thread: 2013-12-23 : Some Basic Rules (iv, revised)
On 2013-12-25, plausiblefabulist wrote:
This is great!
I love the social implications of the ease with which you can steal other wizards' spells. An additional spell-caster in an adventuring party is immediate cause for tension! Masters are secretive about what they cast, even around their own apprentices! This is really excellent stuff, and maps really well to real hermetic traditions.
Now the idea of the plasmids as creatures is really vivid.
Another couple of riffing ideas/wishlisty stuff:
1) It would be interesting if the plasmids began to develop some individuality through play, like NPCs of a certain limited intelligence. So when you first isolate a spell, you know what it does, but you don't know, for instance, how it might spend its self-motivity on a casting flinch. But as play goes on you notice that this particular plasmid is timid, or playful, or vengeful, or diabolically cruel, or has a twisted sense of humor—or at least, that's what it looks like to us, consistent with its alien nature and the difficulty it has perceiving our world. Maybe it's not even as obvious as that—maybe it just has a habit of making shiny things float if it can, and we dont know why. But I like the idea of making notes of how the spell acts, and carrying this forward through play.
2) I like the way you built move design into spell research, I think that's great. The "it takes a year" cost feels a little flat. Somewhere else you said that "expenditure of time" was a load-bearing component of the move, and you wanted to find another way of doing that. Since "So I spend a year in research" / "Okay, what are the rest of you doing during that year?" is somewhat unexciting, I'm hoping that cost will end up unfolding into something more story-generative, like "and you, Turmin the Enchanter, notice that the dead man's fingers are covered with a blue gel." "A blue gel? A BLUE GEL?? I ransack his library." "What are the rest of you doing while Turmin's ransacking?" "Is there anything valuable?" "Sure. You divvy it up. Turmin?" "WHAT DID I FIND?" "The trail is cold, but it's definitely the plasmid you're looking for. It's back in the ether though. But there's a note in the drawer that indicates he sent a manuscript to his cousin Peredir in Nonemore." "Okay, guys, sorry, I have to go to Nonemore now." "WHAT? Dude, Turmin, we're on a quest!" "Quest schmest! I'm going to Nonemore! You can come or stay behind!"
or like that.
