Ritual magic system - need some advice

[Amomentarylapseofsanity]

Hi everyone, this is my first post and I tend to ramble, so you'll have to bear with me.

  I'm working on a fantasy game, where magic is an important part of life. I don't mean that it's like some D&D settings where every other farming can throw fireballs and lightening bolts, though. Magic is ritualistic and relies heavily on religion - calling on the power of God, the Gods or spirits or the power of holy words, or similar. It's very similar to the sorts of magic (or 'Magick') practiced in real life - Herticism, Qabballah, Wicca, etc, as well as more religious rituals, Roman Catholic Mass, Ancient Greek libations and so on.
  The game's magic is intimately tied to religion, with mages often being priests, muystics or shaman, or individuals seeking enlightenment (like Buddhist monks or medieval Alchemists).
  The basics of magic are three spiritual 'energies' which correspond to three of a character's six attributes. The six attributes are split into two groups:
  Material:- Body, Mind, Presnce
  Ethereal:- Psyche, Anima, Spirit.

  Magic uses the three Ethereal Attributes, which form the character's soul, the part of a sentient being which resides in the Netherealm (cross between a spiritworld/afterlife and dreamworld). Psyche, Anima and Spirit are all present in the Netherealm and it is these energies that mages manipulate to produce magical effects.
  Psyche is one's spiritual mind, your memory and subconciousness. Rituals of telepathy, mind control, and knowledge use Psyche. Anima is one's spiritual body, your 'chi' or 'four humours'. Physical curses, healing rituals and animating objects are all examples of rituals using Anima. Spirit is the seat of personality and individuality. It is the least definable of the three. Rituals using Spirit are very varied.
  And many rituals use combinations of these energies. Enchanting items especially, as does creating life (or unlife).

  Though mages of one tradition/religion have the same beliefs and methods, their interpretations can be very different. For example one mage may call on God A for a love spell, while another calls upon Goddess B or Angel C and a third uses the power hidden in the words of their holy book, and yet they could all be of the same religion of even tradition. But they must use something, ritualistic elements are not merely a means to work magic, they are the magic.
 
  So the system has to be freeform to support this flexibility of interpretation. Plus I want a system that can represent many different styles of magic while still using the same basic system for each. And finally, and most importantly, I want some way of easily creating detailed rituals, not simply: you need 20 gold's worth of ingredients and a pentagon. Any ideas how I could do that?

I hope some of that made sense. Thanks for reading it at any rate.

Alex

[greyorm]

Nice overview of the concept.
I have two questions: what does the rest of the system look like, mechanically -- that is, how are tasks determined to be a success or failure?

Second, historically, nearly everyone "knew" magic -- that is what peasant superstitions and charms were in the middles ages; Babylonian citizens made "demon bowls" and chanted prayers over their children to protect them. Does your system, or do you want it to, account for this given the historical/realistic magick bent you're aiming for?

Admitedly, for your system design goals the first question is more important than the latter.

In regards to having a freeform system that is also detailed, I think we'll need more clarification on exactly what you're aiming for. Can you give us an example of what you envision would happen in play -- what players would say, do, decide and so forth?

[anonymouse]

Welcome to the Forge!(tm)

Alex,

Have you taken a look at Talislanta 4th Edition? While ostensibly a freeform system, it really encourages you to have pre-written spells for Color within the setting; this sounds like what you're going for, working on the freeform aspect well in advance of casting the actual magic.

T4 breaks magic up into Orders and Modes. Orders are basically schools of tradition; Witchcraft, Wizardry, Necromancy, Cartomancy, and so on. Each order usually has some kind of banned spells, some spells they're good at, and a bunch of spells they tweak somehow.

Modes are 12 basic effects; Move, Summon, Damage, et cetera. Spells are made up of a Mode and some other bits, and cast via whatever your Order is.

As far as a "random ritual generator".. enh. Maybe each ritual needs 3 things: something of the Psyche, something of the Anima, and something of the Spirit. This even sets you up with a nice setting hook of, say, godtears, mystical orbs which can be used as all three Needs, something normally impossible.

[M. J. Young]

We tackled a very similar problem in designing Multiverser--we needed to create a system by which any ritual which anyone, real or imaginary, might ever use to work magic would have the specified magical effects, but you couldn't just twitch your nose and blow away entire armies (unless you were particularly potent).

To outline our solution briefly, here it is:

[*]Every spell type has a baseline--how involved the caster must be versus how potent the outcome will be. Involvement includes casting time, components, restrictions (must face north, can only be cast in the sanctuary), and anything else that would limit the character's ability to do it. Potency includes damage, duration, range, area of effect, whatever would be applicable to the results. Within the descriptions in the book, this devolves to basics in each case.[*]Once the basics are known, a spell can be customized by a three way trade:

[*]Increasing or decreasing the amount of investment.[*]Decreasing or increasing the potency.[*]Increasing or decreasing the chance of success.[/list:u][/list:u]
Thus there would be a baseline description for create fire that says for a ritual this long you can create a fire this big and this damaging at this range at +/-0% on your chance of successfully doing so. If you want a bigger fire, you can take longer, or you can add "stuff" to the ritual (requires materials, more physically involving, whatever), or you can reduce the probability that it will work at all. If you want to create the fire faster, you can reduce the size of the fire, throw more stuff into it, or reduce the chance of success. If you want to increase the chance of success, you can make it take longer, throw stuff into it, or create a smaller fire.

We found that it worked well if any doubling or halving of the spells effectiveness was balanced by +/-10 percentage points, creating a sort of easy geometric scale. That way if someone wanted to change fifty feet into five miles the penalties were significant but not overpowering, and could be compensated by ritual adjustments. Most ritual adjustments were worth ten points or less.

For more detail, I encourage you to read the magic section of Multiverser.

I hope this helps.

--M. J. Young

[Andrew Martin]

I'm working on a fantasy game, where magic is an important part of life. I don't mean that it's like some D&D settings where every other farming can throw fireballs and lightening bolts, though. Magic is ritualistic and relies heavily on religion - calling on the power of God, the Gods or spirits or the power of holy words, or similar. It's very similar to the sorts of magic (or 'Magick') practiced in real life - Herticism, Qabballah, Wicca, etc, as well as more religious rituals, Roman Catholic Mass, Ancient Greek libations and so on.
  The game's magic is intimately tied to religion, with mages often being priests, muystics or shaman, or individuals seeking enlightenment (like Buddhist monks or medieval Alchemists).

Hi, Alex.

I suggest taking a look at Hero Quest, because what you're describing sound so much like the setting of Glorantha.

[Amomentarylapseofsanity]

Hi everyone, and thanks for the responses.

Greyorm, you wanted to see the game system: task resoultion is done with die 6. The player rolls a number of D6 equal to the level of the attribute or skill that he's using. A success is any roll over three. The number of successes indicates by how much they succeeded. Bonuses and penalties take the form of adding or subtracting die. Also most rolls are contests and the loser's successes are subtracted from the winner's.
Character creation is points based. A character has six Attributes, a number of traits and his skills. The attributes (which I listed in the first post), are from one to ten, with human normal being 3-4 (it's so low to allow for the inhuman strength of other races and supernatural creatures).
Mind and body are self-explanatory.
Traits are split into Social, Physical, Mental, Spiritual, and Material (in the sense of material needs, ie money and property). These can be advantageous and cost points or disadvantageous and give you extra points. Most traits are bought in levels and many disadvantages can be overcome by rolling an Attribute or skill against the trait's level.
Skills are based on Attributes but not directly. Basically the points cost of a skill is determined by an attribute, so the higher a stat the cheaper it's skills are.

As for his second question:

Second, historically, nearly everyone "knew" magic -- that is what peasant superstitions and charms were in the middles ages; Babylonian citizens made "demon bowls" and chanted prayers over their children to protect them. Does your system, or do you want it to, account for this given the historical/realistic magick bent you're aiming for?

Well not exactly. Not everyone can cast magic. Only those with 'The Gift' can cast magic, though the gift is of a neurological nauture, rather than being spiritual or hereditary (like many other games). Basically if one spends the formative years of your childhood (3-10, or there abouts) the parts of your brain used in magic will develop, but if you don't, they won't.
That said there are plenty of shamans, witchdoctors and the like who provide magical srevices. They're a very important part of society because spiritual problems, such as ones Anima being out of balance and possesion, are very real. But once made a charm will work for anyone (unless it was made otherwise), so someone who isn't a mage could treat someone using charms and magic cures.

As for what I'm aiming for: there are two parts, determining the ritual's effect and determining the ritual itself. Determining the effects is fairly easy, I'm following a Mage/Ars Magica type system. My problem is with determining the ritual. I want to leave it up to the player while making sure the ritual designed fits in with the player's tradition and is proportional to the effect (ie so one doesn't have a death spell that can be cast with things lying about the mage's house).

As for the info you guys have given me, I'll have to go away and digest it all, see how it helps.

Alex

[Mike Holmes]

My problem is with determining the ritual. I want to leave it up to the player while making sure the ritual designed fits in with the player's tradition and is proportional to the effect (ie so one doesn't have a death spell that can be cast with things lying about the mage's house).

Aha. Well, there are two choices. The first, impractical IMO, is to enumerate each ritual. Even if you use some method of combinations (like the Ars combinations), you get sorta stilted results that are more applicable to the original elements than to the ritual in question.

The other choice is to have the player enumerate the rituals on the fly and reward them with more success the better job they do describing it. This can be mechanical (you really do need to take Andrew's advice and read HeroQuest) in that the player can get specific advantages for certain things. Once enumerated, you can work off the data accumulated in future rituals. So, if the player got a +2 for his use of a skull in one necromantic ritual, he might get a similar bonus in another.

Make sense?

Mike