Tuesday, September 11, 2007

A proposed approach to magic for Steam Lords

Just some starting thoughts on the subject, working off of Castle Falkenstein (pp. 197-207), the Book of Sigils, and the Victorian Age Magick supplement.

You must belong to a school in order to work magick. The term 'school' is simply a taxonomic device - in Thorower's case, school would equal druidic or shamanic order. Allaister would likely belong to the Templars or the Freemasons, as they work a fair amount with Material Magic, which is what Alchemy belongs to. I like the four major designations of magic in CF: Emotional, Material, Spiritual and Elemental. I'm not sure how we'll work out how these four designations have any impact on our system, but it's something to think about.

Once you've joined a school, you must research using that school's texts. This would fall under the skill section of Lore, not "research" under Science Analytic, as that research is relegated to scientific undertakings. Lore covers research in any area. So you must develop a Lore skill for each separate text you wish to master.

The Thaumic Energy requirements listed in CF should give us an idea of the difficulty level needed to utilize the spells in these books; this would be a skill under the general Magic category; we could call it "gathering power". Each school has book which contain spells which have Thaumic energy requirements ranging from a value of 2-16. We need to come up with a system to mirror these values which works on our chart. Perhaps 2 is equal to the 0 or "somewhat average" designation on our chart, while 16 is Sheer Folly or Absurd.

And finally...once the power is gathered...you cast. Yet another skill, under magic.

Anyhow, some thoughts to get us rolling.

I'm thinking that Ulysses belongs to The Illuminated Brotherhood, what with their mind control spells and all...Allaister is likely a Freemason or Templar. Thorower...Druidic Temple.

1 comment:

Mike Perschon said...

More information on some of the orders can be found on pages 83-87 of Castle Falkenstein