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/tg/ - Traditional Games

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File: 2697fd1b3f13db5⋯.jpg (127.03 KB,437x400,437:400,Mad_Jim_Jaspers.jpg)

 No.414367

I am inclined to develop super-powered campaigns, because dungeon crawl RPGs are tainted with some widespread cultural conventions.

1. If you have magic, make sure that it can run out of ammo.

2. If you have magic, start the wizard with a max of one good spell. Make him blow his load early, and don't give him a chance to recover his magic so that he can be sidelined for most of the play session.

3. if the wizard wants more than one spell, give them out only at higher levels. That way, the wizard's showboating is dependent on the group getting together every week for a few months so that people can level up.

It gets to the point where every player character has to start out on par with the X-Men or else there will not be anything but boring dungeon-crawling, trap checking, and battles of attrition.

Of course, magic is not interesting unless there are things that magic cannot do, and that applies to superpowers as well. Superman is (IMHO) much more boring than Batman because Superman can skip to the most efficient answer - heat vision, frost breath, flying, super-strength - and he never gets hurt unless you whack him with Kryptonite. Batman, on the other hand, never seems to run out of stamina, willpower, dirty tricks, and hidden knowledge. Batman's plot armor is probably even more powerful than Superman's invincibility. The thing about Batman is that the writers pretend that his super-luck, super-skill, and super-everything has some grounding in physical reality. Thus Batman stories have to be written with the theme that Batman's gimmicks are not supernatural. Reading the fantasy of super-science is the interesting part.

In practical RPG terms, Ars Magica does something similar with its Aristotelian pseudo-science. Ars Magica doesn't allow players to skip to the most efficient solution - they have to justify it in terms of misspelled Latin pseudo-Aristotelian science. However, Ars Magica does suggest that magic costs stamina, so you do run out of spells every day - but the game is paced on seasons, so a day of spell-casting is a small part of playtime.

Mage: the Ascension might be a workable way to do this. Unfortunately, even though I *think* that I got Mage to work perfectly circa 1993, the White Wolf playerbase is more cancerous than most groups of gamers, and I don't know whether my Mage storytelling sucked or was awesome or both sucked and was awesome at the same time. The advantage of Mage was that I could recruit lots of players because White Wolf was popular in 1993.

Now, I could preach that GURPS Thaumatology is the perfect set of magic rules, but that is only half-true. GURPS Thaumatology is a rule creation kit. It is not a set of playable rules, it is a set of guidelines that can show the GM how to design a set of playable rules. To make the game work, you need a theme. Furthermore, you need extensive playtesting, and I cannot recruit many GURPS players.

So here I am - I think that I know how to design magic rules that allow players to cast unlimited spells without ever running out of ammo. I think that my GM experience has allowed me to transcend the painful AD&D failures that shaped me. But I can only run games rarely, for small groups, so I will never know whether my designs are really good or just fantasy heartbreakers.

____________________________
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 No.414369

File: 50f15c38965f0a8⋯.jpg (31.71 KB,423x442,423:442,50f15c38965f0a8d2daf787c89….jpg)

>there will not be anything but boring dungeon-crawling, trap checking, and battles of attrition.

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 No.414370

Was there a point to this, or is it just a self-aggrandizing blogpost because you've read GURPS Thaumatology and now you think you're God's gift to RPG design?

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 No.414381

>>414369

I was similarly incredulous when I read OP's post. If you're only having fun when you're slinging spells, anon, then play a video game.

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 No.414389

>>414367

This is something I have been thinking about myself and I have a couple of ideas. I'm using 5e as a base to build on in this example.

1. Scrap the Vancian magic concept all together.

2. There is a separate spell difficulty roll as to whether or not the cast is successful independent of an attack roll. I would think it would be a D20 and the DC would be spell level +4.

3. If you roll a natural 1, it's a critical failure and causes you to roll on a table. I was thinking a D100 with various results like unable to cast spells for 1 hour, loose the miscast spell permanently, take the full force of the spell as damage, teleport yourself to the astral plain, and at 100, destroy your own soul and die. I would weight the table so the more damaging effects would be pretty rare.

4. Add some kind of a mana pool or magic exhaustion count. You can cast one spell per mana point until you are drained. A failed spell is still a cast spell.

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 No.414400

File: 053aba3b4c22cea⋯.jpg (451.95 KB,1920x1080,16:9,skyrim-empowered-magic-404….jpg)

File: cb26a4b1edfd7fb⋯.jpeg (185.15 KB,1024x576,16:9,paradoxmagicka.jpeg)

>>414381

> If you're only having fun when you're slinging spells, anon, then play a video game.

With mods, of course, to maximize spell design and customization. Unfortunately Skyrim's mods for spell design are not nearly as good as the built-in spell customization from earlier Elder Scrolls games.

Ultimately, the goal would be to get a game with the graphics of Skyrim and the flexibility of Paradox's Magicka series.

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 No.414401

>>414389

>3. If you roll a natural 1, it's a critical failure and causes you to roll on a table. I was thinking a D100 with various results like unable to cast spells for 1 hour, loose the miscast spell permanently, take the full force of the spell as damage, teleport yourself to the astral plain, and at 100, destroy your own soul and die. I would weight the table so the more damaging effects would be pretty rare.

You could start with the 5e sorcerer wild magic table, possibly modified to make it deadlier.

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 No.414402

>>414389

>D100 with various results like unable to cast spells for 1 hour, loose the miscast spell permanently, take the full force of the spell as damage, teleport yourself to the astral plain, and at 100, destroy your own soul and die. I would weight the table so the more damaging effects would be pretty rare.

Alternate proposal: table goes from 1-150, every bad effect you roll gives cumulative +1 to all further rolls for that character. Stuff that's actually kinda helpful from 1-50, mixed bag is 51-100, awful shit from 101-150.

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 No.414403

>>414400

Magicka boiled down to throwing on one particular type of shield and then QREASRing your way to victory. Magicka 2 was trash.

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 No.414411

File: 4328b49d3ef5256⋯.jpeg (6.21 KB,259x195,259:195,serveimage (16).jpeg)

>>414367

> dungeon crawl RPGs are tainted with some widespread cultural conventions.

>1. If you have magic, make sure that it can run out of ammo

OP, in D&D you can run a warlock. You will never run out of ammo for eldritch blast.

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 No.414514

>>414403

>Magicka boiled down to throwing on one particular type of shield and then QREASRing your way to victory. Magicka 2 was trash.

You can beat Magicka without using shields. Magicka 2 was only trash because it was trying to emulate GURPS Thaumatology and failing.

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 No.414558

File: 4c2048ef7db2c9b⋯.png (545.8 KB,680x605,136:121,d12.png)

>>414367

>Mage: the Ascension might be a workable way to do this.

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 No.414559

>>414514

You'd throw shields on so that your QREASR freezing-shocking-exploding magic ice crystals you spammed didn't waste you when they killed everything else.

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 No.414873

File: 357d7a9b196ecd7⋯.jpg (1.27 MB,956x1801,956:1801,jews_porphyria.jpg)

>>414558

Mage: the Ascension is a workable way to prove to yourself that magic can do anything, so long as you're willing to lose all your friends by being absolutely convinced of your own idiosyncratic interpretations of the rules.

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 No.414874

File: 26bfac550c49198⋯.png (549.85 KB,529x888,529:888,thirstyBlade.PNG)

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 No.414880

>>414873

Arguments about what magic can and can't do in Mage are already bad enough, but get infinitely worse when you have to factor in paradox.

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 No.415520

File: 57060a4608f2027⋯.jpg (184.22 KB,1600x1117,1600:1117,tightropewalk.jpg)

>>414411

>OP, in D&D you can run a warlock. You will never run out of ammo for eldritch blast.

Double dubs of truth

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 No.415542

I made a mage in Shadowrun 5e. Rolling against stun damage every time was a welcome alternative to running out of "fuck you I win" spells and then casting Acid Splash forever. By the end of the mission I was doing everything at -5, one point away from death, just barely scraping by with Edge until suddenly all the Knight Errant troopers were dead. Where D&D makes me feel powerful until I run out, SR makes me feel powerful all the time, while constantly reminding me how squishy I am.

Don't buy nuShadowrun, though. Interlock Unlimited is a better system overall, and it's free.

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 No.415612

File: 6da0dc5455687c9⋯.png (752.13 KB,771x690,257:230,mongak47.PNG)

>>415542

>makes me feel powerful all the time, while constantly reminding me how squishy I am.

Words to live by.

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