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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: Blk4ce on June 26, 2014, 09:11:08 PM
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I was wondering about the people here, appart from DFRPG, what's your favourite magic system? In what game do you enjoy playing a mage?
(Or could it be that DFRPG is /not/ your favourite system :P?
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I always play a mage if it's an option in any game and any system. This means I've played a lot of mages since I started on my good old Acorn Archimedes 410. My favorite system was when the sorcerer class first appeared in DnD. It has been since replaced by a DFRPG warlock.
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Likewise. I always loved the fluff of magic-users, even long before I started gaming. My favourite system for doing so is probably Mage: the Awakening - I like the fluff, and the semi-freeform system. Plus, it's pretty much the only setting I've found where magic explicitly has no connection to genetics, which is something that's always annoyed me in other fantasy fiction.
Another favorite (though I haven't played it in a while) would be Shadowrun. Though in that case it's mostly the Cyberpunk + Fantasy theme of the setting, and not really the magic system or flavour.
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Spell casting in shadow run is cool. I've played several Mage-types and they were all fun
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I actually like GURPS Magic.
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Spell casting in shadow run is cool. I've played several Mage-types and they were all fun
My favorite is the spirit-focused Voodoo practitioner. Summoning and binding a bunch of spirits to take over your enemies and make them your allies. ;D
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Summoning was done really well in shadow run... Although it was time consuming
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Summoning was done really well in shadow run... Although it was time consuming
They did a great job in SR4, when they split summoning and binding into two separate things. You could summon a spirit at a moments notice, but it had only limited abilities, and if you wanted to get a full powered spirit, you had to do a lengthy ritual to bind them to you. It worked really great. Overall, I agree, the way Shadowrun did its magic was really good.
Though I've played a game without any magic system at all, and I like that better than anything. The world was full of people who used magic like other people breath, and with Fate Core, this got really easy to replicate. Instead of having extra rules, you would just, for example, roll burglary when casting a spell to open a locked door, and instead of picking the lock, you described how you draw runes around the lock etc. in order to magic it open. Doesn't work for every game, but it is so beautifully simple for the kind of fantasy games I like to run.
Dresden's own system does a pretty good job of emulating the magic in the Dresden verse though, so I wouldn't necessarily say other systems are better, it's all a question of what kind of magic you want to emulate.
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Shadowrun.
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I like Shadowrun.
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Yeah, Shadowrun's ok I guess.
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Eh, I dunno. In the edition I've played (4th), there were major disparities in power between different spells and focus types.
I'm told that possession-based summoning was crazy broken too, but I've never actually played with it.
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Ars magica hands down best magical system ever made to portray wizards
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Eh, I dunno. In the edition I've played (4th), there were major disparities in power between different spells and focus types.
I'm told that possession-based summoning was crazy broken too, but I've never actually played with it.
Granted, I was just making fun of the fact that many here seem to like it, but...
That was a problem, yes - spells all cost the same, and things like Fashion (cleans your clothes) and Healthy Glow (makes you look healthy) were listed alongside Heal (actually makes you healthy) and Alter Memory (exactly what it says). However, foci really weren't a big deal; though.
And much of the hype about possession was just knee-jerk complaints about munchkinery. Possession mages had some nice advantages, which were balanced out by hefty disadvantages, especially at the higher end of the scale, where Materialization spirits (the default) beat out their possession counterparts, due to not having capped Attributes and not needing convenient targets.
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Ars magica hands down best magical system ever made to portray wizards
Agree. :D For a certain definition of wizards, anyway. If only it had more players...
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That was a problem, yes - spells all cost the same, and things like Fashion (cleans your clothes) and Healthy Glow (makes you look healthy) were listed alongside Heal (actually makes you healthy) and Alter Memory (exactly what it says). However, foci really weren't a big deal; though.
Ah, but while those spells were listed 'together', they still had different costs. It might take the same amount of work to figure out each spell, but a person could cast that Healthy Glow a dozen times a day without a problem, while the magi-doc would be exhausted after treating two or three wounds at most, depending on how they were built. That Healthy Glow allows your mage to make the entire team look fit-as-a-fiddle, which can let you bluff your way past a number of issues. There's also the (in game) legality of spells; if you don't have a 'license' for an Alter Memory spell and you get caught with the grimoire or using it (if wherever you are even allows people to get registered to use that kind of spell), and you're going to have a bad day. You can have all the Fashion spells you want however, which work quite well for the clothing portion of a disguise. Making that set of body-armor look like a nice suit and tie is very useful if used properly as well. (By the way, the costs of the spell formula are different; it's only the karma cost that stays the same.)
Shadowrun is big on the 'use things the way they are needed, not the way they are designed', from my perspective. If you want to take the time and use the effort and spend the resources to design your own spells? Good on you! If you're a bargain bin rummaging shaman with a tight budget and a rumbling stomach, you might just go buy a pirated copy of one of those beautician spells so you can actually eat for the next two weeks, since it'll get the job done if you use it right and it won't get corp-sec or the Lone Star on your tail.
That same mindset applies to foci as well. That Rating 1 Sustaining Focus isn't going to do much... Except maybe support an Oxygenate spell so you can go diving or survive in a room pumped full of some kind of gas or carbon monoxide. Or, if you're a vampire/banshee, it'll keep you from going dormant without air, letting you escape before the hunters take you out while unconscious. A Power Focus is pretty superfluous in that same situation, but if you're slinging spell-fire, it helps a lot. Weapon foci are awesome... If you're in a fight. Otherwise, they hamper sneaking as bright astral beacons, and for generally being things like swords, spears, big ole daggers, etc.
I can't say much on possession spirits, since the games I've been in haven't really used them much, except for insect spirits/shedim bad-guys (and they have their own rules).
... If you can't guess, I'm a big (huge) fan of Shadowrun. Hands-down my favorite RPG setting by a wide margin (as a setting designed for RPGs, the Dresden Files is about tied in the novel-based category).
Something else I like to add, in regards to Shadowrun, is the interaction between technology and magic. They are not pretty interactions, which I love, and they make hexing in the Dresden Files look sort of fluffy in comparison. Let's see...
1. Cyberware/bioware disrupts the connection between body and soul; if you get enough of it, you pretty much spontaneously die, your soul slipping away from the weakened body. (This can have negative effects on a person's magical capabilities.)
2. Except for cyberzombies. Using various kinds of magic (generally of the dark or corrupt blood-powered kind), you can bind the soul to the body, allowing you to stuff more technology into the body, making them into a superb killing machine! Sounds great, until you realize that the body starts growing tumors and develops other maladies almost constantly, various mental health issues develop and can cascade into gibbering violent psychosis due to the fact that your body knows it should be dead and thus keeps trying to throw the kill-switch, the cyberzombie creates a constant magical drain-effect/death field/blight around them, which kills small plants and animals and grows the longer the cyberzombie remains in the area, and if the ritual isn't done properly, their body might just be possessed by some kind of horror that will slaughter everyone it can get to.
3. When a corporation tried to design a gun that would be able to shoot magical bullets, then entire design pretty much got hexed from then on, even when they stopped that part of the project. The gun would make the ammo in the magazine explode, drop the mags when you try to load it, split the barrel, have inexplicable glitches in the generally reliable smartgun software, etc.
4. The anti-dragon bio-weapon (Blue 227, if I remember correctly) another corporation developed appears to have worked (even if the dragon they used it on still survived, he was hurt bad)! It also appears to drive people insane when exposed to small amounts carried thousands of miles away by the wind.
5. Exposure to pollution-blighted areas can have negative effects on magic-users, eventually turning them into psychotic and/or sociopathic toxic shamans, whose goals range from ravaging the environment to killing all of humanity to blowing up the entire planet with nuclear weapons.
6. Another bio-weapon developed, a form of bacteria that devours magical energies, went native in an environment they released it and killed hundreds of people by floating around in clouds and devouring their magic until they died or escaped. It still haunts the area, ruining the magic in the area and trying to eat people when possible.
The list goes on if you dig a bit, but... Oh, it's awesome. I've been jonesing for more Shadowrun for a while now, since my TT game is on hiatus for the moment.
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Ars magica hands down best magical system ever made to portray wizards
Erm... modulo that we're talking "medieval (through renaissance) view of wizard-who-studies-in-towers" version of wizards, I'd have to agree. There are other versions of wizards, that ArM doesn't do so well.
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Erm... modulo that we're talking "medieval (through renaissance) view of wizard-who-studies-in-towers" version of wizards, I'd have to agree. There are other versions of wizards, that ArM doesn't do so well.
such as
i mean it has decent rules for the creation of magic items spells self enhancement. it covers the time needed to do these things. Its rules allow for fast casting and normal casting by combing spheres you can use it anywhere for anything. Id love a way to make use of it in a modern version of ars magica. I know the world of darkenss mage game tried it but they screwed it up and world of darkness always ruins things with there goth/emo crap. Yes you can call dwn lightning but reality itself will attack you. (except everything else could use their magic without reality biting them in the ass.) Mage the awakening did a better job with more focus on rotes but still reality bites mages in the ass(but not the other criters)
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such as
i mean it has decent rules for the creation of magic items spells self enhancement. it covers the time needed to do these things. Its rules allow for fast casting and normal casting by combing spheres you can use it anywhere for anything. Id love a way to make use of it in a modern version of ars magica. I know the world of darkenss mage game tried it but they screwed it up and world of darkness always ruins things with there goth/emo crap. Yes you can call dwn lightning but reality itself will attack you. (except everything else could use their magic without reality biting them in the ass.) Mage the awakening did a better job with more focus on rotes but still reality bites mages in the ass(but not the other criters)
That's one of the things that set the Mage games apart, though. The fact that your magic is literally rewriting the way reality works - to the point that reality itself hits you with backlash. It's also better from a verisimilitude point of view, since it explains why most still don't believe in magic. Plus it gives the whole Masquerade, hiding from mortals an ironic twist - unlike most supernatural beings who deliberately try to hide themselves, like vampires, the mages (the good ones, at least), desperately want to reveal themselves - but can't, becuase the universe literally will not allows it.
Oh, and for Ascension, the creators themselves outright stated that they weren't going to try for a modern version for Ars Magica, and never inteded to, though IIRC this came after they sold off the Ars Magica copyright. This brings up the old joke: When Mage: the Ascension came out, everyone was pissed because they were expecting a game about modern-day hermetic mages and instead got a game about consensual reality. When Mage: the Awakening came out, everyone was pissed because they were expecting a game about consensual reality and instead got a game about modern-day hermetic mages.
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That's one of the things that set the Mage games apart, though. The fact that your magic is literally rewriting the way reality works - to the point that reality itself hits you with backlash. It's also better from a verisimilitude point of view, since it explains why most still don't believe in magic. Plus it gives the whole Masquerade, hiding from mortals an ironic twist - unlike most supernatural beings who deliberately try to hide themselves, like vampires, the mages (the good ones, at least), desperately want to reveal themselves - but can't, becuase the universe literally will not allows it.
Oh, and for Ascension, the creators themselves outright stated that they weren't going to try for a modern version for Ars Magica, and never inteded to, though IIRC this came after they sold off the Ars Magica copyright. This brings up the old joke: When Mage: the Ascension came out, everyone was pissed because they were expecting a game about modern-day hermetic mages and instead got a game about consensual reality. When Mage: the Awakening came out, everyone was pissed because they were expecting a game about consensual reality and instead got a game about modern-day hermetic mages.
I ttosses out paradox it was stupid and inconsistant across the e tire world of darkness setting especially with the revamp of the series. The idea of paradox and the realm of reason just doesnt work if the reality already contains magic. The best option has always been just hiding it like dfg dont create artificial rules that only one group of magic users havebto abide by.
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Still happy with Gurps Magic 4ed. I can try D6 Magic/Action but feel there's too much math for the poor soul trying to use magic (and yes, coming from a Gurps player, that's a brassy thing for me to say).
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I like Ars Magicka's magic system. It lacks good implementation, but the Idea is great.
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I like systems that are broad and flexible, but have built in belief systems as limitations at the same time. Dark Age Mage is probably my favorite. The original Mage and even Dresden magic are too open ended, they can becomes flavorless too easily. Dresden is supposed to be modified by the belief of the caster via aspects or compels, but I haven't seen it used that well.
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Well, with the experience I've gotten recently, I would not suggest 5th Edition Shadowrun as a good magic system. The basis is great; it's also been screwed up pretty bad. Costs are all over the charts, things got nerfed, etc.
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How is 5e overall, by the way? It sounds like a bit of a mess from where I'm standing, but I don't want to pass judgement on a game I know so little about.
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It's decent, for the basic stuff. Magic's big issue in the core (and Street Grimoire) is some power contradictions, Drain Values being unbalanced, and Direct spells being horribly nerfed. Also, orichalcum and reagents besides normal ones are basically worthless investments at the moment.
Matrix stuff I've always been a little iffy on, but it seems they did well for the most part; except technomancers are difficult to play currently.
Combat is looking good, other actions are looking good...
My biggest problem is the editing. Run & Gun and the Core are okay (not quite acceptable levels of errors, but decent). Street Grimoire is horrid. Also not a big fan for their implementation of the new metaplot nano-disease thing.
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How is 5e overall, by the way? It sounds like a bit of a mess from where I'm standing, but I don't want to pass judgement on a game I know so little about.
Bit of a mess is a bit of an understatement IMHO. The minor mess is some of the questionable rule changes made which I can totally live with. That's just the way it is. But the standard of editing and writing in 5th edition for the core rule book and the supplements released so far have been nothing short of horrible, again IMHO.