Four Mages and a Locked Door

Last weekend, we had our first session in which we used the latest version of Project M.  I had meant to write a post on it the following day, but I felt incredibly disheartened.  The entire session was brief, and not a lot happened.  The majority of the session involved the party - four of the five being mages - trying to open a locked door.  In the end, the one non-mage kicked in the wall beside the door, and the door remained locked and closed forever.

It was bad.  It wasn't my fault, nor was it my players.  They all wanted to test the new magic system, and their first obstacle happen to be an inanimate object.  I wanted them to open the door with some cleverness, but their spells were clever-less.  The most frustrating part was that they had a thief - someone with the ability to open this door.  He had been deprived of his tools, however.  They created lock-picks made of ice, but he failed his roll and they broke.  Something at the back of my mind was gnawing at me, but I couldn't figure it out until last night.

Last night, we were introducing a friend of mine to roleplaying, having never done it before.  I knew he was a fan of Star Wars, and my brother had discovered this new system in that universe through a web comic he reads.  Unfortunately, this system - Star Wars: Edge of the Empire - was being designed by Fantasy Flight.


Now, let me segue into why I used the word "unfortunately."  As readers may now, I enjoy games of Twilight Imperium on occasion, which is designed by Fantasy Flight.  I also own a copy of Descent: Journey in the Dark, and three of its expansions, Rune Wars, Tide of Iron, and my friend owns Battle for Westeros.  Some of these games I regret purchasing.  Others I continue to play.  The reoccurring theme among them, however, is their enormous price tag, and that they are all very similar in the way they play.  Fantasy Flight has a system, it works for them, and they modify it here and there with each new title.  Sometimes, it works; sometimes, it doesn't.  For one-hundred US dollars, you can roll the dice and see if this one is a hit or not.  After spending more money then I'd like, I've had about enough of it.  Fantasy Flight and I are no longer exchanging money for products.

So, when this new system had the double F symbol of Fantasy Flight on it, I wasn't too keen.  They have also announced the the corebook for this system, a 440 page whopper, would be $60.  Good Lord.  I once spent $50 on the Song of Ice and Fire RPG, and boy was that money poorly spent.  I miss when $30 got you a new system.  But, I read around online, and found it to be intriguing.  I decide to buy the Beginner Kit at $32 and see what there was to see.  What I found in this over-priced flimsy box was a system that was willing to take the mold that made roleplaying games the same, and throw it away without even apologizing.

Within the small beginner's book was a concept that each throw of the dice would not be limited to either success or failure, but rather the dice would simply tell a story on how something worked out for good or bad.  The character could only improve his odds for a positive outcome by improving his skills, but fate was out of his hands, as it is in life.  Throughout my design of countless systems, I have been looking for a way to break away from success and failure, without taking away that chance for failure which is what makes roleplaying a game and not a choose-your-own-adventure book.

So, four mages and a locked door.  I wanted them to get through it, and they wanted to get through it.  The spells my brother had created were not designed to open doors, and whatever trick they came up with with the spells they had seemed like just that - a trick to get me to open the door for them.  They were being creative, at least, but they had a boundary that they disregarded: the purpose of the spells.  Can a spell designed for one purpose be versatile?  Certainly.  But, there is a difference between versatility and throwing spells at a door until the GM caves.

I've learned a few things since our first session.  Some things, I had already learned but were now refreshed, others realizations of thoughts I could not pin down.  One, limited use of magic, defined by a list of spells, is just a bag of tricks with no thought.  The user is left to his own devices to cheat - yes, cheat - a creative use out of them.  Why is it a cheat?  Because battle axes were not made to open locks.

Where did that come from?  Picture, if you will, two characters.  One wields a battle axe and can pick locks with skill, the other has a list of spells.  None of these spells were designed to open locks.  These two come across a locked down.  Using a spell from his list, the character opens this door, however his spell wasn't designed to do that.  He has cheated the other character from using his abilities.  If his magic can open doors, then the character is left only with his battle axe, which is a tool of limited use.  A fantasy system must reward magic users and their opposites equally, or the other is obsolete.  Unless, like Harry Potter, that is your goal.  That is not my goal, however.

Lesson two, having the option of failure doesn't matter if the character is free to try again and again until he succeeds.  If this is the case, then failure is literally nothing.  I cannot count the number of times I have called for a check only to have the player failure and request to make the check again.  Why?  Because the options he sees, however true this may be, have led him to the conclusion that this check is his only means to progress.

Lesson three is one I have had beat over my head so much that I cannot help but to put magic in such a headlock that its not very useful.  It is that if magic is unlimited in its use, then magic is the only thing worth having, as I stated in a previous thought.

Lesson four, the hardest to hear, is that in my strive towards my perfect system, all I have done is copied my favorite system.  A copy, though perhaps better, is still a copy.

I have new goals.  Goal one, to make every check in my system arrive at some form of conclusion after the first roll, never requiring a repetition.  Goal two, to make magic something creative, but limited enough so that it is not infinite.  If I can achieve these goals, Project M will be a creation I will finally think about with pride.