Mundane utility to match magic

[Blue]

@Blue

Given how broad the category of magic is compared to what people consider "possible" to physically accomplish, this is a tricky question. It's a take on the quadratic wizard to linear fighter problem, which has been an issue with many games for years.

Some games have managed to deal with this, though. I would look to such games for inspiration. Apocalypse World (though it's not quite magic in this case) and some of its better offshoots (Dungeon World and Stonetop come to mind). Some other games manage this as well.

I think the best way to tackle it is to address it on both sides. Tone down the magic a bit, or make the spellcaster a bit more limited in some way, or put a cost to magic that helps mitigate its efficacy. At the same time, broaden what the warrior type can effectively do. Allow them to injure multiple opponents with one attack, give them other abilities that make them dangerous in combat to help offset the more limited focus they have.

To put this in terms that I know you'll get, I'm looking for mundane ways to affect the narrative in equal (but different) amounts as magic can.

The traditional breakdown is that magic can do things mundane can't, so this has long been a problem. No matter how much you flap your arms, you're not going to fly.

But if instead we describe magic as ways to make authorial changes to the narrative, then there are mundane ways to do the same sort of thing. Because "creating a helpful NPC who wasn't there before" isn't something you can do when you are looking at character abilities, but is something you can do when looking at player abilities if allowed, justifying it within a mundane in-world structure of "Contacts".

In other words, I'm reframing the issue in the same way flashbacks reframe planning -- this has already happened in-world, we players at the table just didn't know the details until we just made them up. And I think that can sidestep a lot of the traditional loggerhead that mundane can't be as useful as mundane+magic, by making it actually mundane+authorial_mundane vs. mundane+magic.

EDIT:
Actually, "Flashback" is a great example of an authorial-mundane ability, if it's not generally available. I've seen games with "Preparedness" where you have chances to have just the right tool/collectable action figure/what-have-you that you need at the moment, which is another.

 

[hawkeyefan]

To put this in terms that I know you'll get, I'm looking for mundane ways to affect the narrative in equal (but different) amounts as magic can.

The traditional breakdown is that magic can do things mundane can't, so this has long been a problem. No matter how much you flap your arms, you're not going to fly.

But if instead we describe magic as ways to make authorial changes to the narrative, then there are mundane ways to do the same sort of thing. Because "creating a helpful NPC who wasn't there before" isn't something you can do when you are looking at character abilities, but is something you can do when looking at player abilities if allowed, justifying it within a mundane in-world structure of "Contacts".

In other words, I'm reframing the issue in the same way flashbacks reframe planning -- this has already happened in-world, we players at the table just didn't know the details until we just made them up. And I think that can sidestep a lot of the traditional loggerhead that mundane can't be as useful as mundane+magic, by making it actually mundane+authorial_mundane vs. mundane+magic.

EDIT:
Actually, "Flashback" is a great example of an authorial-mundane ability, if it's not generally available. I've seen games with "Preparedness" where you have chances to have just the right tool/collectable action figure/what-have-you that you need at the moment, which is another.

Not sure if you’re familiar with Spire: The City Must Fall, but it does a lot of this. It has classes, and many of them have access to magic of some sort, but not all their abilities are magical. For instance, there’s a class called a Knight, but it’s more like a heavily armored gangster affiliated with a specific pub than any kind of chivalric order. They have an ability called Pub Crawler which, once per session, allows the player to declare that there is a pub nearby and the Knight knows the owner. The GM gets to decide how the owner feels about the Knight.

The game is filled with these kinds of abilities across all the character classes. Some are attributed to magic, but some are not. And from what’ve I’ve seen of play, each class is very effective in play.

 

[CandyLaser]

Not sure if you’re familiar with Spire: The City Must Fall, but it does a lot of this. It has classes, and many of them have access to magic of some sort, but not all their abilities are magical. For instance, there’s a class called a Knight, but it’s more like a heavily armored gangster affiliated with a specific pub than any kind of chivalric order. They have an ability called Pub Crawler which, once per session, allows the player to declare that there is a pub nearby and the Knight knows the owner. The GM gets to decide how the owner feels about the Knight.

The game is filled with these kinds of abilities across all the character classes. Some are attributed to magic, but some are not. And from what’ve I’ve seen of play, each class is very effective in play.

Blades in the Dark also does this to some extent. There's one playbook that focuses on mystic capability, but their special abilities aren't better than the ones on offer to the more "mundane" playbooks. For something classless, I'd point to Swords of the Serpentine. In SotS, investment in magic skills preclude investment in mundane skills. There are two magic skills in SotS - Sorcery and Corruption. Sorcery is basically a combat skill, used to launch attacks. Magic users also have freeform magic of two forms. First, they can use magic as flavor and describe themselves using magic to do something they could have done via mundane methods, like lighting a candle or jumping across a gap (though the latter might need a roll). They can also make use of Corruption for very big, significant freeform effects, like blowing up a tower, but these impose long-term costs on the caster that can limit overuse, as well as some other limitations based on the sort of magic the caster uses.

Because of how the game works, though, mundane skills offer more-or-less equal ability to impact the plot, albeit usually in different ways. Characters can spend points from certain skill pools to give themselves bonuses to rolls, boost damage, and change or introduce narrative elements, and characters all have the same number of skill points, so magic ends up feeling like just one tool among many. It is a powerful tool, but an exotic one that isn't always reliable - and because of the nature of the game, the person playing the mage probably only gets one or two chances to really cut loose and show off with it. Since that's true of every other character as well, acting within their specialty, it ends up feeling pretty good.

 

[GMMichael]

In other words, I'm reframing the issue in the same way flashbacks reframe planning -- this has already happened in-world, we players at the table just didn't know the details until we just made them up. And I think that can sidestep a lot of the traditional loggerhead that mundane can't be as useful as mundane+magic, by making it actually mundane+authorial_mundane vs. mundane+magic.

I have two issues here: giving non-casters authorial-mundane powers is basically giving them magic, less the magic words, flashy lights, and accoutrement.

The other is that if you hand out too much authorial-mundane power, the casters are going to wonder why they chose to be casters in the first place.

EDIT:
Actually, "Flashback" is a great example of an authorial-mundane ability, if it's not generally available. I've seen games with "Preparedness" where you have chances to have just the right tool/collectable action figure/what-have-you that you need at the moment, which is another.

A third issue, since I'm on a roll: the flashback power, if not "magic," lends itself to a particular style of game. So you have to ask yourself, do you want to be playing in a game where not just the future is undetermined, but the past as well? Or one in which PCs have more than a classical amount of authorialness*?

*Soon to be appearing in m-w.com

 

[Voadam]

A number of games handle this by balancing the magic against everything else. Magic takes character points in GURPS for magery and every spell/skill etc. which means comparatively fewer points that can be spent on advantages like beautiful or health stat or wealth or mundane skills than non mage characters. Shadowrun requires using a character creation priority category to get magic and it adds on an extra stat to spend your stat points on leaving less to spend on your abilities and skills and money and race.

So while magic can do utility stuff and mages can do mundane things too, mages generally suck at a lot of normal stuff and in particular compared to non magical characters.

Other games limit what magic can accomplish in various ways. D&D started off with mages being stand ins for artillery in a fantasy skirmish game and that chainmail wargame origin led to D&D fireball and lightning bolt being a baseline iconic spell and power level and setting utility spells to do that level of effect as well. On top of that over the D&D spells and abilities of PC magic kept expanding year after year. A number of non-D&D games though either require mages to specialize very heavily (7th Sea mages spending lots of primary character building resources to do one specialty of magic like teleport touch and nothing else) or tone down the magic that is done (Beyond the Supernatural comes to mind but it has been a while).

Others try to balance things more directly. Buffy the Vampire Slayer has the Slayer as supernaturally tough, super combat competent and dominating in battle, with the witch's magic being very useful in combat and out and the mundanes having action point type stuff so that plot/luck/framing works for them in a number of ways to compensate for the lack of super powers of the other two.

 

[pemerton]

giving non-casters authorial-mundane powers is basically giving them magic, less the magic words, flashy lights, and accoutrement.

Huh? Magic is a thing in the fiction. Authorial power is a thing in the real world. They don't correlate in any particular way.

Anyway, to add to the examples from @jian and @hawkeyefan:

I like how Marvel Heroic RP handles magic. It is a rated ability like any other power. I've used it in my fantasy variant of that system (built using the Hacker's Guide, which was a type of precursor to Cortex Prime). So the barbarian might have Honking Great Axe d12 and the wizard has Sorcery d12. They both contribute to appropriate dice pools.

And for a system that is much more "traditional" in its approach to PC build, there is Torchbearer 2e. Magic in that system integrates pretty tightly with the standard resolution rules - in this respect it is different from the "ad hoc narrative insertion" approach of D&D. And it is much more heavily rationed than in D&D. In our game, there is a clear difference between the Arcanist, Alchemist, Enchanter Elven Dreamwalker and the Fighter, Dungeoneer, Cook Dwarven Outcast - but both contribute strongly in play. The Dreamwalker's main contributions come from non-magical skill use, not from casting spells, which happens less than once per session.

 

[GrimCo]

In a game like WoD, you spend character points or xp on everything. So if you invest points in magic, you don't have points for skills, stats, merits etc. So you end up with mage that is powerful magic wise, but can't drive car, fire a gun, doesn't have contacts or wealth etc. You need to balance out how much points to spend on magic vs mundane, while normal mortal can drop points in more skill, skill specializations, merits and so on. Same with Gurps and more or less any classless points based system.

 

[CreamCloud0]

i'd mostly think non-magical characters should have access to authority, organisations, skills and resources that mages do not, some classic examples of this are warrior-types having an official rank so they can pull out the authority card or being able to requisition army surplus to get guns, first aid kits or a helicopter, the rogue being able to call on a network of moles and informants or access the black market.

 

[Emberashh]

Easiest thing to do is to just not make magic busted; in other words, kill the darling that says Magic has to be able to solve anything, and design the system accordingly.

In Labyrinthian, mages can improvise entirely brand new effects freely, and in fact can even improvise new effects for the handful of written spells in the game. This is balanced out in 3 ways.

First, and foremost, Dice mechanics limit the effectiveness of anything you do. You can no more damage than what your dice say, and anything you create will have no more resilience than what your dice say. In other words, no instant kills or impenetrable barriers; this is how the game rules Yes,And you, as the only other limit is up to your playgroups decided upon Game Tone. Eg, you can't pull out Looney Tunes when your group decided on Game of Thrones, and the GM is there to Yes,And edge cases if any should happen to appear.

Second, progression is designed such that you cannot focus on just Magic. You will have to engage with the mundane if you want to maximize the characters potential, and this is all part of the fun as now you have a good reason to engage with all the other wonderful things besides Magic.

Third, Magic abuse is limited by Corruption mechanics. If you go overboard trying to use Magic for everything, you will effectively kill them in all but name. These Corruptions are, however, a useful boon to dedicated Mages, who will have a number of ways to convert some amount of them into something that enhances their experience as a mage (Imagine purging your own Corruptions as curses on your enemies, or converting them into HP draining Runes you can expend to empower your spellcasting, and so on).

But even with these mechanics, you'll only be able to convert so many at a time (or in the Curses case, none at all, so you deal with the drawbacks), so you still can't abuse magic to do everything.

What results is a magic system thats basically soft magic, but retains enough structure to function in a tactical combat system, which is lovely, and is what contributed to me reimagining my entire combat system as a Tactical Improv system, which has been a lot of fun to continue iterating on, particularly as I started looking at psionics and summoners/Leaders design.

 

[Umbran]

What are your thoughts on mundane utilities that have a high frequency of coming up, of similar reality-changing power as magic?

If mundane utility has the same reality-changing power of magic... what is magic? Why have something be "magic" if the mundane approach is equivalent?

This is a central question of game balance - the point is not to make all branches of power have the same "reality altering power", but to have all characters equally able to impact the course of fictional events, which is not the same thing.

Like, yes the wizard can destroy the enemy army with huge balls of fire, killing scores and hundreds. But the mundane person with a decent persuasion skill can talk the general into not attacking. This is a smaller change in reality, but has similar impact on the course of events - the war ends either way.