The Gaming Den

I'm the kind of person who enjoys playing whatever the magic user happens to be in any particular system, and as such I am always open to hearing about new magic systems within various games. The den being what it is, it's not at all difficult to find which magic systems have the most and biggest flaws, from White Wolf's various iterations of Mage, to the infamous 3.5 Wizard. However, what I wish to inquire after here is the complete opposite: what magic systems out there are good?

While I realize such a question is just asking for subjective responses, I ask: what are some of the more well done magic systems out there, and what makes them so?

I enjoyed parts of WoD's Vampire paths. Rituals seperate from combat/utility casting was a novel approach. Special rules for botching a willpower roll was not a fun addition to the rule set, though. Also, as there was no cap on rituals that could be learned, it could get pretty ridiculous under a permissive storyteller, or became near pointless under a tight-arsed one.

2e D&D had a spellpoint system in Spells and Magic that my players at the time enjoyed. More flexibility than the standard spell prep, but I think the appeal was that higher level spells caps could be exceeded at the expense of everything else. 12th level wizards casting Simulacrum, for example. Still, Vancian casting grates on me these days, and that system required some fairly extensive book-keeping, far more than I have time for now.

The question is a bit meaningless. What are the attributes of a "well done" magic system?

Personally, the way I can think of to describe that would be a system that allows for a broad range of versatility and application (as opposed to only being able to throw fireballs, or only being usable in combat, like a final fantasy type black mage), but without breaking the system in half or trivializing everyone else (such as what happens with well-played d&d wizards or with just about anyone in WoD Mage).

HERO System can do magic well, in the sense that it will do a good job of balancing magic with other abilities but will provide none of the "fluff" for you. If you have a clear idea of what you want magic to do, HERO is good at telling you how much of your character's Awesome Allotment it requires.

Exalted's Raksha systems fit that, I think. I've heard good things about Nobilis too, but am not real familiar with it. The downside is that they're really weird, and at least the Raksha one is very, very narrative based. It's not magic tea party though: your attack (or at least a caricature of it) might be "I assemble a grand army and assault your freehold", and the defense is: "but your army has poor hygiene, and dies of the plague." Both of those are actions though, with speeds and dice rolling and so forth.

Amber Diceless seems to go okay, but that's basically MTP with strong characterization.

fectin wrote:The question is a bit meaningless. What are the attributes of a "well done" magic system?

Why are you asking him when you could instead state your own opinion on the matter? The OP is asking for opinions, after all.

fectin wrote:...very, very narrative based. It's not magic tea party though: your attack (or at least a caricature of it) might be "I assemble a grand army and assault your freehold", and the defense is: "but your army has poor hygiene, and dies of the plague."

Just as a meaningless aside, I really scratch my head at games like that. I don't find it interesting to read stories that cover events in such broad strokes, and I don't find it interesting to play games like that either. But I've tried it, because God bless 'em, some people seem to think it's fun.

Because in this specific case, everyone is operating in a very, very malleable consensual reality. It constantly operates at whatever scale is convenient. So you can have the army as an attack, the disease as a disarm, and the next few ticks be going through the minutia of an intricate tea ceremony. The conflict is an improv-off between the characters, and literally everything else is meaningful only as set dressing. If you go off on your own, you can build your own consensual reality. That's boring though, so no-one does that. It's also why mortals are so fascinating, because they're actually fixed points (and also because their dreams are delicious).

Remember how DnD doesn't actually say what the effects of being dead are, so there were jokes about how being killed doesn't actually affect your character? That's actually how it works here. It's possibly an advantage to your opponent, because he can say "Shut up, Bob. You're dead." and try to convince everyone else not to listen to you, but you keep acting however you want anyway. Maybe you stand up, shape yourself back alive and give up, maybe you make cup attacks like "as you stare at my lifeless body, a great sadness fills you".