Thaumaturgy Isn't Fun

[Tallyrand]

As the title would suggest, I have a problem with Thaumaturgy.  In the fiction Thaumaturgy is interesting, it's all about making ritual connections, improvising, and using magic for some truly cunning effects.  At the table, at least the way my group has seen it and I'm pretty sure we're doing it as the book suggests, it's a tedious process of writing a grocery less and then rolling the dice a bunch of times to what is generally an inevitable conclusion.  Some times you can put some time constraints to add some tension but that doesn't change the simple fact that the process is dull and has one player rolling dice while the rest wait until they get to have fun again.

So two questions, one is there something about this process that my group and I are missing?  And two, if we're doing it right has anyone found a solution to this problem (if you find it to be a problem at all)?

[BumblingBear]

So two questions, one is there something about this process that my group and I are missing?

Not really - you pretty much nailed it.

  And two, if we're doing it right has anyone found a solution to this problem (if you find it to be a problem at all)?

I tend to breeze by it if a player wants to do thaumatergy.  I don't spend a lot of time on it since as you said, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that it will work anyway.  I may give them a longer time to accomplish something if it's very difficult or complicated, but I don't spend any actual game time on the mechanics once a player tells me what they are doing and how they are doing it.

[UmbraLux]

So two questions, one is there something about this process that my group and I are missing?  

Hmmm, you seem to do it differently.  In my experience, thaumaturgy is one of two things.  It's either a relatively easy spell done mostly "off camera" or it becomes a group project and a mini-adventure in and of itself. 

[MijRai]

Have the other players go fetch 'ingredients'. Like Malk guano, or troll hair, or White Court Vampire blood. That should entertain them during the spell.

[EdgeOfDreams]

My group makes heavy use of the rule, "If failure isn't interesting (or likely), skip the rolls" to speed past any thaumaturgy where time pressure or failure isn't a factor.

[Tallyrand]

Yeah, and my group has done that too, but that doesn't really solve the problem.  With that ruling then Thaumaturgy is both uninteresting and over power.  Certainly my group hasn't used it this way, but there's nothing preventing you from saying "Ok, we're not really doing anything to the evening, so my character is going to use the morning and afternoon to stack 15 or so aspects on himself".  I feel like there's got to be a more dynamic way to utilize Thaumaturgy at the table.  Tonight I'm going to try to work something out and post it.

[Todjaeger]

Hmmm, you seem to do it differently.  In my experience, thaumaturgy is one of two things.  It's either a relatively easy spell done mostly "off camera" or it becomes a group project and a mini-adventure in and of itself. 

This is basically how I run it as well, with the exception for if/when players 'need' to cast a ritual in a hurry and therefore there is the chance for failure...

So far the situation hasn't come up much since I've mostly been running one-shot Con games (blasted campaign fell apart ) but imagine the sort of hijinks which can ensue from gathering appropriate materials to Ward a group's home base.  Raising a powerful and complex Ward which has destructive landmines embedded which would only go off for non-mortals, and a completely different set of landmines which cause nausea and disorientation in mortals.  Imagine having something like that in your Wards if/when the police go to break down the door.  Suddenly the entire ERU starts stumbling around and vomiting, like they're coming off a three-day drinking binge...

I can see it now, a raid of a local blood bank to get a sample of each blood type used to key the Ward to mortals, samples of a dozen different types of swill/gutrot for the landmine vs. humans, a bit of ectoplasm from the Nevernever and perhaps some other samples for the key vs. non-mortals, and then something appropriate for the landmine vs. non-mortals, like a sample of Greek fire for a fire spell.  All different sorts of ways this can be done and made interesting.  And speaking of which, this has given me an idea for a Con game...

-Cheers

[sinker]

One of the things I've noticed is that things are a lot slower and more boring when only the GM and the wizard know the thaumaturgy rules. Recently I've been playing with people who all know how it works and when we get to the point where we want to try thaumaturgy we all work together to get the prep done quickly and then the wizard busts out the rolls (or doesn't as EdgeOfDreams pointed out) and we're done. I certainly wouldn't say that it makes thaumaturgy fun but it does make it more bearable.

[Tallyrand]

I don't find that a group making a grocery list is any more exciting than one person doing it personally.

[sinker]

Again, not saying it's fun, just faster and easier.

[Todjaeger]

I don't find that a group making a grocery list is any more exciting than one person doing it personally.

The 'grocery list' as you put it isn't the fun part.  The 'shopping' on the other hand, can be a blast.  Or several of them.

Something which people seem to overlook, at least from my perspective, is some of the background work which goes on 'off camera' between the various novels and short stories in the Dresden Files.  While some players and GM's could just gloss over some of that, and they should for much of the more mundane and/or boring stuff, Jim Butcher glosses over some areas which could be quite interesting, but aren't particularly relevant to whatever story he is telling at that particular point, and below are three examples.

The first is from Grave Peril, right in the beginning Harry has a charm which he made and has been using to provide him some protection from the ghosts and spirits that he and Michael had been fighting, immediately before the start of the novel.  Now I don't have the book immediately in my hand, but from memory it included things like a dead man's shroud, blessed silver, and other things which were harder to get.

The second example is also from Grave Peril, but it also gets mentioned in Changes and might have made an appearance in other novels and I've just forgotten.  This one is ghost dust, which is basically a specially enchanted material for use against ghosts and other non-corporeal entities and the base material it is made from is depleted uranium amongst other things.

The third example is a very special bullet which Gard prepared for Marcone to use and was mentioned in Even Hand.  The bullet was inscribed with a rune by Gard, but it apparently had to have been a 'special' bullet for the rune to be inscribed and effective.  What made the bullet in question so special is that it was a bullet which Gard had either taken out, or got right after it was taken out, from the British admiral named Nelson that it mortally wounded.  Incidentally, and to provide historical context for how important/rare the bullet used as the base for the rune is/was, there is a statue of Admiral Nelson in Trafalagar Square, commemorating his victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, as well as the death of Britain's greatest naval hero in the naval battle which broken the naval power of the combined Franco-Spanish fleet during the Napoleonic Wars, and the last fleet battle the Royal Navy would have for ~110 years until the Battle of Jutland in during World War I.

Given the role and importance some of the items I've listed can have, as a GM I would find it absolutely appropriate to have the players spend a session or two just trying to gather the more important and rare materials for a major ritual working.  I freely admit that some of the materials I'd allow to be gathered by creative uses of the Resources and/or Contacts skills, but for some, the story associated with just getting the material would make it worth doing.  Otherwise the Dresden Files RPG which has always struck me as being more of a story-telling RPG, becomes little more than a roll-playing game and not a role-playing game.

-Cheers

[UmbraLux]

I don't find that a group making a grocery list is any more exciting than one person doing it personally.

Lists?  I'm talking adventure.  How do you acquire those items?  That knowledge?  If all you have to do is make a list to have the item appear you may well be skipping the fun.  

Try acquiring Werewolf Blood, Hair from a Water Sidhe, or even just a thread from the Shroud of Turin.  Even something as simple as a Bullet Used to Kill is going to take some work at finding.  And all those are actual items ('actual' being relative).  Essence of Fear, Tears of the Sun, and other conceptual items become more difficult.  

Have a bit of fun with your list!  Instead of looking for items you can find at the store, think of items which could be more...interesting to acquire.  

[Tallyrand]

Werewolf's Blood and Angel's Tears are all fine examples of ritual materials if you're trying to pull off some very unusual spell, but most of the time everything you need can be found at a hardware store.  As often as Harry talks about using Mouse Scampers there's someone using store bought glitter or silly putty.  Also, even if we went with a mandate that ritual ingredients have to be WEIRD that would present with it's own problem.  Now, every time my group wants to do a ritual the GM has to write an entire side adventure specifically for the Wizard.  This also seems to be to be a not fun solution.

[sinker]

I'm not trying to be argumentative or negative here but I'm honestly wondering what you're looking for Tallyrand? It seems most of us are satisfied with glossing over the small stuff (getting small rituals out of the way quickly and with minimum effort) and going epic for the big stuff (making entire adventures around a ritual), so what are you looking for? Help us understand where you are at so that maybe we can provide a helpful solution.

Another question is how often are you (or your players) using thaumaturgy to solve a problem? Over the last five or six sessions with my group I think we might have used it five times. It was never more than a few minutes of any given session.

[InFerrumVeritas]

Personally, it depends on the type of thing that they are doing.

In the case of a summoning spell, I do kind of gloss over the summoning (so long as it is reasonable for the caster to be able to do so).  It's the interaction that's interesting.  

In the case of a divination spell, often the interesting part is getting the link (which we will roleplay) with the rest of it being somewhat mundane ("grocery list").  The interesting part is the chase/bit after the revelation.

In the case of building a blasting spell, you'll roleplay every declaration that you're not spending a fate point for (or most of them).  Not just making a list and rolling it.

Creating the spell can become the adventure, lasting a session or part of a session.

Or it can't.  In that case, you can just gloss over things.

One idea, if you want a limit on Thaumaturgy that's not roleplayed, is that you could say that you can make ONE off camera declaration for each skill you have Fair or above per session.  This tends to limit things to around 10 aspects.  Skipping time (like having a night off) only counts as sitting out a scene.  Thus, big spells become adventures, little ones you have a baseline for (roll skills to see what complexity you can muster, assume you can control it unless you have time constraints because you'll channel one shift at a time).  Roleplay the results.

Using that idea, it becomes a plot device that your players can use or an adventure that you can take them on (rather that they can choose to take).  

Tangentially: I do think this is why we see more evocation focused characters.  It's not that players expect more fighting, but that they see fighting as more fun.