System suggestion for unusual campaign idea

[Gnoman]

Looking to start a third, more semi-casual campaign with my current group as a palate-cleanser of sorts - the current games are quite intensive, so adding something completely different to mix things up would be nice. I'm thinking about trying to run a game centered around a magical research university trying to devise and exploit the fundamental rules of magic in a world on the brink of war.

This is a very unusual idea, and I'm not entirely sure GURPS (our usual system) is the best choice for it. GURPS can certainly be hammered into working, but I figured I'd check to see if there's some obscure system that's more tailor-made for it.

[Cygnia]

Big Eyes, Small Mouth maybe?

Or HERO?

Savage Worlds?

[Vahnavoi]

Invisible College (by RPGPundit) sounds like it's made for this, but I can't recommend it due to not having played it.

Personally, I'd start with something light, like Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and then slap on a magic system or invent one out of whole cloth. Which one I'll recommend to you depends on what you answer to a question: do you want a system for players to throw magic missiles (now with 666 unique variations to choose from!) at targets, or do you want them to do actual research?

And yes, I do mean the players. What do you want them to do when they play?

[Gnoman]

That's a solid question.


What I'm aiming for is that this is a world where there's a bunch of existing "canned" spells that wizards have worked out over the last few thousand years by what amounts to trial and error. In the last century or so, a few of the underlying rules of magic have been discovered and that's allowed some major advances in what you can do with magic and how easy it can be to do.

The PCs will be in what amounts to a magical Skunk Works or Manhattan Project, financed by a kingdom hoping to gain advantage (or at least not gain disadvantage) when an increasingly likely major war breaks out. The PCs will be doing research and conducting experiments to figure out what the laws of magic are (and also help to actually shape the magic system I'm using for everything). Or, in other words, they're not trying to be able to throw Fireball in combat, they're trying to develop a Fireball with more damage dice or lower casting level or such. Not a Harry Potter-style "you're in a magic school, but the focus is on the adventures you're having outside of class" thing.

One of the more interesting elements from my supernatural police game is when the semi-wizard PC is analyzing a crime scene and figures out that whatever the people were trying to do failed because of material flaws in one part of the spell circle. Or that the ritual they're trying to stop is "only" supposed to steal ten minutes of life from everybody in the city, but is an old spell from a lower-magic time that's designed to suck up every drop of power it can, so now it's overcharged and is going to try stealing five centuries instead. Or that the wards for the laboratory they're raiding were powerful enough and layered enough to withstand a strike from literal Hellfire so what in the name of all the gods are they working on here?? I'm basically trying to build a whole game out of that kind of thing, where everybody's involved in it instead of just one player.

[kyoryu]

Fate would be a good choice I think.

Hillfolk might actually work well, if you're seeing the game as more drama-based.

[Vahnavoi]

@Gnoman: Okay. Then my suggestion is to start with something like Carcosa's magic system (available for/through LotFP, but compatible with any OSR system you could care to name), pick a short list (maybe just one per player) of known spells, and then have your players play Twenty Questions about those spells to figure out why they work the way they do. You can substitute almost any D&D version's Divination rules for Twenty Questions if you'd like (Divination is essentially the same as Twenty Question, just with a few extra rules such as limiting # of questions based on character/caster level and such).

An example spell might be: "To perform this ritual, a sorcerer has to gather seven different flowers from seven different fields during midsummer night and place them under their pillow. They then have to utter the name of the Faerie Queen and ask to be wed three times before laying their head to rest. In their dreams, a vision of their future spouse will appear to them."

As for the game master's side (the things you care about to determine whether a new spell or ritual is viable):

- there are some # of rules of magic that have to be satisfied for a spell/ritual to actually work
- there are a limited amount of magical operations, a spell/ritual has to be defineable as at least one of them
- each operation works on some entity

Example set of rules:

1: Rule of Names: a sorcerer has to know the true name of the entity they're operating on.
2: Rule of Contagion: a sorcerer has to have been in contact, or needs an object that has been in contact, with an entity.
3: Rule of Intent: a sorcerer has to will the effect of their operation for a spell to work, proven (for example) by stating their intent three times (<--- you can make this an actual game mechanic: ask your players to repeat their intent for any spell they cast.)
4: Rule of Impermanence: any spell or ritual will terminate when no conscious being is left to will it (usually the sorcerer, but see below.)

Example set of operations:

Invoking: calls an entity into the mind of a person (for example: to gain information or skills from an entity)
Evoking or conjuring: calls an entity to the sorcerer as an external presence (for example: the sorcerer wants the entity's physical presence)
Binding: forces an entity to obey a sorcerer's commands (for example: the sorcerer wants the entity to do a specific thing rather than acting as a free agent)
Banishing: repels an entity from the sorcerer and their presence (counter-operation to the first two; for example: to get rid of a conjured entity once its task is done)
Imprisoning: confines an entity to a defined space (for example: the sorcerer wants to trap a conjured entity for study)
Tormenting: causes agony to an entity (self-explanatory)
Destruction: terminates an entity (self-explanatory)

So, now to analyze the example spell: what it does, how it does it and why would it work or not work? So, based on the above, what it does is invoke the Faerie Queen to grant information to the sorcerer. The actual name of the Faerie Queen needs to be known to fulfill the first rule. The seven flowers from the seven fields are presumably gathered to fulfill the second rule; this is a tricky part, since which seven flowers from which seven fields is let undefined by the ritual. In an animistic setting where the Faerie Queen is responsible for well-being of all flowers, it might not matter, but in a setting where the Faerie Queen is not omnipresent, it very much does: the ability to correctly perform the ritual might rely on information that has not been written down anywhere, necessitating further investigation or experimentation through trial and error. Asking to be wed three times is there obviously to fulfill the third rule. How the fourth rule applies is more complex, but hopefully intuitive once explained: since the intent is to be wed, and a spell can only last for as long as a conscious being wills it, this information on the future spouse has no effect unless 1) the sorcerer acts on the information and either proposes or answers positively to a proposal, 2) the future spouse already plans to propose or answer positively to a proposal, or 3) the Faerie Queen forces the issue. In other words, the spell isn't actually over before the wedding itself is sealed, and intentional actions have to be taken every step on the way by at least one entity to make it happen.

Also, since it is a very simple spell, it probably only contains one operation, invocation. It does not have other components which would obviously constitute binding or banishment. So the entire thing is founded on the Faerie Queen being a nice entity who is willing to do as asked without being forced to, and who will go away once the task's been done. The actual reality of the situation might completely different, with the Faerie Queen hating your gut and sticking around out of spite to ensure you end up in an unhappy marriage.

Notice that this kind of system says nothing what sort of effects can ultimately be achieved outside of those directly concerning entities themselves. The ultimate effects depend on available entities and their abilities. Carcosa uses Lovercraftian Great Old Ones, Book of Antitheses uses Goetic demons. You could in principle invent your own pantheon, substitute some other existing one, or limit entities to just humans and animals. In play, this means that, when players want to do a thing, they have to name an entity, and whether that thing is possible is determined by whether that entity is capable of delivering.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Ars Magicka? I'm pretty sure that studious mages inventing new magics is a core part of the game. It also plays with the idea of having two sets of characters, the wizards in their ivory towers and the mercenaries who go out and do the dirty work.

[Satinavian]

I'll second Ars Magica.

(TDE Myranor would work even better. It is similar, but scales up into war relevant multi-caster magic naturally. Unfortunately it is not in English)


One of the more interesting elements from my supernatural police game is when the semi-wizard PC is analyzing a crime scene and figures out that whatever the people were trying to do failed because of material flaws in one part of the spell circle. Or that the ritual they're trying to stop is "only" supposed to steal ten minutes of life from everybody in the city, but is an old spell from a lower-magic time that's designed to suck up every drop of power it can, so now it's overcharged and is going to try stealing five centuries instead. Or that the wards for the laboratory they're raiding were powerful enough and layered enough to withstand a strike from literal Hellfire so what in the name of all the gods are they working on here?? I'm basically trying to build a whole game out of that kind of thing, where everybody's involved in it instead of just one player. Now that stuff sounds full of surprising plot developments, not something that comes out organically from a magic system.

You really have to decide whether you want a magic system with hard rules that the players can rely on for their research/their investigations or if you just want an academic magic-babble background for whatever happens anyway. For the latter, you don't want a system with proper magic rules because those just get in the way.