Before we start, I'd like to make it clear that the concept I'm about to propose is not intended for any one ruleset. I may often make examples for or draw parallels with D&D (3.5) since that's the system I'm most familiar with, but the concept really deserves a whole system of its own (or at least a more flexible one, like GURPS).
Now that's out of the way, I can start framing some context.
One of my favorite PC games/series is
Age of Wonders, but it's only recently that I've been exposed to its ancestor,
Master of Magic.
I've never found a magic system that I was completely satisfied with before, (NetHack came the closest) but when I played
MoM something just clicked. I realized that the way they divided up the magic succinctly encapsulated
every basic archetype in D&D.
Life covers most of the (good) Cleric spells, Nature has the Druids, Death has necromancy of any sort while the remainder of the Sorcerer/Wizard repertoire is easily split between Sorcery and Chaos. Any spell that doesn't quite fit along these lines can be readily interpreted as the caster taking one book of a different sphere.
But it covers
more than just magic. If one were to classify the more "martial" champions of the Life domain, what would one call them? Paladins, of course. By the same measure, Nature has Rangers, Chaos has Barbarians, Death has Rogues, and the fluidity of Sorcery matches Monks nicely. With the "mixed bag" position going to Bard, that just leaves Fighters as "colorless". Mundane, nothing exceptional about them, lacking what makes the other classes stick out above the NPC rabble...
Which is pretty much the "fighter problem" in a nutshell.
But then I thought...
Instead of fighting this, why not embrace it? Why not accept -nay,
explicitly label Fighter as a less powerful class than the others?
After a while I realized that this phenomenon is specific to D&D, and would be absent in other systems where magic in general is less powerful, but the core concept behind it is still valid:
it is magic that makes characters interesting and fun to play, even when it's as subtle as dodging arrows or shifting a half-ton boulder or even hacking into a CIA database. The point is that you, the player wouldn't have been able to do it, so it seems magical -and true magic is in the eye of the beholder.
No, not THAT Beholder! xD
It is my belief that if this was
explicitly stated as part of a system's philosophy, then the end result would be more fun because of it.
Sadly, in D&D doing this properly this would probably require tearing up pretty much everything and starting effectively from scratch. Which isn't to say the concept can't be applied
at all, just that it would take a lot of work and compromises, and that the end result might not be worth the effort.
Which is why this system is staying a hypothetical one for now. I have no intent to develop it into a full-fledged game at the moment, although I'd be more than happy to act as a creative adviser if anyone else wants to do so.
Now, on to specifics. As the system itself is purely hypothetical, so are they. All I'm posting are my thoughts on possible ways of going about doing things. (Although I
do have the inklings of a setting growing alongside this.) Please forgive me in advance for rambling a bit at times.
Now, first off I'd like to blur, or if possible,
remove the line between "magic" and "non-magic" -but in a way that makes things
more magical. So, when someone does the impossible... They do
exactly that. By rights, they
shouldn't be able to do it... But they did.
I'd
like to, but... This probably isn't feasible. At the very least, it would rely
heavily on the GM's ability to
ad-hoc things, which probably isn't a good idea. So, I'll try to uphold this concept, but won't start over if I can't.
Anyways, I've come up with six different "Domains", which combined should hopefully be able to encapsulate everything, five of which are based directly from
MoM:
- Life
- Nature
- Order
- Arcana
- Chaos
- Death
Spoiler
Show
Life complements Nature and Order, and apposes Chaos and Death.
Nature complements Life, and apposes Order, Chaos and Death.
Order complements Life, Death and Arcana, and apposes Nature, Chaos and Arcana.
Arcana both complements and apposes Order.
Chaos complements Death, and apposes Life, Nature and Order.
Death complements Chaos and Order, and apposes Life and Nature.
They each represent a variety of different things, too many for me to list here. Feel free to ask about them on this thread. Also, none of them are
necessarily "good" or "evil", not even Life and Death: each and every one of them represents a different part of a cycle.
Life and Death are probably the easiest to understand. One represents the "highs", and the other the "lows". Next are Nature and Chaos- both fundamental elemental forces. I would describe Nature as Enthalpy and Chaos as Entropy. One represents growth and the other destruction.
The trickiest to describe are Order and Arcana. Both are really misnomers, but I've yet to come up with better names for them. You see, they both complement and appose each other at the same time. Order represents discipline, tradition, and stability. Arcana represents knowledge, adaptation, and change. They are mutually exclusive, but both dependent upon the other.
The domains sort of replace alignments as well, in that a creature or character can belong to one of them and spells can specifically target creatures of a specific domain. However, unlike alignment this is as much if not more a function of "nature" than "nurture"; for example, an orc can no more become a Nature domain creature than it could become a gnome! (Which isn't to say it absolutely
cannot be done, just that it would be very difficult or unusual. An orcish shaman might be a mix of Chaos and Nature, for instance.) Humans specifically are an exception to this, although it's still not
total freedom...
As for spells etc., there's no easy way to cut it. There's overlap in several areas, and while some domains nominally have exclusive access to some things, there's almost always loopholes and exceptions. I'd recommend reading
this MoM spell compendium for a rough idea of what each domain's capabilities are. Except for Order, which doesn't do spells as much as other expressions of "magic", like physical prowess or technology -including (when mixed with Arcana) the "sufficiently advanced" variety and Magitek.
Anyways, on to casting. Now, one of my inspirations is
NetHack, and I like the system they use there.
First off, I figure that
hypothetically anyone can cast a spell the same way that
hypothetically anyone can solve ordinary differential equations. That is to say,
practically speaking it's not for everyone.
Second, I want to remove all arbitrary limits on spellcasting such as "spells per day" and "eight hours of rest". Instead, let's say that you keep casting day and night if you want... And if you think you can keep up with the cant, and not make a mistake because you're tired.
In fact, let's extend this rationalization to mages carrying spellbooks as well. The spells (usually) don't magically disappear from their mind after casting, it's just, well...
YOU try memorizing a thousand lines of nonsense chants with accompanying gestures -and thought patterns while we're at it- and reciting them perfectly in the middle of combat without even a textbook.
This requires removing arbitrary barriers for spell levels and such as well, though. A more logical obstacle would be to limit the
knowledge of the powerful spells to secret grimories written by archmages of old, who of course know better than to trust such dangerous knowledge to apprentices. (Especially if miscasting scales with spell power.) Thus, a
Disintegrate spell become a loot item no different from a
+5 Vorpal Sword. Especially if neither are readily available on the open market.
To keep this balanced, spells will probably take much longer to cast than in D&D. I'm looking at two rounds for a standard combat spell, an hour -sometimes a
specific hour- for standard non-combat spells, and a (fort)night for the
really big ones. There's room for common yet powerful spells that are less useful for the PCs, too; for instance a teleport that doesn't bring the caster along, and requires the aid of six trained acolytes.
In all, I think it'll help the feel of the game too. If spells are hard to understand and/or written in code, perhaps even subtly hidden in books of all descriptions, then there's a logical reason for wizards to lock themselves in towers so that they can study uninterrupted. (Of course, there's also logical reason for PC wizards to go questing for better tomes...)
Anyways, all of this logically leads to the conclusion that there's no fundamental difference between any sort of magic. Which would be technically true, in the way that they're no fundamental difference between thermodynamics and fluid dynamics. Here's where the domains will really come in: casting a spell in a domain you're aligned with is
much easier than one you aren't. Players of course would get to choose their alignment during character generation, and perhaps a trait or two could make certain
types of spells (like, say, blasting stuff) easier regardless of realm.
I'll go out on a limb and guess that most of this has been done before in some shape or another, But the uniqueness of the system would lie in how realm alignment affects
non-casters. (Or rather, non-
primary casters.)
I'm not entirely sure how to go about this, though. I'm currently thinking of something where there'd be be racial templates, and 6 sets of special/extraordinary/supernatural abilities specific to each realm. Picking stuff up cross-realm would certainly be possible, but would probably cost extra or be limited to a few choices or something.
Whatever the case, though, these abilities would explicitly be as beyond the mundane as the spells that same-level mages are casting.
So, I hope you enjoyed my random rant!
I'll submit it now, to await the admiration, scoffing, comments, slander, or utter silence that awaits it. (Probably the latter...)
A Completely Hypothetical System (PEACH)
Reply With Quote