Magic Systems: Art or Obsession?

Why are so many gamers obsessed with having a "magic system" in FATE Core? After the Magic System Toolbox preview was published, a chorus of voices demanded a "generic" magic system. I don't get it. A magic system serves a purpose in Dungeons & Dragons, in GURPS or whatever crunchy system you prefer.
Usually, the purpose of the magic system is making a character more powerful or breaking the game rules. Also, usually it doesn't mesh very well with the rest of the system: low-level wizards are cannon-fodder compared to a low-level fighter, and that supposedly makes up for a reversed situation at higher levels. But in reality it doesn't.

FATE Core doesn't emulate physics, it emulates story. FATE Points, aspects, stunts and skills lend your character weight in the story. They only remotely relate to physics. An aspect can be invoked or compelled, stunts add a new action to a skill or add a bonus to an action or create a rules exception, skills let you overcome an obstacle or create an advantage or attack or defend. These are the narrative currencies of the game. This way, each character gets to be equally awesome. The Extras chapter in the FATE Core preview even talk about the costs of Extras in terms of aspects, skills or stunts/refresh. This abstract measure is used for balancing.

In my opinion you don't need a magic system. All magic can expressed in skills, stunts and aspects. The Magic System Toolkit goes on to illustrate that and even hands you systems for summoning, something the FATE Core rules don't really hint at.

In FATE Core, magic shouldn't be an excuse to be more awesome or rules-breaky than everyone else, because FATE Core allows you to create characters with the same narrative weight. An eloborate system also tends to add complexity on top of a simple and elegant system. A real magic system with bells, whistles and complexity only makes sense, if the campaign revolves around magic and magic-using people like witches, wizard & superheroes. Because then, you need to differentiate between the magic-users or they will all feel pretty much the same. In all other circumstances, it is enough to define the magic the character uses (as opposed to a whole system) or the group sees in action (usually by fighting enemy spellcasters). That can be handled easily with aspects, skills and stunts without need of a complex system.

Just my 0.02 €

Urban Fantasy: Rethinking Wizardry

I like FATE, because in it's simplicity lies beauty. The way fudge dice with their + and - symbols are beautiful, because they are uncluttered (except when they are from Q Workshop). Because I like simplicity, I am loath to work much beyond the basic framework of aspects, stunts, skills and two stress tracks (one physical, one mental) to describe things.

Wizardry with its mandatory stunt, its skill and four add-on skills is already more complex than I like.

Now, in the Google+ Fate Community, Fred Hicks has written three interesting answers to this comment about converting Ebberon:

Answer #1 by Fred Hicks:

Quick & dirty, give her a Sorcery skill that can do all four basic actions without needing any sort of equipment or justification beyond what you normally do to cast a spell as a sorcerer. Then let her do some stunts that make for particularly awesome things when she spends a fate point: "Fireball: Spend a fate point to roll one attack roll against all targets in a given zone", etc.

Answer #2 by Fred Hicks:

You could also sidestep the fate point thing, and instead give her a separate Mana Stress track. She takes a point of stress every time she casts a spell that uses one of the expanded stunt abilities; she could keep going past the end of that and start taking consequences, but that gives her a per-scene limited budget that clears out every time she gets some rest. Very D&D like.

Answer #3 by Fred Hicks:

Yeah. It might be more 'fair' to make Magic a skill that can do 2 of the 4 actions, but you can add more actions with stunts; or to make Magic more than one skill, but each skill covers a different kind of magery, i.e., one magic skill's Overcome Obstacle doesn't cover the same range of obstacles that another skill's does, etc.

Wizardry already follows these guidelines pretty closely, but still not to my satisfaction. Therefore I am rewriting Wizardry/Witchcraft/Sorcery to be a bit more generic and less precise:

Wizardry/Witchcraft/Sorcery

You still need to take a Wizardry skill and the skill can be used to overcome obstacles and create advantages. Since this is fairly flexible, it also costs you a stunt. Each time you use your Witchcraft skill, you take one point mental stress (as I don't want to introduce a new stress track).  Adding the Warlock stunt lets you use the Sorcery skill to create attack and defend. Still costs one mental stress per roll. The rest of the rules just get cut as being overly complex. When you want to do something more impressive, create another stunt for it, following the suggestions of Fred Hicks. 

Urban Fantasy: The Supernatural Part 2

Part 1 gave us a list of Extras to select from; Part 2 will show some creatures that possess the listed abilities. Of course, these aren't the only inhabitants of the supernatural side of our still unnamed setting. The creature packages will be geared towards beginnig characters in terms of costs (thus less than three stunts). In order for a player character to be that type of creature, the high concept aspect of the character should name the creature.

The currently available Extras are:

• Stunts: Anthevôke, Beast Shape, Clairvoyance, Claws & Fangs, Pass Wall, Seven League Stride, Supernatural Endurance, Wallwalker, Wings, Wizardry (wizardry has add-on stunts, but they aren't required).
• Skills: Elemental Control, Opening, Wizardry.

Remember the first design decision of the setting: There are no vampires? We'll add a second one to that: There are no demons or angels. I've run enough stories and campaigns about these kind of creatures. I would like to have something new.

Changelings

Cost: One or two stunts and one skill slot.

They aren't like the changelings from Changeling: The Dreaming or Changeling: The Lost. They are simply a catch-all category for those people born with strange abilities. Are they descended from faeries? Is there such a thing as a faery realm? We don't know yet. But maybe changelings have a connection to them, if they do exist. Something about changelings is slightly off. Their arms and legs may appear to be too long, their hair color has a shade that is a bit odd, but nothing too obvious (like blue highlights in black hair, a deep coppery red or a tinge of aubergine), their eyes may sparke with hints of gold or silver. Sometimes their faces and bodies are slightly contorted or bend. On closer inspection, they stand out.

A changeling should grab one or two stunts from Anthevôke, Clairvoyance, Claws & Fangs, Seven League Stride/Shadow Walking and/or Wallwalker. Additionally, the usually have some skill at Elemental Control or Opening.

Ghosts

Cost: One to three stunts.

Your character has already died, but something kept him from moving on to the afterlife. The trouble aspect, the Family aspect or the Relations aspect could revolve around that. Did anyone even notice that you are dead? You usually seem quite solid and are visible to others.

A ghost should take the Pass Wall stunt, and he can also take Supernatural Endurance and/or Seven League Stride. But they don't have to. Physical attacks can still hurt you and even take you out, but cannot be destroyed unless someone burns your body.

Werewolves

Cost: One to three stunts. 

Werewolves can be born or infected by the bite of another werewolf. They might follow traditional folklore and have weaknesses to silver, wolfsbane or be influenced by the moon. If the player decides that her werewolf has one or several of those weaknesses, she should work that into her character's trouble aspect.

A werewolf usually has the stunts Beast Shape, Claws & Fangs as well as Supernatural Endurance. But depending on the setting he may only have Beast Shape or Claws & Fangs. In the latter case, his werewolf shape is probably quite monstrous. Supernatural Endurance may be taken at a latter point in the game.

Witches

Cost: One to three stunts and a skill slot.

Practioners of the magical arts are commonly called witches. But they could be called magi, sorcerers or shamans. They carry a traditional mark, which may be red hair, a prominent birthmark (called a witch's teat by some) or they might be completely ordinary folk. Witches usually are born as such and can look back on a whole family line of witches. The heritage runs very often through the mother's side of the family tree, but any offspring maybe a witch, regardless of gender.

Witches have to take the Wizardry stunt (also called Witchcraft or Sorcery) and an associated skill. They may take up to two additional extras from Abjuration, Enchantment, Ritual and Warlock (each worth a stunt).

Other Creatures

The four types listed above are just meant to get you started. Maybe your character is something else entirely, like a:

• Dragon: Claws & Fangs, Wings and the skill Elemental Control "Fire".
• Murder of Crows: Beast Shape (murder of crows), Wings and Supernatural Endurance.
• Selkie: Beast Shape (seal) and maybe "Water".
• Wereraven: Beast Shape (raven) and Wings.

In the end: be creative and talk to your game master. You are not even limited to the Extras introduced in Urban Fantasy: The Supernatural Part 1. Maybe you want to be a Medusa whose natural form can turn people to stone.

Urban Fantasy: The Supernatural Part 1

With the character aspects and the skill list, I've got the high school part of the setting covered. What remains is the supernatural. That needs to be defined in order to give the players some ideas what kind of characters they can play.

I've already defined that you need a high concept aspect that describes the supernatural side of a character in order to access special abilities. Those special abilities are modelled as Extras in FATE Core. I don't want to go the route of the Dresden Files RPG, because as much as I love the setting and the rules, I think the supernatural powers are very complex. Especially since a good part of people I am playing with qualify as "casual gamers" according the Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering. So, I want to have something straight forward that doesn't need many rules behind it. Essentially, everything a player needs to know about his character should fit on his character sheet (i.e. the Extras box).

Before defining possible creatures, I want to have some example powers I can assign to them. After mulling this over, I came to the conclusion that some Extras will be modelled by additional skills that you can just add to your skill pyramid. Other Extras will cost in Stunts. But I would prefer each Extra to cost at maximum one Stunt instead of many to keep the math down and flexibility high.

Anthevôke (stunt)

This stunt is named as homage to Steve Berman's Trysts anthology. It basically describes Psychometry, the ability to read the history of an item just by handling it. This allows the character to use Research to create an advantage on an item. If the anthevôke spends a FATE point, he can use the item as intended for a scene, even without the fuel the item usually needs to run. After that scene, the item is broken and needs to be repaired with Crafts.

Beast Shape (stunt)

The character can take on the shape of an animal or in some rare cases animals. This costs a FATE point and lasts for the rest of the scene. While in animal shape, the character gains a new and separate great (+4) skill column. The skill column contains four of the skills Athletics, Fighting, Notice, Physique and Stealth. The skills replace the normal rating a character has in these skills. Common shapes and their suggested distribution are:

• Cat: great (+4) Stealth, good (+3) Athletics, fair (+2) Fighting and average (+1) Notice.
• Murder of Crows: great (+4) Notice, good (+3) Fighting, fair (+2) Athletics and average (+1) Physique.
• Raven: great (+4) Notice, good (+3) Athletics, fair (+2) Stealth and average (+1) Fighting.
• Wolf: great (+4) Fighting, good (+3) Athletics, fair (+2) Notice and average (+1) Stealth.

Note: Of course these are just suggestions and the player is encouraged to work with the game master to come up with a reasonable skill column.

Note the Second: The beast shape might change your Physique, thus changing your physical stress track!

Clairvoyance (stunt)

Once per session, the clairvoyant can enter a trance and divine the future. The player can place an aspect on the game session that can be invoked once for free.

Claws & Fangs (stunt)

The character can grow vicious claws and fangs. The character gains Weapon:2, when growing those claws and fangs.

Elemental Control (skill)

The character can control one element like fire, air, water, cold and so on. The Extra is treated as a skill that is called like the Element it controls (i.e. "Fire", "Air" or "Cold"). Element control skills cannot be used to directly overcome obstacles, but they can be used to create advantages or to attack. The can also be used to defend against opposite elements or by stopping mundane attacks with their element.

Opening (skill)

The skill Opening can be used to open locked doors and containers without needing any keys. It is a hommage to Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.

Pass Walls (stunt)

The character is able to pass through solid walls, through floors and even into rock. No roll is necessary, but the character takes two mental stress for each wall he passes through.

Seven League Stride (stunt)

By apparently walking straight into a wall or a shadow, the character can teleport to another location within one day travel of his current location. The player needs to spend a FATE point to use the Extra. The ability might also be called Shadow Walking.

Supernatural Endurance (stunt)

The character gains two more physical stress boxes. Supernatural toughness is treated as an Extra, because it shouldn't be available to just anyone; only those touched by the supernatural may have extra endurance.

Wallwalker (stunt)

The character is able to walk on walls and even ceiling without much effort. He can easily bypass ground-based or height-based obstacles while doing so, thus requiring no roll to overcome the obstacle.

Wings (stunt)

The character can literally grow wings. While flying, the character can move more swiftly (two zones instead of one per exchange) and ignore ground-based and height-based obstacles.

Wizardy (skill and one or more stunts)

Wizardry is a special case. It takes a special skill to use that the player can call either Wizardry, Sorcery or Witchcraft. The skill becomes part of the skill pyramid. But he also needs a stunt to practice Witchcraft. That stunt lets him use Witchcraft instead of any other skill to overcome obstacles. In its basic form, it cannot be used to create advantages, attack or defend. Wizardry is very flexibel, because it can be used instead of any other skill. Therefore, it can only be used once each scene. Each additional use causes two mental stress. Successes with major costs and ties should create additional mental stress or consequences, representing the exhaustion the character is pushing himself to.

A sorcerer can take additional stunts to improve his performance with Sorcery:

• Abjuration: The character can use Wizardry to defend himself against attacks instead of Athletics or Will. This counts as a normal use of Wizardry, except when defending against a Warlock. Abjuration can be used as many times as the character wants to defend against attacks made with Wizardry without causing mental stress.
• Enchantment: The character can use Witchcraft to create advantages that may even be used by other characters. They follow all the rules of advantages after they have been created. Enchanting still counts as using Sorcery.
• Ritual: The character knows one reliable way to use her Wizardry to produce  a result. This ritual needs to be agreed on with the game master and doesn't count as a use of Wizardry anymore. It still can only be used to overcome an obstacle.
• Warlock: The character can use Sorcery to attack.The opponent defends either with Athletics, if the attack can be physically dodged, or with Will, if the attack is mental. The warlock decides, if he wants to do physical or mental damage.

Note: Wizardry is closely modelled on the FreeFATE version of the ability.

That's it. My initial package of powers for Urban Fantasy. I am not sure about the pricing for some of these. Maybe Beast Shape needs to cost two stunts instead of one... Feedback is welcome.

Next we are looking at some of the beasties that could populate the setting.