Sunday, March 3, 2013

Magi v001

I finished(sort of) the first pdf version of Magi. There are a lot of things that still need work. Think of this as a working play test document. To use this you will need to have access to the Fate Core rules. I would love to hear any feedback about this, either from reading and finding problems or from actually playing it(should you feel the urge to do that).

Anyway here is the pdf:




And here is an epub version: pdf version
Sorry about the quality, I can never get these things to turn out right, sorry.



9 comments:

  1. Got it, and while there isn't too much there that I didn't already know, I'm super-thrilled that it's out.

    I left my comments on the Google+ forum for FateCore, but I'll add one more: for Spirit, it should work the way Psyche does, but for Matter, Forces, and also dealing with spirits that have some dominion over abstract concepts that humans tend to focus on: Love, Freedom, Fear, Change, Beauty, and so on, as well as ghosts.

    Now, while this risks it being a "Swiss-Army knife" skill, it's not quite that, because there's always the bargaining with the entity in question, Compels that can be offered to mitigate the spirit's effectiveness or willingness to cooperate, and so on. Other skills don't have that delay, as long as the Magus can change reality via his or her paradigm.

    At least, that's how I'd run it, but then you run into the question of statting up the spirit as a separate entity. I argue that it's worth it.

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  2. I will think on it. I plan on doing some cleaning up and additions to this. Probably a few weeks out though as I have a couple other projects I am also working on.

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  3. Understandable, of course. I *do* like your blue-collar necromancy idea.

    Have my comments at least been helpful, so far? I really like Magi, and I want to help it develop, but I'm leery of being overhelpful to the point where I'm a pain in the ass.

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    1. YOur comments are what convinced me there was more taht could be done with this project. I am serious in that I don't really understand half the stuff I write about for this setting. It is so nebulous and out there, I just don't always get what is going on in it. It is less a setting and more a meta setting...or meta settings.

      Theoretically this is a game where Gozer the Gozerian, Batman, and Daffy Duck are all potential character concepts...if you get what I am saying.

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  4. I do get what you're saying. That's yet another thing I'm enjoying about the game.

    It's also the part of the game that convinced me about adding the Occlusion idea I mentioned earlier. Somehow, in some way, the nodes interact to produce a lowest-common-denominator reality that it makes everything conform to. Characters that Magi recognize as extraordinary rarely (if ever) trip regular people's "weirdness meters." Magical events wind up being remembered (and recorded) as mundane events. Sometimes, there are gaps, which some people fall through and could end up disassociating from the LCD-Reality and becoming Magi. Or going nuts. Whichever.

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  5. By the way, how do you determine what the difficulty rating for a given task is? Do you have a set of guidelines you're working off of?

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    1. thats one of the big issues I have. In Fate determining difficulty is generally based on the PCs and their skill levels. I could write down some hard and fast rules, but that would mean at some point the game would just become really easy, no matter what. Right now I am leaning toward guidlines, but I am not sure where to put them.

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    2. I'd base it on the difficulty to hack the node, plus the number of aspects, minus the aspects which support what the Magus is trying to do. Since Nodes are the focus of the drama, let them set the resistance. It means that early on, they'll mostly be using rituals to change things, but as they get more powerful and better at node management, Magi will be able to pull off wilder and wilder effects. And keep in mind: this favors those whom the Node favors, so it makes Node rewriting a strategic goal.

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  6. Here's an idea: A player can, after hitting a milestone, opt to not improve his character, but rewrite it without improving the scores. This gives the option to rewrite the character almost completely after a success, representing changes to their paradigm and themselves, similar to what King Mob went through when he felt he was becoming too violent. They could also change their skills around, rearranging their effectiveness without improving it.

    This represents a moment of personal growth for the character, as they rediscover themselves and, in the process, rewrite themselves to fit a new ideal.

    Also, for your consideration: For each Node hacked by that character (with or without assistance, the player can add one bar to either of his/her stress tracks (Pattern or Discord). Problem is, they lose that extra if the node powering it gets rehacked or blocked. This reinforces the strategy of never approaching your enemy directly if you can at all help it.

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