Magical Magic

Breaking Out of Scientific Magic Systems: A Practical Solution

Since reading John Kim’s essay on breaking out of scientific magic many years ago, I pretty much swore off attempting to create any sort of magic system and have been disappointed that I haven’t seen anything since which really sufficiently addresses all points raised. Some of the “nicest” magic systems I’ve seen have been from Ars Magica and subsequently Mage: The Awakening/Ascension, but these still suffer from the same issues, albeit they seem to feel less extreme because of the narrative flexibility.

But recently I was struck with inspiration on how I might actually be able to address each of John’s points with a single system of only moderate complexity, which would actually feel conceptually and mechanically like “real” magic. Oddly enough, my inspiration for this entire system came from a tiny scene in the movie Stardust, where an old seer makes predictions for one of the princes by rolling some bones. I thought “Huh, he can see something in those bones, but no-one else can…”

So before I elaborate on my proposed system, here’s how it addresses John’s 5 points at a conceptual level:

Problem: Magic is a known system and thus non-mysterious: Solution: Magic is undefined and discovered only during play. It’s unpredictable mechanically, requiring practice and experience to master any outcome, where “mastering” simply means “can reproduce reliably without stress”. Problem: Magic is a force separate from Nature: Solution: There is only one resolution mechanic, applied to all things. Magicians are simply those who can “see the patterns” inherent in the mechanic and apply some limited effort to control them. IE: the world itself is magical, but poorly understood by most. Most people know that True Love’s Kiss breaks evil curses, but only magicians know why or can manipulate how. Problem: Magic happens as spells from deliberate users: Solution: Everything is anthropomorphized, and everything has intent: everything is a character. Rocks, trees, storms, haunted houses. Everything uses the same mechanic, and everything is composable. Wielding an evil sword makes me more evil. Standing on hallowed ground protects me. Neither of these work through uninspired +/- modifiers or ‘alignment’ changes (ugh), but instead by composing characters (everything is a character) together. Problem: Magic obeys conservation of (magical) energy: Solution: Magic begets magic, evil begets evil, and love begets love: nothing is consumed in the act of using magic (everything is magic, so even attacking someone with a sword is inherently magic, in the sense that it uses the same stats and core mechanic). Magic can only be diminished by opposing magic acting against it. There are no limitations nor considerations given to arbitrary statistics such as ‘distance’, ‘duration’, ‘number of targets affected’ or anything. Magic is not scientifically definable like that, it just is, and it flows from intent. Problem: Magic works regardless of morality, ethics, or other intangibles: Solution: Magic is directly and inseparably a result of the character’s current morality and emotional state. You can’t cast a spell to raise the dead against the living one second, then attempt to heal a friend the next. Valiant heroes can face multitudes without harm and lead armies to victory against impossible odds, but cannot corrupt the land or defile the innocent.

The System: Dice

For this to shine, you’d need a whole bunch of custom barrel d4s (it’s important for the feel that they are barrel dice), referred to as “Runestones”. Each Runestone has one blank side, and then the remaining three sides have one of three different Runes. For examples, let’s say the Runes are #, @, and %. If you were using regular d4s, then 1 would be blank, and 2, 3, and 4 would be ‘Runes’.

You’d need like, a ton of Runestones. Specifically, 4 colours: grey, red, orange, and yellow; and you’d need 5 grey but 10 of the rest (so 35 Runestones total, though you’d only rarely roll even half that in practice). Fortunately, these can be shared among players.

The System: Characters

To understand how magic works in a magical world, you must first understand how the mundane works in a magical world. There are a few principles which form the foundation for this system and allow it to work:

Everything is a character

Characters have intent

Magic flows from intent

Magic changes intent

Intent changes characters

Characters are defined by their Nature, and their intent is defined by their Heart and their Passion. I’m not going to go into too much detail here about how these things impact play or the fiction, but just enough to help the core mechanic make sense.

Nature

Nature describes a character’s physical, social, and internal state, through three polar Aspect scales. These change slowly over time as a result of extreme changes in Heart. Human Aspects are capped at 3 ranks, but non-humans can go as high as 5.

Aspects (all use grey Runestones):

Elusion/Impetus (physical directness and impact)

Repulsion/Allure (social influence)

Lunacy/Tenacity (mental acuity and esteem).

Heart

Heart describes a character’s core intents, through three polar Desire scales. These change moderately over time as a result of extreme changes in Passion. Human Desires are capped at 3 ranks, but non-humans can go as high as 5.

Desires:

Harm/Help (red Runestones)

Withdraw/Expand (orange Runestones)

Preserve/Change (yellow Runestones)

Passion

Passion describes a character’s fluctuating current emotional state, through three polar Sentiment scales. These change constantly as a result of almost every action. Human Sentiments are capped at 3 ranks, but non-humans can go as high as 5.

Sentiments:

Hate/Love (red Runestones)

Shame/Pride (orange Runestones)

Fear/Hope (yellow Runestones)

Composition works by taking one or more characters, and using the highest of each of their Aspects/Desires/Sentiments. Say I have 2 Impetus, 2 Harm, 3 Preserve, 1 Hate, 2 Hope, and 3 Pride (everything else at 0), and I wield Maramusa’s Blade of Woe, which has 3 Impetus, 3 Harm, 5 Hate, 2 Change, and 1 Pride (everything else at 0), then I now have 3 Impetus, 3 Harm, 1 Preserve (polar opposites subtract from each other), and 5 Hate (everything else stays the same). This works the same with legendary armours or war-horses or if two characters are working together towards the same goal or if a ghost is trying to frighten someone on a cursed burial ground. All characters with the same intent involved in the same action compose their Nature, Heart, and Passion together when rolling to determine the outcome.

The System: Core Mechanic

To do any consequential action within the fiction, you choose which of your Nature’s Aspects would enable your intent, and gather a number of grey, red, yellow, and blue Runestones, corresponding to your ranks in your chosen Aspect and all your Heart’s Desires and all your Passion’s Sentiments.

Your aim when rolling is to form Chains. Chains are formed by matching Runes (blanks can’t be matched), and each Rune in a Chain is a success. All rolls are opposed rolls, so your successes are compared against and cancelled out by a standard Target Number, and any excess (degrees of success) determine the degree of mechanical impact.

So longer Chains = more successes remaining = bigger magnitude of your mechanical effect. The dominant colour in the Chain gives you the type of mechanical effect correlating to that colour. Finally, the Aspect you chose determines the narration of the fictional result.

Importantly, your narration does not have to match up with the mechanical effect. If, in the fiction, you are attempting to tend to a wounded loved one, but your Chain has mostly red dice and your Desire is Harm, then you can narrate that you bring them water and tend to their bandages, but mechanically they will be harmed by this.

Consequences through interactions

I’m deliberately not going into much detail here as I’m trying (!) to keep this brief-ish, but essentially, there is a cycle of relationships between Passion, Heart, and Nature, such that any action dominated by a given Desire/Sentiment will cause flow-on effects in whoever you are acting on/against. For example, your Harm Desire increases their Fear Sentiment, which overflows to their Preserve Desire, which overflows to their Lunacy Aspect, which itself overflows to their Shame Sentiment. Similarly, your Hate Sentiment increases their Hate Sentiment, which overflows to their Harm Desire, which overflows to their Elusion Aspect, which overflows to their Fear Sentiment.

Magic vs the Mundane

Chains of matching runes are mundane effects. This simply means that the fictional outcome must be something that appears totally understandable and simple to explain in “mundane” terms (such actions can still be amazing or outstanding feats).

However, magic magic is created by Chains where some or more Runes don’t match: a feat only achievable by magicians.

Magicians use the exact same mechanic, with a few key additions. Since magicians are the only ones who can ‘see’ the Runes (in that the Runes themselves matter to magicians), they can form Chains from non-matching Runes, by adding additional non-matching Runes to the Chain. When doing so, the order of the Runes and colours matters a great deal, so for example, #@# is a different result to @## or ##@, as is RRY or RYR.

Such Chains are called Patterns, and Patterns are the only way to produce truly incredible and mystical effects in the fiction, like shape-shifting or conjuring fire or summoning demons.

For magicians, the length of the Pattern correlates with the ‘impressiveness’ of the fictional effect. So a Pattern length of 2 can’t be “summon a meteor to destroy the planet”. As with mundane Chains, the Aspect scopes the fictional narration, the dominant colour decides the type of mechanical effect, and the degrees of success determines the magnitude of the effect.

Every time a magician creates a Pattern, the GM (or player to their left, since I exclusively make GMless games) narrates the fictional effect (ie: what the magic does/looks like, based on the rules above). The magician then must write down both the exact Pattern (Runes and colours) and what the effect was. This is how magicians build up their ‘Spell’ books. All ‘Spells’ are magician-specific: the Patterns are non-transferable, in that they are entirely subjective to each magician and must be learned and uncovered on their own. Two different magicians could both cast the exact same spell with two totally different Patterns, or the same Pattern to two completely different effects.

Stress

Both Chains and Patterns cause Stress. Stress turns every blank Runestone into a Failure. If, after calculating your degrees of success, you have fewer Failures than Successes, then you succeed BUT you also cause some undesired collateral effect in the fiction which either helps your opponent or harms your allies. If you have more Failures than Successes, then you fail AND you open up a new opportunity for an ally or inconvenience for your opponent within the fiction.

Chains cause 1 Stress. Patterns cause 1 additional Stress each time the Pattern’s Runes change. For example, ##@ would cause 2 Stress while #@# would cause 3 Stress.

Mastery

Characters can have Mastery of both their Sentiments and their learned Spells (magicians only, of course). Without Mastery, every roll is purely random, and the only control a magician has over their Patterns is how they piece together the Runestones.

To gain Mastery over Sentiments, you must roll a Chain consisting entirely of one colour Runestone (ie: no other colours rolled the same Runes), and you must do so without using Mastery (ie: ‘naturally’). This earns you a Mastery rank for the corresponding Sentiment. Mastery over Sentiments allows you to pre-set a number of Runestones of that Sentiment’s colour equal to your Mastery rank. So if you have 2 Mastery over Fear, you can pre-set 2 of your yellow Runestones before rolling the rest.

To gain Mastery over Patterns, you must roll a Pattern from your Spell Book without using Mastery. Mastery over a Pattern subtracts from the Stress you’d gain by casting it. Once you’ve reduced the Stress of a Pattern to zero, you can cast it at will without rolling: it has effectively become “innate”.

Things I haven’t solved yet