Ooh, Magic Missile

Faustusnotes has an interesting post today on, essentially, why "fantasy writers don’t take advantage of the cosmology of their worlds to examine how social, political and economic relations would change in a magically-imbued world" - that is, why is it that in a D&D-esque campaign setting where clerics and wizards can cure any illness, and literally change reality, do you still end up with a "filthy, primitive, ignorant feudal world, where life is hard, racism and sexism is rife, and injustice is the order of the day"?

To be fair to fantasy authors, I think in actual fact that D&D-style magic is extremely rare in fantasy fiction. In the "core" texts of modern fantasy - Vance, Howard, Harrison, Moorcock, le Guin, and especially Tolkien - you just don't get magic that can cure diseases, shape stone, and create food and water willy-nilly. Arguably, the fact that magic can't make peoples' lives materially better is kind of the point; and usually it is depicted as a destructive force that probably makes peoples' lives worse - certainly more corrupt.

But it's a nicely done post and true, I think, when it comes to D&D itself. Technology has, over thousands of years, made life many, many orders of magnitude better for us than our ancestors living in neolithic times. Why wouldn't the same be true of D&D magic, except many, many orders of magnitude faster?

The obvious answer is just that "it isn't fantasy that way". And, let's face it, it isn't. The fantasy genre, expecially D&D (which is a genre unto itself) has a set of tropes that make it what it is, and to expect it to be different is to expect romantic fiction without the square-jawed Mr. Darcy-lite, or space opera without the space ships. Complaining that D&D magic doesn't result in the kind of society that Faustusnotes thinks it might do is a bit like complaining that in a Stephen King book we're expected to believe in supernatural entities even if we don't personally believe they exist. Well, yeah, but where's the fun in that? You suspend disbelief for the sake of enjoying the work as an example of its genre.

But I also think there's an interesting point to be made in relation to this: D&D magic is really, really banal. Over the editions the "magicalness" of it - the specialness, the rarity, the wonder - was sucked out of it and it became increasingly about utililty due, let's face it, to the demands of the game and the players. Spells like "create water" and "cure light wounds" exist not because they are cool and wondrous but because they solve in-game problems like "my character needs to drink to stay alive" or "my character lost too many hit points".

There's nothing wrong with this, per se - it is a game, after all - but there's no point in pretending it's all very exciting. It isn't very exciting. D&D magic is as bland as anything - just look at the names of the spells. Cure light wounds. Purify food and drink. Sleep. Magic missile. I know, I can hardly stand the sense of awe and wonder either.

It's for these reasons that I'm all in favour of two things: the non-magical campaign (where magic is the preserve of NPCs, thus implying great rarity) and the spell-forge generated spell name campaign, in which mage characters are told they start off with spells called things like Sage Eyes, Earth Mountain, Underground Child or Vicarious Weaver, and they have to negotiate with the DM about what the hell they do.

This has the added advantage of stopping the logical-minded of us worrying that we have priests and magic-users running around everywhere, while society remains mired in leprosy and filth.We get to keep both.

Risus Sorcerers

Apropos of nothing at all, I was thinking about Risus this morning on the way to work and how you could use it to make magic systems in just about any game. Or, you could use it to create a game in which the characters are all uber-powerful archmage demigods who can bend reality to their very will. Sort of like Exalted or Nobilis, except good.

For those who don't know anything about Risus, a brief precis: characters are created with four attributes, ranked 4, 3, 2, and 1. These numbers represent the size of the dice pool (in d6) for the relevant attribute. Attributes can be anything, though usually a noun-phrase is preferred: e.g. "Tough guy", "Poet", "Womanizer", "Slimy courtesan", etc. The beauty of the system is that it models physical and social combat very simply and effectively, before the Burning Wheel or Dogs in the Vineyard guys were twinkles in their respective fathers' eyes. Basically, it boils down to rolling the dice pool for a chosen attribute, with whoever scores highest whittling away the dice pool of their opponent until they have none left, whereupon the winner decides the fate of the loser. (It could be "I blast his face off with a fireball" if it's magical combat, or it could be "I win the argument and convince the King to let me marry his daughter" in a social combat.)

I have two ideas for a Risus-based magic system:

1. Characters begin with 4 "schools of magic" attributes, a la Warhammer, Magic: The Gathering, Elements, etc. They can make up their own or choose from a big "I'm the DM and these are the magic schools in my game world" list. So you might start off with Fire 4, Earth 3, Water 2 and Air 1 (say). This is in addition to the standard 4 attributes that a Risus character gets. The DM might set restrictions on what kind of stuff a player can do with that given magical school (green magic is for healing, blue magic is protective, yellow magic is to do with time, that sort of thing) or they might limit it only to player creativity.
2. Characters just have one "magic" attribute from among their four, allowing them to do literally anything they choose with their innate magical ability.

PCs would be able to cast spells as and when the situation requires, narrating what they do - for example, "I cast an earth spell and open up a chasm beneath the feet of the orcs!" or "I cast an air spell and summon a breeze to blow our ship safely to port!", or "I use my magic to blast the blacksmith's sanity and turn him into a gibbering moron!" The fun comes in coming up with interesting descriptions for how you use your magic ("I cast a fireball" is okay, "I summon a demon from the plane of fire to burn out the eyes of my enemies" is better.) Spells would go off without a hitch unless it came down to magical combat, in which case dice pools would come into play. Or, for the slightly less uber-powered game, the DM might assign target numbers depending on how ambitious the player is being: casting a fireball might have a difficulty of 5, but summoning an Efreet from the plane of fire to lay waste to an entire army might have a difficulty of 22.

The style of campaign it would support is, of course, one in which the characters are already extremely powerful at the beginning - able to smite mere mortals with impunity. The only genuine limit on what they can do is what the players can think of. As with Amber Diceless, the assumption from the start is that PCs can beat an ordinary human, and can only be challenged by mightily powerful opponents. Or each other. Usually, I prefer my campaigns to be more low-level and "gritty". Still, could be a lot of fun for a Very High Fantasy game of adventuring archmages.

Medelpad Chestnuts

The forest of Medelpad is famous for its chestnut trees. In one remote, hidden grove deep within it, there is a stand of these trees which appears to have magical properties. Various explanations for this phenomenon exist: some say a god died there long ago and the trees' roots burrow down to his vast corpse; others attribute it to faeries; others say the trees themselves contain the souls of dead sorcerers and witches. Some nuts from the trees of this grove have beneficial effects when eaten, while some are damaging; most have no effect at all.

Medelpad Chestnuts

Within the forest of Medelpad during autumn there are usually hundreds of chestnuts freely available, either on the ground or in the trees; however, it is only within the secret grove itself that they are imbued with magic. Even there, only 1 in 12 are special in any way (roll 1d12 to determine whether a given nut is magical; at the height of autumn 10d100 nuts can be gathered in the grove, while in winter 3d100 can be gathered, in spring 1d100, and in summer 1d20). Detect Magic spells work as usual, though an Identify spell is required to know the nature of the effect of eating a specific nut.

A magical chestnut will have one of the following properties (roll a d100; for caster level, assume level 3; effects only act on the eater):

01 - Increases a random stat by +1, permanently
02-05 - Allows the eater to levitate at will for one week
06-10 - Acts as a neutralise poison spell
11-15 - Acts as a lasting breath spell
16-20 - Makes the eater immune to paralysing attacks and spell effects for one week
21-25 - Allows the eater to detect evil at will for one week
26-30 - Makes the eater invisible to animals for one day
31-35 - Makes the eater invisible to undead for one day
36-40 - Acts as a protection from evil spell
41-45 - Acts as an augury spell
46-50 - Acts as a speak with animals spell
51-55 - Acts as a cure blindness spell
56-60 - Acts as a cure disease spell
61-70 - Acts as an insatiable thirst spell
71-75 - Acts as a speak with the dead spell
76-80 - Acts as a call woodland beings spell
81-95 - Acts as a goodberry
96-98 - Allows the eater to commune with nature three times a day for a week
99 - Acts as a cause critical wounds spell
00 - Acts as a power word: kill spell

My Mind Ghouls Wanna Get Fed

Curse of the Mind Ghouls

4th Level Clerical Spell
Range: Touch
Duration: Permanent
Effect: Cannibalistic insanity

This hex, when cast, causes the victim to believe his own mind to be possessed by cannibal ghosts that crave to be fed. Unless his will and resolve are exceptionally strong, sooner or later he will find himself unable to stave off the urge to devour human flesh.

On being stricken by the curse of the mind ghouls, the victim begins to hear voices within his head begging, pleading, demanding, and urging to be fed. Their clamouring is constant and uncontrollable; it does not stop even during sleep. Each day the cursed individual must successfully save versus death. A failed save means that his resolve has been broken by the sheer obstinacy of his mind ghouls, and he will attempt to kill and eat the first human he sees.

The curse of the mind ghouls only affects humans. It can be cured only by a wish or remove curse spell.

Can you spell 'spell'?

Being away from writing blog entries has had the corollary that I haven't done much blog reading recently, either. Apologies to everyone for not commenting on anything ever (as if I commented much anyway) and not updating my blog roll.

Apparently I also missed some sort of big internet OSR controversy of some kind. It's times like this that I really am glad the whole OSR thing has kind of left me behind.

Anyway, some forge spells:

P-cht-then's Ghostly Vigour (Level 4)
Range: Touch
Duration: 10 minutes/level
Effect: Temporary non-corporeality

This spell allows the target to take on a ghostly, noncorporeal form, allowing him to pass through walls and ceilings, levitate upwards and downwards, and see invisible. However, while in this form he cannot affect anything in the physical world; this includes the wearing or carrying of any clothes or items. He can be seen as a vague, translucent representation of his physical self, but he cannot be heard or communicate beyond gesture. While affected by the Ghostly Vigor he can be hit and wounded only by magical or silver weapons, or by undead beings.

Lucid Discovery (Level 1)
Range: Self
Duration: Instantaneous/6 hours
Effect: The caster discovers something while sleeping

This spell must be cast just before the caster goes to sleep. While dreaming, he can discover one of three things: 1) The qualities of a magical item in his possession; 2) The abilities of a known magical creature within 10 miles; 3) The location of a named person within 50 miles.

Moon Silencer (Level 3)
Range: 60'
Duration: 1 round/level
Effect: Temporarily cures lycanthropy

This spell will only effect a werewolf or other lycanthrope during the night, when the creature is in animal form. For the duration of the spell the creature returns to human form and regains its original alignment, personality, and memories.

Silt Pool (Level 1)
Range: 60'
Duration: 2d6 turns
Effect: Creates a pool of silt to slow and block movement

This spell allows the caster to bring into being an area of thick wet sand, up to 40'x40' in size. Any creature trying to pass through this sand can only move at a quarter of its usual rate and must make a saving throw vs. paralysis each turn or else become completely stuck.

Washan's Secret Kiss (Level 2)
Range: 240'
Duration: 1 day to 1 month
Effect: Causes the target to fall in love with the caster

This spell can only be cast when the target is sleeping. If he is a light sleeper, he may feel a light kiss on his cheek and remember it as a dream, but in fact it is the spell taking its effect; when he wakes, he will be profoundly in love with the caster. The spell will only take effect if the target has already met the caster; however, it is not necessary for the target to be in the caster's line of sight - only his location must be known.

Five Spells

Five forge inspired BECMI spells:

Oil King (Level 2)
Range: 60'
Duration: Concentration
Effect: Manipulation of oil

This spell allows the caster to control oils and greases in two ways: firstly, by animating them into a movable form which can cover surfaces and slip through cracks and under doorways; and secondly by causing them to ignite. Any oil within 60' of the caster (including that in containers) can be manipulated in this way.

Whisper Throne (Level 1)
Range: 240'
Duration: 2d4 turns
Effect: Distracts 2-16 HD of creatures within a 40' square area

This spell causes its victims to be surrounded by a host of phantasmal whispers making promises and threats, playing on fears, and attacking insecurities - often in the voices of people the creature used to know but have since died. To be effective, the victim must have a spoken language and have HD of 4+1 or less. There is no saving throw.

Whisper Throne prevents the victim from casting spells; all missile attacks suffer a -4 to hit penalty and hand-to-hand attacks -2; movement is at half-rate.

Azure Purity (Level 6)
Range: 30'
Duration: Instant
Effect: Eliminates 4d8 HD of undead, devils and demons in a 30' cone extending from the caster

This spell creates a cone of clear blue purity extending from the caster to 30'; this blast destroys 4d8 HD of undead beings, devils and demons within that range (lowest Hit Dice creatures being affected first), but leaves all else unaffected.

Ubara's Scalding Palm (Level 1)
Range: Touch
Duration: 2 turns
Effect: Generates intense heat in the palm of the caster's hand

This spell causes powerful white hot energy to course through the caster's left palm, allowing him to burn anything he presses his hand to. The scalding palm causes 1d6 of damage per round if clasped against flesh (requires a successful to hit roll if the target can move freely). Originally created as a method of torture by the archmage Ubara, the scalding palm has other more practical uses; for instance a mage casting the spell can use it to burn his hand through a wooden door within 1 turn.

Misshapen Moth (Level 5)
Range: 240'
Duration: Concentration
Effect: Summons one Misshapen Moth

Misshapen Moths are beings from another plane of existence: fat-bodied insectoid winged things with faces like birds, apes, reptiles or even humans (AC 1, HD14, Move 90', Fly 240', Attacks: 1 bite [2d8 damage, energy drain as Wight]). These horrid, unintelligent creatures drain the life force of their victims, who once dead return to unlife as pale zombie-like thralls after 4 days.

This spell allows the caster to summon a Misshapen Moth to do his bidding; the thralls the Moth creates will then serve the caster until their bodies rot (4 weeks). Thralls are treated as zombies.

Saint Nicholas' Unholy Hymn

Lord save us from Christmas music. You can't even escape it in Japan.

Saint Nicholas' Unholy Hymn (Level 2)
(Enchantment/Charm)

Range: 120 yards
Duration: Special
Area of Effect: Special
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1
Saving Throw: Neg.

When a wizard casts Saint Nicholas' Unholy Hymn, he causes a hideous uncontrollable urge to sing to come over his victim. Once taken by this urge the creature affected can do nothing else other than bellow a cacophonous dirge; he cannot fight, eat, sleep, or walk, though he does remain standing. The spell affects 2d4 hit dice of monsters; monsters with 4 or more hit dice are unaffected, and targets must be within 30 feet of each other. Creatures with an intelligence of 16 or more are permitted a saving throw.

Singing creatures can be attacked as if prone. They continue singing until they are wounded, or shaken and slapped repeatedly - they will eventually starve or die of exhaustion unless this occurs. Material components are a sprig of holly and a small silver bell.

Elementary, My Dear Watson

A friend linked me up to Elements, a free and horrendously addictive strategic online card game in the mold of Magic: The Gathering. Try it and enjoy it, but be forewarned: the thing makes crack cocaine seem like marmite.

Anyway, it got me thinking about one part of 2nd edition AD&D that I really think was poorly executed - specialty mages. A nice concept in theory, but very bland in practice. It added a very small dose of extra flavour to the magic-user concept, but many of the schools of magic were vastly superior to others and it all seemed rather dry.

Elements demonstrates exactly how to pull off a flavourful magic system: wizards are defined by elemental type (air, earth, fire, water, light, dark, death, life, entropy, gravity, time, and aether), each with its own set of spells which summon creatures, conjur items and so on. (I assume this is what goes on in Magic: The Gathering too; I've never played it.) Each element has a very different tone and feel, and offers genuinely interesting options - rather than 2nd edition AD&D's approach of "you get an extra spell but can't take certain other spells".

Maybe when Yoon-Suin is done and dusted I'll think about a book of Elemental Magic. That sort of thing has undoubtedly been done before, but I'll do it better

Abracadabra, Hocus Pocus and Alakazam

The Sorcery! line of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks is one of the great overlooked masterpieces of pulp fantasy. Yes, I'm serious. If you've never read them, or have some sort of misguided prejudice against gamebooks, I'd say you need to do some serious thinking about your life and the way it's going.

Anyway, one of my favourite aspects of Sorcery! is that in order to cast spells, the player is forced to memorise certain code words. As with most aspects of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, this is achieved through a strict honour system which naturally nobody ever follows; if you play by the rules you're not allowed to look up the code word when trying to cast a spell, and instead have to guess or recall from memory. The code words are simple (zed, mib, hig, that sort of thing) so it isn't a particularly onerous task, but when you guess wrong and cast a completely inappropriate spell it injects a dose of light-hearted weirdness that I used to really appreciate. (Of course, I would usually then go back to the previous entry and guess again until I got the right phrase.)

I've sometimes thought about introducing some sort of system of magic words for D&D spells, so that instead of Vanican spellcasting a wizard can cast any spell according to his experience level - provided the player can get the word right without looking. Of course, for every new magic user character you'd have to randomly generate new words, in order to prevent it from being too easy. And you would only allow the player about a minute to try to memorize all the different code words. There would also have to be a system of random effects if a mistake were made. People being turned into frogs and the like.

I can't quite decide whether this would be inspired genius, amusing distraction, or idiotic annoyance and mood spoiler. Probably the latter.

OzCthulu Spoiler: Craft Magic (Part 1 - Body Paint)

I've been working on some different kinds of magic for OzCthulu. The system will basically break down into three varieties - Craft Magic (mainly performed by the Artist class); Divining Magic (performed by the Elder class); and Dreamtime Magic (performed by the Shaman class). [NB: I've put up details of the Shaman class already, but I'm saving the Artist and Elder classes for the playtesting release.] This is the first part of the Craft Magic section, detailing the use of body paint. Comments welcome! It seems like it might possibly be too complicated, and also unbalanced (I haven't play-tested it yet).

Craft Magic

Body Paint, Carving and Rock Art are some of the most powerful means of spellcasting available. Those of the Gatherer class can perform some limited Body Paint magic; those of the Artist class can perform all three varieties, and in more powerful and expressive ways.

The power of art work is a product both of the level of the artist and the time taken in preparation. Thus, a roughly hewn carving by a minor dabbler will perform very weakly, whereas an intricate design produced over the course of a day by a master will be extremely powerful.

Body Paint Magic

Body Paint is most often used to identify the clan group a person belongs to. However, it can also generate powerful effects if painted by a skillful artist; the colours, dots and swirls echo in the Dreamtime, conferring supernatural benefits on the wearer. It takes 1 hour to daub a wearer in paint, and the wearer can either be somebody else or the painter themselves.

There are three kinds of Body Paint Magic:

• Protective: Protective body paint lowers the Armour Class of the wearer, in accordance with the following:
• Level 1-2 Artist or Gatherer: 1d3 point bonus
  
• Level 3-4 Artist or Gatherer: 1d4 point bonus
  
• Level 5-6 Artist: 1d6 point bonus
  
• Level 7-8 Artist: 1d8 point bonus
  
• Level 9+ Artist: 1d10 point bonus
  
• For each additional hour spent, the dice result can be increased by 1 up to the maximum value of the dice. Thus a level 7 Artist who rolls 4 on a d8 can spend another hour to increase the amount to 5, another to increase it to 6, and so forth, but he cannot increase the amount above 8.
  
• Paint gradually fades over time. Its level of protection decreases by 1 rank per day.
• Warding: Warding body paint gives bonuses to the saving throw of the wearer.
  
• An Artist or Gatherer of level 1-3 can confer a +1d3 bonus to one of the wearer's saving throw ratings (rolling separately each time); an Artist of level 4-6 can confer a +1d4 bonus to one saving throw per two levels; and an Artist of level 7-9 a +1d4 bonus to all saving throws. These wards fade over time in a similar way to protective paint.
  
• Blessing: Blessing body paint gives bonuses to the attack and damage rolls of the wearer.
• An Artist or Gatherer of level 1-3 can confer a +1d3 bonus to either the hit or damage roll of the wearer; an Artist of level 4-6 can confer a +1d4 bonus to both the hit and damage rolls of the wearer; and an Artist of level 7+ can confer a +1d6 bonus to either the hit or damage roll of the wearer, or +1d4 to both. These blessings also fade over time.
  

Artists of level 1-3 can use only one of the above methods on a wearer. When they reach level 4-6 they can use two. Above level 7, they can use three at a time.

Gatherers can only ever confer one of the benefits on a wearer.

Note: Protective Body Paint magic might seem unduly powerful at the higher levels; but keep in mind that it is in lieu of actual armour. Except for shields, armour is extremely rare in the OzCthulu game.

I'll be putting up some more details in Craft Magic (Part 2 - Carvings) and Craft Magic (Part 3 - Rock Paintings) entries some time over the next few days.