A Game of Magic and Passion
Written by Brennan Taylor Illustrated by Jennifer Rodgers
Inspiration The inspiration for this game came from many sources. These all have a common theme of magic existing as a subversive and powerful force for transformation, which is also a central theme of Mortal Coil.
Novels and Stories • • • • • • • • • • •
The Anubis Gates, The Drawing of the Dark, and Last Call by Tim Powers Coraline, Stardust , Neverwhere, American Gods, and the Sandman series of graphic novels by Neil Gaiman The Hellblazer graphic novels by Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle The Odyssey by Homer The Metamorphoses by Ovid Monkey by Cheng-En Wu Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Anderson 1001 Nights
Plays • Dream on Monkey Mountain by Derek Walcott • The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
Movies • • • • • • • •
The Company of Wolves Prospero’s Books Jacob’s Ladder Spirited Away, The Cat Returns, and Princess Mononoke Big Trouble in Little China Jumanji and Zathura Unbreakable Sleepy Hollow
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tokens serve as a resource associated with a character. Magic tokens must be spent to activate all magical effects in the game, or sacrificed to create new magical facts about the game world.
Using Tokens During the course of play, tokens will be used t o allow a character to act. There are three different ways to use your character’s tokens, each having a different outcome: commitment, spending , and sacrifice. These uses are defined below. Committing Tokens When you declare that your character is performing an action and move an action token forward to do so, this is called committing the token. Any physical or mental effort by your character requires the commitment of an action token.
Jason’s character forces the door open and goes inside. Jason no longer needs to have the action token committed, so he moves it back into his pool:
Once a token or tokens are committed, they cannot be reused until the conflict to which they were committed is complete or aborted.
Jason’s character has a pool of six action tokens:
Only action tokens are committed. Passion, magic, and power tokens are not committed—they may only be spent or sacrificed. Spending Tokens Tokens are spent if they are temporarily taken from play. Spent tokens can be regained, although the method and specific requirements for regaining spent tokens varies with the type of token (as detailed later). Jason decides his character is going to try to force open a locked door. He commits an action token:
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Krista has a pool of seven magic tokens:
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Krista decides to activate one of her cha racter’s magical aptitudes. She spends a magic token:
Power tokens are not spent, but must always be sacrificed. Sacrificing Tokens A token can be sacrificed, in which case the token is permanently removed from the pool. Power tokens are always sacrificed; they are ephemeral by nature. Magic token may also be sacrificed when you wish to create some new magical fact within the game world. Very rarely will an action token be sacrificed: if one is, it usually indicates that your character has performed some action that permanently injured her body or mind.
Later, Krista decides to introduce a magical event into the game, the opening of a magical portal (the existence of the portal had already been established earlier). She spends another magic token:
Keith’s character has three power tokens:
Keith decides to sacrifice a power token to get the edge in a conflict. He now has two power tokens:
At the start of the next session, Krista will recover her spent tokens:
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This token will never return to Keith’s pool of power tokens. It is gone for good.
Passion tokens are never sacrificed.
Summary The GM’s Duties • Bring supporting characters to life. • Help players set the scene. • Present challenges to the players. • Help players bring the passions and issues of their characters into play. The Threshold of Credibility • Equal to that of the player with the most demanding or rigorous standards. Setting Scenes • Each scene should bring out one or more conflicts. • A scene can also show key information relevent to the characters or story. • Scenes should set up situations the characters cannot ignore. Tokens • Four types: action, passion, power, and magic. • Three uses for tokens: • Commitment : used to declare actions (only action tokens are committed). • Spending : temporarily remove tokens from play (action, passion, and magic tokens may be spent). • Sacrifice: permanently remove tokens from play (power, magic, and occasionally action tokens may be sacrificed).
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game, since magic is supposed to be rare. Mayuran counters that it is rare, but is also powerful. The group decides to set a low moderate level of magic, setting the initial pool at 12 magic tokens.
Situation You have created a theme and setting at this point, and defined the basics of magic in your game world. Now, you need to discuss the significance of these things. What is your game’s situation? What issues are the characters going to address through their actions? What questions will they answer with their choices? This is what you would discuss if you talked about theme in a literary context, and since Mortal Coil is about creating a story with your friends, you should answer similar questions here. A good start is to set up some dichotomies, or sides to the central conflicts in your game. It is all right (and, in fact, desirable) to have more than one. These conflicts create inherent tensions within the world that will provide excellent impetus to your stories. Players may choose a specific side, or may find themselves torn between multiple sides of a particular conflict, creating drama as they are forced to choose and compromise, or are driven to ever more extreme acts in service of their principles.
Villains Now that you have established the basic facts of your world, and set up a situation in which your characters will find conflict, you should determine what the opposition is. Who are the characters that will oppose those of the players? What adversity will they face when you start playing? At this stage, a simple list of villains will help players craft their characters in a way that is t ied in to situation.
The group now comes up with some villains for opposition: an ambitious Hellfire Club magician, an ancient sorcerer attempting to protect his sources of power, and a dangerous king of demons. They note these characters on a list, and will continue to add to it as they make characters of their own.
Once you have settled on the situation with your group, go back to the theme document. Add details or change the ones you have written to reflect the situation your group is interested in.
The group discusses the situation for their game. The conflicts mostly revolve around imperialism, and the looting of colonized cultures for their magical secrets. The core dichotomies are resistance vs. service to the empire, colonizers vs. the colonized, and imperialism vs. local control of magical resources.
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Summary The Theme Document • Records all ideas and rules that the players come up with. • Any player can veto something added to the theme by showing how it contradicts tone or some other fact already recorded in the theme. Tone • The general feel of the game world. Setting • A one-sentence movie studio pitch that describes the game world. The Supernatural • Basic parameters and restrictions on magic, in keeping with tone and setting. • Magic tokens are not spent at this phase of the game. Magic Level • Choose from three levels of magic: low, moderate, or high. • Low magic: 5 magic tokens/player, +1/player for the GM. • Moderate magic: 10-15 magic tokens/player, +2/player for the GM. • High magic: 20 magic tokens/player, +4/player for the GM. Situation • Determine what issues the characters will address through their actions. Villains • A basic list of villains to get players started when crafting their characters.
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Summary Passions • Each character’s passions must relate to the other characters and the theme. • Four types of passions: • Duty: something the character feels obligated to do. • Fear : something that terrifies the character. • Hate: something the character wants to destroy. • Love: something the character cares deeply about. • All characters have 5 points of passions. Starting Ability • Four different skill and experience levels: • Novice: 5 passions, 10 faculties, 7 aptitudes, 3 power tokens. • Veteran: 5 passions, 11 faculties, 9 aptitudes, 2 power tokens. • Ancient : 5 passions, 13 faculties, 13 aptitudes, 1 power token. • Ageless: 5 passions, 15 faculties, 15 aptitudes, no power tokens.
Starting Pools • Four pools of tokens: • Action Pool: equal to 3 plus highest faculty. • Passion Pool: equal to number of passions (not passion value). • Power Pool: varies by starting ability. Novice: 3, veteran: 2, ancient: 1, ageless: 0. • Magic Pool: varies by game magic level. Low magic: 5, moderate magic: 10-15, high magic: 20. GM’s Starting Pools • GM’s Power Pool starts each session with 2 tokens for each player (including GM), plus 2 tokens for each ancient or ageless player character. • GM’s Magic Pool varies by magic level. Low magic: 5 plus 1/player, moderate magic: 10-15 plus 2/player, high magic: 20 plus 4/player. Supporting Characters • Every character mentioned in one or more player character’s passions needs to be created as a supporting character. • Supporting characters are constructed in exactly the same way as player characters.
Faculties • Four areas of ability: • Force: size, strength, physical power. • Grace: poise, quickness, perception. • Wits: quickness of thought, cleverness, the ability to make mental connections. • Will: force of will, mental fortitude, sheer cussedness. • No more than 5 points in any one faculty. Aptitudes • No more than 5 points in any one aptitude. • May be used in any task that could reasonably be considered routine for a real-world person described by the aptitude. • The character in a conflict with a more narrowly defined aptitude gains a +2 advantage for the action.
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Supernatural Items If your character has an item with supernatural abilities, you must spend a magic token to activate the item the first time you wish your character to use it. The item may then be used in play to confer its magical abilities onto a character, and can be used throughout the same game session without spending any more magic tokens. Once the session is ended, the item is no longer considered activated.
session being generally assumed to consist of three to four hours of playing time encompassing two or more scenes.
Krista spent five magic tokens during the sess ion:
Jason wants his character to examine a new char acter with his magical jeweler’s loupe to determine if the person is in fact a magical being, and his character puts the loupe to his eye. Jason has not used the loupe so far in the sess ion, so he spends a magic token to activate it: At the beginning of the next session, she recovers all of them, starting fresh:
Once his character has looked through the loupe, he puts it back in his pocket. Jason may have his character use the loupe again later without needing to spend a magic token.
Items must have a price that goes along with their magical abilities as well, but this price usually affects the user rather than the item (see Price, page 47).
Recovering Magic Tokens It is important to note than magic tokens are for players, not for characters like the some of the other tokens in the game (page 13). Spent magic tokens are regained between sessions of play, a
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Gaining New Magic Tokens The only way for you to gain new magic tokens beyond your current supply is to purchase them with power tokens. The cost for buying new magic tokens depends on the magic level of the game. • Low magic: Sacrificing four power tokens earns you one additional magic token. • Moderate magic: Sacrificing either two or three power tokens earns you one additional magic token. (Which of these levels
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applies should be set at the beginning of play, when crafting the theme document.) • High magic: You can convert power tokens into magic tokens on a one-for-one basis. Whenever a player purchases a power token, the GM also gains one or more magic tokens. In low to medium magic settings, the GM gets one additional magic token when a player purchases one. If you have chosen the high magic setting, the GM gets two additional magic tokens whenever a player purchases one.
Keith has sacrificed most of his starting pool o f magic tokens. He decides he is running low on magic tokens. Since this is a moderate-level magic game, he sacrifices three power tokens to gain one new magic token. The GM gains an additional magic token as well.
Summary Magical Facts • Sacrifice a magic token to add a new fact to the theme document. • New facts must match the tone of the theme, and cannot contradict older facts. • Each fact has an associated price. • The player who establishes the fact cannot set the price. • Facts can be backed with rules: • Conflict Trigger : the fact immediately triggers a conflict with pre-set stakes when activated. • Bonus/Penalty: the fact gives a +2 or –2 to cer tain characters or actions when activated. Supernatural Items • Must be activated with a magic token. Magic Tokens • A player resource, not a character resource. • All spent magic tokens are regained between sessions of play. • New magic tokens must be bought with power tokens: • Low magic: 1 magic token = 4 power tokens. • Moderate magic: 1 magic token = 2 or 3 power tokens. • High magic: 1 magic token = 1 power token. • The GM gains a new magic token whenever a player purchases one. In a high magic setting, the GM gains 2 each time a player purchases one.
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Jason’s character is confronted by a thug with a gun. The GM announces the man’s goal is to kill Jason’s character (or cause as much harm as the resolution of the situation will allow). Wanting to avoid this, Jason decides to go ‘all in,’ committing all of his action tokens to an attempt to talk the man into putting the gun down:
With two extra action tokens, Jason’s character would have exceeded Krista’s total and successfully kept her character from slipping through the door.
Fatigue All sorts of activities, be they mental or physical, cause people to become tired. Fatigue reflects a combination of factors: mental fatigue, physical exhaustion, emotional shock, aftereffects of adrenaline, strain from overextending oneself, etc.
Jason’s character successfully convinces his a dversary to put the gun down and be reasonable! Now that the defensive action is over, Jason brings back all his c ommitted action tokens but one, since he used his entire available pool in one action. The remaining action token is spent and he cannot recover it until later:
As note previously, if you reallocate one or more tokens during a conflict round, you suffer fatigue, and one reallocated token must be spent. Also, your character becomes fatigued if you commit all of your character’s available pool of action tokens at once. Committing all of your tokens in this fashion is called going “all in.” After the conflict is complete, one of the action tokens committed is spent; the rest are brought back into the available pool as normal. Jason views this as an action token well spent.
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• • • •
Spectacular Success: +3 to the other character. Near Success: –1 to the other character. Complete Failure: –2 to the other character. Abject Failure: –3 to the other character.
Items • Items grant a bonus when used for an action: • +2 if used on the specific task for which it was designed. • +1 if used on a task it was not designed for, but that it could still serve to perform.
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Summary Power Tokens • Power tokens are always sacrificed. • A power token can take the place of a committed or spent action token. • A power token can take the place of a spent magic token. Changing a Character • Aptitudes may be raised by one point by sacrificing power tokens equal to the new aptitude level. • Aptitudes may be raised to a maximum score of five. • Aptitudes may be improved any number of times. • Faculties may be raised by one point by sacrificing 5 power tokens. • Faculties may be raised to a maximum score of five. • Changes to faculties depend on starting character level: • Novice: may raise each of the four faculties by one. • Veteran: may raise up to three faculties by one. • Ancient : may raise one faculty by one. • Ageless: may not change faculties. • When a character has suffered maimed or broken harm, the player may spend power tokens to restore the faculty, regardless of the above restrictions.
Still there drips in sleep against the heart grief of memory; against our pleasure we are temperate. From the gods who sit in grandeur grace comes somehow violent. ~ Aeschylus
Buying Magic Tokens • New magic tokens must be bought with power tokens: • Low magic: 1 magic token = 4 power tokens. • Moderate magic: 1 magic token = 2 or 3 power tokens. • High magic: 1 magic token = 1 power token. • The GM gains a new magic token whenever a player purchases one. In a high magic setting, the GM gains 2 each time a player purchases one. Session Power Pools • The GM starts each session with 2 tokens/player, +2/ageless or ancient character. • Main power pool is equal to 2x the number of players + GM.
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