I've had a hard time with really rules-light magic.  My instincts say "say yes" but then things get out of hand quite quickly; the players veer away from the style of the game, and the power level ramps up immediately. 

The only other magic approach that worked for me in a rules-light way was a spirit-magic setup, which has been far too much GM-decides-everything.  That boiled down (mechanically) to a situation where "talking to the spirit" was just a buffer between me and the players, so that social mechanics provided a buffer between "you get to alter reality" and "you are playing this character."

Has anyone had good results with rules light with nonsuperheroic magic?

Hi,

Actually, quite a few games I've found work well with rules light magic.  Is it a matter of players overstepping the expected power levels of magic, or the -feel- for magic?

For example, Trollbabe and Heroquest are all pretty lightweight magic systems.  Some genreless games like The Pool also do just fine.

What kind of magic system are you trying to design, and can you give a real or hypothetical example of how it should work and a real experience where the systems you have used -did not-?

Chris

Conceptually, I'm trying for a system where players have input in their own definition, like PDQ, and can bring in different concepts for their supernatural abilities, and we can jam on whether that fits the campaign.  For example, one player could say they have a mesmerizing voice, another is pyrokinetic, and a third is blessed by the Archangel Metatron.  These could all work in an in-nomine themed game, for example.

But what gets to be a problem, IME, is when they start to mix.  Say we're in a game with a Party vs. Problems and Threats seeking Resources and earning Rewards kind of game.  One player wants to be a conjurer, another is a clockwork creature maker.  The clockwork creature maker makes a creature that can't work but the conjurer conjures an energy creature that drives it.  Now they have a clockwork creature that can devastate the party's opposition.  The rules are deliberately light and to a certain degree the players have a lot of say in them; they wrote their qualities after all.  You don't want to be lame and say no to the creature, but you also don't want to get into a boring situation where these 2 always team up and I'm essentially playing to that.

At least with D&D, the rules say no to certain things; the DM doesn't have to.

Hi,

Try checking out some of the games I've mentioned.  Or Primetime Adventures, or Universalis. 

All of these games share a basic idea that in the system- magic is no different than "Strong" or "Trained by the Order of Dragon Knights" or whatever else might apply.  By these systems, magic cannot overwhelm other trait types because it is either exactly the same in terms of achieving goals or very close to it.  After that, the only thing you need to do is make sure the magic you have in your game fits the mood and flavor- you don't have to worry about it becoming the "go-to" that overwhelms all other options.

Chris

Building off what Chris said...

The clockwork creature maker makes a creature that can't work but the conjurer conjures an energy creature that drives it.  Now they have a clockwork creature that can devastate the party's opposition.

Could that kind of bidding mechanic be bolted onto a pdq-style 2d6+X system?  Also, how would you limit it for the GM - in Universalis nobody has the GM role, so those resources are equal.  I'm looking for something where the GM's job is to provide opposition to the players.

Check out Fastlane. It's basicly like Universalis, except it has a GM, who is still limited by resources. Works just fine.

Mortal Coil has a Magic Token system for this that gives each player X tokens and the GM gets X + Y per player.  X and Y vary based on the "level" of magic in the game; low or uncommon magic means low X and Y, lots of magic means high X and Y.  However, in Mortal Coil, the tokens serve two purposes; stating magic facts, and activitating magic abilities of characters.

With D20 type rules I think you would be better served with common scale instead of an extra bolted on fact type system; simply because the base D20 system (skills, levels, attributes, d20 rolls) already has a fair amount of complexity to it.  It seems intuitively better to make that complexity work for you.  Also, it already has a number of examples from a balanced magic system (i.e. spells, psionic powers) that would allow you to derive a common scale, by comparing X level spells to each other and finding the common features.  But, hey, I"m not the one trying to make a rules light flexible player driven magic system for D20/D&D.  :)

BTW, here is a related idea; use XP as the currency for this kind of thing.  They already exist in the game, and its a pity not to use them for something.  As in:
Player: I think that my spirits should be able to super power clockwork things.
GM: I don't.  I think that is impossible.  The DC for that is DC 40.
Player: Oh yeah, well, I'm willing to put 200 XP on the line that it does.  200/10 = +20.  That brings the DC down to 20.  If I make it, I'm right and your wrong.
GM:  And you lose the 200 XP.  If you lose, you keep the XP, but the world works just as I say it does.

Hi,

Also: check out Donjon.  Donjon does the fact bidding without requiring any resources on either side- it's a basic success/failure system with the exception that the person who wins gets to put forward X number of facts based on how well they rolled.

Also, for GMs with resources, PTA is an excellent and perfect example.

Chris

@Hans

I'm not trying to do it with d20 - I'm hoping to add it to a system I made up years ago that turns out to have a lot in common with PDQ.  I have my d20 groove too, it's going well, but my real interest is in how to add fact bidding as it relates to PC actions into something like PDQ (or a 2d6ed version of Risus).

@Chris

I have run PTA; maybe it's an imagination deficit on my part, but I can't figure out how you would combine PTA's mechanics with something where the GM had a bit more narrative responsibility.

@Eero
Can you expand about fact bidding with Fastlane?  I've heard of it as an example of a really elaborate core mechanic (roulette table?)

Fastlane is actually a rather fascinating game, I find it one of the best formed of the first generation of games I like to think of as "after Dust Devils".

How the GMing role in Fastlane works has many similarities with PTA: the GM has a budget of chips just like the players do, and he needs to assing them to challenges to posit resistance to the endeavours of the players. When the players lose conflicts (as they pretty inevitably do, roulette being what it is) he grows stronger with chips and can use them to create new NPCs in the story, to provide even more layers of resistance and depth to the story. And should the GM go bust, he may still get up when players get unlucky on the wheel.

Fastlane, unlike PTA, has some similarities with Universalis in how the GM assigns chips to important NPCs. Effectively, he buys the NPC into the story with chips. At the beginning of the game he gets a stock related to the number of players in the game, which he then uses to create the initial NPCs in the story, saving a bit for later need. The players act similarly with their own chips, so it's all a closed economy of chips moving from player to player and constraining their choices, including the GM. Dramatic action ensues when the players have to priorize aspects of their characters and chip spending in the various situations that come up in the rules, such as sacrificing objects of importance to the character called "lives" to pay for the roulette.

When it comes time for conflict, the mechanic is simple: the GM puts up however many chips he thinks the conflict is worth. This is how many chips players need to win from the roulette wheel in one bid. This means, of course, that players need to bid more on the wheel to overcome the GM's fixed result. The player may determine his own risk in this regard, as the wheel allows for different bids from the risky to the nigh-certain. Of course, additional winnings in excess of the required minimum are unlikely if the player plays it safe, which is somewhat annoying when the effectiveness of the conflict is tied to the actual winning amount. Often it is not so important to win, but rather to win big. This causes tension in the game, obviously enough.

Anyway, that's the gist of it. As you can see, Fastlane doesn't do fact bidding, it does conflict bidding, like PTA (but unlike Universalis). The purpose of the resource mechanics is not to limit the player's influence on the story, but to limit the characters's sway over the consequences of their choices. Coming back to your original question, magic and other stylistic issues are made to work in this kind of game by removing any mechanical pressure from the players to play against the consensus of the group; in Fastlane (or PTA, for that matter) you are not any more efficient by breaking the stylistic constraints put to place by the group, so provided that you understand those constraints, you never do break them.

That, by the way, is my advice: controlling style with mechanics is crazy-talk, or at least very, very challenging. It is much easier to let players first agree on a style and then get out of the way as a game designer. Most of the games mentioned in this thread manage this by having rock-solid rules for whether your character will succeed or fail in any given endeavour, but at the same time not having any rules as to how they will do so. This kind of rules structure prevents the usual arms-race you get in freeform magic systems (and freeform games in general) where players are encouraged to break stylistic boundaries in an effort to out-describe their fellows. When you remove the benefits of breaking style, you make it possible for the group to find genuine harmony and communication in regards to a harmonic style.

That's my take, anyway.

You could have a set mechanical effect for all spells: for example "Magic allows you to alter any roll, by as many points as you spend Magic Points. You decide how many points to spend before the roll is made", and then it's negotiated what that mechanical effect 'looks like' in story terms.

For example if you want to cast a Charm Person type spell, spending 5 Magic Points, this means that the beneficiary of the spell makes a diplomacy roll using the normal rules of the game, but adds 5 to their roll. It can be negotiated whether this surrounds the beneficiary with a fae-like glow, gives them the eloquence of a demi-god, renders the target susceptable to flattery, temporarily makes them more handsome etc.

Monkeys - I like the idea, and I wish I could use something that simple, but how do you do telekinesis or other non-enhancement effects with such a method?

an addendum to the previous post - conjuration (how much dirt can I create here?) and such is even harder for me to imagine as a +X

Hi,

This is why the first thing I mentioned is to divorce the idea of the rules having a 1:1 exact detailing of what it means in the fiction of the game.  Don't have rules that say, "You  can make 20 square feet of dirt" etc. 

Base the rules around conflicts- you either successfully make -enough- dirt, or you don't for this particular purpose.  Some games, such as HeroQuest, give the GM some leeway in this by letting the GM set difficulty ratings ("I want to make a pile of dirt to play in vs. I want to make a mountain to block the army").  Again, if you're worried about the GM abusing this power, this is where I point to games like PTA or even Agon which give the GM a limited pool of resources for setting the difficulty (regardless of narrative power).

And, unlike your example above, where the players create some uber construct that kicks ass for the rest of the game, mechanically, the players are having to roll again for each conflict- the construct might have been ass-kicking for the first conflict, but maybe it's running low on power, or getting beat up, or going out of control, or any of the 100 reasons that makes life difficult and keeps the story interesting - without cheating the players of their chosen specialities.  They'd still be using their magic skill, it's just that it's not a "success" that will carry them through all conflicts.

If you want more limitations towards how much magic can do, mostly for style and color reasons, give it a broad, but solid set of limitations.  ("It can affect up to a city block size of stuff"  "You can never bring back the dead", etc.)  These broad rules give guidance but also don't become a ton of work since the system itself handles most of the work for you.

Again, my recommendation is to take a look at any of the many games listed above and pay close attention to how they utilize magic, because it avoids a lot of common problems in other games.

Chris

Chris has got the right of it.

If the goal is:  rules light without bizzaro game impact effects

Then the solution is not:  Use rules to determine how much dirt I can magic up or how far I can teleport and then use judgement to determine if that amount is sufficient for success at the task at hand.

Instead try:  Use rules to determine whether or not the task at hand succeeds.  Then the amount of dirt or the distance of the teleport becomes by default "however much was necessary to achieve the level of success I already know I achieved because the dice already told me I succeeded and the initial narration determined I did so using magic"

You need very little in the way of rules to pull this off, and effect is limited to the degree of success achieved.

I agree with Ralph, with one point of emphasis.

Valamir wrote:
You need very little in the way of rules to pull this off, and effect is limited to the degree of success achieved.

This might be one of those things I have to read ten or twenty times before I understand it.

Well if you want to do a lot of theory heavy research do some searching on Fortune in the Middle.

But in a nut shell the idea works as follows:

Step 1:  Figure out what I'm trying to accomplish.  "I want to defeat this monster so that we can get past it to escape"

Step 2:  Figure out in broad strokes how you're going to accomplish it.  "I'm going to use my elemental earth magic trait"

Step 3:  Roll using whatever your mechanics are.

Step 4:  Decide what happens based on: what you were trying to accomplish, how you tried to accomplish it, and what the mechanic result was.

ex.  Say you got a "partial success" using whatever the mechanics are.  Ok...so what would a partial success at defeating the monster with earth magic look like...

"We know its a success...so we must have gotten past it...but we know its only partial and not total, so we could say that its still coming after us, because it wasn't totally defeated..."

"Ok here's what happens"

"Using my earth magic ability I summon forth a powerful elemental of rock and dirt to do battle with the monster.  There's a titanic struggle and as the two wrestle together we use the opportunity to take off past the fiend.  Alas, my elemental proved not strong enough and the monster defeated it...when it did so the elemental broke apart and buried the monster under rock and loose dirt.  By the time the monster dug itself free we were to the other side of the valley, but now its pissed and hunting us".

PTA would be fortune at the middle (we state intentions, we all bid, someone wins narrative, then narrative is described), if I understand the term correctly.

I really prefer yes/no stakes with a basic "your action succeeds and accomplishes something" vs. "your action fails and accomplishes nothing", but where the players can raise the stakes to add bigger and better success AND more critical and worse failure.  Players can also bid some of their resources (action points) to increase their probability of success, which raises the stakes by "you're more likely to succeed, but if you fail, you've failed AND lost your action point."  If I understand the term, that's fortune at the end. 

Example:
I'm a gunslinger; if I succeed I shoot the guy and the injury gives him a minus 1 to all his actions, if I fail I just miss. 
I can raise the stakes: If I succeed, I shoot him in the arm and he falls down and drops his gun in addition to the injury, if I fail I miss and my gun jams.  All this is declared before the roll.

That's just preamble to this: 
How does the don't-get-wacky magic ideas we're talking about here (i.e., sameness of underlying traits + fact bidding) require fortune at the middle rather than fortune at the end (of the kind I'm describing above where players can raise the stakes)?

I have a rather chaotic magic system in my game that is very rules light, but a have a Fortune system attached to it that slows down very gross player spells. I allow players to pretty much design their own spells (with a little vetting process to kick out the more evil ideas!) The spell caster has a magick statistic (usually between 15 and 25 depending on their character build) and needs to roll a D10 to beat the villain's magick resist stat (usually in the same range) plus 1D10. Pretty usual beat the number mechanics.
After a few session where the spells all seemed to be a little too effective (for both sides) I brought in a fortune points system that allowed both sides in a conflict to spend a limited reserve of points to negate a spell effect. This had the effect of braking the whole system, but then players and gm got into a points bidding war to get certain spells to work and everyone was munching through their points like crazy.
To cure this effect we added a second dice to the throw. 1D6 gets thrown alongside the 1D10. If the D6 roll is an even number the player can't spend any points to negate or bid up the spell. The gm is tied to this rule as well (I usually roll the 1D10 behind the GM screen and the 1D6 in front of it).
Its all run very sweet since we got this system working.

rycanada wrote: That's just preamble to this: 
How does the don't-get-wacky magic ideas we're talking about here (i.e., sameness of underlying traits + fact bidding) require fortune at the middle rather than fortune at the end (of the kind I'm describing above where players can raise the stakes)?

Valamir wrote:
Now, if what you're worried about are players who can't control themselves from just narrating stupidly "I summon the moon and drop it on his head"...well then FitM isn't going to help with that...pretty much nothing will.

Valamir wrote:
FitM is just easier to execute.

FitE requires knowing all the details about what might happen before you roll...cuz the roll...the fortune...is the last thing you do.

That means if you want rules light...all of the pre-roll inputs have to be pretty rules light.
However rules light inputs on a FitE mechanic can get pretty crazy.
So you need to have enough stuff (limitations, parameters, whatever) to control for that.
Which has a tendency to get un-light pretty quickly.

This is because the actual fortune part of the mechanics (being last in sequence) doesn't help, where as in FitM the dice actually participate in the process instead of just giving a binary or gradient result at the end.

Hi,

Think of it this way-

In Game A, to magically make a bridge, you have to have rules for how long/wide the bridge can be, compared to how long the chasm is (which means you have to know or make that up on the spot, etc.).  If rules don't let you make a long enough bridge, no matter what, you just can't make it.  This means, then, that as a designer, you're going to be thinking about different situations with X amount of numbers of distances and sizes and trying to balance that all together.

In Game B, we roll the dice (draw the cards, whatever) and if you succeed, there's a bridge.  Doesn't matter if the chasm was 20 feet or 200 feet, you got it.  If you fail, there isn't a bridge (or it forms and falls apart, or whatever).  As a designer, you don't have to think about what the specifics are- they dont' matter.  This makes it very easy to make it rules light.

Game B is fortune in the middle- we find out if you succeed or fail, then we describe how that happened.  Game A you need to know and juggle all the "how" as a designer, Game B you don't.

Pretty much all the examples I gave work like Game B, which is why they're good references to check out.

Chris

OK, now I understand what you're saying, but why is this specific to Fortune in the Middle eludes me.  Why can't game C, fortune in the end, have a player say "I'm going to try to create a bridge across the chasm" roll the dice, and if they succeed they've got the bridge, if they fail they don't, if they succeed by a wide margin it's an extra-nice bridge?  In both cases before the action we had the player saying they were going to do magic, of a particular kind, and the rules decided if he made it or not.  The only difference was that the player described it afterwards instead of before.

Chris_Chinn wrote:
Hi,

Think of it this way-

In Game A, to magically make a bridge, you have to have rules for how long/wide the bridge can be, compared to how long the chasm is (which means you have to know or make that up on the spot, etc.).  If rules don't let you make a long enough bridge, no matter what, you just can't make it.  This means, then, that as a designer, you're going to be thinking about different situations with X amount of numbers of distances and sizes and trying to balance that all together.

In Game B, we roll the dice (draw the cards, whatever) and if you succeed, there's a bridge.  Doesn't matter if the chasm was 20 feet or 200 feet, you got it.  If you fail, there isn't a bridge (or it forms and falls apart, or whatever).  As a designer, you don't have to think about what the specifics are- they dont' matter.  This makes it very easy to make it rules light.

Game B is fortune in the middle- we find out if you succeed or fail, then we describe how that happened.  Game A you need to know and juggle all the "how" as a designer, Game B you don't.

Pretty much all the examples I gave work like Game B, which is why they're good references to check out.

Chris

Maybe's its just the terminology throwing you Ry...because your last question isn't making much sense to me.  The reason you can't do that with fortune at the end...is because if you did...it would be fortune in the middle.  Fortune at the end means all the possibilities are determined before the dice are rolled.  The dice come last.

So with fortune at the end you have to decide:  Is there a difference between a nice bridge and a merely functional one?  If so how good does the roll have to be to get a nice bridge?  If you decide you only want a rickety crappy one does that make the roll easier?  How much time does it take to create a nice bridge 200 feet long?  Is there enough time to cast it before the bad guys catch us?  What if its: night time, foggy, raining, etc...does any of that make it harder to cast this spell?  Does it make it take longer?

These are just some of the more obvious inputs that you have to predetermine answers for BEFORE rolling the dice with a fortune at the end mechanic.  With Fortune in the middle you don't have to determine any of them until the dice are rolled.  If you fail the roll it MAY be because it was foggy and you misjudged how long the bridge needed to be and it collapsed because it didn't reach the other side...it MAY be that you couldn't collect enough energy to bridge a gap that long...it may be that the bad guys arrived before you finished casting the spell.  Alls the dice tell you is you failed.  The rest of the inputs happen AFTER the roll is made (which is why the fortune is in the "middle"). 

OK, now first can we clear this up: The FitM you guys are describing seems to take the game to the scene level rather than the action level.  I've seen scene level resolution working in Primetime Adventures, but it's not what I'm chasing here.  Is that what we're stumbling on?

In Primetime Adventures, you're saying that low magic is easier to do because the players know what resources they're bringing to bear but don't have any incentive to "talk up" their narration beyond the genre as agreed, because it doesn't leverage the situation.  The definition of a character's Edges is important because that determines whether they count towards winning the scene.  But I'm looking for more granularity in the scene than PTA (i.e. action stakes rather than scene stakes), and more definition (i.e. a difference between your level 1 knight and your level 3 knight, as it were).

As I said, I've been running a system for a while and its core mechanic is very much like PDQ.  That mechanic works like this: Character Concept + 2d6 versus Target.  Character Concept is one of a few different Risus-like traits, like "Knight 5" "Geomancer 4" "Womanizer 3".  Target is in the GM's hands, it goes "Easy 4" "Average 7" "Challenging 10" "Difficult 13" "Daunting 16" "Legendary 20"  Target is set by the GM saying "How hard is it to do what the PC is describing?"  The PCs' default stakes are 'being ineffective this round' or 'accomplishing what I described this round', but these can be changed from an initial description by raising the stakes as I described above.In CC+, the players have a disincentive to "talk up" their action description because it will move the scale out to Daunting or Legendary.  The definition of a character's traits is important because it determines which number can be brought to bear to win the stakes.

rycanada wrote:
Monkeys - I like the idea, and I wish I could use something that simple, but how do you do telekinesis or other non-enhancement effects with such a method?

I see what you're saying Monkeys.  I like that.

Modifiers to all actions:
+2 You have an ideal tool for the task
+0 You have an appropriate tool for the task
-2 You have the wrong tool for the task

Magic is like always having the appropriate tools for the task.

What about this approach?

Player: "I want to hurt those 100 men.  The appropriate tool is a big bomb on the end of a short-range precision-guided rocket.  So that's easy." 
GM: "Actually, the appropriate materials are bomb-making materials and a big sling to toss it with.  So your spell is as difficult as making a bomb and aiming that sling in 10 seconds.  That's daunting."

Too arbitrary?

I would treat it as "what are you trying to do by non-magical means", and "how many points of magic do you want to use to add to the relevant roll" - in this case what you want to do is "beat 100 men in combat", so the spell would be however you normally do combat rolls, with whatever bonus comes from the amount of magic you 'spend' on it. Depending on the system, perhaps "beat 100 men in combat" has several parts, eg "I want to have 100 attacks per turn", "I want them all to hit", "I want all their attacks to miss or do no damage".

For magic to be balanced with anything else, something like beating 100 men in combat would have to be impossible, unless non-magical characters can do similar things.

rycanada wrote:
I see what you're saying Monkeys.  I like that.

Modifiers to all actions:
+2 You have an ideal tool for the task
+0 You have an appropriate tool for the task
-2 You have the wrong tool for the task

Magic is like always having the appropriate tools for the task.

What about this approach?

Player: "I want to hurt those 100 men.  The appropriate tool is a big bomb on the end of a short-range precision-guided rocket.  So that's easy." 
GM: "Actually, the appropriate materials are bomb-making materials and a big sling to toss it with.  So your spell is as difficult as making a bomb and aiming that sling in 10 seconds.  That's daunting."

Too arbitrary?

Its clear there's a serious break down in communication here...I'm not sure sure where that is, so lets start over with an example.  I'm moderately familier with PDQ.  Its not my favorite system since its about one step away from being "resolution by GM fiat" but lets go with it.

You're heroes are being chased by a gang of mercenaries.  They've done a bunch of rolls to shoot arrows, set traps, try to cover their trail...whatever but now their pursuers are closing in and they find themselves at the brink of a big chasm.  Maybe you just invented that chasm, maybe it was already on the map* whatever.

A player sorcerer decides they're going to conjure a bridge to cross the chasm.  Great.  Make the Roll.  2d6 + Conjuration. 

Lets say you set up your rules for magic so that magic starts at Average plus a level for additional circumstances.  In this case you decide that the size of the bridge necessary is more than the standard size range for conjuration, and that things need to be done in a hurry so you bump things up to "Difficult"

The player rolls and fails by a good bit.

Why'd he fail?  Did the mercenaries arrive before the spell was completed.  Was the bridge too large and the sorcerer couldn't summon enough energy?  Was the bridge conjured in time, but collapsed before the heroes could cross?  The only thing the dice decide is that the goal of conjuring a crossable bridge over the chasm didn't happen.  That's all FiTM is.  Same logic if the roll had succeeded. 

*As another example of FiTM at work, lets say that earlier one of the PCs made a 2d6 + Orienteering (or whatever) roll to try and find a short cut to help escape from the mercenaries.  He failed it miserably.  As a result, you, the GM decides that failing such a roll by such a margin means the heroes are in a worse scrape than they were before.  That's when the chasm got invented.  Wasn't there before, but it was a result of interpreting the result of the previous failure.

Another variant:

A player wants to make a bridge across a chasm, and rolls 2d6 + Conjuration.

Result is 11 which is a success-level "Challening"

The GM says that this is enough to make a bridge across by doing a ritual for 1 minute.

The player can now negotiate perhaps making a weaker bridge in less time, a more grand-looking bridge by taking more time etc.

The player wants to do the spell in 5 seconds, and the GM says this will make the bridge really weak and dangerous to cross.

The player agrees with this, and narrates the effect of the magic.

Afterwards, the GM might require skill rolls for players crossing or whatever else the GM feels is appropriate.