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Rituals


GianniVacca

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I am trying to add a chapter about rituals in my Imperial Chinese rolegame. Obviously Daoists were big in rituals, but the stuff described in the books is hardly frpg material... burning paper talismans, mixing the ashes with water, taking a mouthful of the mixture and spitting it on a possessed child-medium is not exactly "fun".

So I looked at the BRP book for ideas about rituals and was surprised not to find any :(

Same with Basic Magic. Does anybody have good ideas for rules for rituals?

cheers

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Hi Gianni,

The old RQ3 Magic book does have rules for rituals, so I would have assumed the Basic Magic book also does (unless this was omitted for some reason).

The rituals covered were enchanting, summoning, and ceremonial rituals. The basic rule boiled down to rolling on the appropriate skill and expending one or more points of power.

Was there something more you were looking for in terms of ritual rules? Some specific effect or idea that you wanted to see modelled?

Tywyll is working on the Grimoire at the moment, and this includes some ritual 'spells' or effects. If you have any ideas that you think he should include, I'm sure he would be happy to hear them.

And, for what it's worth, I love to hear descriptions of rituals - they add a lot of flavour during a campaign.

Thalaba

"Tell me what you found, not what you lost" Mesopotamian proverb

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Are you looking more for descriptive flavor (stuff like talisman to spit you describe - only more playable) or actual mechanics?

What is the goal of the rituals - to make enchantments or summonings (ala Basic Magic) or more for effects, such as a blessing(bonus) or spell effect?

I have a bunch of notes for a modified system to use with RQ and am always happy to share ideas though I am not sure how well what I have been doing fits with what you are looking for.

My system basically breaks ritual magic into three parts: Components, the ritual, and the effect.

Components are the trappings required for the ritual. I wanted to be flexible so that GM's can tailor how important the components are to the game - if they want to abstract a cost in coin that is fine, whereas if they want to make acquiring components a major part of their game (or prevent overuse by limiting components) they can.

For me simple rituals use easily acquired components, at least in the locality where the ritual is practiced. A Gloranthan example would be that a common planting ritual in Sartar would use ingredients easily found around the Dragon Pass area, but if you plan on using it in Pamaltela you may want to bring some components with you.

The ritual itself can be described in as much detail as desired but boils down to one or more skill rolls. A simple ritual will be just one skill roll, but more powerful and complex ones may also require additional skills, such as Plant Lore and/or Theology. I am not decided on whether to keep the old RQ3 ritual skills or use different skills. I like the idea that rituals should be tied to the source of the ritual - Theists use skills related to their religion, etc.

The effect of course is what happens when the ritual is completed successfully. I am considering rules for the possibly of bad side effects for rituals that go wrong as well - particularly in the case of powerful or experimental ones (for experimental ones I wanted to include rules for powerful magicians to be able to modify rituals).

I've got more if you are interested but I'll stop rambling for right now as this may not be what you are looking for.

Edited by Rurik

Help kill a Trollkin here.

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If I remember it right (long time ago ...) GURPS Magic had some interesting

ideas on magic rituals, perhaps you could find some inspiration there.

These days, GURPS Thaumaturgy has interesting variations on ritual magic.

Also look at A Magical Medley for FUDGE. I particularly like "Occultism", but they also have a section on traditional Chinese magic.

Frank

"Welcome to the hottest and fastest-growing hobby of, er, 1977." -- The Laundry RPG
 
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Ehm, as the one who will be held responsible for any possible accusations of plagiarism, I suggest that "drawing inspiration" from other RPGs be avoided. I think that rituals can be regarded as spells with a very long casting time, if there is no better solution. As for the effect, it should be inspired by legend and lore, not GURPS or FUDGE.

Proud member of the Evil CompetitionTM

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...So I looked at the BRP book for ideas about rituals and was surprised not to find any :(

Same with Basic Magic. Does anybody have good ideas for rules for rituals?

Um, Rituals / Ceremonial magic is fairly big component of Basic Magic/RQIII magic - could you be more specific about what you didn't like about that system to guide us as to what you might be after?

Cheers,

Nick

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Um, Rituals / Ceremonial magic is fairly big component of Basic Magic/RQIII magic - could you be more specific about what you didn't like about that system

Sorry Nick; I reckon I haven't been very precise. There are indeed rituals in Basic Magic but they are merely variations on the various spirit or divine spells.

I am looking for ideas along the lines of:

A simple ritual will be just one skill roll, but more powerful and complex ones may also require additional skills, such as Plant Lore and/or Theology.

cheers

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Sorry Nick; I reckon I haven't been very precise. There are indeed rituals in Basic Magic but they are merely variations on the various spirit or divine spells.

I am looking for ideas along the lines of:

cheers

That is something that I've thought about... one Skill, Ritual, that would cover all three old RQ ritual categories, but that would be augmented in a Pendragony way by needed skills and/or helpers. If you don't have any skill in the appropriate Lore or Craft then you can't do what you want. It sounds solid, but I have not tested it in play.

SDLeary

Edited by SDLeary
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That is something that I've thought about... one Skill, Ritual, that would cover all three old RQ ritual categories, but that would be augmented in a Pendragony way by needed skills and/or helpers. If you don't have any skill in the appropriate Lore or Craft then you can't do what you want. It sounds solid, but I have not tested it in play.

SDLeary

This is already in the rules, with the Perform (Ritual) skill. Preconditions for the various rituals are not in the BRP tradition, but it could work. What is not - pardon me the pun - ritual is using a precondition as an augment.

Proud member of the Evil CompetitionTM

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This is already in the rules, with the Perform (Ritual) skill. Preconditions for the various rituals are not in the BRP tradition, but it could work. What is not - pardon me the pun - ritual is using a precondition as an augment.

This is mainly to make Enchantment more "personal", requiring the magician either craft the weapon themselves (remember the craft skill that RQIII Civilized Wizards got?) or be there while the smith does his thing. In my mind, things that are already "made" don't get enchanted, they get the long duration spells cast ON them, which can almost amount to the same thing.

SDLeary

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Rituals, which are rare in general gaming, have a "step" up to perform the magic.How I run ritual, is that each roll, ticks off to another . Depending on the ritual it can fail miserably, fail, succeed, and succed well. How we do modern ritual based on modern ideas in are games, is that each ritual.

As compared to a quick spell. They can be major altering abilities. However, if one thing fails the ritual weakens, or fails. Also rituals often need a special place. One thing is that a player can only know if the ritual succeeds or fails . NOT WHICH roll failed.

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Gianni,

Have you seen the Eastern Mysticism rules that Sandy Peterson did for RQ3 ? They're Gloranthan in nature, in that they're designed for use in Kralorea. But since Kralorea was Glorantha's China analogue they might be worth looking at. There's a couple of copies knocking round the net if you want to practice your google-fu.

EDIT

If you go here:

http://karamo.nexenservices.com/glowar/rqgb.htm

and scroll down you should find a set.

Edited by Agentorange
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There is nothing as regards Rituals in those, but there are many other interesting ideas. Thanks for the link.

I don't know, I'd say the sections on charms and talismans could be looked at in terms of rituals ( albeit short ones ) Actually I should have posted this for you the moment you announced your project....I just assumed you'd already seen it. As you say there are some interesting ideas and mechanics in there.

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