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 PM

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.

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.