Both in the crunch (rules) and fluff (setting).
I'm someone who likes to have a lot of rules dedicated to what I can and cannot do in ttrpgs. For me, a badly designed magic system would be both vague and restrictive. As in "You can only cast this spell once per encounter, but first you need to fiddle with your clock and dice pool values to reach a value that your DM arbitarily set, and then you can cast a spell, whose effects and damage, if there are any, are explained in a few words that are only more confusing".
I am pretty open minded about magic systems, but I remember the 2E psionics approach really bothering me (I suppose not technically magic but I would still regard it as a magic system)
When it's too open-ended that it leads to endless arguments. Granted that's a lot of spells throughout different systems, which is a good reminder about clarity of wording and defining limits. But I am also thinking about White Wolf's Mage: the Ascension... aaaand now I am getting flashbacks sitting through discussions about what a Mage can do. /sadface
Did you ever play Mage: The Awakening?
I only played that and it . . . seemed pretty good. Space to create your own, but enough there that you didn't have to and the examples provided good context.
Mind you I didn't play this one as much as I wanted to at the time.
So, this is one I've put a lot of thought into. I like GURPS Magic, AD&D, Rolemaster, Dragon Quest. I'm not fond of Runequest but I do like the Worlds of Wonder / Magic World magic system.
Personally, if the magic is really tied to a setting the problem becomes that it's too restrictive. Did they cast levitate in Lord of the Rings? Well then this magic system doesn't fit because tightly defined settings become too exclusionary.
I guess it's really why I think licensed setting make bad rpgs as well. Rpgs should be about exploration and creation not being locked into a cell.
Lack of consistent limits and specifications. As per Brandon Sanderson, it's often more important to a story -- or consistent game environment -- what your magicians can't do than what they can.
Almost as bad is a magic system that doesn't make useful options available for whatever the PCs are supposed to do. If the game is about killing monsters and taking their stuff, magic which doesn't make it easier to kill things and find stuff isn't going to see much use.
WotC's D&D-ish game is the worst. It lacks limitation so the casters easily dominate the game. Pure trash.
I'm not a fan of DCC but the magic system is dangerous for the casters and their teammates. That's a good thing. Even something like TRoS where using magic causes casters to age faster is good.
The late E.G. Gygax called WotC's rpg a superhero game and he was correct.
(https://media0.giphy.com/media/CF76UXsZXRZle/200w.gif?cid=6c09b952cbwdi5orcq9ylvng5lwu1wl4sh4f5l907vrhch6w&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=200w.gif&ct=g)
I agree with most of what's been said above about bad magic in crunch. If you want to see a magic system trip at every single hurdle, check out Modiphius' "Conan: Adventures In An Age Undreamed Of". Incomprehensibly vague spell descriptions? Check. Multiple steps to resolve every spell? Check. Extremely situational spells that will probably never be used? Check. Having to negotiate the affect of every spell with the GM? Check and check!
I'm not sure there is such a thing as bad magic system in fluff, fluff being almost entirely a matter of taste. It really only becomes an issue when the fluff and the crunch contradict each other. If magic is supposed to be rare and dangerous, you can't make it both highly useful and free (as it is in the majority of RPGs). If magic is supposed be channeling arcane energy out of the environment or summoning up otherworldly creatures, then neither memorizing spells or an MP system makes much sense. Etc etc.
It is difficult to tell what would be bad for a particular setting without knowing anything about the setting. What magic is capable of, should be a part of the setting and somewhat apparent to anyone exploring that setting unless magic is some sort of recent development. If magic is super powerful then the the power structure should reflect that. If magic is lower powered and subtle, the same applies.
The types I personally disdain are the ones that are more or less purchased feats or powers. those to be are uninspired and not even worth my time, they don't fit into the fiction, rarely are balanced and don't feel very magical to me.
So this is most GURPS magic, or anything produced by Green Ronin.
Magic systems I think are the peak of design would be GLOGs magic dice system, because the idea of taking Vancian magic one step further with the idea that spells are non-fungible, that my version of fireball and your version of fireball are discrete entities and only happen to look alike.
LIkewise while I wish it was more concise, something between Ars magic 2nd and Ars magic 5th edition magic is just wonderful, I'm trying to adapt that system in a more concise way into an OSR system, but a semi-open system where GM discretion, spell precedence and the fiction of the setting all helping you triangulate on what a spell should do at what cost is kind of awesome.
Magic without limits or consequences are the ones I dislike the most.
Both in setting and systems.
What Exploderwizard said, plus the Brandon Sanderson approach is half right: Yes limits are important, but also important is how far magic takes over science/tech versus how much it is supernatural/mythic/fairy tale.
The more logical and repetitive magic is, the easier it is to fit into a setting and have limits. It also becomes less "magical" in the process. This is also true if the magic is common. So when you have wizards hiding under every rock and popping out to blast things, it's easy for it to turn into space troopers hiding under every rock popping out to use a blaster. That's fine if that's what your after. It's horrible if it's not.
Which brings us back to Exploderwizard's point, hard. The setting must be the prime driver. Rules are downstream from that.
Personally, I think rules for magic or magic "systems" in general are overrated in prose fiction. I don't think there's a single fantasy franchise I like which has a "hard" magic system. I prefer magic which is ill-understood, even by the characters in the fiction. I was going to say that I disagree with Sanderson as regards non-interactive fiction, but I went and read this article (https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/), and I think he has it mostly right. This quote in particular:
Quote"The really good writers of soft magic systems very, very rarely use their magic to solve problems in their books. Magic creates problems, then people solve those problems on their own without much magic."
And that is true of almost every piece of non-interactive fantasy fiction that I hold in high regard. The only major exception would be Michael Moorcock, who is periodically guilty of letting Elric pull a big spell out of his ass to solve problems. But in that case you could argue that the monster of the moment is never really the threat to Elric, so much as the overarching threat of Arioch and Stormbringer.
In games though, the soft magic approach is borderline unworkable. Games aren't much fun if the player can't make informed decisions, and to do that they need to know how the tools at their disposal work. You have to make magic almost entirely unavailable to the players, which would be the right approach in something like a Conan or Lovecraftian game, but not much use elsewhere.
RPG magic systems are like cooking. Too much salt ruins a dish, but not enough means it will taste bland. Too much chili powder will make it inedible for most people. Even if your take on it is the best on the planet, nobody wants to eat bat soup. Topping a salad with dish soap instead of vinegar is probably a terrible idea. However, soap chemistry is an important part of deep frying; the salt in the food reacts with the fats in the oils to produce soap, and the chemical contact these soaps enable between food and oil is a key component to the perfectly even browning unique to deep fried food.)
My point is there are many, many ways RPG magic systems can fail, not just one or two, and the more you know about them the more nuanced truths flip what you think you know on your head. Most RPG magic systems have some faults, too, so just having them isn't necessarily a deal-breaker either. No, they fail when a flaw or combination of flaws goes supercritical and starts interfering with the other components of the game. Most often, magic starts hogging gameplay time or player spotlight time. Other flaws tend to not actually break magic systems so much as dilute your enjoyment of them.
QuoteIn games though, the soft magic approach is borderline unworkable. Games aren't much fun if the player can't make informed decisions, and to do that they need to know how the tools at their disposal work. You have to make magic almost entirely unavailable to the players, which would be the right approach in something like a Conan or Lovecraftian game, but not much use elsewhere.
Yes and no. If the system is supposed to cover everything, then yes. If the system leaves some things uncertain or outside the scope of "player" magic, then no.
Classic case in point: D&D gods casting "spells". This is fine if you want the players to fight gods. It's horrible if you don't. In the latter case, there's no point to pinning down what a god can or can't do mechanically--or at least not that strictly mechanical. No amount of "at will" with spells will fix that problem, either. Instead of "god casts teleport other" or some such, it's "god snaps fingers and anyone the god wants to be elsewhere is now there." Then whatever limits, if any, the GM thinks should go onto that ability, to fit the setting, the GM can so place.
Less obviously, certain monster abilities. Sure, those need some mechanical basis, but it shouldn't just be a spell effect--and really shouldn't just be a spell straight up unless the monster is a caster. A ogre shaman casting fireball is fine. A fire elemental casting fireball, er, iffy, maybe 50/50--especially if fireball has been neutered a bit. Much better if the fire being blasted from the latter has its own mechanics.
Setting design that looks for more "magic" tries to carve out as many areas like this as possible. This will necessarily make the system less generic, and thus less portable to other settings. Which is why so many generic/universal systems have a bias towards magic as science.
QuoteA ogre shaman casting fireball is fine. A fire elemental casting fireball, er, iffy, maybe 50/50--especially if fireball has been neutered a bit. Much better if the fire being blasted from the latter has its own mechanics.
For purposes of creating different feel and atmosphere this is a feature. For purposes of making a game mechanically easier to handle it's a bug.
I think the "bias towards magic as science" is less a product of setting-free genericization and more a product of the needs of a consistent game
as a game. To be desirable for a game player, an in-game tactic has to meet a minimum threshold of either reliability or reward in potential outcome -- and while you can trade off between the two, the tradeoff itself has to be reasonably calculable by a sufficiently practiced player. If the stakes aren't worth not knowing the odds, practical players won't make that bet.
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QuoteI think the "bias towards magic as science" is less a product of setting-free genericization and more a product of the needs of a consistent game as a game. To be desirable for a game player, an in-game tactic has to meet a minimum threshold of either reliability or reward in potential outcome -- and while you can trade off between the two, the tradeoff itself has to be reasonably calculable by a sufficiently practiced player. If the stakes aren't worth not knowing the odds, practical players won't make that bet.
That doesn't work in this example, unless you first assume that the player should know how the monster's mechanics work. Once you make that assumption, it's starting to drift outside the realm of RPG entirely.
Now, if it was "GM makes something up every time" that would be an example. A player needs the world to be consistent in the sense of things that happened yesterday will follow the same logic today. That says nothing one way or the other about how Monster X's attack should work compared to Monster Y's attack compared to Player Z's attack.
If you are talking effect, then that's another side of the issue. Fire should burn things, no matter who is providing the fire. Doesn't follow that dragon fire and elemental fire and good old mundane fire need to work exactly the same--only that once something starts burning, it works similarly. Kind of like the difference between Greek Fire and and a camp fire.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on April 15, 2024, 04:43:38 PMThat doesn't work in this example, unless you first assume that the player should know how the monster's mechanics work. Once you make that assumption, it's starting to drift outside the realm of RPG entirely.
Fair point, although I didn't intend for the comment about magic-as-system to be a criticism of that example specifically -- my fault there for jumping from thought to thought too fast.
I agree that different rules for different types of magic would go a long way towards making a given setting's magic overall "feel" more like a complex unpredictable environment. I think, however, there's a fairly steep curve of diminishing returns on that approach in terms of ease and time of handling. There's a reason that as of 3rd Edition going forward, arcane magic, divine magic and psionics all became remarkably similar in terms of rules structure and use -- the majority of both players and GMs just weren't interested in having to learn multiple subsystems when one did fine (as opposed to the weird psionics system of AD&D1E).
Quote"Yes and no. If the system is supposed to cover everything, then yes. If the system leaves some things uncertain or outside the scope of "player" magic, then no..."
Player magic tends to have an outsized influence on the flavor of a game world, IME. It's the kind they most interact with, not just because of their own characters but because it tends to be what's available to the majority of NPCs as well. Most NPCs tend to be the same kinds of being as PCs (humans, elves, whatever), so if their magic plays by different rules it starts to ask questions of setting consistency. Multiply that by the fact that while you might see a given monster once in a whole campaign, similar kinds of NPC turn up campaign after campaign, and "player magic" can easily dictate the nature of magic in the whole setting.
When it comes to monsters, there's an incentive for designers to standardize their abilities, just to make life easier for the DM. If every fire breath attack works the same way, it's just a little less mental overhead when running the game. Every monster having unique abilities is certainly more interesting, but you don't often see it in published material.
These are obviously trends, not universals, but they push RPG worlds towards the "hard" end of the magic spectrum. An interesting compromise, which I hadn't thought of before, is
Savage Worlds' "trappings" system, which kind of divorces the crunch from the fluff. IIRC
By This Axe I Hack does something a bit similar, where it describes the spell effect in very dry mechanical way and encourages the player to customize the flavor to their own uses.
Good magic systems affect the game in concrete ways... like Dexterity is reduced by x points for Z amount of time.
Good Magic Systems work hand-in-hand with their respective settings. The settings *should* reflect in the world the realities of having Magic and the various ways Magic is interacted with recapitulated into the everyday world of the setting.
D&D is fairly ridiculous as low-level spells like Create Food and Water would insanely affect locality of anywhere spellcasters exist. The economics and even the population would be greatly affected. Of course no one wants to consider this kind of stuff.
But consider that's low-level magic.
I've always controlled this by making arcane spellcasters pretty damn rare outside of the PC's.
The "system" mechanics ideally should be informed by what is supposed to be described in the setting at large. I'm not a fan of "build spells on the fly" vs. having templated and scaling effects. I think magic should be constrained either by overt mechanics and/or setting externalities. This could be "magic" is limited to thematic schools (elemental, rituals, or other narrowly banded forms of magic) and or setting realities like all spellcasters are marked for death/rare in number/hard to learn as a vocation/cursed passively for knowing magic or whatever.
My only exceptions are when running a Mage-heavy game, depending on the genre. Mageocratic societies should be wild with possibility and the magic should likewise reflect that socially if not in raw power.
Setting is everything for me. How well does the magic system reflect the prevalence and nature of the milieu that the adventure is set in.
Other than that, I dislike systems that focus on offensive type spells. For me, magic-users should be bringing a different toolbox to the fighters.
Quote from: DonJonKeeper on April 16, 2024, 12:27:24 PMFor me, magic-users should be bringing a different toolbox to the fighters.
What sorts of things do you think they should be doing? Bear in mind that even without high-power direct offensive capabilities, in a combat-heavy game (and most RPGs do feature a lot of combat) all characters should still have ways to effectively contribute to a fight, or they'll be getting shut out of a good chunk of play time.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on April 16, 2024, 01:54:12 PMQuote from: DonJonKeeper on April 16, 2024, 12:27:24 PMFor me, magic-users should be bringing a different toolbox to the fighters.
What sorts of things do you think they should be doing? Bear in mind that even without high-power direct offensive capabilities, in a combat-heavy game (and most RPGs do feature a lot of combat) all characters should still have ways to effectively contribute to a fight, or they'll be getting shut out of a good chunk of play time.
They are the ones with monster lore (how to hurt this thing), ritual spells of protection, identifying and enchanting items.
Yes, this means they are shut out from combat, but combat should be a last resort IMHO. By placing more focus on exploration/investigation and not just DPS, the game becomes more reflective of its source materials and less like a war/board game.
Every single one that sets out to "fix" some other game. Usually trying to "fix" D&D.
Quote from: Omega on May 01, 2024, 04:09:34 PMEvery single one that sets out to "fix" some other game. Usually trying to "fix" D&D.
I believe Earthdawn set out to "fix" the issues they had with Vancian spellcasting and "disposable magic items." The way they did their thread magic and spellcasting and integrated into the whole of their world is still one of my favorites--in theory. In practice, it can be a headache at times.
Quote from: Theory of Games on April 14, 2024, 07:48:36 AMWotC's D&D-ish game is the worst. It lacks limitation so the casters easily dominate the game. Pure trash.
I'm not a fan of DCC but the magic system is dangerous for the casters and their teammates. That's a good thing. Even something like TRoS where using magic causes casters to age faster is good.
The late E.G. Gygax called WotC's rpg a superhero game and he was correct.
(https://media0.giphy.com/media/CF76UXsZXRZle/200w.gif?cid=6c09b952cbwdi5orcq9ylvng5lwu1wl4sh4f5l907vrhch6w&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=200w.gif&ct=g)
There is much truth, in the above post.