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Old 01-07-2019, 03:08 PM   #124
Icelander
 
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Re: RPM Rituals: Official, Semi-, Quasi- and Un-official

Quote:
Originally Posted by starslayer View Post
One thing which I have used in my games (which are notably a lot more 'high magic' than your game seems to be aiming) is that powerful magic creates echos both forward and backwards in time, like the side-lobes of a radio broadcast, and that detecting an echo does not require more than magical training or other detection ability (Empathy, oracle, danger sense, etc).

Thus if you are considering combat with someone who has a 100d doom arrow in their quiver and you have danger sense you can get a sensation of raw destruction and harm being placed within an arrow before you are committed to the fight.

Similarly this helps protect the 'state of the union' (State of the union: the concept that everything is the same as you know it, but magic/supernatural has been added) in that, even though under RPM a large cult could in theory get together, drink the magic kool-aid, and do voluntary sacrifice until death getting up to thousands of points of energy rather quickly and easily- the echos of that will stretch so far backwards in time that anyone inclined to disrupt the cult will have ample time to do so (and probably lots of someones if the ritual is for 'turn the entire world's oceans into soup').

For your lower powered, more subtle magic, game making all magic have echos (with the amount they ripple subject to scope and energy) should allow things to remain largely the same with only a few individuals 'in the know' required to 'run interference'- the classical 'slow moving bureaucracy', multiple decision makers, and arbitrary delays of large governments and organizations may actually be simple mundane defenses against mystical manipulation and anything powerful enough to circumvent such defenses creates large enough echos that the limited number of 'in the know' defenders can step in.
This seems reasonable enough.

Also, note that my campaign is actually quite high fantasy in scope. The PCs are 1,000 point Chosen Ones, or if not Chosen by anyone in particular, at the very least each of them has some deeply mystical significance. In a world where only one in a thousand people might know about the occult and only one out of every thousand is capable of even modest adventuring-useful magic, the PCs are mages (or the equivalent) who stand at the pinnacle of mortal potential, probably in the top 1% of adventuring occultists.

Out of the couple of dozen greatest living archmages in the world, the PCs will start out knowing one and will probably end up making enemies of a couple more before the end of the first adventure. And by Season 2 or 3, the PCs might be knocking on the door of that first tier in the rough ranking of magical puissance, once they've polished their raw (or rustic) potential.

It's just that to most people living in the campaign world, the supernatural is superstition, not reality. Even those who know differently mostly just know to use Thresholds, salt, bells, horseshoes, garlic and othef apotropes to protect themselves. At best, a skilled practisioner might be able to make protective amulets and good luck charms, but those would not last long outside his Sanctum.

The ability to stand toe-to-toe with what exists in other worlds and defeat paranormal predators with stronger magic than their own, that makes the PCs superheroes in a world where most people, even very high point budget people (world-champion athletes, special operators, rich and powerful elites, etc.), are simply potential victims.

Only by avoiding areas of the Vile Vortices and any other higher mana zones caused by ley lines and Places of Power can anyone hope to avoid becoming a statistic and a cautionary tale. Most mortals don't even realize it, but they'll unconsciously shiver and feel a desire to go home, inside their safe Threshold, when they sense areas of higher mana, where there might be monsters.

I'm aware that using one set of rules for PCs and another for everyone else accomplishes roughly the same goal, but I'm a fan of character sheets actually spelling out, in concrete terms, what makes the character different from the norm.

Think Anita Blake (probably with less sex), Harry Dresden and Owen Pitt from Monster Hunters International. Just realise that the named characters in those stories and the PCs in mine, they aren't representative of typical people in the setting. Or even typical animators, wizards or monster hunters. All of the above, along with allies of a similar power level, eventually defeat cosmically powerful, deity-level threats and save the world.
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Last edited by Icelander; 01-07-2019 at 03:12 PM.
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