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Subtle Magic ?


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As mentioned before, I am thinking of "low or no" magic for my Thule setting. I would like a

game where the characters do believe in magic, but never know whether it exists, and whe-

re the players also cannot be sure about its existence.

With the usual magic systems with their mostly reliable and predictable "mechanical" magic,

where the same spell almost always produces the same, expected result, this will not be pos-

sible, there would be a much too obvious connecton between cause and effect.

What I would need is a system where a magic ritual (not a simple off the shelf-spell) has ei-

ther no visible result or one that could as well be explained as a non-magical helpful event,

for example something like a "placebo effect" for healing magic, where the belief in the magic

is far more important than the magic itself.

The Harnmaster religion system works in a somewhat similar way, but in my view it does not

fit that well into BRP. My current basic idea would be a secret Luck roll for the "successful"

caster (or, with healing magic and thelike, the recipient) of the magic, and in the case of a

success a referee description of the helpful event.

Since the same ritual would have to be able to create widely different events, these rituals

would have to be rather unspecific, more like "Luck in Combat" than like "Fireball". With such

"unspecified" magic the referee could decide what exactly happens, for example one time an

enemy's sword blade could break, another time an enemy could slip on wet ground, and so

on.

Comments and ideas would be most welcome. :)

"Mind like parachute, function only when open."

(Charlie Chan)

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I'd make a particular magical tradition or domain a skill, and base success or failure of your "plausible deniability" magic depend on it. E.g. you might have skills for Healing, Passion, Nature, Curses (on a person), Blessings (on a person), etc. For comparison, GURPS Thaumatology details a "Book/Path" system for ritual magic, in which magical skills cover logically related effects ("Paths"), or arbitrary but pre-defined powers learned from a book or tradition. Since it's a little more functional, the options for game balance are Effect Shaping (a penalty to the roll based on power/complexity of the effect) and Energy Accumulation (repeated rolls to gather "power", the amount of which depends on the desired effect).

One idea I've seen for other systems is to use social manipulation (Persuade, maybe with Sleight of Hand) to achieve the effect of a "curse" or "blessing". Success means that the subject believed your mumbo-jumbo, and gets bonuses or penalties to skills. Note that Fake Magic won't work on inanimate objects, animals, or even other people who don't share your belief system.

Another random idea, based on the Polynesian concept of mana, is that every time you succeed at a task, your Mana goes up, while Fumbles or humiliating failures make it go down. Mechanically, one could use Allegiance to represent a character's Mana, except that the score will go down if it's invoked and fails, the character fumbles, or the character suffers a humiliating defeat through bad luck or bad planning.

Frank

"Welcome to the hottest and fastest-growing hobby of, er, 1977." -- The Laundry RPG
 
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Thank you very much for these ideas. :)

I'd make a particular magical tradition or domain a skill, and base success or failure of your "plausible deniability" magic depend on it. E.g. you might have skills for Healing, Passion, Nature, Curses (on a person), Blessings (on a person), etc.

If I would connect this to my setting's deities, taken from Crusaders of the Amber Coast, the

result could probably look like this:

Daiwas: Skill "Voice of Daiwas", rituals concerning Authority, Influence, Persuasion

Potrimpos: Skill "Blessing of Potrimpos", rituals dealing with Fertiliy, Growth, Healing

Perkunis: Skill "Might of Perkunis", rituals affecting Combat, Strength, Willpower

Patollos: Skill "Touch of Patollos", rituals related to Burial, Death, Otherworld

A character with one of these skills could have a basic chance to "cause" a helpful event or de-

velopment that falls within the skill's general domain. This chance could be slightly improved by

the knowledge of a somewhat more specific ritual (e.g. "Blessing of Potrimpos - Heal Illness"),

by some magic charm owned by the character, and of course by the willingness of the "target"

to believe in the magic.

"Mind like parachute, function only when open."

(Charlie Chan)

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Personally, in a setting like this I'd ditch game mechanics entirely. There are no PC magicians, so they don't need to stat anything up anyway. Just let your NPC "witches" (or whatever you choose to call them) do what they do. Was it stagecraft? Drugs? Coincidence? Suggestion to superstitious minds? Actual supernatural activity? Only Broomhilda's hairdresser knows, but it really doesn't matter since the adventurers believe regardless of the actual truth. Why beat your brains out with rules when you can GM it with atmospheric description and a hand wave?

Again, with player-characters "causing" events to happen -- you know and I know that their little superstitious rituals are meaningless. So forget about rules. Let them perform their barbaric shenanegins, roll the dice with a thoughtful expression on your face, and let events fall where they may. If they succeed, well of course their ritual was effective. If they fail, aw gee, those darn spirits sure are a fickle bunch. ;D

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Yep, I very much agree. :)

However, to make this work as intended, I think that I need at least the "facade" of a magic sy-

stem: Magic Skills with impressive names for the players to put skill points into and for the cha-

racters to gain experience in, examples of specific named rituals and "magic items" which are

considered to improve the chance of a successful ritual, and so on.

Whether and how much this really influences the campaign events - this can indeed just as well

be handwaved in this setting, without any real magic system, because far more important will

be that the players / characters believe that it will do so, and interpret the helpful events accor-

dingly, either feeling ensured that their magic works or losing trust in the deities and their po-

wers.

"Mind like parachute, function only when open."

(Charlie Chan)

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Three things jump to mind. All of them handle subtle magic but stretch out to the bigger world changing stuff at the high end.

The expanded Nephilim magic system is BRP ready. It's probably ready built for your needs but it comes with some extra stuff that you might not want for your setting. Ka aspects and such.

Maelstrom has a very light magic system that's easy to port over to BRP. It may actually be too light, depending on what you're aiming for.

The third thought is taking a look at Unknown Armies. However, the 'ritual' in this case isn't so much formalized as it is having certain conditions giving the magic user a charge for their spells.

70/420

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The expanded Nephilim magic system is BRP ready. It's probably ready built for your needs but it comes with some extra stuff that you might not want for your setting. Ka aspects and such.

I was just going to mention the Nephilim supplement, Liber Ka for just this reason. It's mostly concerned with ritual, and subtle magics, with a bit of flash-bang stuff to spice it up. It would be easy to excise what you don't need.

Please don't contact me with Chaosium questions. I'm no longer associated with the company, and have no idea what the new management is doing.

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I do not know if it is what you are looking for, but there is a small section in the Green about using Charms or "good luck" items together with the BRP Fate points rules. It may be a little helpful. The section is in a weird place and it kind of hides between chapters. It is on p.57.

294/420

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I do not know if it is what you are looking for, but there is a small section in the Green about using Charms or "good luck" items together with the BRP Fate points rules.

Thank you very much, I had not yet discovered it, because The Green is a little further down my

list - I intended to take a closer look at it when I come to the design of the cultures of the nati-

ves of my setting's Thule and the Forest Coast. :)

"Mind like parachute, function only when open."

(Charlie Chan)

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I was/am toying with something like that for an Ancient Greece campaign. I think the Allegiance rules can be modified to be satisfactory. One style allows heroes to 'shunt' hit points. I was going to allow that AND have characteristices and such improve so that the characters could progress to the 'demi-god stage' (similar to the demi-god character in the BRP book).

"Magic" could be left to the realm of key NPCs, the Gods, aid from Allegiance and the 'demi-god score' and a host of other machinations.

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I am not sure about the allegiance rules, I will have to take another look at them.

However, I think I could - at least occasionally and before especially important combats - give

a character additional hit points or additional strength if he truly believes in the setting's warrior

god and was the target of a ritual which he considered as successful. This would not reflect a

real physical change of the character, only a psychological effect, and would lead to massive

exhaustion after the combat (somewhat like a kind of berserker rage, perhaps).

Thank you for a nice idea, I have to think about it. :)

"Mind like parachute, function only when open."

(Charlie Chan)

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