I've been thinking lately about how I might design an RPG set in a magic school, where the player characters are students advancing through the years, much like in the wizard books that shall not be named, and I've come up with a few basic principles.

If I may, if the idea is sort of a Worst Witch, or Little Witch Academia type magic school... I've noticed there's this one big 'default plot' in a lot of these, which shows up a lot. It's hardly every story, and these series usually ramp up to big witch fights over the fate of the school by the end, but I notice a lot do stuff like this plot a lot. It goes something like this: - The class that week is teaching a specific magic spell, potion, or what have you - The main characters learn that spell - That spell ends up either blowing up in their faces through misfire, or they misuse it to solve an unrelated problem and end up in a new problem. This is the crux of the adventure. For example, "Oops I accidentally turned myself into a mouse and have to fix it but no one can understand me" or like "I'm going to abuse this invisibility potion to spy on the old-blood magician rival girl and now it wore off and I need to sneak out of this restricted area" sort of stuff - Eventually things work out and a lesson is learned, and the kids better understand magic and whatnot So, I think some kind of system which would incentivize you to play with magic you have just learned, in a way which will lead you into problems as much as get you out, could be appropriate.

Ooh, this does give me an idea for a system of spell fumbles, where you're much more likely to have one the more recently you learned the spell. I don't know if I'd bake it into the system as a mandatory part of learning spells, but it's certainly something that has a place in this kind of game!

Let’s talk incentives.

Hopefully these factors will cause spell fumbles to occur when it’s merely a spot of bother for the players to solve, or just really funny.

I've been thinking lately about how I might design an RPG set in a magic school, where the player characters are students advancing through the years, much like in the wizard books that shall not be named, and I've come up with a few basic principles.

If I may, if the idea is sort of a Worst Witch, or Little Witch Academia type magic school... I've noticed there's this one big 'default plot' in a lot of these, which shows up a lot. It's hardly every story, and these series usually ramp up to big witch fights over the fate of the school by the end, but I notice a lot do stuff like this plot a lot. It goes something like this: - The class that week is teaching a specific magic spell, potion, or what have you - The main characters learn that spell - That spell ends up either blowing up in their faces through misfire, or they misuse it to solve an unrelated problem and end up in a new problem. This is the crux of the adventure. For example, "Oops I accidentally turned myself into a mouse and have to fix it but no one can understand me" or like "I'm going to abuse this invisibility potion to spy on the old-blood magician rival girl and now it wore off and I need to sneak out of this restricted area" sort of stuff - Eventually things work out and a lesson is learned, and the kids better understand magic and whatnot So, I think some kind of system which would incentivize you to play with magic you have just learned, in a way which will lead you into problems as much as get you out, could be appropriate.

Ooh, this does give me an idea for a system of spell fumbles, where you're much more likely to have one the more recently you learned the spell. I don't know if I'd bake it into the system as a mandatory part of learning spells, but it's certainly something that has a place in this kind of game!

Did someone say spell fumbles?

Jesus Wizard, Kiki, these are children we’re talking about here!

Thank you for answering (and your blog is really cool)!

Perhaps I've just been in the right corner of the internet recently but I'm enjoying a resurgence in interest in... crunchier? Jankier? More table-obsessive? TTRPGs. This year I got to generate a character (and her family history) for Runequest (an Elmali Sartarite, she ended up with the Coolest Humakti Uncle Ever), play in a Hârnmaster campaign, and I'm probably running some GURPS in a homebrew bronze age setting soon.

Started as a joke, but I'm genuinely considering a taxonomy of TTRPGS based on how they try to model operating a chariot.

I think we need @literalcatpod as a third arm reaching in for the shake here

What im hearing is that we need a game about foxgirls and cats having chariot races,

The foxgirls ride the chariots, the cats pull them. You have to roll just to get the cats to, like, go, never mind cornering and dealing with opponents.

Woodland critters! Recommend to me some good and affordable generic 15mm medieval or fantasy miniatures lines!

My recommendation would've been Wargames Atlantic's Classic Fantasy Battles, but turns out it's 10mm (grand battle) scale instead of 15mm. However, I was able to find Alternate Armies:

These guys are awesome

Alternative Armies actually has multiple different 15mm ranges as it turns out!

These are so cool actually

Now that gent on the left end of the center row is a wizard!

Oh boy, I did think that wizard was quite grand, but turns out he might be bit of a grand wizard. 😞

I've been thinking lately about how I might design an RPG set in a magic school, where the player characters are students advancing through the years, much like in the wizard books that shall not be named, and I've come up with a few basic principles.

If I may, if the idea is sort of a Worst Witch, or Little Witch Academia type magic school... I've noticed there's this one big 'default plot' in a lot of these, which shows up a lot. It's hardly every story, and these series usually ramp up to big witch fights over the fate of the school by the end, but I notice a lot do stuff like this plot a lot. It goes something like this: - The class that week is teaching a specific magic spell, potion, or what have you - The main characters learn that spell - That spell ends up either blowing up in their faces through misfire, or they misuse it to solve an unrelated problem and end up in a new problem. This is the crux of the adventure. For example, "Oops I accidentally turned myself into a mouse and have to fix it but no one can understand me" or like "I'm going to abuse this invisibility potion to spy on the old-blood magician rival girl and now it wore off and I need to sneak out of this restricted area" sort of stuff - Eventually things work out and a lesson is learned, and the kids better understand magic and whatnot So, I think some kind of system which would incentivize you to play with magic you have just learned, in a way which will lead you into problems as much as get you out, could be appropriate.

Ooh, this does give me an idea for a system of spell fumbles, where you're much more likely to have one the more recently you learned the spell. I don't know if I'd bake it into the system as a mandatory part of learning spells, but it's certainly something that has a place in this kind of game!

Thank you for answering (and your blog is really cool)!

Perhaps I've just been in the right corner of the internet recently but I'm enjoying a resurgence in interest in... crunchier? Jankier? More table-obsessive? TTRPGs. This year I got to generate a character (and her family history) for Runequest (an Elmali Sartarite, she ended up with the Coolest Humakti Uncle Ever), play in a Hârnmaster campaign, and I'm probably running some GURPS in a homebrew bronze age setting soon.

Started as a joke, but I'm genuinely considering a taxonomy of TTRPGS based on how they try to model operating a chariot.

I think we need @literalcatpod as a third arm reaching in for the shake here

Thank you for answering (and your blog is really cool)!

Perhaps I've just been in the right corner of the internet recently but I'm enjoying a resurgence in interest in... crunchier? Jankier? More table-obsessive? TTRPGs. This year I got to generate a character (and her family history) for Runequest (an Elmali Sartarite, she ended up with the Coolest Humakti Uncle Ever), play in a Hârnmaster campaign, and I'm probably running some GURPS in a homebrew bronze age setting soon.

Started as a joke, but I'm genuinely considering a taxonomy of TTRPGS based on how they try to model operating a chariot.