Creating Wonders
Magic In Your Roleplaying Game
I’ve collected a multitude of roleplaying games, each of which has its own systems of magic. Mythras from The Design Mechanism has five in its core rulebook, with psionics as a sixth system in at least one sourcebook (Luther Arkwright, Worlds United), and a seventh system, superpowers, in yet another supplement (Destined).
Ars Magica has an entire class of character whose entire focus is magic. Its successors, Mage: the Ascension and Mage: the Awakening, have their own specialised magical systems, which include ritual (group ceremonial) magic, rote spells, spontaneous magic; and there doesn’t seem to be a single roleplaying game which does not have some sort of magical system.
However, there is something lacking in each and every one of those magical systems. At first, I couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but then it came to me.
Consider the following dialogues.
GM [to Steve]: “Sevrin, you can cast Fireball, but you’re too close. You’re going to catch 3D6 damage from the backwash.”
Joe: “Amalthea casts Smother on Timorov, over there.”
GM: “Amalthea, Timorov is 134 metres away. You have 7 Shaping, and your Smother spell has Intensity of 10. He has SIZ 15, and your Smother spell can affect up to SIZ 30, so that’s good: but you need Magnitude 4 to get through his magic shield brooch, which leaves you with 3 Shaping, and that means your spell’s maximum Range is … your POW is 12, so … 3 Shaping gives you a max range of 5 metres per POW, so your Smother can only reach sixty metres.”
Alexander [to GM]: “That animalistic thug over there has INT 10 and POW 14. Can my Befuddle spell work on him?“
…
I’m sure you can see the problem. If not … Everything is reduced to calculations. Ranges, durations, numbers of targets, damage inflicted, spell Intensity, Magic Points cost.
By the time you’ve finished with the calculations, rolled the dice, and prayed for a critical success to reduce your Magic Points, you haven’t had your character cast a spell. You’ve programmed a computer. You’ve plotted a targeting pattern.
Magic systems in most roleplaying games are lacking the same ingredient.
Mystique.
Merriam-Webster defines mystique as “an air or attitude of mystery and reverence developing around something or someone.” The Cambridge Dictionary defines the term as “a quality of being special in a mysterious and attractive way;” Dictionary.com has this to say - “a framework of doctrines, ideas, beliefs, or the like, constructed around a person or object, endowing the person or object with enhanced value or profound meaning: and an aura of mystery or mystical power surrounding a particular occupation or pursuit”; and the Collins website defines mystique thus: “If there is a mystique about someone or something, they are thought to be special and people do not know much about them.”
Basically, you can boil mystique down to two things.
One, having an air of mystique is incredibly cool;
Two, that cool comes from not knowing much about what makes that thing or person cool. What you could describe as je ne sais quoi.
Now look back again at the magic systems in, say, Mythras, and here’s where their mystique falls apart.
All those calculations concerning Intensity, Range, Duration, Targets and so on assume that you are casting your spell, or using your psionic talent or superpower, in a tactical combat scene.
Roleplaying game systems have been leading you to believe that your spell powers need to be catalogued, codified, and set in stone. Your Folk Magic spell, or superpower, or sorcery spell, can only improve if you put in some more Experience Rolls into Intensity, or Shaping, or into your POW. Every spell or psionic power comes at some sort of internal energy cost - Magic Points, Prana, and so on.
But as I’ve just stated, this is only relevant to a tactical combat scene. Ranges, Durations in combat rounds, Targets only matter if you’re engaging in fighting over a battlemat, pushing miniatures across little hexes or squares like some sort of tedious little wargame.
When you’re casting magic in a narrative game, you’re not even testing the activation skill of your power. You are testing yourself.
Your telepath character playing chess with a non-telepath doesn’t need to test Telepathy skill, measure the power’s Range and Duration, or compute the Psionic Strength points it will cost you to run your power for four hours, poring over the chess master’s mind. All you need to do is concentrate on the effect (sensing your opponent’s subtle trap as she slides that Knight into a position where she can fork both your King and your Queen), and the consequence (you win, but your former friend and defeated opponent accuses you of cheating).
It’s like being a Detective. You’ll know forensic procedures, chain of custody, how to give testimony in court, and how to question a suspect. Your skills don’t matter as much as the impression that you know what you are doing, whether you are turning over papers on the desk of a suspected corrupt CEO or attempting to diplomatically grill a grieving widow for information about her dead husband. What matters is not do you succeed or fail, but more what do you get, what happens, and how you respond to what happens next.
There is even a way of wrapping a mystique about the character. You take away the individual spells or powers that they have, and narrate their propensities, the rumoured powers and abilities they are supposed to have, and let outsiders marvel and wonder at the character without having to list all the spells they are supposed to know.
Examples:-
“She is something else. Have you seen the way she moves across the lobby to get to work? She must know some martial arts moves, or maybe she’s a dancer.”
“That man in the red silk across the court? They say he is knowledgeable in the ways of fire. Candle flames are said to bend towards him in a room, and it was once said that he extinguished a house fire with the snap of his fingers. Saved seven lives that night.”
“I’m not saying that cool, thin girl over there is some sort of psychic, but she did this thing where one minute, the bus was tipping over the edge of the bridge where it had crashed through the guard barrier, and the next thing was, it was like she gestured and the bus tipped back onto the bridge, and let the driver and all those school kids escape through the back door. I dunno if she did that with the power of her mind, or she just knew that the bus was going to tip back, but as far as I’m concerned she’s a hero. I just wish I knew what she looked like behind that mask.”
Suddenly, it no longer matters what spells the character learns. And it certainly no longer matters about parameters such as Range, Duration, or Intensity. What matters is that the character has a rep for being wise in the ways of the spirits, or has some sort of esoteric knowledge or psychic powers, or simply that they “know Kung Fu like Keanu.”
And that means that your character, or the Gamesmaster’s Non-Player Character, can surprise the rest of the table by, well, pulling one out of a hat. Run the game as if Ranges, Durations, and so on do not matter. Let your players create wonders that leave the other players gasping with awe.
Scrub off the numbers. Let them make spellcasting awesome.