Freeform Magic

[Eduardo]

Hi,

Has anyone ever created some rules for freeform magic with T&T?
I think the system could really work wonders with it and how stunts work.

Thanks

[mosker]

Jan 9, 2024 19:48:19 GMT -5 Eduardo said:

Hi,

Has anyone ever created some rules for freeform magic with T&T?
I think the system could really work wonders with it and how stunts work.

Thanks

Freeform as in "I want this to happen--what's the cost and SR to make it so?"

If that's the case, I could see it work in a GM game, with perhaps the GM making a judgment call based on the spells the player already knows. You want an adhesive floor? Well, you do know Glue-You and Wall of Stone so..... In a solo? Hmmmm....


(Hopes the discussion develops especially as a functional mechanism would make a great TrollsZine article for using mixing and matching spellcasters across the various St. Andre systems and settings...#Crossover)

[ProfGremlin]

I don't know anyone who's come up with a freeform system for T&T/M!M! but I've heard of players new to a system describe what they want to do and the GM found the way for that mechanically.

My first thought was, "How about describing how a character builds a spell but not actual spells?" Take a traditional five element system: Fire / Water / Air / Earth / Spirit -OR- Fire / Water / Wood / Metal / Air. Heck, throw in other concepts like Time or Gravity. A spell caster can manipulate threads of each to create an effect. Give each element a Wiz cost per level. Spell casters are rarely equally strong in all elements so whatever they are strong in has a reduced Wiz cost, like using a staff. Want to speed someone up ala Little Feets? That'll be a blend of Fire and Time. Need to heal someone per Poor Baby? That'll need Water and Spirit. Want to obscure the area? How about threads of Fire and Water for steam? Or Water and Air for a dense fog? Need to slow that BBEG down? Spin threads of Earth and Gravity to make them immovable or perhaps Earth and Water to mire them in mud. Add in a thread or two of Time to boost the effect.

Where this goes from here I really don't know, I'm just riffing an idea. I see the potentiality to have a light mechanics system to create a story driven effect.

[schmee]

In our Fabled Lands campaign (chronicled elsewhere on the Trollbridge) we use a semi-freeform system.

Each wizard still has a list of spells, and each spell has a 1-2 sentence description of its effect, but it is down to the player & the GM to come up with an appropriate Saving Roll on IQ to cast the specific effect the wizard wants. The WIZ cost is 1 die per SR level, with some modifiers for wizard level.

We use a three-letter code for each spell (following the convention of the Fighting Fantasy "Sorcery" gamebook series).

Some spells are easy to adjudicate: ZAP delivers your IQ in hits x spell level; HOT (fireball) delivers your IQ in hits to 1 target per spell level; AID increases a warrior' combat total by 10% per spell level etc.

Others require more negotiation - a recent example from our game is the RES spell (Raise Dead) - a low-level RES may restore someone temporarily back to a kind of half-life (like the Italian soldiers in Jonathan Strange); a mid-level RES may restore full life, but in a debilitated state; a high-level RES might restore a delver to life exactly as they were before.

We made a list of 216 spells (so they could be chosen randomly if needed using a D666) - I can post these if anyone is interested? Also, some of our fellow Fabled delvers might have more comments to add?

[houndle]

Yes please schmee - sounds good! Or could it be a TZ article?

[Eduardo]

Yeah, I mean something like that mosker, just with some simple guidelines, so the player knows what to expect and the GM has something to guide him.
schmee seems to have a nice house rule.

Found this: trollbridge.proboards.com/thread/1735/new-freeform-magic-system-idea gonna give it a good read.

Thanks all.

[schmee]

Jan 10, 2024 5:46:48 GMT -5 houndle said:

Yes please schmee - sounds good! Or could it be a TZ article?

Hello - I'd be happy to write this up as a house-rule article! I'll speak to the others at tonight's delve. Having said that, 48 of the three-letter spell codes do come from the Fighting Fantasy series (although we don't use them in the same way). Would this still be okay for the TrollsZine?

[mosker]

Two quick (really for once!) thoughts:

1. Check out apn 's Chaos Magic (https://trollbridge.proboards.com/thread/4203/chaos-magic-discussion) for a way to think about powering your freeform spells.

2. Are you getting (or do you have) M!M! 2.7? (I've yet to spend the requisite time with mine). Don't know what's changed, but especially for a TZ article--even if you diverge greatly from RAW, which this entails--it's good to know what the existing "official" (and yes, air-quotes are appropriate) state of kremm/wiz/magic/mana/weird ^@&! is...especially given what Zimrala and the other major settings are doing...

[alkazar]

Well, there is proably two good ways to go about this.  If you've ever played champions rpg then you know that they have a very small power list and haven't created any new powers in almost forty years. The reason is that the powers they give are basic powers that can be used to create any power you can imagine. Chaosium's Super World does the same thing. So I'm of the mind that any magic spell you need can be created by modifying the spells that already exist for T&T, as long as you have a GM who's open to the idea. 

The second way is the verb noun system. There are a couple of games that use this, Mage and Ars Magica comes to mind and GURPS Magic and Voodoo books have it as an alternative spell system. It's actually a pretty good way of creating spells on the fly and it's a wonder someone hasn't written up a TrollsZine article about it yet. I'm guessing trolls don't get out much.

The way the Verb Noun system works is, you have two lists of words. One lists actions and another lists nouns the actions are performed on. For example: One verb could be "create" and a noun would be "vegetable," so using this you could prestidigitate an apple out of thin air, or cause a thick group of ivy to spring from the ground and wrap around something.

For T&T a list of nouns would be

Creation

Destruction

Alteration

Command

Sense

and a list of verbs would be:

Fire

Water

Air

Earth

Vegetable

Mind

Body

Spirit

Individually these won't do much but combining them, one to another will allow the invention of any spell imaginable. So we will treat each one as half of a talent with a score between 1-10 when we combine them together we have a full talent score that we can roll a save with (on the fly casting should always come with a margin of error, and thus a successful save is necessary to cast.)

The player comes up with a spell idea and the GM decides the spell level. The spell's level acts as the save level, so if you want to cast a spell that the GM decides is a 3rd level spell, then it will require a third level save.

For example: Mark the Magnificent decides he want to cast a spell that gives him the ability to control the little beetles buzzing around a nearby lantern and send them flying into the hair of a serving girl who spit in his food. He and the GM discuss which verb noun it should fall under. They decide it's "Command" and "Mind" and since there are several beetles the GM decides it is a level 2 spell. Mark's Command score is 6 while his Mind score is 8 giving him a combined score of 14. He would have to roll an 11 or better to succeed in casting the spell and thus menacing the nasty bar wench.

I would assume that for a mage to graduate from Hogwarts they would need at least a score of 1 in every noun verb category but rogues will be on their own. We would just need to come up with a system that would allow us to fill out the scores properly. I would say 1D6 +1 if you're a Mage and just 1D6 -1 if you are a Rogue and yes, you can have a rogue with 0 in a category. and they get a +2 for each level they advance which they can place into any category they want.

The categories are pretty self explanatory.

Want to summon a demon
"Command" and "Spirit"

Want to turn a princess into a frog
"Alteration" and "Body"