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View Full Version : Building a better gaming and magic system.



Shinizak
2018-05-21, 12:47 AM
This may be a bit of a rambling mess, less of a thought out idea and more of a string of consciousness that I need your help editing. So forgive me.

Okay, to start off, My 2 favorite games in the world are D&D and World of Darkness. Everything I'm thinking of in this thread draws from those 2 sources.D&D has always held a special place in my heart, I've started at 3.0 and enjoyed every second of game play. I love how the level progression gives characters a strong (but admittedly flawed at best) approach to character balance, and I love how clear cut most attacks are. However while I love it's ability to go upward in power, But keep the power scale (somewhat) level I dislike it's inability to go OUT and diversify the current level. You're more of less stuck with your current build until you go up a level or 3. I also really hate it's inflexible magic system. Vancian magic allows for so little story opportunity with world building. at least compared to Mage (the spheres) or the Vampire (the disciplines and paths).


Speaking of world of darkness and D&D I conversely love WoD for its ability to go out and diversify skills and character options, but HATE it's inability to modulate different power scales. However the place that it REALLY shines (in my book) is the novel idea of modularizing the supernatural entities and directly connecting most magic to them and their respective books)


Now what I propose, (and want your dear help with) is to make a system that can adequately handle (and more importantly: balance) an upward scaling character while also allowing an outward diversification of character options.

for magic (and I would love imput on this) I want to modularize the different types of creatures (undead, angels and demons, constructs, magical beasts, dragons, you name it) give each type of creature a theme (undead have evil and death centralized theme, dragons have an elemental power and lordship theme, magical beasts have a live theme, fey have a mystery theme, etc. etc.) Think of these as as one part unearthed arcana, one part Wod, supernatural line, one part monster manual.

Now here's the important part (for magic at least) I want humans to have to obtain magic by walking through and interacting with the worlds of the undead, the the mystical beasts, the angels, constructs, etc. And last but not least, I want humans to be able to mix magic.


Like, lets say you got the power to drain life from a vampire, but the ability to walk through dreams from a fey, and the ability to conjure fire from a dragon. I want the person to be able to mix the magical properties. maybe make a spell that heals you for as long as a person burns. or maybe produce a magical candle that allows a person to look into the fire and seem the realm of the dreams. etc.


Is such a system possible? Do you have any suggestions? how would you modularize the monsters? Am I a crazy person? what other questions should I be asking? Does any of this actually make sense to you?


Tl;DR: I want to build D&D and WoD's, love child.

Angelmaker
2018-05-21, 04:04 AM
Wod does have a mechnic modeling power. It's called generation. A generation 2 or 3 vampire is a trrible power and not comparable to a generation 13.

However, i agree it's more fluid than d&d. Then again the tiers of d&d also wreak havok on the relative power scale.

Regarding your idea of a magic system: yes, however designing such a system will be a pain and take ages depending on the options. Each option increase the complexity by one and depending on your n-complexity the possibilities might tpbe too many to foresee and playtest. If you can accept the inherent flaw in the system that some options will be absolutely underwhelming or crazy overpowered and that your dm/gm will probably have to adjudicate a lot of the sprll combinations, then this could be a fun little system, raisng the importance of creativity above the importance of system mastery.

Overall I'd say this is less about making every possible combination of spells and themes known and viable, but more about setting the basic premise of the system up, allowing players to experiment with powers and putting the gm in the chair of an instant spell-o-matic, follwing the rule of cool.

You should be asking yourself: do i have enough time and will to finish this project and will my regular circle of gamers be available for playtesting. Nothing is worse than pouring hundreds of hours into a system nobody will ever touch.

Also will you stay motivated despite lack of feedback? These are usually a few of the biggest hurdles.

My 0.02 €uro.

Mechalich
2018-05-21, 05:44 AM
The Storyteller system is a terrible mechanical system with a giant pile of fundamental flaws, massive book-to-book inconsistencies, incompatibilities between creation and advancement mathematically, and just general all-around awfulness. The setting and the fluff have a bunch of interesting ideas, but the system is really not worth salvaging in basically any way.


for magic (and I would love imput on this) I want to modularize the different types of creatures (undead, angels and demons, constructs, magical beasts, dragons, you name it) give each type of creature a theme (undead have evil and death centralized theme, dragons have an elemental power and lordship theme, magical beasts have a live theme, fey have a mystery theme, etc. etc.) Think of these as as one part unearthed arcana, one part Wod, supernatural line, one part monster manual.

This is what WW tried to do with Exalted - all of the various exalted types, which represented different creature types in a certain sense, had their own charm trees, their own special anima powers and drawbacks, and variable access to their own forms of 'magic.' It was horrible. Even if you liked the system, the end result was that you needed to possess a half-dozen or more core books to reliably run the setting and it was just too much for anyone to possibly balance (which led to absurd combos like Creation-Slaying-Oblivion-Kick which does exactly what it says on the tin). If you want a setting that builds a whole bunch of different beings, you want them all to use the same rules to save yourself time and to give the mechanics at least a chance of being comprehensible.


Overall I'd say this is less about making every possible combination of spells and themes known and viable, but more about setting the basic premise of the system up, allowing players to experiment with powers and putting the gm in the chair of an instant spell-o-matic, follwing the rule of cool.

If you use the Sphere Magic system of MtA this is more or less what happens. Sphere magic is basically one step up in structure from a completely freeform mother-may-I magic system. What you can do is limited primarily by how convincing the GM finds your BS. You really don't need anything else.

In fact, the simplest way to make a meta-WoD style setup work is to use Sphere Magic and classify all other supernaturals except for mages as spirits and represent them using the spirit rules. Mages operated at a much higher level of power, so the only way to make all the other supernaturals work was to square them with the Mage mechanics.

Thrudd
2018-05-21, 04:34 PM
Look at some generic systems that involve choosing and or creating elements of the game. You may not need to invent a whole new game. Try the D6 system, it's free online, and tells you how to build races, monsters, and magic spells/effects. Between the default/example material it provides and the guidelines for making your own stuff you could definitely make something that works for the type of setting you are thinking of.

LibraryOgre
2018-05-21, 04:54 PM
Lots of ways to do this, and I think you might want to consider addressing some generic systems... I kind of see some elements of Earthdawn in this.

I think the easiest would be to create a system of trees, and let people follow and learn the trees as they like or are able. Certain races might only be able to take part in certain trees, others might get advantages in other trees, but your idea lets humans partake of any tree (which is what gets me thinking about Earthdawn.

Let's say, for example, you have Dwarves, who are best at Elemental and Undead trees, Elves who do Dragon and Faerie trees, and Gnomes, who do Elemental and Faerie trees, plus humans, who can take any of them.

Some powers available:
Undead: Chill Touch, Speak with dead, Drain Life, to name a few.
Elemental: Elemental Burst, Summon Elemental, and Endure Elements.
Dragons: Armor, Fire Blast, Flight
Faerie: Healing, Confusion, Sleep

You might have one dwarf who heavily delved into the Undead tree, another who went very elemental, and a third who balanced the two... he can Summon elementals and speak with the dead, but he left out the offensive powers. Dwarves may have racial abilities that facilitate this... in Savage Worlds parlance, maybe they get a bonus to some Undead powers, or get better trappings for elemental Fire or Earth powers. An elf might be from a group that worships dragons, so all of his choices are dragon, and another is faerie-kin, and so can use their various powers. Same with the gnomes (they're there just to show that some groups will have trees in common).

Humans are breakers in this situation... they learn powers, with no real advantage to sticking with one tree beyond being able to unlock greater powers. So, if you meet an elf, you know mostly what he's likely to be in... basically no elves will have Undead powers. But if you meet a human, he might be anything, or even nothing.