Here’s my post-first-playtest for a system-agnostic, improvised magic system. I’m implementing 3-4 magic systems simultaneously in my game because I like different sources of power to actually be different: no homogenised spellcasting here.
If you just want the goods, skip to the end. But I think you’ll find value and enjoyment in me explaining why this improv magic exists first, and why it feels the way it does. The tl;dr: is for me, the joy of game design is making mechanics that encourage and capture the feeling of a thing.
The Taste of Magic
I hate magic that feels predictable. I hate magic that feels common. I hate magic that doesn’t feel magical. Magic that feels like I’m following a recipe or using a power in an MMORPG. It’s good to know what you hate, because whatever is left over might be to your taste. So, let’s quickly examine two magic systems that almost nail it.
Dungeon Crawl Classics
I do not hate Dungeon Crawl Classics: I love it. It contains an almost perfect magic system, to be honest. Casting can misfire and bad failures corrupt you. You roll on a table for the spell effect, again for spell failures, again for the corruption and… ah. This is getting a bit slow, now.
The beauty of rolling on a table is your spell has a theme of effects, but no specific effect. So, you get that unpredictable feeling of magical magic, but as a player in a game, you can still make functional choices. The issue is that it can take up to 4 dice rolls to conclude a single spell (cast, effect die, target save, side effct). Deepening this wound, the misfire and corruption tables are dozens of pages apart, and sure you can note them down but it’s still a lot of page flipping. Some of the successful spell effects are even across multiple pages.
The big picture is pretty, but the details are too weedy for me to rip off completely.
Electrum Archive
The Electrum Archive is a gorgeous NSR game that uses word salad spellcasting - the kind of thing that gives you adverb-noun prompts and asks you to improvise the results with your DM.
I loathe these. They’re in my preferred vein of improv-collaborative gameplay, but I find the parameters far too broad to be practical at the table.
The Electrum Archive is particularly good at telling you what the cost and strength of a spell should be by sorting them into Minor-Moderate-Major-Mythic tiers, and giving damage limits for each. But they still don’t define the spells enough to make this system fast enough for me at the table.
For example, let’s say a player casts ‘Consuming Death’. Even if I know the tier, how quickly are you consumed? Does it also consume your equipment? How much range is too much range? I could probably answer all of these, but the system is asking me to design a spell in real-time with my players. Out of session I do this sort of thing with joy, but during play? With 3-4 other people waiting around? Nah. Without more defined parameters this takes so much time and kills momentum, so I’ve never used these systems for long before throwing them out.
Speed, The Unknown, Teamwork!
By now you have surmised that speed of play is essential to me. If I have to ever break play to check rules I feel I have failed at something important. So you may say ‘well, Charlie, just use good old fashioned Vancian casting. Spell in, spell out’. And yes that would be easy but then it would be predictable and formulaic and I’m a special boy and surely I can have my speed-of-play-but-not-predictable cake and eat it too.
So here’s my checklist. If the magic is perfect, I want it to capture these things:
Informed Unpredictability. Magic shouldn’t be reliable, but it shouldn’t be so zany as to put you off using it entirely. You ought to know what you’re getting into.
Speed. No checking of the rules mid-play, minimised rolling, minimised discussion about what a spell can do.
Teamwork. I do like collaborative game design at the table. But it has to meet the earlier two points. If we can improv with guidelines, we’re golden.
The System
Well, I think I have figured it out. Enter electromagic. The core is system and setting agnostic but there’s additional depth to focus in on my setting. So far in playtesting, the restrictions keep the power in check but still allow flexibility, creativity, magical magic, and aren’t too hard to remember.
To tweak this for your setting, call it something else (like sorcery), reflavour the complications and table and drop or modify the sections on electromagical targets and electromagicalvoreism.
Using Electromagic
To use electromagic, roll your electromagic die which starts at 1d3.
1 or more below difficulty: failure, complication
Equal to difficulty: success, complication.
Higher than difficulty: success.
The difficulty for basic electromagic is 1. Basic electromagic:
Affects one target
Has a close range (touch for non-zone based games)
Lasts one round
Cannot create matter. (but can modify existing matter)
If it deals damage, it starts at 1d4.
Otherwise, you decide its nature. You can improve any feature, such as affecting more targets, the range, dealing damage by starting at 1d4, or anything else by increasing the difficulty by 1.
You can reduce the difficulty by adding an extenuating factor such as a power source, required materials, astral alignment, indulging in vices or more.
DdEM means roll difficulty X electromagic die. If the difficulty is 3, you roll 3x your electromagic die. This notation is a bit rubbish bit it’s a work in progress.
This table is obviously specific to my game. For D&D-derived games, vigour is constitution or strength, skill is Dexterity or Intelligence, and empathy is Wisdom or Charisma. EoT means end of turn, we use slot-based inventory. You should be able to convert or figure the rest out on your own.
Electromagicalvoreism
You can exhaust a power pack, power cell, or anything else that produces an electromagical field to gain +1 to your next use of electromagic. You must touch and exhaust the source as you use electromagic.
You can also drain creatures in this way. If they are unwilling, make opposed empathy tests. On a success, their maximum vigour is reduced by 1d8 if they are a biologic. If they are a machine, their maximum vigour is reduced by 2d6 and you instead gain +2. You can drain multiple creature at once if they are touching.
Electromagical Targets
Electromagic that targets something with a strong field has its difficulty reduced by 1, and increased by 1 for those with weak fields.
Generally, machines have strong fields, biologics have normal fields, and abberant creatures like VOME have weak fields. Anything from outside of Urd, like things, have no field at all and are immune to electromagic.
Becoming an Electromagician
You must be shown the way by someone in the know. Electromagicians normally take apprentices that hold similar values to them and will further their goals.
Any creature with an electromagic die of 1d4 or more can take you as an apprentice. If they try to teach you, make an empathy save. On a success, you gain a 1d3 electromagic die. On a failure, roll 1d20 on the electromagical complications table.
Increasing Your Electromagic Die
Extreme Electromagicalvoreism
Kill An Ohm. When Ohm die they release a huge volume of electromagical potential. If you use electromagicalvoreism as it dies, increase your electromagic die by +1d.
Destroy Power. If you exhaust a power source you can choose to destroy it beyond repair - if it is a creature it must die. If you do this a number of times equal to the maximum roll on your electromagic die, increase it by +1d.
Tutelage
Ohm Pilgrimage. Follow the Ohm and study them for a number of months equal to the maximum roll on your electromagic die to increase it by +1d.
Apprenticeship. An electromagician with an electromagic die at least one size larger than yours can train you using the some process outline in. ’Becoming An Electromagician’. They cannot help you train your die to a larger size than theirs. It is extremely rare for an electromagician to train an apprentice to the same die size as them. After all, why then would the apprentice stay?
Examples of Electromagic
Electromagical Defense Field (difficulty 1). Attacks against a close target are impaired.
Lethal Attraction (difficulty 1). Close target’s attacks becomes enhanced.
Photonic Shift (difficulty 1). Target creature can teleport with their move.
Freeze (difficulty 1). A close section of water freezes over.
Enfeeble (difficulty 2). Near target’s attacks becomes impaired for one round.
Animate Corpse (difficulty 2). Reanimate a close corpse under your control.
Static Blast (difficulty 3). Deal 1d4 blast damage, close.
Send Message (difficulty 4). A distant target hears your voice.
Conjure Dragon (difficulty 4). Conjure a dragon close to you. [dragon is probably distant, so up to DC 4. It’ll [probably just kill you though, as its the fastest way to get back to wherever it was].
Hypercharge (difficulty 5). A near target gains an additional action, can move twice, attacks against it are impaired and it can teleport with its move.
