Magic and the city: Magic-users in Traenendahl

My second submission for the RPG blog carnaval. This month's topic is Magic and the City. 

The town is surrounded by water, a clear sign of its former use during the Fallen Empire's rule. Except for the massive bridge and the monolythic walls, the buildings are all shabbily made on top of ancient ruins, temporary lodgings whose use got extended for longer than intended. 

What guards patrol the walls stare off into the distance, dreaming of elsewhere. Some long for home, others for places more exciting. The blacksmith polishes one of many near identical crude swords again, she gave up trying to look for new buyers years ago. Traders of various kinds spend evenings doing the math which always tells them they should have already left, even if ir meant leaving merchandise behind. 

A strange absence cuts through the typical ambiance of towns everywhere. The sounds of carts, chattering locals, barking dogs, yowling cats and general busy-ness is all drowned out by a severe lack of children playing, laughing, crying, being scolded or running away from trouble they caused. 

Just another day of shattered hopes and dreams in Traenendahl. 

The town: Traenendahl

As mentioned in the last post, I want to experiment with disparate magic: rather than a single unifying magic system, magics are diverse both in how they work in-universe as well as their resolution. This with the goal of emphasizing magic as arcane.

The main settlement I am making for the Star's Prison thing isn't quite big enough that it qualifies as a city, but I want to use this month's blog carnival as an excuse to think of magics that are being practiced by NPCs living in the town of Traenendahl. 

Traenendahl is sort of like a post-gold-rush town: When folks learned of the location of the Star Prison many adventurers flocked to it aiming to get their hands on that wish. Even more people thought they would be able to make bank off of selling shit to these adventurers. Now that the general consensus is that the prison is very dangerous, only the most daring and desperate still delve it, nowhere nearly enough people to sustain the many traders trying to sell shoddy rope, suspect rations and arms and armour that fell off a dead soldier on some battlefield. 

This history means that Traenendahl has a surprising number of different magical traditions given its relatively conservative size.

These traditions are separate from the player options I am still fleshing out (this project js taking way longer than I intended...), but if a player showed the desire to I would allow them to play as any of these as well. 

Magic services: local traditions

Soul forging 

Hilde is one of the few dwarves born with soul sense. All dwarves can identify metals and minerals by merely being near them through their stone sense, but those like Hilde are able to sense the spirits of all things. 

This allows her to forge these spirits into the things she makes. Give her something containing the essence of a creature or structure and she can make you a metal object infused with that essence. With one minor condition: Hilde doesn't like to waste her time. She only does ambitious projects and never the same more than once. Which inevitably drives up the time it takes to make her creations as well as the price she asks for them.

Wound rushing 

When you are wounded and in a rush you can use the services of Mohib. He has a cabinet in which time flows faster, allowing recovery time to be cut down significantly. 

There are some caveats. For one, you'll be bored as hell, as time flows as normal to the person inside of the cabinet. Second, you better not need regular care cause only one person fits inside. And finally, you have to make sure to bring enough food and water to last the time you'll spend in there. 

Mohib doesn't require payment for use of his cabinet. He also hasn't aged since moving into town a couple of decades ago. So you might want to take a moment to think about how you feel about that as well. 

Spirit distillation 

Sometimes while exploring you require a drink with some extra oomph. Dion's spirits can give you all that and more. No one but him knows how it works, not for a lack of effort on his account though. He will keep going on about alcohol opening up the mind, the different kinds of possession, which aromatics pair well with which spirits, and probably a lot more but at this point most people have started to tune him out. 

Distilation is his passion, and thus his wares are surprisingly cheap in terms of coinage. The real price for any significant amount of a particular spirit are ingredients. Offering him harder to come by ingredients makes him willing to part with even the more exclusive bottles in his collection. 

Rope training

Reliable rope is important to anyone attempting to delve the Star Prison. Fnan's ropes are more reliable than any. Not only are they able to withstand a lot of weight and wear, but Fnan is able to train rope to perform specific tasks when a command is spoken. 

Each rope can do only a single trick as, in the words of Fnan, rope isn't very bright. They come in a wide variety though, from rope that stiffens, rope that climbs, rope that binds, to rope that ignites. They also each have a name that they respond to.

Fnan really cares about her former protégés and will ask after them whenever she meets a former customer. If she finds out you have mistreated one of her ropes, she'll refuse to sell any more to you or your party in the future. 

Also, she's an elf. Completely unaffiliated with the Fallen Empire, but given what those elves have done some might feel strongly about dealing with one.

Thoughts

I think this covers most services players would usually seek out, i.e. enchanted items, magical healing, and magic potions. 

Some of these might be open to exploitation, but I think I can make all of these work at the table. 

It is also a pretty decent amount of magic for a relatively smallish town and feels sufficiently disparate to me. 

Some more leg work would probably be nice (some examples of trained ropes, distilled spirits and forged souls, estimates for how long wounds take to heal + how long it would take for them to heal in the cabinet), but this is all stuff players would probably only be interested in after the first delve, so I feel comfortable postponing that legwork until after I have started up a table for this game. 

Magic and the City: a Sewer witch

My submission for the RPG blog carnaval. This month's topic is Magic and the City.

A sewer witch

In the still of night, broken only by her footsteps, Mildred thought she heard something behind her. 'It is probably nothing,' she wished to herself as she quickened her pace. Probably nothing lingered a moment in the gutter, watching Mildred walk-run-walk down the street. 'Poor thing', he thought 'Something must have given her a start.'

Once the night was truly still again, probably nothing, unaware he had been something, crossed the street and continued skulking home. While his feet mindlessly tread the familiar cobbles, his thoughts went down equally well-trodden paths. Iconic verses such as '... stupid fucking waste of time...', '... all the way across this damned pisstain of a city...', and of course '... shitgulping idiots...', with a steady refrain of 'should've just stayed the fuck home' would at regular intervals escape his mind through his mouth.

The welcoming smell and familiar drip, drip of the outfall pipe that gave entry to his abode stirred him from his grumbling murmurings. He performed the ritualistic darting look to make sure he wasn't seen before climbing into the pipe which had to be growing a bit taller each year. Either that or the ground was beginning to sag.

'Are you up Felps, you sad sack of bones?' his cloak squelched to the ground. 'You wouldn't believe the mind blistering ordeal that was this sabath meet,' and hat flung ontop a pile of trash. His hands sifting through empty bottles looking for one that wasn't. 'Why did I even join their dumbass coven?' The pop of a cork and eager gulps, the hands had been succesful. 'Bunch of stinking, blabbering fools.' He looked around blinking. Something wasn't quite right. 'Did anything happen when I was...' his words falling out of his mouth into the now glaring absence of both scaly snores and toothless attempts to rip off his legs. 'Felps?' his voice asked while his free hand began to slowly lift up his gown. 

A heavy bootstep thumped from the dark of the inner sewers. 'I am sorry Alistar, but we will have to politely ask you to come with us,' said the harsh face as it came into the light. Various heavy bootsteps underlined that last 'us' by also stepping forward, bolts glittering from the ends of crossbows to make sure he would understand the nature of the request. She hated this part of the job. Not that she felt anything for the gross little man, his death would be just. But trudging through these godforsaken sewers to snuff out his kind was disgusting and the tenacious smell of the place would continue to disgust her for days afterwards. 

'You sure got me now Agnes, don't I feel like a shitbrained fool. No use in fighting it, so I might as well turn myself in,' as he finished his sentence he started running towards them, lifting his knees awkwardly high. As his left leg came up she saw it, whatever it was. Instinctively she reeled back, her entire squad involuntary making way as they too were taking aback by what they saw. When she tried to describe it afterwards, the words that kept coming back to her were 'oozing', 'throbbing', and 'greenish', though her mind refused to recollect the image of that disgusting knee.

By the time she had got herself back together and dared look in the direction he had high kneed off to, Alistar was gone. She commanded her squad to pursue him, knowing full well it was in vain. No one would dare to encounter that horror again and the pursuit following her order was more symbolic than anything else.

Magic and the city

The city doesn't abide magic. Urbanisation is an organising force and the arcane inherently resists such organisation. That is not to say there is no magic in the city, just that unlike rural areas where magic is part of daily life, it is forced into the absolute margins. 

The primary magic-users of cities are the sewer witches. They excel at manipulation of that which society can't get rid off, but would rather pretend wasn't there. Each sewer witch specialises in a different area of profanity. From wielding disgust to embracing the relative trashness of everything, from endearing themselves to the discarded to dispelling decorum. 

The few other magic-users that manage to survive the city tend to despise sewer witches, as they don't help the public image of magial arts. Some merely avoid them, others actively try to out them to the relevant authorities. 

Playing a sewer witch

Just like the fighter variants, the sewer witch is intended to be a background/class thing to use in the mega-dungeon game I am still slowly trying to get off of the ground. If you get a 1 and a 2 on your d6 rolls for HP and GP respectively this is what you end up with:

Sewer Witch (1HP 2GP)

If you open yourself to what disgust tries to suppres, profane secrets reveal themselves: You are a master of the stuff most people rather avoid. 

Take:

• Disgusting robes
• Familiar  (rat, bat, frog, or similar)
• Soggy notes on fecal distribution (somehow always wet)
• Stinking sack of some kind of waste 
• Piece of chalk (UD4)
• Bottle of moonshine

What is your profanity of expertise?

1. Disgust is your mouldy bread and cheesy butter. (One of your bodyparts is incredibly offputting. Showing it to an unsuspecting person makes them reel, keeping it exposed makes it hard for anyone to look at you).
2. You have a knack for sending shivers down spines. (Your touch is simultaneously uncomfortably sensual and strangly remeniscent of insect legs. Touching someone stopts them in their tracks for as long as you actively touch them).
   
3. Morning breath is an alien concept to you. Why limit such a gift to only part of the day? (Your breath is absolutely rancid. A whiff is enough to get nauseous, a full gulp of it will cause even the strongest stomach to empty itself.)
   
4. Your love for the discarded endears you to them. (You can rally the spirits of broken objects. No matter the state it is in, as long as it is still recognizable you can use something one more time before it permanently breaks.)
5. There is nothing wrong with being trash, but folks can't seem to wrap their heads around that idea. (You can tell the self worth of a person at a glance. Given enough time you can convince even the most confident person they are no different than trash). 
6. Polite society is nothing but a dream. It takes only a prick to wake up from it. (If you draw blood, the bleeding creature loses all sense of decorum and all of their inhibitions until the wound is healed.)

What made you go look for the Star?

1. Regret: You assumed they wouldn't understand and broke it off before they found out. Now you can't help wondering what could have been.
   
2. Ambition: Urbanisation is an inevitability. If only you could rule one of these future mega-cities from the shadows.
   
3. Loss: Your alligator sewermate meant the world to you. Losing them was the single biggest loss of your life. 
4. Vengeance: You offered them wisdom and they laughed in you face. They'll see who has the last laugh.
   
5. Fear: If persecution of your arts continues you fear it won't be long before there are none who will carry on the tradition.
   
6. Idealism: The ideal world is like an open sewer: Nothing hidden away; acceptance of all parts of life. 

Thoughts

First of all I would like to credit Cosmic Orrery, as I am pretty sure I got the idea for magic having no unifying principle from them. Regardless whether or not I am remembering it correctly, just go and check out their stuff, it is super rad. 

The micro-fiction at the start of the post is something I want to experiment with. Not sure if I am going to keep it at the start of the post, but definitely want to try to do a little scene like this for every background I am making. 

I have a rough version of a total of 36 backgrounds, each with a concept and an ability. However, I want to do some more legwork, so I plan to give each a unique d6 table to give them a bit more detail and a d6 table with random motivations. It is something I saw in GLOG character creations rules Arnold shared in 2016 and I really like providing it for players that just want to quickly roll up a character and play. 

The fighter variants don't have these tables yet, but I'll be sure to add them once I get around to it. 

Thinking about how magic would work in 'the city' when the game I want to run doesn't take place near a propper city was a bit of a challenge. I ended up reversing the trope that cities are the place to go if you want to find magic. Faux medieval cities seem to exist primarily for the purpose of commerce, and the unpredictability of magic seems like a poor fit for that. Also, I went to university in Rotterdam and that city is a prime example of intolerance of anything weird in the name of productivity, so it might have been an unconscious inspiration. 

It does feel a bit like cheating to use this for this month's blog carnaval, so I might try my hand at another post later this month. 

Beyond the OSR: Education scaffolding for tRPGs

My submission for the RPG blog carnaval. This month's topic is Over the garden wall - Beyond the OSR.

My job is being a teacher, a philosophy teacher to be specific. The course I teach is very language heavy and the answers I want my students to produce are very specific in how they should be formulated. One of the biggest frustrations I encounter at work are the poorly worded answers my students produce and their inability to read texts efficiently and comprehensively. From not answering the question itself and solely providing justification for an implied answer, to asking me to clarify the meaning of a word that is explained in the very next part of the sentence, the current generation of teens are particularly bad at dealing with academic language.

There are times when I run RPGs where something similar happens, especially when running games for people who are completely new to the OSR playstyle. They word their actions poorly and ask questions in inefficient or ineffective ways. 

Fighter variants (Star's Prison)

For this GLOG hack I am making I want to do something like Electric Bastionland in approach to character options. This is because I have found that they are a great way to communicate a setting and get players excited. A large number of them isn't as overwhelming to newcomers because they are relatvely simple, having no advancement. 

Now, I do not think myself capable of coming up with 100+ unique and interesting backgrounds, so instead I'll settle for 36. This way you can generate a background by rolling HP and something else (for now I am thinking starting wealth, but I might end up changing that). 

These first six are variations of 6 HP characters, i.e. those who are at home on a battlefield.

Design principles:

• Players should be excited to play as one of these.
• Abilities should be incomparable rather than numerical.
• Abilities should expand player options rather than function as bonusses to what they can already do.
• Any further growth happens as a result of play through weird encounters, chance survivals, and otherworldly rewards.
  

Sword squire (6 HP, 1 GP)

It is difficult to imagine a better instructor: You are linked to a magical sword. Your bond allows you to communicate with each other silently and use eachother's senses.  

• Ragged clothes
• Day to day sword (d6)
  
• Magical, sentient sword (your master, d8)
• Sword oil
• Whetstone 
• Book of poetry (composed by your master)
  

Battlefield heretic (6 HP, 2 GP) 

You deny the orthodoxy of canonical combat: Change one common sense rule of combat for your exchanges, something like 'duller edges cut better' or 'heavier armor increases speed'.

• Stained clothes
• Spear
• Dagger
• Shield
• Pistol (d10, on use: loud and creates smoke)
• Itching powder

Unbreathing templar (6 HP, 3 GP)

Through sheer force of will you refuse to breath your last breath: You cannot die as long as you hold your breath, but your body can no longer heal its wounds.  

• Moth-eaten clothes.
• Battered curas
• Dented helmet
• Faded shield
• Old-fashioned sword
• Sewing kit
  

Thornlancer (6 HP, 4 GP)

You engage your foes on your moss charger, thorn lance and pineshield in hand: Given enough time you can shape plants in accordance with their nature to create mounts, arms and armor.  

• Regal clothes
• Moss Charger (3 HP, protection against blunt force)
• Thorn lance (d12 when charging, otherwise d4)
• Pine shield
• Willow sapling
  
• Fertilizer

Witchhunter (6 HP, 5 GP)

All magic has a verbal component, so you learned to still their voice: When you wound someone you can take away someone's ability to speak. Lasts until they drink something. 

• Solemn clothes
• Crossbow (d8) 
• Bolts (10 steel, 3 silvered)
• Axe (d6)
• Fireproof rope
• Bundle of fire wood
  

Despised Champion (6 HP, 6 GP)

Winning is so much more fun if everyone hopes you lose: You know exactly what to do and say to draw everyone's attention and ire. 

• Gaudy clothes
• Quarterstaff (d6)
  
• Black gauntlets
• Black curas 
• Winner's laurels 
• Rotten eggs

Thoughts

I am pretty happy with these. 

Some of them might require a bit of extra legwork to better communicate to players what is possible. For example, a little table of d20 battlefield exceptions for the Battlefield heretic might be nice. Same for the Thornlancer, but with some example manipulations of common plants. 

Whether or not I make those probably depends on whether or not players end up playing as either of those. 

I also refer to magic rules without having a clear magic system in place. 

Some of the inventory could be a bit more interesting I think. I don't like overpowered, but I do like weird and whimsicle. Maybe a bit more Troika!-esque items could be a good sollution. 

Finally, some tables to help you flush out the character a bit might be nice, as it allows players to quickly roll up a random character to rejoin the party with. Something like 'd6 reasons you are risking your life for a potentially non existent wish.'?

Dragon Neighbours: The infectious dreams of dragons

My submission for the RPG blog carnaval. This month's topic is Dragon Neighbours.

Dragons are like natural disasters: unpredictable, destructive and devilishly difficult to kill. Thus the best way to do away with a dragon threat is to placate it with offerings until it falls asleep. As long as the hoard remains sufficiently big, the dragon will not wake and calamity can be kept at bay. 

One roll: to hit + damage + death and dismemberment (Star's Prison)

For the Star's Prison, a megadungeon game I want to get going sometime soon.

Inspired by Electric Bastionland's scar table and the following design principle from the 2016 GLOG: 

"Consolidate ruthlessly. Turn two  rolls into one, turn one roll into none.  Turn tables into formulas, turn formulas into static numbers."

The Star's Prison: Risk Economy

Making a GLOG hack to run the megadungeon I started during for dungeon23. Hopefully having folks play in it will motivate me to continue working on it, but in order to do that I need a ruleset. 

Reading Gus L.'s wonderful advice on dungeon crawling over on his blog All Dead Generations, made me realise that for a dungeon crawl type game, Risk Economy is the most important thing to figure out, i.e. how do you track time and have the passing of time be meaningful. Anything else (resolution mechanics, combat systems, magic systems etc.) functions within and is there dependent upon the Risk Economy, so that stuff will come later.

The tl;dr of his wonderfully insightful posts on Risk Economy is: Exploration benefits from risk. Risk in exploration is best tied to time: the longer you spent exploring the bigger the risk bad things happen. Also, if resources like light are a prerequisite for exploring, spending more time should eat up more resources. In sum, to run a meaningful dungeon exploration game you need a way to track time, a way to make spending time risky and a way to make spending time costly. 

So here is my take on a risk economy for my Star Prison game.

Time

When inside the dungeon time is abstracted. Gus L.'s argument for why this makes sense in the fiction is compelling to me: 

'Imagine that you had grown up in a society without a distinct concept of the second, where hours or other portions of the day were tracked for most only by the sound of church bells, market bells or calls to prayer. Perhaps the wealthy have access to sundials, candle and water clocks. None of these methods of timekeeping prepares one to break actions down into ten minute intervals, let alone six second ones - if the fantasy quasi-medieval culture even had a modern conception of the second, and time is an imprecise thing.'

And his argument for why this is beneficial for running games is salient to me as well: If actions take an abstract dungeon turn, there is no need to get into discussions about how many actions would realistically fit in that amount of time. 

Basically we invert the relation between time and action: A turn isn't a set amount of time you can fill with actions, an action takes a turn which takes however long it takes. 

So this is how I will formulate it in the ruleset: 

When in the prison, any significant action such as moving to the next room, searching a room, filling a bag with treasure or taking a breather takes a turn. After each turn the GM will roll to see if a random encounter occurs, if light sources deplete, if a magical effect runs out and if exhaustion sets in. 

Movement Speed

Abstract time automatically does away with movement speeds, but I notice that I think that is a shame. Mainly for the following reason: I would like fights to have potentially significant impact even if there is no death. Injuries slow a group down, which is to me way more fun than the fine-until-you-are-dead we see in most HP based systems. 

Same with hauling around something really heavy or cumbersome, or even just being really tired. In a game where exploring is the focus, and risk increases with time spent, getting slowed down seems like it should be the most meaningful impact there is.

Fortunately, a suggestion by Eviltables over on the Tabletop Adventure Games forum gave me an idea for making movement speed matter if you use abstracted time: Going slower increases the odds of bad things happening. 

Basically, if a turn is the time it takes to perform an action, a slower action doesn't take more turns, the turn is more likely to be costly. So if normally the chance of a random encounter is 1-in-6, when you are weighed down by a heavy sack, an injury or fatigue the chance increases to 2-in-6, or in severe cases even 3-in-6. 

Finally, I would like movement speed to be somewhat of a choice. The base movement speed in dungeon crawlers is very slow, which is why it is described as a crawl. When crawling you are being as careful as you can, noticing traps and focussed on any sound that might be a sign of danger. 

But what if you want to hurry, not a full blown sprint that you would only be able to keep up for a few minutes, or less if you're carrying a bunch of shit, but making haste. This should allow you to go faster but at the expense of noticing traps and oncomming danger. 

Lets combine all of this the following way:

When exploring the prison, your encumbrance and approach determine how long your actions take. If you go slower the chance of a random encounter occurring, light sources depleting, ongoing magical effects running out and exhaustion setting in will increase. 

Your approach can be careful or hurried. 

• While moving carefully you'll notice all traps, notable features (which might hint at secrets) and most oncomming danger (such as monsters behind a door). 
• While moving hurried you are faster, but eill fail to notice traps, notable features and most oncomming danger. 

Your encumbrance can be unburdened, trudging along, staggering or collapsed. 

• You are unburdened when you are uninjured, fit and carrying little more than arms and armor. 
• You are trudging when you are battered and bruised, tired or carrying a significant burden such as a bag filled with treasure or supplies.
•  You are staggering when you are seriously injured, exhausted or carrying something you can barely lift due to its weight or cumbersome size. 
• You are collapsed when you are lethally injured, spent, or stuck underneath something you cannot lift. 

For the GM: 

Careful and unburdened is the assumed default speed. The odds of random encounters at that speed are 1-in-6. Increase the odds with 1 for each level of encumbrance and reduce it with 1 if the party hurries. 

So a staggering party hurrying to get out of the prison has a chance of random encounters of 2-in-6 and won't notice traps and has an increased chance to be surprised by random encounters.

When hurrying unburdened (which I would assume to happen rarely), roll for random encounters once every other turn. 

Supply 

Finally, we need to determine when torches burn up, ongoing magical effects deplete and exhaustion sets in. 

Gus L. suggests using the famous overloaded encounter dice, popularized by necropraxis. Though I can see what he means when he says that the somewhat weird situations that can arise from this mechanic (such as three consecutive turns of torches depleting) are great ways to create emergent stories, I find them a little bit annoying and have argued before that it is a shame that it means only one thing can ever happen at a time. 

My proposed solution in that post I refered to is what I would like to use still: Seperate dice for each thing you would normally put on the overloaded encounter dice, with the duration of torches, time until exhaustion exhaustion and magical effects treated as usage dice: Go down one dice size when rolling a 1. 

The nice thing about this little system is that it ties in neatly with the increased odds when moving slower. A torch will go down on a 1 when careful and unburdened, but on a 1-3 when carefully staggering. 

So in the document it will say something like:

The duration of supplies such as torches and ongoing magical effects is variable. Quality of such supplies is inconsistent and magic is inherently fickle. 

To track the duration of these each is assigned a usage dice (as per the Black Hack): You roll the assigned dice each turn, if you roll low enough to trigger depletion you swap out the dice for a dice one size smaller (so a d6 depletes to a d4). If a d4 depletes the resource or magical effect has run out. 

What number counts as low enough for depletion depends on the speed with which you go through the prison, with 1 being the baseline. 

Closing thoughts

I'm aware that if I want granularity such as movement speed I could just use numbers. However, I find tracking all these numbers rather fiddly in a way that keeping track of which dice to roll and what numbers to look out for isn't to me. Personal preference, but one I'd rather design for than trying to get myself to track movement in feet and time in minutes.

I tried out the split encounter dice thing with solo play and it seemed to work well. Adding variability in odds based on movement speed seems like it would be fun to me, but I'd have to give it a go at a table to see how players will like it. 

What these rules heavily encourage is the use of porters. If you only carry arms and armor you are agile enough to out up a fight or respond to a trap, but if you are weighed down by loot or supplies not so much. 

To get players on the same page I'd probably liken the expeditions the party goes on to what you see in movies like Atlantis: The Lost Empire: A few named characters doing the special stuff, with a host of mercenaries and hirelings helping out with the more mundane stuff. 

Currently how much stuff counts as unburdened vs trudging or staggering is vague. I might keep it that way, as I tend to believe you can use less rules to do more. However, during play testing I might end up using a slot based system. Slots, being numbered, allow for fun little mechanics like roll over equipment as seen in Troika! to grab items during combat, but which could also be used to see if you can climb a thing, stay afloat in water or run away from someone of about equal speed (e.g. human vs human). If I use slots I'd probably go with 6 or less for unburdened, up to 12 for trudging, up to 18 for staggering and anything more than that means you're collapsed, as a start and adjust based on play testing from there.

Pillaging 2016 GLOG

My ttrpg self was born in 5th edition. After my first two steps I noticed that this house was wrong. I tried redecorating, changing lore and adventures to better fit my tastes, but quickly I started remodeling it entrely, changing rules and adding procedures without having any real experience yet with running ttrpgs, let alone designing them. And it remained wrong, its wrongness, I believed, lied in its very foundations. Fuck it, I'll just make something from scratch. And so I binged rules summaries on youtube, as I tinkered away at the monstrosity I planned to play in, until I finally stumbled onto my first real home in ttrpg: the Goblin Laws of Gaming. 

Worlds Beyond: The Liminal Mists

 

My submission for the RPG blog carnaval. This month's topic is Worlds Beyond.

The domains of the Gods have fuzzy edges. Where the forest ends and the mountain begins, where one straight becomes another sea, or where a town turns into wilderness isn't always clear cut.

These liminal spaces are usually no problem to traverse. Rarely does one try to exit a town intending to enter a forest and instead end up in a cave beneath a far away mountain. However, once you are in the domain of a fog or mist these little stretches of no god's land become incredibly treacherous. 

It isn't that the mist actively tries to take you places you don't intend to go. Rather, as the mist fades out the physical world around you, it places less and less emphasis on spatial relations between the domains of Gods and more on relations of different kinds. 

This is why parents tell their children to stay indoors during a foggy day, why sailors won't disembark until the mist has cleared, and why sometimes horrible things emerge when the fog lifts.

Mechanics

Whenever heavy fog or mist is rolled on a weather table players are at risk of traveling between different regions. If they choose to do so, there is a 1 in 6 chance they'll end up somewhere completely different from where they intended to go. 

If they have an encounter while moving between regions in heavy fog or mist, roll the encounter on a table that has nothing to do with the region they are in.

Beyond Vancian Magic: Goetia for adventure games

My submission for the RPG blog carnaval. This month's topic is Beyond Vancian Magic.

Knowledge is power:

To get one of the powers to do your bidding requires chanting the right incantation during a specific ritual to prepare the spell, and an action combined with a verbal trigger to cast it. The preparation of the spell and the casting can be no further than 1 day apart.

No innate power or even skill is required to cast spells. Anyone who finds a grimoire and is able to read the frantic scrabbles of the mage it belonged to can simply follow the instructions and boom: magic. Think everytime someone reads from the Necronomicon in Evil Dead movies. 

A lot of media also warns not to do X or say Y while dealing with magic, so lets give each spell a taboo as well as an optional addition. Breaking the taboo creates a negative effect. You could see it as retaliation from the power asked to perform the task.

Mechanics:

At the start of the day a character can spend time and resources to prepare spells. 

As a rule of thumb: when preparing spells in a well stocked environment it takes one dungeon turn to create a spell. If ingredients have to be gathered/bought it takes about an hour, though this does require that finding these ingredients is feasible. For more powerful spells, preparation time can of course be longer. 

Cost depends highly on the sort of game you are running, but I would be inclined to say that in a town that probably has everything you need spells cost 1d6 x 10 gp. As with time, for more powerful spells the ingredients can be made pricier or even unavailable on the market. Go collect that dragon tongue yourself. 

Finally, to prevent endless stockpiling, most spells should have an experation date. I'd probably go with one day as a general rule (use this before next sunrise), but you could do a week or a moon if that fits better.

Some spell recipes for LBB spells:

1. Sleep
   
   Preparation: In a sheepskin, soak sand in milk of poppy, while singing this incantation as a soft lullaby until the milk has been fully absorbed.
   
   Casting: Say the trigger word and blow sand in eyes of your target to put them to sleep until next sunrise.
   
   Taboo: Ending the sleep prematurely of one under the spell curses the killer and caster with insomnia.
   
   
2. Charm Person
   
   Preparation: Mix honey, snake venom with the hair of an innocent child (babies are always  safe bet if you can convince the caretakers) while speaking this incantarion as a compliment.
   
   Casting: Drink mixture, say the trigger word and stare in the eyes of your target. As long as you maintain eye contact the creature has to do as you say. Anything that might make the target flinch (such as pain) will break the charm.
   
   Taboo: If you touch the charmed creature the spell reverses, causing you to be charmed instead.
   
   
3. Light
   
   Preparation: In a gold brazier burn petals of a sunflower, wax of a bee and the eye of a falcon. Optionally you can bind the ash in squashed glow-worms.
   
   Casting: Smear ash in the shape of the sigil of the blind eye on a surface and speak the trigger word to cause it to emit a bright light.
   
   Taboo: Don't mention the sun while the spell is active or it as well as any other nearby lightsource will go dark.
   
   
4. Circle of Protection (Protection from Evil)
   
   Preparation: Place salt in a sack made of white silk. Hang in a fire while droning the incantarion until the silk has gone red.
   
   Casting: Poor the salt as a line in whatever shape you desire. Once the salt is in place say the trigger word and specify the object, creature or person you want protection from. As long as the line is intact the specified threat cannot cross the salt.
   
   Taboo: Spilling the salt is a bad omen, meaning something will go horribly wrong in the near future.
   
   
5. Detect Magic
   
   Preparation: Make a candle from a wick of mage hair (anyone who has cast a spell is considered a mage) and the drippings of library candles, while reciting the incantation.
   
   Casting: Burn the candle in total darkness by speaking the trigger word. The light shed by the candle only illuminates magical spells, magic objects and anything currently under the effect of a spell.
   
   Taboo: A mage can only use their hair to make a candle once. Using hair from the same mage twice makes you blind to any and all magic.
   
   
6. Knock
   
   Preparation: With metal of a latch or lock carve a piece of wood that was part of a door or container into a staff.
   
   Casting: Tap the staff on a hard surface and any door or container the sound echoes off of will slam open, after which the staff splinters.
   
   Taboo: If you close any door or lid the same day you opened them with this spell, you'll be cursed with untimely stuck doors and lids.
   
   
7. Invisibility
   
   Preparation: Melt down a mirror and mix in glas-butterfly wings and phasmid legs. Store in a transparent container.
   
   Casting: Apply liquid liberally on the entire surface area of an object or creature to turn them invisible until the liquid has dried.
   
   Taboo: Any spell covered in invisibility liquid will never again work for the mage who prepared it.
   
   
8. Levitate
   
   Preparation: Hold a dark feather in the smoke of any lit strong spirit while reciting the incantation until the feather is bleached white.
   
   Casting: Burn the feather and inhale the smoke.  As long as you hold your breath you'll continue to levitate upwards. The speed of your descend depends on the speed at which you release your breath.
   
   Taboo: If the feather is burned without anyone inhaling the smoke, the whoever prepared the spell will be cursed with leaden feet.
   
   
9. Fly
   
   Preparation: Grind up the feathers of an uncommon swift to a fine dust while chriping the incantarion. Alternatively you could just use fairy dust.
   
   Casting: Sprinkle a good dose of the dust ontop of whomever you wish to cast it on. The more you use, the longer they'll fly.
   
   Taboo: The spell stops working when you acknowledge that you are flying. Best to think of happy things to distract yourself.
   
   
10. Time Spell (Haste Spell/Slow Spell)
    
    Preparation: Mix pulverised sand from an hourglass with morning dew drops and evening fog while chanting the incantation at varying speed. Let dry to form a piece of chalk (it is advisable to use a cast to create a useable shape).
    
    Casting: Draw a magic circle around the desired area following the diagram below. Upon speaking the trigger word time will move out of joint, seeming to go faster inside the circle from outside while outside the circle seems to slowdown from within it.
    
    Taboo: Never draw multiple circles inside one another, as this will fracture time and cast the spellcaster into a random point in time.
    
    
11. Wizard Eye
    
    Preparation: Polish a bead of glas with a bat's wing into a perfect orb while whispering the incantation.
    
    Casting: Throw the orb in the air while saying the trigger word. The floating orb is now like an extension of your body, another limb you can move about, and sees just like your other eyes. If you keep your eyes open while using the spell you are effectively looking at the world cross-eyed.
    
    Taboo: Don't look at yourself while the spell is active. Every time you do you will go blind in one eye.
    
    
12. Dimension Door
    
    Preparation: Take the opposite halves of two ancient keys and fuse them together into a single key using the blood of a displacer beast, while growling the incantation.
    
    Casting: With the key, trace the outline of a door and afterwards point the key at a surface you can see while saying the trigger word. A doorway will open between the tracing and the indicated surface, allowing travel between the two points as if they were spatially right next to each other. The passage can be used until the door is closed.
    
    Taboo: Leaving the door open when no one is using the passageway will cause the user to be cursed. Any portal they pass through will send them back through the doorway created with this spell.
    
    
13. Polymorph (Polymorph Self/Other)
    
    Preparation: In a lead pan, bake part of the creature you want the spell to turn your target into, combined with meal of pupae and chimera milk (minotaur is recommended), while prattling the incantation. Tip: bake the biscuit into the shape of the creature it turns one into as a mnemonic device.
    
    Casting: Get the creature you wish to polymorph to ingest the biscuit and say the trigger word. They'll take on all the physical characteristics of the creature baked into the biscuit but initially retain their own mind. They'll awake in their original form if they go to sleep before the next sunrise.
    
    Taboo: If someone stays in their new form when the sun next rises they'll have forgotten their former body and their mind adapts to its current one. They are now the creature they polymorphed into.
    
    
14. Enlarge (Growth of Animals)
    
    Preparation: Dissolve manure in the blood or sap of a fast growing crearure or plant while booming the inscription.
    
    Casting: Have the creature you wish to enlarge drink the concoction and say the trigger word. They'll increase in size based on the ingredient used. Typically at least double the original size if the ingredient grows significantly faster than whatever drinks the spell.
    
    Taboo: You cannot enlarge a creature twice. Trying to do so will cause the caster to shrink half their size each night.
    
    
15. Elemental Wall (Wall of Fire/Ice/Stone/Iron)
    
    Preparation: Twist a length of rope from any fibres while singing the incantation. Once the rope is done, keep singing as you soak the rope in one of the following depending on the kind of wall you desire: ash for fire, water for ice, clay mud for stone, mercury for steel)
    
    Casting: Once the rope is in a desired shape say the trigger word to cause a wall to rise up from the rope in the element you prepared it for. The walls will stand until next sunrise or until they are destroyed.
    
    Taboo: Do not have rope for this spell cross over itself when you activate it, or it will turn to whatever you soaked it in, rather than the desired wall.
    
    
16. Conjure Elemental
    
    Preparation: Create an effigy of the form you want the elemental to take (typically people choose animals). The effigy has to contain part of the creature who's form you'll use and a gem corresponding with the desired element.
    
    Casting: Ensure an appropriate amount of the desired element is present. Take out the effigy and speak the trigger word. An elemental of similar shape will form and follow the commands of whomever has the effigy. The effigy and elemental are liked: destroying one will destroy the other. To safely dismiss the spell, speak the trigger word backwards once the elemental has returned to the position its body came from.
    
    Taboo: You can only ever make one effigy of each element. Attempting to make another will cause you to become a mortal enemy of the element you've thus betrayed.
    
    
17. Animate Dead
    
    Preparation: Combine the blood of one who didn't experience their death with the ashes of one who died by choice into a paste while gurgling the incantation.
    
    Casting: Place a mark on the head of the head of the corpse you are trying to animate. After speaking the trigger word give the undead a single command. Once the command has been fulfilled the body will go limp again.
    
    Taboo: You have to give propper burial to the bodies you've used for the spell once they have completed their task, or your body will start to decompose as if it was dead.
    
    
18. Disintegrate
    
    Preparation: Distil amnesiac's tears and mix with censor's ink while silently mouthing the incantation.
    
    Casting: Splash the liquid towards whatever you wish to disintegrate. Once you say the trigger word, anything the liquid touches for the next second will disappear from existence.
    
    Taboo: Once the spell is prepared it has to be cast the same day or else the spell will affect the one who prepared it instead.
    
    
19. Geas
    
    Preparation: Create an alloy of the seven metals and forge it in an eternal flame into a needle, while singing the inscription.
    
    Casting: Prick your target with the needle while saying the trigger word, followed by an instruction on what rule to follow from now on. Failing to follow the rule will result in the doom of the target of the spell.
    
    Taboo: If the rule you give is impossible for the target to abide by and live you die instead.
    
    
20. Invisible Stalker
    
    Preparation: Craft a container out of coffin wood and funeral pyre ash while saying the inscription. Inside, put something close to the intended victim and lock the container with chains forged from prison bars.
    
    Casting: Say the trigger word while opening the container. A shadow will creep out and head towards the target as the crow flies. Upon finding them, the stalker will proceed to kill them and disappear.
    
    Taboo: If your target dies before the stalker gets to them, the caster of the spell will be its new target.
    

Discussion

I know I probably say this every time, but I would really like to tey this version of magic in a future game. There is an appeal to me to magic literally just being forbidden knowledge. Not innate power or aquired skill, just information kept from people because of the impact it would have on society.

For these spells I've tried to tie duration and range on concrete things in the (imagined) physical world rather than abstract unites of measurement. The one place I struggled with this is disintegrate, so if anyone has a better way of phrasing that one (or even a better different way of conceptualizing it) I would love to hear it. There is no real reason for this other than aesthetics and personal preference. I find it easier to imagine conceptually if you can cast a spell on something or someone when it is phrased in terms like these, rather than if you were to use minutes and meters (or feet if you are into that kind of thing). Folks running games on battlemats and with strict time-records kept in modern units of time would probably find my method cumbersome.

The potential worldbuilding implications of magic like this are also interesting to me. From trying to destroy all magical knowledge as a way to guarantee no one uses it agaist you, to trying to hoard it for yourself, or strictly regulating who can and can't access it (maybe through Geas?), authorities are going to have to find a way to deal with magical knowledge. 

It also fits the 'prepared spells' idea you find in 0D&D which I quite like. Forcing you to think about which spells you want to prepare for the day seems like a fun little puzzle and gating the amount of spells you can prepare behind time and materials seems more fun to me as well, as it is a problem players might find interesting sollutions to work around (use the time spell first and then prepare twice as many spells in the same time for example). 

I also like that this creates a fun reason for magic-users to take on apprentices. Getting them to help you prepare spells must be an immense time saver and it seems relatively easy to prevent them from actually learning spells you don't want to give them access to. 

And finally, I like that this reïnforces the 'find spells in the world' trope, which I really like in my fantasy adventure games. Players could even make their own spells (in collaboration with the GM) and then quest for them, or attempt to find them in downtime activities.