Fixes for Mage: Sorcerer's Crusade magic?
- Thread starter Pielorinho
- Start date
Saeviomagy
Adventurer
If you combine the possibilities of magical figureheads and ships crewed by mages with the relative ease of destroying any non magical ship, you basically end up with the 4e minion/nonminion split.
The PCs can shine by blowing up ships left right and centre (mind you, if 4 ships spontaneously explode during a battle, that's probably not going to be entirely paradox free...) and then have to get serious to deal with the one warded ship. Or alternately they may be so tied up with the magic-wielding ship that they don't have time to properly deal with the minion ships...
The PCs can shine by blowing up ships left right and centre (mind you, if 4 ships spontaneously explode during a battle, that's probably not going to be entirely paradox free...) and then have to get serious to deal with the one warded ship. Or alternately they may be so tied up with the magic-wielding ship that they don't have time to properly deal with the minion ships...
Or, if you think in more plot-centric way...
The PCs shine by blowing up mundane ships left, right, and center.... and then the people who are having their ships blown up get royally cheesed off (literally, as some of them are probably ships of some crown), and they put their own mages on them, and the PCs get a taste of their own medicine.
Mage, at its best, is not so much about how you win the battle, as what the consequences of your win are :
prevalence and universe consistency
Part of the question is how prevalent Mages are in your universe. If 1 in 1000 ships has a magically-capable crew, then there will be very few anti-magic counter-measures in place. If, on the other hand, there's a reasonable expectation that any given pirate ship, privateer, or other hostile force will have a magically-capable individual on the crew, then there will be a variety of magical countermeasures in common use.
Let's look to evidence... sailors are commonly understood to be among the most superstitious of all people. In a Mage universe, these superstitions may be vulgar evidence of actual effective magics (perhaps not Mage-style magics, but formulaic...). So if the prevalence of shipboard superstition is evidence of continuing use of magery in ship's operation, it's natural to assume that these magics are also battle-effective.
I have a mental vision of two ship's powder rooms: first, a pirates-of-the-carribean pirate ship, and second a lord-nelson's-navy 'scientifically' managed ship. On the first, The powder room door has a hoodoo warding sign scribed on it 'for protection'. Inside, each barrel of powder has a lump of pitch on an edge, and a red thread around the top of the barrel, and dangling to a broadly-frayed end, "to catch the sparks, keep 'em away from the powder". Wadding and match-cord are stored coiled counter-clockwise above the equator, and clockwise below the equator. Tools for mixing and measuring all have deer-horn in their construction - as weights on scales, handles for tools, etc. All taken together, these magics and fetishes (as administered and maintained by the ship's hoo-doo man from the exotic locale and strange accent, reinforced by the belief and indoctrination of the crew...) raise the target numbers for magical effects (protective sigil against Cor, horn implements against Prim), and raise the required successes for a major effect (red cords, coiling and storage). Note that these also lead to 'by other means' attacks on the guards and wards... Mat attacks on the material of the door to weaken protective wards, Mind effects to make ship's rats hunger for red cords and rearrange coiled matchcord for bedding, etc.
On the Lord-Nelson's-Navy ship, it's a much more technocrat focused. The powder room is a separate vault built into the ship - the vault is installed permanently, but on 'motion-isolating' chocks of some springy exotic wood. The door is actually a double door - one that opens into the ship, one that opens into the vault "serving as both a reminder to personnel of the unique risks of the powder room, and to ensure final defensability of the powder room from any accidental entry to the powder room". Within the powder-room/vault, the individual casks are stored in a specially-designed honeycomb-structured, baffled rack holder, "to isolate any accidental sparks or small explosions". A regular maintenance procedure is to ensure the separations between the baffles "is optimal for safety". Cord and wadding is stored with felt spacers, and all storage boxes are designed without hinges or clasps. Tools are regulation, properly shaped and of the right weights, stored in carefully labelled leather satchels, and the powder monkeys are regularly drilled on replacing each tool in the stachel after each use, before taking out another tool. Note that the game-mechanical effects are the same as above.
Also note - there's not a lot of skepticisim floating around at sea. The reality of the Emprium is subject to local belief systems - and if the only ones around to believe are sailors indoctrinated into the superstitions of their ship, then they're going to have an unusually high impact on local reality. The magics (whether superstitious magic hoo-doo, or technocratic magic of scientiifc design) used on a ship, reinforced by the belief of the crew, should have a higher level of impact than standard game-mechanic ritual magery. Your friendly neighborhood Mage will not necessarily benefit from this boost due to isolation.
Note also that many shipboard situations will have wonky Paradox impacts. A very superstitious, open-minded crew will be much more directly accepting of magical effects - Paradox will be mitigated. A Nelson's-Navy style ship and crew will have a more regimented local reality, and Mager may invite Paradox much more readily. Finally, note that privacy and 'out-of-the-way'ness is very rare shipboard. It will require substantial planning and stage-management to be 'unobserved'.
Part of the question is how prevalent Mages are in your universe. If 1 in 1000 ships has a magically-capable crew, then there will be very few anti-magic counter-measures in place. If, on the other hand, there's a reasonable expectation that any given pirate ship, privateer, or other hostile force will have a magically-capable individual on the crew, then there will be a variety of magical countermeasures in common use.
Let's look to evidence... sailors are commonly understood to be among the most superstitious of all people. In a Mage universe, these superstitions may be vulgar evidence of actual effective magics (perhaps not Mage-style magics, but formulaic...). So if the prevalence of shipboard superstition is evidence of continuing use of magery in ship's operation, it's natural to assume that these magics are also battle-effective.
I have a mental vision of two ship's powder rooms: first, a pirates-of-the-carribean pirate ship, and second a lord-nelson's-navy 'scientifically' managed ship. On the first, The powder room door has a hoodoo warding sign scribed on it 'for protection'. Inside, each barrel of powder has a lump of pitch on an edge, and a red thread around the top of the barrel, and dangling to a broadly-frayed end, "to catch the sparks, keep 'em away from the powder". Wadding and match-cord are stored coiled counter-clockwise above the equator, and clockwise below the equator. Tools for mixing and measuring all have deer-horn in their construction - as weights on scales, handles for tools, etc. All taken together, these magics and fetishes (as administered and maintained by the ship's hoo-doo man from the exotic locale and strange accent, reinforced by the belief and indoctrination of the crew...) raise the target numbers for magical effects (protective sigil against Cor, horn implements against Prim), and raise the required successes for a major effect (red cords, coiling and storage). Note that these also lead to 'by other means' attacks on the guards and wards... Mat attacks on the material of the door to weaken protective wards, Mind effects to make ship's rats hunger for red cords and rearrange coiled matchcord for bedding, etc.
On the Lord-Nelson's-Navy ship, it's a much more technocrat focused. The powder room is a separate vault built into the ship - the vault is installed permanently, but on 'motion-isolating' chocks of some springy exotic wood. The door is actually a double door - one that opens into the ship, one that opens into the vault "serving as both a reminder to personnel of the unique risks of the powder room, and to ensure final defensability of the powder room from any accidental entry to the powder room". Within the powder-room/vault, the individual casks are stored in a specially-designed honeycomb-structured, baffled rack holder, "to isolate any accidental sparks or small explosions". A regular maintenance procedure is to ensure the separations between the baffles "is optimal for safety". Cord and wadding is stored with felt spacers, and all storage boxes are designed without hinges or clasps. Tools are regulation, properly shaped and of the right weights, stored in carefully labelled leather satchels, and the powder monkeys are regularly drilled on replacing each tool in the stachel after each use, before taking out another tool. Note that the game-mechanical effects are the same as above.
Also note - there's not a lot of skepticisim floating around at sea. The reality of the Emprium is subject to local belief systems - and if the only ones around to believe are sailors indoctrinated into the superstitions of their ship, then they're going to have an unusually high impact on local reality. The magics (whether superstitious magic hoo-doo, or technocratic magic of scientiifc design) used on a ship, reinforced by the belief of the crew, should have a higher level of impact than standard game-mechanic ritual magery. Your friendly neighborhood Mage will not necessarily benefit from this boost due to isolation.
Note also that many shipboard situations will have wonky Paradox impacts. A very superstitious, open-minded crew will be much more directly accepting of magical effects - Paradox will be mitigated. A Nelson's-Navy style ship and crew will have a more regimented local reality, and Mager may invite Paradox much more readily. Finally, note that privacy and 'out-of-the-way'ness is very rare shipboard. It will require substantial planning and stage-management to be 'unobserved'.
humble minion
Legend
I may be way off-base with what you want from your game here, but how wedded to the Mage:SC implied setting are you? Is the game more "Mage:SC set in the Caribbean with pirates!" or is it "Caribbean pirate fantasy which just happens to be run using the M:SC rules"?
You say that you want a mage to be roughly equivalent to a cannon. I'm not sure how literal you mean that. Do you want them hanging in the rigging, hurling broadsides of fireballs at the enemy ships? Cos that's not how Mage in my experience have gone. Mage has, for me, always been about applying minimum amounts of sneaky force to achieve the desired objective. And that CAN come across to some players and/or DMs as overly-methodical not-fun God-style play, particularly if they rock up to a game expecting swashbuckling Pirates of the Caribbean style action and end up with ... something very different. Mage - particularly when played in its most *efficent* manner by very results-oriented PCs/players - doesn't really do swashbuckle. Swashbuckle is dramatic, and daring, and risky, and spectacular. Mages tend to try really hard to avoid all of those things.
How do mages fit in your world? How common are they? Is their existence widely known? Does every ship in the Caribbean have a ship's witch? If so, you can probably get away with it, because ship's wards and routine countermeasures to all the obvious gambits are well established and your PCs won't be the first to try anything world-breaking. If not, well, I'm inclined to agree that they'll probably be sending fleets to the bottom and ruling Tortuga from golden thrones in pretty short order.
If you're willing to tinker with the implied setting, is it worth making it harder to do spontaneous stuff, instead restricting PCs more narrowly to a tradition of magic that they presumably learned from their master or something. Or perhaps it's just really hard/expensive to get dots in magical disciplines other than your primary one. So you can have some mages who specialise in hurling lightning at other ships, others who are creepy voodoo practitioners who steal bodies and raise sodden zombies, others who shift shape into sea creatures, etc etc. Mind you, giving up the sponteneity of effect crafting means the game really isn't Mage any more, and that might not be a price you're willing to pay (you are saying you want to play a Mage game, after all!) But something like this might make it easier to handle and control the feel of the game.
You say that you want a mage to be roughly equivalent to a cannon. I'm not sure how literal you mean that. Do you want them hanging in the rigging, hurling broadsides of fireballs at the enemy ships? Cos that's not how Mage in my experience have gone. Mage has, for me, always been about applying minimum amounts of sneaky force to achieve the desired objective. And that CAN come across to some players and/or DMs as overly-methodical not-fun God-style play, particularly if they rock up to a game expecting swashbuckling Pirates of the Caribbean style action and end up with ... something very different. Mage - particularly when played in its most *efficent* manner by very results-oriented PCs/players - doesn't really do swashbuckle. Swashbuckle is dramatic, and daring, and risky, and spectacular. Mages tend to try really hard to avoid all of those things.
How do mages fit in your world? How common are they? Is their existence widely known? Does every ship in the Caribbean have a ship's witch? If so, you can probably get away with it, because ship's wards and routine countermeasures to all the obvious gambits are well established and your PCs won't be the first to try anything world-breaking. If not, well, I'm inclined to agree that they'll probably be sending fleets to the bottom and ruling Tortuga from golden thrones in pretty short order.
If you're willing to tinker with the implied setting, is it worth making it harder to do spontaneous stuff, instead restricting PCs more narrowly to a tradition of magic that they presumably learned from their master or something. Or perhaps it's just really hard/expensive to get dots in magical disciplines other than your primary one. So you can have some mages who specialise in hurling lightning at other ships, others who are creepy voodoo practitioners who steal bodies and raise sodden zombies, others who shift shape into sea creatures, etc etc. Mind you, giving up the sponteneity of effect crafting means the game really isn't Mage any more, and that might not be a price you're willing to pay (you are saying you want to play a Mage game, after all!) But something like this might make it easier to handle and control the feel of the game.
Mark
CreativeMountainGames.com
I've played in a gameday one-shot game with this type of scenario that used the Ars Magica ruleset (one of the Atlas editions) with great success.
Starfox
Hero
This just made me think...
Ninja vs. Pirates!
Players in Mage almost always operate like ninja, using trickery, subterfuge, and the expert application of minimum force. Swashbuckling is kind of the opposite, showy and explicit.
Pielorinho
Iron Fist of Pelor
Wow, I thought the thread was about to die, and y'all bust out with some excellent thoughts. Lemme try out the multiquote feature.
Still, I like the idea that sea battles (especially the first few) should be exciting, dramatic scenes. If one player can end the first sea battle through the careful application of their spheres, it'd be a ludicrous letdown.
There will certainly be other spellcasters in the area. Mexico is still held by the Aztecs, whose magic is staggeringly epic but limited to the mainland. Haiti is held by some mysterious group of former slaves, having held their revolution a century early and without the benefit of the American or French Revolutions first; they're doing their best to monopolize the slave trade in the Caribbean. The Order of Reason (precursors to the Technocracy) have a few explorers in the area, part of an effort to define the New World scientifically and bring it under their sway, but so far they don't have any real permanent power. And there will be the odd practitioner here and there.
I might take your countermeasures and introduce them shortly after word of the first few PC victories reaches shore. It'd be a great backhanded compliment to the PCs' influence.
As for mages being subtle, Sorcerer's Crusade doesn't have coincidental magic. Rather, there's casual magic, which is magic operating according to a magical tradition that the local rubes believe in. Hermetic magic in England is casual, but is vulgar in China, whereas casting the i Ching would be the opposite. The PCs won't need to be subtle, as long as they can persuade their pirate cohorts not to kill them as devil-worshippers (which is a much bigger threat among the general populace than it is among pirates, natch). Of course, the flashier they are, the faster their reputation will spread, for good or ill.
Thanks again, folks! I might open another thread asking about specific plot/character ideas, given the wonderful thoughts here.
This is a possibility. I was also thinking about the fact that pirates aren't interested in destroying ships so much as in capturing ships, and the obvious ways of dominating a sea-battle as a mage tend to involve sinking ships to the bottom of the sea. So maybe they're just really, really good at the defensive arts: no pirate-hunter will be able to touch them.
Still, I like the idea that sea battles (especially the first few) should be exciting, dramatic scenes. If one player can end the first sea battle through the careful application of their spheres, it'd be a ludicrous letdown.
My plan, previous to this, was to have the PCs be among the first (if not the very first) piratical cabal in the Caribbean, and have a major impact thereby. Your list of countermeasures, however, is so awesome that I'm having to rethink this plan.
There will certainly be other spellcasters in the area. Mexico is still held by the Aztecs, whose magic is staggeringly epic but limited to the mainland. Haiti is held by some mysterious group of former slaves, having held their revolution a century early and without the benefit of the American or French Revolutions first; they're doing their best to monopolize the slave trade in the Caribbean. The Order of Reason (precursors to the Technocracy) have a few explorers in the area, part of an effort to define the New World scientifically and bring it under their sway, but so far they don't have any real permanent power. And there will be the odd practitioner here and there.
I might take your countermeasures and introduce them shortly after word of the first few PC victories reaches shore. It'd be a great backhanded compliment to the PCs' influence.
Ars Magica was actually my first choice, because I'm definitely just jonesing for the idea of wizards in the golden age of piracy. But god love 'em, the rules for Ars Magica just make my eyes glaze over; they're way too intense for me right now.
First, I was thinking about the "equivalent to a cannon" thing, and I've changed my mind. I'd kind of like each point of arete to be roughly equivalent to half a dozen cannons. But we're not talking purely about blasting, here; rather, I'm talking about relative strength of ships. Sea battles, in my research (by which I mean watching Master and Commander and reading the Temeraire novels), aren't won in a single firing of cannons; generally it takes several broadsides before one ship strikes its colors. I want PCs to be very effective in battles, but I want it to take a few rounds of back-and-forth before the battle is won (or lost).humble minion said:
As for mages being subtle, Sorcerer's Crusade doesn't have coincidental magic. Rather, there's casual magic, which is magic operating according to a magical tradition that the local rubes believe in. Hermetic magic in England is casual, but is vulgar in China, whereas casting the i Ching would be the opposite. The PCs won't need to be subtle, as long as they can persuade their pirate cohorts not to kill them as devil-worshippers (which is a much bigger threat among the general populace than it is among pirates, natch). Of course, the flashier they are, the faster their reputation will spread, for good or ill.
As for the level of swash that I expect to be buckled, we're not talking Johnny Depp, unless my players really go wild. I'm more thinking On Stranger Tides, Master and Commander, Temeraire, etc.
Thanks again, folks! I might open another thread asking about specific plot/character ideas, given the wonderful thoughts here.
Rel
Liquid Awesome
I have a few opinions regarding the idea in general but some of them run counter to the strictures that you placed in the OP, so I'll leave that alone unless you specifically ask (I hold these opinions as an experienced Mage GM as well as somebody who ran a Pirates of the Caribbean game within the last few years but using a different system).
The real reason I'm posting is to simply say Welcome Back! And that I'm thrilled to see you gaming because I know the challenges of doing so with a relatively new baby in the family.
The real reason I'm posting is to simply say Welcome Back! And that I'm thrilled to see you gaming because I know the challenges of doing so with a relatively new baby in the family.
Pielorinho
Iron Fist of Pelor
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