Skip to main content

...Considerations of Spell Design in Torg Eternity

 Torg Eternity is Ulisses Spiele's reboot and simplification of Torg: Roleplaying the Possibility Wars from West End Games' original design. In the original, the magical world called Aysle had as part of its sourcebook a spell design system which applied a formula to how to design spells from their components.

To say that player reaction was mixed about this system would be a gross understatement. It was one of the most polarizing aspects I have ever seen in a game: players either loved and embraced it or they hated it with the fury of a thousand suns, with very few in-between reactions. Those who hated it (the majority of players were in this camp) did so because it was overly detailed, cumbersome, and too swingy to be reliable. But then again those who loved it did so for the exact same reasons. And since I as a gamemaster always had one player (and sometimes as many as three players at once) who loved the system and were trying to abuse it, I had to learn it better than they ever could.

So now here we are at the reboot, and to no one's real surprise, the spell design system is gone. Not only is it gone, the initial spell designs were intentionally made with no attempt to put them into a systemized format. Although the basic skill requirement was meant to be consistent in most cases, determining things like the range of a spell, its overall effects (including bonus effects for better casting), the base difficulty of a spell, and so on were all done ad hoc based on the "rule of cool". And for the sake of simplicity, that's a reasonable place to start.

But now we have done the "Year One" cosm books for all the invading cosms, and are moving on to Year Two, where the High Lords are no longer as tolerant of one another and the cosms are beginning to interfere not just with Core Earth's plans, but each others as well. The good thing about building spells ad hoc is that you can tailor the design to the world as it currently exists. The bad part about it is that you must take everything else into account with each spell design. This has the unfortunate drawback where each spell consumes not just design space for itself, but takes extra nibbles into the overall design pool as every future design must work with the current one in mind. 

Nonetheless, I am determined to figure something out. My first goal is to design a base system for "on the fly " The goal is to have a limited set of spells that are usable in round play where each component is build into one of the four steps of a Dramatic Skill Resolution. From there, a universal system based off the considerations outlined can be created for more advanced designs. When complete, the goal is to have a system that makes all the current spell designs possible, with those that got extra benefits from the “rule of cool” possible but rare or costly in some other form. But to do that, I need to study the vast array of what is already designed to learn the baseline. Please be patient; this may take a while.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

 ...Spell Trappings, Part 2 This post is the conclusion of Spell Trappings, which was published just before this. Prerequisite A spell that requires another spell or Clearance Level to learn qualifies for the trapping of Prerequisite, The difficulty of obtaining the prerequisite determines the degree of Difficulty Number reduction. Restriction Most spells can be cast over and over. When one Fireball  ends, another can begin. Spells that place limits on how often they can be cast qualify for the Restriction trapping. A Restriction's value in reducing the Difficulty Number is based on the amount of time that must pass between castings. Self In the original Torg, there was a trapping for Touch. In that version, an unarmed combat  or similar test needed to be made to transfer the spell effect to the target. Torg Eternity 's Aysle Sourcebook specifies that Touch spells do not actually need to touch the target; merely being close enough to touch the target is good enough. So in...
Post a Comment
Read more
...Spell Trappings, Part 1 In a previous article, I mentioned that spells can have trappings , additional conditions that can reduce the Difficulty Number of a designed spell. Each trapping must create a situation where the spell either cannot be cast, provides incentive against casting, limits the scope of the spell, or requires additional preparation to cast.  This will list the trappings I have identified so far. Most of these are from the Aysle Sourcebook and reprinted in  Pixaud's Practical Grimoire  from the original Torg, but new ones are added, and all of them will offer suggestions for the player and game master to adjudicate them. In most cases, the value of the trapping has yet to be determined; I am "redesigning" the current published spells to see what values make sense. Additional Cast Time This one is easy enough to understand. Most spells can be cast in a single action, which is one round except in the case of Flurry. So if the spell takes longer than...
Post a Comment
Read more
 ...Tonight's Season Premiere of Survivor Every season of Survivor  (USA) is quite different. There are twists and turns, and the producers try to introduce new things to keep people on their toes. But the main difference each season is the contestants and how they interact with one another. I have seen the early interviews of each contestant prior to this first episode, and it's obvious that the producers cast the most unique cast of at least the modern (i.e. post-pandemic) era, and quite possibly of all time. Each has a unique path for what made them apply in the first place, and now they are being thrown together to see what's up. I will not name names, but here is a sample of some of who we have playing: A man whose house was raided by police at a very young age and realized at that moment that he might have rely on himself to survive. A man whose family encouraged him to apply but is so convinced he's going to be the first person voted out that they're throwing...
Post a Comment
Read more