Observations of the Fox

I've just added an itch.io shopfront for Vulpinoid Studios products... Let's see how this experiment plays out. The shopfront can be can be found here

Like the creation of life, the manipulation of emotions, and a genie granting a wish that grants more wishes, time travel is a messy business that is generally banned. For the purposes of narrative, and having meaningful choices in an RPG, the idea of fixed destiny deprotagonising the characters immensely. Oracle's can get around this by seeing likely outcomes based on probability, rather than definitive versions of the future. A careful storyteller can provide definitve vignettes or snippets of the future, but allow players to recontextualise the vignette, perhaps eliminating someone then masquerading as them when the moment arrives, or changing the contents of a mysterious suitcase when the materials within are unknown. It's all about playing with the unknowns. I'm still working out the best way to address these ideas in the context of a game. There probably is no best way to do it, because each choice will make a dramatic impact on the way the game setting is des...

A magic system in a role-playing game can be used to say a lot about the world in which it is set. Perhaps just as much as the general rule system, it provides a context of what is easily possible, what is metaphysically unlikely or pushing the boundaries, and what is simply forbidden. In many settings, building new life is something outside the realms of even the most powerful magic. In some settings, achieving this goal may be one of the tasks that marks one as ready to join the archmages and ascended mystics. In this way mystic potential is directly reflected in the status of a mage.

One of the things that has appeared in a few discussions lately regarding magic in RPGs, is the idea of mystic resonance. The more a user of magic opens themselves up to specific energies, the more control they have over those energies... and almost symbolically, the more those energies influence them. A magic user focusing on plants might open themselves to floral energies, but in order to reach the next step they need to approach a state of one-ness with the energies involved. To manipulate plants more effectively, they become one with plants. Sometimes this is a deliberate choice, sometimes they simply find those energies shifting and mutating them as they use them too frequently.

Everybody wants something, everybody needs something, everybody has desire. There are places in the world where the obscure and the highly desired can be purchased at a price, but even the proprietors of such establishments sometimes have things that they yearn for. It's this desire that fuels their need to change the world, their innate ability to work with the mystic forces that shape reality. Finding the right lure to attract the desire of mystics is a delicate art. An art that familiars have refined over millenia of interaction with humanity. 

Magic manifests in many ways. Not always in spectacular or obviously unnatural. Sometimes the most effective magic is subtle, such as an athletic edge, an ability to see things invisible to the rest of the world, or a gut feeling. For those who dabble in magic, life can be strange. Even if they avoid seeking out the more blatant elements of the supernatural, sometimes the blatant elements of the supernatural seek them out.

I'm going to try to post something for each of my Inktober images. This will be a short passage to help set the context for magic users within the "Familiar" role-playing game that I've now been toying with for a few years. There are spiritual forces in the world, some of which exist in wild flux, others as eternal constants, and some as cyclical agents of balance countering similar energies in a natural harmony. Those who become attuned to the underlying spiritual forces often find themselves attracted to one or more of these energies. Some may find they draw power easily from specific foci, others may find certain times of the day more advantageous to their manipulations of the metaphysical forces, some may may attune to a season. Everything is different.