Why? Lizy asked if I had to pick one of Laby style Numbers and reductive armour or Rock Paper Scissors as conflict, what'd I pick.
For the right sort of game, I can see randomisers like RPS as a conflict bias actually working and leading to a speedy, interesting outcome. Which I like as I can then get on with roleplaying the consequences. I'd probably do it in some sort of high-wibble non-contact WIZARD CLUB game where you declare an Attack and an Defence with your Magical Gestures of Earth, Blade and Script. I could genuinely see this working as a way to make mage duels vaguely interesting in real time. Casting requires an invocation to give the defender time to mount a defence. If you don't get a defence up by the end, you auto-lose.
Probably doing this as a modern-day setting with Obligatory Wizard Robes. It may or may not be White Council The LARP.
Setting
The Triune Assembly
- Triune Magic is the safe, sane, sensible way to perform magic. It symbolically draws on the three aspects of a person using the concepts of Earth, Blade and Script. It deals with the known and understandable.
- The Triune Assembly is the governing body of magic in the UK. Its symbol is the Borromean Rings.
Protean Magic
- Protean Magic is not safe, sane or sensible. Protean magic draws on the incomprehensible and the chaotic.
- Using Protean Magic tends to leave echoes in areas. Places where it has been used heavily might lead people to be more creative at best and violent and capricious at worst.
- The Triune Assembly are the chief reason that hallucinogenic recreational drugs are illegal. Not because the council found strong evidence of physical harm, but as these substances make Protean Magic significantly easier to perform. A chaos mage is bad enough. A chaos mage who is both more powerful and less sober than usual is frankly, terrifying.
- THIS SHIT IS ILLEGAL and it's the Antagonists.
- Probably leads to Reality Leaks through which Nightmares Pour. Or areas that manifest your own terrors.
Magical Combat
- Earth Magic is the Realm of the Spirit. It is a power for preventing change, defending things, making things better at what they already are. Earth attacks damage the target's memory, identity and sense of self.
- Blade Magic is the Realm of the Body. It is a power for changing existing things into something new, destroying things, healing things. Blade attacks physically pummel, burn or cut the target.
- Script Magic is the Realm of the Mind. It is a power for suggestion, divination, and creation. Script attacks damage the target's ability to think.
- Protean Magic just fucks you up in random, horrible ways.
- In order to use magic in any violent manner, the hands must be associated in the user's mind with either Offence or Defence.
- To accomplish this, a white glove is worn on the Offense hand and a black glove on the Defence one.
- It is expected that most fights will be duels or small-group formal combats.
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