Date: Mon, 4 Dec 1995 14:38:11 -0500 From: s003llt@nova.wright.edu To: Multiple recipients of listSubject: Magic Ritual
On Fri, 24 Nov 1995, Scott Herod wrote: > In the game that I GM a player wants to bring in a shaman. I'm > really clear on how to handle the whole spirit world stuff yet > but I'm getting there. Any good suggestions would be welcome, esp. > books or references to stuff by ICE. > > My real question is, how do other GM's out there handle Magic Rituals. > I'm currently thinking of having the player tell me when he wants to > use a ritual to try and adjust a spell, kind of like a meta-spell mastery. > I'll assign a difficulty to particular things like extending the > duration of a spell or other spell mastery stuff. I was also thinking > of letting a ritual decrease the penalty on an ESF roll if he tried > to over cast. > > Anyway, if anyone out there has ever used Magic Ritual, could you comment > on what you did with it? Oh, this is in RM2 still. I haven't gotten > RMSS yet. > > Scott
I'm sending this again as it came back "undeliverable" during the time the list was down...
Hi! In reference to the questions you asked about ritual magic -- there is stuff in RMIII that covers this, as someone else already mentioned. We have used this method of working with ritual magic for some time and it seems to work pretty well. The divisions of magic are fairly arbitrary. I suppose you could use spell effect categories instead -- like force, healing, self, etc. but the point is to have some division so that the caster has to spend sufficient points for game balance.
A couple of things that my GM has added to the interp. to keep things even more in line:
Also -- the arcane ritual mastery list is very powerful. Someone who has that can, among other things almost always end a ritual safely, even a failed one as long as it was not so bad that it was perverted. This is somehting to remember if a PC asks for the list, however, letting your bad guys have it SHOULD make the PC more nervous about doing rituals...
Sorry this is long, butI also wanted to throw in some comments about how we handled the spirit world. We alsoays treated it as a place you could reach with a trance roll. The better the roll, and the more you were assisted by drugs, bodily purificatio, fasting, etc teh more thoroughly you could be there. The otehr alternative for a shaman is to call a spirit into his world -- more akin to summoning. We always played that the shaman wouldn't coerce the spirit unless eh was evil. He would instead offer them gifts in return for help -- offerings of food, tobacco, magical devices, valued possessions, etc. -- the more you wanted form the spirit, the more meaningful the gift/sacrifice had to be to you. Things that happened in the spirit wourld would look and feel real, and could affect the material world. You could get somehting there and bring it back with you (though it might not look the same), and you could fight and be killed there. Generally, combat on teh spirit world would use WILL (see RMC) rather than a weapon's skill, but it might look like a physical fight. If you have time, I'd suggest the Sonja Blue books (Sunglasses and Night, etc) They are vampire books that deal with mental or "spirit" combat. Or watch the movie Dreamscape -- that is more or less how we handle such things. Hope this helps!
Laura
Date: Mon, 4 Dec 1995 15:30:21 -0500 From: Sergio Bruno Fedi de OroTo: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: Magic Ritual skill
In my game, Magic Ritual helped greatly in adding importance to certain secondary skills. When you need an ingredient for a ritual, you just need a component, a thing that is "charged with a special essence". From that point onwards you have to figure out what things are useful to your ritual, so I, as a GM don't tell the players what things they have to acquire, they have to LOOK for them, and then, evaluate it's properties/capabilities/potential. This is when it comes to good use certain number of skills:
Alchemy - To determine what ritual is the item analised more suitable for. It also answers "What bonus gives this item to the ritual of xxx?" The dificulty of the alchemy roll is based on the amount of information the user wants to get, and if the researcher wants the item been analised to be reusable or not.
The above method is very tedious to conduct a real research of the components needed for a specific ritual, here's when it comes into play the...
Lore skills - Each lore skill, gives information about what the more suitable item (in the Lore skill scope) is for a given ritual, or it tells how can it help a given item for a certain ritual. Of course, there must be someone who knows how magic rituals work if you wnat to get a coherent answer.
It also comes into place another skills, since the variety of ritual components is so vast. i.e. Dance, Foraging for certain herbs/plants/poisons, Time sense, to get right into "midnight of the seventh day of xxx month", scrounging for finding that "special place", and maybe social skills to convince other spell casters to help you get PP's for your ritual.
Any more questions/suggestions/etc to sfedi@dc.uba.ar
Sergio
Date: Mon, 4 Dec 1995 19:07:55 -0500 From: cbennett@mncppc.state.md.us To: Multiple recipients of listSubject: Re: Rituals
PC Professions like Shamans can be a real pain in a campaign. Ritual magic takes time, lot's of it and does not work very well in many campaigns. When a magic user does require a ritual I make sure that they take plenty of time. To perform a ritual I use a rule of thumb that it should take hours of uninterrupted time, in a place that is relatively free of distractions. The area must be properly prepared, it may require certain tools, an altar, etc. as well. The magic user must also prepare him/herself with a ritual bath, meditation, etc. too. A good source of reference would be a book on magic rituals found in most bookstores or new age shops. These books do outline the basics of magical rituals as used in the real world. If your own religion has formal rituals you can get an idea of how they are performed as well. They are not entered into haphazardly or quickly. Make them work for it. This of course can bore the other players if you do it real time, so it is usually a good idea to get the ritual specifics detailed out of game time and then have it happen during the normal course of the game, complete with possible encounters, etc.
Subject: Rituals Author: rolemaster@tower.clark.net at INET Date: 12/4/95 11:18 AM
"In the game that I GM a player wants to bring in a shaman."
Sorry to hear that.
"My real question is, how do other GM's out there handle Magic Rituals. "
I did something completely non-standard (big surprise, huh?). Through various fiction and "non-fiction" books on shamans, spirits, and animism, I worked up a list of things to do. Many of these did not directly correlate into RM spells. I just went ahead and assigned them difficulties anyway. I also assigned ritual times myself.
Other games systems have things more nearly representing ritual magic than the standard "wave-wave-BOOM" spell system. I researched from those and liberally borrowed what would work.
It also helps that one of my co-workers is from Haiti.
"I'm currently thinking of having the player tell me when he wants to use a ritual to try and adjust a spell, kind of like a meta-spell mastery. "
That's probably a workable system, and more closely aligned with the original ICE rules, but it was less satisfying to me. Personally, I think that rituals and spells should be different, with different mechanics (we're OK there) and different effects. It seems wasteful, to my mind, to have a bunch of different methods of achieving the exact same result.
"...this is in RM2 still. I haven't gotten RMSS yet."
As far as I can tell, it makes no difference.
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