Interfacing the Narrative
I was reading something the other day... it might have just been yesterday, time can get a bit fuzzy. It was a reading of the first edition of Mage: the Ascension.
Here's the link.
It raises a couple of great points.
One of which is really pertinent to where I'm going with Familiar...
Oh, there are possibly people reading this who haven't been squabbling over Mage rules for the last couple of decades. Short version - in Mage you run the risk of Paradox if your magic is too obvious and disruptive, but it's possible to avoid Paradox by shrouding your spells in coincidence. Instead of hitting someone with a lightning bolt, you divert electricity from a power outlet to shock someone, you find a twenty dollar bill in your pocket, who's to say anything happened at all - that sort of thing.
Simple enough, but over the years, there have been many arguments about what counts as a "coincidence." Arguments that have a whole raft of abbreviations associated with them. Suffice to say, there's a strict interpretation and a casual interpretation . . . and then there's Mage 1e's interpretation, which lies far beyond even the most generous definition of "coincidental." Taking the text at face value, it seems to suggest that coincidental magic is something reality does for you. A mage will cast a spell using the coincidental techniques, and then they wait to see how it will work out. They don't even know beforehand. But more than just calling upon luck, this version of coincidental magic will hide behind illusions. If a regular person witnesses a coincidental spell, they will see whatever they need to see to make sense of the effect.
Even though I've been playing Mage since that first set of rules, this is something that I'd generally forgotten. I don't think we even played it that way for many years, and I'm not sure whether that change was a deliberate modification to the system in later editions, or the later groups I played with had just overlooked that part of the rules. We always seemed to play with the idea that the player would describe the way a coincidence played out, the Storyteller would see if the character had the necessary spheres to pull off such an effect...and confirm or deny whether the die roll was legitimate. If the GM asked how the spheres could justify it, then the player might need to do so with a sentence or two... if the player breaks first and discusses the mechanics of play, the effect is no longer coincidental, no matter how innocuous it might look.
I've been wanting to incorporate something similar to Mage's coincidental magick into ths game, and trying to work out the best way to do this. My reasonings for this are multiple, firstly because it's inspired by Mage and I don't want to hide this. It's my long term love-letter to the game, in an attempt to update it, expand it, streamline it, but not just completely rip it off. It's aiming to be what I thought Mage always aspired to be.
Coincidental mystical effects will probably be generated on the fly, but this need not always be the case. A character using high ritual magic could invoke coincidences on the other side of town, or even on the other side of the building. A character who take hours to prepare something might see the result of that effect manifest in precise controlled forms, or might let destiny take control and allow the coincidence to take form.
But how do I do that?
Here's where I might take a page from the earlier game system that all of this is based upon.
In SNAFU, there are "success" results and "sacrifice" results, and a player allocates their dice between them. In the earlier FUBAR, there was also a "story" result where the player could describe what happened, the storyteller could describe what happened, or there could be a negotiation between the pair of them. It wouldn't be hard to pull this back into the game for magical effects, it just means having a minimum of three dice when invoking magic so that three results can be allocated between the categories.
Like in FUBAR, a higher "story" result means that the player has more control over the way the action resolves. If a player chooses to allocate one of their higher dice to the "story" category, they'll (on average) be left with lower reults for their "success" and "sacrifice" results. So that naturally means if they want more control, they tend to end up with effects that are less powerful, or more sacrificial. Conversely, if a player chooses to allocate one of their lower dice to the "story" category, they'll be leaving the desctiptions of events up to the storyteller/narrator/GM, and will generally produce effects that are more powerful, less sacrifical, and more randomly coincidental. This basically reflects the idea that coincidental magic has a lower difficulty (and better chance of success) than vulgar controlled magic.
It's not exactly the same as Mage, but it's getting closer to the feel I'm after.
Actions taken on the fly often don't have the time or power behind them to get focused dramatic results, so mystics would use the "story" category as the throwaway die result to obtain reasonable results that they can't specifically control (especially low powered mystics). As mystics get more powerful, and have more ability to control the forces they are channeling through reality, it becomes less important for them to use the "story" category as their dump result, and they actually become more autonomous, and able to control the destiny around them.
The rest of the blog post is really good too and makes me think that I'm on the right track with this game. I'm generally feeling that the idea of vast global power structures has a tendency to lead toward stereotypes, appropriation, and the very types of things that the characters in this game are striving to overcome. Instead there will be dozens of smaller, localised groups with loose affiliations to one another, but stronger affiliations to the cultures and communities they live among.
Here's the link.
It raises a couple of great points.
One of which is really pertinent to where I'm going with Familiar...
Oh, there are possibly people reading this who haven't been squabbling over Mage rules for the last couple of decades. Short version - in Mage you run the risk of Paradox if your magic is too obvious and disruptive, but it's possible to avoid Paradox by shrouding your spells in coincidence. Instead of hitting someone with a lightning bolt, you divert electricity from a power outlet to shock someone, you find a twenty dollar bill in your pocket, who's to say anything happened at all - that sort of thing.
Simple enough, but over the years, there have been many arguments about what counts as a "coincidence." Arguments that have a whole raft of abbreviations associated with them. Suffice to say, there's a strict interpretation and a casual interpretation . . . and then there's Mage 1e's interpretation, which lies far beyond even the most generous definition of "coincidental." Taking the text at face value, it seems to suggest that coincidental magic is something reality does for you. A mage will cast a spell using the coincidental techniques, and then they wait to see how it will work out. They don't even know beforehand. But more than just calling upon luck, this version of coincidental magic will hide behind illusions. If a regular person witnesses a coincidental spell, they will see whatever they need to see to make sense of the effect.
Even though I've been playing Mage since that first set of rules, this is something that I'd generally forgotten. I don't think we even played it that way for many years, and I'm not sure whether that change was a deliberate modification to the system in later editions, or the later groups I played with had just overlooked that part of the rules. We always seemed to play with the idea that the player would describe the way a coincidence played out, the Storyteller would see if the character had the necessary spheres to pull off such an effect...and confirm or deny whether the die roll was legitimate. If the GM asked how the spheres could justify it, then the player might need to do so with a sentence or two... if the player breaks first and discusses the mechanics of play, the effect is no longer coincidental, no matter how innocuous it might look.
I've been wanting to incorporate something similar to Mage's coincidental magick into ths game, and trying to work out the best way to do this. My reasonings for this are multiple, firstly because it's inspired by Mage and I don't want to hide this. It's my long term love-letter to the game, in an attempt to update it, expand it, streamline it, but not just completely rip it off. It's aiming to be what I thought Mage always aspired to be.
Coincidental mystical effects will probably be generated on the fly, but this need not always be the case. A character using high ritual magic could invoke coincidences on the other side of town, or even on the other side of the building. A character who take hours to prepare something might see the result of that effect manifest in precise controlled forms, or might let destiny take control and allow the coincidence to take form.
But how do I do that?
Here's where I might take a page from the earlier game system that all of this is based upon.
In SNAFU, there are "success" results and "sacrifice" results, and a player allocates their dice between them. In the earlier FUBAR, there was also a "story" result where the player could describe what happened, the storyteller could describe what happened, or there could be a negotiation between the pair of them. It wouldn't be hard to pull this back into the game for magical effects, it just means having a minimum of three dice when invoking magic so that three results can be allocated between the categories.
Like in FUBAR, a higher "story" result means that the player has more control over the way the action resolves. If a player chooses to allocate one of their higher dice to the "story" category, they'll (on average) be left with lower reults for their "success" and "sacrifice" results. So that naturally means if they want more control, they tend to end up with effects that are less powerful, or more sacrificial. Conversely, if a player chooses to allocate one of their lower dice to the "story" category, they'll be leaving the desctiptions of events up to the storyteller/narrator/GM, and will generally produce effects that are more powerful, less sacrifical, and more randomly coincidental. This basically reflects the idea that coincidental magic has a lower difficulty (and better chance of success) than vulgar controlled magic.
It's not exactly the same as Mage, but it's getting closer to the feel I'm after.
Actions taken on the fly often don't have the time or power behind them to get focused dramatic results, so mystics would use the "story" category as the throwaway die result to obtain reasonable results that they can't specifically control (especially low powered mystics). As mystics get more powerful, and have more ability to control the forces they are channeling through reality, it becomes less important for them to use the "story" category as their dump result, and they actually become more autonomous, and able to control the destiny around them.
The rest of the blog post is really good too and makes me think that I'm on the right track with this game. I'm generally feeling that the idea of vast global power structures has a tendency to lead toward stereotypes, appropriation, and the very types of things that the characters in this game are striving to overcome. Instead there will be dozens of smaller, localised groups with loose affiliations to one another, but stronger affiliations to the cultures and communities they live among.
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