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Help me design a Ritual Magic system (long)


fmitchell

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(I've also posted on Pen and Paper Games, but this is probably a better place.)

I'm trying to nail down a Ritual Magic system, along the lines of the Buffy RPG's Sorcery system, "Occultism" from Fudge's A Magical Medley (the prime inspiration), and Spirit Magic from GURPS Voodoo/Spirits/Thaumatology. Here's how I initially described it to players in the game that I'm starting Real Soon Now:

Ritual Magic, the most common type in the Orc Lands, involves contact with the Spirit World through lengthy rituals, anywhere between ten minutes and several days. Dealing with spirits is a slow and tricky business, and a practitioner must build up a relationship with members of the Spirit World in order to work greater magic.

Among the People, magic is mainly the province of shamans. Shaman characters begin with basic magic rituals; others must discover them as play continues. Shamans should see the GM for a starting list of rituals.

To perform Ritual Magic a practitioner must have a ritual written or memorized. The simplest rituals allow mortals to speak to local spirits, ask a blessing, send a curse, or travel through the Spirit Realm; more powerful ones compel or banish spirits, call down nature's wrath upon enemies, create charms to protect or harm mortals, or meddle with mortal minds.

The Knowledge (Spirit Lore) skill aids in improvising magical new rituals from known ones, evaluating found rituals, and understanding the ways of spirits. The Research skill can help discover forgotten spells in musty tomes.

The magician and any assistants creates a sacred circle, and conduct the ritual over minutes, hours, or sometimes days. The GM rolls secretly to determine the effect of the ritual, and announces the result ... which may not always correspond to what a magician intended.

Factors influencing the success of a ritual include, but are not limited to:

  • the ritual leader's POW
  • the number of assisting characters and their POW
  • special knowledge or significant items woven into the ritual, e.g. the name of a particular spirit, or an offering that spirit likes
  • results of skill or characteristic checks required by the ritual, if any, e.g. Perform, Craft, or Stamina
  • the location of the ritual, e.g. the grave of a ghost a character wishes to speak to, or a sacred grove
  • participants' Allegiance to relevant spirit powers, if any.

The third, fourth, and fifth bullet points I class collectively as "props"; some are necessary prerequisites, others provide bonuses. Low-POW and untrained assistants might also count as props, although multiple magicians might be able to pool their POW somehow. Allegiance is the mechanic from BRP.

Every ritual has a Power Level, nearly always high enough that a magician needs both a high POW and one or more optional props to have any reasonable chance.

The mechanic I'm toying with is (POW - Power Level) x 5% + Allegiance + prop bonuses. However, that would require a fair amount of on-the-fly calculation at the table, which I would like to avoid.

Other mechanics I've considered:

  1. Using different mechanics for different "classes" of rituals. Summoning spirits directly may rely mainly on POW, while invoking "the spirits" to create a fog would rely mainly on Allegiance.
  2. Making two rolls, e.g. a POW + Prop Bonuses vs. Power Level to judge base success, and an Allegiance roll to upgrade the success level.
  3. Making all props "required" for the spell to work, although the absence of some props might cause an entirely unexpected effect.

Any other ideas would be appreciated.

Frank

"Welcome to the hottest and fastest-growing hobby of, er, 1977." -- The Laundry RPG
 
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I've been toying with a similar, though somewhat different idea (ritual magic but the power being more inherent in the ritual than coming from spirits). As that's mainly going to change effects rather than potency levels, though, here's how I'd do it...

Each ritual requires a certain number of RP (Ritual Points) in order to work. The ritual points are tallied up as follows:

POW of main ritualist = points.

Each participant of a POW of at least 11+ = 2 points.

Each participant of a POW 5 to 10 = 1 point.

Participants of a POW below 4 do not count if they are merely participants, however...

Sacrificing an animal = 10 points.

Sacrificing a being of human-level intelligence = their POW*2

Ritual is performed on sacred ground = 1 to 20 points depending on how suitable and how sacred the site is.

Alleigience levels could also be brought into it.

Negatives could also be given (in your case, for example, if participants had angered/ignored the spirit in question).

If you have enough points then the ritualist must make a successful Perform : ritual check. If that succeeds then the ritual works.

This means that a ritual to speak to a spirit could be done by a ritualist acting on his own in his hut as long as they were potent enough (let's say that requires 15 points). A ritual to bring rain spirits during a drought, however, might require 100 points and so could require everything on the list.

Bear in mind ritual sacrifice is generally rare even in cultures where it does happen - nobody keeps obeying the priest that kills 5 people a day whatever power they might demonstrate in exchange for that high toll.

That's what I'd do, hope it helps.

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I was thinking along similar lines, but instead of "Perform(Ritual)" I'd just add a random factor to your point tally. It still doesn't factor in Allegiance, but maybe I'd add Allegiance/5 to the total.

BTW, I was initially tempted to make all magic a roleplayed negotiation with spirits, but then I'd run into the "netrunner effect": one guy is roleplaying, the rest are twiddling their thumbs.

Frank

"Welcome to the hottest and fastest-growing hobby of, er, 1977." -- The Laundry RPG
 
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BTW, I was initially tempted to make all magic a roleplayed negotiation with spirits, but then I'd run into the "netrunner effect": one guy is roleplaying, the rest are twiddling their thumbs.

What about having the players roleplay different spirits and awarding powers depending on how well everyone did with regard to roleplaying their parts? It's late so I don't know how good an idea this is... just putting it out there.

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What about having the players roleplay different spirits and awarding powers depending on how well everyone did with regard to roleplaying their parts? It's late so I don't know how good an idea this is... just putting it out there.

It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it will work.

To a large extent, the spirits are my way of providing knowledge to the party, just like corporeal NPCs. For example, the Shaman summons forth a ghost who wants the party to give its body a decent burial, and will grudgingly trade secrets about the ruin at the top of the hill for that service. To play the ghost properly, a player would probably have to know what the secrets are.

Also I don't want spirits to exist simply so that our Shaman can clobber them and take their spells (a la RuneQuest 2 and 3). The experience should be more like negotiating with inhabitants of a strange town, and eventually meeting the nobles. Once the Shaman gets to that level, and they regard him as an ally in the corporeal world, then it's time to reduce the rituals to a simple die roll.

Finally, since spirits are the gatekeepers of magic in this system, it's a little unrealistic to expect the other players to act against the group's best interests. I'm reminded of a scene in The Gamers, when a player introduces his new character:

The Gamemaster:
Guys, please! I want you to roleplay this. Remember you've never met this guy before, the last guys you met tried to kill you, and you're standing in the ruins of an evil, cursed castle. Just act appropriately.

Magellan:
Hello, I'm Magellan, a traveling mage. I notice your group has no wizard.

Rogar, the Barbarian:
You seem trustworthy. Would you care to join us in our noble quest?

Magellan:
Yes. Yes I would.

Edited by fmitchell

Frank

"Welcome to the hottest and fastest-growing hobby of, er, 1977." -- The Laundry RPG
 
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Factors influencing the success of a ritual include, but are not limited to:

  • the ritual leader's POW
  • the number of assisting characters and their POW
  • special knowledge or significant items woven into the ritual, e.g. the name of a particular spirit, or an offering that spirit likes
  • results of skill or characteristic checks required by the ritual, if any, e.g. Perform, Craft, or Stamina
  • the location of the ritual, e.g. the grave of a ghost a character wishes to speak to, or a sacred grove
  • participants' Allegiance to relevant spirit powers, if any.

The third, fourth, and fifth bullet points I class collectively as "props"; some are necessary prerequisites, others provide bonuses. Low-POW and untrained assistants might also count as props, although multiple magicians might be able to pool their POW somehow. Allegiance is the mechanic from BRP.

Similar to Byron Alexander's suggestion, an off-the cuff idea would be:

Core mechanic is Ritual (whatever) skill.

Rituals are built up of points based on components such as effects, duration, distance etc as needed to determine the cost.

If the cost is exceeded then a bonus is gained to the final ritual roll, if the cost is not met a similar penalty is applied. Perhaps +/- 10% per point of difference.

Meeting the cost:

  • Main ritualist's POW score.
  • 1/10 of POW of other ritualists (apply the same amount as penalty if a fumble).
  • +2 (3? 4? 5?) per POW burned by any ritualist.
  • Allegiance check of main ritualist adds 1/10 of allegiance (or 1/5 etc) - however fumbles could be very bad.
  • Modifiers for props (gestures; dance; incatations; sacrifice etc) - varies.

I would require that assistants make their Ritual rolls first, to determine their bonuses/penalties. All POW bonuses could be doubled for the penalty of making difficult rolls (Ritual and allegiance).

Now if taking this approach the notion of certainty is ruled out to a degree, since if those assisting fail their rolls the final main ritualist's roll could be penalised. Often these systems build in a sense of certainty which eleminates a sense of risk, which kind of goes against the drama often associated with fictional versions.

Edited by leonmallett

Very slowly working towards completing my monograph.

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At the risk of provoking the Moderators' wrath, I'll refer to my answer to similar suggestions on Pen and Paper Games.

To summarize, I'd like to avoid a "Perform (Ritual)" skill because thematically the rituals are easy, but getting spirits to pay attention to them is hard. Two people could do the same ritual the same way, but one has more status/presence/whiffie in the Spirit World so he gets an answer. The whole process should be a bit mysterious; I'd like magic to be, well, magical, not just an alternate technology.

Also, I'd like to avoid on-the-fly calculation of percentages as much as possible: no more than three or four bonuses to the base probability decided at the last minute, particularly if I'm calculating percentile values and not something in the 1-10 or 1-20 range. (Math not Frank's skill.)

To quote myself, here's a mechanic I'm going to go with:

Each ritual has a Base Chance (often horribly low), a list of required props, and a list of optional props that increase the base chance. A POW modifier and a relevant Alliance also adds to the base chance. The GM adds all these factors up (or pre-adds them for extra speed), and makes a simple percentile roll. When the shaman is dealing with an unwilling spirit, maybe a POW vs. POW roll would also be involved.

For me, I think the next step is enumerating a dozen or more rituals, ranging from basic techniques through master-class magic.

Frank

"Welcome to the hottest and fastest-growing hobby of, er, 1977." -- The Laundry RPG
 
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The Gamemaster: Guys, please! I want you to roleplay this. Remember you've never met this guy before, the last guys you met tried to kill you, and you're standing in the ruins of an evil, cursed castle. Just act appropriately.

Magellan: Hello, I'm Magellan, a traveling mage. I notice your group has no wizard.

Rogar, the Barbarian: You seem trustworthy. Would you care to join us in our noble quest?

Magellan: Yes. Yes I would.

Best game related movie ever! And if you don't believe me I will strike thee with my mighty blade.

Rod

Join my Mythras/RuneQuest 6: Classic Fantasy Yahoo Group at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/RQCF/info

"D100 - Exactly 5 times better than D20"

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