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Tibbius
2019-05-29, 11:47 AM
The Weird in RPGs
Too often, weirdness overwhelms roleplaying games – usually in the form of “magic” that is limitless in its potential and can easily become a go to deus ex machina for resolving conflicts and plot points that otherwise might be interesting narrative challenges.

Yet a little weirdness does make a story more interesting.

This is a proposal for a little bit of weird.

Specifically, the special mental abilities of “the Word” (telepathy activated by spoken words) and “the Sight” (clairvoyance and prognostication activated by telepathy). Characters can be created with these abilities, and can improve them, but can’t gain them during their careers.

The Word
A character can be born with the ability to interpret others’ verbal and nonverbal communications so accurately that it is like reading their mind. Further, the character can be born with the ability to verbally and nonverbally communicate their thoughts so effectively that they can instill perceptions, beliefs, and even memories into others’ minds. These two abilities are known as “the Word.”

Thus, a character with the Word could with only a few words of speech – their own, or another character’s – gather all the information that a character involved in the conversation knew or believed about that topic. On the other hand, a character with the Word could with a little speech establish an illusion or delusion in their listeners. This latter type of action is successful only if it inflicts a mental wound on its unknowing targets, and endures in its targets until they recover from that wound.

Examples of what a player can narrate if their character has the Word:
- “As my character converses with the count, her true intentions toward my character become apparent.” The lead then can consent by divulging those intentions, or challenge by saying that the count’s mind is devious.
- “While the merchant speaks about his journey through the mountains, my character realizes he is lying about how the guards were lost. They did not die in an avalanche – he left them to die of their injuries from a battle with bandits.”
* “After a few words are spoken, the guard decides to let my character out of the dungeon.”
* “As my [young male] character greets each of the villagers, each in turn perceives him as an old woman with long white hair and a warty nose.” The lead can challenge this: “A young child cries out, ‘Why is that young man shuffling along like that?’” Then the challenge can be resolved by a roll modified by your character’s Word.
* “When my character seizes the pirate’s wrist, the pirate perceives that his muscles in that arm become limp and do not respond to his will.”
* “My character says ‘It’s getting dark in here.’ The other characters perceive that all the candles are extinguished and the room becomes so dark they cannot see their own hands.”
* “My character says, ‘Boil your blood and freeze your bones.’ The bandits feel intense pain in their bones and blood vessels, so intense that they feel they might die.”

Examples of what a player cannot narrate, even if their character has the Word:
- “My character says ‘Let there be light!’ and the true features of the cavern become apparent to her and to the other characters.” (The character can influence the perceptions of others with her Word, but cannot instill knowledge of reality external to her own thoughts and perceptions. If she had previously seen the cavern by torchlight, then at best she could replicate that memory for herself and for others – but her memory might no longer match the true features.)
- “By a simple touch, my character restores sensation to the pirate’s paralyzed arm.” (This can work only if the arm was paralyzed by the Word; it will not work on paralysis caused by physical injury.)
- “With a word and a gesture, my character causes stones to fly at his enemies.” (Nope. This isn’t any form of communication. However, the character could cause the enemies to perceive that they were being pelted with stones.)

Thus, many of the effects that can be achieved with the Word also can be achieved by other, less weird abilities such as ordinary fast talking or disguise.

* Effects marked with an asterisk take effect only if they inflict a mental wound on their targets, with the accompanying roll to challenge the wound. Once the target recovers from the wound, the effect is over. The target is unaware that they have suffered a mental wound – unless they fail their Survival roll, in which case they become incapacitated (dazed and distressed) until they recover from the mental wound.

Mental wound roll
Bonuses: Rolling party's Spirit and ability.
Penalties: Other party’s Spirit and ability


Sonia is a lead character. She attempts to enthrall Lawrence using her great Word and superior Guile. You narrate that Lawrence (no special mental abilities, and superior Guile) resists Sonia's psychic attack. You roll for the challenge, with three penalty dice for Sonia's Guile and ability and one bonus die for Lawrence’s Guile. You roll three dice, dropping the best two, and the result is 3, which means that Sonia succeeds in enthralling Lawrence. The lead narrates that in addition to gaining some control over Lawrence's actions, Sonia also inflicts a mental wound. You automatically challenge this, as you would for a physical wound. Sonia has superior Spirit, as does Lawrence – but Sonia has great ability in the Word, so you again have three penalty dice and one bonus die. You roll three dice and get a 2. Lawrence loses one level of Guile and Spirit. He now has only fair Guile and Spirit. Once he recovers from the mental wound, Sonia no longer will be able to control his actions.

Recovery from mental wounds works just the same as recovery from physical wounds. You can narrate recovery of one wound level after the first hour, and the lead may challenge your narration by making a Survival roll with your character’s attributes as penalties to the roll.

The Sight
A character who has the Word also may have the unusual additional gift of extremely accurate inference (“the Sight”). Given this ability, the character may be able to glean from another character’s inward knowledge and intentions a fair estimate of their future, or of current events involving third parties with whom the other character has interacted. The Sight works only for topics on which the character has acquired knowledge through the Word.

Examples of what a player can narrate if their character has the Sight:
- “After speaking with the count about her attendance at the king’s conference last month, my character sees that the king presently is engaged in a fierce battle with the invaders.” The lead then could narrate “In the battle, the crown prince [who also was at the conference, and spoke with the count] intends to betray the king and make a peace with the invaders in order to resolve the debts of the crown and subdue the restive local nobility.” Alternatively, the lead could challenge this: “The king is not in a battle, but feasting with the invaders at a peace conference.” Depending who won the challenge, your character’s vision would be true or not.
- “A few words with the guard about the food in the dungeon, and my character sees what is planned for her tomorrow...” The lead then can narrate what will come.
- “After talking briefly with the merchant about his profits, my character sees the hidden chest where the merchant keeps his gold and sees the key to that chest on a thin golden chain around the merchant’s neck.”
- “Expressing sympathy for the crippled pirate, my character sees that the withered arm came about when an angry young woman grabbed the pirate’s wrist after he groped her.” The lead could challenge this: “No, the injury was from a sword stroke at the boarding of a merchant quarry.” Then a roll modified by your character’s Guile and Sight would resolve the challenge.
- “After interrogating the pilloried bandit, my character has a clear vision of where the bandit camp is situated in the mountain forest.”

Examples of what a player cannot narrate, even if their character has the Sight:
- “Looking from the eyes of a soaring eagle, my character sees where the bandits have their hidden camp on the mountainside.” (The Sight relies on the Word, which can’t work on animals with which your character can’t converse.)
- “Staring into the flames of the campfire, my character sees how the king will die.” (Again, the Sight relies on inferences from the Word – the campfire neither knows nor communicates anything about the king.)

DracoDei
2019-05-29, 07:56 PM
One thing that would probably help is to know why precisely you picked these over, say "Avatar: The Last Airbender" style elemental manipulation. Taking that as an example: If you made flight hard to do it seems it wouldn't trivialize mundane solutions.

Or make it so that magic works only on the willing, not on the unwilling or the inanimate. That way you are making people BETTER at doing things, rather than having magic do the actual work.

So, what makes you feel that these specific choices serve your goals better than other options? Knowing this would help me (and probably others) get a better grasp on the fine details of your objectives, and then we could comment better on if these really are ideal to meet them. If they are we could offer refinements. If not we could offer alternatives.

Tibbius
2019-05-30, 01:59 PM
One thing that would probably help is to know why precisely you picked these over, say "Avatar: The Last Airbender" style elemental manipulation. Taking that as an example: If you made flight hard to do it seems it wouldn't trivialize mundane solutions.

Or make it so that magic works only on the willing, not on the unwilling or the inanimate. That way you are making people BETTER at doing things, rather than having magic do the actual work.

So, what makes you feel that these specific choices serve your goals better than other options? Knowing this would help me (and probably others) get a better grasp on the fine details of your objectives, and then we could comment better on if these really are ideal to meet them. If they are we could offer refinements. If not we could offer alternatives.

I'm going to respond first by explaining some of my motivations for this approach.

1. Recently I ran a 5e campaign in which one of the key NPCs was demented. It could have been an interesting complication for political and practical reasons, and the players immediately set about finding a way to cure the dementia. Of course the obvious solution was to cast Restoration on the NPC. This reduced the interesting complication to a simplistic "find the right key" type problem.

2. Generally, there's a trope that whatever other characters can do, a high level wizard can do better. I'd like to eliminate that by having weird power characters stay more in a dedicated lane, and need to practice other abilities if they want to compete apples-to-apples with characters who aren't in their lane.

3. Conventional RPG magic often lacks mystery and can become very mechanical, even in systems like Ars Magica or MtA that are intended to make magic free-wheeling. At the same time, it's unrestricted in its potential (see point 2 preceding).

In response to those motivations, I started thinking about a setting where weird powers would by a mystery and a secret mostly unknown, unbelieved, and misunderstood. Perhaps even some of the characters who possessed those powers would not believe nor understand the extent of their own abilities. In order for that to work, the powers would need to be subtle and deniable, explicable by other means.

It's difficult to explain telekinesis or summoning or conjuration or real actual shapechanging by anything other than "magic." But tricks of the mind - those mostly can be easily understood as an application of mundane skills, maybe even by the people who accomplish them. Maybe there would be some particularly flashy applications, like making people perceive unrealistic events, that could be explained only as "mass hysteria." Even those applications, however, could be digested by most of the mundane folk of the setting as merely unusual experiences. Only a few believers would seek to explain weird powers as what they were, and those few generally would be disbelieved and even mocked.

In order to have a setting like this, I needed a different set of rules for "magic." One that was limited to deniably or explicably subtle aspects of weirdness, like hallucinations and delusions and mind-reading and foresight.

I want these powers to work on willing and unwilling alike, but not on the inanimate - and I want there to be a definite impact on the target of an "active" use of power.

Note this was written up in view of a specific set of rules that I created for a more collaborative approach to storytelling ... but what rules there are here, can be easily adapted to 5e with the following modifications:

- for passive applications of the Word, make a check against DC as if for researching lore, using Proficiency Bonus + INT bonus.
- for active applications of the Word, target gets a saving throw against DC of 10 + Proficiency Bonus + CHA modifier.
- for passive applications of the Sight, make a check against DC as if for researching lore, using Proficiency Bonus + WIS bonus.