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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shadow" data-source="post: 8962073" data-attributes="member: 16760">To be clear, I definitely did not mean it in this way!  I was referring to how one wants, as I said above, a 'sufficient illusion' of the world to immerse oneself in.  Maybe 'Imaginism' is better, despite being an ugly word, but the problem with that one is imagination is part of all roleplaying games whatsoever!Likewise, describing it as 'Immersive' feels right, but immersion is certainly not limited to sim games or players.In that game, magic revolved around interacting with spirits in some way.  We were very clear from day one that none of the spirits are nice.  Some of them are more palatable than others, but all of them were at minimum alien and uncaring.  The usual set in our local area were actually known as "the Demon Gods".There were two forms of magic, Sorcery and Wizardry.  Sorcery involved having a pact with a spirit.  (It required a stunt.)  You could use magic in that spirit's spheres of influence, of which there were generally three that were loosely connected.  You spent an action activating your power (which caused you to light up like a Christmas tree to anyone with magical sight) on a given occasion.  You described to the GM what you wanted to do, he set a target to reach, and you rolled Sorcery skill to reach it.  Not making the roll meant Very Bad Things could happen.  (A little further on, we experimented with one of those Very Bad Things being a Doom Point - a kind of Fate point the GM could use against you at the worst possible moment.)The other kind of magic was Wizardry.  This involved stealthily siphoning power from the spirit of your choice to produce an effect.  It was considerably weaker than Sorcery - Wizardry skill could only be used to create advantages - but much broader.  Also, spirits HATE wizards with a passion!  It is impossible to be both a sorcerer and a wizard.One of my favorite moments was when my character Shade, who had a (rather uniquely weird!) pact with a Nakhmirite (ie, very foreign to the area) Shadow Demon, but had just found out that Shaprenka, the Demon God of Secrets, was the traditional choice in his family, and that the magic ring he'd been carrying around was actually attuned to Shaprenka.He's mulling over switching his pact to Shaprenka, and the shadow demon is trying to talk him out of it.Shade, dubiously:  "I dunno.  I think I'll talk it over with Iskander, he's studied this stuff."  (Iskander, another PC and a scholar, is a wizard.)Demon, outraged:  "You would seek counsel from a thief?!"Shade:  "Well, I can't get too high-minded on the subject, I'm a thief myself!"Demon:  "YOU ARE NOT!!  Oh... You mean of material things.  Your priorities are all wrong, mortal!"Oh, finally, wizards and sorcerers were capable of mental combat (using Will), but only against other wizards and sorcerers (and spirits).  (Basically, learning magic 'opens your mind up' to attack.)  The Sorcery stunt gives a +1 to such combat, so sorcerers have a distinct advantage against wizards.  Mental combat was not a use of magic per se, so you didn't have to activate your power to do it.Our current game, the Renaissance Italy one I mentioned earlier, also has a strong S&S vibe, but magic works quite differently.  Once again, there are two kinds, Ritual Magic and Sorcery.Ritual magic is just what it says on the tin.  It uses bog-standard Lore skill to produce effects, though you need a stunt to lead a ritual.  (Anyone with Lore can participate in a ritual, provided they have an aspect that supports that in some way.  Also, the stunt gives a +1 bonus to a particular type of ritual, of which there are six.)  There are fixed numbers of participants that give bonuses, ie 3 people gives +2, 7 gives +4, 13 gives +6.  The consequences of failure depend on what exactly you're trying to do.One kind of ritual is Summoning.  Pretty much the only thing that can be summoned is demons, so it's incredibly dangerous.  But one thing you can bargain with demons for is magical power for you and perhaps even your descendants, which is where sorcery comes from.(The other kinds are Blessings, Curses, Healing, Warding, and Divination.  Blessings and Curses take up a consequence slot.  ie, if you have a +4 Blessing, that ties up your Moderate consequence, but you get a +4 to anything relevant to the exact blessing you have.  It "heal" at the same rate as an ordinary consequence, and this can't really be sped up.)There are seven sorcery bloodlines known to exist in the local area, based on the Seven Deadly Sins.  They were bargained for by seven Roman-equivalent Senators in a Great Ritual over a thousand years ago.  Each has one area it can do things in:  For example, teleportation.  Or predicting the future.  Or producing fire.  And so on.  There is a distinction between being "Halfblood" or "Fullblood" in a particular line.  They're both a stunt, but Fullblood also needs an aspect related to the sin.  Fullbloods have significantly more ability, but have to roll higher on Sorcery to produce effects (3 as opposed to 1).  Halfbloods aren't allowed to buy Sorcery higher than +2.My character Ludovico is different, though.  About three hundred years ago, three master spies secretly enacted a ritual of their own for power.  In their case, though, it doesn't descend by bloodline but by apprenticeship.  They basically have a built-in Hat of Disguise - they can alter their features at will.  (Master "Faces" can go a little closer to full shapeshifting - they can do things like grow gills to breathe underwater, convincingly take on the shape of the opposite sex, and so on.)Ludovico and Chloe are Faces, apprentices of different masters, which is why they address each other (not very sincerely) as 'cousin'.  Two interesting twists:  Faces can spot each other pretty easily.  And the one face they can't take on is their real one.  (This was Ludovico's original Trouble - he was obsessed with finding out what he really looked like, as he'd become a Face at a very young age and couldn't remember.  I've gone in some detail in the 'Five Word Summary' commentary thread about what happened when he found out!)I really, really want to try Masks at some point!  But my current group isn't hugely interested, and in any case we're very involved in our Fate game at the moment.</blockquote>

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