Magic: the Gathering land/mana tapping mechanics for tabletop RPG's

[OgreBattleFight]

Tap, Untap, gain more land turn by turn, paying upkeep, playing echo cost, sacrificing a land, comes into play bonus or penalty. MtG's core resource mechanic has a lot of versatility that's well known by a lot of tabletop RPG players.

So is there any existing tRPG that approaches their core resource mechanic, action economy similar to MtG? If not I've been thinking about it.

For the Legwork Phase or even Kingdom Management phase of a tRPG, it could be centered on gaining 'Lands' to 'tap' for different effects. It can literally be lands, like getting the Thieves Guild to do something for you requires controlling 2 City lands.

For active combat I think slowly gaining more mana to tap isn't for everyone, so was thinking more in terms of treating your Standard/Bonus/Swift/Movement/.etc, actions like MtG lands, where there can be an Echo cost to a big action.

Or for a specific class like a sorcerer channeling elemental powers, you get X amount of mana slots to to fill with Y colors/schools/elements (5 to 7 is good) and that determines what you can cast.

[deaddmwalking]

I think there have been various 'rage meter' mechanics where you build up more power every round. Rather than giving out land, you can presume that people are gathering energy so they can do '1 tap' powers in the first round, and '2 tap' powers in the second round.

With any type of escalating power you have to explain why it's not available at the beginning of combat (players will want to charge up before a big fight). If you solve that problem, you also have the issue where 'cool abilities' come later in the fight possibly feeling wasted on 'clean up' or overshadowing all of the combat prior to the 'finishing move'.

I think these two issues are more fundamental to the play experience and as you note, not for everyone.

Changing all of the spells to have a mana cost is easier (though still considerable work). A spell that does radiant damage to undead, for instance, might be a 5th level spell and cost 1 red, 1 white, 3 any. Each time your Wizard/Sorcerer takes a level they choose a color. If there are spells that are 3 red, spells that are 3 white, and spells that are 1 red, 1 white, 1 other, the choice of whether to hyper-focus and get some powerful (for their level) spells or generalize and have access to broader magic becomes meaningful.

This can address the problem of all casters having access to all spells, a potential nerf. However, it becomes another solvable problem in power gaming where choosing the right access in the right order can potentially make them more powerful than base-line expectations.

This Reddit Link includes a proposal for doing Magic the Gathering Style mana costs and looks like other various versions I've seen. What it doesn't do is lay out a spell list with costs - instead saying 'give them a cost and/or import them from Magic: The Gathering'. This one doesn't have lands/mana tapping (instead you spend mana down from a pool that resets on a long rest).

Having a system where you 'invoke' power sources and power up for multiple rounds (maybe spending small amounts of mana on defensive spells or reactions) and then unleash powerful effects is a major paradigm shift in standard games. Trying to gank the wizard before he can do anything while protecting your own becomes the strategy. There are fantasy worlds where that type of play flows from the expected fiction - heck even Robert Jordan's Wheel of TIme is basically like that - but wizards being awesome and everyone else being their lackeys isn't to everyone's taste.

[pragma]

Sinless is a Shadowrun clone that can't avoid tripping over its own two feet, but the central mechanic in the downtime phase is controlling assets that you tap to further your interests. Tapping the assets can generate complications, which in turn spawn heists for your gang of criminals to undertake. Though the core mechanic is nigh impenetrable, the downtime phase has some land-like ideas that seem fun.

I think there have been various 'rage meter' mechanics where you build up more power every round. Rather than giving out land, you can presume that people are gathering energy so they can do '1 tap' powers in the first round, and '2 tap' powers in the second round.

Nimble has a Barbarian that bullds up rage dice by spending actions on each round, making it a deep hazard to bad guys. However, the rage dice can be sacrificed for damage mitigation, so this winds up looking like a tanking mechanic similar to the Tome Knight: "hit me or something bad will happen". (For thoroughness of citation: the Kaelik barbarian has a similar core mechanic, though I haven't gotten Tome to the table to see how it works.) As Dead noted, this has some similarity to the drip of lands in MtG enabling more serious powers.

I haven't seen mana slots of different flavors anywhere unless you consider the 3.5 Mystic Theurge, which arguably gives up its most powerful spell to cast from two different colors (arcane and divine).

[OgreBattleFight]

Thanks will look through those.

Instead of D&D/MtG's specific spell entries to cast, going for more Shadowrun's shorter list of effects that vary in power level (so how much mana of the right color is tapped for it). Like two of any other off-color counts as 1 of the correct color.

Shadowrun 4e's list (but with Manipulation split) is a good versatile list

-Direct
-Indirect

Targeting: Touch, Line of Sight, Bolt, Spray, Blast, Beam, Voluntary Only
Timing: Instant, Sustained, Permanent

1) Health/Energy
- Stun/Lightning(Mana)/Shatter/Heat/Cold
- Armor, Increase/Decrease, Heal, Cure

2) Divination
Detecting, Scrying, Reading stuff
Guide/Luck, Misfortune

3) Illusion
Obvious, Realistic
Single, Multi Sense
Light, Darkness
Manipulate, Control

4) Matter Gravity Manipulation
Magic Fingers, Fling, Levitate, Poltergeist
Armor, Barrier, Wall, Cage (Earth, Metal, Wood, etc.)
Shapeshift, Goo, Petrify



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Other considerations, "Comes into Play" effects like drop lands. Leaves play effects. Using the MtG design of a resource that can do something from being used.

[Mistborn]

Any system where players can "charge up" by spending out of combat actions to win harder at combat is inherently going to present some balance problems. You can just sort of accept that a just how things work and have the PC rolling in a wrecking fools at full power just be their reward for winning at the stealth/detection minigame. If land drops aren't tied to some other resource you sort of need ask why the players aren't just going to play all their lands before they kick in the door. This is sort of the inherent problem with any sort of pure Rage system, why not do some kind of warmup kata on the wall or a bag of rats.

Now this is a problem with a lot of potential solutions. You could for example have a power that generates some kind of "combo points" where the resource it generates is only usable to power super attacks on the guy you were already attacking. You could have mana generation be tied to some kind of already limited resource. For instance you could have each of your encounter powers generate a mana that goes into your pool, giving you a dynamic choice between alternating powers and 1 mana spells or firing off your powers in sequence as set up for you big flashy final attack. Or your Sorcerer might make a land drop every time they cast one of their daily spells and it's sort of like a reveres of the old reserve feats where every daily resource expended makes your at will options better.

[deaddmwalking]

Old school Magic had mana burn - you took damage for charging up and not spending your spell points.

In our homebrew, the Berserker has a rage mechanic. It takes a standard action to activate (kinda expensive) so there's reasons that you might want to activate it before a combat starts. We have it cost a mana (a relatively small pool of points) unless you attack during your turn. This does mean that they could 'keep charged' with their allies or a bag of rats, maybe, but in practice it's a lot of work to try to stay charged and it ends up making sense to start charging when the combat music starts.

[Thaluikhain]

5th ed D&D had the Barbarian stop raging if they don't attack or take damage for a turn, which leads to them asking other players if they will poke them for 1 damage, I guess.

5.5 has the Barbarian stop raging each turn, unless they can make an attack, force an enemy to make a saving throw, or use a bonus action.

Only limited amounts of rage before your next long rest. The 5.5 rules look better than 5, but eh, not great either way.

[Bigdy McKen]

There’s a 5E supplement on the dms guild called Tap Untap Burn which tries to convert casting to a 5 color m:tg mana system.

I didn’t find it compelling enough to change over, but it appears to be relevant to your interests.

[Louiseravot]

For a Legwork/Kingdom phase, I actually love the “control X lands to unlock Y action” idea. It feels very domain-play friendly and maps well to faction influence mechanics if you get what i mean.

[Louiseravot]

You might also look at systems where big actions have delayed or ongoing costs.The Echo-style costs in a tRPG could create interesting tension if players must reserve future actions, just saying.