Big Writing Day

Over 15 pages written today for Novarium. Really inspired by the Ars Magica game last night. Seeing game mechanics that were so cool, yet so poorly described, really got my juices going. I am changing paths a bit on Novarium. I am doubling down on the gender politics that I have been flirting with. Especially after reading this awesome post on Borderhouse Blog, though I am not taking 100% of her suggestions to heart I am really taking the sociological aspects seriously.

First off, OGL is out.

It is going to be a game like Ars Magica or White Wolf's Mage games in that you control a Mage and their ancillary folks. However, it is going to be this really new fiction that I have been building for the world (angels, demons, twisted demi-humans, etc). I am really digging the attributes as built for Forlorn Hope, so I have adapted those. The mage class (I am calling classes "Identities") is called the Novarii. Your collective of Novarii is a Novarium (game name connection).

You can also play a female that is highly skilled instead of a full mage (still a little bit if you want), a non-magical male fighter, a dwarf, an elf (magic with limitation), or if you get bad rolls you can choose to be a Halfling (bad-ass lay on hands FTW!). So yes, you could be a mage and have a demi-human companion character to support you.

There is going to be a Willpower mechanic that powers magical abilities. As in Ars Magica, it only gets drained when you fail. Language system will be similar to Errant, literacy very important, and I am going to also run with Ambitions in this game (love that subsystem).

Then there is going to be a big pool of choices that you can spent points on called Abilities. They are basically a combo of skills, powers, and gifts from Errant. You get a certain number of points per level up, and a big pot of points at game start.

For magic, I am going to take the Ars Magica system and improve it. There are going to be Techniques and Foci. Four techniques; Control, Destroy, Sense, and Strike. These determine how the spell actually affects the game world. Then you can take Foci for all the elemental effects, mind, plant, animal, etc. You can cast spontaneous magic by creating a combo that you know; i.e. Control + Plants to cause an overgrown path to curl out of your way, Destroy + Plants to cause them to wither and die, Sense + Plants to see beneath them, or Strike + Plants to push them out of the way.

As always, I aim to make the game as simple to use at the table as possible. I am sticking to the Errant tradition of single-page classes. Spells are going to be extremely easy to use and won't require constantly referencing some spell section of the book, unlike in a lot of systems.

Here is a taste of what you are looking at in terms of simple open easy-to-read design (well, I will add page numbers and maybe one other border element, but that's probably it). Click for full view.

Bonus points if you can detect something slightly off about the art on that page.

And that is the state of the thinking. Cheers.