[Hex Rangers] Strange Fruit revisited

[Marshall Burns]

Hex Rangers is my design that was formerly titled Witch Trails<

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blogging at the Wizard Exploded Cookbook

[Patrice]

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[Simon C]

Steal Away Jordan has, in my opinion, the hands-down best implementation of that kind of magic that I know of.  It's worth a look. 

But I understand you're looking for ways to explain your mechanic, rather than new mechanics (although it's possible if the magic keeps coming out wrong in play, your mechanics could use a look).  Folk magic contains nothing that couldn't be dismissed as chance, or the wild imaginings of a superstitious person.  Folk magic is about using ritual to control those things that are uncontrollable.  It's wearing the same pair of underpants to every football game.  It's crossing your fingers for good luck, it's touching wood, it's your "lucky" fishing lure. 

Oh! I just remembered a comic I read that is exactly what you're talking about: http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/master-of-the-universe/

[Marshall Burns]

I'm gonna have to check out SAJ. I've been meaning to for a while now anyway.

As for the mechanics, there's barely any to it at all (which could be part of the problem). The players tell me what they're trying to do, and describe the ritual. I, as GM, judge the ritual on aesthetic & symbolic grounds and assign it a score, and possibly also a complication score. The magic always works unless acted upon by other magic (which, y'know, happens when you go fucking around with spirits), in which case it goes to cards and is handled like any other conflict.

[Simon C]

Interesting stuff.

I'm always wary of "GM assigns a score based on aesthetic judgement" kind of mechanics.  Not because I don't think GMs should be making judgement calls (indeed, I think it's a fundamental requirement), but because the scope of those judgements is often too large.

What about providing some guidelines for that judgement, that went hand in hand with guiding players in the right tone.  Something like:

Hemlock: +1 for spells against men (I'm just making shit up here)
+1 for each hour spent on the ritual
Pine needles: +1 on spells for injury
Binding cords: +1 for spells about movement
Blood: +3 all spells, but +1 complication

Or something like that.  So if you spend three hours winding a spig of hemlock in twine, you have a powerful spell to restrict a man's movement.

The downside to this is that you have a huge list of components and procedures.  Depending on your game, that could be a good thing or a bad thing.  If magic is a central mechanic, I think it's fine.  If it's not, it's possibly too cumbersome.  I think only a fairly small number are needed though to seed ideas for others.  Players will ask "what herb works against women?" and if the answers not in the book, maybe they have to find out in character, or maybe they can make it up.  That seems like fun to me.

[Marshall Burns]

Yeurgh, no. That's not magic, it's chemistry. When you provide guidelines like that, it stops being magic, starts being technology, and gets dull, dull, dull.  I don't mean to be snarky, but it's exactly that sort of approach to magic systems, all but ubiquitous in RPGs, that I've been railing against for years. I hate it.

This is magic:
Joe finds out that his woman's been sleeping with another guy. He gets really drunk and goes walking out in the middle of the night. He falls down by the river. His hand falls into some clay, so he scoops it up. He starts kneading it furiously, working his sweat into it, and his anger, and his grief, and his drunkenness, and finally his semen.

The woman gets pregnant, and dies from complications in childbirth. The child survives, and is born without the ability to feel fear. And even though she was sleeping with someone else, Joe is certain that the child is his.

It's all about a particular, unique iteration of symbols, expressed in action, emotion, and circumstance. On the surface, it looks normal, but there's a certain something that makes it seem a little off, but not enough for the uninitated to suspect anything.

Also, and importantly, it will never happen exactly the same way twice.

[Simon C]

Cool.  Something else then?

When you're making your aesthetic judgement about the ritual, what guides you? What do the rules say should guide you?

[DWeird]

I'm not sure how unique little actions and raw feel can go together with the actions of what's essentially a government-contracted problem-solving organisation. To Hex Rangers, deaths of innocents and such is likely to be a question of efficiency of the fairly cold "do you push a single featureless person in front of a trolley to save five featureless persons that the trolley endangers?" mental experiment variety.

Do you have any mechanics for the characters to become emotionally invested like you did in Rustbelt?

[Marshall Burns]

When you're making your aesthetic judgement about the ritual, what guides you? What do the rules say should guide you?

The poetic weight and aptness of the symbols. If it feels right, it gets a good score. If it doesn't, it gets a poor score (even lame rituals work). If it's so dead-on that everyone at the table nods their heads like, "Yeah, that's exactly how it happened," it gets a great score.

Do you have any mechanics for the characters to become emotionally invested like you did in Rustbelt?
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly thing. Saving civilian lives is just a matter of efficiency, and also a matter of not getting your superior officers pissed off at you.

However

[Mike Sugarbaker]

Yeurgh, no. That's not magic, it's chemistry. When you provide guidelines like that, it stops being magic, starts being technology, and gets dull, dull, dull.  I don't mean to be snarky, but it's exactly that sort of approach to magic systems, all but ubiquitous in RPGs, that I've been railing against for years. I hate it.

This is magic:
Joe finds out that his woman's been sleeping with another guy. He gets really drunk and goes walking out in the middle of the night. He falls down by the river. His hand falls into some clay, so he scoops it up. He starts kneading it furiously, working his sweat into it, and his anger, and his grief, and his drunkenness, and finally his semen.

The woman gets pregnant, and dies from complications in childbirth. The child survives, and is born without the ability to feel fear. And even though she was sleeping with someone else, Joe is certain that the child is his.

It's all about a particular, unique iteration of symbols, expressed in action, emotion, and circumstance. On the surface, it looks normal, but there's a certain something that makes it seem a little off, but not enough for the uninitated to suspect anything.

Also, and importantly, it will never happen exactly the same way twice.

This thread is full of stuff that should probably go directly into your game text, including the above. In fact if I were you I'd put it on the very first page inside the front cover, Polaris-style.

[Marshall Burns]

You know, you're probably right.

My plan (which is just a starting plan, and thus quite ambitious; I'm sure reality will tone it down) was to make the game a boxed set, with a core rulebook for the mechanics, a how-to-GM book, and an easily-photocopied pamphlet for the players called the Hex Ranger's Field Guide that would explain everything they needed to know about being Hex Rangers. I wanted to write that pamphlet "in voice," but, the more I work on this game, the more I realize that I can't do that. I have to address the players directly, in meta-voice, in order to explain issues like magic.

Speaking of magic, I've had a bit of an idea.
In the rules for making spirits, the first step is to create its Domain:

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[David Berg]

Communicating Folk Magic

Examples are good.  That guy at the river is one good one, but you need others to show other facets and possibilities.

Does the Hex Rangers setting include one flavor of magic, used by PCs and antagonists alike?  Or do the PCs do folk magic and the badguys do something else?  Your examples ought to show the kinds of magics that will occur in play -- either useful stuff the PCs will want to do, or nasty stuff they'll want to not have happen to them.  Or both.

Visuals are also good.  Even crappy Pow-wow and Hoodoo images from the internet could be a starting point.


Arbitrating Magic

I agree with Simon that it'd be good for the GM to have a list of criteria for evaluating how a spell should take effect.  However, I tink the criteria themselves should be aesthetic, not scientific.  And the game text should provide guidance to the GM in making these specific aesthetic judgments.  Example:

-how well does the spell's color evoke (in the minds of the players) its intended effect? (0 - doesn't, 1 - vaguely, 2 - clearly, 3 - strongly or cleverly)
-how well does the spell's color evoke its intended target?
-how well does the spell's color represent "Hex Rangers magic"?

The better the score in each of these categories, the better the spell (a) produces intended type of change, (b) affects desired target, (c) produces intended extent of change.

Another option would be to somewhat formalize the system of "if everyone at the table says that's perfect, then it works well".

Or those options could be combined, with some sort of a bonus vote thing where players sway the GM's judgment.  "I was thinking 'vaguely evocative', but it got two votes, so I guess 'clearly evocative' is fair."


Awkward Resolution Outcomes

Your comment about having to shoehorn in consequences of the card-playing sets off alarm bells for me.  I've never played Right to Dream using Conflict Resolution, so I'm curious to see what that looks like.  But it sounds like you've found an obvious pitfall.  When the answer to to "why did that happen" is obviously "cuz the rules say so", that can jar a dreamer.  The GM would do well to make sure "why did that happen" never gets asked -- some GMs are up to this, with  fast, clever, plausible improv -- but others may find it tricky without some resources to fall back on.  I'll stop speculating now; I guess my real point is that I suspect this is a very important issue, one that might trip me up if I ran it without having seen you run it first.


GM Prep

Marshall, we need to compare notes on this.  Delve uses a timeline too.  For me, it's mainly a reminder to periodically inject some dramatic urgency, plus a brainstorm checklist of how to do that.  Same for you?


What does folk magic look like, and how does it behave?

Just brainstorms here.

-color apt to "magic"
       -sacrifice
       -deal-making
       -secret-utilizing
               -secret symbols
       -gross
       -visceral
       -taboo-breaking
       -altered mental states
               -frenzy
               -trance
               -weeping

-color apt to target
       -part of it
       -effigy of it
       -symbol of it

-color apt to effect
       -drowning
       -dessication
       -discarding
       -shaping
       -merging
       -detecting/revealing

-power source
       -blood
       -semen
       -precious item
               -gem
       -rare item
               -frog bone
               -albino squirrel
       -personal offer
               -child
               -spouse
               -virginity
               -name
               -soul
       -nature
               -sun
               -moon
               -special tree
               -whirlpool
               -4-leaf clover

Based on process/effect and target, you could generate some rough idea of the kind of change wrought, and where it occurs.  At some point, either the game or the GM would have to determine the specifics: "Yes, your wife is affected, but burning the effigy, rather than burning away her lust, only enflames it."  Brainstorm: the GM might choose or roll randomly on lists of ways a spell could go:

scale of obviousness -- first thing you might expect -> barely traceable to ritual

scale of degree -- weaker than optimal -> stronger than optimal

scale of specificity -- effect too narrow -> effect too broad

scale of polarity -- optimal form of effect -> exact opposite of that

scale of backlash -- no side-effects for you -> permanent side-effects for you

Alright, brain-dump complete.

[Marshall Burns]

Does the Hex Rangers setting include one flavor of magic, used by PCs and antagonists alike?

All magic rituals are done in the same flavor. The PCs use them, as do witches*. Spirits*, devils*, and abominations* may use them, but also have Powers that are like magic in that they can be combated with magic, but require no ritual or anything; they just DO them. Sorcerers* also have rituals, but only to traffic with and command spirits.

*These are just different classifications of badguys. There's also fearsome critters, but they don't use magic. Joe, from that example, would technically be a witch -- while the fearless child born from the spell would be an abomination.

Awkward Resolution Outcomes

Your comment about having to shoehorn in consequences of the card-playing sets off alarm bells for me.  I've never played Right to Dream using Conflict Resolution, so I'm curious to see what that looks like.  But it sounds like you've found an obvious pitfall.  When the answer to to "why did that happen" is obviously "cuz the rules say so", that can jar a dreamer.  The GM would do well to make sure "why did that happen" never gets asked -- some GMs are up to this, with  fast, clever, plausible improv -- but others may find it tricky without some resources to fall back on.  I'll stop speculating now; I guess my real point is that I suspect this is a very important issue, one that might trip me up if I ran it without having seen you run it first.
-style consequence-for-escalation mechanic.

GM Prep

Marshall, we need to compare notes on this.  Delve uses a timeline too.  For me, it's mainly a reminder to periodically inject some dramatic urgency, plus a brainstorm checklist of how to do that.  Same for you?
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Quote from: David Berg

What does folk magic look like, and how does it behave?

This is a good idea. I should probably make something like this.

Based on process/effect and target, you could generate some rough idea of the kind of change wrought, and where it occurs.  At some point, either the game or the GM would have to determine the specifics: "Yes, your wife is affected, but burning the effigy, rather than burning away her lust, only enflames it."  Brainstorm: the GM might choose or roll randomly on lists of ways a spell could go:

This is really<and

[David Berg]

All magic rituals are done in the same flavor. The PCs use them, as do witches*. Spirits*, devils*, and abominations* may use them, but also have Powers that are like magic in that they can be combated with magic, but require no ritual or anything; they just DO them.

Okay, cool, so rituals all kinda look like other rituals.  Removing the ritual process will obviously make Powers look somewhat different... but are there any constraints on what Powers could look like?  Are you still going for the color elements present in the rituals (e.g. visceral, taboo, using power source, or whatever else from my or your lists), or could a critter's Power look like "Speak Egyptian backwards to shoot laser beams!"?  I guess I'm trying to nudge you to find a good limit case that'd help define your aesthetic.

Quote from: Marshall Burns on August 31, 2009, 11:21:31 AM

Quote from: Marshall Burns on August 31, 2009, 11:21:31 AM

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here if you want to compare thoughts.

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here's my blog, discussing Delve, my game in development

[Marshall Burns]

Okay, cool, so rituals all kinda look like other rituals.  Removing the ritual process will obviously make Powers look somewhat different... but are there any constraints on what Powers could look like?  Are you still going for the color elements present in the rituals (e.g. visceral, taboo, using power source, or whatever else from my or your lists), or could a critter's Power look like "Speak Egyptian backwards to shoot laser beams!"?  I guess I'm trying to nudge you to find a good limit case that'd help define your aesthetic.

That's gonna take some thinking about. "Speak Egyptian backwards" is really cool. "Shoot laser beams" isn't. Somewhere, there's an identifiable divide here.

This reminds me a bit of what I've heard about Survival/Tension in Dead of Night.  It sounds like a significant reward mechanism to me, but I don't remember any descriptions of it in your play accounts.  Do you intend to make players aware of this dynamic?  If so, will you do it directly, on the meta level, player to player, as part of "how to play this game"?
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Huh?  How have you NOT being using that?  It sounds integral to resolution...