Hey, here's a weird magick thought I had a few years ago:

What about "Faith Based Magick" (no George Bush jokes, pls! )

Here's how it would work:

Magick is a powerful, ancient, and ill understood force. MOST folks don't wield it, but there are many stories, legends, and philosophies about what and why it is.

So the player is an aspiring mage. Not only does he have to seek out remote elders and quest for tons of hard to find information, magick fundamentally does not work ON COMMAND! Magick is unrealiable, for plot and gameplay purposes.

Magick isn't a chaingun, nor is it a nuclear missile. Magick is a expression of the Goddess (or God, or gods), and as such a player must be in tune with the Goddess through gameplay in order for magick to work.

As the player encounters challenges, their magick will or won't work based more on what the Goddess intends than the player's desire to chop up orcs (that's what fighters and swords are for). The player may wish to kill a goblin, but the Goddess, since she's a diety, may know that the son of that goblin is vital for lasting peace in the realm.


Frustrating?

For this not to be as frustrating as flipping a lightswitch that occassionally doesn't work, some in-game mechanism has to subtly communicate the will of the Goddess. Player's should not know how to get their magick to work, and the great fun would be in the quest for knowledge and in understanding their diety, as well as the conflict the game should impose on them between their own ego/desires and the will of the Goddess.

This models the experience some religious people are said to have had, particularly the Bible's Jesus Christ. In the Bible, God didn't grant magick to Christ like a genie's wishes. Nor did he get to sling around this powerful force for his own aggrandizement. Instead, magick was granted as a glory of God, and we might say that in the stories the Bible tells, Christ gained greater magick (so to speak) by coming into tune with and seeking the will of his god.


Magick is a Manifestation of Faith

Under a system like this, it's important to have a strong, guiding narrative, and for success to sometimes look like defeat. The player might even be required to make decisions he doesn't agree with, which later are revealed to have been the best choice for the common good. And when the magick manifests itself, it is powerful and glorious! (Faith testing plagues and Red Sea dividing type stuff, which bring escape and salvation to the chosen while utterly destroying their cruel oppressors)

Something like this could not use a banal interface meter or dial, btw. Something more impressive, like a complex narrative that acted as a vague sense or intuition would be required. But it MUST start out vague, as that's the experience of faith many of the faithful report (at least when first starting out)

Two good models for this: Inigo Montoya's honoring his slain father's spirit and asking it to guide him at a critical moment in the movie The Princess Bride. Also, the whole way Moses develops a relationship with God in The Prince of Egypt.

(Tank-mage wannabees would HATE this, btw, so don't go putting it into Diablo XXIV )

quote:Original post by Oluseyi
Oh, and Ketchaval, I'm also a fan. (Of Wavinator too!)

Alright! One step closer to world domination!!!!

quote:Original post by Ketchaval
Ack! Enough with the fandom.

Uh, Ketch, sir, umm... could possibly I have your autograph? It's for my sister. She's in the hospital. Yeah.

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Just waiting for the mothership...


Edited by - Wavinator on June 7, 2001 2:43:26 AM

Here's another odd idea... (Geeez, what is it with me?!? I don't even LIKE magick!!! )

Clairvoyance or magical dreams:

What if you displayed important scenes or foreshadowed turns of plot or events using some symbolic representation? Using a 3D engine and a scripting language, you'd reuse elements to make imagery. You could, for example, create a dire prophecy: using the game's King model, fully textured in armor, up to his neck in an ocean of blood, with the head of his son glowing behind him, for example, could portend betrayal, war and murder. Gameplay would be influenced by acting on this vision, but the player might not know exactly what it meant (and for replay, the symbolism could change to represent different things)

This type of magick wouldn't so much be a force the player would throw around, but would represent his attunement with the force of magick itself.


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Just waiting for the mothership...


Edited by - Wavinator on June 7, 2001 3:05:07 AM

A concept of magic I''ve been playing around with is to
not limit the player to a specified number of spells.
Ranging from low level spells like fireball to higlevel
spells like "armageddon" that rakes havoc among the
enemy lines.
Instead base the magic system on a language
of magic that gives the player a way to interact with aspects
of the game world, a way to control e.g. the four elements:
fire, water, air, ground. It is up to the player to write
his spells using this language and thus magic becomes a
process of learning to handle this language rather
than collecting mana points and scrolls. And why not combine
this with the above mentioned religous belief system.

The main drawback I see with RPGs is the standard spells
found in basically all RPGs: fireball etc. The magic system
soon becomes tiresome. And soon I end up only using one or two spells.

A magic system that requires studying and deep knowledge of the
concept of magic provided by the game world would in my opinion
make the game more interesting.

my $0.02
/Trysil