Magic as a D&D Edition Setting

[Prak]

There's also the fact that ProCold could be useful even if you don't know what magic you're being hit with.

[Username17]

Obviously, you're going to need multiple resource systems out of combat. Asking around in bars and looking things up in books are things that run on the "only during downtime, and only in town" resource scheme, while picking a lock or setting up an alarm ward are things that run on the "you need a few free minutes, but you can still totally do that in a dungeon" resource scheme. When it comes to things that are more esoteric like "making masterpiece swords" or "opening a portal to a distant land", the resource schemes can be things more esoteric still like "has collected a certain number of mana crystals" or something.

And just as there are multiple different resource schemes going to be in play, there will also be multiple lists to select from. The Priest is different out of combat from the Paladin because he gets to choose from the White list and the Cleric list, while the Paladin gets to choose from the White list and the Knight list.

And of course, there are going to be skills of ambiguous combat/noncombat utility. At least, there had fucking better be. Hiding, riding, and climbing all have clear utility in exploration and scouting, but there are scenarios in which having them is a useful thing during a combat as well. Likely therefore, there will be several lists to choose things off of (for example: skills, rituals, and feats), with sublists within those being opened up by both color and base class. Every Knight gets access to Ride, every White character gets access to Heal, that sort of thing.

Clearly there's room for overlapping skills: All Green characters and Scouts of all colors probably should have access to tracking technology. If you were so determined, you could arrange it so that skill associations from each color were evenly distributed within each base class - so the fact that Heal was on both the White list and the Cleric list wouldn't be any more of a strain on Priests any more than the fact that Planar Knowledge is on both the Cleric list and the Blue list is a strain on Blue Clerics.

-Username17

[Red_Rob]

One of the key things about Magic is the colour wheel. Each colour has two 'ally' colours it works well with and two 'enemy' colours it is traditionally antagonistic towards. I'd like to work this into a proposed system, however I'm having trouble concepting the enemy colour paradigm.

Typically in an Elemental Wheel system it will play out like Rock-Paper-Scissors, with some elements beating others. This leads to a nice, easily grokkable tactical landscape - you want to attack their Fire guy with your Water guy and everyone gets what's going on. But in Magic, Red is opposed by White and Blue. And White is opposed by Red and Black. So when a Red guy and a White guy meet up, what's supposed to happen? Are both of their attacks super effective against the other (meaning battles between opposites are just super short), or are their defenses both super effective (meaning battles between opposites are extra long)? Should the wheel be simplified so W>B>G>U>R>W so there is a clear heirarchy? Or should each enemy colour pair be given some kind of tactical opposite (which would be a hell of a job to create and balance)?

[Foxwarrior]

Doesn't a Rock-Paper-Scissors system mean that you can no longer have a functioning monocolor party?

[Prak]

The Colour Pie doesn't work like that, really. Each colour will have effects that are designed to attack their enemies, sure, but it's not like you say "Oh, he's using Black, I better summon Wurms." It's more like "Well, this black spell specifically targets green creatures" or "this white spell turns mountains into plains."

The Colour Pie isn't a RPS system, it's a division of attitudes that informs what abilities are likely to pop up. Red is impulsive and chaotic, so red creatures get haste and double strike and red spells might make you flip a coin for an outcome, but red almost never gets "tap target creature" abilities because it's uncharacteristic for red. White is about order and peace--including peace through making your enemies dead if necessary--so it gets a lot of "nope, no damage is dealt," healing and "I'm arresting you" abilities.

[...You Lost Me]

I'm totally ok with it being entirely a flavor thing.

[Red_Rob]

Doesn't a Rock-Paper-Scissors system mean that you can no longer have a functioning monocolor party?

Isn't encouraging diversity a good thing? People would generally rather a mixed party was more effective than loading up on 4 carbon copies I think.

The Colour Pie doesn't work like that, really. Each colour will have effects that are designed to attack their enemies, sure, but it's not like you say "Oh, he's using Black, I better summon Wurms." It's more like "Well, this black spell specifically targets green creatures" or "this white spell turns mountains into plains."

Yeah, I didn't mean that every Blue attack should get a super bonus against Red creatures. But it's a fact that each colour does get certain spells that fuck with their enemy colours - whether that's riders that do extra things against targets of the right colour, or spells that negate common tactics used by the colour, there is a definite sense of the colours in conflict. I'm just not sure how to represent that in the RPG without it getting muddled. I mean, would you go up against an enemy you had a bonus against if they get that same bonus against you?

[Prak]

Well, in that case it goes something like this (in CCG terms):

Black is about disease and corruption and death. It weakens creatures (in the form of reducing power and toughness), poisons them, and can outright destroy them. Green opposes this by strengthening creatures (increasing power and toughness), and regenerating creatures (preventing them from being actually destroyed). White opposes it by increasing toughness first, power second, and preventing damage. Black might suck at someone's soul dealing damage and gaining an equal amount of life, white would counter this by flat preventing damage, while all green could really do is prevent the target from dying by increasing it's numbers or regenerating it.
Blue is about control and knowledge. It draws cards, counters spells, unsummons creatures and taps things. Green and red both counter this control by just throwing cannon fodder out. Red also counters this by just having a ton of spells. A classic Red v Blue match would have a fire mage throwing out tons and tons of fire spells, and the control mage countering what spells he could.
Green is all about big creatures and nature. It amplifies mana, throws out lots of small and large creatures to smack you in the face, and can destroy artifacts. It also has some life gain, poison and, as previously mentioned, regeneration. Black counters green by destroying it's creatures. It uses "deal damage to all targets" effects to spread plague amongst the elves to wipe them out, and then uses flat-kill effects to take out the wurms. Blue counters green by simply tying up it's resources.
Red is all about fire and chaos, swarms of goblins, and giant firebreathing dragons. It's main tactic is throwing direct damage or overwhelming your with goblins, but it can also work up to a flight of dragons that come over and wreck your face. Blue counters this by denying the burn spells coming through, while white counters this by just preventing damage and gaining life and having it's own armies of small creatures.
White is peace, order and light. It has armies to defend itself with, will lock down your creatures by arresting them or making them pacifists, and will make itself hard to kill by making your damage meaningless- either by preventing it or by simply having more life. Red counters this by throwing out more damage and black counters this by whittling away at life and destroying white's armies with plague and fright.

[zugschef]

yeah, giving each color opposing abilities is the way to go. this is a non-issue, though. paladin and blackguard pretty much make it clear that they oppose each other, also, the dragoon seems to follow a beat first, talk later approach; hardly what you'd expect from a paladin.

next thing which the color wheel has influence on, is in game communication and interaction. a red dwarf and a blue dwarf will have lots of reasons to hate each other. this stuff seems kind of obvious...

[Red_Rob]

next thing which the color wheel has influence on, is in game communication and interaction. a red dwarf and a blue dwarf will have lots of reasons to hate each other. this stuff seems kind of obvious...

Why would you want that in your game? What good things does it bring to the table?

The reason to have the colours mechanically weak or powerful against other colours is to create interesting tactical choices and reward forward planning and decision making. It also has the bonus feature of being a control valve for the DM - if the Blue character is dominating, you can introduce more Red enemies that get bonuses against them. But having characters of the different colours hate each other? That just leads to boring mono parties, inter party bickering and an excuse for that disruptive player to wreck the game.

[zugschef]

next thing which the color wheel has influence on, is in game communication and interaction. a red dwarf and a blue dwarf will have lots of reasons to hate each other. this stuff seems kind of obvious...

Why would you want that in your game? What good things does it bring to the table?

The reason to have the colours mechanically weak or powerful against other colours is to create interesting tactical choices and reward forward planning and decision making. It also has the bonus feature of being a control valve for the DM - if the Blue character is dominating, you can introduce more Red enemies that get bonuses against them. But having characters of the different colours hate each other? That just leads to boring mono parties, inter party bickering and an excuse for that disruptive player to wreck the game.

first off, i don't care if someone's got an asshole at her/his gaming table. that's something that person must solve on her/his own.

back on topic, we're talking about a setting. if you're playing in middle earth you won't have orcs and elves interact on friendly terms. in this case, namely magic the gathering, you won't have mountain dwarves and island dwarves interact on friendly terms. that's because their philosophies are mostly incompatible, but that still doesn't prevent players from forming a party of five where each comes with a different color. what it does imply, though, is that players need some (fluff) reasons for that. it's not like an elven druid, a human paladin, a merfolk wizard, a human necromancer and a goblin dragoon are going to accidently meet in a bar and decide to team up for swag, booty, booze and all teh womenz.

the argument that the mc could rebalance the game by controling a dominating blue wizard pc with little red goblins is invalid, btw. that's because it also means that the mc can't run an adventure to destroy a red zitadel of some pyromaniacs when the party consists of not only blue pcs and the blue pc is mostly underpowered.

[DSMatticus]

First topic: MtG does not have an x-counters-y color scheme. Some colors have specific cards/abilities aimed at fucking with a specific color (or abilities that color uses), but those are just that: specific abilities. And what's more, it's frequently a two way street: white loves to screw up black, and black loves to screw up white. If you were going to implement something like this, you'd do it by giving each color specific abilities aimed at messing with other colors, with a focus on their opposing colors. White gets to drop anti-death effects, black gets to drop anti-healing effects, and they laugh at eachother. But you can also just be a white cleric and have no anti-black at all.

Second topic: the philosophy of red and blue (dwarves or otherwise) varies wildly from block to block, because each block is an entirely different setting. And while they have common themes, they are not nearly as violently opposed as you're suggesting. Black, for example, actually fits relatively nicely into the philosophy of its opposites, white and green. White-black lends itself towards some sort of ideology involving the life-death cycle from a spiritual perspective, and black-green lends itself to the exact same thing from a natural perspective. Red-white would make a nice anarchist/libertarian parody - law without force and force without law. So on and so on. Then there's Ravnica.

[Red_Rob]

Sure, it's fine if groups within each colour are antagonistic towards each other. That's almost a prerequisite for having an interesting setting. But having a blanket "Red and Blue characters hate each other" is a terrible idea for a game in which you can ostensibly freely choose to be a red or a blue character without consulting with the rest of the group to make sure you haven't accidentally entered into a blood feud.

Regarding the colour-hose aspect, having each colour get some effects that hinder or counter strategies of the opposing colours would be one way to do it. It would mean that when an enemy Black mage started throwing his Death effects around you'd want to turn to the White Cleric to deal with it, but the Cleric wouldn't necessarily be the best choice to directly attack the Wizard himself. I could see that leading to an interesting teamwork dynamic.

the argument that the mc could rebalance the game by controling a dominating blue wizard pc with little red goblins is invalid, btw. that's because it also means that the mc can't run an adventure to destroy a red zitadel of some pyromaniacs when the party consists of not only blue pcs and the blue pc is mostly underpowered.

That's like saying D&D characters shouldn't have Good and Poor saves because then the MC can't run the Cavern of the Mind Controllers when the Fighter is the weakest character. Characters have strengths and weaknesses, and one of the side effects of that is it allows the MC to balance adventures according to the relative strength of the characters.

[zugschef]

the argument that the mc could rebalance the game by controling a dominating blue wizard pc with little red goblins is invalid, btw. that's because it also means that the mc can't run an adventure to destroy a red zitadel of some pyromaniacs when the party consists of not only blue pcs and the blue pc is mostly underpowered.

That's like saying D&D characters shouldn't have Good and Poor saves because then the MC can't run the Cavern of the Mind Controllers when the Fighter is the weakest character. Characters have strengths and weaknesses, and one of the side effects of that is it allows the MC to balance adventures according to the relative strength of the characters.

i know what you mean. it's just that you don't need special effects for red vs. white or black vs. green to have a tool for balancing or getting a pc back on track. if your melee dude can't fly all day and has to shoot arrows, switch to indoor combat, etc..

as for strategic and tactical choices, they come up if you simply stick to each color's theme for their respective abilities. if blue stands for mind-control and red stands for chaos and freedom, and if red stands for fire and blue for water, then you already have the kind of complexity (as regards how different colored abilities interact with each other) you are talking about.

[Username17]

One of the things that's kind of neat about the card game is how different factions attack each other in different ways. Black and Red go for quick brutal kills, while White drags things out. And this translates to their attack cards against each other, where Red blows up all the Plains, while White locks down Swamps. Ideally, you'd transfer that sort of "feel" to the character abilities for an RPG.

Yes, the Paladin should have some "anti-Black" abilities available, but they shouldn't be the same as the Dragoon's "anti-Blue" abilities. The Dragoon should have stuff that is annoying to Blue and White playstyles in general (Speed Strikes that are uncounterable, Doom Strikes that deal unhealable damage, and so on). But the Dragoon should also have stuff that is specifically anti-White and anti-Blue, but it should still be in terms of setting shit on fire rather than making an anti-Blue ward.

-Username17

[Prak]

It is entirely possible to have a group of five friends who are each aligned with a different colour. There may be strain occasionally, but people from enemy colours don't automatically hate one another. It's about personalities, and Garfield made some colours enemies and some colours allies for game design purposes.

You could very well have an elven druid, a human paladin, a merfolk wizard, a human necromancer and a goblin dragoon all meet up in a bar and go adventuring together.

The Green Elven Druid is basically taoist, believing it is bet to let nature do it's thing, but it's not above having it's grizzly bear buddy smack you in the face.
The White Human Paladin believes in order and peace, but not so much freedom. He's probably highly religious, and thinks that every group needs a hierarchy. He's odd-man out in this group, but he could get along just being "The Religious Guy." As long as he is either in charge, or knows who he's supposed to take orders from, he's fine. He probably has the best sense of tactics, so putting him in charge is a good idea. Keep in mind, just because he's white and a paladin doesn't mean he's good. He could be a paladin of Moloch, the Eater of First Children.
The Blue Merfolk Wizard is, well, your typical D&D wizard. He's probably sitting in the bar with a stack of books the height of him, and reading. He sees knowledge as the ultimate resource. He probably formulates complex plans for upcoming combats.
The Black Human Necromancer isn't even necessarily evil. He just doesn't give a shit about morals. He doesn't care whether society says something is right or wrong, if wants to do it, or he feels it needs doing, he will. This includes eating people or raising your great grandma as an undead soldier, and it includes shooting the Joker in the face without a trial.
The Red Goblin Dragoon is probably the guy sitting at the table playing with the candle. He doesn't care for being told what to do, he doesn't care for tactics, and he doesn't care for plans. In fight he'll rush in and club the people on the other side over the head. He's impulsive. Your best bet on handling him is to either plan around him, or let Necromancer and Druid explain to him why the plan needs to be carried out. If you can befriend him, you're golden.

It's about personalities, not RPS style antagonisms. The personalities clash, but that doesn't make them automatically enemies.

[zugschef]

The Black Human Necromancer isn't even necessarily evil. He just doesn't give a shit about morals. He doesn't care whether society says something is right or wrong, if wants to do it, or he feels it needs doing, he will. This includes eating people or raising your great grandma as an undead soldier, and it includes shooting the Joker in the face without a trial.

from that perspective absolutely nothing is evil. but the term evil is naively stupid anyway. totally and utterly unethical is the correct term for black; and that's as abhorrent as it gets.

[Prak]

What is your point? Ethics is pretty artificial in itself, so I don't see the lack thereof as being particularly abhorrent. Not every black mage is a baby eating rape demon, some just say "My orders were to kill everyone in this compound. That's fucking insane, I'm not going to do it."

[zugschef]

Ethics is pretty artificial in itself, so I don't see the lack thereof as being particularly abhorrent.

now that is insane.

but back on topic, all i wanted to say is that to me black and white or red and blue is a little like the us and the udssr during the cold war. what i think the colors determine (apart from abilities) is politics, philosophy and attitude. that's all. but that's probably a trivial point to make.

[Omegonthesane]

Ethics is pretty artificial in itself, so I don't see the lack thereof as being particularly abhorrent.

now that is insane.

Less so than you'd think. Having a firmly defined ethical code that restricts your actions is in fact a different beast to showing minimal human decency and having no desire to cause unnecessary bloodshed. There's a wide gulf between months of prayer, starvation, and torture-penance in a monastery in Buttfuckistan and "I did what had to be done, I'd rather not dwell on it, next round?" in response to processing the fact you just murdered a kitten to advance your interests.

[Prak]

No, that's essentially correct. It's not so much that a character is red because it can do direct damage, it's red because it's impulsive, and the direct damage is a reflection of that (to hell with defense or countering you, the sooner you're dead, the sooner you stop being a problem)

[CatharzGodfoot]

What happens when a Red character is played as logical, thoughtful, and cautious?

[Prak]

You look to see if he embodies red in other ways. If not then this question is essentially the same as "What happens when a Good character is played as someone who breaks into orphanages and eats babies?"

[Red_Rob]

Well the typical answer is "the character becomes Evil". But that doesn't really work when you are talking about effectively changing class mid campaign.

It really depends on whether you want to force colour-appropriate behaviour or not. If you don't care then just let people play their character however they want. If you want to enforce things you'd need some kind of list of banned behaviours for each colour and dole out penalties if the character does them too many times. But that is probably going to work out about as well as forced alignment usually does. I'd probably just give some guidelines and if a player wants to ignore them he can argue it out with the DM.

[Prak]

yeah, I'd go more the Palladium Alignment route and have a list of "a character of this colour does or doesn't do these things."

There is an additional flexibility with the colours though, it's entirely possible that a character could be impulsive and passionate (red) but also given to making plans and accumulating knowledge (blue). He's simply both Red and Blue.