Rules light magic that doesn't get wacky?

[Valamir]

Chris has got the right of it.

If the goal is:  rules light without bizzaro game impact effects

Then the solution is not:  Use rules to determine how much dirt I can magic up or how far I can teleport and then use judgement to determine if that amount is sufficient for success at the task at hand.

Instead try:  Use rules to determine whether or not the task at hand succeeds.  Then the amount of dirt or the distance of the teleport becomes by default "however much was necessary to achieve the level of success I already know I achieved because the dice already told me I succeeded and the initial narration determined I did so using magic"

You need very little in the way of rules to pull this off, and effect is limited to the degree of success achieved.

[Hans]

I agree with Ralph, with one point of emphasis.

You need very little in the way of rules to pull this off, and effect is limited to the degree of success achieved.

That last bit is really important.  The character started out with some intent, and the magic used achieves that intent.  It CANNOT coincidentally achieve some other, different intent, as in:

Player: "I teleport some dirt and bury the monster"
GM: "Awesome, roll"
Player: "Success, I take a bunch of the dirt with my magic from around the buried doorway of the Temple of Super Evil we have been trying to get into all day, and teleport it, burying the monster and, coincidentally, clearing the path to the door."
GM: "Ummm....no."
Player: "Wait, I SAID I took the dirt from the doorway!"
GM: "Sure, you said it.  Well done.  You just can't have it actually work the way you said it did without another roll.  There's still more dirt, it rolls down the side of the mountain and fills the cavity."

[Ry]

This might be one of those things I have to read ten or twenty times before I understand it.

[Valamir]

Well if you want to do a lot of theory heavy research do some searching on Fortune in the Middle.

But in a nut shell the idea works as follows:

Step 1:  Figure out what I'm trying to accomplish.  "I want to defeat this monster so that we can get past it to escape"

Step 2:  Figure out in broad strokes how you're going to accomplish it.  "I'm going to use my elemental earth magic trait"

Step 3:  Roll using whatever your mechanics are.

Step 4:  Decide what happens based on: what you were trying to accomplish, how you tried to accomplish it, and what the mechanic result was.

ex.  Say you got a "partial success" using whatever the mechanics are.  Ok...so what would a partial success at defeating the monster with earth magic look like...

"We know its a success...so we must have gotten past it...but we know its only partial and not total, so we could say that its still coming after us, because it wasn't totally defeated..."

"Ok here's what happens"

"Using my earth magic ability I summon forth a powerful elemental of rock and dirt to do battle with the monster.  There's a titanic struggle and as the two wrestle together we use the opportunity to take off past the fiend.  Alas, my elemental proved not strong enough and the monster defeated it...when it did so the elemental broke apart and buried the monster under rock and loose dirt.  By the time the monster dug itself free we were to the other side of the valley, but now its pissed and hunting us".

[Ry]

PTA would be fortune at the middle (we state intentions, we all bid, someone wins narrative, then narrative is described), if I understand the term correctly.

I really prefer yes/no stakes with a basic "your action succeeds and accomplishes something" vs. "your action fails and accomplishes nothing", but where the players can raise the stakes to add bigger and better success AND more critical and worse failure.  Players can also bid some of their resources (action points) to increase their probability of success, which raises the stakes by "you're more likely to succeed, but if you fail, you've failed AND lost your action point."  If I understand the term, that's fortune at the end. 

Example:
I'm a gunslinger; if I succeed I shoot the guy and the injury gives him a minus 1 to all his actions, if I fail I just miss. 
I can raise the stakes: If I succeed, I shoot him in the arm and he falls down and drops his gun in addition to the injury, if I fail I miss and my gun jams.  All this is declared before the roll.

That's just preamble to this: 
How does the don't-get-wacky magic ideas we're talking about here (i.e., sameness of underlying traits + fact bidding) require fortune at the middle rather than fortune at the end (of the kind I'm describing above where players can raise the stakes)?

[vikingmage]

I have a rather chaotic magic system in my game that is very rules light, but a have a Fortune system attached to it that slows down very gross player spells. I allow players to pretty much design their own spells (with a little vetting process to kick out the more evil ideas!) The spell caster has a magick statistic (usually between 15 and 25 depending on their character build) and needs to roll a D10 to beat the villain's magick resist stat (usually in the same range) plus 1D10. Pretty usual beat the number mechanics.
After a few session where the spells all seemed to be a little too effective (for both sides) I brought in a fortune points system that allowed both sides in a conflict to spend a limited reserve of points to negate a spell effect. This had the effect of braking the whole system, but then players and gm got into a points bidding war to get certain spells to work and everyone was munching through their points like crazy.
To cure this effect we added a second dice to the throw. 1D6 gets thrown alongside the 1D10. If the D6 roll is an even number the player can't spend any points to negate or bid up the spell. The gm is tied to this rule as well (I usually roll the 1D10 behind the GM screen and the 1D6 in front of it).
Its all run very sweet since we got this system working.

[Valamir]

That's just preamble to this: 
How does the don't-get-wacky magic ideas we're talking about here (i.e., sameness of underlying traits + fact bidding) require fortune at the middle rather than fortune at the end (of the kind I'm describing above where players can raise the stakes)?

Require?  It doesn't.

FitM is just easier to execute.

FitE requires knowing all the details about what might happen before you roll...cuz the roll...the fortune...is the last thing you do.

That means if you want rules light...all of the pre-roll inputs have to be pretty rules light.
However rules light inputs on a FitE mechanic can get pretty crazy.
So you need to have enough stuff (limitations, parameters, whatever) to control for that.
Which has a tendency to get un-light pretty quickly.

This is because the actual fortune part of the mechanics (being last in sequence) doesn't help, where as in FitM the dice actually participate in the process instead of just giving a binary or gradient result at the end.


Now, if what you're worried about are players who can't control themselves from just narrating stupidly "I summon the moon and drop it on his head"...well then FitM isn't going to help with that...pretty much nothing will.

[Hans]

Now, if what you're worried about are players who can't control themselves from just narrating stupidly "I summon the moon and drop it on his head"...well then FitM isn't going to help with that...pretty much nothing will.

I always assume that the other player is not being stupid, regardless of what they say.  As in...

Player: "I want to hurt that guy over there with magic."
GM: "Awesome.  Go ahead and make your roll, then we'll decide what happens."
Player: "Great *rolls dice*"
GM: "That's a minor success."
Player: "I summon the moon and drop it on his head!"
GM: "Ummm, are you sure?  I mean, the moon?"
Player: "Yeah, baby!  Its rules-light fortune in the middle magic, I can do whatever I freaking want!"
GM: "Ok, fair enough.  Your summoned moon does 2d6 damage.  The guy is still alive and kicking, and probably pissed that the moon just got dropped on his head."
Player: "Still ALIVE, I dropped the moon on his freaking head!"
GM: "Yep, sorry.  Still alive, as is the the rest of the countryside that, seemingly, should be a smoking ruin now.  That is freaking awesome!  How in Sam Hill were you able to summon the moon onto that guys head and AT THE EXACT SAME TIME, somehow avoid actually hurting him or anything else in any significant way and also doing little or no meaningful property damage?  Man, I can't wait to hear how you describe that!"
Player: "What, me?  That's your job!  You're the freaking GM!"
GM: "Nope, sorry again.  It's rules-light fortune in the middle magic, I don't have to make your narrations make sense, you do.  The rest of us are eager to hear your creativity at work, because, WOW, you summoned the freaking moon and the process acheived almost diddly squat.  I'm sure you have some really cool explanation for how that works, because your a cool guy with a great imagination.  I mean, WOW, the moon!"

But, yeah, really, if one person is playing a "summon the moon" game and everyone else isn't, that's not going to work regardless of what rules you use.  FitM makes this obvious very quickly.  In D&D, you could play for multiple sessions and never realize that your friend prefers low-level magic and you want moon-summoning magic, because all magic is carefully regulated by the system.  In Donjon, you'll figure this out in the first 5 minutes, most likely. 

That's why I suggest that in any game where you will be using any of these ideas for magic you take 10 minutes up front, before or during character creation, and just talk over what magic should and shouldn't do.  Mortal Coil has a directed process for this, as does Sorcerer.  If the players can't agree on this, better to find it out beforehand and decide to play a few games of Settlers of Catan instead, then to find it out after you have gotten started.

[Ry]

FitM is just easier to execute.

FitE requires knowing all the details about what might happen before you roll...cuz the roll...the fortune...is the last thing you do.

That means if you want rules light...all of the pre-roll inputs have to be pretty rules light.
However rules light inputs on a FitE mechanic can get pretty crazy.
So you need to have enough stuff (limitations, parameters, whatever) to control for that.
Which has a tendency to get un-light pretty quickly.

This is because the actual fortune part of the mechanics (being last in sequence) doesn't help, where as in FitM the dice actually participate in the process instead of just giving a binary or gradient result at the end.

This may sound dumb, but I still don't understand what you mean about the inputs.  Could you give me an example of what the difference would be in a nearer case?  Something like "I make a bridge across the chasm" ?

[Chris_Chinn]

Hi,

Think of it this way-

In Game A, to magically make a bridge, you have to have rules for how long/wide the bridge can be, compared to how long the chasm is (which means you have to know or make that up on the spot, etc.).  If rules don't let you make a long enough bridge, no matter what, you just can't make it.   This means, then, that as a designer, you're going to be thinking about different situations with X amount of numbers of distances and sizes and trying to balance that all together.

In Game B, we roll the dice (draw the cards, whatever) and if you succeed, there's a bridge.  Doesn't matter if the chasm was 20 feet or 200 feet, you got it.  If you fail, there isn't a bridge (or it forms and falls apart, or whatever).  As a designer, you don't have to think about what the specifics are- they dont' matter.  This makes it very easy to make it rules light.

Game B is fortune in the middle- we find out if you succeed or fail, then we describe how that happened.  Game A you need to know and juggle all the "how" as a designer, Game B you don't.

Pretty much all the examples I gave work like Game B, which is why they're good references to check out.

Chris

[Ry]

OK, now I understand what you're saying, but why is this specific to Fortune in the Middle eludes me.  Why can't game C, fortune in the end, have a player say "I'm going to try to create a bridge across the chasm" roll the dice, and if they succeed they've got the bridge, if they fail they don't, if they succeed by a wide margin it's an extra-nice bridge?  In both cases before the action we had the player saying they were going to do magic, of a particular kind, and the rules decided if he made it or not.  The only difference was that the player described it afterwards instead of before.

Hi,

Think of it this way-

In Game A, to magically make a bridge, you have to have rules for how long/wide the bridge can be, compared to how long the chasm is (which means you have to know or make that up on the spot, etc.).  If rules don't let you make a long enough bridge, no matter what, you just can't make it.   This means, then, that as a designer, you're going to be thinking about different situations with X amount of numbers of distances and sizes and trying to balance that all together.

In Game B, we roll the dice (draw the cards, whatever) and if you succeed, there's a bridge.  Doesn't matter if the chasm was 20 feet or 200 feet, you got it.  If you fail, there isn't a bridge (or it forms and falls apart, or whatever).  As a designer, you don't have to think about what the specifics are- they dont' matter.  This makes it very easy to make it rules light.

Game B is fortune in the middle- we find out if you succeed or fail, then we describe how that happened.  Game A you need to know and juggle all the "how" as a designer, Game B you don't.

Pretty much all the examples I gave work like Game B, which is why they're good references to check out.

Chris

[Valamir]

Maybe's its just the terminology throwing you Ry...because your last question isn't making much sense to me.  The reason you can't do that with fortune at the end...is because if you did...it would be fortune in the middle.  Fortune at the end means all the possibilities are determined before the dice are rolled.  The dice come last.

So with fortune at the end you have to decide:  Is there a difference between a nice bridge and a merely functional one?  If so how good does the roll have to be to get a nice bridge?  If you decide you only want a rickety crappy one does that make the roll easier?  How much time does it take to create a nice bridge 200 feet long?  Is there enough time to cast it before the bad guys catch us?  What if its: night time, foggy, raining, etc...does any of that make it harder to cast this spell?  Does it make it take longer?

These are just some of the more obvious inputs that you have to predetermine answers for BEFORE rolling the dice with a fortune at the end mechanic.  With Fortune in the middle you don't have to determine any of them until the dice are rolled.  If you fail the roll it MAY be because it was foggy and you misjudged how long the bridge needed to be and it collapsed because it didn't reach the other side...it MAY be that you couldn't collect enough energy to bridge a gap that long...it may be that the bad guys arrived before you finished casting the spell.  Alls the dice tell you is you failed.  The rest of the inputs happen AFTER the roll is made (which is why the fortune is in the "middle"). 

[Ry]

OK, now first can we clear this up: The FitM you guys are describing seems to take the game to the scene level rather than the action level.  I've seen scene level resolution working in Primetime Adventures, but it's not what I'm chasing here.  Is that what we're stumbling on?

In Primetime Adventures, you're saying that low magic is easier to do because the players know what resources they're bringing to bear but don't have any incentive to "talk up" their narration beyond the genre as agreed, because it doesn't leverage the situation.  The definition of a character's Edges is important because that determines whether they count towards winning the scene.  But I'm looking for more granularity in the scene than PTA (i.e. action stakes rather than scene stakes), and more definition (i.e. a difference between your level 1 knight and your level 3 knight, as it were).

As I said, I've been running a system for a while and its core mechanic is very much like PDQ.  That mechanic works like this: Character Concept + 2d6 versus Target.  Character Concept is one of a few different Risus-like traits, like "Knight 5" "Geomancer 4" "Womanizer 3".  Target is in the GM's hands, it goes "Easy 4" "Average 7" "Challenging 10" "Difficult 13" "Daunting 16" "Legendary 20"  Target is set by the GM saying "How hard is it to do what the PC is describing?"  The PCs' default stakes are 'being ineffective this round' or 'accomplishing what I described this round', but these can be changed from an initial description by raising the stakes as I described above.In CC+, the players have a disincentive to "talk up" their action description because it will move the scale out to Daunting or Legendary.  The definition of a character's traits is important because it determines which number can be brought to bear to win the stakes.

[Monkeys]

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?

It depends what they want to acheive with the spell, more than what kind of spell it is.

For example, levitation: I want to levitate up that cliff and see what's there. Perhaps that effect would normally be acheived in your system by a Climb roll. So you ask how many points do you want to add to your Climb roll. If the roll still fails, you get the normal consequences of a failed Climb roll. For example, perhaps a failed Climb roll means that you fall and take damage. In story terms, this means that you levitate part of the way but then you lose concentration and fall.

Or you might want to levitate in order to convince some bandits that you're a powerful wizard not to be messed with. This would normally be an Intimidate roll, so it's treated as adding points to an Intimidate roll.

Using telekenesis to levitate an object so that it knocks someone out is counted as enhancing an attack roll, using it to disarm a trap is treated as counted as enhancing a 'disarm traps' roll.

In the case you used of creating a golem, perhaps you have to keep putting magic into it every time you want to use it, to intimidate, attack, or whatever else you're doing with it.

By the way, apparently several games have a concept like 'hero points', or 'fate points', where the players have a limited amount of ability to alter the plot. This is a similar in mechanical terms (you have a limited number of points which can do almost anything), but changed in story terms, so that it's considered to be the character doing something rather than the player.

[Ry]

I see what you're saying Monkeys.  I like that.

Modifiers to all actions:
+2 You have an ideal tool for the task
+0 You have an appropriate tool for the task
-2 You have the wrong tool for the task

Magic is like always having the appropriate tools for the task.

What about this approach?

Player: "I want to hurt those 100 men.  The appropriate tool is a big bomb on the end of a short-range precision-guided rocket.  So that's easy." 
GM: "Actually, the appropriate materials are bomb-making materials and a big sling to toss it with.  So your spell is as difficult as making a bomb and aiming that sling in 10 seconds.  That's daunting."

Too arbitrary?