Doc Democracy

In all of this it really comes down to what you expect the pain to do.  When you have decided that you can probably quite easily design a power that meets that.

If I remember correctly (and it has been a LONG time since I read the rules), in Danger International, if you were hit with an attack that did BODY damage then you had to make a PRE roll modified by the BODY damage taken.  A failed roll meant that the next action had to be taking cover, retreating or some other purely defensive move.

6 hours ago, Ranxerox said:

 

Not mentioned by the article, starting in 1935 Neville Chamberlain began rearming the UK in preparation for a possible coming war.  Consequently, when England finally did fight that were much better prepared to do so than they were at the beginning of Chamberlain's term as PM.

And he did this re-arming in the face of serious opposition from people who did not want to consider going to war again and when there were very serious demands on the nation's finances to recover from the Great War. 

In my Golden Age campaign, he is a Professor X type character, building up the UK's superhero programme as a hedge against not having enough mundane war materials and aggresively delaying the onset of war by forcing Hitler to engage with appeasement overtures, wasting the nazi's time by giving them easy wins that appear to humiliate the British while furiously working behind the scenes to deliver a core resilience.

Autoduel/Champions would be a useful thing to look at because Autoduel was absolutely skirmishing vehicles.

I was flicking through my Deadlands books the other day and was taken (again) with the mechanics surrounding the fear in the area. 

Supernatural creatures in an area have their abilities boosted when fear in the area is higher. Heroes can reduce the fear factor by defeating creatures and then visiting local communities and telling tales of that.

It means that the big, powerful creatures in high fear areas cannot be tackled directly because they are too powerful.  Heroes need to engage with minions, slowly whittling down the fear factor.  Only once that fear factor is reduced could the heroes consider taking on the local big bad.

I reckon this is a great mechanic forcing players to engage with the broader issues and communities.

My thoughts are that the supernatural creatures are bought with abilities that grow in high fear areas.  The environment will also deliver penalties to PCs, giving a double whammy of impacts.

I reckon this supernatural effect could be translocated to more mundane effects.  Taking on the local bandits is difficult because everyone is too scared to stand up to them and their confidence is high. As they begin to suffer defeats, that fear and confidence begin to diminish making each opponent that much easier to defeat.

It could be a magical thing, with wizards, or something to do with the Fey.

Not sure I am asking anything, just felt the need to share...

Doc

6 hours ago, Steve said:

A sorcerer casts a summoning spell and botches the casting roll. Perhaps having them rush the casting time and not having all the right spell components was a bad idea? It still works but the anticipated summoned creature is antagonistic and strong-willed instead of friendly and amenable to requests. Oops.

I like systems where the roll can be more than a binary result.  More than do you succeed or fail.  In the Modiphius 2D20 system, the player rolls 2D20 by default which can result in 0-4 successes.  The player can add more dice (up to 5D20) to achieve more effects.  The drawback is that rolling a 20 causes a complication, the action can succeed but there will be one ir more complications and the more dice you roll the more likely it us to have a complication.

With magic in their Conan game, every failure (not just 20s) is a complication.  The conceit is that magic is inherently difficult, dangerous and ultimately evil in Hyboria.

This adds a level of risk and reward and brings in that concept if nagic having a cost.  Sometimes the complication will just be a physical/spiritual transformation that marks out the sorcerer as a sorcerer.

11 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

I know I'm on record as pooh-poohing the idea, but I'm going to make a good faith suggestion. 

 

You'll want the following:

• SFX decided by the GM. The spell is a Blast, let's say, but the GM decides what form it takes. 

Appreciate the effort Chris.  I think it is easy to talk about game styles you don't like as long as the Game Police are not going to break down your door and make you use it!  😄 

I think this is some of the stuff that the complication idea I had might trigger.  It should not be every time that the GM has to decide, that could get tedious, but if the magic roll contains a complication THEN things go awry.

I might want a bunch of broad things to impose, like the SFX significantly changing (very much like the Spellsinger novels) or ignoring detailed management of physical components until a spell complication destroys everything being carried, making the spellcaster scrape things together (and risk more complications) until he can properly reprovision himself.

Those things are helpful too.

7 hours ago, Old Man said:

And for unpredictability, as I see it there are three ways for a wizard to screw up: magnitude, control, and effect. 

 

• Power: Usually this manifests as a failure to generate enough magical power.  Luke can't lift the X-Wing.  Ron can't leviosa.  It's also possible to overpower a spell--this might not matter if you're trying to kill a dragon, but could be bad if you're casting a love charm.  Some Hero powers already have dice rolls here, but not all.
• Control: Power is nothing without control.  Ron casts a slug curse with a busted wand and it backfires on him.  He later Disapparates without a license and leaves an arm behind.  Hermione successfully transforms herself... into a cat.  Ged summons Elfarran, but also summons a shadow creature that almost kills him on multiple occasions.  To-hit rolls cover some of these instances but not all.
• Effect: Sometimes magical mistakes have completely unrelated results.  The Potterverse almost has a monopoly on this trope.  Harry loses his temper while casting a spell and... accidentally inflates Aunt Marge into a balloon.  Neville accidentally transplanted his ears onto a cactus.  Luna Lovegood's mother cast an experimental spell and simply blew herself up.  This is the hardest thing to randomize without just having the GM make something up.

This really cried out for a much more fleshed-out Side Effects system.  As it stands Side Effects is entirely situational--in fact without GM intervention it's possible for the Side Effect to be better than the original spell.  But using the above it should be possible to set up a system to randomize spell failure without leaving it to the GM to make something up.

Really useful @Old Man.  If I focus on re-jigging the Magic Roll along the lines I talked about in my original post and Side Effects as you suggest I might get to where I want to be.

I look forward to reading your thesis on making magic magical. 🙂 

Doc

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Thankfully the Hero system takes a lot of the heavy lifting of balance out of your hands.  The point system and power builds makes magic vs melee easier to control and keep in check.

But can you give me  an example of, for example, making it inconsistent or unreliable?  Or making non-replicable?

16 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

The keys to making magic feel magical in my opinion are:

 

keep much of it mysterious -- we don't know exactly how it works

don't worry about consistency -- yes, you can turn beans into peas, but not peas into beans

make it inconsistent or untrustworthy -- yeah I can blow up those orcs but it might not go exactly as I planned

let it be whimsical -- I can make you stronger, but you have to tie this toad to your forehead

don't make it too systematic or scientific -- my magical experiments are not always replicable

put limits on it -- magic cannot make your hair blonde, I'm sorry

make it difficult -- I studied 18 years to transform this block of wood into stone

make it have a cost -- yes, I can bring him back from the dead but it ages me a year, and he will have no memory

focus more on flexibility and utility than power -- no I cannot blow the orc horde to pieces, but I can conjure up siege engines and food for your armies

Make sure it feels magical -- I cannot fly like Superman but I can sprout huge bat wings and fly at night during the full moon

 

This kind of thing makes magic feel set apart from science or superpowers or mutant abilities, etc.  Magic only feels magical if it is made to seem that way.  If you can do the same things with magic as a superhero, or vice versa, you've lost its special sense.

I am 100% behind you on this list and it does not need all of those things to be true in any particular game but they are indeed some of the things that make magic magical.

So SFX are inherent here.  i think that there should also be some kind of social element to it.  Magicians are often either revered or reviled.  Sometimes Wizards are revered and Witches are reviled but open use of magic, unless you are in a magic heavy environment (at which point you might as well go with the magic as pseudo-science approach) then people should notice and react when you cast a spell.

The biggest question is how you pack all of those things into a game, where not only might you want players to use magical characters, you dont want the magic use to take up a whole session or leave you, as GM, being castigated for being arbitrary or biased.  There needs to be an element of system in there around which you wrap the trappings of magic in the setting.  A player wants to have an element of understanding, a feel they can at least push the chances of things working in their favour and to have a reasonable expectation of knowing what should happen if things go well.

THAT element of gameability is what I am hoping to talk about.

16 hours ago, assault said:

How about a True Name type system?

That feels like an SFX solution.  How would it work in game?  Simply finding out the true names of things and then having absolute control over them? Degrees of control?

What would the mechanics be?  Anything outside of the RAW?

16 hours ago, Gauntlet said:

Not sure if anyone here is aware of the game but I have found Ars Magica's magic system to be rather good. It has types of magic that you have power in and in order to cast a spell you have to work based on your level of the magic types it is part of. This could also be done for hero, have it setup as multiple power pools and the spell uses a combined point level of the two magic types used. Another idea is a VPP but have multiple magic rolls, one for each type of magic. So if they are casting a spell they have to use the roll based on what type of magic they are using.

As you might note from my post in the other forum - I think I am reaching towards an Ars magica style solution here.  Ars magica however, for me, had all the trappings of Magic with the underlying philosophy of science.  I have always wanted to play a decent length campaign of Ars Magica but never had the time or the group (or the GM willing to run it for me!).

Doc

Ah!  I want a bit of wonder in the application of magic, I want it to be distinct from technology, which means less reproducibility, more variability and a little bit of a need to dive into the "mythology" the PC is seeking to exploit for superhuman power and abilities.

I really do think I am aiming at varying the ruleset a bit to deliver something the current ruleset cannot. I understand the bureaucratic drag I am ranking about here and wondering if there is a simpler way to deliver this stuff or whether it is possible to get it to deliver more.

The original post was quite lengthy, I thought I could get away with not duplicating it!  🙂  I also failed to find a way to quote a post from a different forum...

Doc

Cross posting this from the Random RPG musings thread...

The discussion was about magic being treated pretty much as a science and whether there might be a way, that does not ruin gameability (difficult) or place impossible burdens on the GM.

I thought I would have another go at this.  It has been playing in my head as something I want and, if I do, then surely HERO can accommodate me.  I reckon the big thing is whether you can introduce an element of uncertainty and "magic" without imposing an undue time or complexity "tax" in game terms.

On 2/18/2024 at 8:51 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

The game problems with magic of this nature have already been drawn out above.  Players like to know what their characters can do, and want some narrative control over the results.  The latter can be implemented if the player exercises some (or full) control over the results of the magic, despite the character being unable to do so, but this will also break that "magic is a mystery" vibe.

I think the key dichotomy of this issue is that the player has knowledge the character does not (the game rules), that the character has knowledge the player does not (the rules of the universe, and living in a world where mortals wield such power).  I am sure the characters are entirely unaware of their "level" and why, when they cast their six first level spells, they must only cast more powerful spells.  🙂

What is missing here is that neither of them know what the GM (and thus the universe) knows.

I was, to my surprise, reaching toward Ars Magica as that, tome us the epitome of magic as science.  But the game tries to provide a core game-comoatibkeway of codifying magic.

Before I start, this is only worth the (GM) effort if you want to introduce an element of doubt and uncertainty to magic and that is only worth it if it adds depth and colour to the magic and the world.

On 2/18/2024 at 9:39 PM, Chris Goodwin said:

If tides are entirely the whims of Zeboim, then I have no idea what else might be, and just that fact is enough to make me not care.  

To me, the question is not whether Chris might gave an idea but whether Belzeboim, his magic-wielding character in the world, knows or can find out. 

In Glorantha, everyone is aware, they understand how the world works and they do not pine for a world of bacteria and viruses, nor for a world where metals are inert chemicals with no link to the mythic history of the world. The player can learn the rules of the world but cannot expect their knowledge of this world biology is chemistry to deliver insight into that nautical world, or that the scientific method will reign supreme as it does in this world.  It us a different paradigm.

In HERO, this is all bound up, I think, into the (boring) magic roll. The magic roll adds an element of unpredictability but no magic, wonder or setting colour.  I think it would be valuable for the world to introduce variety and colour to magic in the setting. I would make the magic roll a straight 10 or less but not allow people to but bonuses to the roll, that all comes from the cloud of knowledge, skills, and materials available to the wizard.

So, players should have knowledge of what characters know (which is what they have been taught).  If the character is from a hedge witch tradition, they will have knowledge such as Plants, Weather, Animals, the Winds etc., and may have charms, potions and fetishes that enhance their magic.  If the character is from a wizardly tradition, then they will have knowledge such as Thaumaturgy, Evocation,  Illusion etc., and may have a staff, symbols and scrolls that will enhance their magic.

The Fantasy Hero source book delivers a lot of the detail on which this stuff could hang. The question us how it might work in game.  Would a hedge witch trying to cast an "unseen" charm in a field have the same chance as a wizard casting an "invisibility" spell in the same field?  That is where the GM knowledge comes in. 

The environment is an "unknown" to the player.  That unknown is what introduces variability, the difficulties the player will not know of (and character might be able to find out).  As such, I think there will be two approaches, prepared and unprepared. 

In a prepared situation each spellcaster might use various skills to understand the environment, or it may be the home territory of the caster and thus "known".  That may counter some or all of the difficulties. The player might also proffer a skill and item that will deliver a bonus to the roll.

In an unprepared situation only skill and item will help.

The GM should have a range of environmental issues such as "wild magic area", "local nature spirits", "on a ley-line" and a variety of other things that have a variety of +/-2 modifiers.   It is subjective rather than objective.  The GM sees the hedge witch, in an area known to them, and decide that the "local nature spirits" are friendly and provide a +2 to their magic roll.  The GM might decide the same spirits deliver a -2 to the wizard, or perhaps are neutral to the wizard casting invisibility but might be unfriendly to them changing the environment.

This should be a discussion with the players, the casters will be aware of positive or negative influences.  These should not be subject to rolls at the time of casting.  However, the player might seek to better prepare for magic by getting to know their environment ahead of casting (meaning more opportunity for either role play with active environment such as nature spirits or lore exploration with passive environment such as ley-lines or wild magic areas). Such preparation can turn neutral or negative elements into positive ones (and may entail rolls to "persuade" or "understand" the elements).

This also means it is much more dangerous taking on a spellcaster on their own ground, all the environmental elements will be positive for the home-caster and likely, at best, neutral to other casters (unless they are of a similar tradition and know the location).

I would also be open to a system where the magic roll delivers boons or complications.  I think that every six rolled in a successful cast delivers a boon to the caster while every one rolled in an unsuccessful cast causes a complication. These things do not change the spell but deliver additional benefits or complications to the caster, such as gaining a positive relationship with the nature spirits or understanding of the magical ambience of ancient ruins.

I think this begins drawing the players into the setting by giving them game-relevant reasons to do that.  It also means that casting lightning bolt on the site of an ancient battlefield might be more unreliable than wgen cast in defence of a prepared campsite.

All-in-all, I think this would begin to make magic more magical, as the unknowns of the environment have the potential to make things more unreliable, while the boons and complications blur the edges of success and failure.

Doc

Edit: I will cross post this in the Fantasy HERO forum where it probably belongs...

Crazy that this is one of the major trigger points for a lot of players.  "Of course the goblin cannot, through the system, persuade me to spare it's life.  I decide that." Though they will want to rely on the system allowing them to scam their way outrageously through NPCs.

19 hours ago, Gauntlet said:

 

Of course if you really want to base it trying to keep everything in mind (and the need to make everything as complicated as possible) you could figure out how many points you get back by having it always on and then put a 1/4 advantage on it stating "Not when wearing clothing" take those points and add a limitation to it of OIF (clothing and makeup) and pay those points. Below would be the way you would do this:

 

Invisibility to Sight Group , No Fringe, Persistent (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (52 Active Points); Always On (-1/2)

 

With the Always On Limitation it would cost 35 Points and without the Limitation it would cost 52 Points giving a reduction due to the Limitation of 17 points

 

You would then add a 17 point custom power with the limitation OIF.

 

Wearing Clothing:  Buying off Always On Limitation for Invisibility (17 Active Points); OIF (-1/2)

 

With the Limitation, to buy off the Always On Limitation with an Obvious Inaccessible Focus, it would cost 11 Points.

I definitely would not make the player have to put anythign on the sheet to accomodate that clothes he wore, or things he carried did not go invisible - I might even, depending on the game, give a discount on the invisibility for that.

Doc

The sudden appearance of Hope, by Claire North, is a story about a woman who s instantly forgotten by everyone.  It is an interesting examination of place in society.

If you think about all the social drawbacks people raised about wearing masks, then this doubles down on virtually all of them! 🙂

Doc

There was the Mental paralysis power in third edition I think.  My players hated it.  If they got the hint a villain had that power, they became priority number one - every attack on every action on that villain until he (or she) was no longer moving....

I have not put a lot of thought into this and my inclination is that I should not.  From a purely, at the table, simplicity perspective, I would draw no distinctions unless the END Reserve was drawn up in a way that demanded complexity.

On 3/7/2024 at 5:48 PM, DShomshak said:

The Alabama SC applied the principle of human life starting at conception. They correctly recognized that it was not relevant whether sperm meets egg in a womb or in a lab. To that extent, I laud their rationality. I can only hope that the Alabama legislature's carvingf out an exception for in vitro highlights the irrationality of the core assumption. But I am often disappointed in people's rationality.

I think thus highlights the incompatibility in the edge cases of pure philosophy and the practical application of law.

I can follow the scientific and philosophical principles of life beginning at conception.  It is clean in both these cases with the edge coming at conception.  Obviously that causes issues with laws that talk about life (usually human life). So homicide is killing a human. If a human embryo is alive, then ending that is homicide. The law has accepted many compromises in the issue of homicide,  war and self-defence the most obvious and there are lots of arguments being made about the right to die.

The in-vitro stuff is interesting because it involves the processes by which people are seeking a right to have a baby, to create a life.  The processes are reasonably wasteful with regard to embryos, the ones left in vitro and when there are multiple viable embryos developing in uterus, where some are destroyed to avoid multiple births.  The convenient decision for both the in-vitro industry and prospective parents is that the embryos are not human - there is no incentive to improve processes, to seek practitioners that are less wasteful.

Biology is messy, it does not easily conform to sensibilities, to legal definitions and often not even to scientific delineations. It means we make decisions on matters of society and law, looking for scientific back-up which is often not there to sufficiently make the law water-tight.

I think we need to get to a place where we stop thinking science can answer our social questions.  That law is there to set lines where the state has decided to set a social decision in a defined way that can be adjudicared in court. People will argue whether that line is in the right place. Science will usually be deployed on both sides, but it is most often a social decision rather than a scientific one.

I often tell people (scientists) coming to parliament that when they are describing what happens (or might happen) under certain measurable circumstances then they remain scientists.  When they say what should happen because of that, they become politicians.  Science early tells you what you need to do, it can tell you whether doing something will achieve an end, or likely deliver an outcome, and it might identify the only known way to achieve an outcome. It never Sat's that is what you need to do.

Doc

I am uncomfortable about the taking no actions during this time.  I like the idea of a character leaping across a chasm while firing at opponents, this rule would prevent that.  I can accept that actions might be limited and may be harder, but being able to do nothing while soaring through the air feels wrong.

I share your confusion about the statements.  I think I would have the additional time for non-combat doubling be a suggested limitation for colour, possibly the second clause should say, every additional (or purchased) doubling purchased adds a phase, that makes it a reiteration of the first clause.

5 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Normal defenses of 30 will block all BOD from a terminal velocity fall.

That is presuming that they aren't falling onto broken ground, sharp edges. 🙂

I would be looking to find ways of dropping, pushing, pulling the doppelgangers onto sharp/edged surfaces.  Change velocity into killing damage.

3 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

hmmm...What other complication could see a PC captured/mysteriously vanish, and drag in his teammates to investigate and assist?  Is this actually "Hunted: MicroDimension"?  That may be the closest comparable.

I like the idea of the micro-dimension hunting the character.  Not sure the mechanics work as well as other suggestions but it is an option I need to remember for future character builds.

In my opinion points are a player thing.  The character is a construct, the points are about the players engagement with the game world, not the characters.  All those rules and points are, in game, invisible to the character.  None of us can see their character sheet, the PCs are not aware of theirs.

So I do absolutely see these things impacting the player.  The character is not impacted by being absent from gameplay for a month or a year, the player is.

If I did not want to run the MicroLad scenario, I wouldn't, but I would suspect my players might drive things that way, and it would behoove me to be prepared for that.

I don't agree it is the equivalent of being beaten in a fight, it renders the conflict pointless.  The PC is not captured, not imprisoned, not put at a disadvantage to his opponents, he is just not there.

Doc

I would be ambivalent about it.  It would be an opportunity - bluebooking the Microverse, it would be a mini-series in a comic book, not a trauma event.

If me and the player had discussed it, and nothing like this should be done without that kind of discussion, then it is relatively minor.  I would have the player pull out a pre-prepared alternate PC for the duration.  I would pull out the pre-prepared scenario about finding MicroLad.

It would shake things up a bit.

With an NPC then it is even less so.

All in my incredibly humble opinion, of course.

Doc

@Grailknight has made a good suggestion but it feels off to me if the NPC has to pay points for something that complicates their life or disadvantages them.

I would be more inclined to make it a custom complication.  It might be a small value one, maybe five points, when using full shrinking, on an 8 or less he gets trapped in the Microverse for 1D6 weeks.