[WFRP] The Bloody Crown OOC XV

[LCP]

I mean if they're sufficiently rare or specific to fulfill the "long-term planning and thorny preparations" requirement (RoS, p.170).

I see. I think those bulletpoints are more trying to put you in the right frame of mind for the whole process than setting up a checkpoint you have to pass at the beginning, but yes, your draft seems to be in the spirit of what a WFRP ritual is supposed to look like.

1. Spend a month of in-game time writing the first draft.
2. At the end of the month, the player and GM compare their estimates to determine the modifiers for the Research step.
3. Next comes the Research step. It takes 1 to 5 months

This is the point I was referring to (you didn't have to write the whole thing out, I've got the book!). In the first section, The Ideal, it says:

[...] you must spend a month of game time in research before the process can continue. [...] At the end of that time, you have assembled your First Draft.

The stuff about rolling on the Research Time table comes in the next section, which seems to imply that's the next thing you should do, but it doesn't explicitly state that the first draft requires more research. It just says that this is a loop that you should iterate, and we've already been told in the previous section that the research time for the First Draft is 1 month. 'Research' doesn't get capitalised or otherwise turned into a special game term anywhere (unlike First Draft and Final Draft), so there's no particular reason to think they're not talking about the same thing.

Then, under the next section:

At the end of each period of research, you attempt to cast the newly modified Draft.

Well, we already completed a period of research, the 1 month to come up with the First Draft. And while on the one hand, the text strongly implies that you've done a round through the let's-mess-with-your-ritual tables ('newly modified'), on the other, why would you be modifying it if you haven't tested it out yet? For all rounds except the first, the Draft is clearly the thing that you try to cast; if the First Draft is different why don't they spell that out?

To be clear, I don't think on balance that the interpretation I'm putting forward here is very likely to be Rules-As-Intended*, but I think it's Rules-As-They-Can-Be-Read**, and it could save you 1-5 IC months (which, if you roll poorly, is the rest of the campaign). You're the one doing it, so it's up to you which you prefer. The rolls on the previous tables don't modify the Casting Attempt table, so I don't think I'm trying to tempt you into doing something more dangerous here.

To be less rules-y about it, ROS also very explicitly gives the GM leeway to mess with its formula, and I'm still very open to doing that. I haven't really had time to sit down and think about How I Would Do It - with the group split so many ways it takes all my game time just to keep up - but if you have requests for things you want to modify, don't hesitate to ask.

To be honest, I was kinda hoping ritual prep would be something of a shared medium-term quest for the PCs, not just Elsa's pet project...

Then you're going to have to rope them in - not going to happen if you don't ask them. Although some of the other PCs do have some quite high-priority things of their own going on at the moment!



*Most notably, the RAI way forces you through at least one cycle of the 'roll dice with modifiers depending on how closely your expectations match the GM's' stuff, while if you do it my way, you have a 20% chance of bypassing that step.
**and as an experimentalist, Rules-As-They-Make-Most-Sense-To-Me - you don't go tinkering with something before you've collected some data as to what needs tinkering with! But I don't want to fall into the trap of thinking that a renaissance magician would be working like a 21st century scientist, so this isn't as relevant.