Not a Scrabble-based Magic System

I can work on RPG design for 6 hours straight with only 2 breaks to pee, but grading for only 30 minutes makes me want to tear my eyeballs from their sockets. Today was my stay-at-home day, and I have about a 4-week backlog of grading to do. Therefore, a nap, dinner, a run, and 12 hours later... and I'm still working on my Scrabble magic system. (I did some grading in there though! And some laundry.)

When we last left it, I had a separate skill and power mechanic going on. However, I was running into trouble on pricing things. For instance, moving (M) anything--even a bottle cap--would inherently cost at least 3 mana. Yet banishing (E) a demon or holding (N) a person immobile would only cost 1 mana (though such acts would require a high skill roll). In short, mind-blowing magic didn't cost any more than subtle magic in the same discipline; it was the disciplines themselves that cost more or less.

Of course, the GM could adjust this per spell, but it still seemed too ad hoc. Or I could combine power and skill into a single mechanic. But I didn't want that either. I wanted them to be separate so you need both enough skill and enough power, and that one doesn't substitute for the other. Sometimes high-powered magic should be possible with low skill... it's just always much more dangerous if you mess it up. That said, it still seems there should be a general initial correlation--if you're highly skilled, you should be able pull together more power.

My post-run insight (I love those--it makes it all worth it) was the tile-based power levels I was considering varied only from 1 to 4, since I was saving the higher scoring tiles (8 points: J, X; 10 points: Q, Z) for mythical magical forms. But my skill levels run from +0 to +3, so just making the base power cost the Difficulty Modifier + 1 suddenly seemed so clean and simple, and fixed most of the hiccups I was struggling with. Now the simple skill steps also give a sensible base power requirement, but the two are still separate, so the GM can modify power as needed for certain odd spells.

So this means I am no longer using the tile scores. And then I decided to go ahead and drop the last real Scrabble-based constraint: the tile frequencies. Rather than requiring a certain number of a particular letter tile, just knowing the letter is good enough. Power levels should be set based on the task, not on the magical school.

And so suddenly I was free of Scrabble, because the only thing I'm using now is the 26 letters. And I think I'd do better if I dropped that too and used some other form to keep track of what "schools" or "runes" of magic a character knows. (A list on a sheet of paper comes to mind...) That way, it's more flexible--they can vary as needed by character or story, some broader or more narrow than others.

Overall, I'm happy with the way my Fluffy urban fantasy magic system is shaping up. However, I think the Scrabble aspect is done for.


I was thinking more about why this should be, though. I think the basic difficulty of a Scrabble-based magic is the flavor/world reason for it: why would a mage (randomly) vary in what spells he knows at any given time? That's basically what's being represented by a rack of limited tiles drawn from a larger pool.

Also, there's a game flavor at work here: resource management. So I think this system would work better for gamist games, such as D&D or GURPS. Also, then you could more easily map the tiles to a specific spell list (whether as stunts or specific skills).

The alternative to representing knowledge is representing power. This might make more sense--that a mage has various levels or fragments of power available at a time. (But again, why?)

The other thing to keep in mind is that Scrabble isn't the only way to approach such a "resource drawing" magic system. Playing cards, tarot cards, or dominoes might work better, depending on what you need. I particularly like the idea of dominoes--they just feel like little runestones in your hand!

So, while perhaps not completely abandoning it, I think I'll be putting this whole Scrabble thing in cold-storage after all... at least until I run across some magic flavor that actually cries out for it as a mechanic.