thread: 2009-04-30 : Magical Magic
On 2009-04-30, Paul T. wrote:
My experience also matches what Emily says about Mortal Coil:
I haven't played that game, but have seen very "magical" and fun stuff result from a similar process in my game "Land of Nodd". I haven't played Mortal Coil or Otherkind, but the mechanics are a mix of the two, as far as I can tell (at a conceptual level). It's basically, "narrate magic however you like as the player, when it doesn't count too much" and "you say what you want, and other players throw in twists and complications" when it DOES count.
The result has always had that cool mysterious magic-y vibe, quite successfully. In the last game we had strange side effects including two people's souls switching bodies and how it interacted with their fates being mystically intertwined. The result was very satisfactory, both "magic"-wise and aesthetically—unpredictable to everyone at the table but also totally believable.
I'm actually curious about this point, Vincent:
You know how you keep talking about the right- and left- facing arrows and how they affect the "feel" of the game?
Well, I have no idea how rules like "decide on some dangers" in your "Otherkind dice" mechanic look in your clouds and arrows diagram. I mean, it's left-pointing, in one sense, but it's very much rooted in the fiction, too.
This kind of mechanic has been my favourite lately, and I'm not sure how it fits into the whole left-pointing/right-pointing dilemma. Is it an unrelated issue, like HOW the players decide what those dangers are (e.g. when Bob does so, he takes details from the fiction, but when Sue does it, she makes up new stuff just because the rules demand it), or something else?
