Expanding on the Evolution of Magic

The more I build on the concepts I introduced in The Evolution of Magic, the more I love this concept. Magic really needs to be used more as technology is today in modern high action/adventure. Missions can center around a new form of magic - either better, faster or cheaper. Sending the players out to recover a stolen magic wand - a new proto-type or a potion capable of more or different results - These make great adventures. Think about your spy missions - Evil guy steals the new explosive and turns it over to his scientists so they can reproduce. This works perfect as “Evil guy steals new fire potion and turns it over to his alchemists”. Or it works as evil country’s necromancer escapes his handlers and is trying to bring the plans for the new hideous zombie to the “good guys” and someone needs to protect him. Or the beautiful herbalist is on the verge of developing a new herbal potion that will enhance farm yields, but the bad guys are planning on kidnapping her and taking her back to their country. Any spy plot will work. I guess my point is simply that too often magic is considered static in most games or campaigns. GMs come up with new, cool magic items, but they are mainly for the PCs to keep them interested. Magic that doesn’t specifically affect the PCs can make for good missions too. Maybe you already do these missions, but I really haven’t. If you haven’t, I think the best way to get the new ideas is to check out other system’s magic supplements. There should be tons of ideas there that your game hasn’t used, at least not yet. (Check out the Book of Wishes) This is just another in my eternal use of genre switching methods to liven up a game.

The Bucket Shop

Why do I do what I do? I get these weird thoughts in my head, and I have to figure them out to determine if my books and rules make sense. Take the bucket shop. Every morning, the workers march off to their jobs and leave their buckets at the bucket shop. Every evening they march home and pick up their buckets of beer. How big? Well, three pints for a husband and wife seems “normal”, but when you’re talking about buckets, they could be any size. We’ll stick with three pints. The brewer needs to sell to 88 people in order to make his 12sc per day. Where did that come from? Well, I worked it out. Grain Into Gold tells me that a pound of barley is required to make a gallon of beer. It also tells me that a pound of barley costs 2.75cc (copper coins), and a pint of beer sells for 1cc. That was based on a cottage industry model of tripling costs. (2.75cc x 3 = 8.25cc for a gallon or 1cc for a pint) Then I looked at everything that goes into turning barley into malt. It takes a couple weeks, and lot of space. It also takes a cistern and a good sized oven/kiln. I’ve recently priced malt at 4.35cc per lb. I worked it out as whether it was done by the local farmer or by a malthouse and both really seemed to work at that level. So the brewer, seeking to make 12sc per day buys malt at 4.35cc per pound and over the course of weeks/a month, produces beer that he sells for 8cc per gallon. Thing is, he has multiple batches running all the time, to produce reasonably fresh beer for his customers. His profit margin is 3.65cc per pint, so to get his 12sc, he needs to sell about 33 gallons (thus 264 pints or 88 customers). If each customer bought four pints, then he’d only need 66. Doesn’t seem like a lot does it? one guy making 33 gallons of beer? if this is his full time job? But think about it this way: #1 - he likely lives very well on 12sc a day (that’s often considered skilled craftsman wages). #2 - assuming it takes about 30 days to brew the beer, he has over 400sc invested various ingredients in his brewery or well over a month’s wages. That’s a lot to risk. #3 - he had to invest in all the equipment to brew the beer at the multiple stages and store it. While it may not seem like a lot of output, you have to wonder how long it took this guy to put together the capital to have all these ingredients and all this equipment. Could he afford to have more going at any given time? Now, when I expand this to the big breweries, they’ll be able to process far more than 33 gallons per person. That means that they will make more profits, the kind of profits that pay for all those bosses and brew masters. Why do I do it? Because it works! Grain Into Gold has been on the market for about six years now, and while it isn’t 100% perfect, it works in just about every scenario I’ve tried. If you’re looking to avoid doing all this math for yourself - You might want to pick up Grain Into Gold.

Curses and Diseases

I remember that original FRPG. Lost in the game master’s book was a rule that said that every player character had a chance of catching a disease every month (and a chance of parasitic infestation). I think it started at 1% and went up depending on conditions. I kind of liked that rule; thought it added flavor. The problem is, I remain curious how diseases run in a fantasy era. Oh sure, the priests can cure diseases, but I don’t think that should be a 100% chance. (See this post) So I’ve been doing a little research on diseases and trying to put them into game rules. I also want them to all be a little different, not just have each one reduce Endurance. But another thought came up and I’ve been developing the two together. What are curses? I’m going to make curses magical diseases. Now many of the curses will be identical to the diseases, except that you can only cure them through magic. (You can get over a real cold, but not a cursed cold.) So now I’ve given myself the task of not only figuring out what diseases will do, but of assigning spell like stats to them as well. There will be some wildly magical curses too. Stuff like every time you sneeze, you turn blue. That would be a fun curse! A thought has come up in all of this though: Can you curse someone with lycanthrope or vampirism? I think so! I think the curse would be a pretty powerful spell, but I think so. Pretty nasty thing to do to somebody, but pretty cool too. I’m thinking that killing the curser (OK, “witch”) will remove the curse. That makes curses better mission starters. The prince insulted an old hag and now every time he sneezes he turns blue. Go capture the hag and get her to remove the curse, even if you have to kill her. OK, not the most original, but not too bad for a little filler mission. I’m still working on developing curses that will reduce luck or something like that. The game balance on something like that could be very difficult, otherwise the curse becomes incredibly powerful. Any ideas?

When is magic a lifestyle?

In Legend Quest, the main spell casters are the mages. The mages/wizards have six schools of magic: conjuring, druid, healing, illusion, necromancy and sorcery. Now the way I see it, sorcery, conjuring and illusion are just tools to getting a job done. Sorcerers are out there casting fireballs and such and wiping out vast numbers of people. OK, that’s not normal, but being a killer isn’t based on sorcery. Similarly, the conjurers and illusionists are using magic as a tool, though more indirectly than the sorcerers. That leaves the others. Most games see druidic magic as a religion. Well, most games see healing magic as religion as well. Although we don’t see either of them necessarily as a religion (it can be, but doesn’t have to be), I think either of these disciplines does inherently cause the user to think and live in a different manner. When you are actively controlling the magical forces of the world in order to heal injuries or assist nature, it changes you. For most, it would make them more reflective. Maybe this is a philosophy and less religion, but there has to be something there. Magic is no longer just a tool to get your job done. It is a force for good. On the other hand, those who use necromancy or use druidic magic to cause harm (“despoilers”) would also have it change them. You cannot alter the flow of magic in the world to tap into the power of death and divert death magic to create zombies or drain the life from a person without it changing who you are. Even the sorcerer is actually using the magic to create fire; he’s not directly using the magic around his target to deliberately pull the life out of him. Compared to the necromancer, the sorcerer is using magic indirectly as well. He may know the fire will kill his target, but he’s making fire, not making death. You get into the whole deliberate vs. intentional argument here. What’s the point? I think the point is that healers naturally have to be different from “normal” folk. They have to see the world differently. So do necromancers. They aren’t just creepy because they wear weird robes; they think in creepy ways and understand the universe in creepy ways. There will always be those whose lives are affected more by something else than by their magic, so not every necromancer is going to have the exact same personality, but there will be an underlying current of death running through the necromancer’s life and personality.

The Evolution of Magic

OK - Since I don’t know how I would ever get this into a book, I have to publish this here. Just stay with me for a little bit: What if magic were new, like technology in the modern age? What if sorcery had only been invented 75-100 years ago? So, in your battle mage’s grandfather’s time, magic was wearing garlic to fend off the evil eye curses from witches - You know, just superstition. The enchanters and alchemists are a new phenomenon. The world and the world’s cultures are just now starting to burst forth with magic. Why does it matter? Well, I’ve always been a little antagonistic to the idea that some people have massive amounts of magic (think the adventurers not only decked out in magic armor with magic swords and wands, but also casting magic and fighting hugely magical creatures) compared with the peasant farmer who is no more advanced than Europe’s peasant farmers just before the Black Death. Does that make sense? If magic has been around for thousands of years, why is it only in the hands of a few? Don’t give me that stuff about secrets. Look at technology. How long did it take from the invention of the transistor to the proliferation of cell phones? Magic is easily as powerful as technology. Think about it this way - About 90 years ago, some guy in some university figured out that you really could make a philosopher’s stone and change lead to gold. This began a surge in the ideas of magic and was quickly followed by illusionists creating magical lights and conjurers summoning odd beasts. (Skipping an enormous number of evolutionary steps here.) Fast forward to today in your fantasy campaign and magic works as indicated in your game rules, but has only been at this level of sophistication for 5-10 years. Here’s what this brings - good and bad: There shouldn’t be a plethora of old/ancient magical items. Anything enchanted is relatively new. People and governments would just now be starting to consider the ramifications of magic in war and trade. Since relative few of us protect our campaign castles and cities against the common magics, it seems more reasonable that magic is new and the defenses are only being considered in the present campaign time. This also allows the player characters to be on the forefront of magical “science”. Sort of like James Bond is always just that extra touch ahead of us on technology. Stealing magical secrets and using new enchantments (that may or may not work exactly as planned) seems great for any fantasy campaign. And it settles the peasant farmer issue. Magic is still being developed in the magical universities and has not yet filtered out to the poorer and/or more rural folks. I’m still developing the next application of this concept in my head: I think it would work if one continent had been “mundane” until trade opened up 100 years ago, so there would be a fully magical continent and a newly magical continent. It might work for magical elves and newly magical humans, but then the elves would have truly needed to have been isolated until that recent point in history. I think it also works that some type(s) of magic were around but kept secret. Necromancy comes to mind. Maybe the necromancers have been around for centuries, but because they were so hated, they kept their magical secrets to themselves. The whole thing really screams for witch hunters too. There would have to be some cultural push back, where magic was all seen as necromancy or just plain evil, and needs to be eradicated.

Military Magic

I have been criticized in the past for publishing “useless” information. By useless they mean something that does not increase the chance to hit or the amount of damage. I guess they might be slightly placated by things that give your more damage absorption potential, but they don’t really communicate that well. More about that later. I’m a big believer in role-playing games having a role-playing element to them. Funny, I seem to be in the minority about that. But even on the battlefield, I think way too much energy and effort is put into the less important things like accuracy and damage. Don’t get me wrong. When the arrows are raining from the sky and the blood is running in currents, I realize the value of doing a ton of damage, but we’re not war gamers here. Those guys died off in the last generation. So what do I think is important? Communications! I think logistics are hugely important too, but they are not as exciting. How do the units get their orders from the commanders? Sure, the charge call can be trumpeted out, then everyone roars and races forward. But while they’re roaring and running and smashing metal weapons into metal armor, how do you call retreat? Are the trumpets loud enough? What about the units that were flanking and might be out of trumpet hearing distance? If the trumpets are so important, why wouldn’t the enemy fake trumpet calls to mess soldiers up? I mean if one side sounds retreat, are they using a different retreat than the other side? Because once retreat is sounded, wouldn’t both sides fall back? OK, so we’ll assume they have different bugle calls, but still, are they secret bugle calls? Does the other side not know them? Seems kind of odd. And if it were that the bugle calls were secret, wouldn’t a clever enemy kidnap one bugler just before the battle and torture the answer out of him? I mean, we’re typically talking about enemies willing to consort with the undead and demons. Torturing some young bugler boy seems right up their alley. OK - That wasn’t the point of this blog entry. The point was - isn’t it time that the enchanters started working on means of communication and espionage instead of +1 swords? If not, shouldn’t intelligent commanders have telepaths sitting next to them at the battles, so they can send direct and secret information into the fray? Back to magic. Think of a telescope that also provided sound. That sounds like something magic could do, and WOW would that be beneficial when spying on your enemy camp. Every game has differences in the magic system, including what spells are available. In some games, spells that don’t do damage are either forgotten or considered useless. My players typically prefer to grab those “crazy” spells and find ways to make them work in the oddest arrangements. In Legend Quest, you cast spells until you pass out - none of this forgotten spell stuff. Therefore they can afford to be really good with one or two combat spells and then learn all the quirky ones. Not to get off track, but with sleep spells being so common in games, why doesn’t anyone ever spend the time to interrogate and then ransom hostages? I could easily write an entire book on the use of non-damage causing magic, with multiple chapters on how it affects warfare. How I do it doesn’t really matter in your game. What matters is if you recognize that reconnaissance, communications, and logistics have a much bigger part in military matters than the size of your sword. The sword matters! but not as much as the attention it is given.

More Ideas Everywhere

I often complain that what is listed on internet sites as “top news stories” is pathetic. These are not “news” and if they are the “top” then it just shows how vapid our society has truly become. However, from time to time, I click on one. It’s like a car fire. You just have to slow down and look. So this latest one directed me to a news show, about 10 minutes long, from a resort community in the Midwest. This was pure gold as background material and possibly even mission starters. The stories included (from memory, so don’t look for too much brain power here): a 3yo child was beaten to death by his parents, a young girl drown when she wandered off, idiots in a speed boat got thrown around inside their boat but it was caught on camera, where the fireworks were going to be that weekend, where the bands were playing that weekend, who won the speed boat competition, and the local boat and 4wheeler store has a new model. Please understand, I am not reveling in the misery of two dead children here (maybe in the idiots who were driving their boat so fast across wakes that they got chucked around, but still). But small town news like this always seems more “fantasy era” to me than big city news. How does this become background or mission starters? I hope you don’t really need this part but: The upcoming weekend is some sort of minor patriotic holiday where people will be off work and picnicking. During the festivities, a young girl wanders off, and a huge search begins. The girl is found the next day drowned, but on the shore. How did that happen? Are there evil creatures in the lake who killed her then hurled her out of the water? Someone needs to investigate! (I’d go with the girl drown on her own and the peaceful water creatures were trying to save her at great risk to themselves.) Let’s add some other items to it: There was a big race (rowing or canoeing?) on the lake, and the participants had no idea that while they raced a young girl was in such danger. So when they finished, they started their party anyway. Those people who were searching for the girl believe the racers to be extremely cold hearted for partying while the girl was dying, but the racers didn’t know. So there is a lot of resentment between the two factions (racers vs. picnickers). This will give the whole region a palpable tension that will greatly interfere with finding out what happened to the girl and getting the girl’s “people” (the picnickers) to work with the only people with boats (the racers) to get an expedition to the middle or bottom (or both) of the lake. Is that how you saw it? As long as you saw some of that - then you know how to never run out of ideas.