Mage Contest

[Fnord72]

I attempted to make a mage contest for a county fair type environment. PC's were 250 CP, most were using DF templates. However, there were some restrictions at character generation on magery level and types of spells available (generally no combat spells, so no fireball, etc). This was for char gen only, after that PC's could expand and learn most spells through self teaching.

My goal was to have a pair of mage's engage in performance casting to be judged on endurance and artistic flair.

However, unless I made the arena a no mana zone, endurance wasn't an issue between contests as some of the PC's were recovering magic at ridiculous rates.

So one contest was to create earth based sculptures, and then modify them on the go. The players argued that no other skills were necessary as the description of shape earth is "any shape."

In the end the entire project fizzled out. So I'm asking for some help.
Using the basic magic system, how would you do some magic based contests that were more about showing off, stage performing, etc.

Imagine you are at a county fair in a generic fantasy world and one of the highlighted shows is mages showing off.

There are different sets of contests (earth, fire, water, etc).
It's expected that most mages would not be able to participate in more than a couple of the different categories.
There should be some sort of endurance component for which mage can hold out the longest, either by casting multiple spells, degree of difficulty/stress, length of time, etc.
Contest length's shouldn't be more than a few minutes as spectators aren't going to sit and watch a ritual for twenty minutes.

Thanks!

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Fnord72

So one contest was to create earth based sculptures, and then modify them on the go. The players argued that no other skills were necessary as the description of shape earth is "any shape."

The shape spells can benefit from other skills. In fact the description for Shape Earth calls out Architecture as possibly required to create a stable form.
Other references exist for various spells and I allow an artist type skill to create especially pleasing or detailed shapes, I'd allow Sculpture to handle stability instead of Architecture skill for say a statue as well.

Performance would be useful in contests like these to improve crowd reaction and possibly gain more applause.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Fnord72

I attempted to make a mage contest for a county fair type environment. PC's were 250 CP, most were using DF templates. However, there were some restrictions at character generation on magery level and types of spells available (generally no combat spells, so no fireball, etc). This was for char gen only, after that PC's could expand and learn most spells through self teaching.

My goal was to have a pair of mage's engage in performance casting to be judged on endurance and artistic flair.

However, unless I made the arena a no mana zone, endurance wasn't an issue between contests as some of the PC's were recovering magic at ridiculous rates.

So one contest was to create earth based sculptures, and then modify them on the go. The players argued that no other skills were necessary as the description of shape earth is "any shape."

In the end the entire project fizzled out. So I'm asking for some help.
Using the basic magic system, how would you do some magic based contests that were more about showing off, stage performing, etc.

Making the shape you create look good would require an art skill. But a better contest might be two earth shapes compete by trying to control the same mass of clay at the same time creating a contest of spell skill to win a kind of tug of war with the winner being the one who manages to get it to stretch part of itself across the other guy's line with actual skill in the game acting as a complimentary skill.

[Anaraxes]

It's standard RAW that magical shaping is no better than you could accomplish without magic. Thus, various artistic, crafting, or engineering skills are useful. Yes, "any shape" means "any shape" -- but that doesn't mean the mage automatically has the knowledge to know what that shape ought to be, only that they could achieve it with relatively little time and effort if they did know. You were spot on there.

Endurance is going to boil down to spellcasting expense and FP total. You might as well assume that a starting mage has all their spells at 15 (IQ 14 and Magery 3), including Recover Energy, and perhaps a favorite or two at 20. The mages that design mage contests are of course perfectly well aware of this, as well as the limitations on recovering FP. Any endurance contest would be designed with those benefits and constraints in mind.

So, the easiest way to prevent resting is to require the mage to maintain a spell that needs concentration. Something as simple as "maneuvering a levitating object" would work. So the mages have to fly colored balls through a set of aerial croquet hoops (hi, Quidditch fans) until one of them gives up. More advanced stages might throw in some jesters whose job it is deliberately to distract the mages, forcing them to make Concentration rolls to avoid falling behind (or even dropping the ball on a crit fail).

Another advanced stage might require casting a second spell while keeping that ball moving. (Possible at a penalty; see M10.) So another contest would be to levitate one ball at a time from a pile, keeping them all in the air, until one drops. This is endurance only when the balls are heavy enough to cost a net FP. It's a test of skill based on how many you can get and keep in the air at once.

Other concentration spells that you might use for an entertaining contest include Voices (reciting epic poems for endurance (and a skill check), poems of the mage's own invention (requiring a Poetry check), or or multiple voices at once, say stacking a harmonic pattern that calls for multiple Voices spells at once (and possibly some musical skills, though if you wanted to eliminate that requirement, it can be a relatively simple pattern, musically speaking). You might have dancing flames or water (continued motion requires concentration), increasing the size of the dancing object for an endurance component, and/or judged on artistic merit (Choreography defaults to IQ-5 :). (A barrel of water would be base 2 FP, so that would cost at least 1 FP per minute and thus stop at around 10 minutes -- but feel free to make it 60 gallons (2 FP net, so 5 minutes) or 80 (3 FP, <3.5 minutes) or 100 (4 FP, < 2.5 minutes) if you want shorter contests.

If you'll forgive my saying so, it doesn't sound like your players are into the spirit of the thing, if their response is to go all rules-lawyer rather than play along. You're the GM, and you can even bend the rules to make the contests entertaining if you want. GURPS isn't written to be a battle of rules-lawyering, with the contest depending on who can out-interpret obscure meaning in vague phrases in the rulebook. (That sounds like an in-character mage contest of its own, probably resolved with a Contest of Thaumatology skills, with the color left to player narration.)

[Gigermann]

I came up with a "wizard duel" for my fantasy campaign. It's basically "magic sumo." There's a circle, and the objective is to push the other wizard out of the circle, with the one caveat that "no blood be shed" (which is probably often overlooked for things like a cut lip or other minor injuries that feature "a little blood," but includes major injuries that might not feature heavy bleeding, like large-area burns.)

[Dalin]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

So the mages have to fly colored balls through a set of aerial croquet hoops (hi, Quidditch fans) until one of them gives up. More advanced stages might throw in some jesters whose job it is deliberately to distract the mages, forcing them to make Concentration rolls to avoid falling behind (or even dropping the ball on a crit fail).

There could also be additional challenges like gusts of wind or moving hoops in obscure patterns. (Think of the sorts of things you'd see in a Mario level!) To efficiently make it through the course, the caster would need to make perception and/or IQ rolls to notice fluttering ribbons and deduce the right timing and direction.

Depending on what types of skills or attributes you wanted to test, you could have unusual combinations of things. What if there was a ground-based course or race that the wizards themselves needed to traverse along with some sort of aerial apportation challenge. This could be dressed up in all sorts of ways: American Gladiator, bullfighting/rodeo/dressage/animal handling, white water rafting, swimming, gymnastics, sprints, climbing, etc. Since you can't concentrate while taking a full move, the wizards who were most efficient on the ground would be able to do better in the air.