Quote from: GnomeWorks;343232Give me a list of spells with very mutable parameters.

I'm working on doing exactly that with the Fantasy 3.5 OGL spells:
Flexible Magic System

I wold give you a mixed position. A laundary list of spells but guidelines for creating your own spells. This fits with my own principle of Magic as a science. By setting internally logical parameters for spells and how they operate you can have a list of known spells and encourage PCs to create and research their own spells with the parameters you outline ans stick to for all the other spells.

So you get the idea of finding new spells with those great names Etherbright's Primordial Panacea, Micklewish's Measured Mesmerisation and of course my favourite mage Medium Dave's Stony Glance. but you also encourage the PCs to create their own spells and define their own magic and i don't just mean blue fireballs or lighting bolts in the shape of F's etc etc .
One of the great things about Vance was the idiosyncracies of his mages.

D&D almost did this but new spells were ill defined and open to DM fiat and therefore abuse.

Quote from: RPGPundit;343254Freeform always runs the risk of destroying a campaign if just one asshole player...

Hold 'er newt. Don't play with assholes.  Why do people have a problem with this?

Also, given your statements regarding GM authority, I'm surprised this would be any kind of problem for you.

!i!

I voted for a list, because I prefer Palladium and D&D, but I also like old Mage: the Excuse. The difference between the two systems is that characters in Mage are so powerful, that the story can never be about killing someone, because if it is, there isn't much to stop a PC from giving him a heart attack.

Now Mage does include a bunch of bullshitty ideas for how to keep Technomancers safe, but really, if a PC knows where one is, it is pretty easy to whack him.

I like the idea of freeform spells but I haven't played or GMd many games that used them. They seem to support magic being more unreliable/chaotic/experimental... never the same thing twice.
Spell lists are fine though, especially when they have evocative names and interesting rituals attached... if they can open up to variations in power and effect then all the better.

Both Ars Magica and the game that it informed -- Mage -- handled this quandary well.  Not only do you have a relatively freeform system for constructing spells, but you have lists of spells constructed by magicians who have come before.  Not only do these lists provide you with ready-to-use spells, but they also serve as models for creating new ones.

!i!

Does Ars Magica have the same annoying New Agey metaphysical explanations for magic that original Mage had? The stuff about 'belief' changing 'reality'.
That was the stuff that turned me right off of Mage when I was reading my way through it... even though I'd bought it because I'd heard it had this cool freeform magic system.

Quote from: Simlasa;343299Does Ars Magica have the same annoying New Agey metaphysical explanations for magic that original Mage had? The stuff about 'belief' changing 'reality'.
That was the stuff that turned me right off of Mage when I was reading my way through it... even though I'd bought it because I'd heard it had this cool freeform magic system.

Belief does inform reality in Ars Magica, but there is more to it than that. The laws of magic are quite interesting. I forget them mostly, but it includes stuff like:

You can't change the nature of the infernal.
You can't bring anyone back to life.
You can't work magic beyond the lunar sphere.
You can't affect the outcome of a miracle.

People of faith have a strong resistance to magic, as does holy ground. If you were using earth magic to tunnel under a town, if you accidently went under a church you could easily be killed when the spell fails and the tunnel collapses.

Quote from: Simlasa;343299Does Ars Magica have the same annoying New Agey metaphysical explanations for magic that original Mage had? The stuff about 'belief' changing 'reality'.

As Cranewings states, belief does affect reality, but not in anything quite as abstruse as the "Pirsigian" philosophy espoused in Mage.  Ars Magica definitely engages in magic for the sake of magic, and not as an expression of a phenomenological philosophy, and it preceded the World o' Darkness zeitgeist by some years.

In the year before Mage was originally released, I got antsy while working on a Vampire game I was running, and I adapted the AM magic system to the Vampire / Werewolf character creation mechanics.  It worked rather quite well (though with a decidedly less world-spanning perspective of magical traditions), and I was rather disappointed in how bland Mage itself turned out to be.

!i!

Quote from: Silverlion;343266True, but isn't that in part what GM's are for, to say no to such things?

Yeah, but it sure becomes a hassle if the system is set up to require that to be a recurring theme.

RPGPundit

Give me a laundry list, as a fall back the set of tools in my control.  Free form systems are too open to abuse and/or total neglect as players can't be bothered to come up with more than a handful of spells.

Frankly, I'm over the idea of having an intricate logic system in place to explain magic.  It just is, tell me what cool things it can do and move on. I don't need to know how.

My preference is a framework system and laundry list of examples.

Quote from: Simlasa;343299Does Ars Magica have the same annoying New Agey metaphysical explanations for magic that original Mage had? The stuff about 'belief' changing 'reality'.
That was the stuff that turned me right off of Mage when I was reading my way through it... even though I'd bought it because I'd heard it had this cool freeform magic system.

No, in Ars Magica magic is presented as an erudite pursue. The more you study, the more powerful you become. On the one hand this makes your character not want to have adventures, because they're distractions, on the other hand, in order to study your character will need books and magical components that will make him go out and search for them.

Quote from: Ian Absentia;343278Don't play with assholes.  Why do people have a problem with this?

Because it's unrealistic and unhelpful advice.

Seanchai

Quote from: RPGPundit;343332Yeah, but it sure becomes a hassle if the system is set up to require that to be a recurring theme.

RPGPundit

Possibly, I can see that--then again a lot of player's effectiveness rely on a GM's arbitration. I think it will always be that way when you put any capabilities in the hands of somewhat creative and imaginative people.