Okay, the rest of the ideas for my system might be in disorganized shambles right now, but I like this idea, so far. Briefly, this game is about telling sweeping, big stories in a fantasy world and about the characters; how they change, what they give up (or the nasty things they do) for power, and the clash of opposing forces (law/chaos, magic/technology, etc.)

I'm beginning to like the idea of a push/pull magic system. Essentially, the elements are very important in this setting, especially in their duality. Fire/Water, Earth/Air, and in this case Law/Chaos (the last needs renaming still). In a push-pull system, a player will have a pool of magical power, which is split between their magical schools. However, each pairing can only have a certain maximum size (let's say 10 for convenience here. So one player might go 5 Fire / 5 Water, while another might go 7 Fire / 3 Water, 0 Fire / 10 Water, etc. Now, during the course of their conflicts, they spend points from these pools to perform above and beyond. A bit of minor magic, like magically lighting a candle, doesn't require and pool expenditure, but making a fiery whip to lash out with sure does. As each point is expended, instead of being lost, it flips to the other side of the duality. If a player burns a Fire point throwing a fireball, and was 5 Fire / 5 Water, they're now 4 Fire / 6 Water. I'm thinking there would be some mechanic so that large imbalances were dangerous, so it would be in a player's advantage to learn to manipulate both sides of a duality, using the two opposing forces in unison.

As for Law/Chaos, I'm not sure they'd work quite the same way. In this setting, there's the safe kind of magic, ordered, comprehensible, and (more or less) static. Wild Magic / Chaos Magic, on the other hand, can do anything. It carries tremendous power, but it's kind of like the Dark Side of the Force. While you might be powerful, sooner or later, Wild Magic ends up controlling you. It is in the nature of wild magic to corrode and eat away at things, so a Wild Magic user would become less and less stable and human the more Wild Magic they used, thus bringing the players to a different dilemma. When faced with a difficult problem, do you resort to Wild Magic and risk corruption, or try to fight it off with weaker but safer powers?

Anyways, I hope this post isn't too much a mess, but what do you guys think of the push/pull style of mechanic? I'm starting to like it enough I might base the whole system that way. (I'm a freak for duality)

Sorry if this is spelled badly, incomprehensible, or stupid,

John.

opsneakie wrote:
Sorry if this is spelled badly, incomprehensible, or stupid,

Okay, I've got some more thoughts in order now, and this system is shaping into something I'm liking a little more.

So, continuing with fire/water (which I guess is the example axis), a fire mage would want to start a conflict with a high Fire pool, at the expense of Water. If a Water attack is launched at him, it is resisted by his Fire. As he spends Fire points to cast spells, his Fire decreases, meaning his resistance to Water abilities gets weaker and weaker. By using some Water abilities to re-balance, he not only gets his defenses more in order, but he also gets more Fire points to spend on his abilities. This example mage specializes in Fire spells, so that's where he gets the most bang.

I'm thinking there would be some mechanic so that large imbalances were dangerous...(snip)

Actually, that's almost exactly what I had in mind. I've been fleshing out this system a little more in my head and on paper, so I thought I'd dish this bit out.

I was thinking that Law/Chaos would function as a degeneration scale, kind of like Humanity in Vampire. So every time you have to call on Wild Magic, you risk degenerating down the scale, towards the point where you get completely consumed by the dangerous magics you're wielding. There would be ways to drag yourself back onto the law side of things, but it would be difficult, kind of like atoning to lose Dark Side points (wow, I have a lot of weird gaming metaphors. If anyone will understand it, you guys will).

My other thought was that these two push-pull axes will govern all character stuff, not just magic. So Air would represent physical and mental nimbleness and quickness of reaction, Earth would be brute strength and resilience, Fire would be courage, bravery, and martial prowess, and Water would be wisdom/intelligence, logic, and reason. Then players would spend these points back and forth in the style of WoD willpower to help out a roll, but the catch is, you're spending your ability points to get a benefit for one roll, so now you're tipping the balance, possibly weakening yourself for the next roll you have to make.

The new part that's sticking me is that this kind of thing doesn't deal with the character's resources getting exhausted well. In Shadow of Yesterday, for example, you're expending points out of your pools, and they need to be refreshed, but if every point you spend just tips you the other way on the scale, you can just wobble around happily forever.

Do I make spent points just go away, forcing rest and refreshment on the players, or do I do fatigue a different way.

Thanks for the feedback and ideas,

John.

You could have a small list of simple spells/ablilties that corrispond to each element (and which also re-enforce the main behaviours you want players to have their characters doing) and using those build up the Law pool.  Then when players use Wild magic it would depleate that pool and build the Chaos pool.  This would allow players to invent new Wild magic spells whole cloth in the game while keeping that magic in check through the GM assigning that spell a cost.

Here's a thought on keeping easy spellcasting down and thus make it harder to balance - Have spells cast to no purpose swing you farther towards Chaos. The more powerfull the spell and petty the reason, the more the swing to Chaos.

Narf wrote:
Here's a thought on keeping easy spellcasting down and thus make it harder to balance - Have spells cast to no purpose swing you farther towards Chaos. The more powerful the spell and petty the reason, the more the swing to Chaos.

The way I envision magic is that petty reasons don't necessarily mean degeneration, but you can fall into Chaos by the use of certain spells and abilities. For example, to reach certain places (like the realm of the Dead), a caster needs to use some Chaos magic to get there. If they're in good control of themselves, they can avoid slipping down the slope into Wild Magic, but if they're not careful, even a little use of this magic can have harmful effects.

So, lacking a good way to keep attributes working with the swinging axes, do you all think I should make non-magical attributes their own thing, or should I try and figure out a way to make it work?

I'm not entirely convinced that all your attributes fluctuating over the course of the game would be a bad thing. Your character's personality would stay the same, but the things they're able to do would move around a bit. Say on the Fire/Water axes, the character is exhausted from fighting, their Fire goes down, their bravery/martial ability is depleted, but they can do other stuff now.

Also, I was thinking of doing wound levels as a penalty to maximum pool size; you take a wound, you lop the ends off your pools. So a Fire 7/Water 3 person takes one wound level and they effectively become Fire 6/Water 2, then Fire 5/Water 1, etc. This way characters still lose things as they become fatigued and wounded.

opsneakie wrote:
For example, to reach certain places (like the realm of the Dead), a caster needs to use some Chaos magic to get there. If they're in good control of themselves, they can avoid slipping down the slope into Wild Magic, but if they're not careful, even a little use of this magic can have harmful effects.

opsneakie wrote:
Your character's personality would stay the same, but the things they're able to do would move around a bit.

opsneakie wrote:
Also, I was thinking of doing wound levels as a penalty to maximum pool size

Xerxes wrote:
This is a decent idea, and the idea of "maximum pool sizes" being limited by player choice is an excellent way of tying attributes in with the levels of magic; if you have their initial attributes correspond to their maximum pool sizes but allow their actual pool sizes to fluctuate depending on their injury level it could work well.

And by "initial" I do not mean permanent.

opsneakie wrote:
Ok, let me see if we're on the same page here. I roll up a character. Let's say each axis is 10 points here, for ease of math. I decide I like Fire better than water, so my initial balance is Fire 7 / Water 3. Then, i spend points to do my heroic stuff, but can refresh up to Fire 7 / Water 3 somehow. If I get wounded in a fight, my pool sizes go down, as a way of me getting weaker, right? But then it seems like the swinging effect gets lost a bit there. i.e. a spent point of Fire doesn't equal a gained point of water. My Fire 7 / Water 3 spends  a Fire point, but he can't gain a Water one because he's at his maximum Water.

I was thinking of having the players define initial values, to which their pools could be refreshed, via rest/healing/etc.

That sounds simply amazing.

Wow. That's the perfect way to get the attributes to work out the way I like, and still allow the magical swing to happen. Thanks, Xerxes, that's the option I didn't see there.

Then my thought is: when you refresh your pools (by sleeping, resting up, whatever) they refresh back to their default values of Fire 7 / Water 3 (in that example),so even if your character has become heavily Water-baised, he refreshed back to a more Fire-oriented build. Then I suppose there would have to be a mechanic to allow the player to change his character's permanent balance.

Thanks for the help, I feel like this system is coming together really well.

- John

Maybe, although that strikes me as a bit of a cop-out.  Not only does it fall prey to the usual D&D style "sleepy mage" in order to refresh magical ability, but it also cheapens the change a bit.

For example:

Merlin has been forced out of his scholarly isolation by a crisis in his local village, brought on by a roaming dragon.  In order to defeat the dragon, he had to employ Pyrus magic, in a titanic clash that not only brought him to near-death at the hands of the dragon, but tugged at his very soul, transforming him from a calm, reflective scholar into a raging, capricious magus as likely to kill an innocent as to invigorate it with his magic.

The next morning he wakes up refreshed and ready for another day in his library.

It's a simplified example, but I hope it makes its point; that resetting the magic cycles by resting makes the changes transient and easily fixed, without any serious thought needed to balance out the transforming magical energies raging within the mage's soul.  More magic needs to be involved in the change, or the magical reset needs to be something a bit harder to do.

And a thought about my own post, I say that the physical attributes stay put and are altered all at the same time.  The idea is that they're altered and completely mutable, but at a slower rate than the magic scales change.

I wasn't actually going to use sleeping as a refresher, exactly because of the sleepy mage syndrome. There would probably be some other way to deal with refreshment that was a little harder to do.

This is pretty damn cool. Kudos.

I've got 2 thoughts/questions/suggestions. First one:

If you are a Fire7/Water3 mage, this is your "natural" state, correct? So if you cast some Fire and end up at 5/5, will you ever get back to your own natural 7/3 balance, *without* casting some water?

I was thinking that if I was a twinked out Fire mage, I might only really have skill in casting Fire. I might have simply neglected learning any of that wimpy Water stuff. Will time correct this imbalance? Or am I just stuck with needing to water the lawn for the afternoon?

How about other methods to correct this Fire/Water imbalance? Is there anything non-magical he can do to boost his Fire back up? Since you appear to already have married the elements to emotional states, could my Fire guy get more points by getting into arguments, starting fights, or otherwise exposing himself to that which Fire represents in your world?

Second one:

Chaos/Order being its own thing. This is pretty rocking, too. If Fire/Water, Earth/Air both exist on the "x" axis, and Chaos/Order is on the "y" axis of things, it's possible to cast an Order-based Fire spell, just as it's possible to cast a Chaos-based Fire spell? So the Order one gives set results (range, duration, power), and the Chaos one is all random, but quite likely more powerful, in the end result?

If I'm following you correctly, I think you're really on to something, here. Please, keep it up!

-a-

You're following exactly here, Adam. I'm thinking there would be some other ways to re-balance yourself, some non-magical means. The question is, do you refresh by following that element or by doing the opposite?

i.e. does exposing yourself to what Fire represents in the world increase your fire because you're acting on it, or decrease it because you're expending the Fire energy within you? Do you have to take a moment to sit back and think to 'refresh' the opposite abilities?

This is something I'm still not sure on. I kind of like the idea that you have to refresh by doing something that's not necessarily normal for you, so a fighter would have to take a step back from continuous battle to get his points back.

Good to know at least a couple people like the idea.

- John

(I'm having a heck of a time writing this one)

To get further into this, you have to answer the following:

Do I (A) "make room" for the Fire by spending Water, or do I (B) grab Fire and push it into my container, and thereby force the Water to leave?

The question applies to both casting magic, and for regaining elemental energy via non-magical means. Explain to me why magic works in your world. When I do Fire magic, what's going on?

Possibilities and Ramifications

(A):
I cast a Fire spell in order to light a candle. I am *spending Water* to make a fire happen. If I reach Fire 10/Water 0, I can't cast any more Fire, because I am *out* of Water.
To refill my capacity to do more Fire, I have to *spend Fire,* through either magical or non-magical means.

(B):
I cast a Fire spell in order to light a candle. I am *spending Fire* to make fire happen. If I reach Fire 0/Water 10, I can't cast any more Fire, because I am *out* of Fire.
To refill my capacity to do more Fire, I have to *get more Fire,* through either magical or non-magical means.

Personally, I think (B) makes more sense. I also think that refilling Fire via non-magical means will be easier to wrap your (and your players') head around, than trying to figure out what expending Water via non-magical means would look like. I can conceive, quite readily, what going out and "getting Fire" would play out like. You'd go and do, or at least be around, the qualities that Fire has. I also like this because it approaches my understanding of occult/magical thinking, where like attracts like, and energy flows through association.

The idea of (A), where I have to *spend Fire* via non-magical means, is difficult to wrap around. How do I do this? What does it look like, and play out like? You *could* say that by doing Fire things, I am getting Fire "out of my system," and am thereby spending it.... I dunno.

-a-

It works like option (B) you presented, although points won't be spent for every spell. You cast a powerful Fire spell, and you spend fire, until eventually you run out of Fire and can no longer use Fire magic of any kind until you refresh it. I'm not sure quite what you'll do to refresh the pools yet, but I'm getting there. I'm hoping to have at least a preliminary set of rules done by the end of the week, so I can do some playtests soon.

  Hi,
    Just came across your post, Amazed at the idea, very simple and very close to some ideas I have been kicking around.
Which might help or just create diversions? Any way here goes:

Your idea could be one of many ways to cast magic or use abilities! The choice depends on the player and his characters learning process? i.e. we start life as hotheaded individuals on a journey to wisdom, for some!

The law of your system relies on transference of balance between fixed opposites at character generation.
The way of Transference magic. Method 1.

1.  A method of using magic called (Transference) but used by those who run the risk of its effects, which you have covered.
Or
2.  A method combining the elements called (Harmonic) which has a less damaging effect? But would bring a balanced reduction of both opposites.

What I am trying to point out is, are you trying to accomplish what I am trying to accomplish a gaming experience, which gives feed back on the way, you use your character? Then with this feedback your character can learn what suits him/her.

The dice and the methods we could talk about but what do thick so far!

Blodwin.