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View Full Version : [Fate Core] Magic and Races for Nightmares in the Dark game



RedWarlock
2014-01-09, 03:55 AM
Nightmares in the Dark is a setting I'm working into my own animated webseries. In short, it's urban fantasy, with a higher concentration of elves, dwarves, and other 'fantasy' monsters than in most settings. The main characters are typically humans who find themselves transformed into monsters, awakened from a lost heritage or as backlash for magic over-use.

The setting of the series/game takes place in modern-day earth, and lurking in the shadows of human society are vampires, werewolves, demons, fey, etc, like with most urban fantasy, but also dragons, centaurs, gryphons, dwarves, and a whole host of goblin/troll-kin collectively referred to as Jaegers.

Spirits of magical energy exist on a parallel plane of existence (referred to as the Astral Plane, Spirit World, Underworld, etc), feeding on mental energy created by emotions. These spirits embody basic concepts, such as a traditional element, a place, an animal, or more complex combinations thereof. In their most basic form, they embody a material element, and exist like single-cellular organisms and consume one another, growing in power and complexity.

Magic is largely temporary, based on expenditure of energy. It can produce/control energy (fire, ice, lightning, etc), make new things temporarily (temporarily forcing astral matter into reality), or transform something temporarily (shunt existing matter into the astral, while using astral matter to replace it for duration). It can also reshape existing matter permanently, but only of the same type (conservation of mass mostly still applies, though healing and growth can be accelerated).

Basic rituals (slow, taking a couple minutes at least) can contact these spirits to do basic tasks. These spirits can be bound into objects (such as wands and other implements), into animals (creating monstrous beasts), or to oneself's own soul (with resulting back-wash influence on your physical self).

Your soul (which is itself a spirit, bound to your body) can also consume spirits. This results in the ability to use that spirit's powers yourself, as well as major physical mutations (reflective of the spirit's nature), which are often themselves physically beneficial, though generally inhuman.

This is where the other races come into the story. In ages past, groups of magic-users grew these traits, which passed down into their children. There are concrete, identifiable race-groups, though not without some internal variation within said groups, depending on an individual's magic use. The child of a normal human and a monstrous race will have half as much monstrous features (and magical talents) as that parent, but these will develop in full if they take up that magic, favoring the parent's same mutations.

Due to various racism and monster-hunting efforts, a spell was developed to hide monstrous features and magical talent in an unborn child, forcing it to be recessive. Exposure to direct magic, more often the magic of your parent-type, can break this spell, but even just catastrophic emotional crises can force a breakthrough into sudden powers, with rapid transformation to follow.


So I'm going to be running a game of Fate Core for some buddies in the near future. I'm going to start everyone off as human (though I might start off one guy who has more experience with the setting as a non-human, just to give them a leg-in and see what's involved) and let them awaken themselves in-game.

The magic will use an extra set of skills. Some of the function is similar to the Stormcaller system in the Toolkit, though since this magic is non-exclusive, each main element has a distinct skill, suited to different purposes, secondary usage, sometimes combining with other elements, and a specialized application, requiring a stunt to access.

These skills are explicitly for learned magic, and only available to awakened characters or spirits. Rituals (performed with Lore, over the course of minutes) can replicate them to a degree.

Fire
Create and control fire and heat.
Control Energy: Control energy in other forms, such as lightning (requires Air), or using cold to make ice (requires Water).
Stunt: Shadow. Create visual illusions, including glamour and invisibility.

Earth
Create and control earth and stone.
Control Solid: Create walls, bridges, and other structures from any material, enduring long beyond the caster's concentration.
Stunt: Binding. Bind spirits to matter, allowing the creation of magical tools, familiar spirits, and monstrous beasts.

Water
Create and control water and other liquids.
Control Liquid: Transform living matter, including yourself, temporarily, using the animal natures of various kinds of spirits as pattern for the change.
Stunt: Growth. Allows for permanent change in living matter, including healing magic.

Air
Create and control air and the winds.
Control Gas: Manipulate gases for telekinetic-like effects, including sound-based effects, haste and slowing effects (caused by thick or creatively-thinned air, as needed), and vacuum force.
Stunt: Song. Telepathic connection with the mind, thoughts, and memories.


Binding can be used (via ritual, most often) to attach a spirit to a tool of some kind, such as a wand or spellbook. Whoever wields the tool gains the usage of its spirit's abilities, if they know how to use them, making them easy targets to be stolen. Likewise, binding can be used to create a familiar, by taking a regular animal (preferably a pet, which already has some connection to you) and binding a spirit to that animal, and binding the animal to you. This chain of connections is safer than a tool, generally.

Alternately, binding ritual can be used to bind a spirit directly to yourself, gaining immediate access to the powers in a special kind of pact. (This can also happen by accident if a familiar is slain, as the link acts less like a chain and more like a spacer, keeping you and the spirit distinct.) A side effect of this is that the spirit has more direct control of your body and mind, in the form of influence on your attitudes.


This last point is what creates shapeshifters, like werewolves. The binding is actually to the shapeshifter's blood, and is often with a more powerful spirit (who is splitting off a portion of its power into you, rather than you controlling it entirely), shared amongst the whole family group (IE pack), passed down along family lines.


Now, if you are an unawakened descendent (as in, the human child of a monster race) or a pact-bound caster, and you take a major consequence, you can choose to awaken, consuming the spirit (and learning its prime skill at Average (+1) on your next skill-up), and adding a race or creature-descriptor into one of your aspects, including possibly your high concept, if it fits.

As an awakened caster, you have an extra avenue of power, above and beyond that of the pact-bound and ritual casters. You can buy shifts on a casting by marking off mental Stress before you roll. This can come at a cost, however, as you can force yourself into more changes, by accident. If you blow all your mental stress... [mechanic to be determined later]

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So, I need some opinions on what I've got. Planning to add more at a later time, but I need to get this out. (note, the arrangement of the powers and elements is fairly well fixed, though I might adjust things very mildly.)