TheInquisitor/LarpMagic

A thought hit me earlier today, and this led me to start pondering what a magic system in larp should be trying to achieve.

Usual caveat: This is what I think would make for a good magic syatem in a club environment like TT, with people much like we have now. I don't expect everyone to agree - but experience suggests that about half the disagreements will be due to miscommunication, rather than true disagreement.

Collection of statements about the situation as I see it:

• Magic has to be related to something people care about, or it just isn't worth writing.
• People care about approximately four things: Combat, plot, roleplay and indirect conflict.
• Roleplay is easy. It basically just needs there to be an avenue for inventiveness. People will roleplay with and around insanely dull systems if they have to (c.f. LT), so worry about this last.
• Plot more or less doesn't want a system. It's helpful to have a framework around which to place whatever magic-related plot the ref team is running, but much like roleplay, it will fit around whatever's there.
• Combat is the only things many magic systems cater to. It tends to do this by giving people limited uses of a significant advantage and/or irrelevator of larp combat. You very rarely see unsupported magical combat as an option, and this is for a good reason. More on this later.
• Indirect conflict. PvP? or PvE?. Doesn't really matter. Point is, it's conflict resolution via not-hitting-each-other. Magic either ignores this, or wades in rather inexpertly. You tend to see one of three effects: No useful spell exists for the situation; an 'I win' spell exists for a situation, or a possible solution exists via a spell. The first two are fine if kept within bounds that people might expect - the third isn't. Why? Because the resolution mechanic is inevitably one of 'what does the ref feel like?' or 'can the player casting the spell ask the right questions, and/or badger the refs sufficiently, to make it work?'. Think of the trouble with psycometry... This is basically a Bad Thing, and I may come back to it later.
• Going back to combat, because that's what I started thinking about...

It occurs to me that I'm writing a bullet pointed essay. May as well run with this.

Combat magic should basically be completely separate from magic for indirect conflict. That makes it possible to meet the very different requirements of the two.

I think we should get more thoroughly away from the idea of magic as something that happens independantly of hitting people. I'm less and less interested in the idea of two people standing 30' apart yelling vocals at each other. It may even be possible to make an interesting RPS subgame out of it (Hmmm... Interesting idea, that - will consider further for resistances) - but even then, I don't want to see it. Right now, it's an exercise in gabbling fast, and knowing the system better.

The strength of larp combat is that you get the interesting tactical considerations, and effective randomiser, of actually runnign around hitting each other. The sort of syetem gaming required for cast magic is a layer removed from that, and doesn't add much. If I want to play that sort of thing, I'll play Ars Magica, which has a wonderful system, and can explore nuances in much more detail. (side note: in Ars Magica, the best tactis seems to be to stock up on magical defence, and then go and make mundane attacks, using your magical defence to run inteference. Please ignore this when considering above point).

So, in short, I think we should cut right down on ranged and wide type effects. Magic should, instead, be a source of combat tricks - and possibly also ways to redefine the conflict in your favour (some mass effects might manage this. Not sure).

This runs us into the problem currently facing the system: Combat tricks are amazingly powerful. This is mostly because combat is a way of doing damage very fast, and a combat trick generally invalidates the opponent's defence, reliably, for long enough to level them.

(I wonder what we could do with a minimum 3 second gap between taking one effect, and taking the next - enough time to disangage, and/or think. It would make everything into sparring, but it might enforce a more heroic style of combat. </aside>)

Anyway, this is mostly a problem because of the glass ninja issue, and because it makes it pretty much impossible to balance combat casters against stand-off casters. The glass ninja issue I shall come to, but I think the solution to the latter is to build the system on the assumption that almost everyone will be a combat caster. I don't really care whether they get their tricks from 'skill', or from magic. /LinearSystem went along these lines, although I don't think it's quite there yet, due to the glass ninja issue I'm coming to.

Oh, aside on power growth. I'd like to see a move towards a model where the base ability is higher, and the cap lower (say, start on 4/2 singles with 2 DAC, and work up to 10/5 ambidoubles with 4 DAC, in current system terms - the point being that it's just not interesting to have larger variations, since the combat is then just tactically uninteresting, and safety considerations tend to mean that weapon-trapping and a mass bundle will win the day).

So, defences... Combat tricks could really benefit with some finer divisions of success than 'works' and 'doesn't work'. Either in terms of chances, or in terms of actual resistance. People consider broad-spectrum immunity, even limited-application, to be really scary - partly because it invalidates combat tricks you had to spend a lot for, and partly because it will kill a trick-user who isn't expecting it.

Getting rid of the culture of expecting a trick to work will help there, but that's not going to get around the problem of total immunity itself being a very good combat trick, which probably wants not to be widely available.

So, one rather crazy thought is to return to the RPS idea above (Rock Paper Scissors), and let people declare a per-encounter defence (say, scissors) - then have people attacking obliged to use one sort of attack or other - the result giving full/partial/no effect, in the obvious fashion. That lets people work out what to do next time, and adds a tactical subgame.

I think the game would be more interesting with a 5 point colour wheel, with each colour having itself (strong effect), two adjacent colours (weak effect), and two opposed colours (no effect). You then give people mechanical incentives to optimise towards particular colours, and it becomes possible to guess what colour the opponent will use if they are optimising their own behaviour, and thus defend against it.

I don't know if the above is *actually* a good idea, but it does seem a way of getting randomised resistances in, which is otherwise a hard proposition.

The other solution is to have partial resistances available, of course. It doesn't help that (say) strikedown 30 is a very different beast from strikedown 5, in terms of how you should make best use of it (leave them along and hit another target first versus pile in for the kill), so you'd need a good system of feedback, or it gets messy.

Damage effects scale with level, status effects don't. I've had this rant before. They should. (Or, alternatively, damage effects shouldn't, a la fest systems - but since the fundamental unit of club larp is one person, rather than one mob, the granularity might be worth the effort).

Anyway, that wasn't my thought.

My thought was sparked by a joke Ian made, paired with behaviour of various classes in Warcrack (notably the paladin, and possibly the deathknight) - who charge their swords with some sort of effect, and then hit people to unleash it.

Now, this isn't actually a bad idea for larp. It's a useful combat trick, but (unlike a 'for 5 minutes' effect, it's quite possible to balance.

It leads to the idea of casting being all, pretty much, about putting limited effects into items - to give you combat tricks.

So you might have a tree or three of effects to put into melee weapons, and some for shields, and some for armour, some for clothing, some for protective thingamanjigs. Then some for battle standards, as well.

You end up with a whole bunch of effects which are physrepped by 'I use this item, and we pretend it has more effect than usual', rather than the present 'imagine that a ball of fire is shooting out of my hand' - and that also deals with most problems of people just not noticing vocals (fest systems strongly limit spell numbers for that reason, I believe - but casting in mass combat in TT is just a joke right now).

I reckon it could actually work on the current system with a bit of a syllabus change, although I'm not necessarily advocating that (then again, we are intending a syllabus rewrite for Christmas, so why not?)

You could, of course, have long-term enchanting of items, as well - but that should be considered a question of how you balance item creation and use, which is to say combat power, rather than a question of how the magic system works.

So, to conclude:

• I'd like to see almost everyone be at least somewhat of a combattant.
• I'd like to see almost all magic be combat tricks, and directly paired with actual bits of larp combat.
• I'd like to see gradations of resistances, somehow.
• I like the idea of combat magic being all about temporary enhancements of items.

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I do not like 'everyone is a combatant' because I thoroughly enjoy being a noncombatant - running around at the back ready to occasionally cast something at someone. I like the current point and click magic system because you can do things like 'nerf your running-faster-than-me advantage by halting/repelling you'. I think it is important in a club environment like TT to have a range of classes requiring different sets of hard skills, not all of which involve being physically great, and I think point and click magic supports that better than your ideas. I am especially nervous of them coming from you, because you have quite good running around and fighting skills and you may not always appreciate that other people don't and don't really want to develop them but would like to have fun and play something effective anyway. --ChessyPig

Not being in the front line hitting things doesn't make you not a combatant. Support caster is clearly a valuable and interesting role. I just don't think it's one which should be firing direct damage spells. Ironically, removing DD spells makes the support caster a more viable role, because people *can* effectively form a line and protect you. Also point and click 'anti-running' spells are most definately a combat trick, or, at any rate, something I think is beneficial. Point and click damage/crippling status effects less so (and I do mean crippling, as opposed to just inconvenient there), not so.

As for worries about skill... I suspect the biggest advantage available would be that of thinking fast, and adapting tactics. I note that at least one of Jake and Jacob complained that LinearSystem would lean more heavily in favour of soft skills than hard skills than they were happy with, and it's certainly that direction I was thinking of heading in. I certainly would like hard skills to play a role, but I'd rather tactical skill was at least as important as the ability to run fast. --I

But support casters are still "combatants" in that they get into fights, and they might have to run, etc. While I'm very well aware that you do enjoy larping without combat on occasion, I think your view that everyone "should" be a combatant is coming from the point of view that everyone wants to or even can, and is at best misguided. --Pufferfish

Yes, okay, that was badly phrased. It was also a bit beside the point. I meant something more along the lines of 'offensive magics should be paired with weapon skills in an offensive magic build; the unarmed (or armed, but non-weapon-using) point-and-click mage shouldn't be a viable archetype for those seeking optimal combat builds'. Please disregard the old wording. (If you really must regard it, put it in the context of my thinking about characters optimised for combat situations - I think it reasonable to require that they carry and use weapons, given we're dealing with larp combat...) --I

Whereas I think there are various entertaining things you can do on a battlefield that don't necessarily involve carrying and using weapons, which come under the various magic/spirit/alchemy/first-aid headings (as well as the much undervalued role of keeping an eye on things and shouting directions), and which I wouldn't want to lose / disregard. --ChessyPig

• I like point-and-clickery within reason, because it adds both another hard skill and another tactical element to combat; rather than just fighting the person nearest too you you have to think about getting to the casters, even if that means going into tactically disadvantageous positions.
  • Sadly, it also adds the option of just blasting the casters, without fighting your way to them - and makes defensive formations somewhat irrelevant without the right rather random mix of countermagic and/or blessings. --I
• I think that in your uses-of-magic distinction, "Plot" and "Indirect Conflict" are basically one and the same, or at least heavily overlap.
  • There is overlap, yes - but consider the points plot, versus use of magic to investigate a murder. I suspect it is my terminology at fault, here.--I
• I like magic being able to intervene in this; I'm aware that it causes headaches but I think it is worth preserving nonetheless.
  • I, too, like magic being able to intervene in such things. I don't believe that it has an adequet resolution mechanic for the 'chancy' cases, yet. I didn't explore that further because I got distracted. --I
• I think that gradations of resistance between "works" and "doesn't work" are generally problematical - it feels much more unsatisfactory to fling your spell and have it not work properly than it does to just have it bounce, and as you say partial effects often have very different effects to whole ones.
  • Could this be avoided by phrasing it 'default effect', 'unexpected extra-powerful effect', 'no effect'? --I

  I think this could be cool, but probably wouldn't achieve what you're looking for, because vulnerabilities would need to be fairly rare, and the default effect reasonably significant. But having some people specifically vulnerable to certain effects is an idea I like, and may steal for TT statting (if you take a strikedown, it works at inflict duration...). --Jacob

• One possible resistance system would be "respond to this effect only every Nth time you take it"; with the implicit assumption that everyone would have some levels of this, and each spell would need to be cast several times to take effect.
  • True. Don't like the feel of that one, though. I've seen it proposed as a way of mechanising armour, and quite like it for that - but only with global armour. --I
• Casting in combat is - at least for me; ISTR Pufferfish saying that she found it different - *much* harder than point-and-clicking from behind a line.
  • I, too, found it harder. I don't consider this a bug. --I

--Jacob

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I'm all for adding more "combat tricks" to the magic system, but surely advocating "combat casting" encourages the annoying "step back gabber vocals to rebuff weapons/armour" tactic?

Also given the vast gulfs in hard skills and the lack of any real incentives in practice for linear parties to protect their weaker members I don't see "forming a line to protect the casters" happening. --Tristan