Changing the flavor of player-side magic

Changing the flavor of player-side magic

Changing the flavor of player-side magic

I polled my players after two sessions of play about what was working and what wasn’t. Lots was working! But Dave Chalker  pointed out that for a game with a Twenty Palaces vibe, the player side magic felt kinda standard-ish, the sort of stuff you get from Buffy and Supernatural. I loved getting this note because it was absolutely right.

On thinking about it, part of it has to do with the text of the Use Magic move itself. Even keeping the effects intact, the needs of the spell create a strong bias towards that style. Soooo I’ve done up a quick draft of a new set of bullets for “The Keeper may say casting the spell needs one or more of the following”

……..

The spell will take 10 seconds, 30 seconds, or 1 minute to cast

You need one or two people to help

The spell needs chanting, gestures, and/or inscriptions

You must inflict great pain on yourself or another person benefitting from the spell

You must ingest something toxic, dangerous, or animate

You must call a supernatural creature into this world to help you perform it

You must lay claim to knowledge held by another

You must sacrifice something dear to you, tangible or intangible

……….

Anyone else done something like this?

10 thoughts on “Changing the flavor of player-side magic”

  1. That’s awesome Fred.

    The Savvyhead “pick your poison” move is awesome and really underrepresented in games.

    The decision could be made player side with the number of options chosen affecting the power of the spell…

  3. This hack got deployed tonight, tho there was only one Use Magic roll, and it worked spectacularly there. The spellcaster character found a symbolic link that when destroyed made the big bad monster defeatable; but ALL such links had to be destroyed, and they didn’t have physical possession of the others. So she cast a spell to suss out and destroy all those links, using the one she did have as a focus. This was in the middle of a fight. The focus was an inscription on the back of a photo of the guy the dark sorcerer NPC was in love with.

    So I looked at the list and told her:

    – The spell will take 10 seconds.

    – You have to burn the inscription… then eat it while it’s burning.

    – You will lay claim to knowledge held by another as you do it.

    So she did this (oh, did it burn on the way down; then it transmuted into metaphysical pain, and settled into her heart chakra), and it reached out and burned all the other links, making the monster vulnerable/destroyable, and left her falling in complete and tragic love with the guy from the photograph, essentially absorbing the secret pains and fears of the relationship that drove the sorcerer to use his monsters to kill all the various folks killed over the course of the mystery.

    It’s probably gonna leave her emotionally out of sorts for the next few months. 🙂

  9. When you use this, does the first use of a USE MAGIC for a particular effect become the standard requirement for casting that magical effect in the future?  I really like the idea of having players define the rituals for casting different magical spells, therefore creating a customized set of rituals for your setting.

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