Magic and mystery in games

Magic is such a common factor amongst fantasy games and I will concede that without it fantasy would be lacking something. A huge part of the genre, in fact one of its defining tropes is magic and magic wielding individuals. From the very start, from the kinds of stories that the modern fantasy genre grew from, magic has been an integral part. From the earliest times man has believed in magic.

Faeries have faerie magic. Merlin was a wizard and Arthur had the sword Excalibur. The ancient cults of Egypt with their priests casting spells every day to make the sun rise for thousands of years. All these and more are examples of magic. Our earliest legends are full of tales of mysterious and powerful beings wielding powers that could only really be described as magic. The stories we tell our children, in fact just watch a day of childrens TV and you’ll undoubtedly find at least one programme where a character has some kind of magical powers. So often they manage to present magic as something mysterious, or some might say… Magical.

So given how often these things can be (and have been) done right, how come so many people get it so wrong? Magic is supposed to be magical. Why does it all have to be spell lists and by rote? Why does magic always have to be controlled by the old and the powerful? Why in fantasy games and novels have we not really progressed much beyond where Tolkein stamped his boot print on the genre so many years ago? If you look for him, Gandalf appears everywhere. But wasn’t Gandalf just a more pleasant and less judgemental Merlin. That’s probably a subject for another essay though.

Don’t get me wrong. I think that in some games, where the game balance and system are forced that way that magic should be handled the way it so often is. The Mage: The Ascension magic system wouldn’t work in D&D, but also the level based spell list system in D&D would have killed the entire premise behind Mage. I like my magic magical and mysterious. I think it should be something that instils fear and a sense of wonder or trepidation in the players or reader.

I appreciate that a fireball is for all intents and purposes a fireball, and it’s a bit pointless renaming it again and again but the effects should be different or the description varied. Just describing it as “Jebediah looked around his study at the after effects of a fireball spell” just doesn’t cut it. Referring to spells in the middle of descriptive prose is weak. Unless it follows a suitably interesting presentation that is.

“Jebediah surveyed the room, the devastation was unmistakable. Scorch marks covered the furnishings and there was a heavy scent of Sulphur in the air, barely masked by the smokey odour rising from the carpet that still smoldered by his feet. He turned to look at the painting of his master on the wall. The paint blistered and bubbled around the edges, burnt black across the upper right side. The gold gilt edges peeling away. The only spell he could think of that would cause this much damage was a fireball. But who knew such a devastating spell in this town; and more importantly why cast it here? What were they trying to achieve?”

Which inspires you more? Think about it for a moment.

The unfortunate fact with these examples is still the players though. No matter how you go about describing the after effects of magic if the system is predictable and by rote or spell list then you are one step closer to losing the mystery. All too often I’ve sat there behind the GM screen after describing a spell to hear a player say something like “Hey, that guy only lobbed 2 fireballs. He’s only second level!” Now yes, the player is guilty of meta-gaming, but what else is he going to do if he knows what’s going on with the game? This one is a real doozy and, again, probably will get covered in more depth in a different essay.

There is a certain amount of responsibility that comes from involving magic in your story or game. If you treat it like just another resource for the characters to use then don’t expect anything more back from it. When you then try to instil some sense of mystery in the game later, or to do something magical that isn’t in the rules players all too often feel that they are being cheated. The reader feels that the story is inconsistent, or that the continuity has gone from his “immersive experience” if you like.

So the conclusion so far? Keep it magical and keep it mysterious. Use all the descriptive tools you have to hand and make people believe in magic again in your game or story. Don’t let it just be the same old stuff again and again. Each use of magic should be a different and interesting experience, or at least the after effects should be. Make people realise exactly what it is that they are throwing around here. There should be no such thing as just another magic missile.

Now, how do games handle magic and what works in my opinion? Please don’t get this wrong, most of what works for me might not work for you. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned over the last 20 years it’s that every gamer is different, so don’t take this personally.

I’ll start with probably one of my favourite games, Mage. In this system, magic is fluid and you can manipulate the areas of power that you understand on the fly. Creating spells and effects with your limited powers is half the game. Unfortunately, what could have been such a good plan falls short in that it doesn’t provide you with a solid framework from within which to do that spell design. Also because of the nature of how the game works and the paradigm driven nature of the magic system you tend to get bogged down in pseudo-philosophical diatribe. Otherwise this game would be fantastic. As systems for magic are concerned this one gives you mystery and surprise all over the surface, but soon enough the game degenerates down into comparing different powers and spheres. Arguing the cross about how many different ways there are to cast fireball is fun for one session, but when it happens for every spell you use it becomes tedious. Again, don’t get me wrong here. I’m sure there are loads of games of mage that haven’t been like that but all too often all I hear about is how busted this combo of spheres is, and how ‘my paradigm allows me to do this with only the forces sphere, I don’t need life to stop your heart.’ Such a pity but I still love it.

On the other end of the spectrum are most other games, that don’t have any flexibility within the magic system at all. I’ll pick D&D, not because it’s any worse than any other but because it’s the best known. I’m not a particular fan of D&D but I also don’t think that the manuscript was penned by the antichrist either. It’s what I would describe as a ‘Ronseal Roleplaying Game’, as it does exactly what it says on the cover. If you want dungeons and you want dragons, then look no further than Dungeons & Dragons.

With games like D&D with their levelled spell lists and their consistent spell descriptions, magic becomes cold. Clinical is probably a more appropriate word. Casting magic merely becomes a game of accountancy and mathematics. Make sure you have enough money to replenish your spell components between adventures and calculate the most opportune moment to cast your spell. You know exactly how the spell will work every time, how big the effect will be. How long it takes to cast and how likely it is that the target will be affected by it. In essence it becomes nothing more than, as I said, a numbers game. No magic, no mystery. You become afraid of the numerical and mechanical effects of the spells rather than the manipulation of the raw stuff of creation, or whatever your magical theory is.

I don’t think there is an easy solution to this. Give the players too much freedom and they will run rampant if you’re not careful or they won’t know what to do with the creative options presented to them. Give them too little and they will play the numbers instead. In my experience, the best use of magic that I’ve had in fantasy games was with my epicly long running WFRP campaign. In this I enforced the magic system on my players. They used the rules and the spells as they were written. They were, as their characters progressed and became more familiar with the powers they possessed and the spells they could cast, allowed to subtly alter and change those spells. So a fireball (yes we’re back to that again) might take the form of a glowing White sphere of burning light, rather than a ball of fire. Lightning bolt might come from the sky rather than the fingers of the caster and so forth. This allows the player to take some control of, and to customise their magic without giving too much power to them.

My NPC’s generally weren’t constrained by any kind of rules though. They were supposed to be mysterious. The world is supposed to be full of stuff that people don’t understand and are scared of, mostly with good reason. If I spent 6 months (no exaggeration here) building up a powerful magical NPC without the characters having met him, then I didn’t see why when they did he should have a detailed spell list from what was for a very very long time a woefully inadequate grimoire. I made a lot of stuff up, but only within the confines and limits of my heavily defined cosmology and metaphysical rules. You can make it up for so long, but it has to seem to at least be consistent. If they are incapable of lightning one week it shouldn’t be the main part of their arsenal the next week. They shouldn’t have a seemingly limitless pool of knowledge or power. In the end, they actually only needed to use one or maybe two effects that weren’t in the books and the players were mystified. After that everything is just a twist or different description of something already there. In essence the illusion of mystery was created by careful use of the same rules as the players and a little pinch of original thinking.

In conclusion then, give them mystery. In combat you don’t have to individually describe every use of the same spells, but you should at least make some kind of effort to add some flavour text to the game either of the spell being cast, going off or its effects. Don’t be afraid to let the players cosmetically change spells to better suit their characters as long as the changes are just that, cosmetic. Make the player describe their newly tweaked spells when they’re cast. If it’s supposed to be magic then let them make it magical. The first time your players see something new to their characters, don’t tell them what it is and don’t let them just classify things from the rulebook either. Add a twist to your NPC’s spells. Keep it balanced though. Let your bad guys change the rules but balance it out somehow. Let them surprise the players and leave them with a sense of fear after their first encounter and your players will thank you for it one day.

If the magic in your game becomes mysterious again, then the mystery will become magical again.

LiAm