BattleMaster Community
Toms Other Games => SpellMaster III => SM General Discussion => Topic started by: Tom on June 29, 2012, 12:25:55 PM
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I am re-thinking a few things here. One is that I believe there was a bad decision made very early and that was to bring up too much strict game mechanics.
The game should be more free-form. Here is what I think right now in game-mechanics:
- Keep the "bases" and rework them to act as "energy" - basically, you have a limited amount of each base available per time period (it replenishes).
- Keep the "intents" and rework them as skills - basically, your ability to use your available energy for various purposes.
- Drop all the range, target, etc. specifications and replace them by a subjective, variable and highly flexible "power" number.
Game mechanics: To make a successful effect, you specify what you want to accomplish, and how much energy you invest. The GM secretly decides a required power for that effect, taking the effect but also circumstances into consideration. The game calculates Intent times Energy as the power that you create. If the result is near the required power, then what you wanted to happen, happens. If it falls short then your spell fails (energy is still expended). If it is much stronger then unintended side-effects can also happen.
Behind-the-scenes we would have some guidelines for GMs to determine power levels. Players would find workable effects by experimentation, they could invest time and energy into "confirming" effects in their labs, at which point the GM would hand them a signed formula, which they can then use to reliably cast that spell (i.e. circumstances other than counter-magic by others would no longer play a role, the familiarity with the effect allowing the spellcaster to adapt to minor changes like that).
Example - Fireball
Obviously a spell based on Fire, and cast with an intent to kill/hurt. As an area-effect spell with side-effects (burning), and massive damage an example GM arbitrarily assigns it a power rating of 50.
Our spellcaster has a killing-skill of 6 and since he specializes in fire magic has a pool of 9. He really wants to make sure his enemy is dead, so he throws all he has into the spell - 6*9 = 54 power. This is close enough to the required power, so the fireball explodes just like he assumed.
One of his enemies (who has not yet been burnt to a crisp) wants to reply in kind. He has a killing-skill of 8, but his fire magic isn't as strong and he only has a pool of 7. Moreover, he has already used up 2 of those points and misjudges the required power, investing only 4 points for a total of 8*4 = 32 power. That's not enough and the spell fizzles out. He now has only 1 point of fire magic remaining, maybe enough to light a candle.
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This sounds like it will require a GM ruling for every single spell cast. That would make things about an order of magnitude slower and more frustrating.
Unless I'm misunderstanding?
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This sounds like it will require a GM ruling for every single spell cast. That would make things about an order of magnitude slower and more frustrating.
Unless I'm misunderstanding?
Until you get the formulas, yes. As for slowing it down - if it helps getting things running at all, then it's still progress, isn't it?
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Until you get the formulas, yes.
What do you mean by this? That once we have cast enough spells that we can figure out exactly how much power a given spell with given settings uses, we won't need to consult the GMs anymore?
What's the point of that? Why not just put the formulas in the parser, like they are now?
Or have I misunderstood?
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It's not that different from now. If you have formulas, you can use them and you'll know what they do and what it costs. Spontaneous magic is where you will always need a GM.
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Ok, so I should elaborate on that:
Rituals will be what you do when you need lots of power and must accumulate it over time, because you simply don't have enough energy to cast it as a spell.
Spells are basically unchanged.
Spontaneous magic is changed. This is what I outlined above: You describe what you want to do, and how much power you put into it, and then you'll see what happens. How close you come to your intended effect will depend on how well you estimated the required power.
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Ok, so I should elaborate on that:
Rituals will be what you do when you need lots of power and must accumulate it over time, because you simply don't have enough energy to cast it as a spell.
Spells are basically unchanged.
Spontaneous magic is changed. This is what I outlined above: You describe what you want to do, and how much power you put into it, and then you'll see what happens. How close you come to your intended effect will depend on how well you estimated the required power.
Oh, I thought you were describing a whole new system for spells.
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It's not really a new system at all with respect to speed, it just requires more GM action at the start. You would've still had to wait for someone else to respond to your RP when you cast spells anyways.
I'm open to anything, I'd just like to start telling stories again.
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yeah... hopefully people will join again. are we going to do the rework of the spells too?
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You'll note that this will erase the spells. That isn't to say that you couldn't practice them to the point where it becomes a spell that you earn. In a lot of ways its the way spells were created in SM. GM's granted them to players.
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You'll note that this will erase the spells. That isn't to say that you couldn't practice them to the point where it becomes a spell that you earn. In a lot of ways its the way spells were created in SM. GM's granted them to players.
So GMs will create spells for us now? or do we still get to create spells but will GMs change them?
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No, you do what tom outlined. You fiddle with it until you figure out just how much it takes to cast the spell and in essence demonstrate the familiarity. Then you get a hash key to just auto insert it.
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Wait, now I'm confused again. Tom specifically said:
Spells are basically unchanged.
Spontaneous magic is changed. This is what I outlined above: You describe what you want to do, and how much power you put into it, and then you'll see what happens. How close you come to your intended effect will depend on how well you estimated the required power.
So are you saying that to start with, there are no spells, and they are derived from performing the same spontaneous magic over and over?
Or are you saying that Tom misspoke, and we do, in fact, have to get a GM ruling on every single spell we cast, regardless of whether it's being cast against someone?
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So are you saying that to start with, there are no spells, and they are derived from performing the same spontaneous magic over and over?
I won't speak as to 'no' spells, but considerably fewer than we have in the DB right now would be my bet. As for just blatant repetition, no.
A close reading shows that you have to tinker. Lets use the fireball, it has a power rating of 50. It's intent is Kill. I have a skill of 5 in Kill. So I'll start off and say ok, it'll take 8 energy to cast this spell. Damn it fizzled. Ok, Maybe it'll take 11 energy to cast. Well it's somewhere between 8 and 11 because I just burnt my test subjects to a crisp. Time to find more volunteers from the Cult of the Fallen.... (some time later) Great, more targets to practice with. So it was between 8 and 11. Why waste power? Lets try 9. Nope it fizzled. And crap my kill skill went to 6 with all this practice. Lets try 8 again as it was a 20% increase in my skill and if I min max it I'm better off always trying from the bottom/middle (note 20% decrease from 11 is 9.166 so I know my range is now 7.5-9.16) Ok so here goes with 8. Damn another fizzle. Ok then maybe 9. Wham they're all dead again. Ok the value is between 48 and 54.
You can see how this might take time. Especially if you have to get it within a certain percentage/range/over/under or some such other rule. Which incidentally could also require certain skill levels in the intents. If I had a skill in Kill of 1 and I got a range between 40 and 50 that might not count since it's still so unknown. That doesn't even open up the possibility of half energy levels etc, though I have my own thoughts on that.
Or are you saying that Tom misspoke, and we do, in fact, have to get a GM ruling on every single spell we cast, regardless of whether it's being cast against someone?
A spell does the same thing every time with defined limits, so no you won't need a GM for that. Obviously if you go beyond those limits any player or GM could easily point out your error. Spells haven't changed, just how you get them and how they're calculated. We'll have to discuss amongst ourselves what it means to improve skills in this paradigm and whether a learned spell always costs the same amount of energy, or if it explicitly says what the power rating is and the game figures if you can meet that and it takes away your energy automatically.
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I can't really answer the detail questions right now, because everything's at the idea stage.
Basically, spells would stay, but change (fewer numbers). Some math needs to be worked out, as Loren pointed out, you simply can't reach all power level unless we allow fractions.
The core idea isn't changed that much. You can get effects by tinkering, and if you want to use them more often, you can experiment until you find the right numbers. There would still be a lab where you finalize the effect (maybe fractions are allowed only in the lab?). Once you have the spell, you can use it reliably (fractions rounding or whatever).
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I like this idea. More free form, less accounting-style approach has more appeal to me personally.
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I could need some help working out the math. The problem being that multiplication means that some values can not be reached, only approximated. This can be offset by two means: Allowing fractional values or simply increasing all values so that it matters little.
Still, figuring out the perfect value range is something that needs to be done.
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;D I could do this.
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;D I could do this.
Thumbs up for our math guy :D
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;D I could do this.
Then go ahead and make a proposal, please.
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I'll make up a few manifold plots in matlab and post the images. It should help us see what's possible.
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I'll make up a few manifold plots in matlab and post the images. It should help us see what's possible.
I'd arbitrarily set the range at +/- 10%, so we need an area of numbers where every power level can be hit with that deviation by all combinations of base*intent that are capable of reaching it.
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Yea, that's what I was testing. I thought about it for a few seconds and realized the only values we couldn't hit were prime numbers. So the problem only manifests itself for about 20% of the values from 10-100, however we only allow one independent variable as someone can't apply less or more skill to a problem. That's the rub I'm pondering at the moment.
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Yea, that's what I was testing. I thought about it for a few seconds and realized the only values we couldn't hit were prime numbers. So the problem only manifests itself for about 20% of the values from 10-100, however we only allow one independent variable as someone can't apply less or more skill to a problem. That's the rub I'm pondering at the moment.
I think we should allow people to apply less skill than they have. Otherwise a grandmaster couldn't cast the most simple spells without overkill, could he? Hm, with energy one maybe. Still, he'd have the problem of really big jumps.
The easiest solution might be to allow fractional energy.
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The easiest solution might be to allow fractional energy.
I think absolutely, any parser should be able to use fractional energy for spells. However, I'm disinclined to use fractional energy for spell research purposes. Here's how I presently think about it from a story telling standpoint.
In the field, when you're casting a spell you've learned the ins and outs of, all the little fine details, you're going to use all of your skill in casting that spell. Which means you're going to use less energy to do so.
However, in the lab, or under your bedsheets when you're practicing your illuminating spell, you're perfectly free to be a little 'sloppy'. In fact you can focus and intentionally apply less skill at your task. I might be a brain surgeon, but if my goal is to throw a boulder and hit that house two feet away I can just lob it in there and watch the house have a very bad day. If my goal was to throw a boulder and have it hit the fly on the door knob well then those surgical skills might've been handy, though I'd need a much smaller rock.
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Yes, one of the advantages of using spells could be to round fractions down, meaning that spells are always as cheap or cheaper than improvising it.
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Well we need to decide. Should you be able to learn any spell at any skill level, only at skill levels where your skill makes up half of your required contribution and so on, or only at skill levels where +- 10% is enough to allow you to learn it. All the primes fell in ranges of +- 10% if I let skill levels get to 12.
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Just coming onboard here again, so I admit I've been out of touch for awhile on the forums. Can someone kindly explain how this gets us closer to a freeform concept? From what I'm seeing so far, it looks like the change is either a) minimal, b) a guess-and-check way of getting to what we already had, or c) some combination of both, depending on who you ask.
It's still quite crunchy and tastes like math instead of storytelling in the end, no?
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Well look at it this way then. Rather than trying to get a bunch of spells together people are instead pushed towards freeform casting. If they want to be able to reproduce the same effect again and again they can put the time and effort together to get a spell that they've worked at. However, generally speaking until the game is sufficiently old most people will have maybe a spell to kill someone, and a spell to do X. It'll take them time to build up, a lot like the original SM was really where collecting spells was difficult and a sign of prestige.
It'll also make guilds and friendships that much stronger. If someone can instruct you on how to do a certain thing you'll learn it much faster.
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Ok, so the major change is simply that the emphasis changes from established spells to spontaneous casting- and that because the mechanics for doing so are stripped down a little easier?
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Well the mechanics aren't any easier per se, just shifting the emphasis. I see it as somewhat harder really. The very first time you try spontaneous magic with some intent you're just kind of in the dark. Hopefully we can give some basic guidelines.
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I kind of wished that the game mechanics were more easy to understand. To be honest I liked the testing a lot and I still like the general idea of Spellmaster, but I quit because it was just too complicated - especially the rituals.
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The new system is much simpler. However, it would appear the backend is on the backburner at the moment.
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Any progress? :o
I hope we can get this going by Christmas ;)