Building a Mystery

I've started futzing around with how I want magic to work in my Fate Core fantasy setting, so I've been thinking a lot about the role that magic will play, and what it can be used for. What problem or challenge is it intended to solve within the setting?

To this end I'm running down a couple of paths. The first thing is that the magic "system" isn't going to be something that fully explains how magic works, or all of what it can do. The second is that the players still need to still be able to meaningfully engage with the magic.

In the end, it will mean that magic is knowledge. Like all knowledge, some of it will be widely known. Some of it will be a well-kept secret. Some of it will be unknown, for now - or completely unknowable. That's going to take a lot of consideration and doodling around to get the mix right because I also want to eschew spell levels, spell points, conservation of magical energy (which will mean reevaluating another setting element that I wanted) and a whole host of fantasy magic tropes. It means that for all intents and purposes, binding and packing a wound and using some "magical" method are along the same axis of knowledge and effectiveness and not considered (in the setting) to be separate - a chiurgeon will know how to do both and won't think of one method as "magical" over the other, but rather in terms of which one is the most effective for the situation. This leads me strongly toward the embryonic magic system being (in Fate Core terms) indistinguishable from Lore. You either know how to do it, or you don't. There's no special thing that makes someone a "mage" aside from a lot of the right kind of knowledge.

Even then, magic being knowledge doesn't keep it from being a mystery. Characters may use it, they might know what they need to do in order to achieve some effect, but they can't ever really understand it. In addition, it's visceral. Exposing yourself to it changes you. It's not necessarily that it damages you or hurts your sanity (although it may), but at some fundamental level some part of you is different afterward. It leaves a pit in your stomach, the taste of iron in your mouth, and you just know that now something feels wrong. Think of The Heart from Dishonored. Without spoiling too much about who it belongs to, that realization puts an entirely new spin on The Heart. It's a little more than some McGuffin that you can use to find things - it's actually in a way both wondrous and horrifying. And, you don't have any idea how it works or need to know how to use it. Similarly, in Thief Garrett has no idea how magic works at all - it's just something that he needs to avoid pretty much at all costs (despite that most of it seems fairly mundane with waving of arms and casting of spells). When it does impact him, it's a potentially life-changing event.

My next step is going to be fleshing out exactly how this all fits together in the context of rules, what the limitations are, and how to make it something that is both playable and atmospheric.

Design Journal: Steampunk, Gaslamp, Victoriania...How To Not Be Any Of Them?

As we move into the new year, I'm going to be posting roughly weekly design journals as I craft a new, as-of-yet-unnamed fantasy setting for Fate Core. My goal is to have all of the pieces in place by summer, so I can actually get to running it.

I'm a huge fan of the Thief franchise of PC games, as well as Dishonored. I'm currently playing Thief Gold, with the goal of getting through The Metal Age and Deadly Shadows before the end of February. If I finish before the new Thief game consumes my time, I'll probably replay Dishonored with the DLC that I didn't have before (and my new surround headphones). I am also a fan of a lot of older fantasy, particularly Fritz Leiber and other offerings in the vein of Amazing Tales (and, of course, Lovecraft), and devoured every Thieves' World book. Pulp, noir, and sword and sorcery are more my cup of tea than high fantasy.

I want my setting to incorporate a number of elements from these seemingly disjointed influences. I'm deliberately avoiding "medieval fantasy" as the setting's basis, but otherwise all I have so far is a few embryonic ideas, and a reasonably good looking map (which I will post at some point). But the one thing I'm completely unsure of is how to steer clear of the whole thing getting slapped with a "steampunk" or "gaslamp" label. Because my intention isn't for it to be any of those things (I don't even particularly like steampunk, at least as any kind of cohesive "genre"). I suppose that I should just build the setting I want and damn the torpedoes. Comparisons to this or that are going to inevitable and there's nothing I can do about it. For sure, there's not going to be any gears in my setting. Or gas masks. Or goggles.

Ironically, even though I'm trying to steer clear of those genre labels, I think it's best in these situations to actually learn something about them. As I said, I'm not a steampunk fan. I don't know it beyond pictures I see of people's costumes or when I see a steampunk RPG title cross some news feed or in a post. So I figure at the very least I should familiarize myself with what's already out there. Luckily Age of Ravens has a great rundown on the history of steampunk rpgs. That looks like as good of a place for insight as any.

Thanksgiving Vacation Inspiration

For Thanksgiving this year we went to Sedona, AZ. I had always thought it was just a resort town, so I didn't really know that Sedona is known for a number of things:

1. New Age tomfoolery
2. Hiking trails
3. A number of Native American sites in the surrounding area

The chiquitos are more likely to be of extraterrestrial origin

The New Age tomfoolery isn't so much interesting (except maybe from an urban fantasy perspective). However the country around Sedona is absolutely breathtaking and inspirational.

While we didn't get to spend nearly as much time as I would have liked exploring, we did get out to Palatki to see the ruins there. Palatki is known for having a couple of cliff-dwellings (mostly crumbling) as well as a grotto with pictographs and petroglyphs. Just seeing it is a humbling reminder that for every ancient civilization that GMs and game designers write about, there are real world examples often right under our noses, stretching back thousands of years. That shit's real.

Cliffs near Palatki. Every butte or cliff in Sedona needs a fortress on it.

The dwellings at Palatki are built right up against sheer cliffs, with overhangs that protect them from the elements (which is one of the reasons that they are still there). These were two-story structures, sometimes three or more. The Sinagua (not the actual name of the people) did not utilize the wheel, have a system of writing (that we know of) or use metal implements. They were still able to build some pretty impressive dwellings. What's really clever about them is that by building them along the cliff-face, they eliminated the need to build one entire wall.

First floor dwelling entrance

Second story of dwelling

Additional dwellings along cliff

The two dwellings were strategically placed on either side of an area where rainfall ran off the cliffs above, creating a huge waterfall. The guide said that when there's heavy rain, there are multiple spectacular waterfalls - they were more than likely the source of the settlement's fresh water.

On top of that, the site contains a grotto that has preserved some pictographs - some of them dating back to the "archaic" period of prehistory, at least 5000 years ago. There aren't many identifiable symbols - a lot of them are very abstract, although I was able to spot a number of animals. A couple, such as the weird alien-looking humanoids are thought to be depictions of shaman or a Sinagua girl (they put buns in their hair when they reached the age of majority, hence the horn-like protrusions. There are also multiple culture's pictographs crammed into the grotto - ranging from the prehistoric, to the Sinagua's art, to later comers such as the Apache.

Animals and Sinagua girl

The black markings such as the ladder and horse figure are most certainly Apache, because the Sinagua didn't have horses

In addition, there's a good likelihood that they used various markings for more than ceremonial or decorative purposes. One pictograph depicts mountain peaks with black triangles underneath certain portions. Those peaks just happen to line up with the shadow cast by the cliffs across the valley - and the black triangles align with the position of the sun at different points during the year. Another shows what appear to be waterfalls coming from the cliffs. Who knows what that was supposed to represent - maybe part of a map?

Anyway, all of this real life stuff has given me some inspiration for a potential fantasy setting. It's not Native American-inspired, per se- I'm not sure that I could do it justice without in some way being offensive. But I know that I want to aim for that overall time period in human history, or at least a fantasy analog. I have a few ideas bouncing around, I'll just have to see how the seeds of inspiration grow out of them.