Strictly speaking, one way out is that every single magical effect is inconsistent compared to each other, but is fixed in the instance.  To piggyback on the "sword with a blessing" example, every sword that has a blessing against undead operates in a different way, but this specific sword with a blessing operates as mechanic X in situation Y against opponents Z.

As much as I like that from a fantastical setting perspective, there is no way as a GM I'm going to be careful enough in my notes to make that work for any game with a sizable chunk of magic items.  If the game doesn't have a sizable chunk of magic items, then in practice it isn't likely to make much difference anyway.  (If Joe's sword has a blessing against undead and Felipe's axe has a charm that lets him fly 1/day and Mary's staff has an enchantment that lets her cast fireball 1/week--and that's pretty much it--then there's not anything to compare how other blessed swords and charmed axes and enchanted staves would operate.)

Of course, with spells, that same problem gets magnified immensely.  You certainly can't do it as every time you prepare the spell it operates a little differently, at least not without a chart of finite possibilities.  You might do it with a more involved version of the DCC approach where Spell X for Wizard A can be somewhat different than the same spell for Wizard B.  I can see that working in a play by forum, but not at a live table.

What I'm trying in my own game (with degree of success still very much an open question) is a hybrid approach where there is some core magic that is systematic and the rest is more adjudicated as above.  That is, there's the core spells and items that everyone knows about, that the correct practitioners can use reliably and teach predictably.  Then there's the other stuff that operates in any kind of wacky way the GM wants, but isn't repeatable.  When that staff of animate mushroom people runs out of charges, that's probably the end of that effect.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on August 06, 2021, 02:55:16 PM

Quote from: SonTodoGato on August 06, 2021, 01:07:54 PMOn the other hand, you have a party of people who are not flashy casters. Maybe there's one wizard, who has to concoct a potion to get visions in the fumes about the location or use tarot cards to get hints, and can spend a turn chanting the incantations to shoot a whirlwind of fire or summon a fire elemental to cast it for him. The warriors of the party can wield weapons that have been blessed by a local priest, but these weapons don't have a "+1" mechanical effect; they carry a blessing, which may prove useful against the undead. The druid may turn into a beast, wield a magical staff that paralyizes those who touch it or summon gusts of wind and thunder against them. They don't fight on equal terms; it's a war. There's an element of horror (because you don't know what you're up to) apart from stealth and action, and you can't count on magic spells as though they were ammunition. Magic works indirectly, through effects, and it requires a ritual or components, as opposed to just simply spending mana points for superpowers.

When they finally defeat him, he can cast a spell on his last breath, an old druidic curse, which causes one of the characters to get progressively older. When they get the magical bowl, they realize that it allows a person with a pure heart to get visions from the future. Rather than being a mechanical aid, it become more of a plot device.

As you can see there are no mechanics, no physical energy, no clear laws; just magic. We all know it has some implicit rules and limitations, but we don't find a physical explanation as to how it works its magic. We don't think in terms of mechanics. It's a legend.

I highlighted what I think is the key landmine in this otherwise very-cool-sounding approach: in the context of a game, it doesn't matter how much roleplaying atmosphere and how much thinking-in-terms-of-legends you create in or attribute to the characters. The players are going to think in terms of mechanics, if not all the time, then inevitably at some critical point.

To take one example, consider the weapon which doesn't have a fixed +1 bonus, but "carr(ies) a blessing, which may be useful against the undead". Well, if it's useful against the undead, how is it useful?  Does it keep them from approaching the wielder?  If so, what's the radius of the protected area?  And if the blessing "may" be useful, under what conditions would it not be?  Against certain kinds of undead? On certain places of cursed ground? If the wielder's committed an action his religion deems sinful?  Either the answers to these questions are consistent, in which case I think they effectively amount to mechanical rules, or they are inconsistent, in which case they're heading straight for the inevitable clash of players disliking a GM-fiat ruling, especially if it disadvantages them or the GM contradicts himself about how the magic works because he's forgotten how it was applied last time.

In principle you can get the best of both worlds by making sure there are game-applicable mechanical rules and the GM knows and consistently applies them, as long as the PCs aren't allowed to start out knowing those rules. But there, again, I think one ultimately winds up with only one of two alternatives: either it's feasible (i.e. doesn't require excessive PC time, cost, or risk) for players to figure out those rules by experiment and analysis, or it isn't.  If it is feasible, then the mage-PC players are going to turn the game into a Rise of Sufficiently Analyzed Magic campaign (because again, players will expend effort on figuring out how to maximize their characters' effectiveness), which may not be to everyone's taste or interest; if it isn't feasible, then we have the GM-fiat problem again, compounded by the frustration of people who thought it was possible to figure out a solution and found out the hard way it wasn't.

Unexplained magic that's under no obligation to be consistent or quantified works much better in games where the PCs aren't allowed to wield it. But an available player action that can be mechanically effective in the game has to be consistent and quantified, at least to some degree, or it will either disrupt the game (if it's too powerful) or be abandoned (if it's too ineffective).

I don't care about mechanics. I'll make something up on the spot. If it's blessed, it may be useful. How? That will depend. Some players find it hard to think outside of the book; particularly Spaniards, in my experience. Others understand it right from the get-go and see it coming a mile ahead. We're here to tell and play stories, situations and adventures, and I won't let the rules get in the way. That being said, this is not at all like the wokes who are here to "tell a story together" in which nothing bad can happen. It's just a rules-light approach highly consistent with the old school mindset.

Quote from: SonTodoGato on August 06, 2021, 12:30:13 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on August 05, 2021, 04:29:29 PM
Well... not sure.

First, how is this "new school'? How is O&D's vancian magic - you've got two first level spell and one second level spell and they always work similarly etc. - any better?

Second, I LIKE random magic (on the veio of DCC RPG etc.)... but I think it is mostly a matter of taste. And it is not common in most literature - except Lieber and occasionally Vance (but rare in D&D). Gandalf would never cast a fireballs and see it occasionally explode in his own face. Magic does not "fail" often; when it does, there is a rational reason (maybe Arioch just doesn't want to answer at this time).

Third, there are concrete rules to hitting someone with your sword... because we are playing this game. Magic-users need rules too.

Fourth, eh, there is plenty of sci-fi (or sci-fi looking) stuff in OD&D.

I think the easiest way to make magic "magical" when you NEED rules is making these rules somewhat ARBITRARY (when you resurrect someone, he might reincarnate in a duck).

My point is not just about mechanics; that's addition. We can work the mechanics out just fine.

People just have different paradigms as to how we imagine magic. One group treats it as a superstition, whose means and inner workings are beyond our reach or appear to work on a more symbolic aspect rather than physical. In this worldview magic is rare and obscure and only a few study it. This does not mean random and non-sensical, it just simply means it works in mysterious ways which we have not (and probably will never) decipher.

The other one treats magic as an energy or force of nature which can be understood, measured and even harnessed by machines, thus turning it into a science rather than something supernatural. It can be openly learned at colleges of wizards, it can power machines, it's simply shooting beams of energy or having levitating books.

My point is that the first view keeps magic more special than the second one. If magic is so ubiquitous, people get used to it and take it for granted. If magic is rare and non-physical, players are dealing with forces outside of their comprehension.

Examples of "natural" magic

A magic-powered machine, magic weapons, lighting up a city with "magic", shooting beams, "storing" magic inside a glowing pink crystal, teleporters, a healing spell which is bright green light; basically, magic is the fantasy equivalent of electricity. It is an energy that can be converted into other forms of energy under a certain kind of replicable conditions (see Eberron, Magitek, etc.). Having different "schools" of magic (thaumaturgy, conjuration, change, control, entropy, etc.) is part of this as well

Examples of superstitious magic

Seeing the face of your soulmate in a mirror while backwards walking up a staircase, a magical sword which makes you invincible, a good luck charm, getting lost in the woods makes you end up in the realm of the fairies, a voodoo doll, a cup that shatters upon "hearing" a lie, a statue that kills all the virgins who touch it, a man turning into a wolf on Fridays, etc.

In these cases, there is no physical, natural means through which magic works; it's simply a ritual or objects which causes an effect through means unknown. It works more on a subjective and symbolic field rather than a physical, natural, observable phenomenon.

For natural magic, vampires are killed by UV light. For superstitious magic, it is never explained but it is implied that they hate the brightness of the sun because it is the light of good and they are evil creatures of the night.

QuoteSame thing works for deities, BTW. 5e has a spell where two married people get a +2 bonus to AC for a while after marriage. I'd prefer something like - your marriage is official in your deities' eyes. So you might gain entrance to Hades to rescue her soul, etc. No mechanic bonuses, just a narrative tool.

You idea is far better. Instead of being a mechanic, it has meaning. I guess we coincide on this; making magic part of the "story" rather then a mechanic.

Ah, okay, I see your point here. Yes, I agree. Magic is much more flavorful when mysterious and unexplainable.

It's somewhat hard to do, mechanically speaking, but I like it. I always try to make things a bit dubious (sometimes combining what you call "natural" and "superstitious" magic) so the PCs do not know exactly what they're dealing with...

Here is a bit I am particularly proud of (if I may say so), might be relevant:

Addendum: Living spells

Even if your magic system is completely different from the ones presented above, the idea of "spells as living entities" is worth considering. My main inspiration for this concept are the works of Jack Vance. Terry Pratchett uses it very effectively for comic effect. Our goal, however, is somewhat different from these authors, as we are trying to make magic a bit more grim and scary.

This idea can explain various parts of a spell system. For example, spells mishaps are just strong spells that the wizard was unable to control for a moment. Spells occupy a place in the wizard's mind. They can reproduce and be extinguished, like viruses or bacteria, and they can make the wizard sick in the brain. They can lie dormant in old grimoires and scrolls, or be trapped in talismans and wands. They can mutate with time, or generate funny interactions with one another. Magic items lose power after all spells store within are spent – leaving a single spell unused might prevent this in some cases, probably because some spells can reproduce through parthenogenesis.

These things would ordinarily inhabit another planet, parallel to our own, where they roam free, only to be randomly picked by random wizards to fuel their actions. The most powerful ones could even take a physical form if they wish. Every wizard should have some grasp of this concept, even if only in a subconscious manner.

What kind of beings are spells, exactly? Well, that is up to you. They might be spirits, demons, angels, elementals, or beings of pure energy. Their minds are probably extremely simple or completely alien. They might be servants or parts of powerful beings (the god of fire, etc.). One would assume they do not mind being used by wizards, perhaps because they follow a higher order, or do not grasp the concept enough to organize a rebellion. They probably do not enjoy staying for too long in our plane, since most magic is temporary.

The truth, however, could be darker than the characters things. Maybe these beings can feel, and consider every casting a small torture, and repeated summoning a form of slavery. The screaming faces that appear every time you hurl an energy spell at your enemies are more than illusions. Magic artifacts may require the binding of a sentient spirit in a piece of metal or wood. Like trapping fireflies to make a lantern... or imprisoning Beethoven in a music box for your own amusement. The demon that lives in your sword is always willing to help you in your fights in exchange for some blood... but for how long? Maybe all wizards know this and keep it secret, or maybe they refuse to see it. Maybe it is only a theory, a legend, a hunch... an uneasy feeling in the back of their heads.

And maybe one day the wizards might find that these things want revenge.

(source: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/284302/Dark-Fantasy-Magic)

Quote from: jhkim on August 05, 2021, 12:53:45 PM
The simplest example of non-scientific magic is spirit magic, where magic is handled as role-played interaction and negotiation with NPC spirits. A lot of old-school, non-storytelling games handle interaction with NPCs as pure role-play rather than by dice-rolling rules. There are other possibilities as well. In my Water-uphill World campaign, I represented magic as a dungeon the PCs would go to in their minds. Based on where they went and challenges passed, they gained various magical abilities. It was pretty clearly defined in exactly the same way that a tricks-and-traps dungeons is  (as opposed to a tactical combat board game dungeon.

This is a good approach.  There would need to be some things the DM established in his own mind first, I think.  If the DM is just making it up as they go there's always the chance that he could warp the outcome to be too easy or too hard (or too weak or too strong, you get the idea).  If the DM has set what will work and how, or even just what the spirits want and are willing to give, then it becomes like a puzzle.  This would create a unique flavor, I think.

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 05, 2021, 10:32:44 AM

Quote from: Wrath of God on August 04, 2021, 09:23:59 PM

Quoteand is also basically woke garbage because "believing hard enough changes reality" is basically the same logic

Not really - because Believing Hard in Ascencion is quantifiable skill that allows you to change reality

QuoteBecause the medium of RPGs is all about using defined rules and tools to solve problems

That's quite narrow definition - unless you define problem extremely widely.

Mage the Ascension is literally, "if you believe it hard enough you can make it real in defiance of all natural laws." That is precise mindset pushed by the lunatics who say Men can be Women if they believe they are. Mage is Woke wish fulfilment where they can change reality to meet whatever their whims of the day happen to be and the villains are caricatures of the Right Wing; oppressors who wish to impose an objective reality that will keep them from being able to be woman or a sea turtle or whatever. The latest Mage book literally paints it as conservatives are trying to oppress and ruin the world for their own gain and good Mages must be good transgendered woke Leftards and oppose them by believing really hard; because Utopia WILL come if you just kill enough of the unbelievers in it.

I ran Mage the Ascension.  Not because I wanted to tell some story about the left vs the right.   I could have given two shits about politics then (and now I'm pretty centrist in my politics): I ran a Mage game so I could tell a story about modern wizards throwing lightning bolts at vampires, werewolves, "Terminator" and "Mr. Smith" ripoffs in Philadelphia - with a side dish of dimension hopping.   Not "everything" is politics. 

And actually, you could play a pretty decent Technocracy game if you'd wanted (I had considered doing that- kind of like Paranoia in Mage, but you'd be blasting foes with technomagic) but my enthusiasm for White Wolf waned by the time I had gotten that far. 

Now, because I've, done that (probably 15 years ago now), I'm running Ars Magica which is a bit more of a grounded Magic system than Mage- requires less GM interpretation, though is still very flexible.  Magic is simply of the natural order, and a magus of the 13th century  understand how that natural order works better than most.     

Quote from: SonTodoGato on August 06, 2021, 07:40:10 PMI don't care about mechanics. I'll make something up on the spot.

Then why have rules at all?  Isn't this just as good an answer if somebody says, "Okay, I'm going to roll to hit; what number do I need vs. this Armour Class?" as it is if somebody says, "Okay, I draw the blessed sword; what effect does that have on the vampire?"

I don't ask that to be obstreperous, but in my experience the one thing guaranteed to annoy, infuriate and eventually drive away players is inconsistency in how effective their actions are allowed to be, especially when enforced to their disadvantage by GM fiat. This approach really does sound like a roadmap straight to that point.

As Brandon Sanderson wrote, it's much more important in story terms what your magicians can't do than what they can, and anything that forms a limit on a PC magician's capacities amounts to a mechanical rule.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on August 07, 2021, 07:51:29 PM

Quote from: SonTodoGato on August 06, 2021, 07:40:10 PMI don't care about mechanics. I'll make something up on the spot.

Then why have rules at all?  Isn't this just as good an answer if somebody says, "Okay, I'm going to roll to hit; what number do I need vs. this Armour Class?" as it is if somebody says, "Okay, I draw the blessed sword; what effect does that have on the vampire?"

I don't ask that to be obstreperous, but in my experience the one thing guaranteed to annoy, infuriate and eventually drive away players is inconsistency in how effective their actions are allowed to be, especially when enforced to their disadvantage by GM fiat. This approach really does sound like a roadmap straight to that point.

As Brandon Sanderson wrote, it's much more important in story terms what your magicians can't do than what they can, and anything that forms a limit on a PC magician's capacities amounts to a mechanical rule.

It's a good question. I don't really have a set of rules apart from a few mechanics which are "necessary" to add a level of unpredictability, challenge and fairness, particularly to combat. I don't keep much track of points, I do zero math and same goes for my players. We role a few dice when we need to. I don't do armor class, challenge rating, or stuff like that. You either pass or you don't. I do advantage occasionally.

I don't play by any system because I find them unnecessary and I don't want to learn when I can play just as well on our own rules. Few people get it, but most players appreciate the simplicity and how straight to the point and flexible the "rules" are. I try to be fair and I am very lenient with my players. So far, I haven't gotten complaints, but it's not for everyone and I'm aware of that.

Quote from: SonTodoGato on August 07, 2021, 11:13:04 PM

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on August 07, 2021, 07:51:29 PM

Quote from: SonTodoGato on August 06, 2021, 07:40:10 PMI don't care about mechanics. I'll make something up on the spot.

Then why have rules at all?  Isn't this just as good an answer if somebody says, "Okay, I'm going to roll to hit; what number do I need vs. this Armour Class?" as it is if somebody says, "Okay, I draw the blessed sword; what effect does that have on the vampire?"

I don't ask that to be obstreperous, but in my experience the one thing guaranteed to annoy, infuriate and eventually drive away players is inconsistency in how effective their actions are allowed to be, especially when enforced to their disadvantage by GM fiat. This approach really does sound like a roadmap straight to that point.

As Brandon Sanderson wrote, it's much more important in story terms what your magicians can't do than what they can, and anything that forms a limit on a PC magician's capacities amounts to a mechanical rule.

It's a good question. I don't really have a set of rules apart from a few mechanics which are "necessary" to add a level of unpredictability, challenge and fairness, particularly to combat. I don't keep much track of points, I do zero math and same goes for my players. We role a few dice when we need to. I don't do armor class, challenge rating, or stuff like that. You either pass or you don't. I do advantage occasionally.

I don't play by any system because I find them unnecessary and I don't want to learn when I can play just as well on our own rules. Few people get it, but most players appreciate the simplicity and how straight to the point and flexible the "rules" are. I try to be fair and I am very lenient with my players. So far, I haven't gotten complaints, but it's not for everyone and I'm aware of that.

So, basically, you aren't talking about RPG's at all... you're talking about Storygames.

Quote from: zagreus on August 07, 2021, 05:19:51 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 05, 2021, 10:32:44 AM

Quote from: Wrath of God on August 04, 2021, 09:23:59 PM

Quoteand is also basically woke garbage because "believing hard enough changes reality" is basically the same logic

Not really - because Believing Hard in Ascencion is quantifiable skill that allows you to change reality

QuoteBecause the medium of RPGs is all about using defined rules and tools to solve problems

That's quite narrow definition - unless you define problem extremely widely.

Mage the Ascension is literally, "if you believe it hard enough you can make it real in defiance of all natural laws." That is precise mindset pushed by the lunatics who say Men can be Women if they believe they are. Mage is Woke wish fulfilment where they can change reality to meet whatever their whims of the day happen to be and the villains are caricatures of the Right Wing; oppressors who wish to impose an objective reality that will keep them from being able to be woman or a sea turtle or whatever. The latest Mage book literally paints it as conservatives are trying to oppress and ruin the world for their own gain and good Mages must be good transgendered woke Leftards and oppose them by believing really hard; because Utopia WILL come if you just kill enough of the unbelievers in it.

I ran Mage the Ascension.  Not because I wanted to tell some story about the left vs the right.   I could have given two shits about politics then (and now I'm pretty centrist in my politics): I ran a Mage game so I could tell a story about modern wizards throwing lightning bolts at vampires, werewolves, "Terminator" and "Mr. Smith" ripoffs in Philadelphia - with a side dish of dimension hopping.   Not "everything" is politics. 

And actually, you could play a pretty decent Technocracy game if you'd wanted (I had considered doing that- kind of like Paranoia in Mage, but you'd be blasting foes with technomagic) but my enthusiasm for White Wolf waned by the time I had gotten that far. 

Now, because I've, done that (probably 15 years ago now), I'm running Ars Magica which is a bit more of a grounded Magic system than Mage- requires less GM interpretation, though is still very flexible.  Magic is simply of the natural order, and a magus of the 13th century  understand how that natural order works better than most.   

Oh, I have run Mage as well; until relatively recently, I had an ongoing campaign that spanned two and a half decades (2e was the new hotness just as I took the reigns when the prior ST burned out after 6 sessions). When WW killed the line in 2002 to try and launch their NWoD (now with even more gnostic heresies) I kept right on going and ultimately wrote my "White Book Mage" because the old books weren't all that available and purchasable pdfs for them weren't yet a thing.

But over time I came to a realization that the game's metaphysics were garbage and you can see in my WBM (I've shared links to it here several times so search my post history if you care to look) I'd already started houseruling much more defined mechanics into the system and the fluff I included had a generally much more concrete cosmology than the traditional "belief makes it real" of the official books and my actual campaign even more so with the struggle over the Anchorheads of Reality (and eventually their source) becoming THE metaphysics of the campaign.

Hard mechanics because the soft stuff wasn't a game; it Storygame style improv theatre and really indulged the idea of the "GM as frustrated author" which is not what I've ever enjoyed my games being. My Mage setting had always been a sandbox and so I had always had house rules (even before I codified them in WBM) to make magick less of a constant improv theatre asspull.

And then I ran headlong into the politics shoved into Mage20. At first I ignored it, but the authors have grown ever more shrill and with the some of the specifics wherein they linked "not letting men be women because they believe it" to the various evil forces trying to keep magick from letting people change sexes like they're clothing and basically "objective reality is evil because it won't obey me" it finally clicked that the whole construct of Mage is just one big Leftard wankfest where their Utopia is being kept from them by the evil bourgeoisie (i.e. the collective belief of working class Americans and their Christian morality that wouldn't indulge the depraved whims of adult children who were so pampered they had to invent struggles just to feel like they'd accomplished something).

That's when I stopped running Mage and started adapting my White Book Mage rules towards my own urban fantasy setting where monsters are again monsters and morality and reality are objective and the supernatural works according to those laws of reality.

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 08, 2021, 11:23:05 AM
So, basically, you aren't talking about RPG's at all... you're talking about Storygames.

Call it whatever you want. I'm not sure if its meant to be disparaging but I prefer this kind of gaming over learning complex rules to arrive at the same results.

Quote from: SonTodoGato on August 08, 2021, 01:44:37 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 08, 2021, 11:23:05 AM
So, basically, you aren't talking about RPG's at all... you're talking about Storygames.

Call it whatever you want. I'm not sure if its meant to be disparaging but I prefer this kind of gaming over learning complex rules to arrive at the same results.

But they're most likely NOT the same results. In a game you have rules so that unexpected results can happen because there are rules that mean sometimes a PC fails when all evidence says their success was all but assured, where ones who look certain to lose pull off amazing wins anyway and where players use their understanding of the rules as the setting's "physics" to concoct plans that work even if the GM doesn't actually think they should.

Without the rules it's just the GM's whims and limitations on what's possible with a random dice toss here and there to make it seem like things are random. The PCs only succeed if you want them to succeed, they fail no matter what if you want them to fail. And the system turns into a metagame of "how do we best butter up the GM or play to the GM's biases to ensure success?" rather than one where Players can judge actions based on objective rules.

You're not playing a game, you're engaged in a cooperative story building session.

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 08, 2021, 02:51:34 PM

Quote from: SonTodoGato on August 08, 2021, 01:44:37 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 08, 2021, 11:23:05 AM
So, basically, you aren't talking about RPG's at all... you're talking about Storygames.

Call it whatever you want. I'm not sure if its meant to be disparaging but I prefer this kind of gaming over learning complex rules to arrive at the same results.

But they're most likely NOT the same results. In a game you have rules so that unexpected results can happen because there are rules that mean sometimes a PC fails when all evidence says their success was all but assured, where ones who look certain to lose pull off amazing wins anyway and where players use their understanding of the rules as the setting's "physics" to concoct plans that work even if the GM doesn't actually think they should.

Without the rules it's just the GM's whims and limitations on what's possible with a random dice toss here and there to make it seem like things are random. The PCs only succeed if you want them to succeed, they fail no matter what if you want them to fail. And the system turns into a metagame of "how do we best butter up the GM or play to the GM's biases to ensure success?" rather than one where Players can judge actions based on objective rules.

You're not playing a game, you're engaged in a cooperative story building session.

You just need to play with people you trust and whose goal is to have fun. If you have to keep them in check so that they won't "cheat", you're not doing it right.

I don't know what gave you the impression that they'll succeed fail if I want. There are die rolls and character scores, they're just limited to whenever we need them. I allow my players to "negotiate" with me and they have opportunities to make suggestions as to how to handle a situation. If it sounds fair, reasonable and fun, we can have it.

Quote from: SonTodoGato on August 08, 2021, 03:16:48 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 08, 2021, 02:51:34 PM

Quote from: SonTodoGato on August 08, 2021, 01:44:37 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 08, 2021, 11:23:05 AM
So, basically, you aren't talking about RPG's at all... you're talking about Storygames.

Call it whatever you want. I'm not sure if its meant to be disparaging but I prefer this kind of gaming over learning complex rules to arrive at the same results.

But they're most likely NOT the same results. In a game you have rules so that unexpected results can happen because there are rules that mean sometimes a PC fails when all evidence says their success was all but assured, where ones who look certain to lose pull off amazing wins anyway and where players use their understanding of the rules as the setting's "physics" to concoct plans that work even if the GM doesn't actually think they should.

Without the rules it's just the GM's whims and limitations on what's possible with a random dice toss here and there to make it seem like things are random. The PCs only succeed if you want them to succeed, they fail no matter what if you want them to fail. And the system turns into a metagame of "how do we best butter up the GM or play to the GM's biases to ensure success?" rather than one where Players can judge actions based on objective rules.

You're not playing a game, you're engaged in a cooperative story building session.

You just need to play with people you trust and whose goal is to have fun. If you have to keep them in check so that they won't "cheat", you're not doing it right.

I don't know what gave you the impression that they'll succeed fail if I want. There are die rolls and character scores, they're just limited to whenever we need them. I allow my players to "negotiate" with me and they have opportunities to make suggestions as to how to handle a situation. If it sounds fair, reasonable and fun, we can have it.

Right. Storygame.

So I'll just direct you to the header for this section of the forum (emphasis added);

"For discussion of traditional pen-and-paper roleplaying games and anything related to their game mechanics and settings, as well as industry events and gossip. See "Other Games" forum below for story-games."

So maybe a discussion of the sort of mechanics you and your players negotiate out for how magic works and which stats/roll you do use and track (i.e. if you decide someone has a carry capacity of 200 lb. then I presume it remains in place as a stat rather than something that goes away and you just re-negotiate it the next time it comes up) would pull this thread back more on topic for this forum.

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 08, 2021, 12:45:22 PM

Quote from: zagreus on August 07, 2021, 05:19:51 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 05, 2021, 10:32:44 AM

Quote from: Wrath of God on August 04, 2021, 09:23:59 PM

Quoteand is also basically woke garbage because "believing hard enough changes reality" is basically the same logic

Not really - because Believing Hard in Ascencion is quantifiable skill that allows you to change reality

QuoteBecause the medium of RPGs is all about using defined rules and tools to solve problems

That's quite narrow definition - unless you define problem extremely widely.

Mage the Ascension is literally, "if you believe it hard enough you can make it real in defiance of all natural laws." That is precise mindset pushed by the lunatics who say Men can be Women if they believe they are. Mage is Woke wish fulfilment where they can change reality to meet whatever their whims of the day happen to be and the villains are caricatures of the Right Wing; oppressors who wish to impose an objective reality that will keep them from being able to be woman or a sea turtle or whatever. The latest Mage book literally paints it as conservatives are trying to oppress and ruin the world for their own gain and good Mages must be good transgendered woke Leftards and oppose them by believing really hard; because Utopia WILL come if you just kill enough of the unbelievers in it.

I ran Mage the Ascension.  Not because I wanted to tell some story about the left vs the right.   I could have given two shits about politics then (and now I'm pretty centrist in my politics): I ran a Mage game so I could tell a story about modern wizards throwing lightning bolts at vampires, werewolves, "Terminator" and "Mr. Smith" ripoffs in Philadelphia - with a side dish of dimension hopping.   Not "everything" is politics. 

And actually, you could play a pretty decent Technocracy game if you'd wanted (I had considered doing that- kind of like Paranoia in Mage, but you'd be blasting foes with technomagic) but my enthusiasm for White Wolf waned by the time I had gotten that far. 

Now, because I've, done that (probably 15 years ago now), I'm running Ars Magica which is a bit more of a grounded Magic system than Mage- requires less GM interpretation, though is still very flexible.  Magic is simply of the natural order, and a magus of the 13th century  understand how that natural order works better than most.   

Oh, I have run Mage as well; until relatively recently, I had an ongoing campaign that spanned two and a half decades (2e was the new hotness just as I took the reigns when the prior ST burned out after 6 sessions). When WW killed the line in 2002 to try and launch their NWoD (now with even more gnostic heresies) I kept right on going and ultimately wrote my "White Book Mage" because the old books weren't all that available and purchasable pdfs for them weren't yet a thing.

But over time I came to a realization that the game's metaphysics were garbage and you can see in my WBM (I've shared links to it here several times so search my post history if you care to look) I'd already started houseruling much more defined mechanics into the system and the fluff I included had a generally much more concrete cosmology than the traditional "belief makes it real" of the official books and my actual campaign even more so with the struggle over the Anchorheads of Reality (and eventually their source) becoming THE metaphysics of the campaign.

Hard mechanics because the soft stuff wasn't a game; it Storygame style improv theatre and really indulged the idea of the "GM as frustrated author" which is not what I've ever enjoyed my games being. My Mage setting had always been a sandbox and so I had always had house rules (even before I codified them in WBM) to make magick less of a constant improv theatre asspull.

And then I ran headlong into the politics shoved into Mage20. At first I ignored it, but the authors have grown ever more shrill and with the some of the specifics wherein they linked "not letting men be women because they believe it" to the various evil forces trying to keep magick from letting people change sexes like they're clothing and basically "objective reality is evil because it won't obey me" it finally clicked that the whole construct of Mage is just one big Leftard wankfest where their Utopia is being kept from them by the evil bourgeoisie (i.e. the collective belief of working class Americans and their Christian morality that wouldn't indulge the depraved whims of adult children who were so pampered they had to invent struggles just to feel like they'd accomplished something).

That's when I stopped running Mage and started adapting my White Book Mage rules towards my own urban fantasy setting where monsters are again monsters and morality and reality are objective and the supernatural works according to those laws of reality.

This is pretty much my experience with what happened in m20. They made it impossible to ignore the politics in it. The only thing good I can say about ascension now is creative thaumaturgy. I need to also take a look at ars magicka, but I saw some good rulesets for GURPS. It's a shame the basic premise of mage was good originally. A war for control of reality, mysterious organization that believes mages are are a threat to humanity and view them as a force of chaos. Every story I told with mage was usually from the perspective of a hermetic order or some kind of group. Avoiding the sillier shit

Quote from: Ocule on August 09, 2021, 11:42:39 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 08, 2021, 12:45:22 PM

Quote from: zagreus on August 07, 2021, 05:19:51 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 05, 2021, 10:32:44 AM

Quote from: Wrath of God on August 04, 2021, 09:23:59 PM

Quoteand is also basically woke garbage because "believing hard enough changes reality" is basically the same logic

Not really - because Believing Hard in Ascencion is quantifiable skill that allows you to change reality

QuoteBecause the medium of RPGs is all about using defined rules and tools to solve problems

That's quite narrow definition - unless you define problem extremely widely.

Mage the Ascension is literally, "if you believe it hard enough you can make it real in defiance of all natural laws." That is precise mindset pushed by the lunatics who say Men can be Women if they believe they are. Mage is Woke wish fulfilment where they can change reality to meet whatever their whims of the day happen to be and the villains are caricatures of the Right Wing; oppressors who wish to impose an objective reality that will keep them from being able to be woman or a sea turtle or whatever. The latest Mage book literally paints it as conservatives are trying to oppress and ruin the world for their own gain and good Mages must be good transgendered woke Leftards and oppose them by believing really hard; because Utopia WILL come if you just kill enough of the unbelievers in it.

I ran Mage the Ascension.  Not because I wanted to tell some story about the left vs the right.   I could have given two shits about politics then (and now I'm pretty centrist in my politics): I ran a Mage game so I could tell a story about modern wizards throwing lightning bolts at vampires, werewolves, "Terminator" and "Mr. Smith" ripoffs in Philadelphia - with a side dish of dimension hopping.   Not "everything" is politics. 

And actually, you could play a pretty decent Technocracy game if you'd wanted (I had considered doing that- kind of like Paranoia in Mage, but you'd be blasting foes with technomagic) but my enthusiasm for White Wolf waned by the time I had gotten that far. 

Now, because I've, done that (probably 15 years ago now), I'm running Ars Magica which is a bit more of a grounded Magic system than Mage- requires less GM interpretation, though is still very flexible.  Magic is simply of the natural order, and a magus of the 13th century  understand how that natural order works better than most.   

Oh, I have run Mage as well; until relatively recently, I had an ongoing campaign that spanned two and a half decades (2e was the new hotness just as I took the reigns when the prior ST burned out after 6 sessions). When WW killed the line in 2002 to try and launch their NWoD (now with even more gnostic heresies) I kept right on going and ultimately wrote my "White Book Mage" because the old books weren't all that available and purchasable pdfs for them weren't yet a thing.

But over time I came to a realization that the game's metaphysics were garbage and you can see in my WBM (I've shared links to it here several times so search my post history if you care to look) I'd already started houseruling much more defined mechanics into the system and the fluff I included had a generally much more concrete cosmology than the traditional "belief makes it real" of the official books and my actual campaign even more so with the struggle over the Anchorheads of Reality (and eventually their source) becoming THE metaphysics of the campaign.

Hard mechanics because the soft stuff wasn't a game; it Storygame style improv theatre and really indulged the idea of the "GM as frustrated author" which is not what I've ever enjoyed my games being. My Mage setting had always been a sandbox and so I had always had house rules (even before I codified them in WBM) to make magick less of a constant improv theatre asspull.

And then I ran headlong into the politics shoved into Mage20. At first I ignored it, but the authors have grown ever more shrill and with the some of the specifics wherein they linked "not letting men be women because they believe it" to the various evil forces trying to keep magick from letting people change sexes like they're clothing and basically "objective reality is evil because it won't obey me" it finally clicked that the whole construct of Mage is just one big Leftard wankfest where their Utopia is being kept from them by the evil bourgeoisie (i.e. the collective belief of working class Americans and their Christian morality that wouldn't indulge the depraved whims of adult children who were so pampered they had to invent struggles just to feel like they'd accomplished something).

That's when I stopped running Mage and started adapting my White Book Mage rules towards my own urban fantasy setting where monsters are again monsters and morality and reality are objective and the supernatural works according to those laws of reality.

This is pretty much my experience with what happened in m20. They made it impossible to ignore the politics in it. The only thing good I can say about ascension now is creative thaumaturgy. I need to also take a look at ars magicka, but I saw some good rulesets for GURPS. It's a shame the basic premise of mage was good originally. A war for control of reality, mysterious organization that believes mages are are a threat to humanity and view them as a force of chaos. Every story I told with mage was usually from the perspective of a hermetic order or some kind of group. Avoiding the sillier shit

LOL could you give some more examples of politics getting into Mage?  I'm only slighlitly familiar with the setting; I know there are different "schools" and thar magic is "mind over matter". What were the major changes apart from this blatant propaganda?