Apropos of nothing, I’m going to address why I’ve chosen this particular design for the Ritual Magic System, and why I’m designing one at all.
Existing Work
While as stated previously the major inspiration for the system comes from the magic system for King Arthur Pendragon, 4th Edition, I’m drawing from a number of other systems I’ve seen and liked over the years, including:
- Barbarians of Lemuria and Everywhen, Sorcery
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG, Sorcery
- Carcosa (Lamentations of the Flame Princess), Sorcery
- Castle Falkenstein, Sorcery
- D&D 3.5 SRD, Incantations
- Stormbringer 1st Edition, summoning demons
- Ghosts of Albion, Magic
- GURPS Thaumatology, Book/Path Magic, Energy Accumulating variant
- The Laundry RPG, Sorcery
- A Magical Medley (Fudge), “Occultism” system
- Mythras, Animism
Features I like include:
- Anyone can attempt magic, although certain people are more adept at it than others. (#2, #5, #10)
- Magic typically requires a long amount of time to perform, i.e. more than a combat round. (#2, #3, #4, #5, #8, #10)
- Using specific “props” – objects or even times and places – makes magic easier, or in some cases possible. (#1)
- Rather than a quick skill roll or series of skill rolls and/or paying some cost in “magic points”, magic requires accumulating power from the environment. (#0, #4, #8)
- Expert magicians learn a set of principles, not simply a list of spells.
(#1, #8, #9)
- That said, magicians’ principles include some basic spells to start with. (#9)
- Summoning and binding entities are some of those “basic” principles. (#6, #9, #11)
- Magicians can learn as many spells as they like … but they have to find or invent them through play. (#2, #3, #4, #5, #7, #9, #10)
So why don’t any of the above systems suffice?
-
Not all features are present in all magic systems.
-
Certain systems have features I didn’t want. For example:
-
Generally I wanted to avoid basing the success of a ritual on a single roll plus a bonus, as in most of these systems (#1, #2, #7, #10) or a single d100 roll (#6, #11).
-
As detailed previously, the repeated dice rolls of Incantations (#5) made incantations with more steps or rolls literally exponentially less likely.
-
-
I wanted to reuse this system in other games (assuming it was usable), so tying it to a specific system’s mechanics (d100, d20, 2d6, etc.) was undesirable.
Early I toyed with the idea of using playing cards instead of dice as in Castle Falkenstein (#4). Using cards would emphasize the out-of-system (“otherworldly”?) nature of the Ritual Magic System. However I ran into some conceptual and mechanical problems:
- Would a magician’s proficiency with magic determine how many cards they could draw? How many they could keep?
- Cards have colors and suits. Should rituals have “elemental” affinities as in Falkenstein, or should I just ignore the suits?
- Cards have a 13-point spread between high and low values, so drawing the right card could make or break a casting. Unless face cards mean something else, or I remove them (a pain) and stick to 1-10.
- How would what I’m now calling the “Lore” ability work using cards?
- You’d have to shuffle the deck periodically, unless like in Falkenstein running out of cards means draining the ambient magic. That could be a pain, especially if a casting draws a large number of cards.
In the end, though, I decided that rolling multiple six-siders was the most convenient and least specific mechanism I could use, given how ubiqitous six-siders are. I can buy a pack of five in a drugstore.
Witchcraft: An Alternative
Renaissance, based on OpenQuest 1st Edition, has a “Witchcraft” system that at first blush looks ideal. Cakebread & Walton even renamed and adapted it for Dark Streets and Pirates & Dragons. In brief it works like this:
- Witches (etc.) have an additional attribute called Magic (MAG) that starts as a tenth of the sum of INT and POW.
- To perform a spell, a Renaissance witch checks their Witchcraft skill, which is a standard percentile skill. All witches have a standard repetoire of spells.
- MAG determines the power of a spell: damage done, range, duration, etc.
- Increasing this ability is setting dependent: in Renaissance it’s only possible for “Satanic Witches”, but in Pirates & Dragons someone who knows magic can increase their MAG by choosing a Talent.
While I like the outlines of this system, I didn’t like the details.
-
MAG is almost like Essence in my system. However, MAG strictly constrains parameters of one’s magic, while a lucky Essence roll can yield more power than average.
(As an aside, I’m still fiddling with how Essence relates to an OpenQuest character’s attributes and skills. Currently I’m simplifying it to POW/4, but that does mean a character can only raise their Essence by raising their POW. I may simply allow characters to raise their Essence separately, for a lower cost than four points of POW.)
-
In Renaissance Witches only learn a number of spells equal to their INT. I’m not going to constrain my system with an arbitrary attribute value, although I am toying with soft limits on the number of disparate spells a Ritualist can cast off the top of their heads.
-
In Renaissance spells aren’t written. In mys system spells usually are written, and a Ritualist can refer to the written form while performing a ritual.
-
In Renaissance,
The casting time is one combat round plus the time it takes to prepare the ingredients and any rituals required
. As I specifically wanted a ritual system, mine will list the time to complete a ritual … but giver certain “rituals” the ability to be fast-cast by a practitioner with a specific talent.
What My System Offers
While I partially explained my motivation early on, and touched on its advantages above, I’m going to risk repeating myself:
-
“Ritual Magic”, as the name implies, takes time – minutes, hours, maybe longer – as well as specific objects, places, times of the day/month/year, and so forth.
-
Anyone can attempt a magical ritual, although certain people are more adept at using ritual magic than others. Being good at ritual magic requires a mix of innate talent (Essence) and continuous study and practice (Lore).
-
The prospective ritual magician must only find a Ritual, and gather all the resources required to perform it, within the game world. Having more people participating in the ritual makes it more likely to succeed, and makes it effect stronger.
-
Performing a ritual requires no memorization. One can freely refer to notes in a grimoire, chapbook, or otherwise easily legible handy reference. A dedicated ritualist can still use memorization (and more exotic techniques) to remove their dependence on external references, but doing so imposes other limits.
-
Rituals are organized into Traditions. Each Tradition includes certain basic rituals and ritual operations that are drilled into the student, such that they can recall them without effort and even improvise variations on “standard” rituals.
In short, this Ritual Magic system resembles pre-RPG notions of how magic worked (or was alleged to work).
The mechanics I’ve chosen have the following features:
-
The system assumes players and GMs can easily find at least five six-siders. Choosing pools of six-sided dice makes this system reusable among a wide variety of role-playing game systems.
-
To comprehend a ritual requires the Ritualist to make a Lore test against the difficulty of the Ritual (or at least of its description within a text). This extra step gives Referees a way to make certain Rituals more or less accessible, and also represents whether the Ritualist fully comprehends not just a Ritual’s effects but its side effects.
-
Upon the completion of the ritual a player rolls several six-sided dice (or mathematical equivalent) to determine if they have summoned enougn power to perform the ritual, and if so how great an effect it has. Summing multiple dice allows players to estimate whether they have enough Essence to perform the ritual, without the extreme swings of single dice (e.g. the d20) or percentile dice.
-
Optional rules for memorization and transcription of Rituals let the Referee implement standard tropes about magic: dusty tomes of barely comprehensible meanderings that somehow describe magic, magicians casting “spells” off the top of their head, etc.
-
A rule for gaining “Corruption” from immoral rituals represents a tenet in some worlds that certain magic diminishes and eventually extinguishes the humanity of the user. Referees can ignore this assumption if they choose.
-
Optional rules for “fast casting” will represent certain types of magic, like Witchcraft, where ritual practitioners have a small arsenal of effects they can call upon in emergencies.
While the best magic system may be none at all, I felt the need for some structure if player characters were performing rituals. D6-based Lore checks and Essence checks provide lightweight, system-independent, predictable mechanics, while the emphasis on finding rituals and their requirements in the game world emphasizes exploration and planning in a way most magic systems simply gloss over.