Skill issues, and my REAL second project

I was going to have a post describing my skills in detail and building stunts for them. As you will see, that is not the case. I am having difficulty with the skills section of Magi. I was going along alright, then I realized i was uncertain if I was being clear. I am entirely to close to this project and I may not be objective. So I give you a sample of my skill writing and I ask that you let me know if it is clear, or if you think it needs more. Here is the trickiest one I have:

Affinity
Description: Everything is connected.Or more to the point, everything can be connected. This skill deals with the connections between people, places, and things. It is a difficult skill to fully grasp on its own. The easiest example is movement and teleportation.
Overcome: you roll to move through rough or blocked terrain, or to move further or faster. This could be via teleportation, seven-league-stride-altering you form to a faster one, cybernetics, or whatever. This can also be used to understand the connection between things, roll to find out what that connection is. This could be post-cognition(the past connects to the present), some sort of Kirlian apparatus(aura reading the connection between people),  or whatever.
Advantage: Creating an advantage with this skill is changing the distance, altering the relationship, or creating a new relationship: being in two places simultaneously, Someone liking yo for no real reason(this does not manipulate memory, just relationship).
Attack: You attack to break down relationships, physical or mental. Mental attacks are easier with this, but physical attacks are also doable. remember this is about altering an existing relationships and affinities. Major movement(kinetic energy) is covered by Forces. Attacking someone mentally(altering there relationship with another person or thing) will not change the memories of how they were, just the emotions of how they relate. If you have ever fallen out of love, its a lot like that. Physically altering the affinity of someone with gravity or there connection to the world can send them flying into things.
Defend: You defend with this skill by altering where you were, or altering when you were, or altering how people view you. You can stop someone from hating you, or wanting you dead.

So, while I work that out I will be working on another project for a bit. I was going to continue with Buck Rogers, but I found that it lacked any kind of change to the rules of bog standard Fate Core, save for dog fighting which is covered in Kriegzeppelin Valkyrie.

I had a few other thoughts on what settings to do, but eventually I set my sights on one of my favorites. There is loads of material and many different kinds of campaign frameworks within the setting. It has many different in setting systems that interact with the rules, so there will be loads for me to consider and convert. I will be converting the Aeon Trinity continuum to Fate Core.

Aeon has several really interesting parts to it: Psionics, Superpowers, Faster-than Light Travel, Aliens, War, Mecha, espionage, conspiracy, and loads of others. The setting itself stretches from an alternate 1920s to the 2120s.  I will be breaking down the parts of the setting I like and reworking them to fit how I see the setting. It will be mostly the same, but there will be some changes so that that setting will work better for the types of campaigns I tend to run. Also I will be adding little tweaks to the setting, just for my own enjoyment of setting creation.

Psions
Artificially enhanced humans, with powers beyond those of normal men. They seem to be the salvation of man. If only they could unite. Created by secret alien masterminds, for purposes known only to them, the Psions work hard every day to fight the Aberrant menace.

There are several parts of the Psions I really like and would enjoy monkeying around with. The psionic powers are a bit of trouble. I think I will probably build a bunch of broad skills for the aptitudes and then use stunts to represent various pieces of the modes. this is problematic in a way, as it adds quite a few extra skills to the list.  

Another thing they have is bioware. Basically they can build living tools that only those with psi can use in the original game there is a limit to the amount of bioware you can attune to. I am not sure if this is still required for a Fate version. If I do it would also work well as a system for using some types of cyberware, so it is a thought I have had.

The Psi factions are also very interesting, and I think they would work far better in Fate Core. I am thinking of having an organizational aspect as one of the steps in character creation. I will work on this as the project goes on.

Aberrants
Wielding powers beyond their ability to control. Forged in quantum fire, tempered in the madness of war. These beings are terrifying, not for their alienness, but for the fact that they were once human. Mad and mutated, genius beyond human thought, these beings are power incarnate. Or at least that is the story the Trinity tells everyone.

They show up out of nowhere, like the titans of old they seek only the subjugation of man and reclamation of the Earth. They are not ravening monsters. They are calculating and cunning. Like the people the spawned from they are fractious. Some wish to leave Earth and its people alone, some to rule, and some to destroy.

I really want to do something really special with the Aberrants. I would like them to be playable in the Trinity era. I would also like to make them playable alongside Baselines and Psions alike. THis will be tricky, but not impossible. I think I may use bits from Strange Fate to make it work. Some of the largest Changes to the game world will probably involve the Aberrants. I would like to see a few more o the worlds they control, what they have done in 60 plus years(some of them had left Earth as early as 2020). These strange planets would allow me to do some of the wierder stuff I would like to do with the setting.

I also want to do some stuff with the aliens and the mechs(known in setting as VARGs). There was some interest, when I brought this up, in doing a Babylon 5 hack. As much as I like that series I do not know it well enough to do a setting hack for it. I do intend to bring some of the elements of it to the game, however. We will see how well that works.

Fate Core: Magi pt 9

http://kuragariokami.deviantart.com/art/Yggdrasil-71971498

The Magic System Toolkit was released in draft form to us yesterday. Oh wow, this thing is just filled to the brim with unadulterated awesome sauce! Seriously, if you have not have not donated to the Kickstarter, now is a perfect time to do so.  Now, having had a look at how some other magic systems were built I can see a few areas that helped me figure out how to present the magic system for Magi.

In the Magic System Toolkit +Rob Donoghue puts forward a series of defining traits of magic. I have decided to question my game using those traits. I hope to end up with my magic system a bit more defined than it was before. Here goes:

What is the tone of magic? Magic is basically neutral. It is the stuff of the universe, and thus has no will, desires or influence of its own. It has no will or personality, there is no light or darkness in it, though it can be influenced by those who use it. Magic is the turning point between the three pillars of the universe: Stasis, Destruction, and Creation. Without using magic, these forces tend to remain balanced, magic allows the Magus to tip that balance.

What is the cost of magic? Magic has no inherent price. Anyone with the belief, can do it. Even somethings without belief can do magic, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Magic does have a great deal of risk. Altering the world to suit your beliefs is dangerous work. You may come away from it changed beyond recognition.

What are the limits of magic? Theoretically magic might have limits. But for all practical purposes it does not. Only the skill of the magic user limits the magic. Most limits are those imposed by the mind. The skills themselves limit magic in a way. They only allow for control of a piece of the universe. The skills you choose will effect what you can do.

How available is magic? Anyone can have magic. Most people don't. there appears to be very little difference between a Shadow and a Magus, yet the difference is vast. Why some people can do it and some can't is a mystery, though a thousand theories exist. There probably all wrong too.

What is the source of magic? Magic comes from the beliefs of people(however that is defined). Before there was consciousness, there was nothing. Before belief, there was unity. Magic comes from that initial conflict. When the first world view argued with the second. Where belief met doubt for the first time. That is where magic comes from. It may have a deeper source as well.The Other seem to have no beliefs, no purpose. Yet they work magic as great(maybe greater) than any Magus. Magic is the power of creation, and it steps from and channels through the true believers, the Magi.

.I hope that helps with the understanding of magic. I know I found it useful. The questions allowed me to look at Magi and magic from a different angle and see where the edges are. I wish to talk about how casting works for Magi. I do not yet have the whole system laid out, though. I am still having a great deal of difficulty with nodes. They are crucial to my game and I have hit a bit of a wall on how they work.

When using magic the default difficulty is +2, the node can spend one of its fate points(it gets as many as there are players in the game) to increase this difficulty as a passive defense/obstacle. At any point you can be compelled to allow the Node to actively defend and attack. The fiction of how this happens is dependent on the node. If it adheres to Methodical Naturalism, the attack and defense would have to follow the conservation of energy so creation ex nihilo becomes much harder. Whereas in a node that follows an ancient Egyptian world view would allow for that easily, provided you were channeling the power of the gods(Heka) and met with the metaphysical balance(Ma'at). It gets a bit iffy in some cases, and corner cases abound. I am still working on a way to make the system of adjudicating what magic works where.

I have this idea to give magic a cost like property and add to the players power base at the same time. I got this idea from the Magic System Toolkit. You can take a Discord consequence and add the shifts of damage it would normally avoid directly to your magic roll. this allows for you to purposefully cut loose with your magic but you are creating a great deal of dissonance in the world. I think this will work well, I will have to play test it to be sure though.

I also had a few random, incomplete, thoughts on how magic will work, sort of. These are just one sentence explanations for something that will probably be its own post once I have worked them out a bit.

Ritual casting
Slow and big, makes permanent things, not for combat magic, easier way to get around Discord.

Fast casting
Very quick, but nothing it makes is permanent and it has more of a tendency to generate Discord

And that is what I have on the magic so far. I will be refining skills and stunts tomorrow. Hopefully by Monday I will know how nodes work. 

Fate Core: Magic Sytem Toolkit Test

I just finished running a game of Fate Core using one of the new magic systems presented in the Fate Core Magic System Toolkit. The system was called Stormcallers. Basically the players each had control over an storm element: Inferno, Glacier, Flood, Earthquake, and Thunder. we made characters and I ran them through a heist scenario. Over all it was a blast to play and the magic was very quick and intuitive. It was a thrill ride.

We did run into a few issues though. The first was the names of the various storm elements. It was inconsistent, which led to some debate as to what each power was actually called. Not a huge issue really, but still it was a bit annoying.

the other issue we ran into was that some of the elements were poorly defined in the fiction. I had assumed that Thunder would allow for control of the winds. But there is nothing in there saying that. It talked mostly about lighting and thunder. If it had been described a bit more I think that this  would not have been an issue. We also ran into an issue with misunderstanding what a barrier is. Barriers are introduced in Stormcallers as a way to block movement from one zone to another. One of my players wished to use this a s defense, and as written it does not do that in the way he wanted(i.e. in the same zone as the baddies). I did not think that this is a problem with the rule itself, more in its perception.

If you wish to watch the game we recorded it on hangouts, check it out if you like:

Fate Core: Magi pt 8

http://hideyoshi.deviantart.com/art/The-Morrigan-145615010

Today I am going to try something a little bit different from my normal design. i am going to go through character creation and make a couple of characters. I would like to see how easy(hopefully) or hard(hopefully not) it is to conceptualize a new character. Through out the examples I will also be introducing some new(ish) mechanics for the game; don't let that throw you.

Throughout this post I will be following two of my friends, Chuck and Adrienne, as they create characters for my game. Chuck is a hard hitting, in your face action maniac. Adrienne is very into swashbuckling adventure, along the lines of Captain Blood. Before we even sit down to play I know that this game will have lots of high flying action and a distinct lack of patience. It is good to know your game group.

Step 1
Name: Names have power. They are you, in as much as anything is. If one were to know your true name, they would have power over you. Your name is not an aspect in itself, but it provides good conflict, or an aspect you can build to get one up on another Magus.
Belief: What do you believe about the world around you? How do you think it should behave? How do you see yourself? What is the thing that drives you to act? This is the trickiest aspect to get down, but if you nail this one then all the dominoes will fall neatly in place.

Style: How do you change the world? what is your system of magic? do you do rituals? Speak the names of dead gods? Take loads of drugs and become part of a larger universe? Do you know an ancient martial art? Are you a super hero? A god? a dragon? A Jedi? This aspect will be central to how you interact with the world. It dictates when you are in tune with the universe and when you are disassociated with it. It will inform how you do your magic

Adrienne decides she wishes to play a forgotten goddess from many cycles before. She thinks that a good belief would be that technology poisons the world. She think that this fits as without technology men will once again worship the old gods. she chooses the aspect Fire Must Be Returned To The Gods. She then moves on to her style. Adrienne sees the goddess as very driven, perhaps a battle goddess. She sees the style as involving meditation and seeing the future. She chooses the aspect Actualized Temporal Wrath. She then chooses a name, she goes with Morrigan after a Celtic goddess.

Chuck thinks it over and he decides that he wants to play a more traditional wizard. He looks through Wikipedia and finds that there were a lot of different kinds of magic users in history as well as fiction. He centers in on true names and thinks that sounds really cool, as does mystical equations. He thinks about the kind of person who uses those powers. He just watched The Mummy and like the character of Imhotep, so he decides that is his character's name. For his belief he goes with I Will Break The Bonds Of Life And Death. For his style Chuck chooses the aspect Numerals And Nomenclature. 
Step 2
Love: What do you care about? Who do you love? What could you not bear to lose? What did you lose that you NEED to get back? This aspect is on your mind. This is your Lois Lane, your Holy Grail, your object of worship.
Failing: How have you failed in your life? What is your worst tendency? Your weakness? This works like your trouble in standard Fate Core. Magi have great power that stem from their passions and beliefs, this leads to greater failings.
Cohort: Look to the players around the table. Their characters are all part of your cohort. You all seek to change the world together. What drew you together? What can the other members do for you? What do they need you to do? Do you all get along? Who do you dislike? Why do you have to work with them? This aspect can be about the group as a whole, or about the time you came together, or even about a specific member of  the group talk it over together and see what you can come up with.

Adrienne thinks about what Morrigan loves. What could she not stand to lose? Adrienne decides that Morrigan has a child that she is going to raise to be her vengeance on the world. She chooses the aspect My Son My Vengeance. Her failing comes easily enough from that, it is her pride, her hubris. She is a goddess after all. Adrienne goes with the aspect Fallen Pride to represent her status as a forgotten goddess and her pride in her station still. After talking it over with Chuck they come to the conclusion that both of their characters are remnants of bygone cycles using ancient magics. Adrienne tells a story of How Morrigan was being hunted by a nasty Jinn and its Fire Hounds and Imhotep helped her. She writes the aspect Debt Owed Through Blood And Fire.

Chuck knows exactly what he wants for his Love. Imhotep's wife died. that was bad, but then in the new cycle she was erased from reality. That was worse. He chooses the aspect I Will Get Her Back. He then must come up with Imhotep's failing. Chuck's firs instinct is to make that about his wife as well, but then he thinks of the kind of situations he wants to get into, and he goes with a tendency to rush to judgement and alack of patience. He takes the aspect Rush To Judgement. After talking it over with Adrienne and hearing her story of how they met, he decides to go off of that. He sees Imhotep as using Morrigan to help him getting what he wants. He writes down Morrigan Can Help Me as his aspect.

Step 3
Skill ladder: There are seven(7) skills in Magi: Elan Vital, Matter, Forces, Spirit, Affinity, Psyche, and Tempus. Elan Vital is the skill that deals with living things, creating them, harming them, healing them, and in all ways affecting living things. Matter is the same but with inorganic material. Forces controls things like fire, electricity, light, and other 'forces.' Spirit deals with things that are not of this world. It is the main skill for dealing with The Other, as well as summoning and binding the representation of an idea(a spirit or genius). Affinity deals with the connections between things, people, locations, or ideas. Psyche deals with the mind, and time deals with, well time.

When creating a character pick three skills, one at +3(Good), one at +2(Fair), and one at +1(Average). the remainder of the skills are rated at +0(Mediocre). These can be increased during a milestone like normal(just ignore the rules on having skills in a pyramid or column. Any skill can have any rating.

Adrienne looks over the skills and sees a couple that stand out. She will definitely need Life as a war goddess she will need to be able to hurt living things. She also needs time as Morrigan can see the future and Psyche seems to fit. She her final skill selection is Time +3, Life +2, and Psyche +1.

Chuck is nearly as quick. Going over it he focuses on Forces, he wants to shoot lighting and such. Life is also a good one for him as he wants to affect others. He hems and haws over the last one for a while then remembers that he wants to deal with death and life, so he takes Spirit, to control the boundary of life and death. His final skill ladder is Spirit +3, Forces +2, and Life +1.

Step 4
Skill aspects: You get three skill aspects. these are different than other aspects in a couple of ways. Firstly they are transitory, you can change them with a roll versus a difficulty of +2.  Secondly they represent the mundane skills you might have. When you invoke these aspects you gain the normal bonus, however the action you are taking counts as a mundane action. If the skill aspect does not mach up with the aspects of the node you are in you can get compelled to no longer be able to use the skill until you change it.Generally these aspects will be one word only, usually some sort of action word.

Adrienne now must pick her skill aspects for Morrigan. She goes with Fighting, War, and Speed as her three aspects as they represent how she sees her character's default state.

Chuck then thinks it over and takes Knowledge, Fighting, and Literacy as his three. He sees Imhotep as a warrior scholar and this fits that idea.

Step 5
Stunts: Pick a stunt that works for your character, you can pick more stunts than one at the cost of one refresh per stunt. you cannot start with less than one refresh. I will add a stunt list in a future post, right now, there are no stunts for this.

Adrienne and Chuck pick one stunt each, it was very exciting.

Step 6
Finishing touches: Record your starting Pattern and Discord stress(two each, unless you take a stunt that increases it). Record your refresh(three, unless you took extra stunts, then less).



Name: Morrigan
Played By: Adrienne
Belief: Fire Must Be Returned To The Gods
Style: Actualized Temporal Wrath
Love: My Son, My Vengeance
Failing: Fallen Pride
Cadre: Debt Owed, Through Blood And Fire

Skills
+3 Time +2 Life +1 Psyche

Skill Aspects
Fighting
War
Speed

Stunts
She has taken one stunt(these will be detailed in a later post(probably tomorrow, we'll see how I feel)

Refresh: 3
Pattern Stress: [1] [2]
Discord Stress: [1] [2]


Name: Imhotep
Played By: Chuck
Belief: I Will Break The Bonds Of Life And Death
Style: Numerals And Nomenclature
Love: I Will Get Her Back
Failing: Rush To Judgement
Cadre: Morrigan Can Help Me

Skills
+3 Spirit +2 Forces +1 Life

Skill Aspects
Knowledge
Fighting
Literacy

Stunts
He has taken one stunt, this will be fleshed out later, once I have built the stunts for the game

Refresh: 3
Pattern Stress: [1] [2]
Discord Stress: [1] [2]

Fate Core: Magi pt 7

Randy Scott Slavin

Oh, The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.
And when they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only half-way up,
They were neither up nor down
                                   ~Nursery Rhyme

Stress
when I put my thoughts on stress down, I had not really had a lot of time to think them over yet. After considering my initial position I have decided to change the Stress tracks to something that fits my game a bit more. There was nothing all that wrong with my initial ideas on Stress. The issue came when I was working on the rest of the world. Having a mind stress track was just too rigid, especially because there are some factions and people who seek to eradicate the concept of mind. So I had to change it up, and after rereading Mage: the Ascension, I think I figured it out.

I had wanted something that worked a lot like the paradox mechanics in Mage. I got very close with my thoughts on how nodes work. When you use magic in a node that has a style different from those supported by that node, it rolls against you. It becomes a conflict. It defends and attacks. Originally I was going to have it inflict Will stress, but that is not really correct in the world of the game. It is not your will that protects you, it is your ability to change the world around you. I know that can get a bt semantic, but I think there is a key difference there. I have now decided to have two kinds of stress, pattern and discord.

Pattern stress represents your selfhood, and your resistance to changes by outside forces. When someone tries to change you this is the type of stress they have to create. If you get stress out in this manner, you are taken out, and the person who took you out will have free reign on your pattern. Pattern consequences will be large or small changes to yourself. Either physically or mentally.

Discord stress represents how in tune you are with the world immediately surrounding you. You take stress only when you are casting magic in an area not conducive to that type of magic. The world fights back. When you get taken out it is bad, very bad. It changes your style aspect to match its own. Discord consequences are representative of how out of tune you are with the surrounding world. So on the low level, it could be a bit of bad luck, at the higher levels it could be full blown hallucinations, or you are cursed with stigma or a 'witches mark' of some kind.

Person of interest
The Once and Future King: He has slept in a sealed node for time immemorial. all that is left of his glorious shining kingdom are few half remembered stories. His rest is watched over by his three closest companions. He awaits the sounding of teh horn and the call to once again take up the sword and the banner. To call to all men, good and true. To face the evils of the world and drive them back to the shadows whence they came. He was the king, is the king, and shall be so again. Until that day he sleeps. He dreams. Oh, such dreams as would make the angels weep.

Belief: Good will triumph over evil
Style: By my Sword and my deeds
Love: The weak need protecting
Failing: Too Trusting

Fate Core: Magi pt. 6

http://www.randyscottslavin.com/

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.

He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile.

He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,

And they all lived together in a little crooked house

                                                                ~Nursery Rhyme

In this post I will be taking a closer look at some of the core concepts of Magi. How the world is arranged, and all that.

Cycles and Nodes
Because there are very few constants in reality, the Magi do not measure things by time or location. Time is fluid, it exists or it doesn't, the Magi remember things by Cycles. A cycle is when the world changes significantly, like the eight dimensional construct cycle, or the cycle of the inverted stair. When a majority of the nodes are converted to a certain worldview, then that becomes the new cycle.

Locations are also transitory, much like time. the only stability in the universe are the nodes. Nodes can be many things. The most obvious being Nodes that are actual locations. There are other kinds though. Nodes can be part of the collective unconscious(if such a thing exists in this cycle). They can be separated from the world entirely, remnants of old cycles, beginnings of new cycles, or something far stranger still. The important part of a node is that it is a necessary fixed point in the universe.

Shadows
Most things in the world are transitory. They are represented by aspects, and not much else. people(well, the non-Magi ones) are little different. To the magi, these are known as shadows. they are there, but lack the substance of a Magus. They are made up of three aspects and a single skill.
the aspects are Physical aspect(represents how they look), Mental aspect(represents how they think/what they believe), and a Skill aspect. The skill they have can have any rating, though most have the skill at only average. Shadows can become Magi, though it is uncertain how this happens. Most Magi started out life as a Shadow of some sort.

The Other
There are things in the universe that should not be. The believe nothing, think nothing, and have no voice. Yet they have power, they change the world. They have been called many things over the cycles of change: Leviathan, Titan, Fomoire, or Giants. To most in this cycle, they are simply known as The Other. Existing in reality, yet not of reality. No one knows what they want, or why they do what they do. They are completely alien, no matter what version of reality.


Persons of interest
Mother: Some say that she is Hera, Frigga, Tiamat, or Pavarti. Some say that she is older still than that. They say she was the first goddess. Carved in stone and worshiped in languages that were barely that. She is Mother, and she is angry. When she appears upon the world it is as a ravager. Her army of Never Beens and Forgotten sweep from node to node until they are driven back. Then she retreats to her caves. There is no light in her caves just the sound of dripping water, gnashing teeth, and plotting. She will reign over the universe again, for she is the mother of us all.

Belief: I am the mother of all
Style: Dreams and songs
Love: The children of man
Failing: Rage of the forgotten

Seth: The last survivor of the Great Pesedjet of Heliopolis. He seeks to rule the universe as the lord of chaos. He is all creation all the time. Seth fabricates stories and appearances better than anyone. He can blend into any paradigm, and has been known to even get along with The Other from time to time. His mind is alien to most, though his motivations are simple.

Belief: Chaos is the natural state
Style: Shape shifting master of darkness
Love: My brother, my betrayer
Failing: I will rule the universe

Fate Core: Magi pt 5

http://www.randyscottslavin.com/

Character creation
In Fate Core the phases of character aspect creation are very crucial to the understanding of how your character exists in the world and how that character interacts with the world. For Magi I have decided to change the Fate Core phases to something different that fits the game I am making a bit better.

What do you believe: Write an aspect about how you believe the world should work. Do you believe in chaos or order, individuality or conformity, or do you fall outside those parameters in some strange way?
What is your style: how do you interact with magic? how do you change the world? Technology, ritual, the force, steam tech, transhumanism,  or something else? write an aspect that demonstrates that style
What do you love: What is the person, thing, or idea you care about the most?
What is your failing: What is your weakness? how have you failed, and how do you continue to fail? What is in your way on the path to power?
What is you connection to others: look to the other people at the table, build an aspect that shows your connection to their characters. Are you a cabal of Magi attempting to change the world? Are you Frenemies? what is the relationship and how do you interact with it?

There are another type of aspects you will have. you start with one skill aspect slot. a skill aspect is like a scene aspect, only it can be changed by yourself or another using a roll(obviously it is easier for you to change it, than another. you can have more than one skill aspect, however you have a maximum number of slots equal to one plus your rating in pattern.

A skill aspect represents what you are good at in the current reality. Basically these represent your mundane abilities within that paradigm. you can change them to suit your needs, or to better fit a new paradigm. Say you are accessing a node where gunpowder does not work, having the Gunfighting skill aspect will not be useful. So you roll one of your magic skills to change that. The magical skill will effect the type of skill aspect you can create.

I am tinkering with the idea of using some sort of sliders in the world. There would be two of them.the sliders one is set between order(conformity) and chaos(individuality) perhaps there is an x axis that goes from order to chaos and a y axis that goes from conformity to individuality. I kind of want this game to potentially be any game. need to think on this. Basically it would be rated from -4 to +4 on each scale and it would represent the way the universe works in that node. you could only change it on a successful roll. This will alter it one step on the sliders. Succeed with style and you can do two. I still need to work on this idea a bit, but that is the core of it.

I have had a few thoughts on how style will affect play. I thought I would share those thoughts, but be warned they are incomplete. If your style is in line with the aspects on the node you can do magic freely. If you own the node, you gain a free invoke on each of the aspects on the node. If your node is mildly off of the aspects on the node any magic roll will be contested by the node. And if your style is just way out there, then the node gets a free invoke of it aspects against you in the opposed roll. I need to work on the node's skills and such, but this is the basis of how I see magic working in the game. Any thoughts on this subject would be welcome.

Unique Persons of the World of Magi
The First Dissenter: In the beginning was the one. the first voice, singing to the void. Then came the other, the second voice. The First Dissenter claims to be that second voice. The voice of rebellion, disagreement. It seeks to create as may differing and opposed viewpoints in the world as it can. It follows the path of anarchy and individualism. Break everything down, always.

Belief: I disagree
Style: The Language of the First
Love: Self is all there is
Failing: Of course, I disagree...

King of Clocks: He exists in perpetual motion. The world around him seems to be standing still. Time bends and distorts to his whim. If you start trying to alter the time stream, or do away with time, be warned. You will hear the tick tock of his footsteps long before you see him. And none who have seen him survive with their sanity intact. He lives in a palace of gears, surrounded by his automita. There you can live a lifetime in a moment, or not age for millenia. He is order, he is creation, he is movement.

Belief: Life should be sequential
Style: Casting and clairvoyance
Love: Machines will never let me down
Failing: Things must be just so