The Gaming Den

So the oMage and nMage thread got me thinking. Is there a game that let's you do magic in a modern setting well? Freeform magic or creatable spells would be nice, though not really necessary, provided that it has enough material to have varied types of mages and so forth. Any suggestions?

Magic is time period- agnostic, no ?


(Shadowrun and Unknown Armies seem particularly fine to me. D&D ammo-like "fire-and-forget" spells seem particularly bad no matter the time period )

Shadowrun. You could kitbash something like GURPS or HERO or FATE into it, too. WoD and AS are horror games, but the mechanics are explicitly magical (especially in AS).

The Fate Dresden Files game has a "design your own" magic system, but I think it's pretty barebones and MTP.

Shadowrun seems the most obvious fit. It has a decent modern setting engine, and a robust casting system.

What makes magic in a modern setting distinctive from say, magic in any other setting? More deadly since people aren't able to shrug off whacks from greatswords?

You can rule out UA because it is shit at everything. It is tempting to rule out d20 with vancian casting since d20 is so terrible at modern settings. But! There's nothing to say that prepared spells or spontaneous spells from a list of known spells isn't totally doable in a modern setting. People find specific incantations that generate specific effects. You could totally raid the SRD for spells and just convert them to whatever non-d20 system you prefer.

I couldn't recommend a free-form magic system for a modern setting since free-form magic just lends itself to being applied as technology before breaking the system and setting in half.

What makes magic in a modern setting distinctive from say, magic in any other setting?

My point precisely.

erik wrote: What makes magic in a modern setting distinctive from say, magic in any other setting? More deadly since people aren't able to shrug off whacks from greatswords?

D&D mages start off being compared to...
-dudes with swords and bows
-wearing plate armor
-riding horses
-feudal kingdoms
-hand written letters

A modern setting mage has to have his spell list made with the following in mind
-dudes with guns and bigger guns
-riding cars and planes
-The United States of America and other governments
-video surveillance
-the internet

and so on

Yeah, the D&Dism of people eventually getting tougher than elephants is usually absent from a modern setting that wants to be 'realistic'

On "Shadowrun with modern tech", this thread http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=425295
brings up an interesting point:

Orion wrote:If you port over shadowrun magic as-is to 2015, it will be very, very powerful. You're not looking at a horror setting, you're looking at a superhero setting, and not a low-end one.

Low level D&D spells aren't necessarily unimpressive in the modern world. A spell that surrounds the caster in a thin field of force which absorbs and deflects blows without encumbering is just as useful in the modern day as it is in fantasy. I don't think that if you stuck a wand of Mage Armour in every cop car any cop is going to pass up the extra protection while responding to a call. Even if you test it and show that a bullet proof vest is more protective than mage armour, the cops still have protection in places other than the torso without looking like they're mobilizing for war.

No one's going to cast Mount before going out of town, but if I'm on my own for dinner and don't have anything in the house, then I'd definitely blow a spell slot or a wand charge before running to the store for a steak to cook or Red Robin for a burger.

Hell, most people in the real world are weak compared to D&D adventurers. Make wands of Color Spray and home defense's body count is suddenly way lower.

If you started selling rings that give Use Activated Mage Hand, Mending and Open/Close, maybe some prestidigitation, you'd be a household name in a weak as people no longer have to get up to get the remote, struggle with jars, toss clothing with holes, or put up with unsatisfying food.

BILLY MAYS HERE FOR MAGE HAND

Hell, Billy Mays for Prestidigitation, it would blow Oxyclean out of the water.

Billy ?

The idea was kind of a Masquerade style of things (though it would get broken fairly shortly in).

At this point, magical Billy Mays would be shilling for True Ressurection.

So, in the vein of this thread, how easily could Shadowrun's magic be decoupled from its specific setting? And which edition of shadowrun had the best magic system?

1) Why, for the love of whatever you hold holy?

2) Not easy? It's specific to Shadowrun's attributes (including Essence), the healing and damage subsystems, the combat subsystem, cyberware and equipment to some degree...and, of course, it's intimately tied into the setting's metaphysics. That is, to put it mildly, half the point of why it's such a solid system. If you move it to a different setting, you're basically divorcing it from the better part of why it works so well.

Not that you couldn't do it, but the destination setting would have to be adapted to use the same or very similar metaphysics, and that would mean that any such game would have a large chunk of the gameplay which works a lot like Shadowrun.

I'm really just kinda always in the market for a good magic system, and have heard good things in the past about shadowrun's.

Yeah, basically what I'm looking for is a robust, somewhat customizable magic system that isn't conjoined to a specific setting.

Wiseman wrote:Yeah, basically what I'm looking for is a robust, somewhat customizable magic system that isn't conjoined to a specific setting.

The problem is that really doesn't tell us anything.

Magic is broad. The number of magic systems out there are potentially infinite. It's not grounded in reality, so imagination is the limit. Different settings have different magic that can do different things and works very differently.


Harry Potter magic just feels different from Harry Dresden magic, which feels different from Anita Blake magic, which feels different from Cthulhu magic, and from D&D magic, and from Belasarius magic, and from Mage magic, and from Shadowrun magic, and you get the idea.


Before you can create a magic system, you need to know the flavor you want. Men in business suits are different from men in robes. Throwing fireballs is different from making it rain in New Jeresy on the 12th of May. Power without cost is different from power that requires sacrifice. Setting your baseball card collection on fire to power your spells is different from murdering random people to power your spells. Pacts with spirits are different from innate powers.

There are too many potential variables that will heavily influence your setting.

Wiseman wrote:Yeah, basically what I'm looking for is a robust, somewhat customizable magic system that isn't conjoined to a specific setting.

Here are several. (This may still be my favorite RPG book ever.)

Or did you want one that didn't take much work, because that's a pretty big additional requirement.

Ideally one with not much work, though that's not that big of a deal. I'll take a look at that GURPS book.

For the record, I'm recommending the 4e version. I don't know if there's an earlier version of GURPS Thaumatology and I can't seem to find out because the sjgames store site is terrible, but if there is one I can't comment on its quality.