audun's ideas for an overhaul of SR magic, flexibility, consistency and magic Options

[audun]

I'll try to post this now. It's rather long and as I've been writing it on and off for some weeks since this discussion.

EDIT: If you are new to this thread, the long discussion on "belief/understanding" can safely be skipped.

I post it with the intention that some of the people working on SR4 will pick up some or most of these ideas, and to get feedback. If I come of arrogant or something it's probably because I am ;)If SR4 continues in the same vein as MitS, this might be something for the SR3R. Here goes:

My intent is to make the SR magic rules more consistent and flexible. SR magic rules are quite good, better than many others. The initial system was a good idea and lots of good ideas have been added over time. Now, it's a heap of good ideas. The problem is that most ideas simply have been added on top of the others and the basic system, there's no consistency to it. SR4 intends to fix this for the rest of the system, so why not for magic too.
I have some suggestions. The basics are:

1. Magic works the way you believe it works. This is no longer only fluff (as it is by current rules), but the way the rules work. Culturally different traditions such as Quabbalah, Norse magic or Bantu animism shouldn't be tweaks of hermetic or shamanic magic, but traditions all by themselves. The spirits conjured and the magic worked should reflect this.

2. Same rules for all. SR3 mostly has same rules for everyone. Though, SR3 defies
1. By adding more flexibility to the basic rules it should be possible do both 1 and 2.

3. Move SR magic from the realm of D&D fantasy spellslingers into the realm of Urban fantasy (Neil Gaiman, etc) magicians. Why? Well, SR was originally the combination of D&D and cyberpunk. Since it first appeared, cyberpunk fiction is no longer or has evolved into so much more. SR4 seems to try to catch up with some of these changes. Why shouldn't it catch up with the evolution in fantasy as well. SR has adopted lots of concepts from RL occultism and mysticism, something which moves it much closer to urban fantasy, so why not take it the whole way.
What I want is magic rules which treats magic as magic is portrayed in fiction. Lots of rituals, mysticism, spirits and dangerous powers. This should be a part of the system, not fluff.

4. More options. Going from 1,2 and 3 the system needs more options. And it needs more ways of introducing new stuff. MitS was written in a way that permitted no new stuff to be added. There was two options for introducing new stuff in SR3 magic. One was to introduce new metamagics (T:AL, SOTA2063), the other was to tweak and bend the existing rules (Euromagic in SOTA2064). I felt crippled when working on the Neo-Pagan rules in the Euromagic chapter. I had to take into account what MitS said about something even if it was far off. I especially loathe the idea of Idols. MitS it was a ”cover everything”-book instead of the ”advanced magic rules” book. Hopefully Street Magic would be the latter.

5. No power creep. More options shouldn't be more powerful, only more flavor and fun. This hasn't really been a problem in SR so far IMHO, though it should still be avoided.

Take note that all my suggestions are only ideas and suggestions. Game balance or any other balance is not calculated with in any way. I'm no good at writing actual rules, I'm good at ideas and concepts.

This post has been edited by audun: May 4 2005, 01:16 PM