Ygg: Demonic Weird

[Christoffer Lernö]

I'm trying to simplify and improve stuff. Right now I'm looking at the magic system, and I was thinking of moving from keeping track of taint to having a sort of demonic counterpart to fate-points. I call my fatepoints "Weird" so with that terminology it's "Demonic Weird"

Anyway, you blast a lot of demonic stuff or you're just being evil with your magic? To skip the details: You get Demonic Weird.

I had some ideas what it should do:

First of all it makes you suceptible to demonic influences. That means if there's a fat ass demon out you meet and you have Demonic Weird then chances are that he'll pop your Darksoul into control and take over you. The same thing can happen with other magically skilled beings (including other sorcerers!)

Same with your magic. You try to control a demon with your magic, but the demon takes over your magic and uses it to bind you and so on.

The stronger the Demonic Weird, the more chance of that happening.

To counter these things (here I'm inspired by some suggestions people had previously) you can buy off your weird by taking permanent demonic chances. You know those physical mutations which made you look like a demon?

OR you seal of your magic through magic fetters and so on. The old stuff.

Anyway, I was thinking of some more things to use the Demonic Weird to control (basically think of it as the demon realm more and more influencing your mind and your destiny).

For example one could get more and more suceptible to cold iron (i.e. pretty much any piercing and cutting weapon) the higher the Weird was.

The most appealing idea, but the most difficult to apply, however is ruling that for every point of demonic weird you have your spells will have a flaw.

1 point of Demonic Weird? 1 flaw
7 points of demonic weird? A whopping 7 flaws.

But who gets to say what they are?

My intention is only to make the magician less efficient, although in general the effect will seem to be the same. I think it's a bit trickier than it seems on the surface.

One could have a set type of flaws, but who gets to choose? If the Player does then maybe playing with a lot of demonic weird will simply be a matter of min-maxing well. I don't really want that.

If the GM does... well then you end up with the GM in the antagonist role, which is impractical from an EF point of view where the GM ALREADY has full control. To have the GM also think up player punishment makes it harder to conceal the GM's REAL power.

It could be random but... I don't know if it plays out well if I don't have as sound plan.

Ideally one would have the player do it, but in a way that ensures that efficiency IS reduced (because it's basically if you use your magic a lot you lose efficiency). Many games would go about this by lessening the effect ratings or the chance to succeed but that fits very badly with Ygg.

Ideally the flaws are such that they work against the original purpose of the spell.

For example you want to cast a fireball. There will always be a fireball coming, but flaws might be that: "oh, the effect was suddenly amplified so you got roasted too" or "there's a fireball but after it explodes you see that within it was hidden a firedemon which now goes after your enemies as well as your friends" or "there's a fireball, but as it explodes it explodes into small fragments instead, all small burning fireballs which cascade away which doesn't do nearly as much damage"
Ok, very little imagination in those examples, but fireball doesn't exactly help the imagination :)

However, maybe you get the geist of what could be done with the flaws?

In addition, I'm interested in other games that potentially uses similar mechanics. Such as Orkworld's Trouble, and Dark Force Points in Star Wars(!?!?) Bear in mind that I'm in Taiwan, I can't get any RPG material here that isn't online. So recommendations to look at a commercial game which doesn't provide samples that illustrate the point is kind of meaningless ;)

[Shreyas Sampat]

I really like the idea of these 'flaws' you have going on with magic.  I'll try to present an analysis of what a flaw can cause:

Weakness: The spell does what it was supposed to do, but not completely or as effectively.  Your scattered fireballs.
Backfire: In addition to the beneficial effect of your spell, something harmful happens too.  The fireball that roasts you too.
Surprise: The spell doesn't do what you intended - the fireball spell ultimately summons a demon; the fire was only a side effect.

You discusses somewhere different levels of Weird (correct me if I'm wrong); maybe flaws can have levels too?

Then, instead of having many, many flaws, a spell cast with high Demonic Weird can havea few intense flaws.

For example, your demon-summoning fireball was cast with a lot of Weird in Surprise.  If it had high Weird in Weakness as well, it might create a flash of light and smoke instead of a fireball - the initial visual effect is the same, but the fire did little to no damage to stuff around it.

Another example, one with more weirdness-freedom: You want to live a long time, so you devise a spell of youth, but foolishly cast it with a high amount of Weird.  For whatever reason, this Weird goes into Backfire, and you become an oak sapling.

[Christoffer Lernö]

I notice your analysis are taken straight from my bad examples. Are there maybe other possible groups beyond the Weakness/Backfire/Surprise triad?

To get back to your posting: Yes it's possible to combine the flaws into something bigger, but I was thinking that at this stage it was better to present the mechanic without that complication.
First it's important to know if "big/small flaws" is a necessary distinction - because I was thinking that a big flaw might be constructed out of a few small flaws which would eliminate the rules for conversion (e.g. 3 small flaws=1 big flaw, 2 big flaws=1 huge flaw etc)

It might be useful or maybe not. :)

What's not so straightforward is determining the flaws. I'd like to have some simple guidelines but it's not easy.

Maybe I should explain why:
The demonic weird means the demonic forces are more and more in control. That makes it harder and harder for you to control your magic, so more and more uncontrolled stuff sneaks in (and the demons in the Outer Worlds can exploit this too). This is the "why" of the flaws.

But there's another reason as well. It's about limiting the magicians without seeming like you limit them. Thus magic always works but with insidious problems.

Ideally flaws would be such that for example spells could be reversed easier. So, you make a spell that puts the whole kingdom to sleep. But the flaw is that there is a way to undo the spell. And further on, the spell is guaranteed by fate to be undone by the flaw.

Or the mind-control spell fails to work on the dragon prince because of the magic in his blood and so on.

On the other side we also see demons trying to exploit it so that there are "demon promoting" effects in play when you use magic with a lot of demonic weird.

But I can't really expect the GM to come up with new flaws every spell (I can see how that quickly would become tiring), now do I want to make spells with flaws useless.
And as Mike Holmes made me realize: If I put really bad demonic sideeffects to the spells which kind of toasts everyone, then some people think that's just cool and it won't be a deterrent at all.

However, exactly the way I'm supposed to go is not clear to me, which is why I present all these alternatives.

[Bob McNamee]

You could trade off deciding spell flaws.
especially on spell with multiple flaws

Player decides first flaw , Gm the second, the Player etc. (or vice-versa)

That way GM can lessen the effiiciency without being the only one "hosing" the character.

[Bob McNamee]

For that matter...maybe let the other Players into the act deciding Flaws for another Player's character/ spell.

(0r, make them pay to get the chance to)

(or reward them for making devious Flaws)

[Christoffer Lernö]

Trading spell flaws sounds like Donjon in disguise hehe.

However, first I have to come up with how the flaws work to begin with. What is a typical flaw? Willows mentioned three categories I suppose taken from my examples but...

well my examples was a bit boring to begin with, weren't they? What I posted was kinda mechanical and not the organic "magic is alive" kind of feeling. But maybe that solves itself once I get the lowdown on the spells themselves (beyond the set descriptions of spells I already've made)

Still, if anyone has ideas for creative flaws and ways to do flaws in new and different ways I'm all ears.

[Valamir]

Tried posting here a day or so ago but it got caught in the too much traffic vortex and disappeared.

I'll try to bullet point what was a longer and more articulate post.

1) LOVE the idea of Taints being something you CHOOSE to take in order to avoid something worse.

2) Not a big fan of that something worse being getting possessed and loseing control of the character...because then there is no choice the Taint is automatically the only thing to do.

3) Also not a big fan of the specific mechanic implementation of Demonic Wierd...although it could be made to work in a certain way.

My idea would be this.  Take a stat called something like "Soul" (call it whatever you want...it being a representation of what distinguishes the character as being a sentient being from the "normal" world vs a demon from some "other world"....whatever).

The Soul stat could be the same for all characters so it only has to be tracked for sorcerous characters.  It serves as a built in "saving throw" or "difficulty threshold" or whatever works mechanically to resist demonic magic being used against you.

If you use demonic magic yourself, you become more attuned to it and thus more susceptable to it, so the penelty for dealing in magic is you lose points of "soul".  This makes you more vulnerable to demonic magic...not a good thing for someone who consorts with demonic energy regularly.

Sooo, you can avoid the loss of soul effect by substituting physical taint effects.  Thus the player has a legitimate choice between how much he's willing to let his soul drop vs how undesireable the physical taint is.  To avoid having a laundry list of potential taints, I'd occur "design your own" with the point cost being set by a simple "advantage" / "disadvantage".  method.  If the player sets a low advantage high disadvantage combination for a set of demonic claws, than the claws are likely highly visable and impair manual dexterity, but not very useful as combat weapons.  If he sets a high advantage low disadvantage, than they are probably easily concealed, do nice viscious damage but aren't worth much in terms of absorbing Taint.

Instead of losing soul you could increase Demonic Wierd and then define wierd as a bonus to others trying to cast demonic magic against you.

Anyway...those were my thoughts.

[Christoffer Lernö]

To clarify some things:

2. "Being taken over" would not be spontaneously happening but only if an antagonist actively does it by exploiting the demonic weird.

3. I don't know what part of the mechanical implementation you're talkig about Ralph. Or is it everything?

Take a stat called something like "Soul" (call it whatever you want...it being a representation of what distinguishes the character as being a sentient being from the "normal" world vs a demon from some "other world"....whatever).

Actually you just outlined the old system except the way changes are gained. However, that variation was suggested in some earlier thread by someone.

The problem is that such a system would stand very much on its own separated from the rest of the mechanics. I'm not sure I go with the suggestion with Weird above, but there's a good chance that happens if I let the whole magical mechanism circulate around "Weird". It's mainly introduced as a possible beginning to a solution to facilitate EF style play into the game. The demonic weird is just a start. There's hero weird, demonic weird, magic weird, evil weird and so on. In the end I need to find an alternate naming scheme :) But basically these are forces affecting the fate of the living and the weave that creates reality.

As you see I don't really have much to add. I need to figure out how I can create an EF system after that I expect things to follow fairly easily.