Game Mechanic: Creepy magic

[sirogit]

The basic idea is, a player states what his character is doing to activate a magical effect(Which can be anything, even simply activating the effect at will.), and it's effect/if it causes any effect at all, is dependant on if the way it's activated/the effects are genuinely creepy to the GM, which would be down to fiat.

I envisioned it for use in sort of a dingy, black&white game wolrd where there just happens to be creepy shit being done all over the place for ordinary purposes. Something like a child's perspective of rituals of any sort...

You could play it up for schlock, I guess, but that wasn't really the intention. There are alot of schlocky systems that say such as "Do X if X is icky", but I've never seen one with exactly what I was talking about.                    

To give some examples, perhaps children would be able to go back in time for short burts, but it causes things around them to have growth deformities.

Or you could implant seeds into someone's brain to make them forget bad memories.

The goal I guess I'm going here is to create this sort of hard to define, an immersive,  almost airy feeling in the game's setting, something like a relief that you live in strange universe. Probably something that would only appeal/"work" for a small niche.

Anywho, anyone know of game's that tried the same thing?

[Mike Holmes]

I think it's somewhat original. I'm not seeing how it gets a particular esthetic, however. Is this for a game in progress? What's it about?

Mike

[simon_hibbs]

It seems to me what you're saying is that since what the players are doing is unnatural, there is some kind of backlash from the natural world in the form of an unintended consequence.

Coming up with appropriate backlashes is obviously the tricky bit, but you can't get round that. It's the creative, narative setting part that you can't realy automaticaly generate. You also need some kind of game emchanical support for this as well. I'd suggest going with as flexible a system as possible, perhaps HeroQuest. It allows you to assign a rating to just about anything.

I hope some of that is helpful.


Simon Hibbs

[Mike Holmes]

You can more reliably create the desired esthetic through reward mechanics, however. For example, if the rule was that the player accumulated a dice pool in order to do the magic effect, and they got more dice, if they narrated side effects appropriate to the genre, that's an incentive to produce that will create results.

One thing that I've been thinking on a lot, lately, is how to create rewards for GMs. Such that you can keep the power in their hands an incentivize certain aspects of their performance.

Mike

[Jonathan Walton]

Actually, I think both of you are on the tip of something much bigger, with a great deal of potential.

What if there was a system that allowed players to narrate whatever they wanted, as long as they narrated X amount of consequences, mitigating factors, etc?  Imagine The World, the Flesh, & the Devil on steroids.  So if I wanted to narrate the sun exploding (a level 10 action, say), I'd have to narrate the consequences of that action, such that they added up to 10 levels of consequences.

You could use this as a model for a magic system, for GMing, for narrative control of combat (where damage dealt has to equal damage taken, but more effective characters would only have to narrate X-5 worth of consequences, perhaps), or for hosts of other things.

This is a really sweet concept for basing diceless mechanics on, actually.  Now I just have to figure out how to use it effectively...

Thanks for the inspiration.

[Daniel Solis]

If I understand correctly, you suggest the task resolution result in a set of consequences that is is the player's duty to link together through narration? Do you mean this to be something like an improv troupe who asks for suggestions from the audience to fill in certain blanks (Place, Job, Delusion, Quirk, etc.) that the troupe then must incorporate into a cohesive and entertaining skit?

[Jonathan Walton]

That's not what I was getting at, but it could be closer to what Sirogit was originally envisioning.

I was thinking of something like this:

Example Magic System

Level 1 Task: Turn a rabbit blue
Level 2 Task: Turn a rabbit into a cat
Level 3 Task: Turn a rabbit into a giant rabbit
Level 4 Task: Turn a rabbit into a giant, flying rabbit
Level 5 Task: Turn a rabbit into a giant, flying, rabbit made of fire
Level 6 Task: Turn a rabbit into a nuclear explosion
Level 7 Task: Turn a rabbit into a god

Level 1 Consequence: You turn blue.
Level 2 Consequence: You turn into a cat.
Level 3 Consequence: Something bad happens to a loved one.
Level 4 Consequence: A tragedy strikes your life.
Level 5 Consequence: A tragedy strikes people you care about.
Level 6 Consequence: A tragedy strikes at your reason for living.
Level 7 Consequence: You die.

To cast a spell, narrate the Task you accomplish and then narrate an equally potent consquence.

Example Special Abilities

-- Accomplish a Level X Task for only the price of a Level X-2 Consequence.
-- When you have to narrate a Level X Consequence, you can instead narrate two Level X-1 Consequences.
-- Whenever your Tasks are accomplished through the use of fire or cause others harm, half any resulting Consequences.

That's more of what I was getting at.  Actually, I'd be surprised if this kind of thing hasn't been done before, to one extent or another.  Nobilis does a similr thing, but with expendable resources instead of Consequences.