I am in the process of working on a magic system and am looking for some advice. 

The system is essentially elemental, magic users can summon on of three different abstract elements and then combine and process these (magically) to produce real world materials (including some stuff like cold, flame, force, life-energy e.t.c. but also wood, stone, steel, water e.t.c.).  Initially any particular invocation only produces a very small amount of material which only lasts for brief moment before returning from whence it came but by means of more advanced techniques materials and elements can be 'fixed' allowing them a slightly less temporary existence. 

Incidentally the system isn't very numbery.  The different elements and techniques for manipulating them are represented by square cards with 4 coloured edges and can be combined by matching the colours.  There will be more than one way to summon flame for instance, one way might have colours that are awkward to match to other cards and one might have "easy" colours. 

I'm pretty happy with how its coming along, except for one thing.  I can't think of a nice easy, simple way to regulate how the elements\materials can be shaped (except for GM fiat!).  I want players to be able to summon up a bunch of flame and make a wall from it, but I don't want them to fullmetal alchemist up a fully functional cannon!  The most obvious line of attack on this problem seems to be to assign different complexity values to different shapes and then regulate the players abilities that way, but this seems ugly and awkward somehow.  Basically I don't want a shape complexity with examples that I have to compare stuff too ("Oh no, a hand-glider is definitely more like a cannon than a wooden rocking horse, so its complexity 15").  A more geometric approach would obviously be more accurate and maybe nicely crunchy but probably unmanageable (for me anyway, I don't have a good number head, nor am I good at estimating weights, dimensions or numbers of visible faces). 

The closest I feel I have got to a decent solution is ruling that if you want to make something shaped (rather than just throwing about generic fireballs, earth clods, rock boulders e.t.c.) then they have to be touching something with the same structure.  So if they want to make a sword of flame (good luck wielding it sucka!) then they need to be touch a real sword, if they want to make a cannon they need to invoke all the materials and be touching a real canon.  Its still potentially pretty powerful, but reigns it in a bit.  But its problematic.  Makes it tricky to raise a good old wall o flame out in the middle of the desert. 

Another thing I thought was that magic users could make imbued mini-props (been reading pkd's three stigmata!) which are basically key chain sized models of useful shapes and objects which have some non trivial mojo in them which allows them to stand in for their upscale equivalents.  Obviously these artifacts would be valuable, tricky to make e.t.c. but would at least allow for some generic shaping (yay for wall of flame!).

But its not perfect.  Its getting about complicated for one thing. 

Any thoughts?

Heya,

I want players to be able to summon up a bunch of flame and make a wall from it, but I don't want them to fullmetal alchemist up a fully functional cannon!  The most obvious line of attack on this problem seems to be to assign different complexity values to different shapes and then regulate the players abilities that way, but this seems ugly and awkward somehow.

The closest I feel I have got to a decent solution is ruling that if you want to make something shaped (rather than just throwing about generic fireballs, earth clods, rock boulders e.t.c.) then they have to be touching something with the same structure.  So if they want to make a sword of flame (good luck wielding it sucka!) then they need to be touch a real sword, if they want to make a cannon they need to invoke all the materials and be touching a real canon.

I'm not entirely sure I understand your card matching mechanic, however I don't think thats whats in question. If I read correctly, you're looking for system to regulate what types of objects mages can conjure.

This may not be the answer you're looking for, but I'll give it a shot. Consider having different 'totems' or 'foci' for each elemental school. For example, you could require that the mage possess a Fire Focus in order to summon elemental flame. This would limit the types of things a mage could conjure, in that, if the mage possessed a Fire Focus, they could then summon fire, but not water.

Another mechanic you could implement is a sort of 'power' associated with the different totems. More powerful totems could allow the mage to summon the element in more abundance or complexity. For example, a Weak Fire Focus would allow the mage to summon fire in a ball no bigger then a basketball, or in a structure no more complex then a simple sheet of flame about the size of a piece of paper. A Strong Fire Focus, on the other hand, would allow the mage to conjure a much larger ball of flame, and produce complex structures with the fire like a sword, a shield or wall, or even produce flaming letters or symbols in the air.

To me, it would seem that the major problem here is preventing the mages from conjuring very complex machinery, tools, vehicles, ect ect. Perhaps you could limit them by imposing a minimum time limit. For instance, each individual piece of the cannon must be conjured and 'suspended' (kept from dissipating by use of the Focus or totem) in order to fully construct the weapon. This would take at least 20 minutes if not longer, up to a few hours of in-game-time. Also, you could limit them by saying the mage cannot conjure any peice of complex machinery that they don't understand. In otherwords, Algeroth the Elementalist cannot instantly summon a hang glider because he's not quite sure how to physically construct one, had he the actual physical components. This means that the mage would be required to actually learn how to create the object before he can summon and subsequently suspend each of the individual parts, then assemble them.

Let me know if this is of some help. I may not be grasping your problem wholey.

Z. Adam Wolf

Ooo! Troy touched on a good thought. I like the idea of multiple mages be required to summon and shape multiple elements. You could impose a limit by saying that an individual mage simply cannot summon more then one element at a time.

Z. Adam Wolf

Can I ask a more fundamental question?

Why don't you want them to conjure up a cannon or other complex tools...?  That seems pretty interesting to me...and potentially more entertaining than casting fireballs.

If you have a skill systems, why not require the ability to make a cannon (bicycle, cake, powdered wig) in a non-magical way as a prerequisite to being able to do it magically?

Obviously I don't know how your cards work, but maybe you could add "complexity" as a technique or element, somehow. Creating a cannon requires metal+complexity, not metal+create (or maybe it requires metal+create+complexity).

Or you could plain disallow it. If you don't want the players to do something, don't make it possible but too hard, just make it not a thing they can do.

Valamir's question is more important than my suggestions.

-Vincent

i see how it could be both great to work with, and hard to control, but i'm thinking a slightly simpler model.

Limit the amount of elements a magic user may use at anyone time, based on there level. (ie, level 1 through 20, only one element at a time).

the amount of that element is dictated by two things.
A) how powerful the caster is, he/she can summon an amount of a single element within a limit set by there body. (ie, can't conjur anything thats bigger than they are, or more powerfull magicly)

B) if they are up to a certain skill level, they can use the enviroment to summon larger things. (kinda FMA, but you gotta admit, its pretty cool.)
  but only if that element is in abundence. like, wondering through a valcano has fire element readily availible. in the mountains, stone, ocean water. etc etc. but it still costs them resources or "mana".

its a touchy technique your useing, but the possibilities for roleplay are nice and complex. good luck on developing the game further.

cheers!

[Sorry about the formatting and content of this post, I composed it in work and
you know how it is...]

Hi there, firstly thanks for the excellent feedback.  You guys clearly know your
stuff and do the forum credit!  Secondly apologies if this post becomes long and
rambling.  Anyway, a little background on the project might be helpful.

I am putting together a system and campaign for some non-gamer friends to play. 
Almost all of them are Fine Arts graduates so when they expressed an interest in
playing some tabletop rpg I thought "Yeah, lets do something along the lines of a
big N type Dostoyevsky campaign!".  To my surprise they turned this option down
and indicated that they wanted to do D&D instead.

Straight edge classic D&D wasn't something I could offer so I suggested that we
play a generic fantasy rpg of my own design.  Basically what I am going for is a
generic fantasy rpg but without all the nasty mechanical kludge.  I'm sticking to
most of the 'classic' conventions regarding the relationship between the GM &
players, and the means by which the narrative elements are progressed, but I'm
keen run the whole thing on a slim gamey engine that won't require hardcore
calculus, resolutions that require more than one roll, excessive book-keeping,
pages of tables and references etc. etc.

I've gone for just two stats, modular skills-sets instead of classes, no levels, single
roll resolutions (using opposing dice pools) and all that jazz.  I think the general
system works fairly well and is quite quick and fairly believable (although
ambushes are extremely lethal, might need to work on this!).

The setting is basically as generic as can be (leaning more towards Conan than
Tolkien), except (sort of) that the world is heavily dominated by churches headed
by many powerful archetypal deities.  That said, the whole thing is fairly low
magic, as magic (which is really just channeling a willing deity) is very much a
work in progress (IC as well as OOC).

Anyway, that just about covers it!

Now, on to the comments.

@Troy

"Solution #1: Require multiple rounds/actions to cast a spell."

The main problem I foresee with this approach is that you still need to work out
the relative complexities of every transmutable object or at least approximations,
and although the resolution system is full of time saving approximations something
about this particular hack is a real turn off for me!  I'm not sure why, maybe I
shouldn't worry about this so much?  Perhaps a fairly general set of categories
like Simple, Complex and Very Complex would suffice?

"Solution #2: Creating complex or large objects requires more than one caster."

This is a pretty exciting idea and makes me feel more positive about implementing
the categories mentioned above!  Could give me a lot of potential for encouraging
interesting problem solving dynamics and resulting PC interactions.  Only
downside is it might take some careful balancing to ensure that flying solo
remained as viable as tag-team and vice versa.

"#3:  Give opponents the chance to counter."

Again a great suggestion, and I like that complex invocations become increasingly
house-of-cards like.  The only problem is that invoking complex items will become
a whole lot easier when players aren't facing off against an enemy.  Although that
isn't necessarily unrealistic of course.

"Quote
The closest I feel I have got to a decent solution is ruling that if you want to make
something shaped (rather than just throwing about generic fireballs, earth clods,
rock boulders e.t.c.) then they have to be touching something with the same
structure.

-This is not a bad solution, but like you say it may be inconvenient at times. 
However, that might not be undesirable."

What is generic fantasy role playing about, if not inconveniencing the players?!

@Sentience

"I'm not entirely sure I understand your card matching mechanic"

Its pretty easy, but harder to explain if I can't just lay the cards down in front of
you and say, "See?"

The building blocks of magic in this system are elements, materials (really just the
same thing, except elements are slightly more abstracty-type 'materials', i.e. fire
is an element, but earth is a material) and manipulators (ill come up with a snappy
name for these at some point!).  To do anything more interesting than conjure up a
momentary flash, or a handful of earth that decays away to nothing almost
instantly you need to combine a sequence of elements and manipulators.

So to throw a fireball, you'd need to invoke a few units of flame, fix them (to hold
them in our world a little longer) and then add some momentum so the casting
order would be:

Inv. Flame; Inv. Flame; Inv Flame; Fix Invocation (3s); Target Invocation; Inv
Force

It is presumed that any single step only takes as long as it does to utter a syllable
or two so the invoker in this case can get to the "fix invocation" just before the first
flame decays (the unfixed flames stack so the fix affects all three).  The "fix
invocation" gives him a few more seconds to work on the spell, and also time for it
to fly across the room.  'Target invocation' tells the universe what the invoker is
about to apply the next invocation to (otherwise the force would materialize *in*
the air at the casters fingers and create a momentary gust of wind), and the force
propels the fireball across the room.  The force will decay swiftly, but it really just
needs to get the fireball moving and it will move under its own momentum for a
short distance.

All of this will happen very quickly, i.e. in one round.  In fact each of the building
blocks will have a one or two syllable name "sa" or "ku" or "lo" or "veri" (unique to
that method) and the player will be required to deliver the 'chant' produced by
combining the different building blocks.  There are a whole lot of other nuances,
like what happens if you invoke an element, disinvoke it and then reinvoke it, or
combine different elements before fixing them (basically different types of
transmutation allowing you to invoke odd elements like "shear" which is negative
space!).  But the above is enough to get you burning people alive at range.

In practice the useable versions of these building blocks are called 'Methods',  A
Method is just a way of invoking flame, or anchoring to this plane, or shifting it off
this plane, or propelling it across the room or whatever.  Any given method was
discovered by some guy, who probably named his method after him.  Its probably
not the only way to do it, and its probably not the best way, but it's irrefutably
'Mithrandir's Irrefutable Flame Invocation'!

So the player will have a bunch of cards in front of them representing the
invocations for summoning the elements and materials and techniques for
manipulating them, and these are the methods that they have learned (so most of
the above is easier to show than to explain).  Each method is a square card (duly
labeled) with four coloured edges so to cast the above fireball spell you would
need to have a set of compatible methods. If you can connect each step to the
next by placing the cards edge to edge, matching the colors as you go then they
are compatible.  I'd expect players to work out 'recipes' for complex spells outside
of combat and so long as they deliver the correct chant they wouldn't need to do
the whole card shuffling business to actually cast, but if they manage to pull it off
during combat without substantial hesitation then fair play to them.

So what's the point of this whole coloured edges business?  Well I wanted a semi-
freeform magic system, but with a bit of arbitrary internal structure.  I wanted
some flame invocations to be better than others in terms of their compatibility and
thus their usefulness, without resorting to Flame +5 vs Flame +12 ("Mithrandir is
enraged that that upstart Nyx would have the tenacity to develop a better Flame
Invocation than the Chief Scribe of the Holy Order of Al'Kalim himself!").

I also wanted some things to be (apparently) inexplicably hard to do and some
things to seem arbitrarily easy, just to give the setting's magic some character
("For some reason we invokers have always been able to bend the naked flame
to our will, though despite our best efforts, earth and stone remain defiantly
difficult to wield.  Perhaps this says something about the destructive nature of the
invoker's heart?".

Also I wanted to be able to differentiate different scholar's methods from one and
other. ("After some concerted study Nyx realized that Mithrandir's Flame
invocation was flawed at the very core; each of the binding energies involved
seemed to be slightly out.  Not only that, but all of Mithrandir's Methods were
flawed in the exact same way.  Nyx reasoned that this was no coincidence; a
scholar of Mithrandir's stature could not have unintentionally made such a mistake
so systematically. Further investigation was clearly required.")

Etc. etc. You get the idea.  I'm of the opinion that a bit of arbitrary structure
makes of good fluff\plot\background ammunition.  The deities in this world are
going to be a Big Deal and invocation is their gift to their faithful so Invocation is
going to be a Big Deal also.

Finally, I'm hoping that the color matching mechanism will give the players a little
bit to play with, in terms of magical research, and give them a way to explore the
world's fundamental magical principles. I think that 'freeform' magic systems often
tend to lend themselves poorly to exploration.  The last example of this I can think
of is the magic system from Oblivion, the video game rpg.

In it you could use a spell creation system to fashion your own spells by mixing
spell effects with target types (self, area, etc.) and delivery methods (touch,
projectile etc.) and it would work out a mana cost.  It was kind of fun until I
realized that now that I knew exactly what all the building blocks in the system
were, I could foresee every possible spell and somehow this somewhat sucked
the magic out of it! With the color system its not obvious what combinations of
methods  are possible in which sequences without trying it out, and the trying it out
gives the players a simple sort of way to get involved in a sort of magical research
(why Mithrandir's methods all suck (binding energies) can be filled-in in more detail
in game, and probably on the fly).  I'm hoping that the emergent structures will
suggest (to some extent) the actual characteristics of world's laws of magic.

Double finally, I am considering randomizing the edge colors of the initial set of
methods (although with some weighting so that particular scholars methods are
more similar) and 'discovering' the characteristics of the laws of magic for myself
when I come to tweak it.  Obviously the whole thing can be balanced by adding
Methods, but the random element might throw up some interesting structures.

"however I don't think thats whats in question."

No, but I hope you aren't sorry you asked!

"If I read correctly, you're looking for system to regulate what types of objects
mages can conjure."

Basically I am worried about how to mechanically differentiate between clods of
earth, swords and F16s, ideally with some kind of in-game stipulation rather than
something crunchy.

"Consider having different 'totems' or 'foci' for each elemental school.
...
"Another mechanic you could implement is a sort of 'power' associated with the
different totems."

I hadn't thought of this actually.  So you are suggesting that in principle a sword
would be as easy to conjure as a clod, but only if you had access to all the
required techniques which would be the tricky part.  I like the idea of totems,
primarily for giving invokers more fluff and props, and secondarily because props
are good for plot hooks ("Hey you, come back with my totems!").

"To me, it would seem that the major problem here is preventing the mages from
conjuring very complex machinery, tools, vehicles, ect ect."

I'd agree if only to try and keep things from going magically overboard at the drop
of a hat.  If I let the invokers summon ride-on lawnmowers at will then the warriors
are going to want to be able dual wield 15 foot swords and at that point my
carefully crafted courtly intrigue adventure is likely to go down the pan.  (I'm
kidding, I haven't even though up a single NPCs

"Algeroth the Elementalist cannot instantly summon a hang glider because he's not
quite sure how to physically construct one, had he the actual physical
components. "

This is an excellent idea (I'm in danger of forcibly welding every suggestion in this
thread together!).  So invokers wouldn't be able to FMA-up a fully functional
cannon, but in principle they could invoke and fix each of the basic components
and would have to figure things out for themselves from there.

"You could impose a limit by saying that an individual mage simply cannot summon
more then one element at a time."

This is pretty interesting too!  It also means I could dodge having to rule on what
constitutes simple, complex, even more complex etc.  Only problem is that crafty
players could probably do a great deal with a single element.  I'd worry about
100% steel battle mechs!

@ Valamir

"Why don't you want them to conjure up a cannon or other complex tools...?  That
seems pretty interesting to me...and potentially more entertaining than casting
fireballs."

Very true, its just that I am going for a fairly generic fantasy game, and that
normally inplies starting the characters out as underdogs.  At least to begin with. 
Your right though, it is an interesting idea.

There is a philip k dick short story about aliens that come down to earth (after
www3?) and have the power to make an exact copy of any object they are
presented with.  They are these big tentacle-bug monsters and people stop
making things for them selves and rely on the aliens to replicate everything they
need and society kind of gets back on track.  Eventually people forget how to
make stuff altogether. Unfortunately the copies that the aliens are producing
gradually get worse and worse, because they are getting old and actually dieing
and people start to panic.  Many of the copied objects have already started to
decay and those communities with (barely) living copiers guard them jealously and
it all turns a bit grim!  Anyway, it's a great story and a cool rpg adaptation would
be to have the PCs as powerful invokers living in a time where people had
forgotten how to make things for themselves (relying on the invokers ability to
temporarily conjure things), but the order of the invokers was in decline and things
were just starting to get nasty!

Anyway, I digress.  I'd quite like elemental invocation to be fairly crude for this
game, as I say, a work in progress.  Possibly even dangerous and difficult to
control.

@ Ralph Mazza

"If you have a skill systems, why not require the ability to make a cannon (bicycle,
cake, powdered wig) in a non-magical way as a prerequisite to being able to do it
magically?"

I do have a skill system, and I think I am going to go for this.  I think Elemental
Invocation is going to be about summoning and controlling the raw components of
the physical world in a raw sort of way.  Perhaps the techniques could be refined
to allow a greater level of control but I think we will begin with the basics, and if an
artisan can assemble the canon before the parts decay then fair enough!

@ John Laviolette

"Obviously I don't know how your cards work, but maybe you could add
"complexity" as a technique or element, somehow."

Something like this might be a good way of gradually implementing advances in
fine control.  Perhaps I could model it on the different levels of engineering
technology in the different ages of man?  Start of with the level of engineering
required for crudely fashioned tools, then single part but more refined objects,
then on to larger scale but still simple multi-part mechanisms, then on to more
complex mechanisms, but still with few parts (maybe like canon?), then basic
'clockwork' (like locks?) and so on.  It might work for an arms race between
factions, or maybe the invokers are initially mocked for being so excited about
reinventing stone age tools.

@*****LAST POSTER*********

"Limit the amount of elements a magic user may use at anyone time,"

A good idea, I think I am going to do this now.  I haven't fully integrated invocation
in to the skill system yet so I haven't really worked this out, but perhaps the dice
pool that they have for invocation could also be a count of the number of elements
they can invoke in one go.  Or maybe I'll group the elements into schools (defined
by the scholars who did the initial research, not nescessarily fundamental) and
make the whole thing a dice pit so its hard to invest dice in such a way that the
character can wield a number of different elements effectively.

"the amount of that element is dictated by two things." Just for simplicity's sake I
think am going to 'quantise' invocation and say that any caster of any level invocing
a single unit of flame is invoking the same 'quantity' as any other and that
producing larger amounts of flame requires chaining multiple flame invocations.  I
might at some point introduce 'double' flame invocation methods (or let the players
work on discovering them(, which might be harder to use (rare edge colours
maybe) or somesuch depending on how usable the initial quantities turn out to be.

Incidentally (another small digression, sorry) I'm considering having no mana count
(just to remove the book keeping, I've never liked mechanisms which require you
to be constantly rubbing out some number on a character sheet) and instead
declare that in any scene\encounter each method may only be used once, so the
triple flame fireball detailed way about would require knowledge of three separate
compatible flame methods, but that might be too complicated.  The explanation
would be because the fabric of reality would develop a tolerance to tricks the
invoker uses very very quickly and becomes temporarily resistant to them
(conservation of matter\energy eventually prevails and "rights" the state of the
universe as anything that has been invoked inevitibly decays and slips back into
the ether).  What if this tolerance effect applies in the entire local area.  Could
opposing invokers trump each other by using up the 'best' methods first?  Could
this force players to utilise less obvious methods creatively?  Mithrandir has
thrown the bog-standard common as muck triple fireball and Nyx knows that the
universe will resist his attempts if he tries to throw the same fireball back so
instead he creates a diversion by invoking a mellon sized mixture of earth and
water and manually flinging it in Mithrandirs face. OK, so not that creative, but wild
off the wall ideas are what players are for!

B) if they are up to a certain skill level, they can use the enviroment to summon
larger things. (kinda FMA, but you gotta admit, its pretty cool.)

It sure is, and it would also be nice to tie it into what was mentioned about about
disadvantaging invokers in certain locales (deserts?) and giving them an
advantage in others (volcanoes?).  Of course unless they are floating in a pitch
black vacuum a creative invoker should be able make use of what ever they find to
hand.  Turning sand into razor sharp shards of glass, or a powerful lense in a
desert for instance.  Not very thirst quenching of course, but you can't go wrong
with razor sharp shards of glass.  I'm not sure how I would regulate use of
already-available elements, but it would certainly be interesting, though its maybe
for another thread!.  Could be cool to have invokers realise that their craft can
have an negative environmental affect.I.e. Villager:  "Sure, thanks for slaying the
giant monster and all, but when are you going to put all the water back into our
lake?".

Anyway, that's probably enough from me.  Thanks for all the food for thought, it's
a great help.  I think I'll go and try and firm some things up.

Thanks again,

pwate

Lol, ******LAST POSTER****** being johnwedd of course!

welp, it was a thought. one solution would be to make magic like a programming language. then thats alot of work. but that can be regulated by lines of code and ram. anyway, best of luck.

cheers!

No, but I hope you aren't sorry you asked!