Magic: Rote versus Freeform

[Steve]

In working on my magic system for the Aquarian Age, I've started pondering opposing ways to approach it.

 

On one hand would be "rote" magic: a structured and formulaic way to cast a spell. The other way is "freeform" magic: like art, there is no right way to cast a spell.

 

The first method lends itself to a structured purchase system. A character pays for knowledge of each spell, maybe also needing a magic skill and/or magic Talent of some kind.

 

For freeform magic, it would probably be a kind of VPP, the spellcaster setting up each working of magic spontaneously.

 

Given that magic permeates the world I'm building, I'd like spellcasting to be cheapest for rote-form spells. If you know the right incantation/gestures, you can light a candle, maybe not even needing a magic skill, just paying a point to know the spell. However, if you want a character able to create a spell on the fly that's never been done before, like an AP fireball spell, you need to have a magic Talent and a magic skill.

 

Dabblers could thus have a few minor spells for a handful of points, but they have to cast them exactly the same way each time. A wizard could impose his will on the universe in new ways, cast a spell without words, etc. That ability would cost much more.

 

I'm still working on how I could structure things. Maybe spells below a certain power level can be done by anyone by just buying knowledge of the spell for a point or two. Or rote magic may have a free bonus to cast, like +2 or +4 to a magic skill check.

 

Suggestions are welcome.

[Greywind]

Well, in 3.+e D&D terms, you've just explained the difference between a Wizard and a Sorcerer.

[L. Marcus]

Nnn ... I wouldn't say D&D Sorcerers have a VPP. They have a much more limited palette of spells than a Wizard, so Sorcerers would be better served than them, under HERO, to just buy the spells outright or in a MP.

[Greywind]

Yes, but it's a difference between learning and instinct.

[L. Marcus]

Well, for Hero, that's a bit meta.

[BlueCloud2k2]

IIRC Correctly Killer Shrike modeled those who prepared spells as using a VPP and those who spontaneously cast spells (Sorcerer and Bard for example) as buying a separate Multipower for each Level (level 0 was 15 AP, 1 was 30, 2 was 45 AP, etc...) and 6 charges per MP (on top of Gestures, Incantations, RSR, etc)

[Chris Goodwin]

For the rote spells, you could look at the INT Min model in Fantasy Hero. It treats spells as if they were weapons; you'd buy a Spell Familiarity Skill, and then have to somehow acquire the spells but paying no points for them. The freeform magic could then be done by buying a VPP, perhaps with the pool representing a college (Fire Magic, Light Magic, etc.) and the Skills representing techniques (Create, Control, Sense, etc.)

[NuSoardGraphite]

Rote magic equals multipower. freeform equals VPP.

 

Pretty simple. multipower magic systems can be game-breakingly cheap when configured correctly.

 

(A 30pt multipower pool with -2 in limitations only cost 10pts with each fixed slot costing a single point each, so for a mere 20 points a character could have a 30pt pool with 10 spells known, and it would only cost 1 point to add a new spell)

[mhd]

The difference between rote and freeform doesn't even have to be in the mechanics, if it isn't really required. Personally, I'm a big fan of actually having different in-game approaches to magic being reflected in different magic systems, but quite often that's a bit too much for the players. Which is probably one reason why the aforementione D&D sorcerers/wizards divide actually was quite minuscule (whether you're a child prodigy or an ancient wizard, you both had the same version of Tensers Floating Disk).

 

And in recent editions of Talislanta, you had a very freeform magic system. Basically one skill for each "school" of magic with degrees of difficulty depending on the effect. Very easy to improvise, but it was mostly assumed that the improvisation of the player was based on some in-depth character knowledge -- Bob the wizard didn't just come up with "inflict 5 pts of damage" on the fly, he remembered the appropriate "Elthoraks Eleventh Elemental Effusion" spell from his days at Teenage Wizard High.

 

A system -- or parts thereof -- that serve multiple approaches simplifies things, so it's probably worth thinking about a level where the different paths converge. Well, they basically have to, as it all boils down to HERO powers, but maybe one or two levels of abstraction above that might be neat for the sake of the players. So you have a spell/spell effect that has costs listed for both rote and freeform. Of course, the freeform practitioner then could deviate from that with a little bit of mental effort.

 

I think most VPP users already do that -- you might take a few seconds or minutes to come up with something new during a session, but quite often you have a "pregen" list of things floating in said pool.

[BlueCloud2k2]

I've often pondered treating Offensive Magic like Martial Arts with the base damage being INT or EGO divided by 5 (much like STR).

 

So a Wizard with a 20 INT would have 4d6 or 1d6+1k base damage and spells would function as naked Advantages like so:

 

10 Magic Missiles: Ranged (+1/2) and Autofire (5 shots; +1/2) (20 Active Points); Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4), RSR - Magic Skill at -1 per 10 AP (-2 to Magic Skill Roll; -1/2); 2 END per missile

 

15 Fireball: AoE (8" Radius; +1 1/2) (30 Active Points); Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4), RSR - Magic Skill at -1 per 10 AP (-3 to Magic Skill Roll; -1/2); 3 END

 

15 Lightning Bolt: AoE (32" Line; +1 1/2) (30 AP)); Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4), RSR - Magic Skill at -1 per 10 AP (-3 to Magic Skill Roll; -1/2); 3 END

 

8 Vampiric Touch: Drain +2d6 (4d6 Total) (20 AP); ); Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4), RSR - Magic Skill at -1 per 10 AP (-2 to Magic Skill Roll; -1/2), No Range (-1/2); 2 END

 

Non Combat Magics would still cost normal, so:

 

20 Wings of the Zephyr: Flight 20" (40 AP); Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4), RSR - Magic Skill at -1 per 10 AP (-4 to Magic Skill Roll; -1/2); 4 END

 

12 Expeditious Retreat: Running +12" (24 AP); Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4), RSR - Magic Skill at -1 per 10 AP (-2 to Magic Skill Roll; -1/2); 2 END

 

5 Mage Armor: Force Field 5/5 (10 AP); Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4), RSR - Magic Skill at -1 per 10 AP (-1 to Magic Skill Roll; -1/2); 1 END

[Steve]

The rote and freeform notion come from my readings of White Wolf's Mage and the older Ars Magica games.

 

To me, a rote form of magic is like running a computer program. You start it up and it does the same effect each time without variance. Stray from the rote and either nothing happens or something bad happens.

 

In a sense, this would make a rote spell like a form of science or engineering. Do this and such-and-such is the result. If a talent for magic is not required to get the universe to "notice" you, then anyone can say the words and make the gestures, resulting in the same magical effect each time. This would be like science.

 

To continue the programming analogy, a freeform spell is more like a hastily constructed program done on the fly (which I think is called a kludge). Such a thing would probably require some kind of magic talent IMO. That would be the art side of things.

 

I just think it might be interesting to have a world where anyone can cast low-powered spells by rote, but a wizard talent of some kind is needed to create something new or cast magics above a certain power level.

 

Of course, if a speck of wizard talent is needed to cast any magic, even a rote, that might be okay too for my needs. Some people might just be nulls, unable to be a rote to work, no matter how perfectly they replicate the inputs for the spell.

[Chris Goodwin]

I like to think of it like cooking.  A great chef can improvise an excellent dish with ingredients and equipment he's got on hand, whereas a good recipe cook can make really tasty food within his comfort zone, in his own kitchen with his own stuff.  And some people can't boil water without burning it.  

[Steve]

If spells below a certain power level just seem to work for everyone, you can also get a blue collar workforce that works on assembly lines, repeating the same simple chants and gestures.

 

A potentially dangerous situations would be if "all" rotes worked for anyone, but wizard talent is actually a way of minimizing magical backlash. It would be like a dampening effect if something went wrong in the casting. Someone without a talent makes a mistake of pronunciation: BOOM! However, someone with sufficient talent and training can adjust the casting to cause the spell to simply fail quietly or maybe still get it to go off.

 

Following a rote would just be an INT roll to remember everything and do it right. A magic skill and magic talent lets you deviate from the rote and maybe discover another new spell in the process, or at least not blow up your house trying to do something.

 

Magic rotes could be like controlled substances, I suppose. That puts an interesting policing aspect into it.

[Ndreare]

^^ and totally sounds awesome. Imagine professional mages employed just to control all the screwed up stuff the masses mess up.

[mhd]

If you follow the programming analogy, it would be professional mages causing all the screw ups, because they're selling rotes to the general public.

 

Whereas the ancient gray-bearded eunuch wizards remain hidden in their shells.

[Steve]

How would one categorize rotes available for sale?

 

Perhaps by power level? So a rote of 20 Active Points is available to the general public for purchase, like minor healing or other rotes that have been tested and deemed "safe" for the public.

 

I guess it could also be done by category. Perhaps healing magic requires special training, so most rotes would need to be done by a licensed doctor or nurse. Destructive magic rotes like a fireball or lightning bolt might require registration, like buying a gun in the US.

[mhd]

Well, points and money don't generally mix that well. Life Support[longevity] being the extreme example...

 

And to bring up another trope: Are mages in that world part of the commercial sphere at all? This often comes up in the discussion of buying magic items, but certainly applies to buying spells/rotes, too. How much above the average "mundane" are the wizards regarding frequency, power level and isolation? And then the other side: How much spare change is there? Are we capitalist enough already for this? Most fantasy worlds are more in this sector than history would imply, so that might not be an issue. So no need to get all dialectic about this

 

If I continue to further misappropriate computing history, one could simply say that this rote-selling is pretty new. Wizards used to be rare and remote, and with rather high standards and pretensions: Doing the immortality shtick, govern nations (or help out others doing that), maybe the occasional Magic of Mass Destruction to decide wars.

 

No rote for you!

 

But then some enterprising wizards (possibly not the most gifted ones) saw a niche and exploited it. Create some rotes for things that were considered trivial and inappropriate and rake in the cash. Go for quantity ("one rote every smith should have!") instead of quality ("Let me bestow my blessings on your firstborn, my king!").

 

That seems like a possible path. Probably not something the bigwigs would want, so they theoretically could block/curb it violently or by institution regulations, like those mentioned.

 

If this would be in a setting, it's also interesting to consider whether this proliferation of rotes would coincide with other trends towards industrialization and mercantilism, or whether this is actually its very core.

 

Also the science of magic matters. Was it purely a matter of some entrepreneurs "selling out" or did magical knowledge just simply prohibit this style just a few generations earlier (cf. computers)?

 

By the way, is magic that scientific at all? One other setting where magic was rather common was Glorantha/RuneQuest. But if I remember correctly, that was "Spirit Magic" then, so not something that was likely to be dissected and studied. Religion/spiritualism doesn't really have a very evolutionary trend. No Moore's Law for shamanism.

 

It probably is best if this meshes in with the general tech/civ level of the campaign. For something straight out of the Dark Ages, rote-sellers seems a bit inappropriate. For the usual quasi-Renaissance of fantasy worlds on the other hand...

[Steve]

Well, this question actually arose as part of the Urban Fantasy campaign I am working on and have been posting about: The Aquarian Age. It's a modern Earth setting where magic and folk from Faerie suddenly arrived in the 1960s and is now fifty years later.

 

In a modern society with magic as a commodity, having a rote (spell) that anyone can cast makes for an interesting notion, especially if illegal magic needs to be policed. If only those with a wizardly talent can cast magic, then its more like a kind of superpower than a science that can be studied.

 

If a rote can be reproduced by anyone and generate the same magical effect each time it is done, does it cheapen magic? Is it better to require a magic talent to unlock magical effects?

 

I'm thinking that it might be quite interesting to have magic be something in my campaign that anyone can do if they have the details of a spell/rote available, but that magical talent limits miscasting problems. Magic talent also lets someone create new spells, exploring the "source code" of the universe as it were, and do it very quickly if needed. This would let art and science be applied to magic, whereas most fantasy worlds stick to the art side of things.

[BlueCloud2k2]

For some reason I want to read Rick Cook's Wizardry series again.

[mhd]

Is that the one where the programmer gets summoned to save the day and quickly invents his own magical programming language?

 

When we're talking about magic spells as a commodity in a modern setting, I think of two benchmarks regarding ubiquity: home computer magazines and Napster.

 

For my younger readers: Back in medieval times (the mid-80s) we didn't have fancy things like the internet to distribute software cheaply. Even floppies were too expensive, given the limited circulation of enthusiast magazines. So a lot of said publications had program listings, sometimes over several pages. So after typing in (!) a couple of hundred lines of what often looks like math equations you finish it with "RUN", and a simple hangman game appears on your monitor/TV. That is if you didn't type "GOTO 210" instead of "GOTO 220" somewhere...

 

Adapting that to a culture of magic, you'd have a medium size group of enthusiasts. A bit of knowledge and lots of patience would be required, as well as some material investment, but probably no binary (excuse the pun) talent, i.e. no "Magery" or "The Gift". If the setting has contemporary technology, there probably would be some reason why distribution wouldn't progress beyond this level -- maybe "scrolls" have to be used or other paraphernalia that's not prone to digitizing.

 

This might also have a more blurry line between "rotes" and "proper wizardry". BASIC hacking and soldering home computers was quite removed from running mechanical simulations and huge mainframe computers, but it wasn't just mere consumption at one end, there was some tinkering. In a world where magic derives from the faerie, this might be the place where human craft and science meets faerie art and artifice.

 

Of course, running a simple mortgage calculator on your C64 might have been handy, but it wasn't "throw a fireball" or "cure my back pain" useful. So a reason why this didn't become even more ubiquitous would basically be required. Maybe magic is still dangerous or legally very restricted. This would mesh the 80s home computer scene with extreme sports and/or counterculture.

 

The other goal post would be a system like Napster, which moved file distribution (music in this case) into the public eye. Everyone could just download the songs they wanted. Of course, it only got easier, faster and (mostly) more legal since then. Magic with such a setup would be seriously weird. No deep knowledge required, probably very specific rotes ("color my nails red", "color my nails green", "prepare turducken"). Rotes that common would replace technology totally and lead to either an utopia or worldwide destruction.

 

Mechanically, the latter would move magic to (often mundane) equipment (I don't have to use poitns for having an iPod in most games). The "computer enthusiast" part would be more difficult, especially if one has multiple levels of magical ability between rote repetition and archmagery.

 

Oh, and if you need weird NPC pics: http://linuxbeard.com/

[The Weapon]

 

 

Whereas the ancient gray-bearded eunuch wizards remain hidden in their shells.

 

I see what you did there.  

[BlueCloud2k2]

Was that a programming joke? As in, DOSShell?

[Steve]

I just had an odd notion. The idea of "spell checking" suddenly takes on a new meaning in this context.

[The Weapon]

Ars Magica does both quite well.  There are "arts" divided into "Techniques" and "Forms" (basically "verbs" and "nouns").  Magicians research spells (or learn them from "Lab Texts", basically cheat sheets/spell books).  To learn the spell they need a "lab total" based on the their rating in the two "arts", the Technique" and the "Form" (plus intelligence, magical knowledge, and how magical the place there).

If they don't know an appropriate spell they can cast spontaneous magic, but it's much harder.  The "casting total" (the number that determines if your spell succeeded) is halved if you take a fatigue level and there's a chance it will botch (crit. fail).  Casting known spells only fatigues you and if you fail the roll (and it still works if you fail by >11).  You can cast spontaneous spells without fatigue, but they are pathetically weak, 1/5 the casting "score" of known spells and you don't get to add a dice to get the total.  They can't botch though.

 

   

Quick example:

Artemis the maga* has Stamina +2, Creo (create) 7, Ignem (light/fire/heat) 6 =  15 Creo Ignem casting score.  She gets handed a letter late at night and wants light to read it by.  If she can effortless cast the spell "Moonbeam" (level 3)which casts light as strong as moonlight, but it only lasts as long as she concentrates and it's the lowest level of light.  Or she can try a fatiguing spont and roll a d10 add it to the 15 and halve it, to find out how good a spell she can cast.  She would have to roll a 5 or better to be able to cast a "magnitude 2" or level 10 spell.  However she could easily cast a level 5 spell, which could be bright than the level 3 one AND last until dawn, if she wanted.  However is had learned a light spell of magnitude 3 or 4 (level 15 or 20) then she could easily cast it.  There is a chance with the level 20 spell that she might be fatigued, but with the level 15 spell she gets it automatically, unless it's a "stress roll"**.

 

* Female mage.

** A stress roll is a special roll that happens when the character is stressed.  Basically there's a chance to botch and a chance to do really well.  Spontaneous magic is always stressful. 

 

All of this is quite hard to duplicate in Hero System.  

[The Weapon]

Was that a programming joke? As in, DOSShell?

 

eunuch = unix (a programming language) that uses "shells".  

 

Disappointed they didn't include a daemon (= a program called by name in unix) reference.