Tribal Magic

[New Fire]

Greetings! My name is Jason Caminsky and I am currently designing a fantasy RPG known as New Fire. It's an adventure game set in a fictional world based on the cultures and mythologies of the Aztecs, Mayas, and other Precolumbian civilizations. It is pretty far along, and I am just trying to fill in the last few holes in the game mechanics before I write it up for release. You can check out the project at the official website: http://newfirerpg.com/

Now, the question that I bring here today has to do with the way magic works in New Fire. There are 3 types of magic in the game: Sun Magic, Moon Magic, and Tribal Magic. Sun Magic draws upon the energy of the Sun gods and functions as elemental magic (different Sun gods are associated with different elements). Moon Magic allows the Priest to use certain skills in magical ways (for example, there is a Writing skill in the game that anyone can learn and use in a variety of ways, but someone with Moon Magic can use the Writing skill to work Glyph magic, which allows them to alter the world and guide future events by writing about them). Tribal Magic allows the Priest to draw upon the unique gods and spirits their tribe worships, and upon the power of their community itself.

I have a variety of effects worked out for Sun Magic and Moon Magic, but I'm still looking for additional things that the players can do with Tribal Magic.

Tribes in New Fire have stats, just like the PCs do (in fact, the stats of their tribe are actually part of the character sheet, and can be used and increased just like the character's individual stats), and I was thinking it would be cool to base Tribal Magic off of those stats. Each stat will have a number of magical effects the player can create by using it, and these effects will be based off of the aspects of the tribe that the stat represents.

This probably sounds a bit abstract, so let me give some more concrete examples. One of the tribal stats I have is Farming. It represents the amount of food the tribe is able to harvest and make use of, the skill of the tribe's farmers, and in many ways acts like the stamina and fortitude of the entire tribe (people can endure a lot so long as they're well fed, after all!). So I thought one magical effect tied to the Farming stat could let the Tribal Priest summon food from her tribe's fields and bring it to wherever the adventure is taking place. Another effect would let the Priest remove Fatigue penalties from individuals by infusing them with the vigor of their tribe's farm fields, and transferring the fatigue to their tireless farmers working back home. Another effect would let the Priest bless food with the tastes and memories of home, thereby granting characters morale bonuses because of the increased sense of fulfillment and connection to home.

Another tribal stat is Crafting. It represents the skill and output of the tribe's craftsmen, their inventiveness and resourcefulness, and in many ways the tribe's overall intelligence. One idea I had was to have Crafting magic allow the Priest to grant temporary skill ranks to characters by connecting them to the reservoir of skill that exists in the tribe. Another was to let Priests summon items from their tribe's craftsmen, items that would mysteriously happen to be lying around nearby and that would inexplicably get lost and vanish after a certain span of time.

The full list of tribal stats is as follows:

Farming
Crafting
Political (the political rank and connections of the tribe)
Spiritual (the piety and dedication of the tribe to the religion of the game)
Unity (the tribe's sense of community and individuality--it's sense of identity as a group apart from all other groups)

I would be very interested in any ideas people have for magical effects based off of these stats. What kinds of bonuses could a Priest grant to others by drawing upon these aspects of her tribe? What sorts of problems might they be able to inflict on others with these stats?

[Chris_Chinn]

Hi Jason,

Welcome to the Forge!

If you haven't already, you may want to check out Hero Wars/Hero Quest, which has some neat community rules similar to what you're talking about.   They usually base their magic on the idea of community rituals and festivals - stuff like Spring Solstice festivals granting bonuses to crop growth later in the year, etc.

One of the things they do that works really well for creating conflict, is that those stats are often tested by the GM against possible troubles- for instance, "Disease Spirits" or "Bad Weather" - and where it fails, the GM improvises a problem/adventure around that.  For instance, maybe every funeral requires a Spiritual roll to see how fares the soul of the deceased (worse case scenario- it becomes a ghost...)

The community magic is a big deal in that game for individual characters to go do epic things- major spells, questing in the underworld, that sort of stuff all requires the community to back them up- which means characters need to form solid relationships and get support before they can really do those things.

Since you're drawing from Aztec mythology, I'm sure there's probably records of stuff like blessings, curses, averting disaster, and that sort of stuff.  I'd be looking at that as a good source of inspiration.

Chris