[contracycle]

Now...
How would I go about emulating these ideas mechanically? My ideas are too vague. So you become "changed"... so what? What does that mean? How do I quantify what is changed in the scope of game mechanics? What does "out of touch with reality" mean? Insane? Not quite. Non-human, but still human. Tuned in to a different station than the rest of humanity.
Might be physical changes too, or people just feel like you're "creepy".

Yeah I think you need more clarity on the actual outputs you desire; from the description you give its easy to see many examples in existing games of similar structures.  Whether or not they have an impact on the player beyond their sympathy for their character though is a different matter.

Mage: The Ascension contains the possibility that excessive use of magic cocoons a character in a self-referential bubble of their own magically manifested desires effectively removing them from human company and sympathy.

Conspiracy X contains the possibility that tampering with magic - a psychic force possessed of rudimentary consciousness and malice - will/may push you over the edge of sanity to become an Incarnation of of an archetypal human fear.

These two examples demonstrate the most common usage of such 'secrets man was not meant to know' tropes, and in a conventional manner use them as a failure condition, i.e. loss of the character.  Both include 'weak spots' or particular locales with magical sympathies.

ConX's descent into hell mechanic is much more interesting that Mage's though.  A given form of Incarnate is comprised of 6 characteristic (and usually unpleasant) traits that the character can acquire in traditional circumstances (stress, exposure, infection, etc).  Full loss of control can be restrained for some time; but concealing your new predeliction for human flesh from you companions might be tricky.


I think the central problem with reversing the angle so that this personal evolution becomes the subject of play is very tricky for a multiple-protagonist medium.  Most such stories concentrate heavily on the internal monologue of the viewpoint character and are thus able to explore personal apotheosis.  How you would structure this in game terms is presently beyond me.

[madelf]

I think the central problem with reversing the angle so that this personal evolution becomes the subject of play is very tricky for a multiple-protagonist medium. Most such stories concentrate heavily on the internal monologue of the viewpoint character and are thus able to explore personal apotheosis. How you would structure this in game terms is presently beyond me.

What strikes me is that the first problem with "this affects you in these ways" is that I have to know why that matters. That is, I can devise any of a dozen mechanical ways of causing changes to interfere with the relationships the player characters have with non-player characters, but why do they care?

Thus for the sorts of affects you're envisioning to have meaning, there has to be something at stake in connection with character relationships. It's easy to suggest ways to "control" the player character's ability to influence, befriend, and otherwise interact with non-player characters; it's a lot harder to make that matter to the player.

I think these points get to the root of the problem.
The other (flavor) stuff is a chinese menu, I can just pick and chose whatever elements I want and go with it. They're all just variations on the theme. So which particular elements I use is less the critical issue I think.

The problem is how to express the concept of "becoming other" in any way that will have meaning to the player while still maintaining a playable character.

The only thing I've personally run into that even made a passing attempt at addressing the idea is Vampire, and that fails miserably on carrying it through. For a game that's supposed to be about loss of humanity, it always just seems to end up being a game of political intrigue or a revel in mindless destruction.

What makes a player about to cast a spell stop and think "Is what I'm about to do worth taking another step toward being unhuman?" How do I devise a way to measure the increments of those changes? If the player takes those steps toward "otherness", how do I maintain a playable character while still establishing a price for the power? At what point does the character become too "other" and get taken out of the game? Is that point ever reached?

Right now, after thinking about this a bit,  I'm mulling over a merits/flaws sort of structure. As you become more "other", you gain benefits. But when you gain a benefit, you also gain a disdvantage. So as a character becomes more and more a changeling, they get more and more special abilities, but they also develop more and more disadvantages and traits that set them apart from humanity. So as a character advances in power, they pay a price that impacts the potential of having a normal life or being accepted by society. For instance... maybe after you mess around with magic for a time you find that you can see far better in the dark than a normal person (a decided advantage for a hero who fights the creatures of the night), but you're almost blind by daylight. Or maybe you find yourself getting stronger, but you find that eating anything but raw flesh makes you ill. (Again, the strength is an advantage in many situations, but it could make the celebratory dinner at the Lord's palace problematic to say the least).
Eventually a character who fought the forces of "other" for long enough, could become very powerful, but would be so tainted by the "other" than even though he's humanity's greatest hero, he's lost everything that made him human. He would be considered a monster in the frightened eyes of his fellow men. Now he has become one of the very creatures he once hunted as the enemy of his kind. What will this mean for him now? Does he still try and hold on to the the scraps of humanity he has left (which will only get harder) and try to defend mankind despite their hatred, or does he turn his back on humanity and embrace life among the "other"?

I guess the question is whether that will be enough to draw the player in, to make them care enough about the downsides of becoming a changeling to explore that dilemma in play, or if it'll just end up being a race for power and who cares if we're human.
Will the different decisions by the players on when to risk magic cause an interesting mix of more and less "changed" characters, resulting in interesting inter-party relationships as someone is forced to realize that their best buddy pushed his luck too far, and is now a changeling with decidedly weird characteristics, and they have to find a way to come to terms with that.
Or will that aspect just be glossed over and ignored by most players?

I mean, I can tell people to role play that sort of thing till I'm blue in the face. And there probably isn't a system in the world that will force people to roleplay deeper issues if they just want to kill things and get kewl powerz. But there's surely some way to encourage the sort of deeper, immersive(?) roleplaying that a concept like this would need to make it work.

It's certainly going to take some thought.

And it sounds like I should take a look at ConX

[Mike Holmes]

Heh, not only would this work for Sorcerer, but it's been looked at in detail before.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=2130

That said, who cares. What happens in Sorcerer is that if you go to zero humanity (and become fae, in this thread's example), you lose the character. I assume that you want players to be able to continue playing the character, but somehow reflective of the price they've paid? That alone would be different from Sorcerer.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Not too different, Mike. Many of the options listed in The Sorcerer's Soul permit the character to be continued under the player's control. Calvin, this is probably the main reference I'd recommend on the subject (said hesitantly due to conflict-of-interest concerns).

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

I knew you'd say that.

The point is that there's lots of room for a new game in this area that doesn't handle things precisely like Sorcerer does.

Mike

[madelf]

I think you can rest easy, Ron.
Looking over that Sorcery/Buffy thread, I can see how Sorceror could be used to do something like what I'm after. And the general theme definitely has a lot in common.

But I really think we'll be coming at this from substantially different directions.
I'd say that a big difference will be in the fundamental assumption of how magic will work.

Standard Sorceror wouldn't work for me as I don't want the players summoning the fae as if they were demons and making them do the magic. The fae may be magical but they are not the magic in themselves, they are just a element of an alternate world. They may eat and breath magic, but they aren't there to do the player's bidding.

The idea of translating demons into spells is rather nifty, but not what I want to do at all. I have a deep and irrational loathing of individualized spells, so building spells as if they were demons is not something I want to do at all.

The ritual and sacrifice as "Needs" and "Desires" isn't right for me either. The magic system that I have now allows for ritual and sacrifice and all the trappings, but doesn't require it. Those things just make it easier and safer. This way I can recreate literally any type of magic tradition imaginable and at the same time allow a really powerful (and brave) character to cast magic by simple force of will. I expect I'll carry that basic sytem over into this game as well.

I'm also not into the idea of "Need" and "Desire" elements as part of spellcasting. They sound very appropriate for demons, but far less so for the way I'm envisioning magic. I'm thinking of the magical energy as something akin to sunlight, or fire. Something that can be harnessed to do certain things, and that can hurt you if you're not careful, but that has no sentience, needs, or desires of its own.

The fae creatures on the other hand may very likely have an agenda, but dealing with them would be interacting with another being, and I doubt the fae I envision would tolerate being summoned.

So I think Sorceror is safe from plundering for another day.
;)

[M. J. Young]

Just to throw a thought out, what if part of the transition involves becoming inhuman in your thought processes, such that the player gradually loses control of the character?

Stay with me for a moment. I don't mean that the referee takes over; I mean that the decisions made by the player are less and less likely to work as expected.

The most direct way I can see for this would be by inversely relating the power of the magic to the control of the magic. At the beginning, the character can work a little bit of magic, but he can define it quite precisely. As he works more magic, the amount of power he can release increases, but the amount of control he has over it decreases, until ultimately all he can do is release a great deal of power without any ability to determine what it will do.

Now, one more nuance: it is not that the character has no control over the magic, but rather that the player no longer controls the character. As the character has become more and more alien, the player no longer understands him; he does not think as the player does. Thus it isn't that the character can't do what he wants, but that he doesn't do what the player would think best, because he doesn't think like the player.

Anyway, this is probably pretty far out there, and it would require a lot of work, but maybe it will spark something for you.

--M. J. Young

[Gamskee]

I think emotional and habitual changes might be effective for this game. Perhaps adding and taking away habits as necessary.

Alien nature takes some time to nail down as humanity is about feeling human. If someone starts off relatively inhuman, then the humanity loss hits them that much lighter. Thus the reason why vampire is generally ineffective: you play a vampire who was once human rather than a human who becomes a vampire.

If the changes are too overt or quick, it's like being handed a new character sheet, losing whatever kind of character you built over time. So a slow progression would allow it to creep in.

For instance, some elementally aligned earth mage starts to change into some kind of rock troll. Maybe the first change is a very small physical change. His toes turn kind of slate grey color. Doctor quickly chalks it up to athlete's foot and the incident is dismissed. Then maybe a slight habit change, like finding that going barefoot is just more comfortable, despite his foot problems. Then he starts to put more salt on his food, higher mineral content vitamins and such, etc. Perhaps when he finds himself chewing on a stone paperweight he thought had been his muffin would he begin to wonder.

As far as emotional goes, it can be difficult to deal with being told what a character feels if the context doesn't seem to have supported it. Being told a villain is scary is nowehere near as effective as when you actually think he is scary. The same goes for emotional change. If the character should be feelign distant from humanity, telling them they have lost an emotion to experience may be more effective than trying to tell them they feel an emotion. YMMV.

When the character finally gets it, you can probably start to get a little more overt as it isn't mysterious occurance or GM headgames. If your lucky, it will seem like part of the character at this point.

Are you going to include magic specific changes(earth mage to rocky stuff, hermetics to bindable spirits, druids to fae, etc.) or more randomly?

So, will the changes be an inevitable slide(ie. a scale that always builds up, never down), a risk(Scale goes both up and down), or punishment to those who do too much(goes down quick, but effects will remain)?

Aberrant (a White Wolf supers RPG) had a taint system, which caused the supers to mutate when they used their powers too much. However, the taint system was so forgiving that players would rarely gain taint long enough or in great enough numbers to risk getting permanent aberrations.

Oh, first post. Sorry if it sounds preachy or pushy.