Magical Styles

[ULFGARD]

I'm wondering how many are using magical styles in their games. I'm doing a bit of retooling of an existing game world, and this seems like a good method for making magic seem less "vanilla." It also makes sense insofar as I was accomplishing something similar by having existing guilds, circles, etc., of wizards. Using the magical schools gives benefits rather than acting simply as social restrictions. In other words, this gives me a carrot to go with my stick (and makes the guilds look less like stumbling blocks than organizations they'd like to join, even if there ARE dues).

What is your experience with this in games? Especially grafting them on to existing games (though I won't be doing that, it'd be nice to know).

[Pagan]

I retooled my magic schools when Magical Styles came out. I was using affinities before to make separate styles but these are much better and way cooler. Out of my 6 pcs only 2 are spellcasters and use magical styles. One uses power investiture and specializes in magic that increases his ability to hunt and the other uses an illusion based style.

I also add advantages to the style and learning each separate style requires you to learn the magery for that style. IMC magery is a learnable trait if he have "mage blood" or the potential to use magic.

It has worked out exceptionally well.

[Phoenix_Dragon]

I started using the magical styles in the very next campaign I ran that used the regular magic system, and after that, I intend to use it for every further campaign that does, as well. In the current campaign it's given great variety to the different magical orders and has done quite a bit to make the use of magic both more varied and more interesting.

[ULFGARD]

Thanks -- this is what I had expected to hear. I'm surprised more aren't using it, though perhaps the majority are on DF or MH kicks currently.

I'm glad to have positive feedback to go with my reading of it. In retooling my fantasy campaign a bit, this and some racial tweaks are the only major items, all of which I think are coming together to make the world far more interesting.

I'm using other types of magic as well, giving runic magic to the dwarves, for instance...

[Greg 1]

Magical Styles is a great book. It adds loads of flavour to the standard magic system.

Don't forget to post any fan styles you invent here for other geeks to enjoy:

http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/GURPS_...es_Fan_Netbook

[Kromm]

Had I not written Magical Styles in the dusk of my last fantasy campaign (which ended a month after the PDF was released), I'd have used it in said campaign in a flash. That campaign was the genesis of the idea. I did not allow free-and-easy spell selection, or have general-purpose wizards who attended generic magic academies. There were 39 magical "paths" and 13 major priesthoods in the PCs' homeland, and many others from away, as well as a couple of sorts of shamanism, a form of druidism, and something I called "witchcraft." Oh, and alchemy, and probably other stuff that I've forgotten. It was a messy jumble of special cases and fiat that only worked for that campaign because it evolved alongside the PCs, world, and storyline over a run of seven years. However, the magic was so much more colorful than that in any campaign in which I used GURPS Magic as written that I vowed to organize my thoughts in a book.