Hex Rangers is my design that was formerly titled Witch Trails. It’s a game of investigating and exterminating the paranormal in the American frontier.

A couple weeks ago, I ran the “Strange Fruit” scenario for my cousin James and his fiancee Krystal. It was her first time playing an RPG, although she had watched me, James, and Steven play Super Action Now! one time and made an engaged (and occasionally participating) audience, so I really thought she’d have a good time with it, even though it was out of character for her. She did, and even stepped into speaking in-character (even while persuading NPCs with her character’s feminine wiles) with ease and no apparent discomfort.

The system has gone through a few changes since then. Lemme give you a rundown of the process of play:

The PCs are Hex Rangers: a secret, government funded organization tasked to rid America of supernatural threats. These threats mostly boil down to nature spirits who are pissed off at white expansion. (There’s room for Premise there, so the game could be Drifted to Story Now easily, but as-designed, the game is a Participationist Right-to-Dream thing.)

The PCs investigate, looking for signs of supernatural activity. Along the way, they get into conflicts, which are played out in poker hands, similarly to DitV but with some crucial structural differences. The chips that are used in the conflicts are replenished when the PCs call it a day for the investigation.

Meanwhile, the threat has an agenda with a timeline. The longer the PCs take to figure out a) where the threat is and b) how to kill it, the worse things get for nearby civilians and/or the PCs.

Some particularly successful system changes have been:
the introduction of the timeline as a required step of GM prep;
using the Qualities (attributes) as betting limits and a way to regain chips at the end of a conflict, with none of the older functions;
solid guidelines for ranking traits: “If it’s normal, it’s 1 card. If it’s famous, exceptional, or rare, it’s 2 cards, with a 1 card complication [a negative thing that gives opponents cards and may be brought into play by the opponent once the trait is used]; if it’s magical, it’s 3 cards, with a 2 card complication.”

Those all worked really, really well.

As for problems:
Converting the stakes of a conflict (here referring to the chips in the pot, not a statement of Intent) into Trouble (damage) is becoming problematic again. It gets clunky, and it’s hard to make sure that all of the chips get used: you end up having to shoe-horn in some rather silly stuff in order to meet the requirements, or else you just discard them and freeform it, which brings me right back to the same problem I used to have with this. I’m not sure what to do about it.

Also, for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to explain the magic at the table. I try to explain that it’s folk magic, and I try to explain what that means, but I never do it right. I’m all, “It’s folk magic! It’s cool and different from stupid light-show Disney-glitter Hollywood magic!” and the players say okay, and then proceed later on to narrate shafts of purple light and wounds closing up and pixie dust. I try to re-explain that that’s not the right vibe or scope of effect, but I end up relenting because I explain so badly that the players don’t get it. And it has a definite negative impact on my fun.

How do you explain American folk magic to someone who has only heard “Pow-wow” used as a term for “meeting,” and who has only heard of Hoodoo because they saw Skeleton Key? WITHOUT making them read an essay?

As for the play: it went well. We had fun. I ran the scenario a little different this time, starting it a day before Emily’s transformation into a cannibalistic monster; the first Sign of supernatural activity was the disappearance of some workers from the orchards. This one difference, intersecting with the different players’ methods of investigation, led the scenario on a very different path. It was interesting. It was also a solid validation of the prep techniques, because I had no problem keeping up with these differences (which included many unexpected actions) without resorting to railroading.

- Marshall

Marshall wrote:
Also, for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to explain the magic at the table. I try to explain that it’s folk magic, and I try to explain what that means, but I never do it right. I’m all, “It’s folk magic! It’s cool and different from stupid light-show Disney-glitter Hollywood magic!” and the players say okay, and then proceed later on to narrate shafts of purple light and wounds closing up and pixie dust. I try to re-explain that that’s not the right vibe or scope of effect, but I end up relenting because I explain so badly that the players don’t get it. And it has a definite negative impact on my fun.

How do you explain American folk magic to someone who has only heard “Pow-wow” used as a term for “meeting,” and who has only heard of Hoodoo because they saw Skeleton Key? WITHOUT making them read an essay?

Steal Away Jordan has, in my opinion, the hands-down best implementation of that kind of magic that I know of.  It's worth a look. 

But I understand you're looking for ways to explain your mechanic, rather than new mechanics (although it's possible if the magic keeps coming out wrong in play, your mechanics could use a look).  Folk magic contains nothing that couldn't be dismissed as chance, or the wild imaginings of a superstitious person.  Folk magic is about using ritual to control those things that are uncontrollable.  It's wearing the same pair of underpants to every football game.  It's crossing your fingers for good luck, it's touching wood, it's your "lucky" fishing lure. 

Oh! I just remembered a comic I read that is exactly what you're talking about: http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/master-of-the-universe/

I'm gonna have to check out SAJ. I've been meaning to for a while now anyway.

As for the mechanics, there's barely any to it at all (which could be part of the problem). The players tell me what they're trying to do, and describe the ritual. I, as GM, judge the ritual on aesthetic & symbolic grounds and assign it a score, and possibly also a complication score. The magic always works unless acted upon by other magic (which, y'know, happens when you go fucking around with spirits), in which case it goes to cards and is handled like any other conflict.

Interesting stuff.

I'm always wary of "GM assigns a score based on aesthetic judgement" kind of mechanics.  Not because I don't think GMs should be making judgement calls (indeed, I think it's a fundamental requirement), but because the scope of those judgements is often too large.

What about providing some guidelines for that judgement, that went hand in hand with guiding players in the right tone.  Something like:

Hemlock: +1 for spells against men (I'm just making shit up here)
+1 for each hour spent on the ritual
Pine needles: +1 on spells for injury
Binding cords: +1 for spells about movement
Blood: +3 all spells, but +1 complication

Or something like that.  So if you spend three hours winding a spig of hemlock in twine, you have a powerful spell to restrict a man's movement.

The downside to this is that you have a huge list of components and procedures.  Depending on your game, that could be a good thing or a bad thing.  If magic is a central mechanic, I think it's fine.  If it's not, it's possibly too cumbersome.  I think only a fairly small number are needed though to seed ideas for others.  Players will ask "what herb works against women?" and if the answers not in the book, maybe they have to find out in character, or maybe they can make it up.  That seems like fun to me.

Yeurgh, no. That's not magic, it's chemistry. When you provide guidelines like that, it stops being magic, starts being technology, and gets dull, dull, dull.  I don't mean to be snarky, but it's exactly that sort of approach to magic systems, all but ubiquitous in RPGs, that I've been railing against for years. I hate it.

This is magic:
Joe finds out that his woman's been sleeping with another guy. He gets really drunk and goes walking out in the middle of the night. He falls down by the river. His hand falls into some clay, so he scoops it up. He starts kneading it furiously, working his sweat into it, and his anger, and his grief, and his drunkenness, and finally his semen.

The woman gets pregnant, and dies from complications in childbirth. The child survives, and is born without the ability to feel fear. And even though she was sleeping with someone else, Joe is certain that the child is his.

It's all about a particular, unique iteration of symbols, expressed in action, emotion, and circumstance. On the surface, it looks normal, but there's a certain something that makes it seem a little off, but not enough for the uninitated to suspect anything.

Also, and importantly, it will never happen exactly the same way twice.

Cool.  Something else then?

When you're making your aesthetic judgement about the ritual, what guides you? What do the rules say should guide you?

I'm not sure how unique little actions and raw feel can go together with the actions of what's essentially a government-contracted problem-solving organisation. To Hex Rangers, deaths of innocents and such is likely to be a question of efficiency of the fairly cold "do you push a single featureless person in front of a trolley to save five featureless persons that the trolley endangers?" mental experiment variety.

Do you have any mechanics for the characters to become emotionally invested like you did in Rustbelt?

Simon wrote:
When you're making your aesthetic judgement about the ritual, what guides you? What do the rules say should guide you?

DWeird wrote:
Do you have any mechanics for the characters to become emotionally invested like you did in Rustbelt?

Marshall wrote:
Yeurgh, no. That's not magic, it's chemistry. When you provide guidelines like that, it stops being magic, starts being technology, and gets dull, dull, dull.  I don't mean to be snarky, but it's exactly that sort of approach to magic systems, all but ubiquitous in RPGs, that I've been railing against for years. I hate it.

This is magic:
Joe finds out that his woman's been sleeping with another guy. He gets really drunk and goes walking out in the middle of the night. He falls down by the river. His hand falls into some clay, so he scoops it up. He starts kneading it furiously, working his sweat into it, and his anger, and his grief, and his drunkenness, and finally his semen.

The woman gets pregnant, and dies from complications in childbirth. The child survives, and is born without the ability to feel fear. And even though she was sleeping with someone else, Joe is certain that the child is his.

It's all about a particular, unique iteration of symbols, expressed in action, emotion, and circumstance. On the surface, it looks normal, but there's a certain something that makes it seem a little off, but not enough for the uninitated to suspect anything.

Also, and importantly, it will never happen exactly the same way twice.

You know, you're probably right.

My plan (which is just a starting plan, and thus quite ambitious; I'm sure reality will tone it down) was to make the game a boxed set, with a core rulebook for the mechanics, a how-to-GM book, and an easily-photocopied pamphlet for the players called the Hex Ranger's Field Guide that would explain everything they needed to know about being Hex Rangers. I wanted to write that pamphlet "in voice," but, the more I work on this game, the more I realize that I can't do that. I have to address the players directly, in meta-voice, in order to explain issues like magic.

Speaking of magic, I've had a bit of an idea.
In the rules for making spirits, the first step is to create its Domain:

Domain
The Domain is where the spirit intersects with the visible world. This can be something very local – a certain deer, a certain tree, a certain mountain. Or it can be more general – storms, forests, stone. It can even be conceptual – luck in the hunt, good harvests, warfare. Basically, the spirit must have some link to the world of humans; otherwise, what is it doing here?
This link is central to the spirit’s profile. Its Desire, Vulnerability, Manifestations, and Powers should all flow from its Domain (but feel free to use poetic logic here). After all, it is through the Domain that the spirit acts on the mundane world. Really, it is the Domain that gives the spirit an identity at all.

Communicating Folk Magic

Examples are good.  That guy at the river is one good one, but you need others to show other facets and possibilities.

Does the Hex Rangers setting include one flavor of magic, used by PCs and antagonists alike?  Or do the PCs do folk magic and the badguys do something else?  Your examples ought to show the kinds of magics that will occur in play -- either useful stuff the PCs will want to do, or nasty stuff they'll want to not have happen to them.  Or both.

Visuals are also good.  Even crappy Pow-wow and Hoodoo images from the internet could be a starting point.

Arbitrating Magic

I agree with Simon that it'd be good for the GM to have a list of criteria for evaluating how a spell should take effect.  However, I tink the criteria themselves should be aesthetic, not scientific.  And the game text should provide guidance to the GM in making these specific aesthetic judgments.  Example:

-how well does the spell's color evoke (in the minds of the players) its intended effect? (0 - doesn't, 1 - vaguely, 2 - clearly, 3 - strongly or cleverly)
-how well does the spell's color evoke its intended target?
-how well does the spell's color represent "Hex Rangers magic"?

The better the score in each of these categories, the better the spell (a) produces intended type of change, (b) affects desired target, (c) produces intended extent of change.

Another option would be to somewhat formalize the system of "if everyone at the table says that's perfect, then it works well".

Or those options could be combined, with some sort of a bonus vote thing where players sway the GM's judgment.  "I was thinking 'vaguely evocative', but it got two votes, so I guess 'clearly evocative' is fair."

Awkward Resolution Outcomes

Your comment about having to shoehorn in consequences of the card-playing sets off alarm bells for me.  I've never played Right to Dream using Conflict Resolution, so I'm curious to see what that looks like.  But it sounds like you've found an obvious pitfall.  When the answer to to "why did that happen" is obviously "cuz the rules say so", that can jar a dreamer.  The GM would do well to make sure "why did that happen" never gets asked -- some GMs are up to this, with  fast, clever, plausible improv -- but others may find it tricky without some resources to fall back on.  I'll stop speculating now; I guess my real point is that I suspect this is a very important issue, one that might trip me up if I ran it without having seen you run it first.

GM Prep

Marshall, we need to compare notes on this.  Delve uses a timeline too.  For me, it's mainly a reminder to periodically inject some dramatic urgency, plus a brainstorm checklist of how to do that.  Same for you?

What does folk magic look like, and how does it behave?

Just brainstorms here.

-color apt to "magic"
      -sacrifice
      -deal-making
      -secret-utilizing
              -secret symbols
      -gross
      -visceral
      -taboo-breaking
      -altered mental states
              -frenzy
              -trance
              -weeping

-color apt to target
      -part of it
      -effigy of it
      -symbol of it

-color apt to effect
      -drowning
      -dessication
      -discarding
      -shaping
      -merging
      -detecting/revealing

-power source
      -blood
      -semen
      -precious item
              -gem
      -rare item
              -frog bone
              -albino squirrel
      -personal offer
              -child
              -spouse
              -virginity
              -name
              -soul
      -nature
              -sun
              -moon
              -special tree
              -whirlpool
              -4-leaf clover

Based on process/effect and target, you could generate some rough idea of the kind of change wrought, and where it occurs.  At some point, either the game or the GM would have to determine the specifics: "Yes, your wife is affected, but burning the effigy, rather than burning away her lust, only enflames it."  Brainstorm: the GM might choose or roll randomly on lists of ways a spell could go:

scale of obviousness -- first thing you might expect -> barely traceable to ritual

scale of degree -- weaker than optimal -> stronger than optimal

scale of specificity -- effect too narrow -> effect too broad

scale of polarity -- optimal form of effect -> exact opposite of that

scale of backlash -- no side-effects for you -> permanent side-effects for you

Alright, brain-dump complete.

David wrote:
Does the Hex Rangers setting include one flavor of magic, used by PCs and antagonists alike?

Awkward Resolution Outcomes

Your comment about having to shoehorn in consequences of the card-playing sets off alarm bells for me.  I've never played Right to Dream using Conflict Resolution, so I'm curious to see what that looks like.  But it sounds like you've found an obvious pitfall.  When the answer to to "why did that happen" is obviously "cuz the rules say so", that can jar a dreamer.  The GM would do well to make sure "why did that happen" never gets asked -- some GMs are up to this, with  fast, clever, plausible improv -- but others may find it tricky without some resources to fall back on.  I'll stop speculating now; I guess my real point is that I suspect this is a very important issue, one that might trip me up if I ran it without having seen you run it first.

GM Prep

Marshall, we need to compare notes on this.  Delve uses a timeline too.  For me, it's mainly a reminder to periodically inject some dramatic urgency, plus a brainstorm checklist of how to do that.  Same for you?

Hex wrote:
THREAT AGENDA
All Threats have an agenda. That agenda is, in some way, what makes them a threat to the civilians; that is, they’re agenda needs to be to make something terrible happen. If you’re using a combination of Threats, they could be collaborating on a single agenda, or they could be pursuing separate agendas. However, as separate agendas are liable to conflict, I don’t recommend that you try them until you’ve got a handle on running the game.
The agenda needs to be a multi-step plan of action that, unless foiled, they will follow. Each step should correspond to one Segment of gameplay [the period of time between when the PCs resources are refreshed and when they call it a day, either because they’re out of leads or they’re out of resources –MB]. 
Whatever the agenda is leading up to, it needs to be really, really bad. Furthermore, things need to get progressively worse as the agenda continues, such that the longer the players take to figure things out, the worse things get for the people they’re supposed to be protecting.
This is important! Notice the rule for replenishing chips? The players get their chips back when they decide to call it a day and end a Segment. Which advances the Threat’s agenda by one step, and makes the situation one step worse. So the players have to be careful about splurging all their chips on conflicts, lest they run out and are forced to allow the Threat to get worse.
Now, if the players manage to foil a step of the agenda, but don’t manage to take down the Threat, you’ll have to improvise changes to the agenda. Don’t worry if the improvisations aren’t as clever as the agenda you had cooked up; this mirrors what your Threat is going through. His plan is going all to hell, and now he’s got to try something more dicey, reckless, or even desperate.

AN EXAMPLE THREAT AGENDA
The Threat is Jack Gossman, a Witch who can create undead slaves. Their bite carries on the curse after 24 hours. The idea is to turn the entire town of Cedar Grove into these Abominations.

1. Kidnap Eleanor Wingham.
2. Drown Eleanor in the well, and allow her body to be found.
3. When Eleanor’s curse takes hold, she will kill and turn the mortician, Thaddeus Burnow, who was, of course, preparing her for burial.
4. From here on, in each step, each extant undead Abomination will kill and turn one of the townsfolk apiece, until the entire town has been turned, at which point they will turn their attention toward the PCs.

The way this will work in play is thus:
When the PCs arrive in town, inform them somehow of Eleanor’s disappearance – it should be the talk of the town – and react to their attempts to investigate it. On the next segment, inform the PCs of the discovery of Eleanor’s body. On the next segment, inform the PCs of the discovery of Thaddeus’ body (with strangely human bite marks) and the disappearance of Eleanor’s corpse. And so on, for each new victim.

David wrote:
What does folk magic look like, and how does it behave?

Based on process/effect and target, you could generate some rough idea of the kind of change wrought, and where it occurs.  At some point, either the game or the GM would have to determine the specifics: "Yes, your wife is affected, but burning the effigy, rather than burning away her lust, only enflames it."  Brainstorm: the GM might choose or roll randomly on lists of ways a spell could go:

Marshall wrote:
All magic rituals are done in the same flavor. The PCs use them, as do witches*. Spirits*, devils*, and abominations* may use them, but also have Powers that are like magic in that they can be combated with magic, but require no ritual or anything; they just DO them.

Marshall wrote: Trouble happens after conflicts because the conflict escalated to a certain point. Not “cuz the rules say so,” but because things boiled that hot.

Marshall wrote: It’s meta, sure, but this isn’t a game-physics, [Threefold] Sim kind of Right to Dream. It’s a genre-emulation, Dramatism kind of Right to Dream.

Marshall wrote: I’ve been thinking that, instead of converting stake points to Trouble points, I can just have a “Trouble meter” that I compare to the stakes, one that tells me, say, “At 25 stakes, X, Y, or Z happens” and the winner chooses. In other words, use more of a Poison’d-style consequence-for-escalation mechanic.

Hex wrote:
THREAT AGENDA
. . . The players get their chips back when they decide to call it a day and end a Segment. Which advances the Threat’s agenda by one step, and makes the situation one step worse.

Hex wrote:
Now, if the players manage to foil a step of the agenda, but don’t manage to take down the Threat, you’ll have to improvise changes to the agenda. Don’t worry if the improvisations aren’t as clever as the agenda you had cooked up; this mirrors what your Threat is going through. His plan is going all to hell, and now he’s got to try something more dicey, reckless, or even desperate.

Hex wrote:
AN EXAMPLE THREAT AGENDA
The Threat is Jack Gossman, a Witch who can create undead slaves. Their bite carries on the curse after 24 hours. The idea is to turn the entire town of Cedar Grove into these Abominations.

1. Kidnap Eleanor Wingham.
2. Drown Eleanor in the well, and allow her body to be found.
3. When Eleanor’s curse takes hold, she will kill and turn the mortician, Thaddeus Burnow, who was, of course, preparing her for burial.
4. From here on, in each step, each extant undead Abomination will kill and turn one of the townsfolk apiece, until the entire town has been turned, at which point they will turn their attention toward the PCs.

The way this will work in play is thus:
When the PCs arrive in town, inform them somehow of Eleanor’s disappearance – it should be the talk of the town – and react to their attempts to investigate it. On the next segment, inform the PCs of the discovery of Eleanor’s body. On the next segment, inform the PCs of the discovery of Thaddeus’ body (with strangely human bite marks) and the disappearance of Eleanor’s corpse. And so on, for each new victim.

Marshall wrote:
Speaking of Risk, this thread has occasioned me to realize that I don’t use the Risk mechanic NEARLY enough. It’s like this:

GM poses a danger, pushing forward a number of chips proportional to the danger’s severity.
Players decide how their PCs try to deal with it. They can either “pay off” the danger by spending a number of chips equal to how many the GM put forward, or they can pay off part of it and then Risk it, or they can just Risk it totally.

When you Risk it, you draw cards, using traits as normal, but with only one round of actions, and no betting. Then you compare cards to the GM; if your hand is better, the danger is averted. If the GM’s hand is better, the danger comes true and Trouble happens based on how many chips you didn’t buy off.

David wrote:

Okay, cool, so rituals all kinda look like other rituals.  Removing the ritual process will obviously make Powers look somewhat different... but are there any constraints on what Powers could look like?  Are you still going for the color elements present in the rituals (e.g. visceral, taboo, using power source, or whatever else from my or your lists), or could a critter's Power look like "Speak Egyptian backwards to shoot laser beams!"?  I guess I'm trying to nudge you to find a good limit case that'd help define your aesthetic.

This reminds me a bit of what I've heard about Survival/Tension in Dead of Night.  It sounds like a significant reward mechanism to me, but I don't remember any descriptions of it in your play accounts.  Do you intend to make players aware of this dynamic?  If so, will you do it directly, on the meta level, player to player, as part of "how to play this game"?

Huh?  How have you NOT being using that?  It sounds integral to resolution...

Perhaps the players shouldn't be put in charge of describing the magic and scope of effect?

Y'know, I really don't want to have the GM do it, but I still can't verbalize exactly why.

Hmmm

Have a look at this.

Particularly this line

understanding just how much potential violation can be injected at one time.

Marshall wrote:
Y'know, I really don't want to have the GM do it, but I still can't verbalize exactly why.

Marshall wrote:
That's gonna take some thinking about. "Speak Egyptian backwards" is really cool. "Shoot laser beams" isn't. Somewhere, there's an identifiable divide here.

Marshall wrote:
Y'know, I really don't want to have the GM do it, but I still can't verbalize exactly why.

Marshall wrote:
In this session, I specifically told the players that when they rested to replenish their chips, the situation would get one step worse, and thus they were running against the clock. I’m not sure what influence this had on their decision-making, but they did seem reluctant to replenish until absolutely necessary. Combined with a tendency to push a little harder than was prudent in conflicts, they had a few moments where they nearly had to let the villain get away due to lack of resources.

Marshall wrote:
I don’t have an explanation. I don’t really know why. The players led their characters toward conflicts exclusively – they never declared any risky thing outside of a conflict – but that’s no reason why I can’t introduce a risk on my own.

Okay, been thinkin' on this. Hopefully nobody's so tired of waiting that they've given up on the thread.

Color education
A truth that this game has taught me: educating players, through play, in Color that they aren't intimate with is hard. This has also confirmed the notion (which I never really doubted, but it's all up in my face now) that education & appreciation of "the Package" is crucial to fully functional RTD play.

Specific to this game:
In informing players about this game's Package (I still hate that term, but I still haven't thought of an alternative) begins with a pitch that I've been using for a while now, and has (so far) always got a good reaction: "It's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly meets The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." And that's what it is: it's about larger-than-life gunslinging badasses with ambiguous morality, who happen to be paranormal investigators, and the paranormal is of the folk-horror-tale variety. (As opposed to the Cthulhu variety, or the X-Files variety, or the Stephen King variety, or the British ghost story variety.)
(Also, if they're history buffs, I throw in the historical angle. Mostly, though, the historical jollies are all for me)

People get that. Everyone who's into Spaghetti Westerns and dark folk tales (or at least the Tim Burton movie) "gets it" thus far.

The next step after that is chargen. It's a rule in this game that chargen be done at the table, with everyone, and with the GM directly involved: he asks the players leading questions, makes suggestions, and reins in inappropriate contributions. This goes well -- even the "reining in" part, because people (even, so far, first-time roleplayers) understand the idea that the GM has prepared a scenario, and that it's going to have a certain scope, and that contributions need to be within that scope. There aren't many hurt feelings when the leader of a rockabilly band says to a bandmate, "Whoa, sorry, but that accordion just isn't going to work. Would you mind playing piano instead?" (Might the bandleader say, "Whoa, that accordion is crazy, but let's try it anyway and see what happens"? Yes, of course. That's a real phenomenon that happens literally and metaphorically, but it's not pertinent to the issue at hand because said issue isn't an issue for people who want to try that. It's an issue for the rockabilly purists, so to speak.)

My favorite part of chargen, and what I consider the most crucial part, comes at the end. Here's the thing: Hex Rangers are hand-picked, and it's always because they encountered some supernatural threat and survived. So now we have to establish that encounter. What was the supernatural thing? What happened? How'd the character survive? This is done through back-and-forth between the player and GM, with the GM continuing his task of leading questions, suggestions, and reining in the inappropriate, until both the player and GM are satisfied with the tale. Once this is done, the players have a good idea of what sort of things they're likely to go up against, how they're likely to behave, and in what sorts of ways they can be dealt with.

An example from this last session:
One character had been a prostitute. One of her johns turned out, once the moon came up, to be a werewolf -- Krystal first said a demon, but I pointed out that, in this game, demons (properly "devils") are concerned only with claiming souls by tempting people to sin and, while they're still damned, leading them to die. The PC was already a prostitute, so not much tempting needed to be done there; I suggested a werewolf instead, and Krystal was into that.

She wanted her character to kill the werewolf, and was trying to figure out how to justify the silver. I pointed out that a.) the silver thing was made up for the old movie The Wolfman and had no real basis in folklore, and b.) there are many werewolf legends*, which attribute various weaknesses, strengths, and origins to werewolves, and that, in this game, all of them were true: it was just a question of which kind of werewolf you're dealing with.

(*My favorite is the one where you become a werewolf by donning the skin of a hanged man, and you are invulnerable until that skin is destroyed while you're not wearing it.)

"So how do you kill a werewolf?" she asked.
"On average? The same way you kill anyone else. It's just hard because werewolves are fast, strong, cunning, and really fucking scary."

So she kicked him in the crotch (me & James simultaneously quoting: "Wolfman's got nards!") then killed him with a razor. Which established that, even when dealing with the paranormal, the straight-forward, practical approach sometimes works, and is at least worth a try when you're in trouble.

Following that step, I hand the players a copy of the Hex Rangers Priorities & Code of Conduct, and explain that they're allowed to break it; they just don't want to get caught. Then we start playing, and I throw in an intro conflict to explain the mechanics to new players. Thus far in the process of the game, everyone is on board and getting it. Those who didn't quite get it at first have been gently guided back onto the trail.

Then we get to the problem area: rituals. Which I have tried to explain, but it becomes apparent once one is attempted that I didn't do a good job. In previous games, Steven and Kourtney got it straight away, but they were both pretty clued-in already to the ideas. In this game, James was on-target but nowhere near the bull's eye, and Krystal was way off.

One problem here that I can't really get around is a lack of in-play example: I can't show them an NPC doing a ritual because, at the start of the game, that would be strictly behind the scenes. It is, however, possible to contrive a scenario in which stumbling onto an NPC's ritual first thing wouldn't short-circuit the investigation process; perhaps scenarios for new players should be constructed in such a way.

Also, perhaps the same GM-player interaction used in chargen should be applied to rituals for first-timers. For some reason, I'm disinclined to do that sort of thing once play proper has begun. The hardcore strategist in me says "Let them hang themselves on their own mistakes, and learn from that!" because that's what I want when I'm playing -- but when you aren't given to understand why a mistake was a mistake, then there's no learning to be done from it. So maybe I just need to get over that impulse.

To JoyWriter

Cos making this stuff up is supposed to be part of the fun, and you want to share that fun with all the players? It's like why you don't want the GM deciding what the characters will risk, he gets his own fun, they get theirs.

Well, here's one point:
1) Anachronism is bad.  Don't use anything that reminds the players of modern tech or entertainment.
I dunno how many such points would need listing in order to provide a usable "color guide"... but, y'know, it's an idea...

Personally, I would have also gussed:
2) Cultural importation is bad.  Don't use anything that reminds the players of Asia, Africa, or anywhere not America.
Thus, speaking Iroquois backwards is cool, but speaking Egyptian backwards isn't.

I'd like to try another example if you think this is at all useful.  How about:

Skull-fuck a raccoon to make lightning strike the thief.

What's the logic for when you resolve a situation with Risk mechanics vs when you resolve a situation with Conflict mechanics?  By "logic" I mean both your rationale as the designer, but also (more importantly) "How do I, as player or GM, know when to use which?"

One problem here that I can't really get around is a lack of in-play example: I can't show them an NPC doing a ritual because, at the start of the game, that would be strictly behind the scenes.

Cos making this stuff up is supposed to be part of the fun, and you want to share that fun with all the players? It's like why you don't want the GM deciding what the characters will risk, he gets his own fun, they get theirs.

Yeah, that's it! Thanks!

Marshall wrote:
They are adepts, and have learned countless rituals;

I cannot understand your logic.

Callan wrote:
Ouch, you can't do cut scenes showing the NPC's? You can only ever show what PC's see? Jeez, that's being a bit old school hard on yourself, isn't it? Well, if you must, you must, but it is being hard on yourself and group.

Yeah, that's it! Thanks!

Except it isn't, because they made their decision on magic and you didn't like their decision.

Marshall wrote: Callan,
The game is built on a framework of investigation. Plot-structure-wise, it's a procedural, just with unusual procedures. It's hard to show the players NPC cutscenes without giving away the stuff they're supposed to be investigating

I had some good experiences with Mage which might be relevant here.  In mage, there is no fixed methodoogy of ritual; the mechanism by which magic is performed is specific to the mages paradigm, and even mages within the same tradition need not share a given paradigm.  This approach has weaknesses, but in terms of actually executed play it worked quite well.  When a PC mage performed a magical act, the explanation of how it was performed was pure, umm.. I wanted to say colour be perhaps it would be best not to at the moment.  Lets just call it improvisational expression.  The way you described the performance of a ritual had little or no meaning in itself, but what it did do was communicate something of your characters worldview to the rest of the group.  As a result, the only valid response to any given magical act was "Cool!".  Every time someone did something you learned a little more about the character they were portraying.

More broadly, I think this is an unsolvable problem.  In a more prosaic example, say you had a character with a History skill trait; there are only two possible approaches.  Either that player now has the right to declaim history as they wish it to be or, more likely, the player is entitled to ask the GM questions about history.  Unless you do actually have an entire history corpus for them to study, which of course you don't, and unless they spent as long studying it as a real expert would, which of course they won't, they can't replicate the effect of being a historical expert except by one of those two methods.  Substitute any topic of in-game expertise you like and this remains the case.

The unavoidable conclusion, therefore, is that you cannot simultaneously leaver players to make it up AND avoid having a recipe system which informs them about what is make-up-able.  Either they can make it up, in which case it may well violate your own expectations, or they must call on some pre-existing data which restricts, informs, and with any luck, inspires.

Charles

Hi Marshal

Sounds very cool.

Maybe magic in Hex Rangers could be as simple as:

1) you (the player) have to describe the ritual (what you do to make the magic work)
2) you (the player) have to describe the effect

with both steps having some concrete laws that show the type of elements they either must or cannot include.

Here's an example of what I mean from a freeform magic system I've come up with for a S&S rpg. I'll confess now that these rules haven't (and may never) see playtesting so YMMV.

The crux of it, so far as it might apply to what you're doing is:

1) PC-specific magical flavour added at chargen which is half rules-defined, half player-defined. This flavour has a mechanical impact, but not at the time of invoking the magic--it only kicks in when the PC wants to heal any wounds. That's any wound, not wounds related to the magic in question.
2) Sorcery in practice is made up on the spot by the players (or GM for non-PC magic). The only proviso is that it must obey the 5 Laws Of Sorcery. These are codified to tell the players & GM what magic "is" in this game. There are no spells lists or "spheres" of magic.

The Details

1) Supernatural Prices
Players pick a Supernatural Price at chargen. This is one of 4 predefined "types" of Price, plus a player-created catchphrase that reflects the price. Catchphrases have no mechanical impact, they just help everyone recognize what that PC's magic might look like.

The Price itself doesn't have any impact on the type of magical effect players can create. Instead, any time a PC with a supernatural price is wounded, they have to perform an activity related to their price before they can recover. This is directly inspired by pool refreshes from TSOY. "Wounds" in this game are reductions to player effectiveness (any reductions).

Basically Price backloads the "magical flavor": that is, rather than having to decide if a declared magical effect is appropriate (legal) for a specific char in the thick of the action, the flavor is applied down the track (ie when healing, which typically happens during housekeeping).

2) The Laws Of Sorcery
These are how the GM/players determine what's legal magic & what isn't. Any sorcerous char or NPC can describe any sorcerous effect they want, as long as it obeys the Laws Of Sorcery. Their purpose is to funnell all magic in play toward a pulp S&S feel.

They are:

1 Sorcery Is Perilous
Anyone who uses or is affected by sorcery in any way, even if the effect is beneficial, has to make a saving throw.

2 Sorcery Is Not Natural
Sorcery always includes an obviously and hair-raisingly supernatural effect. If it doesn't, it won't work until the player does include one (in real time).

3 Sorcery Is Real
Once a sorcerous effect or entity manifests in the world, it's subject to whatever physical hurt and influences normally affect an entity or object or force of that type, although it may resist those hurts & influences far more strongly than its mundane counterpart.

4 Sorcery Needs A Victim
The act of invoking sorcery always has a victim. The default victim is the person/s or object/s the sorcery is affecting. If there's no obvious target the sorcerer is the default victim. The default victim can escape a saving throw if the sorcerer provides a Sacrificial Victim instead.

5 Sorcery Is Cursed
Accepting defeat from any sorcery, whether you are the sorcerer or the victim, inflicts a curse on the defeated character (defeat is a mechanical effect that can be chosen by a player to avoid death or horrible injury).

There's some bells & whistles but those are the fundamentals.

When I wrote the first lines of this post, I was specifically thinking of the Laws of Sorcery. The Prices thing is more of an example of a possible direction to get everyone thinking within a specific framework about what magic is like from the get-go (as well as throwing out an alternative idea for when a mechanical effect needs to kick in).

Cheers, Charles

Callan,
I should perhaps point out that the magic isn't terribly frequent -- I would consider one or two rituals per session to be ideal -- and is done as either part of the investigation, or as magical combat to deal with the threat once  you've figured out what it is and how to deal with it.

But, yes, there are two things that I must have working for this game to satisfy me. I don't see them as imcompatible. I do see it as difficult, but I'm not afraid of that.

Contracycle,
I think you're pretty much correct about players needing to call on pre-existing data. I don't believe that that necessitates a recipe system, though. That's a cop-out.

I have to agree that I find recipe systems weak and unsatisyfing, but I struggle to think of anything else.  I would love to see a novel idea for a 'logic of magic' if you will that didn't rely on them; I didn't mean to say that there has to be a this-plus-that recipe system as such, but there need to be some principles which the players can riff off in a way that is mutually and consistently comprehensible.  But especially when you are dealing with things like the peasant supersition stuff you have gone for, there is little in the way of underlying, abstractable principle that you could fall back on.  In the European context, what passes for "folk magic" is a kind of partial multi-generational hand-me-down memory of pre-christian religious concepts, which were never intended to be actual systems of magic even in their original form.  It would be a Herculean task to derive from these some set of principles from which players can extemporise in a consistent manner.

I'm interested in the topic precisely becuase I would be keen to see some new thinking on the topic of magic systems, out of much the same frustrations you experience, I imagine.  But I think the problem you have run into is that same one that causes recipe systems to be resorted to, however unsatisfying they may be.

If players aren't getting what magic is supposed to be in your game then giving lots of examples has got to be a good idea.

I also think the rules need to explicitly tell players when they're in the ballpark.

Something like this:

A. Everyone has to write 1 line "Magical Trigger" at chargen: something concrete that must occur or be present for their own magic to work.

Ie:

"fire"
"I speak Egyption backward"
"a mirror"
"tears"
"Someone must be bleeding"
"a heart must be broken"
"the moon goes behind a cloud"

etc.

B. For magic to occur, the following has to be true:

1) the magic-worker's Trigger has to be present or occur in the scene
2) the magic's effect must be something that could be mistaken for something natural by others
3) either the act of working the magic, or the object of the magic, or the magical effect must draw on a personal emotion for the magic-worker [what a "personal emotion" is could be purely interpretational, or you could define it in the text, or it could be linked mechanically to something on the character sheet like a stat or backstory]

Cheers, charles

Teaching:

In Delve I have more experienced adventurers teach the PCs some tools of the trade.  In DitV, the setting of the intro conflicts gives the GM an opportunity to establish the views/doctrine of your order's higher-ups.  Do you think it would be fun to play through some grizzled veteran Hex Ranger teaching your player characters a ritual?  Sounds cool to me...

Recipes:

I'm not sure what y'all have against the "recipe", but I'm going to guess: it tends to be creatively stifling, either too simple (thus predictable and repetitive) or too complex (thus laborious to track and use).  I think a middle ground can be found, but I agree it's a real challenge.  I wonder, though, if this challenge doesn't derive largely from the constraint of using in-gameworld logic for recipes.  I haven't seen a real stab at an about-gameworld recipe system, which seems to be what's called for here.  You know, where recipes are guided by aesthetics more than causality.

To me, Charles' ideas look like an effort to create some in-gameworld rules based on some aesthetics.  Some amount of that might need doing at some point, but I think trying to nail the aesthetic recipe first would be cool.

Skull-fucking raccoons:

Marshall, that's interesting that your big complaint was the weak causal connection.  I posed that example thinking just in terms of ritual color.  To me, skull-fucking seems like a shock-value punchline, appropriate to nothing natural or serious.  If one of my players proposed that, I'd think he was trying to gross me out or make me laugh rather than getting into the fiction.

I'm hoping that if we can corral a good set of impermissible stuff, maybe you can churn out some good descriptors of what's desirable.  So, crappy ritual #3:

Burn the village elder alive to remove the unnatural cold hanging over the village.

David,
Not so much a lack of a causal connection as the complete lack of "skullfucking a racoon" representing, like, anything.

But this new one, "Burn the village elder alive to remove the unnatural cold hanging over the village," is superb. Twisted, and something I would only consider using as a last resort, but superb.

Charles,
I'm not big on the "magical trigger" idea. But some character trait to use as a starting point, not a requirement, could be good.

I am suddenly put in mind that, the playtests with Steven & Kourtney, in which the magic was cool (except for one time that served to teach me that magic needs to be a big-deal and its own scene, not something casual), there was a rules difference. You had to create a few hexes (or amulets or whatever) in chargen.

I took that rule out because the magic that was created that way never got used. But maybe it should go back in, or something like it.

Hi Marshall.
I love your setting. I'm jealous because I had a similar idea which I was going to use as a hack for my game. I described it as From Hell meets Sleepy Hollow.

The magic thing is something both me and my codesigner were playing around with for Dark Days. We ended up not caring since it wasn't a big part of the game, but I still think about it because I want to use it for a new project.

I think that in your case, it would be interesting for players to create a couple of rituals for their characters. Like signature moves, each character has a couple trusty old rituals, while he can come up with new ones when he feels like it. That way you have something that will help you in the way.

As far as explaining goes, folk magic isn't terribly hard to do I think. Use elements like blood, fire, flowers, earth. The ritual itself is more than a grocery list, but with those elements, it's easier to come up with things.

As an example, when playtesting an early build of my game, we used some magic with no rules. They were in a haunted hotel looking for a room which they couldn't find. The number just didn't exist. One of the players cut himself and used the blood to draw the number of the room they were looking for on a door that led to a storage space.

That's a basic ritual, but being familiar with the element of blood made it easier to find.

As a third option, use foci or schools of magic. A guy that has a crow's skull hung around his neck can use that to locate dead bodies by swinging it over a map.

Hi Marshall.
I love your setting. I'm jealous because I had a similar idea which I was going to use as a hack for my game. I described it as From Hell meets Sleepy Hollow.

The magic thing is something both me and my codesigner were playing around with for Dark Days. We ended up not caring since it wasn't a big part of the game, but I still think about it because I want to use it for a new project.

I think that in your case, it would be interesting for players to create a couple of rituals for their characters. Like signature moves, each character has a couple trusty old rituals, while he can come up with new ones when he feels like it. That way you have something that will help you in the way.

As far as explaining goes, folk magic isn't terribly hard to do I think. Use elements like blood, fire, flowers, earth. The ritual itself is more than a grocery list, but with those elements, it's easier to come up with things.

As an example, when playtesting an early build of my game, we used some magic with no rules. They were in a haunted hotel looking for a room which they couldn't find. The number just didn't exist. One of the players cut himself and used the blood to draw the number of the room they were looking for on a door that led to a storage space.

That's a basic ritual, but being familiar with the element of blood made it easier to find.

As a third option, use foci or schools of magic. A guy that has a crow's skull hung around his neck can use that to locate dead bodies by swinging it over a map.