Remember, folks. The more precise, the more usable in a game. Magic is a subsystem defined by rules. Objective and consistent.
Based, fuck the no-games.
>>98339525
>>98339525i can make one that isnt
>>98339525idgi >>98319131are you made about magic or something?
>>98339525Counterpoint: rigid rules-based magic systems fucking suck and Brandon Sanderson should be beat with hammers for the irreperable damage hes done to the fantasy genre.
>>98339608Do it here and now then
>>98339933its 2am so i wont, but ill tell you how to do it. create a magic system that functions as a chaotic system where the outcome of a given set of uncontrollable inputs is solveable, but unpredictable. use the in-game environment and at least one dice as inputs so as to prevent someone from "brute-forcing" an effective spell list. this system is extremely unprecise, but entirely useable in game. it is defined by rules, but despite the rules being known it is entirely incomprehensible by them. finally, it is subjective to chance, the environment, and is entirely inconsistent, despite meeting all your criteria for it's design
>>98339922No.
>>98340009so you can't do it then.
>>98340037>why arent you doing cryptography for free on 4chan at 2amokay sure, if it makes you happy then i cant do it. it makes no difference to me, i'd never share any work of value on /tg/ regardless
>>98340074>>98340009>ozo can't keep up with how much shit their mouth runs Oh lmao you're the one who keeps posting >my homebrew is so much better than anything but can never post it because you're soooooo much better Protip kid, if it made no difference to you, you wouldn't bother to lie this much to strangers on the internet about your amazing game no one can see.
Hey let’s talk magic systems. I personally am fond of the verb-noun system ars magica helped pioneer.
Damn. OP is a seething bitch. Lmao.
>>98339856Well he keeps seething about some “wonderfag” in other threads
>>98339525Reverse shitposting is still shitposting
>>98341202Look at the catalog. Most of the threads are for seethe.
>>98341157Owing to enjoying the 3.X kitchen sink and being decidedly on the complexity addiction side of that, I've given a little bit of thought to trying at a "default theurge" system where it has a bunch of different subsystems reflecting different common "single-source" explanations for magic only for the actual applications and access mechanics thereof to almost all use several of them because those in-universe have little to no knowledge of the "fundamental forces of magic" and aren't subject to rails forcing them into just one, so the traditions emerge from complementary low-hanging fruit rather than specialization in one "field".>>98341202>>98341227It comes across as a decent number of posters, myself included as at least one non-OP case. Got seared in my own head from like two months where loads of threads vaguely about magic degenerated into flinging bullshit over rejecting eachother's premises, with wonderfag seeming to genuinely not understand the issues his framing results in for considering anything outside one's current understanding of reality.
>>98339525I actually agreeAmbiguity in rules are a pain in the ass. Just make casting Fireball straightforward.Whatever 'mystery' and 'wonder' can just be fluffed as flavor text. It's like how no-one playing Mage *ever* agrees on how magic works.
>>98339525Based
>>98339525>Spell Target: 1 person you can see>"Hey GM can I use this spell to attack the wall and possibly break it down?"
>>98341653This. The board is plagued with lots of off-topic schizo posters. “Wonderfag” is one of them. He’s notable because he’ll start threads specifically saying magic should be full of wonder and mystery, and then have a meltdown when asked what game he’s talking about, since he’s trying to ramble about /x/ shit instead of traditional games.
>>98341653>>98341885You have autism
>>98342125>YouSorry, different posters. Stay mad, bro.
>>98341157Ars Magica is the best. It is a shame that you have to read a 500 page book to understand it all, and even then you're just scratching the surface. I wrote this little summary a while back to teach the basics. I am also of the unpopular opinion that Ars Magica's magic system is much more fun when you use it in a setting other than the no-fun-allowed medieval Europe it was designed for.
Barbarians of Lemuria has a loose magic system
>>98342329>no-fun-allowed medieval Europe>there's a mechanic for spells taking seasons to makeIt's an extremely grounded game considering, and that turns a lot of people away from it. I briefly looked into it but couldn't get any takers to put together a game.
>>98342373it requires a very special kind of autism to learn the system in the first place. It's difficult to learn, and extremely difficult to run properly. The setting basically makes doing anything fun with magic illegal, which ends up making players aimless as they realize they cant actually do much with the awesome power they wield.
>>98341202struck a nerve huh bitch? LMAO
>>98341233/tg/ is the shitposting board, retard.
>>98341880is the wall a person?
>>98342329all those words just to be less comprehensive and less elegant than other games lol
>>98342426All that information is scattered over several chapters in the actual rulebook. It's a tome.
Games about simulating tactical combat against adversaries controlled by the game master either need their rules clearly and consistently designed or to be played in extremely good faith by people who are actually mature adults. Games that aren't about trying to tactically wrangle an edge in a combat scenario can get away with more interpretive rules without it causing any issues. The reason nerds have been arguing abiut this for 50 years is that while there are plenty of people who want a game where the rules structure for enacting magic is flexible and interpretive because it allows for a different kind of game, there are also a great many nerds who simply want their wizard to be stronger for fighting beholders, as if wizards needed to be stronger.Frankly I don't like magic being a substitute gun anyway. It doesn't matter how locked in or freeform the system is if you are just using it to do something boring. D&D would be instantly improved by removing every single attack spell and making everything except minor illusions and mind controlling effects protracted rituals. I'd rather play a game where wizards destroy cities by building an elaborate model of it and then summoning a demon to destroy the model and give everyone a plague than a game where a wizard is a dude who shoots cold bolts from his fingers.
>>98342430ok. thanks for agreeing with me? lol
>>98342470lol boring loser
>>98342496Nogames poser
>>98339525I stopped caring at some point
Only legitimate autistic people don’t understand what mystery has to do with magic since they can only look at the rules and buttons and parameters not the actual perception or cultural impact such things will have on the world. This also implies that they don’t roleplay or actually value the narrative or setting. The person typing “no games” only wants to play games he doesn’t want to roleplay or immerse himself in the world. Typical autismo. Probably got laughed at because his player concept sucked.
>>98343404Hi wonderfag. Sorry you don’t still have a blog.
>>98343404>Only legitimate autistic people don’t understand what mystery has to do with magic since they can only look at the rules and buttons and parameters not the actual perception or cultural impact such things will have on the world.No, it's you being insufferably autistic by insisting one minor etymological quirk is grounds enough to synonymize a massive swath of different traditions to a fuzzy non-thing, no matter the basic syntax errors prescribing the adjective "magical" causes in Elfgame rules.>This also implies that they don’t roleplay or actually value the narrative or setting. No, that's you, because you keep rejecting out-of-hand that there is any valid separation between "magic" as an objective phenomenon inside the setting and "magic" as a descriptor of real-life superstitions.>The person typing “no games” only wants to play games he doesn’t want to roleplay or immerse himself in the world.Incorrect, I am goddamn OBSESSED with the soft-simulationism of ludonarrative resonance, wherein the rules all correspond to actual in-setting phenomena adulterated by ease of resolution and pressuring for desired play-patterns. I will come up with setting elements built off weird quirks of the rules, and design rules to represent previously-unmechanized corner-cases of the setting.
>>98343473I think you’re overreacting
>>98343473>"magic" as an objective phenomenon inside the settingMagic can be objective, but still not be perceived or interpreted as magic, is a previous point that was made. >"magic" as a descriptor of real-life superstitions.That’s magic, period. A label. A proxy. A placeholder. Isolation doesn’t work. It’s like insisting that fossil fuels be called magic, and nothing else.
>>98343404games are defined by rules, sorry.
>>98343613And uncovering the rules of nature is a prime component of mystery, religion, etc.
>>98343639So is that the objective of the game you’re playing, or just babble that couldn’t make it into your amazon book?
>>98343602>Magic can be objective, but still not be perceived or interpreted as magicThe lack of the perception or interpretation does not remove that the internal context of the setting does in fact have an objective phenomenon the best common use English word for is one of the non-subjective meanings of "magic".>That’s magic, period. A label. A proxy. A placeholder. Isolation doesn’t work. It’s like insisting that fossil fuels be called magic, and nothing else.It's YOU making the argument that "magic" can mean nothing else, by insisting on your reduction to this farce of a "common" meaning in refusal of any contextual variance and BASIC FUCKING SYNTAX. Unless you can explain to me how your definition of "magic" functions as a noun, you are Not Even Wrong because you insist on being lost up your own ass instead of engaging with anything about Traditional Games or the settings thereof.>>98343639How can you have a game about uncovering the BASIC rules of what you're using?
>>98343404>rules and buttons and parameters not the actual perception or cultural impact such things will have on the world.I do think nerds overdo the rules sometimes, but "it's a mystery" isn't necessarily always the answer. A magic spell is a tool and people want consistent results from tools. Oracles and divinations are about reducing uncertainty. If I ask a chicken a question, say the right formulae, and then poison it to get sn answer, why it works can be a complete mystery to me but the actual oracle is standardised rote operation (this is an actual well documented magical practice from a famous ethnography I'm not schizoposting here). The truth is that magic, religion, and science exist in a sort of uneasy triangular gamut in reality, but games often work to separate them in ways that are dissatisfying. In a corpus like the "book of the dead" the real difference between a hymn and a spell is that a spell harnesses a ritual process to create some sort of ritual-consequence. A hymn might praise and entreat a god for favour, but it can comfortably exist beside a spell that commands the same entity using some sort of ritual enactment that directly identifies the dead user as osiris and sort of harnesses his cosmic authority. If you've ever played TED it basically works like mantling. I'm Osiris now, behold my symbolic enacting of Osiris's deeds, with the logic being that ritual reenactment in the has a quantifiable result. Archaic akkadian (and sumerian) magic incantations are very formulaic and typically contain a series of "I have..." sentences that the professionals think were likely accompanied by actual physical actions, like a little 1 man drama.Point is that magic isn't easy to define and while I have a degree in more or less doing that it is important to remember that we are talking about games and personal taste for game style matters. Magic is about action and result, but the actual causal relationship is not physical. Hard to gamify that well.
>>98343718>>98343792I think you’re overreacting
>>98343639no, not rules of nature. rules in the rulebook.
>>98344166Real life is a rulesbook. God is the gamemaster.
>>98346260That’s stupid, and so are you by proxy of claiming so.
>>98343613>the game is defined by rules zero Yes, I'm glad we agree.
>>98343792I like extremely formulaic magic that may or may not actually matter. It’s just culturally systemized. How much of a ritual truly matters? Who cares. You’re still expected to do it.
>>98346859nope you lose
>>98339608Please, tell us how you intend to make a magic system that isn't a system...
>>98340009
>>98347944Its the core defining rule, you're right. Rule zero defines the game.
>>98348386Define rule zero then
>>98348440Helps if you read the whole book and actually run games but here.
>>98341653>Got seared in my own head from like two months where loads of threads vaguely about magic degenerated into flinging bullshit over rejecting eachother's premisesThere's three or four severely autistic posters on /tg/ fixated on the subject of magic. As soon as you get two or more in a thread together they just screetch at each other for hours because they all have very particular ideas about how magic should function. It might be the only thing keeping the board alive outside of general threads.
>>98348461Anon, all that does is just prove you have no will of your own and/or aren’t interested in engaging faithfully in a discus. All Rule Zero really exists to be is serving as an establishment of the social contract between players and GM where they’re agreeing that the GM and the party has the implicit trust and authority to serve as the final word on any disagreements or disputes regarding the rules. It has nothing to do with magic or the fluff, it’s just saying that two autists at loggerheads over how a fireball works still should trust their GM to make a fair judgement regarding how it does, or they should just leave the table. We have all the other rules after Rule Zero in order to actually have a functioning game. We have Rule Zero to basically agree to a functioning table. And a game where the game can’t actually define the intended outcome of a specific action nor has a game master willing to be the final definitive word might as well not exist.So piss off with your “rule zero “ crap. Fucking gormless retard.>>98348501And most of it’s not even entertaining autistic ramblings about magic either. It’s mostly the same people getting hung up on the word choice and definitions of shit. It’s rather sad, really.
>>98346260nope.
>>98348386nope you lose
>>98348543your definitions are wrong idiot
>>98348626I know you don’t have an original thought, you retard, you don’t have to remind me,
Frankly I think everyone should agree with me and like what I like and if you don't you are bad and wrong.
>>98343805He's just frustrated by an off-topic spammer shitting up the board for years.
>>98348543>wants to obey the rules >can't obey the rule of 'figure your shit out nigger' typical
>>98351820Congrats, you’ve said nothing of worth, you dumb fuck
>>98351830nou
Hmm....
>>98351860Every time it’s pointed out that magic is mysterious in essence there’s some idiot on this board who has a massive meltie.
>>98352385Yeah, and they keep making threads to whine how nobody else thinks that it’s mysterious or wonderful and call everyone atheists despite everyone telling them to fuck off
>>98339525>Magic is a subsystem defined by rules.Roll a d6 and if it entertains me, is a rule. >Discrete, Compact with clear play guidence and pass/fail states. I look forward to your games surely.
>>98352396I’m pretty sure most people think magic is “idk it’s magic I ain’t gotta explain shit” anon
>>98352720I’m pretty sure most people don’t think of magic at all
>>98339525The only requirement to have magic work in a game is that specific spells and specific effects do not deviate in how they work from time to time. It is in no way necessary for magic to conform to a system of rules or to be symmetric.
>>98339525Ok.
>>98339933here:i just tell my gm what my magic does every time i use it
>>98357682And then your GM tells you “No, it doesn’t do that.” What now?
