Quote from: MGuy;580363I agreee with everying on this page of the thread. Everything I was gonna say got said already, primarily in jibba's and daniel's posts.

Related fantasy economy thread

Interesting thread. takes some time reading through it but really interesting ideas

So...how would one go about building a "non-metagamey" RPG magic system?...

Quote from: MGuy;580363I agreee with everying on this page of the thread. Everything I was gonna say got said already, primarily in jibba's and daniel's posts.

Related fantasy economy thread

Odd. He's basing his argument upon the abstraction of gold pieces being assumed to be a literal thing, as in actual pieces of unstamped gold being exchanged in a barter-like fashion.

Which is bizarre because AD&D 2e PHB & DMG (and AD&D 1e DMG) do go to great lengths talking about how gp is just an abstraction, not an actual gold disc devoid of stamped meaning (and which may be counted out in any currency manner your setting likes, too). And further it talks how money is a function of the viable economies in the setting world, being backed by accepted gov't and market standards. Also, if you are outside of a currency's range, or even a gov't (and it's corresponding market) reach, the game talks about barter and favor exchanges in extreme hinterland societies.

It's like a weird one-man argument with a strawman. Either that or 3e has done some additional fucked-up things to currency that I never knew about.

Considering TSR went into detail about the economy of hiring hirelings, and the level of disruption it could lead in a feudal labor economy -- and the issue of garnering permission of such feudal "property" -- I find it rather stunning Frank missed the equally involved discussion about the nature of money in this game. I mean TSR AD&D talked about various additional taxes -- in several additional sourcebooks as well! -- so it's not like its notion of economy was a simplistic one of bartering blank precious metal discs.

But perhaps WotC fucked up hardcore...

Oh well, this is just a tangent. Ignore and carry on.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;580549So...how would one go about building a "non-metagamey" RPG magic system?...

It has to be meta gamey to a degree.

I am trying to do it with a mana source and using level as the limiter of effect

So take fireball iconic D&D spell

D&D its a 3rd level spell with a level based effect. Later the effect is limited to 10d6

In my system anyone that learns how to cast spells can learn it (the learning bit is a bit archaic) For each 3 mana you put into the spell it does 1d6 damage. If you exceed your level x3 (this is a standard mechanism in fact it's mana x base spell effect here =3) then the spell has a chance to go wrong based on its difficulty and the ammount you exceed this by.

A first level wizard has d10 + bonus (1-5) mana so a 1st level wizard could deliver a 3hd fireball.

The idea is that the physics of the spell is set in the spell but the effect of the spell, its damage, force, duration etc is set by in game logic rather than meta game logic. So spending more mana does more damage grants better Defense, grants longer duration or adds bells and whistles to an effect being more experienced means you can safely channel more power.

Some people won't like it because its magic as pseudo science and they want magic to be well more magical. However, whilst this works in novels where magic is limited in effect by the plot I think in a game its a good rule. Magic behaves like this so you can do this with it.  

I could see a Bounteous Blessing spell that at the lowest level of effect could give someone a temporary bonus but at eh top level could become a permanent stat increase.

Quote from: Opaopajr;580685Odd. He's basing his argument upon the abstraction of gold pieces being assumed to be a literal thing, as in actual pieces of unstamped gold being exchanged in a barter-like fashion.

What? You can literally substitute gold in that conversation for anything. Trade, barter, goods, fiat money, credit. It doesn't really matter because the conversation would still be the same.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;580549So...how would one go about building a "non-metagamey" RPG magic system?...

[nitpick]As long as it is rules we're talking about it is the metagame we're talking about. [/nitpick]

Anyways as jibba put it just have things scale. Let's say Unseen Servant. The higher level you get the stronger, smarter, more Unseen Servants you can make in one casting until by level 10 you can get unseen servants with about the power of and usefulness of a second level commoner and have them run all day. Let's take "Cleaning" spells. You get to the point at higher levels where you can clean entire houses by making the area that the spell cleans larger and larger. It'd take a bit of effort to do this for every spell but it wouldn't be too hard.

This is where I hate how busy life has become, becaus this is very near and dear to my heart.  Because I could spend all day on this one thread.  I've been building on my basic spell system when I 'graduated' from d20 back in 83.
 Matching system to setting and game style I always advocate for, and magic is one of those places that a GM has the most leeway to really do some setting specific stuff as well as a place they can really hang themselves.

Frequency distribution of caster vs power level, speed of growth, how many areas of magic and how are they represented, rate of power recovery, importance of reagents, cost of learning magic...all of these and more are major considerations.  Basic thoughts on it are Here.

More later.  I don't have unseen servants, but Artificers do control  constructs and Necromancers have more servants than any other type of caster.

Quote from: LordVreeg;580724This is where I hate how busy life has become, becaus this is very near and dear to my heart.  Because I could spend all day on this one thread.  I've been building on my basic spell system when I 'graduated' from d20 back in 83.
 Matching system to setting and game style I always advocate for, and magic is one of those places that a GM has the most leeway to really do some setting specific stuff as well as a place they can really hang themselves.

Frequency distribution of caster vs power level, speed of growth, how many areas of magic and how are they represented, rate of power recovery, importance of reagents, cost of learning magic...all of these and more are major considerations.  Basic thoughts on it are Here.

More later.  I don't have unseen servants, but Artificers do control  constructs and Necromancers have more servants than any other type of caster.

Very nice. I need to look into this more when I have more time.

Quote from: jibbajibba;580689snip spell system

Good stuff... I do like these sort of more freeform spell systems. It cuts down on some of the arbitraryness of the scaling.
 
A bit off topic, in systems like that I'm pondering whether there should actually be two factors that scale separately - the power rating of the spell, and the complexity of the spell.
Some effects may be just a matter of raw energy (the same spell moves the paperweight as the mountain, but the mountain takes more energy to do) and the complexity of the spell (creating a house is more complicated that creating the same mass as an amorphous blob).

Quote from: MGuy;580715[nitpick]As long as it is rules we're talking about it is the metagame we're talking about. [/nitpick]

'Metagame' is perhaps not the correct word. 'Gamey' would probably do, actually; basically I mean these are rules which don't follow internal logic beyond what's good for the game - as in, maintaining challenge ratings and game balance.
 
One example of something that comes to mind - Arduin had the first spell fumbles tables. There's an example of a wizard fumbling a Create Water spell, and getting a 'reverse effect', which naturally kills them and probably TPKs the party as an equal volume of water evaporates out of the caster and anyone nearby, leaving them as dessicated mummies. Perfectly logical extrapolation from how magic would work, although in D&D Create Water is 0-level and the reverse (2E Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting/3E Horrid Wilting) is 8th.
 
Conversely you have limitations like Implosion only working on living creatures - I ways thought I should be able to Implode anything really, I assume this is to stop people Imploding their way through dungeons or imploding ships or the like.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;580867'Metagame' is perhaps not the correct word. 'Gamey' would probably do, actually; basically I mean these are rules which don't follow internal logic beyond what's good for the game - as in, maintaining challenge ratings and game balance.
 
One example of something that comes to mind - Arduin had the first spell fumbles tables. There's an example of a wizard fumbling a Create Water spell, and getting a 'reverse effect', which naturally kills them and probably TPKs the party as an equal volume of water evaporates out of the caster and anyone nearby, leaving them as dessicated mummies. Perfectly logical extrapolation from how magic would work, although in D&D Create Water is 0-level and the reverse (2E Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting/3E Horrid Wilting) is 8th.
 
Conversely you have limitations like Implosion only working on living creatures - I ways thought I should be able to Implode anything really, I assume this is to stop people Imploding their way through dungeons or imploding ships or the like.

yes, systems that actually reflect the setting always aid in immersion and in making the players aplin old enjoy the experience more.

And I have used spell success rolls, including the same fumble and critical success numbers, as I use in combat.

I just got to throw out there that I do not like spell fumbling. The prospect of randomly dying because a simple spell backfired is anathema to me. On that note I do think that there should be a strong connection between setting and rules. Whenever I get done with my rules I'm going to engineer a setting (the best I can) based on how the rules play out. Hopefully I get something close to what I want. If I find anything amiss I'll be changing the rule to make it fit better. I believe in my ruleset you pointed out how the Dark Elves' "save a roll" ability would make them often times do certain things over and over again everyday until they get it "perfect" in setting. I had figured that would be the case after writing it up and having a racial OCD quirk seems "ok" for me. That's the kind of strong connection I'm hoping for.

Prior to the discussion that led to this one I had thought briefly about cantrips but didn't give them a second glance. This discussion has actually will help a lot when I redo the spells and write up the Rituals and Rites for my game.

Quote from: MGuy;580713What? You can literally substitute gold in that conversation for anything. Trade, barter, goods, fiat money, credit. It doesn't really matter because the conversation would still be the same.

No. He really is talking about how the economy works as a neutral universal barter system. Then he notes how adventurers form a sort of brain drain and later resource drain upon regions. The pile of assumptions on how a D&D setting is formulated is dizzying, but all a castle of sand.

Like I said, considering TSR assumed our fantasy worlds to have different governments and corresponding currencies, this argument is specious. Especially since TSR AD&D also went to great lengths stating that adventurers were in general not looked upon favorably. (And further there's no "magic shop" or people willing to trade out their best local stuff to newcomers just because of a pile of specie.)

Here, let me offer a useful new book looking at this notion and blowing away our current assumptions of barter's elaborate past. Basically the concept of debt, credit, power projection (military) as debt/credit foundation, service, taxation, jubilee, etc. all derive a hell of a lot earlier than modernly assumed. These concepts are extremely old, and if you have agrarian societies with the needed military to defend the non-mobile crop resource you're going to have a complex economic structure of debt/credit by default.
 
"Debt: the First 5000 Years" at Amazon.com

Normally I wouldn't care to respond with this tangent, but it's a rare opportunity to share a pretty neat book.

It does relate in the sense that economy (debit/credit) is grounded in power projection, and that the easiest way to correlate magic's effect upon a society would be its immediate military advantage. But magic is such a screwball factor, with oft embedded setting assumptions of "lost knowledge," that you could structure it with a strong strain of domestic trivialities. And as a poster already noted trying to follow the logic thread of magic's "actual effect upon society" is more of an exercise towards madness. So I cannot speak to the fruitfulness of such a goal.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;580864Good stuff... I do like these sort of more freeform spell systems. It cuts down on some of the arbitraryness of the scaling.
 
A bit off topic, in systems like that I'm pondering whether there should actually be two factors that scale separately - the power rating of the spell, and the complexity of the spell.
Some effects may be just a matter of raw energy (the same spell moves the paperweight as the mountain, but the mountain takes more energy to do) and the complexity of the spell (creating a house is more complicated that creating the same mass as an amorphous blob).

Each spell also has a difficulty rating which is your chance to learn it based on intelligence (well its a roll + int Mod + level versus a target number) so I added a complexity ruling. some spells also add bells and whistles based on additional mana spend.

Quote from: MGuy;580923I just got to throw out there that I do not like spell fumbling. The prospect of randomly dying because a simple spell backfired is anathema to me. On that note I do think that there should be a strong connection between setting and rules. Whenever I get done with my rules I'm going to engineer a setting (the best I can) based on how the rules play out. Hopefully I get something close to what I want. If I find anything amiss I'll be changing the rule to make it fit better. I believe in my ruleset you pointed out how the Dark Elves' "save a roll" ability would make them often times do certain things over and over again everyday until they get it "perfect" in setting. I had figured that would be the case after writing it up and having a racial OCD quirk seems "ok" for me. That's the kind of strong connection I'm hoping for.

Prior to the discussion that led to this one I had thought briefly about cantrips but didn't give them a second glance. This discussion has actually will help a lot when I redo the spells and write up the Rituals and Rites for my game.

In my system spells only fail if you pump more energy into them than you have experience to cope with. It is my metagamey bit if you like but I still try to tie back to some in game thing. So 1st level can generate a 1HD fireball with no issues but trying to generate a 3hd fireball carries risks .