Rules light magic that doesn't get wacky?

[Ry]

I've had a hard time with really rules-light magic.  My instincts say "say yes" but then things get out of hand quite quickly; the players veer away from the style of the game, and the power level ramps up immediately. 

The only other magic approach that worked for me in a rules-light way was a spirit-magic setup, which has been far too much GM-decides-everything.  That boiled down (mechanically) to a situation where "talking to the spirit" was just a buffer between me and the players, so that social mechanics provided a buffer between "you get to alter reality" and "you are playing this character."

Has anyone had good results with rules light with nonsuperheroic magic?

[Chris_Chinn]

Hi,

Actually, quite a few games I've found work well with rules light magic.  Is it a matter of players overstepping the expected power levels of magic, or the -feel- for magic?

For example, Trollbabe and Heroquest are all pretty lightweight magic systems.  Some genreless games like The Pool also do just fine.

What kind of magic system are you trying to design, and can you give a real or hypothetical example of how it should work and a real experience where the systems you have used -did not-?

Chris

[Ry]

Conceptually, I'm trying for a system where players have input in their own definition, like PDQ, and can bring in different concepts for their supernatural abilities, and we can jam on whether that fits the campaign.  For example, one player could say they have a mesmerizing voice, another is pyrokinetic, and a third is blessed by the Archangel Metatron.  These could all work in an in-nomine themed game, for example.

But what gets to be a problem, IME, is when they start to mix.  Say we're in a game with a Party vs. Problems and Threats seeking Resources and earning Rewards kind of game.  One player wants to be a conjurer, another is a clockwork creature maker.  The clockwork creature maker makes a creature that can't work but the conjurer conjures an energy creature that drives it.  Now they have a clockwork creature that can devastate the party's opposition.  The rules are deliberately light and to a certain degree the players have a lot of say in them; they wrote their qualities after all.  You don't want to be lame and say no to the creature, but you also don't want to get into a boring situation where these 2 always team up and I'm essentially playing to that.

At least with D&D, the rules say no to certain things; the DM doesn't have to.

[Chris_Chinn]

Hi,

Try checking out some of the games I've mentioned.  Or Primetime Adventures, or Universalis. 

All of these games share a basic idea that in the system- magic is no different than "Strong" or "Trained by the Order of Dragon Knights" or whatever else might apply.  By these systems, magic cannot overwhelm other trait types because it is either exactly the same in terms of achieving goals or very close to it.  After that, the only thing you need to do is make sure the magic you have in your game fits the mood and flavor- you don't have to worry about it becoming the "go-to" that overwhelms all other options.

Chris

[Hans]

Building off what Chris said...

The clockwork creature maker makes a creature that can't work but the conjurer conjures an energy creature that drives it.  Now they have a clockwork creature that can devastate the party's opposition.

This example is full of meat. 

Someone in the game made three important decisions about the way the fictional world works in the above example: Clockwork creatures can be made that can't work without a controlling spirit; Conjurer's can conjure spirits to super power clockwork creatues; Superpowered clockwork creatures can devastate almost any opponent.  Who made these decisions?  Did the players do so unilaterally?  Did you, as the GM?  These are really questions about WHAT magic can do.  I have seen these dealth with in two ways in games that give the players some control over this:

* Fact competition: I highly recommend looking at Universalis or Mortal Coil.  Both of these games have token based "fact" mechanics that allow players and the GM to state and more importantly COMPETE about what are "facts" in the fictional world.  It goes something loosely like this:
Player: I think that conjurers can conjure spirits to super power clockwork things. (bids a token)
GM: I think conjuration magic and clockwork magic can't work together at all (bids two tokens)
Player: Oh no, you are wrong (bids three tokens)
GM: Hmmmm (looks at token pile) I guess I am.
Player: Awesome.  Now, I think that super power clockwork things are exactly what can kill hydras, like the one our characters are currently facing, with a single blow (bids a token).
GM: Oh hell no. (bids two tokens) 
Player: (looks at now depleted token pile) ah, it was worth a try, you win.

* Common scale for all effects: This is the mechanism in Donjon and Heroquest.  In these games, all effects of any variety (magical, mundane, etc.) are all encoded in the same way (dice in Donjon, ability value in Heroquest).  If an effect cannot be encoded in this way, it simply DOES NOT MATTER in the story.  In Donjon, my 6 success Summon Fiend From Hell roll is, conceptually, no more or less powerful then my 6 success Summon Small Puppy roll or my 6 success Whack With Mace roll or my 6 success Knit Sweater roll.  The only difference is in the kinds of fictional description I can put with that magnitude of effect, and in what venues my own credulity will be strained in trying to make those 6 successes work for me.  As in:
Player: I conjure an Arch Demon from the Inner Council of Hell to inhabit Bob's Clockwork Teddy Bear and make it a super Clockwork Hell Bear. 
GM: Ok
Player: *rolls only 2 successes* Crap.  Ok, I'll use those two successes to boost the Clockwork Teddy Bear's Virility.  I could describe the Arch Demon crawling out of the Pit, flames all over the place, but 2 success doesn't really warrant that, does it.  Hmmmm.  Here we go.  The Arch Demon cannot completely pass through the veils that shroud our world, and only a small portion of its power can assist us at this time.  The bear's grin seems a bit more...evil...now, and it has flames on its furry paws.
GM: Awesome.

[Ry]

Could that kind of bidding mechanic be bolted onto a pdq-style 2d6+X system?  Also, how would you limit it for the GM - in Universalis nobody has the GM role, so those resources are equal.  I'm looking for something where the GM's job is to provide opposition to the players.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Check out Fastlane. It's basicly like Universalis, except it has a GM, who is still limited by resources. Works just fine.

[Hans]

Mortal Coil has a Magic Token system for this that gives each player X tokens and the GM gets X + Y per player.  X and Y vary based on the "level" of magic in the game; low or uncommon magic means low X and Y, lots of magic means high X and Y.  However, in Mortal Coil, the tokens serve two purposes; stating magic facts, and activitating magic abilities of characters.

With D20 type rules I think you would be better served with common scale instead of an extra bolted on fact type system; simply because the base D20 system (skills, levels, attributes, d20 rolls) already has a fair amount of complexity to it.  It seems intuitively better to make that complexity work for you.  Also, it already has a number of examples from a balanced magic system (i.e. spells, psionic powers) that would allow you to derive a common scale, by comparing X level spells to each other and finding the common features.  But, hey, I"m not the one trying to make a rules light flexible player driven magic system for D20/D&D. 

BTW, here is a related idea; use XP as the currency for this kind of thing.  They already exist in the game, and its a pity not to use them for something.  As in:
Player: I think that my spirits should be able to super power clockwork things.
GM: I don't.  I think that is impossible.  The DC for that is DC 40.
Player: Oh yeah, well, I'm willing to put 200 XP on the line that it does.  200/10 = +20.  That brings the DC down to 20.  If I make it, I'm right and your wrong.
GM:  And you lose the 200 XP.  If you lose, you keep the XP, but the world works just as I say it does.

[Chris_Chinn]

Hi,

Also: check out Donjon.  Donjon does the fact bidding without requiring any resources on either side- it's a basic success/failure system with the exception that the person who wins gets to put forward X number of facts based on how well they rolled.

Also, for GMs with resources, PTA is an excellent and perfect example.

Chris

[Ry]

@Hans

I'm not trying to do it with d20 - I'm hoping to add it to a system I made up years ago that turns out to have a lot in common with PDQ.  I have my d20 groove too, it's going well, but my real interest is in how to add fact bidding as it relates to PC actions into something like PDQ (or a 2d6ed version of Risus).

@Chris

I have run PTA; maybe it's an imagination deficit on my part, but I can't figure out how you would combine PTA's mechanics with something where the GM had a bit more narrative responsibility.

@Eero
Can you expand about fact bidding with Fastlane?  I've heard of it as an example of a really elaborate core mechanic (roulette table?)

[Eero Tuovinen]

Fastlane is actually a rather fascinating game, I find it one of the best formed of the first generation of games I like to think of as "after Dust Devils".

How the GMing role in Fastlane works has many similarities with PTA: the GM has a budget of chips just like the players do, and he needs to assing them to challenges to posit resistance to the endeavours of the players. When the players lose conflicts (as they pretty inevitably do, roulette being what it is) he grows stronger with chips and can use them to create new NPCs in the story, to provide even more layers of resistance and depth to the story. And should the GM go bust, he may still get up when players get unlucky on the wheel.

Fastlane, unlike PTA, has some similarities with Universalis in how the GM assigns chips to important NPCs. Effectively, he buys the NPC into the story with chips. At the beginning of the game he gets a stock related to the number of players in the game, which he then uses to create the initial NPCs in the story, saving a bit for later need. The players act similarly with their own chips, so it's all a closed economy of chips moving from player to player and constraining their choices, including the GM. Dramatic action ensues when the players have to priorize aspects of their characters and chip spending in the various situations that come up in the rules, such as sacrificing objects of importance to the character called "lives" to pay for the roulette.

When it comes time for conflict, the mechanic is simple: the GM puts up however many chips he thinks the conflict is worth. This is how many chips players need to win from the roulette wheel in one bid. This means, of course, that players need to bid more on the wheel to overcome the GM's fixed result. The player may determine his own risk in this regard, as the wheel allows for different bids from the risky to the nigh-certain. Of course, additional winnings in excess of the required minimum are unlikely if the player plays it safe, which is somewhat annoying when the effectiveness of the conflict is tied to the actual winning amount. Often it is not so important to win, but rather to win big. This causes tension in the game, obviously enough.

Anyway, that's the gist of it. As you can see, Fastlane doesn't do fact bidding, it does conflict bidding, like PTA (but unlike Universalis). The purpose of the resource mechanics is not to limit the player's influence on the story, but to limit the characters's sway over the consequences of their choices. Coming back to your original question, magic and other stylistic issues are made to work in this kind of game by removing any mechanical pressure from the players to play against the consensus of the group; in Fastlane (or PTA, for that matter) you are not any more efficient by breaking the stylistic constraints put to place by the group, so provided that you understand those constraints, you never do break them.

That, by the way, is my advice: controlling style with mechanics is crazy-talk, or at least very, very challenging. It is much easier to let players first agree on a style and then get out of the way as a game designer. Most of the games mentioned in this thread manage this by having rock-solid rules for whether your character will succeed or fail in any given endeavour, but at the same time not having any rules as to how they will do so. This kind of rules structure prevents the usual arms-race you get in freeform magic systems (and freeform games in general) where players are encouraged to break stylistic boundaries in an effort to out-describe their fellows. When you remove the benefits of breaking style, you make it possible for the group to find genuine harmony and communication in regards to a harmonic style.

That's my take, anyway.

[Monkeys]

You could have a set mechanical effect for all spells: for example "Magic allows you to alter any roll, by as many points as you spend Magic Points. You decide how many points to spend before the roll is made", and then it's negotiated what that mechanical effect 'looks like' in story terms.

For example if you want to cast a Charm Person type spell, spending 5 Magic Points, this means that the beneficiary of the spell makes a diplomacy roll using the normal rules of the game, but adds 5 to their roll. It can be negotiated whether this surrounds the beneficiary with a fae-like glow, gives them the eloquence of a demi-god, renders the target susceptable to flattery, temporarily makes them more handsome etc.

[Ry]

Monkeys - I like the idea, and I wish I could use something that simple, but how do you do telekinesis or other non-enhancement effects with such a method?

[Ry]

an addendum to the previous post - conjuration (how much dirt can I create here?) and such is even harder for me to imagine as a +X

[Chris_Chinn]

Hi,

This is why the first thing I mentioned is to divorce the idea of the rules having a 1:1 exact detailing of what it means in the fiction of the game.  Don't have rules that say, "You  can make 20 square feet of dirt" etc. 

Base the rules around conflicts- you either successfully make -enough- dirt, or you don't for this particular purpose.   Some games, such as HeroQuest, give the GM some leeway in this by letting the GM set difficulty ratings ("I want to make a pile of dirt to play in vs. I want to make a mountain to block the army").  Again, if you're worried about the GM abusing this power, this is where I point to games like PTA or even Agon which give the GM a limited pool of resources for setting the difficulty (regardless of narrative power).

And, unlike your example above, where the players create some uber construct that kicks ass for the rest of the game, mechanically, the players are having to roll again for each conflict- the construct might have been ass-kicking for the first conflict, but maybe it's running low on power, or getting beat up, or going out of control, or any of the 100 reasons that makes life difficult and keeps the story interesting - without cheating the players of their chosen specialities.  They'd still be using their magic skill, it's just that it's not a "success" that will carry them through all conflicts.

If you want more limitations towards how much magic can do, mostly for style and color reasons, give it a broad, but solid set of limitations.  ("It can affect up to a city block size of stuff"  "You can never bring back the dead", etc.)  These broad rules give guidance but also don't become a ton of work since the system itself handles most of the work for you.

Again, my recommendation is to take a look at any of the many games listed above and pay close attention to how they utilize magic, because it avoids a lot of common problems in other games.

Chris