For some reason I've never been interested in Call of Cthulhu, but I'm reasonably familiar with other BRP games, especially RQ and (somewhat less) Stormbringer/Elric.
One thing that interests me about CoC though is the magic system. I keep hearing about a "Ritual" skill and I'd like to know how that works, and how magic in general is handled in the game.
What I'm shooting for in a fantasy context is the idea that "magic" is never a property of a character, but knowledge, skill, and possibly accoutrements are needed to perform magic well. E.g. just as in The Shaggy Dog, if you find a spell and read it out loud, it'll go off.
In a game, you might also need special vestments, material components, etc. Some skill might be needed to prepare things properly or pronounce the words right, especially if you're working from memory. You might also need to meditate properly. In addition, certain spells might require a unique artifact. And to create a new spell might require advanced knowledge, or it might have to be revealed somehow by a higher power.
But ultimately this is very different from most fantasy RPG approaches that define people as magic users or not, and as innately having access to certain spells or powers or not.
Also, does the Chaosium BRP book include CoC-style magic as an option?
BRP's Ritual is a subskill of the Perform-skill. It allows a character to cast spells or boost them. It is not incorporated into the magic-system as such, it is included as an option if you want your magic to be more ..well, ritualistic. If you want to use this option, it's basicly just a question of how you want it; a single ritual-skill for all spells, different sub-rituals for different magics, determining trappings, how long time it takes etc. A bit of tailoring system to concept.
BRP includes two different magic systems; one where spells are learned individually as skills, and used as such. The other system is Sorcery(basicly lifted from Stormbringer5). It is slightly less powerful in nature, but can be cast more or less automatically. A GM might require a successfull Ritual-test to cast a Sorcery-spell instead of letting it automatically succeed.
Adding mythos-magic to the mix is a relatively quick fix.
If you want, I'm pretty sure you could slap the Ritual-skill on mutations, psychic powers and supers as well.
The ritual-skill might also come into play as a divination-tool, regaining powerpoints, summoning attempts, enchanting etc.
By itself it does little, but is there as an option.
Jason D haunts these forums, he might sprout some wisdom if he sees this thread.
And, there is a Magic-monograph in the works, building on the foundations of RQ's magic. The Ritual-skill gets a bit more fleshed out there.
Thanks. I do mean to pick up Jason's BRP book eventually, as it seems like the best "baseline" to use that's in print. (I'm not keen on what I've seen of MRQ core, though the supplements might be of interest and I'm aware of a new edition in the works.)
My main question is, once I get BRP, what else will CoC bring to the table magic-wise, and particularly for the "style" of magic that I'm looking for?
Is this the BRP magic book you're referring to? http://catalog.chaosium.com/product_info.php?cPath=55&products_id=3719 It sounds like Ceremony is the innovation there vis à vis RQ III, although maybe it was already there and I'm forgetting. Anyway this thread (http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/supplements-monographs/1525-basic-magic-classic-magic-systems-basic-roleplaying.html) from BRP Central doesn't make it sound very promising.
Quote from: Elliot Wilen;343958...
Is this the BRP magic book you're referring to? http://catalog.chaosium.com/product_info.php?cPath=55&products_id=3719 It sounds like Ceremony is the innovation there vis à vis RQ III, although maybe it was already there and I'm forgetting. Anyway this thread (http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/supplements-monographs/1525-basic-magic-classic-magic-systems-basic-roleplaying.html) from BRP Central doesn't make it sound very promising.
I made an inquiry about magic and BRP at the Big Purple about a week ago, and was pretty strongly warned away from that supplement.
I own the BRP corebook, and it seems to include most of what you'd need for your purposes, I think. Just require the ritual skill for the casting of any sorcery spell (along with any additional material components, etc., you like), and I think that you should be fine. Also, keep the sorcery spells rare and give them 'exotic' names.
(However, I'm still learning the system, so I could be wrong...)
The BRP corebook is
excellent, btw.
The Basic Magic-mono has gotten some well-deserved flak.
But if you have RQ, you already have all the info in a better package.
But I'm referring to Tywyll's (http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/basic-roleplaying/1398-magic-monograph-2nd-try.html) mono. It seems like it will bring good things to the table. It builds upon principles from the Basic Magic-book(or preferrably the magic systems from RQ II/III). I've read some excerpts, and it looks good.
Are you planning a fantasy/scifi/supers/etc-game with tentacles? Or just adding excrutiating detail to the roaring 20's?
Mythos-style magic will immediately add some colour to BRP, as well as entities capable of reducing characters to mush in seconds. The powers presented in the book are very usable, as powerful as you want, but also quite bland and generic.
Adding the mythos to a setting and using BRP's allegiance-rules instead of the downward spiralling sanity-mechanic could be interesting.
Not really sure what you're angling for. Mythos-style spellcasting can be emulated very easily within the framework of BRP. Adding mythos-style magic will also add the GOO's and their ilk, and as such, a mythology. Or cosmology? Bad Things!:eek:
Thanks for the info. Hopefully I remember to check in on Twyll's book from time to time. I do own RQ III so I will forego the Magic book.
I'm not really looking to add the Cthulhu mythos per se to anything. Rather I'm looking for something to use as part of a revisionist S&S campaign. By "revisionist" I mean that it uses S&S as a major inspiration but tries to make it more "real". (Some might say "less exciting" but I don't plan to pitch the game to those people.)
So: low magic in general, with something along the lines of RQ's tripartite division of spirit/divine/sorcerous magic. However while I don't intend to do anything too radical with the first two (mainly: a lot of nerfing), what I want to do for sorcery is mainly summoning/pacting with possibly a few "spell-like" rituals as well. Possible inspirations include Dragonquest, Stormbringer/Elric (in at least three distinct iterations), Sorcerer, and the Fantasy Hero supplement The Valdorian Age. Maybe a pinch of the old SPI wargame Demons, too.
Between the lot I think I have a good idea now of how things will work; the only remaining issue is that I would like to see if I can break down the hard division between magic-users and other characters while still encouraging some specialization. To a large degree, sorcery becomes no more than a knowledge/craft/lore-type skill, albeit one where success is hard and failure often incurs a big penalty. And where even getting started usually requires a lot of expenditure and prep.
Here's how spells work in CoC.
Firstly, there is no skill component, spells are binary, you either know them or you don't. Ritual comes I think from RQ3e, it's not in CoC.
Like other BRP games CoC has a Power stat, representing will and charisma and magical power. Characters in CoC also have magic points, equal to their pow. To cast a spell you pay a cost in magic points and lose a certain amount of Sanity, powerful spells or ones with permanent effect sometimes require a cost in Power, the difference being magic points regenerate in 24 hours but Power once spent is gone forever (well, there are means to increase Pow as there are other stats, but basically you've just taken a permanent stat modifier).
Certain spells also require certain conditions to be met, times for casting, sacrifices, objects to be used (possibly themselves requiring another spell to enchant first), and some spells even then only have a certain chance of working. That chance can sometimes be modified by putting in more magic points, but skill again isn't relevant. Either you can do it or you can't.
In current editions spells are divided into the old grimoire and new spells, originally the game just had the old grimoire. Spells in the old grimoire involve summoning and binding creatures (and you summon first, then have to bind, which for most humans is a problem as you'll probably have spent most of your magic points on the summoning not leaving you enough for the binding), contacting certain other creatures which aren't capable of summoning and binding but which can perhaps be bargained with, calling deities (often a very bad idea, many are very bad news when they turn up and they often have no real interest in the caster's survival), and then some spells based on stuff that came up in the stories - creating magical gates between distant places, a spell to shrivel people so that they die hideously, a warding spell, a spell for intimidating supernatural creatures and so on.
The new grimoire isn't nearly as good, it's just all the spells that were included in the adventures, often they make no sense outside the context of the adventure they were originally in and many of them frankly weren't that good to begin with. They do no harm, as you can ignore them, but I don't think they add much either and many of them are at odds with the philosophy of the game.
Anyway, hope that helps.
I think Bal is right that the ritual skill is from RQIII, I don't believe it was ever in COC. I used a combination of RQ, Stormbringer, and COC rules back in my heydey but there really wasn't much unique to the mechanics of the COC magic system itself that I used. Back then at least there wasn't really a tripartite division of magic as in RQ. Spells were just out there to be discovered and anyone could in theory use a spell if they learned it from a mythos tome or otherwise and had the power and sanity to spare to cast it. The vast majority of the spells were summonings reminiscent of RQIII (with the sanity losing component added) or were spells to contact and/or keep away various mythos creatures. Investigators running into a sorceror weren't likely to get zapped* but they would probably be eaten by whatever nasty the sorceror made a pact with or killed by his evil henchman/cultists.
If you just want to add the flavor of the COC magic system to your game you might want to pick up an earlier edition on Ebay or something and with your RQ background you shouldn't have any problem with it. Or you may be just as well off using the old Stormbringer summoning rules since they seemed more developed to me at least.
*except in the dreamlands where magic was stronger.
Balbinus is correct. The important aspect of CoC magic is almost all of the spells have a cost that is more than spending a few magic points. They're usually in books that cost sanity to read, they cost sanity to cast, and often have permanent costs of ability scores. The exact costs and even exact effect are generally kept from the player until they've been cast.
When PCs cast spells, they're either naive, used to othey systems or are desperate and willing to take the risk.
Quote from: Nicephorus;344013Balbinus is correct. The important aspect of CoC magic is almost all of the spells have a cost that is more than spending a few magic points. They're usually in books that cost sanity to read, they cost sanity to cast, and often have permanent costs of ability scores. The exact costs and even exact effect are generally kept from the player until they've been cast.
When PCs cast spells, they're either naive, used to othey systems or are desperate and willing to take the risk.
I forgot to mention that learning them also often has its own San cost, thanks for flagging that.
The core book also encourages you to rename spells, so that frequently PCs may not even know what the spell does until they cast it. Call forth ye Blasphemer for example, probably summons something but what exactly? Can you bind it? Dismiss it? Hard to say.
One of my favourite CoC moments came when the party in a game I was running decided to test a spell to see what it did, a few hours later when the thing showed up (after folk had generally decided it wasn't going to) there was much confusion and terror and a bit of gunplay which threatened the characters more than it did the thing they summoned. Also, it turned out that throwing a bag of flour over the entity so you can see what you're shooting at isn't always as good an idea as it sounds...
Thanks, all. You've clarified things a lot and provided some good ideas. I'll keep an eye out for a used CoC book.