what system would i use for this kind of story?

[kitsune180]

I want to run a game that is set in a world where magick once was known by all. However, a group of Mages, called the Children of Damian, began to take control of the world with a black iron fist. The Council of Aether, the oldest mages, decided that if the world were to survive, magick had to disappear. The went to the Book of Aeons and tore out the page that contained the formula that kept magick in the equation of reality.

It is now the modern age. the players are high school kids, that while on their way home from school, discover a piece of pure gold paper (the torn out page of magick). Upon reading it, they black out. When they awaken, the discover they can each use one form of magick that has control of one "domain" of reality. A "Domain" could be control over books, for instance. The visual possibilties are endless, such as having the pages fly from the book to take the form of a dragon.

so, that being said, what system would you recommend?

[Rhynn]

Mage: The Ascension / Mage: The Awakening, Unisystem (Witchcraft is free), GURPS, and... well, I completely blanked on the name of the one where usually each player has a magic and non-magic PC, but IIRC the magic system is quite similarly based around domains / sphere / somesuch.

[The Rose Dragon]

Mage: The Ascension / Mage: The Awakening, Unisystem (Witchcraft is free), GURPS, and... well, I completely blanked on the name of the one where usually each player has a magic and non-magic PC, but IIRC the magic system is quite similarly based around domains / sphere / somesuch.

Ars Magica?

[JeenLeen]

Mage: The Ascension or The Awakening sounds good. I know Ascension better, so I will speak about it.

The Spheres are different categories of magic: Correspondence, Entropy, Forces, Life, Matter, Mind, Prime, Spirit, Time. You can essentially cast any spells that use Spheres you know, and the rules are fairly loose as to what Spheres can do what.

To use your book Domain example, the Domain is fluff -- how the spells are cast (or, in Mage terms, the 'paradigm' in a sense.) You can use Correspondence to scry (look into a book and see another place) or to teleport (jump into a story about Egypt and you are in Egypt now.) Entropy for luck-based divination (randomly open a book to get your answer) or manipulate luck (oh... the bullet actually didn't hit you because it hit the book you had in your pocket. Close call!) For Forces, a page becomes a fireball (a stretch, but as likely as it becoming a dragon.) For Life, a page acts as a bandage, healing you, or conjures a dragon as you mentioned (Life 5 can do such, or let you transform.) And so on.

The Domain is a little limiting, but the limit is the player's imagination and how much the GM wants to let players do everything or to be limited by paradigm.

You might want to drop or modify the Paradox rules, depending on how you want the world to work. (Although it could work very well if you want reality-as-modified to be resistent to magic being introduced. That's... sorta how paradox works in mage. (In mage, reality is whatever people believe it is, and you get paradox if you do the impossible (most magic) in said reality, and you get more dox if it's done in front of Sleepers, those who do not believe in the supernatural.))

[Rhynn]

Ars Magica?

That's the one.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Mutants and Masterminds could work-- it's certainly got the versatility, and probably has the least amount of fluff to strip out. 3e is available free online, as well. (www.d20herosrd.com)

[The Rose Dragon]

Mutants and Masterminds could work-- it's certainly got the versatility, and probably has the least amount of fluff to strip out. 3e is available free online, as well. (www.d20herosrd.com)

While I am a great fan of M&M, one thing to note is that, especially in a story like this, keeping character advancement tied to a theme is very important, since the system doesn't enforce that by default.

Incidentally, while the rest of the system is probably a poor fit, the concept of Madness Talents from Don't Rest Your Head would probably simulate Domains very well.

[LibraryOgre]

Part Time Gods from Third Eye Games (http://thirdeyegames.net/part-time-gods/) might do it for you. It's based on Eloy's DGS, and seems to mostly fit the fluff/crunch you're looking for.

[tensai_oni]

Mutants and Masterminds.

Mage fits thematically, but unfortunately the mechanics are written by White Wolf and thus suck horribly. Could be worse though, could be Exalted.

[kyoryu]

Fate Core would work well, I think.

[JeenLeen]

Mutants and Masterminds.

Mage fits thematically, but unfortunately the mechanics are written by White Wolf and thus suck horribly. Could be worse though, could be Exalted.

I agree with the sentiment about Mage, but I think it's not too hard to work-around. When my group did a Mage game, the DM and I read through the different Spheres by rank (each is ranked 1-5, apprentice to master) and wrote down what they could do based on the Sphere description, ignoring rote description except as clarifiers... because they directly contradict each other.

For example, the description of Prime (manipulating magic and the essence of reality) states that Prime 5 is needed to effect Life Patterns (aka, living beings.) Prime 1 has a rote called Rubbing the Bones that lets you cause pain by agitating the Life Pattern of a being, possibly stunning them. Although it is a reasonable level 1 power, it does something that only Prime 5 should be able to do. Or so we ruled in our game. So to run an effective system, you either need to be okay with vague and contradictory rules OR need to basically make a houserule powerset, or so I see it.

I think M&M would work poorly unless you invest in the Variable power (or whichever one costs 8 per rank, but lets you do most anything using 5 per rank points), since your characters would be limited in what they can do. Sure you can choose anything, but the amount of different stuff is limited by what powers you buy: afflictions, damage, healing, etc. It sounds like you want more versatility than that. Mage offers that. (For example, Life 3 can heal, harm, and allow you to boost your own physical stats and shapeshift into other humanoid forms.)

Note: I think I'm basing my view of Mage off of the 2nd edition revised oWoD rulebook.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I think M&M would work poorly unless you invest in the Variable power (or whichever one costs 8 per rank, but lets you do most anything using 5 per rank points), since your characters would be limited in what they can do. Sure you can choose anything, but the amount of different stuff is limited by what powers you buy: afflictions, damage, healing, etc. It sounds like you want more versatility than that. Mage offers that. (For example, Life 3 can heal, harm, and allow you to boost your own physical stats and shapeshift into other humanoid forms.)
Thanks to the power of alternate effects, you can get very versatile characters in M&M-- and what you don't cover during character creation you can cover in-game through the use of power stunts.

Take your Life example-- in M&M terms, you'd have something like this:
Life Array

Healing Ray-- Healing 10, Ranged. (30 points)
Disrupting Touch-- Weaken (Physical Abilities) 10, Broad, Simultaneous (1 point)
Muscle Morph-- Enhanced Strength 10; Leaping 5; Speed 5 (1 point)
Body Morph-- Morph 3 (Humanoids), Continuous (1 point)


If, during the course of the game, you need to use your power in a way not covered by your array-- say to restore a transformed ally to his original form-- you'd power stunt a new ability-- "Restore Form--Nullify (Transformations) 10, Effortless"-- at the cost of either a hero point or a level of fatigue.

[JeenLeen]

Oh; right. I forgot about arrays and that use of power stunts.

With that, I can see shifting to M&M. Certainty more streamlined mechanics, and the d20 system works pretty well for it. (With D&D, I dislike how at low-level your rolls depend so much on the d20 result. But even at PL 8 you can have a +10 or more in some rolls, so you can be good at something and have that matter more than the dice result.)

[Jlerpy]

I'd probably use something pretty freeform, like FATE, or maybe even Cortex Plus Drama, if the game will be about relationships as much as action.

[Lorsa]

Since people have already suggested some systems I would recommend too I'll simply add in BESM to the mix. I haven't actually played it myself but from what I hear customizable individual powers is what it does.

[Beleriphon]

Oh; right. I forgot about arrays and that use of power stunts.

With that, I can see shifting to M&M. Certainty more streamlined mechanics, and the d20 system works pretty well for it. (With D&D, I dislike how at low-level your rolls depend so much on the d20 result. But even at PL 8 you can have a +10 or more in some rolls, so you can be good at something and have that matter more than the dice result.)

Plus in a pinch a hero point can force a roll to default to at least 11.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Plus in a pinch a hero point can force a roll to default to at least 11.
And the ability to take 10 is just a 1-point Advantage away.

[Friv]

...urgh I want to say Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine so much...

but it's not actually out yet.


So yeah, Fate or Cortex+.

*edit* But they're hoping to have the digital copy out by the end of the year, so when's your game starting?

[Airk]

I don't want to say that you are doing it wrong and this thread is useless, but this question is functionally invalid. Given what you have told us so far, you can tell that story in almost any that's not exclusively designed around crawling through a dungeon kicking down doors. You could do this in Fate. You could probably do this in GURPs. You could do this in Mage. You could probably do this in Burning Wheel. You could almost certainly do it in BESM.

You've asked the wrong question.

The question you should be asking (yourself, more than us) is - what kind of game do I want to run? What is going to be important about this game? What are these characters going to DO? Is this game going to be about these empowered students clashing with other magically empowered beings in titanic battles? Is it going to be about these students wrestling with what these powers MEAN to them and how they disrupt their relationships with the world? Is it going to be about these students trying to understand what these powers are and what they mean while trying to avoid 'mundane' people noticing what is going on? Is it important that these characters be able to increase in power dramatically as time goes on? Or do they start as near-demigods and their character development as people is more important than "Oh hey, now I can 'cast a spell' that does X!" These are the kinds of questions that should guide your choice of system.

What you've given us so far is setting and background, and while those inform what kind of game you will play to some degree, they absolutely do not provide us with enough information to make a remotely informed decision about what sort of gaming system would suit you well.

I suggest you give a quick glance at this page (http://bankuei.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/a-way-out/) and maybe some of the other content there, and then spend some time considering what kind of story you want to tell. How you want it to -feel-. And then maybe we can all help you pick a system that will really achieve that goal.

[Jlerpy]

I don't want to say that you are doing it wrong and this thread is useless, but this question is functionally invalid. Given what you have told us so far, you can tell that story in almost any that's not exclusively designed around crawling through a dungeon kicking down doors. You could do this in Fate. You could probably do this in GURPs. You could do this in Mage. You could probably do this in Burning Wheel. You could almost certainly do it in BESM.

You've asked the wrong question.

The question you should be asking (yourself, more than us) is - what kind of game do I want to run? What is going to be important about this game? What are these characters going to DO? Is this game going to be about these empowered students clashing with other magically empowered beings in titanic battles? Is it going to be about these students wrestling with what these powers MEAN to them and how they disrupt their relationships with the world? Is it going to be about these students trying to understand what these powers are and what they mean while trying to avoid 'mundane' people noticing what is going on? Is it important that these characters be able to increase in power dramatically as time goes on? Or do they start as near-demigods and their character development as people is more important than "Oh hey, now I can 'cast a spell' that does X!" These are the kinds of questions that should guide your choice of system.

What you've given us so far is setting and background, and while those inform what kind of game you will play to some degree, they absolutely do not provide us with enough information to make a remotely informed decision about what sort of gaming system would suit you well.

I suggest you give a quick glance at this page (http://bankuei.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/a-way-out/) and maybe some of the other content there, and then spend some time considering what kind of story you want to tell. How you want it to -feel-. And then maybe we can all help you pick a system that will really achieve that goal.

The issue is not that the question is wrong, but that there's not enough information to answer it.

[Vamphyr]

I love Hero 5th edition for any power based games. It allows your players to easily set up the crunch of what they want their character to do and then fill in the fluff however they want.