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View Full Version : A good Urban Fantasy "Magicians" system?



Bryan
2020-06-13, 10:38 AM
I'm thinking of starting a new campaign. I binged "the Magicians" and thought back to all of the Dr Strange comics I loved when I was a kid waaaaay back in the late eighties.

I'm thinking of a few CoC scenarios but with PCs who have more powerful magic than the average investigator in CoC so it is more spooky adventure than deadly horror. Then later on introduce some multiverse elements.

I thought of Mage but I never seem to do well with the White Wolf games. I know Desden Files is a thing but while I love the books, I don't know anything about the game.

Money is a little tight and I can't drop twenty to fifty dollars to test out a system at random. I'd want to read up on it online, maybe catch a YouTube video or something. Thing is, I don't really know where a good place to start would be.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

malloc
2020-06-13, 11:13 AM
I'm thinking of starting a new campaign. I binged "the Magicians" and thought back to all of the Dr Strange comics I loved when I was a kid waaaaay back in the late eighties.

I'm thinking of a few CoC scenarios but with PCs who have more powerful magic than the average investigator in CoC so it is more spooky adventure than deadly horror. Then later on introduce some multiverse elements.

I thought of Mage but I never seem to do well with the White Wolf games. I know Desden Files is a thing but while I love the books, I don't know anything about the game.

Money is a little tight and I can't drop twenty to fifty dollars to test out a system at random. I'd want to read up on it online, maybe catch a YouTube video or something. Thing is, I don't really know where a good place to start would be.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Dresden Files RPG (DFRPG) is in Fate. So if you know/like Fate, or want to read the core Fate rules (https://fate-srd.com/), it works pretty well for making a Dresden-feeling game, where not everyone HAS to be a magician.

You might also want to look at some type of superhero system, or a rules-lite system if you want "magic" to just be a simpler system.

farothel
2020-06-13, 11:47 AM
Shadowrun has a lot of magic in it. And you can have people make mages and 'physical' mages (adepts) or a cross between the two. You can even play techno-mages (technomancers). I don't know the latest edition (6th), but I've played 4th and 5th and I like them. And if you can play with the power level easily during character generation by giving more or less points to start with (and to allow initiations and stuff).

And there is more than enough spookiness and horror in Shadowrun if you want to (insect spirits, toxic shamans,...).

LibraryOgre
2020-06-13, 12:31 PM
A favorite of mine, that preserves some of the "weird magic" aspect, is Apocalypse Prevention, Inc. It has a 2nd edition (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/150480/Apocalypse-Prevention-Inc-2nd-Edition?affiliate_id=315505) and a Savage Worlds (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/106523/Apocalypse-Prevention-Inc--Savage-Worlds-Edition?affiliate_id=315505) edition though, unsurprisingly, the SW edition strips out some of weirder aspects of magic.

GentlemanVoodoo
2020-06-13, 01:53 PM
You have a few options for this:

For world of darkness which of the mage games are you not having luck with, Ascension (old WOD) or Awakening (New WOD)? I ask as Awakening is the more streamline version of the games and really there is less complexity of the rules when compared to Ascension in general. If your knowledge is to the old WOD, don't forget other classic WOD books like the the Hunter's Hunted 2, Gypsies and the like has more simplified Numina magic system.

I would second the superhero idea with such games as Mutants and Masterminds. There is enough power customization you can make any magical caster you wish.

Not knowing much of the Dresden Files RPG, but Fate in general is a solid choice in terms of rules light flexibility. There are other systems such as The Window that also acomplish the same thing in their own methods.

Bryan
2020-06-13, 02:08 PM
Wow, go away for a couple of hours and there are plenty of responses. Thank you.

I've been looking into things online. I'd say that Dresden Files and Mage the Awakening look like the best options.

I will say that I prefer a more neutral setting so I can kind of make it my own. Mage for example seems to have a very established culture with various orders. If I go with that, I'd prefer to leave the orders behind, start with a basic mystical subculture that the players can explore as we grow it together more organically (I hope that makes sense, I'm not great at explaining my style of gm-ing/storytelling)

By the same token, Dresden Files obviously leans heavily on the writings of Jim Butcher so, you know, same thing.

I've never played either Mage game. I played in a couple attempts of Vampire, Werewolf and Hunter but none of them got more that three or four sessions in. Looking back, I'm not sure if it was poorly run games or just bad luck.

Bryan
2020-06-13, 02:38 PM
I haven't played many superhero games. I wanted something focused specifically on magic-users as I'm a little concerned about scope creep ("sure, it's a game about wizards but why can't I play a vampire/elf/merman since the others are already wizards").

Still, i have seen Mutants & Masterminds along with supplements including one called Book of Magic.

Grod_The_Giant
2020-06-13, 03:13 PM
I know Desden Files is a thing but while I love the books, I don't know anything about the game.
Well, the good news is that the DFRPG is probably the best RPG adaptation I've ever seen, from underlying mechanics (the more power you have, the lower your Fate Point refresh becomes, and the less ability you have to resist when the GM Compels one of your flaws) to presentation (Billy the Werewolf wrote the game; he, Harry, and Bob have notes everywhere in the margins). The bad news is that it's based on an older version of Fate, so you'll run into unnecessarily complex mechanics at random points. That said, I've played in a couple campaigns using it, and it's quite functional. There's a newer Dresden Files Accelerated (https://www.evilhat.com/home/dresden-files-accelerated/), based on newer Fate rules that do work pretty sleekly, but I've never had the chance to check it out.

Mutants and Masterminds, much as I love the system, I'm hesitant to suggest here. The system is absolutely brilliant at translating wildly different characters into a simple set of shared mechanics, but as a result you can have trouble if you're trying to have a party of similar characters. Doctor Strange and the Hulk will work out well, but Batman and Black Panther will wind up looking pretty identical on paper. There are also some scaling issues if you try to translate it into non-superhero genres-- seriously potent noncombat abilities (walking through walls, turning invisible, talking to objects, very precise telekinesis) are dirt cheap compared to combat ones, and exponential scaling means that even a very small bit of super-strength or quickness becomes insane. It works for a combat-heavy game where those kinds of thing are side-projects and you're working within the status quo. In other circumstances... well... in a recent high fantasy game I'm running with M&M the party left the crafter behind to work on their fortress for a few days. They came back to find that he'd done something like 600 years worth of work single-handedly rebuilding everything.

Unknown Armies is a reputable urban fantasy system, and Savage Worlds works well for most action-y things, but I'm also going to go ahead and throw my own system (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/268061/STaRS-The-Simple-Tabletop-Roleplaying-System) into the hat. It's light, flexible, fast, and really easy to both GM and teach new players.

It's a 1d10 roll-under, players-roll-all-the-dice system. You get ten abilities rated 1-10, and to do something you roll a d10 and try to get your rank or less, with modifiers either adding or subtracting two from your rank. NPC stats are basically just sets of modifiers-- "it's harder to fight this guy in melee, but it's easier to deal with him socially."
The basic combat engine is extremely generalized-- "overcome" instead of "attack" and so on-- with more specific discussions on how to use it for normal fighting, for social scenes, and for skill-challenge-y "Environmental Conflict" (escaping a burning building, navigating a dangerous swamp, investigating a crime, etc)
It uses a very general system for characters with special abilities, where the only thing that really matters is how broad the ability is, but the full version has a couple of ready-made examples of how to break that up into a structured magic system.
The full version also has a chapter discussing how to add new rules to customize the experience, with examples of things like mass combat and vehicle rules.

Morty
2020-06-13, 03:15 PM
Liminal is an interesting rules-medium urban fantasy RPG that allows you to play all kinds of characters, from clued-in normal humans to magicians, faeries or werewolves. Its setting focuses very strongly on the UK, though. Not sure if there's any extra material for the other parts of the world.

Tanarii
2020-06-20, 10:31 PM
Dresden Files RPG (DFRPG) is in Fate. So if you know/like Fate, or want to read the core Fate rules (https://fate-srd.com/), it works pretty well for making a Dresden-feeling game, where not everyone HAS to be a magician.
Ouch. I know TRPG conversions of Movie/Book IPs usually aren't very good. But casting an IP in Fate is cruel and unusual punishment.

Chauncymancer
2020-06-21, 02:19 AM
Unknown Armies specifically is going to capture Julia's experience with the hedges and the cult of our lady underground right up to the summoning, and little bits of Alice's and her family's experience. But there's nothing like Brakebills as an institution, and Filagree is much, much larger and more full than the otherworlds of Unknown Armies, which are more comparable to the Chatwin house after dark.
Thematically, it is firmly in the camp of "tragedy makes wizards" and "magic isn't the best way to get what you want, but it's the only path you're going to get".

Sam113097
2020-06-21, 03:58 AM
Not all of the classes can act as “Magicians” per se, but I highly recommend Monster of the Week! It’s based on the Apocalypse World System, so it’s easy to pick up, and the way spells (and Big Magic) work is super interesting.

Chauncymancer
2020-06-26, 08:58 PM
Something specific about Monster of the Week that applies to the Magicians is the play cycle where you have find the specific charm, weapon, or spell to defeat a bad monster, and doing so is an adventure in itself.