Magic's End: Introduction

[Wormwood]

. . . And so the gods left this plane and its people. This world was a lesson that would not be forgotten, even if those who suffered and endured it's discoveries would remain behind in it's dying embers. Some were taken, but many, even of the faithful, were abandoned. And then magic died . . .

   -Excerpt from the "Degali Shadif"

You were once an archmage. You once mastered one of the aspects of power. This made you a lord amongst your people. You were decended from one of the great lines that arose after the Wars of Power. Now it has all changed. The gods have vacated the universe and magic is failing all around you. Even your own powers, once great and dependable have begun to fade slowly to just a trickle of sorcery. It is a new age, perhaps the last age, and one you are poorly suited to survive ... just like everyone else.

Setting Elements:

The Wars of Power - The world of Magic's End has been shaped primarilly by great conflicts in the almost mythic past. Each war caused the division of one element of the world, creating the divisions that define characters and their place in the world that was.

Incarnations - The aftermath of the Destiny War, the Incarnations resulted from the splitting of the Great Drama, a creation of the gods where in mortals, often unwittingly, played parts to amuse their dieties. As a result the parts became divided among the people. Now the Incarnations have been warped by their attachment to a single role in the theater of the world. But since the gods' exit, the drama has ended, and destiny has become a thing of the past.

Tongues - In the Treaty of Gnosis, which ended the War of Words, the language of creation was granted to each speaking being, but only in part. Each being born has the inate power to use one form of speech. Alone they have little effect, but together they could perhaps allow a reshaping of the world, or at least it's understanding. The power of words seems the only thing that has not been diminished by the passing of the gods.

Codes - The Godswar was the greatest and most divisive conflict ever inflicted upon this world. The battle was not with the gods, but rather with how they were defined. By the end of the war the very nature of the gods was held fixed, defined by the codes of the world, nine statements of being. Each god, as each person shares two of these.
Orders - The War of Trees defined the nature of magic, creating the magical orders, and defining the exalted position of archmage as the highest ranks of society. The orders each keep their secrets, jealous of those who serve other towers. But ultimately their loyalty has always been to those others who form magic, those of the mundane nature have had a difficult lot. But now as power wanes, the tides may indeed be turning.

System Elements:

Skills versus Spells - The central mechanic of Magic's End is the use of skills and spells. Skills are rated in a number of dice, in which that many d8's are rolled when the skill is used, this gives the result for the skill. Skills are ultimately meant to be unreliable, but stable, not fading away over time as the magical spells do. Spells on the other hand are extremly stable in the short term, simply having a constant rating to determine the effect. But this rating becomes reduced by one upon each use. As a rough comparison, one die of a skill is equivalent to five points of a spell.

Order Advancement - There are 13 Orders, last being the unoffical Mundane Order. During character creation the character is built from any of the 13 orders, quite possibly mixing more than one order. But after character creation players can only ever advance in the Mundane Order. A possible option is that characters during play may gain non-Mundane Orders, but will only gain the skills, and not the spells from this advancement.

Questions:

Does this setting seem original enough to merit further development?

How potent should Tongues be, since they don't seem to fade with the passing of the gods?

How interesting is the mechanic so far?

What form of action resolution seems best suited to this setting? This was the issue that I blocked on in the design the first time around.


I hope you find this interesting,
     - Mendel S.

[Garbanzo]

Mendel-

I'm not getting a good sense of what you've established so far.

So we've got
-the gods have/are defined principles
-there are no god-entwined destinies
-all characters have the ability to use magical speech
-orders of magic exist, but magic is a finite commodity for each character

The first two are just setting background, as I read them.
What does it mean to "use one form of speech?"  ("My guy does dramatic monologues!!" -er, sorry.)

And then there's the finite magic.
If magic only decreases, the world must have just shifted a few years ago.  Within this generation, anyway, otherwise the chars wouldn't've been able to learn it.  Right?

But how do you see spells-magic differing from speech-magic?


What you've given feels to me like this premise - do you agree?
Individual power is waning, but the power of the collective is growing, or perhaps just being revealed.

[Mike Holmes]

.Does this setting seem original enough to merit further development?

Well, I'm a sucker for mystical sounding gobbledy-gook. Which you have a lot of. But until I can see how it all affects play, I'm not sure. The basic premise is, however, quite solid I think. As such, I'm not sure how well you need to detail the setting, anyhow.

How potent should Tongues be, since they don't seem to fade with the passing of the gods?

Well, the obvious answer is somewhat less. Does Tongues have a downside?

Code Select Expand

How interesting is the mechanic so far?Need more data. Does the die pool get added? Or is it TN? Or high roll? Compared against?

I do think that the magic/skill dichotomy is interesting. But until we see more of how these things work it' hard to comment.

[quoteWhat form of action resolution seems best suited to this setting? This was the issue that I blocked on in the design the first time around.[/quote]Conflict, definitely. I assume that magic isn't going to be tightly defined in specific effects? If that's true, Conflict resolution leaves the description of how magic is used open-ended. Which sounds cool to me. The first time you cross the chasm, you describe your Order of Fire magic as making you into a flame which dances from one side of the chasm to the other. The next time, you describe being incinerated by a flame on one side, and being "unburnt" back to your normal self on the other side.

Make sense?

Mike[/quote]

[Wormwood]

Garbanzo,

It would probably help to make some of the elements more definite:

Here's a short listing of each major element, including the "attributes" which I call talents in this case:

Talents:
   Power - the degree of physical and metaphysical force you can apply.
   Flexibility - the mental and physical abilty to react to changes
   Resilience - the mental and metaphysical ability to withstand assault
   Receptivity - your ability to percieve the mundane and supernatural
   Energy - you inner reserves and outward spirit.

Incarnations:
A) Heroic: these are the protagonists in the great dramas, they fought against the villanous and protected the other incarnations, perhaps too much so.

B) Villainous: these were the masters of intrigue, and though they have often failed, rarely suffered the full consequences of their defeat, until now.

C) Tragic: these were the artists and sidekicks of the world, they have begun to learn that ultimately they may surpass their faults.

D) Mischevious: henchmen and brutes, these were forced to bear the brunt of the Villainous peoples, but freedom is at hand.

E) Resplendent: above all the material world these peoples have been brought to face the harshest reality of all, the world of those they neglected all this time.

F) Heinous: cursed and reviled, these people have begun to wonder if their lot is truly of their own making.

G) Commoner: until now, these people were unimportant to the great schemes, but now they realize they can make a difference.

Tongues:

A) Verbs: Words of action and purpose, this tongue often makes one act faster, as they are more intune with the choices they can make.

B) Proper Nouns: The names of all things, those with this tongue have a deeper understanding of others and their behaviors.

C) General Nouns: These are the catagories of existence, making generalizations more accesible and accurate for those who master it.

D) Modifiers: All things change, and these words describe the new states that are always discovered.

E) Connections: These describe all the relationships between things, giving insight in the patterns of the world around you.

Codes:

Compassionate
Valorous
Wise
Curious
Noble
Dutiful
Destructive
Vicious
Capricious

Each of these has some effect when chosen for a given character.  In particular: Incarnations add to Talents, and may provide other advantages, since none of the incarnations are precisely human; Tongues add to skills, as your understanding of the normal world is likewise enhanced; and Codes add to spells, since these reflect an attachment to the more magical aspects of reality.

What I'm thinking of for Word magic is linking words of each kind to produce statements of reality, which then influence the world. This necessarilly requires at least two Tongues to perform. I'm wary however that this will make things a bit too easy, and that the system will have degenerate features in some cases.

There's about four or five premises, but they all focus on the theme of childhood's end. As such I don't see that as a lack of focus.

   -Mendel S.

[Wormwood]

Mike,

The current sense for the mechanic is a simple Talent + Skill roll, or Talent + Spell value, compared with a desired difficulty or an opposed total.

An alternative approach was to divide each total by 5, and count this as the number of hits, which allows a number of effects based on which skill or spell was used. This requires tables or expenditures, and a post roll effect determination but itself has interesting elements. I've had success using this sort of mechanic in other games, using a round-robin expenditure until everyone has finished for the round.  Ultimately it devolves into a static difficulty for unopposed actions. In either case, magic is more dependable, but skills are more consistant in the long run.

As far as conflict resolution, it seems that any resolutions system permits the description of the effect to vary. On the other hand, the major way I was distinguishing spells was in terms of effect.  For example, Deceit permits any form of sensory deception, so it covers the entire gambit of traditional illusions, as well as more subtle things. On the other hand, strike permits you to do any number of directed applications of magic, but doesn't deal wholesale destruction (which falls under blast). Perhaps I'm mis-understanding your use of the phrase conflict resolution, if so please explain.

Thank you for your time,

    -Mendel S.

[Mike Holmes]

You're right. Don't know what I was thinking. I still feel intuitively that Conflict resolution allows for greater creativity, but it's probably not an issue.

Mike