Y’know how, in Star Trek, they solve problems with technobabble? At its best the technobabble is built on the established physical properties of Star Trek’s world. As a viewer, I understand that the Deflector Dish can be modified to direct a variety of different types of energy, I understand that the Bussard collectors gather up interstellar particles, and I know that tachyons are particles that move backwards through time. In the real world this is all varying degrees of nonsense. None of these tools are defined well enough to hold up to close scrutiny, but within the fiction they have a comprehensible function that allows me to see how they fit together to overcome a certain problem. So when good technobabble happens, the solution feels earned.
That’s a feeling I’d like to create within my games. In particular I’d like for magic users to feel like this as they command the elemental forces to conjure their spells.
Right off the bat I have an advantage over Star Trek’s writers because I’m using magic. Magic makes no pretensions to being science. Its underlying logic is already entirely vibes-based, and nobody expects it to hold up to close scrutiny.* That said, I’ve got some hurdles to deal with as well. Most notably the fact that while I want magic users to feel like they’re cleverly manipulating a complicated system of tools and principles, I don’t want to make them learn a complicated system of tools and principals.
Now, I’ve written about magic systems a few times before. Okay, more than a few. I’ve written about magic systems a lot. I’ve even got a new method I’m developing through playtesting. This desire has always been what I’ve been trying to drive towards I think, even though I definitely wouldn’t have always been able to phrase it clearly for myself. Part of what has helped me figure out what I’m driving towards has been the fairly recent development of Chris H’s oozes.
Chris H. is a highly skilled player. He doesn’t have a public facing blog or social media presence for me to link to, but there’s a good chance you know him anyway because he plays in so many online games that I get stressed just thinking about having a schedule that packed. In my Dangerous Neighbors campaign he plays a magic user named Wob, using my Magic in the Moment system. Early on Wob acquired the magic words “Animate,” and “Ooze,” and this has basically defined his strategy through the whole campaign to this point.
Chris has taken to treating any form of slime, sludge, mud, or goo as treasure. He carries sacks of flour, empty buckets, and a whole collection of odd substances in mason jars as part of his normal load of gear. Every few sessions he mixes a bunch of stuff together to magic up a slime servant to get the party out of a jam. When he throws “powdered vampire ashes” into the mix, it functions exactly like good technobabble in Star Trek. Everyone understands its function well enough that the results of creating a slime with it feel earned.
All this good play is more a result of Chris’s personal playstyle, and our relationship as people who’ve played together for many years and have a certain simpatico with one another. It can’t be credited to Magic in the Moment. Hopefully, though, I can figure out how to write simple rules that best encourage the sort of play that Chris is pursuing, thereby making it something that others can more easily slot into their own games.
*Except people who read too much Brandon Sanderson. Haha, sick burn.
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