26 Oct, 2009, Antron wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
I find the current paradigm of magic really uninteresting. First, have these things called mana points, then you just randomly learn new spells and then cast them, using these mana points, which come back pretty quickly, especially if you are lying down.

I have a few ideas about how to handle super-ordinary abilities, but I'd like to hear input from other players, builders, designers, and programmers. So I ask you this:

What are some other/novel ways to present magic to players?

What are some ways magic is handled in non-game worlds (books, movies, ancient/medieval history?)

Most MUDs simply Cast the spell, but what are some other options that work? such as channeling/preparing the spell before cast? Are there other systems?

Sort of an in-game question, if you feel the need to explain the lore for your MUD's story:
How does magic work, anyway? What is it? Where does it come from? Why?

These questions can be answered both in terms of game balance, and in-game immersion factor
What sort of things should magic be able to do?
What sort of things should magic not be able to do?

These three are the same question, from the perspective of a designer, a builder, and a player:
How do you make magic approachable and fun for players?
What are some simple magical abilities that characters can learn before they get high-end spells?
As a young person in a new world, how do I get 'into' magic?
26 Oct, 2009, Lyanic wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
I designed my magic system loosely based on a concept from Merlin (the television mini-series). Magic can come from the hands (gestural), spoken words or pure thought. I actually deviated somewhat, in that instead of gestures, my hand magic involves combining magic symbols (Combination Magic). The spoken words are just that - I invented a novel system that parses and interprets speech from 'say' and looks for a series of pseudo-Latin words in various patterns, which then trigger appropriate magical effects (Chant Magic). Finally, I also deviated from the pure thought line somewhat, in that the magic is channeled through the eyes - clearly based on the primary system of Dikurivitives (Cast Magic). I call it the 3C - Magic System. Each is clearly based on a body part. If you cut a magic-user's hands off, he or she can not use Combination Magic. If you cut a magic-user's tongue out, or silence him or her in any way, then he or she can not use Chant Magic. If you gouge out a magic-user's eyes, then he or she can not use Cast Magic.

As for the concept of mana points - I do use them, but only for one type (Cast). In fact, each type utilizes something different. Combination Magic uses expendable resources (the magical symbols are created from metals, stones and woods). Chant Magic requires concentration (too elaborate to thoroughly explain). And Cast Magic uses mana points (as previously stated).

Pertaining to the learning of spells - it's not the least bit random. Combination Magic involves trial and error to figure out which sets of symbols produce which spells (and first you have to learn how to create the symbols themselves). Chant Magic involves deciphering a small pseudo-language and understanding the basic grammar of it to know which pattern of words will produce which spell. Cast Magic is more straight-forward, in that you know precisely what to type to cast an intended spell just by looking at a list, but they first have to be learned by studying spell books found in an Ancient Library. Only one can be studied at a time, only up to a certain number, and each having certain prerequisites for successfully studying it.

Another really good magic system I've found is on the MUD, End of Time. It's a bit complex to fully explain (and I'd probably butcher it), but it takes a channeling approach, and allows spells to be augmented or combined mid-cast to produce new, more powerful or differently applied versions of spells (something like that).

Anyway, I hope this helps.
26 Oct, 2009, Mudder wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
A system I've seen and like is when a spell is cast it is not immediately done but "performed" and at the end is when the spell is cast.

Spells require you to hold a spellbook with that spell written into the book. Spellbooks of different qualities can hold more/less spells. Most spells will also require a regent of sorts and the stronger spells will require multiple, perhaps becoming more expensive or more rare as the stronger the spells get.

This puts limits on spellcasting to be more realistic, though for new characters it can be a bit frustrating to be able to learn a spell via "spells" command and not be able to find the spell scroll itself to use it. Making mages a very non-newbie friendly class, though they were never meant to be.

Putting magic into your theme and making it explainable is more difficult and really depends on your MUD type and theme. Though the more generic ones (most common) answer that magic is taken from the world around them, another dimension, or the result of their current planets position relative to other planets or moons. Different moons tending to control different types of magic, generally, dark magics, holy magics, and neutral. This also ties into the clerical spells.

I've toyed around with the idea of people starting out with no actual class/guild and working their way to join one. Magic especially. I think casting magic missile is certainly no easy task that any douchebag can randomly cast once he says he wants to enter the guild. I also see spells like detect magic/invis as actually being fairly high level in difficulty. Especially invisibility.

There are certain spells that I do not like simply due to the fact that I don't think magic should have that affect. I see magic as manipulating external factors. Lightning. Fire. Light (invisibility). Spells, I feel, should always be able to relate back to controlling external factors to achieve their desired effect.

Plague, I dislike, because it is simply creating a disease out of thin air. Same for create food. They are creating matter, not changing it. Generally these spells belong to the clerical category, I don't like the idea of defying basic laws of reality for your implementation of a God. Though I am going for a more realistic approach where players that worship Gods might never know whether their prayers are answered or not. I'm putting the focus on Gods/deities to be very minimal and haven't worked out exactly how this will be done. Namely, staff. Generally admins are the gods, deities, as an explanation for the massive powers they wield. I don't yet have an explanation for this aside from the possibility to suspend the "reality" of the game for their appearance. Remaining wizi isn't exactly an option for any MUD that wants players.
26 Oct, 2009, Mudder wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
Lyanic said:
The spoken words are just that - I invented a novel system that parses and interprets speech from 'say' and looks for a series of pseudo-Latin words in various patterns, which then trigger appropriate magical effects (Chant Magic).


I really like this.
26 Oct, 2009, Runter wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
My 2 cents on the subject is I would like to see a system where perhaps you have magical ratings in certain areas. Such as level 10 fire magic. The important part to me is how the spells after this point should be acquired. It seems to me it would be interesting if spells were gained through scripted quests per whatever the spell is. These quests may require certain ratings to begin. An furthermore, the ratings would give bonuses to the spell after the fact. Perhaps low level spells could be gained easily but depending on the spell you could make quests interesting and challenging. I like the idea of as new higher tiered content is added to your game perhaps adding new challenging spells to learn that could make the new content more hospitable.
26 Oct, 2009, flumpy wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
There are numerous ways to portray magic in games, and studying what others have done will help. Look around some other muds and commercial games out there to get some ideas.

Here's a few that I like:

Dungeon Seige: Magic comes from spells in spell books, and by learning new lines of magic. The main point is you do have "mana", and that recharges after a time.

Nanvaent: various systems of magic, with many guilds. My favourite magic user here was the Necromancer type, who had to feast on the blood of creatures they kill. They could raise the dead, possess the corpses they killed (and gain the corpses abilities) and become ghosts. Mostly a system of "guild points", like mana, but fortified by a blood level. If you loose all your blood, you pass out, which means you must continually move and kill.

Neverwinter nights/Planescape Torment/Baldur's Gate - typical AD&D magic systems. And just great games :D

God Wars II- Manual combat, Manual magic. Flex your left finger, right hand, left armpit and voil: a fireball!!

Well. There are tonnes more that I just can't think of atm. But you get the idea.

BTW, yes the parsing thing sounds very cool +1
26 Oct, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Out of interest, didn't LegendMUD generate spells by parsing latin text as well? I once did something similar with English words, although I wasn't very happy with the result.

The mages in GodWars muds have access to spellbooks, in which they can create their own spells. The implementation was pretty poor, but I still like the concept.
26 Oct, 2009, Runter wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Out of interest, didn't LegendMUD generate spells by parsing latin text as well? I once did something similar with English words, although I wasn't very happy with the result.

The mages in GodWars muds have access to spellbooks, in which they can create their own spells. The implementation was pretty poor, but I still like the concept.


I wrote a spell system once based on word parsing. I think the idea is cooler on paper than it actually plays though.
27 Oct, 2009, Lyanic wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Since at least one person expressed interest, I decided to post a quick example of the Chant Magic:
Quote
%say Ignis detrimentum proximus!

You exclaim 'Ignis detrimentum proximus!'.
Your incantation burns a Gnome Fighter! [7917]
A Gnome Fighter bursts into flames!
A Gnome Fighter burns to death!

The above chant can easily be deconstructed. Ignis means fire. Detrimentum means damage. Proximus means close range. Put them together and you have a close range fire damage chant. The intended victim of the chant is determined by a separate targeting system (e.g. 'target gnome' or config +autotarget).
27 Oct, 2009, Orrin wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
The pen and paper rpg Ars Magica had a spellcasting system based on combinations of Latin words which could possibly have been the inspiration for these kinds of systems in MUDs.
27 Oct, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Ars Magica is sweet.

Some of the Ultima games had pretty unique magic systems as well. I particularly liked the alchemy and sorcery in Ultima VII. You didn't directly cast spells, but instead prepared them into tokens (kind of like scrolls or potions, in concept). Alchemy was the creation of spell by mixing components. You create tokens that had stored magic that could then be used to cast spells. Sorcery required the player to conduct rituals in magic circles (via using pentagrams and the like and placing a series or red or black candles in particular patterns) to create tokens.

So far as books, I've always wanted to come up with a game system that could use magic like the Amber books. The Amber RPG falls way short IMO. Amber used a preparation system as well, where the caster would "weave" spells using "threads of magic." He could then "tie them off" to bind them in place, or create the magical equivalent of a slipknot to wrap a stored spell around himself or an object and have it release its energy at a later time.

In terms of table-top systems that are playable and fun, I really like the D20 Wheel of Time system. It is based off of the classic D&D spell preparation system and spell slots system, but extended in a few interesting ways. For one, you could cast spells with (almost) any slot. So instead of saying that a level 10 wizard's fireballs are all more powerful than a 1st level wizard's, or saying that you had to learn a new version of the fireball spell to get a more powerful effect, you could just choose to use a higher level slot to cast the spell (if you had access to such a slot, that is). Aside from making a small spell list far more reusable, it also got rid of the silly case where a powerful wizard in D&D was just flat out incapable of casting weaker fireballs when he wanted to harm but not kill a relatively weak opponent. WoT also added a decent group casting system that basically allowed a circle of casters to have access to higher level slots. The spells would often have effects for levels that no single caster could achieve (e.g., the healing spell cast at level 12 might be able to restore lost limbs, but an individual never got slots higher than level 9 even at the most powerful levels).

If you're disinterested in the flash wizards-kill-everything-mega-blaster why-would-you-even-be-a-soldier fantasy worlds, consider going with a more LOTR inspired magic system. Natural magic. Wizards are more about reading the world and asserting relatively minor influence over natural events, not rewriting the laws of physics. One of the LOTR table-top systems had a nice setup where magic was broken into a few different varieties based on speciality, with one of them being Sorcery. Sorcery was the evil magic used by the minions of Melkor (and later Sauron), and it included the most flashy and destructive spells, or the mind-controlling spells and such… but learning or using that kind of magic was basically banned for non-evil characters.

OVA ( an anime-inspired game ) broke magic into three varieties, too. I forget the names it used, but it was something like Wizardry, Witchcraft, and Sorcery. OVA was an effects-based character game (much like GURPS). Wizardry was spells that added beneficial abilities (sometimes with negative consequences) for a limited time to willing targets. Witchcraft was spells that added negative effects (sometimes with positive side effects) for a limited time to unwilling targets. Sorcery was the manifestation of special attacks (which non-casters could also have, which is how you build monsters or special races or robots or weird martial arts special attacks or whatever). Basically a (relatively) well balanced "build your own spell" system with an easy tie-in to different character classes or foci or whatever you happen to prefer.
27 Oct, 2009, Antron wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Great responses. TOP was what I call a 'positive troll' so thanks for responding. Let me answer some of my own questions as I see them, too.

I want to keep it simple. I want my MUD to be immersive, but I still want it to be approachable, and fun. However I do like the End of Time system. It seems cool but it is not for me. Also, a spoken-word system would be really cool but I don't think it will work for what I am envisioning. Maybe that would work for a Harry Potter MUD.

Mudder mentioned a few generic ways that magic's source, such as inter-dimensional or drawn from the surroundings. In relecting upon the matter more, I think Clarke's third law is relevent: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." First, remember the ancient world's view on science–that there were four primary elements (or five, if you count hot redheaded chicks). This foundation was used by mystics, perhaps to perform some magic.. perhaps the first person to accidentally discover flint and steel thought they were magic fire stones.

We know now there are 92 naturally occuring elements from Hydrogen to Uranium. With that knowledge, we are able to create all kinds of technology that would be, to a person living 8000 years ago, magical power beyond the wildest of dreams. Or even an unknown amazon or pacific tribe in present day. See the movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy" for an example.

Now, suppose the ancient world had never realized their mistake, and still labored under the conclusions of the four-element system, never recognizing their magic as technology. Imagine modern technology but without the recognition of what it is. That is how I would probably approach thinking about magic. For instance, steampunk uses 19th-century tech to achieve 20th-century results. I would use 8th-century tech to achieve 21st-century results.

Anyway that's just an idea I just now came up with. Clearly it needs refinement. Also, different classes would have totally different approaches to magic. Wizards would learn by studying the way the universe works, clerics through spirituality, and maybe sorcerers though… hmm. any ideas? or are they just amoral wizards? Then there's druids and all the rest. Anyway I haven't decided on my final classes yet.

—-

Mudder also mentioned having players start without a class, then join a class later. that is something that I'm most definitely going to be implementing. They would be able to join a magical class by learning prerequisite skills that were pre-magical in nature, like herbalism. perhaps creating salves and balms and such, perhaps poison, though that would be a pre-requisite for a rogue-style class as well. I'm working on the details still.

I will also be using a skillset system, instead of indivdual command-skills like SMAUG. For example, instead of having seperate skills or spells for lore, identify, detect magic, night vision, detect invis, and whatever else, I'd group the whole thing under "magical awareness" and then each time you train the skill, you gain a new ability or spell within that skillset, while increasing the power of the skills and spells you already have.
27 Oct, 2009, Orrin wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
elanthis said:
If you're disinterested in the flash wizards-kill-everything-mega-blaster why-would-you-even-be-a-soldier fantasy worlds, consider going with a more LOTR inspired magic system. Natural magic. Wizards are more about reading the world and asserting relatively minor influence over natural events, not rewriting the laws of physics.

I always liked the way this was handled in Maelstrom which had no spell lists or set magical effects. Instead a magic using character could attempt any magical effect they could think of and it would be rated by the GM on a difficulty scale based on how far reality would have to be warped to achieve the effect. Most typical fantasy magic would have been almost impossible to perform so instead you ended up with characters performing more mundane feats as magic.

I'm not sure how you'd translate that kind of system to a MUD, but it's still one of my favourite ways to handle magic in an RPG.
27 Oct, 2009, shasarak wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
There was a somewhat-pertinent thread on mudlab a few years back: http://www.mudlab.org/forum/viewtopic.ph...

This thread on mudconnect had some interesting ideas: http://www.mudconnect.com/discuss/discus... On the question of "magic as technology", check out posts 3 and 7 (by me). They were based on part of a much larger post I once put on USENET and also on the mudmagic forum, although sadly the text of that no longer seems to survive. (I can find responses to it on Google Groups, but not my original post).
27 Oct, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Orrin said:
I always liked the way this was handled in Maelstrom which had no spell lists or set magical effects. Instead a magic using character could attempt any magical effect they could think of and it would be rated by the GM on a difficulty scale based on how far reality would have to be warped to achieve the effect. Most typical fantasy magic would have been almost impossible to perform so instead you ended up with characters performing more mundane feats as magic.

I played that game, many, many years ago - but I never could remember what it was called, so thanks for the link!

Mage: The Ascension had a similar sort of concept, although more rule-oriented (but not as extreme as Ars Magica). Spells that broke the laws of reality were referred to as "vulgar magic", and (particularly when witnessed by normal people) could cause a Paradox backlash, where reality tries to resolve the contradiction.
29 Oct, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Here's one that's inspired several peopl...

The GURPS magic system was based on more powerful spells having prerequisite spells.
You can download the charts for free here.
Not unlike the technology progression charts in games like Civilization and Age of Empires.

Obviously paper & pencil role-playing games are an endless source of magic systems, mechanics and spells.
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