Free-form magic systems

[Occluded Sun]

Satisfying "free-form" magics in story and legend aren't really - they're based on complex and sophisticated systems of thought that are in their own way as restraining of their effects as modern physics is to engineering.

It's not possible to make a free-form game system that is satisfactory if the players do not bring a shared understanding of such a worldview to impose upon the system. If the system imposes an understanding upon the players, it's not truly free-form.

Freedom cannot be meaningfully expressed without restrictions.

[souran]

Silva;

I understand that when people talk about "free form" magic systems they generally mean something where the effect is created by announcing some sort of desired effect and then rolling dice related to some facet of magic and then reading the results as determinig how close to the disred effect the caster got.

Secondly, I was indeed saying that the metaphysics of magic will say more about how "free form" it is in the long run than its mechanics. A magic system will feel a lot more unique if it is not simply packets of results. Infact players will probably be a lot more willing to let the magic be a tad unbalanced if the magic is defined such that it does X group of things but is useless in Y conditions.

Finally, what "magic" characteristics you have will fundamentally effect how your player casters will approach what effects they try and generate. If you let people have "time" based magic people will think they can change the past. However, if you have a time magical property and then other people who can maniuplate fate then what is possible with the time magic will be percieved to be different.

Perhaps a better analogy might be: If you have magic that is based around controlling the aristotleon elements then players mindset will assume that the guy who controls the wind is the one who shoots lightning even though these are not really related. In such a system people will assume that Wind and Water makes hurricanes, even though there a lot more to hurricanes than that.

However, if you magical elements that let people control gravity, elecrtro-maginatism, strong and weak nuclear force then making hurricanes is not obvious, but most people would look at those and think they could make EMP weapons and nuclear explosions.

[Ancient History]

Tip: when reading the local reviews (called OSSR around here), focus on Ancient History parts, and take Frank parts with a grain of salt. AH is a much more coherent and unbiased fellow (besides being a great writer by himself).

Backing shit up for the moment: Silva, fuck off. Frank and I tend to balance each other out on the reviews. With the exception of the things we both hate enough to get our rant on.

Back on topic...

You can totally have a freeform magic system with constraints. But you need think very carefully about the mechanical as well as the metaphysical nature of what those restraints should look like. The thing is that constraints and difficulties are in large part what make characters and stories interesting - and what make players and gamemasters forced to get creative to deal with. It's why Superman is vulnerable to kryptonite, red suns, magic, and other phlebetonium; if Superman can just punch every single fucking problem, Superman becomes boring and overpowered. If Superman is temporarily de-powered, and has to rely on Kryptonian karate to overcome the villain, the result may be stupid but it is more interesting than "Superman throws the villain into the sun, goes to Tijuana at super-speed to take in a donkey show."

So on a mechanical level, you want to impose constraints on the nature, limitations, and frequency of what you can do and how often you can do it. Some of those limitations might well be "none" - "Yeah, Bob there can set his fingers on fire whenever he wants. Great trick at parties." or "Oh, Sasha can find her friends...anywhere...in the entire universe. Once she friends you on Facebook, you're marked for life."

Generally when talking about frequency, this is taken to either be a static or independent limitation. Static limitations start at "X number of times per time period" and move into resource-dependent stuff like "Sam has X mana in his manapool, which he uses to cast spells, and refreshes when he..." Independent limitations don't have a set resource limit, because the cost is variable - for example, in Shadowrun each spell has Drain which is resisted; theoretically you can cast small spells all day if you're good enough. Earthdawn made time itself the limiting factor, since it takes a certain number of rounds to weave the necessary threads.

But arguably more important than the raw mechanical effects of "how much damage does the fireball do?" and "how many fireballs can I cast?" are the metaphysical questions: can I cast a fireball? If so, why or why not? What else can I do with Fire? What can I not do with fire? If you answer those questions - as Shadowrun pretty much did, with basic restrictions like "Magic isn't intelligent" and "Spells can't summon spirits," you're still left with a relatively large phase space to work in.

[souran]

So on a mechanical level, you want to impose constraints on the nature, limitations, and frequency of what you can do and how often you can do it. Some of those limitations might well be "none" - "Yeah, Bob there can set his fingers on fire whenever he wants. Great trick at parties." or "Oh, Sasha can find her friends...anywhere...in the entire universe. Once she friends you on Facebook, you're marked for life."

I read through this list of magical powers and figure in this universe Brock Sampson must be the greatest wizard in the universe as he has the ability to know if somebody is in his convertible regardless of where he or the the car is in the world.

But arguably more important than the raw mechanical effects of "how much damage does the fireball do?" and "how many fireballs can I cast?" are the metaphysical questions: can I cast a fireball? If so, why or why not? What else can I do with Fire? What can I not do with fire? If you answer those questions - as Shadowrun pretty much did, with basic restrictions like "Magic isn't intelligent" and "Spells can't summon spirits," you're still left with a relatively large phase space to work in.

This is what I have been getting at. Also note that the effect of this is why D&D magic is so broken. it is LACKING any such restricions at all. In D&D the fireball spell ignites combustibles. However, this is not a mandatory effect, it was just what the writer wanted. You could write an alternate fireball that did not ignite anything and it would not violate any "rule" of Vancian D&D magic.

[Archmage Joda]

I do like Mage (I guess one could say that's one of my shitty games I still like, along with nwod changeling), but is there a way to at least make the spheres themselves coherent (not the resolution mechanics of wod or gurps, but just the spheres and their levels themselves)? I had the thought that maybe some overarching rules like "Cannot bring back the dead" or something, along with paring down the spheres a bit would be helpful.

Like, folding "Spirit" and "Death" into one, so as to not have two different categories for monkeying with ghosts and souls and shit, and just flat out eliminating some spheres without some solid reason to have them.

[Ancient History]

Prak's edit: The spell lists in D&D do have quite a bit of repetition and redundancy in them, but not that much.

That's largely a product of several editions worth of refining, though. It took a long time for shit like spell descriptors to get standardized in D&D, and there's still not a spell design system comparable to Shadowrun, because D&D doesn't have a metaphysics framework hashed out.

[Occluded Sun]

The oMage Spheres were meant as a tool for people to describe their character's beliefs with. In practice, people tried to use them as a worldview in themselves, which is bad, and they couldn't represent any arbitrary worldview, which is bad.

The most important aspect of a true-seeming magic system was always meant to be supplied by the players.

[Prak]

Prak's edit: The spell lists in D&D do have quite a bit of repetition and redundancy in them, but not that much.

That's largely a product of several editions worth of refining, though. It took a long time for shit like spell descriptors to get standardized in D&D, and there's still not a spell design system comparable to Shadowrun, because D&D doesn't have a metaphysics framework hashed out.

Yeah, D&D's metaphysics amount to "Divine Gets Healing, Arcane Gets Blasting, unless you're a Bard or rep a god of blasting"

[WPharolin]

I feel like Sanderson's Laws are relevent to this discussion,. Particularly, in talking about the importance of limitations.

http://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-second-law/

[codeGlaze]

Frankly, I think the very concept is inherently unimplementable, because people want it to be balanced and also let them do things that make sense.

For example, someone might be able to conjure matter out of thin air or otherwise get the ability to get matter of their choice at a target location. They could use this to materialize weapons, but logically they should also be able to materialize a chunk of lead in someone's windpipe. In an effects-based system, a "kill a dude" power is likely more expensive than "make a sword", even though it doesn't particularly make sense. But if you're going with a sphere-based system either murdering a dude is underpriced or making a sword is overpriced. I imagine most of the incoherent restrictions come from efforts to kludge away that sort of thing.

Would it be nonsensical to say that bodies (human, animal, etc) are a more complicated target to fuck with? Either they have some kind of natural resistance to being fucked with by arcane (automatic will save? naturally occurring weak AM field?); or they are simply more complicated than raw matter... and therefore require more power to start manipulating at all?

Buffs would be a "gimme" in the sense that maybe they work off of a natural protective aura or... something.

[Username17]

Grossly inflating the lethality of magic actions is not a thing you're going to be able to stop by worrying about personal space. If I can spray boiling brimstone at someone (and what the hell good is a magic system if I can't?), then why couldn't I spray boiling prussic acid instead and expose everyone in the room to millions of times the lethal dose of cyanide?

The reality is that there probably aren't any freeform rules you could make that would allow you to do narratively satisfying things that wouldn't allow you to do much more effective things instead. The raw realities of physics, chemistry, and biology are such that for any effect you'd be able to do with something big and cool looking, you could probably do it much better with something small and boring.

If magic is to be open ended, it can't create effects in the world that then play out as natural laws dictate. It has to create effects on the narrative that are then flavored with whatever special effects seem like they'd sound cool.

-Username17

[Ice9]

Grossly inflating the lethality of magic actions is not a thing you're going to be able to stop by worrying about personal space. If I can spray boiling brimstone at someone (and what the hell good is a magic system if I can't?), then why couldn't I spray boiling prussic acid instead and expose everyone in the room to millions of times the lethal dose of cyanide?

I think there's three things there:
1) A lot of magic effects are going to be potentially lethal. You know what else is potentially lethal? A gunshot to the head. You can solve them the same way - whatever method people use to not die from being shot is the method they use to not die from magic.
2) Being able to create "any substance that exists" is an extremely powerful ability, and shouldn't be given out lightly. And limiting it by complexity doesn't help much, because a number of elements have potent effects by themselves.
3) A magic system doesn't actually have to let you spray boiling brimstone at people. Psychic powers that "only" let you read and control minds, perform telekinesis, and predict the future would still be a damn potent ability to have. And things can expand quite a bit from there without entering "absolute control of all matter" territory.

[Foxwarrior]

Of the two possibilities Frank has laid out, I think the one where people compete with each other to find small and efficient magical solutions to problems sounds a lot cooler than the one where they have damage cones they can describe with any color they want.

[Omegonthesane]

Of the two possibilities Frank has laid out, I think the one where people compete with each other to find small and efficient magical solutions to problems sounds a lot cooler than the one where they have damage cones they can describe with any color they want.

In theory yes. In practice, as he says, the problem of "insta-death spell" comes pre-solved under that system due to players knowing grade school chemistry.

[Foxwarrior]

I read that post too.

There are a lot of other insta-death spells you still have left to invent: for when your enemies are far away, or there are people you don't want to kill, or if they're wearing full protective gear, or they're mages who know how to rapidly change their cellular structure to adapt to any poison, or (not sure about this one) you want to kill them so fast they don't have time to put fifteen bullets in your chest.

Sure, this game might easily end up being so extremely swingy that it's not very interesting to actually play most of the time, but even then it could be quite fun to spend several hours coming up with situations and figuring out the perfect spells for them.

[Username17]

Sure, this game might easily end up being so extremely swingy that it's not very interesting to actually play most of the time, but even then it could be quite fun to spend several hours coming up with situations and figuring out the perfect spells for them.

But that's all you have. You've created a competition to come up with the most brokety broken exploit of a physical law that doesn't exist. And while I can agree in abstract that such things can be entertaining to argue about, they aren't much of a basis upon which to tell cooperative stories on. Whatever physical properties your transmutations have, you can figure out a killer app for them, and once the puzzle is solved it's not really worth talking about anymore.

In Mage, the simplest of transmutations forces you to leave things in the same mass, temperature, and state. So you turn the floor into room temperature solid nitrogen, because that is what you are "limited" to. And um... then the entire building explodes in a frosty detonation, because a few tonnes of compressed solid nitrogen at room temperature will immediately endothermically expand. A lot.

-Username17

[Foxwarrior]

once the puzzle is solved it's not really worth talking about anymore.

Yes, that is how puzzles work. This game could make a fun puzzle book. I'm sure many RPG players have read more RPGs than they've played, and this one could get onto the "exceedingly satisfying to read and discuss with friends even though you've never gotten around to playing it" shelf.

Even if you somehow manage to make a freeform magic system actually balanced and not constantly result in devastating explosions of deadly poison, in the end what you have is a way to bring a CharOP-like activity into the middle of what could have been a heated combat.

[Ice9]

Not into the middle of a combat, unless you allow on-the-fly freeform magic, which is a bad idea because of the RL slowdown involved. Preparation is the way to go.

As far as "physics-style freeform" being inherently broken - still not convinced. The system used in Mage is trivially broken, yes, no argument there. A reasonable argument can be made that "transmute to any element" is always going to be a problem. So - don't have that particular power, maybe?

There's a long way between "total control of matter" and "does nothing", and there's also a long way between "follows all the laws of physics and only the laws of physics" and "narrative based". When I've got a bit of time, maybe tonight, I'll mock up a possible implementation so it's not all theoretical.

[Occluded Sun]

"Transmute to any element" isn't so terrible when the elements involved are earth, air, water, and fire.

If you throw out our scientific understanding of the world, you must also discard its findings.

[Lokathor]

I was always under the impression that when you have a spell "holding" a magical situation in place (eg: transforming a stone floor into a nitrogen ice floor) then when you "release" the effect it just goes back to normal, rather than staying in the new configuration with the physics-engine of the universe suddenly being applied to it. So instead of the nitro-ice floor suddenly exploding into cold when you release the spell, it just turns back to a stone floor when you release the spell.

Is there a particular reason that that general idea would be untenable?

I mean magic should still probably be effects based and all, but that lets you explain why you don't have to worry as carefully about as many physical reactions when you end a spell, and you can instead worry about what sort of effect your spell is doing while the spell is actually going.

[momothefiddler]

I don't see how that's useful in this case; you can give the transmutation spell enough duration for everyone involved to die, and then... you don't have to worry about having inhaled any of it? That's nice, I guess. But, I mean, if it transforms all the gaseous vapor everywhere back into a solid stone floor, does it bring all the people back to life? Does it put all particles back exactly how they were? Is is just a particularly realistic imagination ability? I guess I don't see what that solves without nullifying the concept of magic entirely.

[deaddmwalking]

In a fantasy regime, you could do a lot with 'knowing'. I mean, separating the air into constituent elements and knowing the physical properties of each element at a variety of temperatures is possible, but there may not be a way to acquire that knowledge in character.

Beyond that, limitations on range may circumvent many such issues. If you acquire the necessary knowledge but then havre to ttouch the floor to process the transmutation it becomes an awesome suicide option, but not an 'I win' button.

[Lokathor]

Well, if you want toxic fumes that kill people, you declare it as an area of effect attack. If you want the floor to be brittle because it's ice then you declare it as a spell that's removing hardness from an object.

If you turn the floor to nitro-ice, it just sits there being nitro-ice and only having the effect you picked (reduced hardness or whatever). If you want to turn the floor to ice so that it sucks in all the heat, that's an area of effect attack spell and you get "charged" (roll difficulty, mana cost, whatever system) the same as other people do when they perform an area attack damage spell, even if their fluff is that they're throwing a fireball or calling down lightning or turning all the nearby air into Sarin gas for a round.

The strength of an effects based system (spells do exactly what you pay for) is also the weakness (spell effects don't do anything else that might seem like a logical consequence of what's going on).

[momothefiddler]

@deaddmwalking: unless you're including various academic knowledge skills, or something, that's gonna be hard to adjudicate. Especially considering the wizard capable of flexible matter-related spells like turning the floor into nitrogen is also probably magically capable of physics study far beyond his tech level. And I mean, if a game's gonna be fucked as a story anyway, I'd rather it be by us playing with our broken magic until the setting's gone than us spending a long time studying physics.

@Lokathor: I really don't see why you'd allow turning a floor into solid room temp nitrogen, then. I would much rather have "if you don't have the effects points to mimic the result of that, you can't do it" than "if you don't have the effects points to mimic the result of that, you do it but because ~reasons~ it only acts like a 1-point Blast."

[Username17]

"Transmute to any element" isn't so terrible when the elements involved are earth, air, water, and fire.

If you throw out our scientific understanding of the world, you must also discard its findings.

Then you're just in Ars Magica territory where no one understands how anything is supposed to work even though a lot of people think they do. In a recentish Ars Magica discussion, I made an offhand comment about Rego and Muto and gave a flippant example to show how hard it was to parse that crap. A bunch of Ars Magica fans popped out of the woodwork to claim it was actually easy to resolve... and they all claimed it worked differently. I mean, every single one of those people was wrong about how it works, but more importantly they weren't even wrong in the same way.

Dunning Kruger is a huge problem when you have to whip out physics or alt-physics in games. And alt-physics make things so much worse.

-Username17