Posts belonging to Category Magic systems
Posted by Ravyn on July 13, 2011
One of my players recently asked me how I did nonvisual magic in my games. I covered the topic before, about a year ago, but since then I’ve had time to refine my technique a bit and think about the process, rather than just the descriptors, of my effect/sense descriptions.
I start with the outline, well [...]
Categories: Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Magic systems, Technique, Thematics, Voice and Style, World-building |
Tags: description, magic, roleplaying, World-building, writing | 
1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on May 16, 2011
I’ve noticed that in many of the books I read, magic is rather similar to physics, in that it works the same way no matter where you are and where you came from. Sure, you might get cases where it seems to work differently due to other factors, rather like the way gravity differs between [...]
Categories: Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Magic systems, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: Magic systems, roleplaying, variance, World-building, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on September 16, 2010
The world isn’t what you expected it to be. Things, generally supernatural, are pretending to be completely normal and hiding everywhere from the sewers to your neighbor’s preschool. And you’ve just figured this out and are trying to figure out how to make sense of it. Grasping at straws in the process is a perfectly [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, Concepts, Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Magic systems, Player Advice, Technique, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: Characterization, fairy tales, roleplaying, setting knowledge, World-building, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on September 2, 2010
In yesterday’s post about creating magical locations based on their purpose, I mentioned the possibility of the purpose being to channel magic, and said I’d discuss it later. “The following day” counts as later, don’t you think?
Like necromancy’s slow shift from “My divinations require a corpse of some sort, preferably fresh” to “OMG FEAR MY [...]
Categories: Concepts, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Magic systems, Places, Scening, Symbolism, Technique, World-building |
Tags: magical locations, roleplaying, setting, World-building, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on July 19, 2010
A long time ago, I asked a question: why do we always see magic? The answer I originally worked with was that it was easier, since people are visual; I know the English language has more sight-words than sound-words or taste-words or scent-words. But sometimes, it makes sense to make someone’s arcane senses pan to [...]
Categories: Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Magic systems, Player Advice, Symbolism, Technique, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: descriptions, displays, Magic systems, roleplaying, Thematics, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on June 16, 2010
In any world, there are some things you don’t question. They are, and that’s all there is to it. Or at least, that’s what everyone says. (Which of course means that some main character, particularly if what we’re dealing with is a game because those things beg for PC questioning, is going to question them.) [...]
Categories: Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, History, Magic systems, Religion, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: concepts, roleplaying, untouchable concepts, World-building, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on June 8, 2010
Yesterday, I talked about how ambiguity in the creation of a world can make it more interesting than clear right/wrong binaries can. But how does one go about making a world in which these things are clearly ambiguous?
To understand that, it helps to understand how not to do it.
It’s pretty easy, and pretty common, to [...]
Categories: Description, Dialogue, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Magic systems, Religion, Technique, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: ambiguity, practice, roleplaying, World-building, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on June 7, 2010
One of the things I’ve noticed about many created worlds, and felt that it might be good to reverse the trend of at some point, is that there isn’t much vagueness. In our world, you have a lot of things that may or may not be real or effective depending on who you ask, from [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Magic systems, Religion, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: advantages, ambiguity, roleplaying, World-building, writing | 4 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on June 2, 2010
While I’m not too fond of dealing with mechanics as a whole, there are some that just appeal to my problem-solving nature: ones that can drive a GM crazy, but might just take a little sideways thinking. And not long ago, I caught on to a comment by Callan on Living Dice’s GM Misery Index, [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Magic systems, Technique |
Tags: mind-reading, plot-breakers, roleplaying, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on September 4, 2009
A ritual isn’t just a bunch of steps blended together; it has to have a theme. After all, there’s a certain unity to most rituals, something that binds the individual steps together. You don’t often see a ritual involving invocation of the Five Dread Names of the Forbidden One, a reenactment of the last battle [...]
Categories: Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Magic systems, Player Advice, Symbolism, Technique, World-building |
Tags: original posts | No Comments »