i absolutely love the concept of your character literally fraying as they mess with the weave. i have this amazing visual in my mind of characters literally losing color and having a 'fuzziness' to their silhouette as a consequence of years of playing with the tapestry, or leaving behind a trail of literal threads of themselves as they walk
@@MagnificentDevil do people play clerics without being religious? I haven't experienced this. In our games, the priest knows they must be a religious representative of their deity and lose their spells if they fall out of favor.
Excited for this! The "poofing" out of existence is so cool, but I would love to see it as "now you start to fade/unravel" to allow for existence through the end of the gaming session, allowing for heroic (or foolhardy) last stands narratively.
Man - this is surprisingly similar to what I have come up with (obviously also based on ars magica). The thing I struggled with most is to keep complexity in check - in the end I want a magic system that does not rely on massive spell lists - however, I don’t want to replace this with insanely complex rules… so psyched to see how you solve it. Absolutely brilliant channel!
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG Oh, rest assured, no matter what you have come up with, I will spend 24h in awe and then immediately start tinkering with it - an unfortunate condition I have yet to find a cure for.
Amazing! We have the same mind! I have been tinkering with a similar homebrew magic system and came to very similar conclusions. Although yours is more refined. For example I didn't come up with the distinction between verbs and nouns. Decomposing things like that is a hallmark of good design, kudos!
I like the resolve mechanic b/c it instantly makes me picture a caster from any fiction you see straining and grunting to try and make or maintain a spell!
I have never played a table top and somehow, I could listen to this for hours. Would you say this game is beginner-friendly? I don't think I have never played something that isn't a video game haha But this just seems so fun and interesting. I could see myself buying it just to read the rules alone.
@@ThisIsntmyrealnameGoogle if you’re a fan of WH40K I HIGHLY recommend getting the TTRPG “Imperium Maledictum”! Not only is it a fantastic game, a lot of the concepts are similar, which is a part of why TBE interests me.
You might be at an advantage by not having other games cluttering your headspace. Dive into this; learn it! There’s no rush, but when you feel ready, gather some peeps to play. I guarantee you’ll have a blast. Role playing is unlike anything else.
One of the things I hate the most about preparing spells in games like D&D is that some spells feel like a gamble. You are not sure if you would need them or not and it always sucks when you prepare a niche spell and end up not using it because the situation didn't call for it.. But it sucks more when you don't prepare it and end up using it. I love that this system doesn't have prepared spells and you can always look try to come up with creative spells for any situations.
I have to completely agree. The work Trevor has done BEFORE the kickstarter is amazing, professional, and appreciated. This is unlike a certain other game being developed that hauled in $4.2M and didn't even have a title yet! Worse yet is doing a cash-grab selling dice sets when they should be focusing on creating something smart like Trevor is doing. I am genuinely excited to play this game.
Love this. This looks really fantastic. It seems to combine the pragmatic (can you use it at a table without spending 20 minutes in discussion about a single casting) with real creative flexibility. I love the idea of piety being hidden. Why not also hide “fraying”? The GM would need to make sure to let players know their general status (“the spell dissociates you greatly” or “you hear a whisper of your god”), but not knowing if this spell is the last seems incredible.
All the design are goals are just incredible! I really hope that the final systems are streamlined enough to be brought to the table. Wish you the best!
You are singin' my song, Trevor. I was already looking forward to TBE but this video has really clinched it for me. I've always loved playing magic users and have always hated the arbitrary restrictions placed on them by other RPGs (one in particular we all know and love {to hate}, but it's far from the only offender, just the most popular/egregious). I am _so glad_ you kept the Kickstarter open for late pledges. I meant to back it in the second half of October when I got paid but... well, suffice to say a woman in a truck had other plans for me. On the bright side, I can walk again and I'm super looking forward to running this for my group once the project's been fulfilled and continuing to expand their horizons on kick-ass TTRPGs that _aren't fucking D&D._
I love the magic system, because it encourages role play for wizard and cleric. The cleric must act according to his religion and serve his god to get power, while the wizard needs to avoid to be consumed by the weave. Both have now a rational that they have to consider when casting spells or miracles. This is a great principle!
I’ve been writing a magic system for my game for a few years now. We must be on the same wave length! There are a lot of similarities between your spell weaving and the way I’ve written arcane magic. I like your imagery of the tapestry, mine does not use that. Instead of sacrificing resolve, characters in my game sacrifice energy to cast spells which is the equivalent of hit points (which can also be sacrificed to nudge die rolls in the right direction). Your divine magic system is almost identical to mine lol. I love the idea of keeping piety (I call it favor in my system) secret. That way it doesn’t seem so transactional with players deciding to do something for the god just to earn enough points to cast specific miracles. I may steal that (with your blessing, of course!) There are many differences in my system to yours. But I was tickled at how close our magic systems were.
I am jealous. This is clearly well thought out and very similar to what I have made for my own homemade ttrpg. We are sympatico on how we view magic in our respective games. I will need to get a copy. Very cool and best of luck!
Good to see an intelligent approach to trying to put a lid on wizards, and in particular the players of wizards. There seems be a real running theme with them engaging in disruptive limit testing behavior with magic. Now the universe says: do what you want but your save or die is based on how poorly controlled your disruptive behavior is. I always get a laugh out of telling wizard players that I nerf the wizard class down to the observed power level of Gandalf. They want to get mad at having limits applied yet can't get mad because the limit is literally Gandalf.
@@nss5353 this works if you have players that also don't like wizards. Gandalf was barely a wizard. He was basically there to neutralize the magical forces so that the characters without magic could do what they needed to do. See the Spellmonger series. This is a setting where the fuedal system functions with magic as part of its economic system. It also shows what would probably happen if humans had magic and how ineffectual martial disciplines would become.
You are really killing it with those last minute rule dives! The system has come into its own during those last few episodes in season 4 and although I always preferred roll-over rather than roll-under systems, I feel I will really enjoy playing TBE! Ars Magica has been one of my favorite magic systems and one that I have never run as a GM. Enter TBE!
The free form magic system sounds really interesting. Recently, I have been thinking of how one would design a soft magic system reminiscent of LOTR and ASoIaF. I feel that free form is the closest one can get for a TTRPG. Gonna be interesting to give it a look.
I also loved the religious system in Artesia - it sounds similar to this. There were all kinds of small rituals that you could do to gain piety points that you later used to power your spells. It was great for there to be a reason to stop and pray at a roadside shrine - like people in a culture like that would. Can't wait to see Broken Empires as it seems to be hitting all the right notes.
Late but something about this game and it's magic systems is just... clicking with me a lot. It's like something I would try to incorporate in a game but never had the skill to do so. Good thing there's a talented man making a game that clicks with me so well :D
what a great concept for magic with the weave. Magic should be something you don't use lightly (like in WHFRP) spellcasters in D&D use eldritch bolt to turn off the tv or signal that dinner's ready for the kids playing out in the street or to heat their tea kettle.
If the tapestry of the universe reacts so negatively and aggressively to attempts to use power to modify it that it can even end up pulling a person's thread out of the tapestry... What then is the nature or relationship that the gods have with this tapestry? And what is it that differentiates a mortal from a god? I tend to assume, because of the concept of the tapestry, that the more one has lived and the more events and people one has affected/known, the thread becomes too long and too anchored to the tapestry to be able to be torn from it without causing a worse mess to the tapestry than simply leaving it. So, would the divine thread be differentiated from the mortal thread by a question of how long it is? How many years has he lived, how many people know him, how much has he changed the world. Could a mortal then end up becoming a god? Perhaps only a magic user since it would translate to that eventually, as centuries or millennia pass, he would see that the tapestry reacts less and less strongly to his modifications (perhaps it could even be perceived over the course of a mundane lifespan in the sense that the older a person is, the more powerful they are with magic as the tapestry reacts less strongly). Were the gods mortal in their origin then? Perhaps great shamans or priests of empires or forgotten tribes? On the other hand, I find it very interesting that this concept of the tapestry of the universe (although it is true that it is nothing new because it has existed since Greek mythology), with the idea that everything and everyone are just threads in that tapestry, well... it could be an interpretation of the idea that we are all like worms in the 4th dimension, that is, that in time we are a line that begins with us as babies and ends with us being old (ideally)... very much like threads. Curiously, in the Nordic creation myth I think that humans emerged as worms from the earth when the giant god was killed and his blood flooded the earth. I find it interesting how there seems to be a concordance between the different interpretations, both from ancient mythologies and cutting-edge science concepts (such as string physics).
--- An excerpt from "Whence the Thread? A Treatise Most Profound on Philosophies Arcane", by Magister Epipan of the College Arcanum of Sal Martanne, Angevarre
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG Epipan is a race or a title of of mine, that is why I'am "the" epipan 😉My name is unknown, because only a naive person would risk having the knowledge of his name used for curses. (off-role, you leave me quite intrigued about that College Arcanum of Sal Martanne, Angevarre!) *Whence the Thread?* is volume 3 of the author's collection of books, these issues are explored more deeply in his later volume 5 *"The Permanence of Threads"* , excerpt: "The oft-proven fact that reality behaves like interconnected threads, along with my reflections on the possible anatomy of threads (see volume 4 of this collection) and the possible correlation between the extension of these threads in the dimension in which the tapestry exists with the power or permanence of the threads in the tapestry (see volume 3 of this collection) necessarily lead me to the conclusion that reality is something permanent. We know that the extension of a thread can be terminated prematurely, and the concept that each thread willfully chooses, albeit mostly blindly, how it will intertwine with others, each thread effectively being its own weaver, suggests that the tapestry is something that is continually being generated; it is not something predefined that has existed in its entirety forever. But if it seems to be so in terms of what we perceive as the past, and if something is defined and exists tangibly in some dimension... why does it seem to be an impossibility to modify it? It is not just my previous reflections, but the cases of disappearances of magic users... if their threads were simply cut, we would just see them die spontaneously, but the fact that they disappear is an explicit demonstration of the existence of the tapestry. If my reflections in Whence the Thread? are correct (the length of a thread is equivalent to the degree of power and permanence of that thread in the tapestry), then everything implies the existence of a past that remains in some dimension. Perhaps the answer is something like the effect of water pressure: so many tightly woven threads create a kind of Fabric or Thread Tension on each thread... and the further back in time we go, the more and more threads accumulate, increasing that pressure or tension (experiments should be done to check if there is a maximum point of pressure, after which it stabilizes and stops increasing; personally I am inclined to think that this must be correct, especially if it is true that the universe had an origin, which would mean that this Thread Tension would describe a descending bell graph after reaching a peak. If there was no origin of the universe, the pressure could increase infinitely as we move away from the present). But if this pressure is something that is increasing, I tend to think that it is a force that could be overcome, at least not too far in the past. Being something that could not be achieved yet, must mean that the pressure grows exponentially too quickly. Experimentation should focus on directing magical effects at targets with known coordinates. It is simple in the physical world, but we do not know how to move in the dimension of time, the dimension in which the tapestry is tangible matter. Mathematically it is difficult to achieve, we can barely have a certain notion of the shadows of things in those higher dimensions, but perhaps intuitively we could develop an ability to guess them (we know or perceive many things intuitively without having yet managed to explain them academically, such as consciousness itself, as well as several issues that we must apply as axioms in the sciences). The sensations of nostalgia and 'deja vu' are interesting points to consider. Mathematics and physics, however, suggest that it would be much easier to make a thread vibrate than to move it or cut it... a whisper, a sensation, the memory of an image or smell.
Hidden piety :) Great :) Of all resources that could be hidden, this makes a lot of sense, that fear of capriciousness and indirect communication with some unknowable power :) Also a fan of creative spellcasting, since it feels a bit cinematic and is less a Solve Puzzle button since you have to worry about pushing things too far. How often per session were spells cast in the tests you did? How likely was it to get a frayed result? Since if I understood you right anybody can invest in spellcasting ability, could a dabbler in tiny utility spells basically "get away with" a lot with minimal risk?
It’s not quite that easy to become a Fade (a dabbler in Magic), but it can be done. Most play tests yielded a spellweaver being able to cast 2 or 3 times before things became dangerous. But there are so many variables that each situation will be different.
Ah yes, Lenz' law of arcanomagitism: The magic induced in a thread due to a change in a magic field is directed to oppose the change in flux and to exert an arcane force which opposes the spell.
I'm looking forward to it, even dropping the 1 dollar to get the wound dice and whatnot. Love interesting magic systems that step away from Vancian styles.
Though in one video it was said this is more low magic, I imagine a high magic world could easily be made by allowing for just most ask for less risk - with the excuse of the area or maybe bonus resolve for certain magic types a mage knows really well.
In 1997 (I think) I had some experience with ttrpg like WFRP 1ed, Cyberpunk 2020 or MERP. I decided to crwate my won system and whennI got to the chapter about Magic I thought that I will not make spell list. Instead I created about 8-10 aspects that covered some elements like nature, death, life, elementals, summons, morph etc. It was up to player what spell he wants to cast. GM just had to set the difficulty level. And I loved, as magic is not always prepared with recipe. The game was called "Quentari". I don't know why I remeber that :).
A lot of cool stuff in TBE. I am very excited for it. I am a bit surprised how not solo friendly it is looking. Piety is a hidden stat. Magic is a negotiation with the GM. Solo you always have to make some compromises of wearing two hats but this sounds like it will be harder than most.
Well, I have said *repeatedly* that this is not a game designed explicitly for solo play. That said, I am working with some very talented people to make the solo experience more palatable. More information will be available on Tuesday morning when the Kickstarter launches!
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG That's fair Trevor, and you certainly have been up front about that. It's just you are sort of THE MOST FAMOUS SOLO PLAYER IN THE WORLD. So it feels a little off brand even though I know you also lead plenty of group play too. Also the DnD alternatives for group play is a bit saturated right now. Still you have come up with a great system with several things that make it stand out. I am definitely a supporter and I hope things go great for you Tuesday.
I remember a thread from way back in Season 1 which was about some heretics in the world believing, that gods aren't real at all, and priests are just performing a different brand of arcane magic. I wonder if that makes it into the setting book in some form, because I think it was pretty cool.
I'm really enjoying the videos about the system. I hope the price of the PDF is affordable for those living in countries that don't use the dollar as currency, as I would love to read it. Is there any price estimate?
So question!! the magic system made my brain course with ideas, but one idea came to mind that i wanna know if it is supported by the system or is it left to the GM, the idea is : can i exploit the environment around me to reduce the magnitude of the spell? for example let say i wanna bind somebody to the earth and we are in a rocky terrain, obviously this is more vulgar more 'magical' so this should yield a higher magnitude since rock cannot cause people to no longer be able to move, while if i were to use the same effect in a muddy terrain its magnitude should be lower since it can be explained by oh yeah mud is very difficult almost sticky. am i correct in my understanding or am i off the chart a bit ? also i am loving this series a lot !! thank you for these video!!
This sounds very much like the Dreamweaver in the Edge RPG, where they Weave (made up of thoughts, hopes, fears and desires) to manifest creation (cast spells) and suffer a Backlash by the Weave if they fail.
How will new players, or players used to defined spell lists, adapt to the free form magic system? Even more important, do you think GMs will have to be more experienced to handle such a system?
Very cool stuff, I love what I am hearing! Question: If the piety score is hidden from you how do you hide it from yourself when you play solo (with the solo rules)?
Hmm... sounds interesting, but I'd probably need to see or run examples to actually know how that would be to run. I like the idea of it as a narrative concept. Doesn't Ars Magika have a crafting element to spellcasting, though? Like aligning the tokens representing the physics of the functionality of its effect?
That element is here as well, to a point. The use of Threads (a kind of solidified Bind or Strand) is extremely valuable to a spellweaver. I don’t go too far into the weeds with creating magic items, certainly nowhere near the level of detail Ars Magica goes into (that doesn’t hold a lot of interest to me).
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG It's a Netflix series - the witches train and learn spells thru "tying" threads together to form spells. It's sort of a more "grown-up" version of Twilight.
Was divine magic inspired by Harnmaster? It being something that goes up and down, gained by serving the god and also being hidden from fhe player heavily remind of ritual invocations in HM.
Interesting! These videos you made explaining the mechanics are so useful to understand the core of the system, and help gauge interest. In fact, the one about social mechanics inspired me to apply the same philosophy to my own games (a Harnmaster game in fact).
I haven't play Ars Magica yet, but in Burning Wheel there's a freeform magic style called art magic where you set the parameters of your spell and figure out the difficulty when you go to cast. It also requires a lot of back and forth with the GM. The moment someone goes to cast a spell it's an immediate 5-10 minutes of just trying to figure out all the parameters while the rest of the players sit around. For that reason, I avoid it as much as possible. Is this freeform system a bit snappier? How long does figuring out a spell take on average?
I really like Art Magic in BW, but it can take more time, yes. In our playtests, players internalized the costs to craft spell effects within 2 or 3 castings. By the end of their first session, they had it down. The "negotiation" of spell effects between player and GM is mostly based on what is obvious in the context, and on common sense (which this game assumes).
If I'm a spell weaver in this world, I would like a way to 'manage' frame points. Not managing like limiting your debt, but going in-debt deliberately and spend the extra power to going even more in-debt. So that I have enough power to move frame points onto OTHERS. Or just use the power to float the frame points as a dub. Or taking over others' frame points as part of your ritual, then float it, and setting a time so it CAN explode then make others take your total points as one of the ways to end your ritual. Just like people play bull-fights. You poke holes to the fabric of reality intentionally, and dodge away at the right time and the right angle. And if you do it with enough frame points and enough skills, I bet you can make something BIG to disappear entirely.
I love that you can create Spells on the Spot! My question is: Will there be Idiot proof examples for how to classify the Spells Magnitude? Why do I think this would be great. I tried a couple of amazing systems like Maze Rats, Knave 1, Deathbringer and Pathfinder 2e. But since I am fairly new I did not get what they were talking about or how to run this as a DM. (pf2e was the most idiot proff here). The other systems seemed to have assumptions baked in the rules that would probably obvious to people that have played the older d&d variants for years. At the moment, if you can create spells in any shape or form on the spot, I can't imagine how as a DM I would judge these for power level : /
Sound awesome Trevor! Are you planning on making some adventures for the Kickstarter? And what about a beginner set? Could be an easy entry point for newbies.
I absolutely love Ars Magica and its magic system is great, but one thing I find is that negotiating spontaneous spells takes time. I think it would significantly slow down the game. Ars Mgica addresses this problem by heavily encouraging the use of pre-determined Formulaic spells, rather than casting spontaneous ones. I understand the desire to enjoy the creativity and versatiity of spontaneous magc, but I do think adding Formulaic spells can increase both the ease and speed of play, and the 'realism' as now wizards spend their time studying and learning spells (among other things). The image of unraveling is great, but I would consider adding back its gradual nature (Twilight Scars) as this would add great color to the world and wizards.
I think "Fraying" should work like Metallica's "Frayed Ends of Sanity" and "Bloodborne" Insight, combined... at least at my table.
3 місяці тому
I feel like magic is the most confusing system for me. The death by choices thing isn't really my thing. The rest of the game sounds amazing though! Do monsters and evil wizards etc also get the fraying and weave backlash?
At the moment, the same way any other “hidden” element works for solo players: track it, and separate player vs Character knowledge. That said, I’m still playing with a randomized method. We’ll see where it goes.
Is Cherilyn's Mantle in Season 4 a thread since it helps for magic? Mot Zaroth tried to become immortal, but because of fraying sooner or later even immortals are going to be "plucked from existence".... does that mean that liches spend their immortality fighting the weave reaction? If the player doesn't know the piety they have, I wonder what rules there could be in a solo play. In The “Savage Worlds” of Simon of Argoston S1 Eps 14: Master of the Temple at 12:25, Simon finds a notebook that supports the idea that clerics are in fact just regular spell casters who believe their actions come from gods... but Simon witnessed a madman preaching the same ideas drown in the middle of his village years ago... hmm Is Thur'zaan still a god in the Pantheon? I've never been as excited about magic before, the possibilities are endless!!!!!!
All excellent observations. I will say that trying to find a solution for Fraying is one of the very things mages look to lichdom to accomplish... (And yes, the Spiritmantle is definitely a Thread) ;)
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG i live in Denmark, the last RPG kickstarter that was send my way from overseas was more expensive in shipping+customs than actual product. That stung😅
Hi, I'm new here because your solo RPG episodes and I noticed The Broken Empires is also available to solo RPG players. I have a question after watching Divine magic. How does a solo RPG player deal with the amount of piety?
Hello! You just track it exactly as a GM would, since a solo player is the GM too. In solo play you have to constantly separate player knowledge from character knowledge, and this is no different. And there’s already a random element in spending and receiving Piety, so the will of the gods is still an unpredictable crapshoot, which was the intended feel of the hidden piety mechanic.
I saw the interview with Barron ( i sub to both) why dont you guys do a back and forth disagreement/philosophy ?) Maybe, 1 zinger per video. Purpose is not to win but entertain. And perhaps learn yourself and friends betteralong the way!
I generally don’t care for magic in ttrpgs. To the point where I’ve almost completely cut or severely limited it in my games. The reasons being-it seems too easy mechanically and it’s usually narratively uninvolved and shallow. Obviously you can fabricate a coherent logic in your own game as to what magic is and why/how it works-but it’s great if it’s already worked into the game with specific mechanics that reflect the rationale for the seemingly impossible. So, yea. Hearing about the magic system here in TBE actually gets me very excited for Magic in a way I haven’t been in a long while. I’ll be backing as soon as I get that launch notification in my email.
Excited for this! The "poofing" out of existence is so cool, but I would love to see it as "now you start to fade/unravel" to allow for existence through the end of the gaming session, allowing for heroic (or foolhardy) last stands narratively.
Feels like Ars Magica meets Clive barkers weaveworld, with a little bit of Mage and Myrhras sprinkled in. Love it!
shout out for Clive Barker name drop. One of my all time favorite authors!
i absolutely love the concept of your character literally fraying as they mess with the weave. i have this amazing visual in my mind of characters literally losing color and having a 'fuzziness' to their silhouette as a consequence of years of playing with the tapestry, or leaving behind a trail of literal threads of themselves as they walk
A cool-looking way to lose a character, to be sure! ;)
Making clerics have to be religiously focused to succeed is such a great touch. It is about time gods were treated as more than spell batteries.
This! So much!
@@MagnificentDevil do people play clerics without being religious?
I haven't experienced this. In our games, the priest knows they must be a religious representative of their deity and lose their spells if they fall out of favor.
THIS is what I am most excited for. If this comes out as in depth and as accesible as I hope, man my 50's are gonna be alot more fun.
Can’t wait for this. I absolutely LOVE this magic system. It’s how I’ve always imagined magic to work.
Excited for this! The "poofing" out of existence is so cool, but I would love to see it as "now you start to fade/unravel" to allow for existence through the end of the gaming session, allowing for heroic (or foolhardy) last stands narratively.
The universe said "Eat the mages."
I approve.
Man - this is surprisingly similar to what I have come up with (obviously also based on ars magica). The thing I struggled with most is to keep complexity in check - in the end I want a magic system that does not rely on massive spell lists - however, I don’t want to replace this with insanely complex rules… so psyched to see how you solve it. Absolutely brilliant channel!
Whether I solved it to your satisfaction will be a matter of preference, but it works well enough for me :)
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG Oh, rest assured, no matter what you have come up with, I will spend 24h in awe and then immediately start tinkering with it - an unfortunate condition I have yet to find a cure for.
It afflicts all us GMs.... ;)
Amazing! We have the same mind! I have been tinkering with a similar homebrew magic system and came to very similar conclusions. Although yours is more refined. For example I didn't come up with the distinction between verbs and nouns. Decomposing things like that is a hallmark of good design, kudos!
I like the resolve mechanic b/c it instantly makes me picture a caster from any fiction you see straining and grunting to try and make or maintain a spell!
If you choose to see it like that, sure!
Your take on the cleric/priest archetype is refreshing and elegant. I love it!
I have never played a table top and somehow, I could listen to this for hours. Would you say this game is beginner-friendly? I don't think I have never played something that isn't a video game haha But this just seems so fun and interesting. I could see myself buying it just to read the rules alone.
Not gonna lie, it does assume a basic familiarity with some core concepts of TTRPGs, but I wouldn't call it prohibitive by any means :)
Plenty of time to play some Shadowdark (easy rules) or Call of Cthulhu (similar d100 skill rules) before this game comes out to get ready for it.
@@ThisIsntmyrealnameGoogle if you’re a fan of WH40K I HIGHLY recommend getting the TTRPG “Imperium Maledictum”! Not only is it a fantastic game, a lot of the concepts are similar, which is a part of why TBE interests me.
After you read the rules try to play a solo game!
You might be at an advantage by not having other games cluttering your headspace.
Dive into this; learn it!
There’s no rush, but when you feel ready, gather some peeps to play. I guarantee you’ll have a blast. Role playing is unlike anything else.
One of the things I hate the most about preparing spells in games like D&D is that some spells feel like a gamble. You are not sure if you would need them or not and it always sucks when you prepare a niche spell and end up not using it because the situation didn't call for it.. But it sucks more when you don't prepare it and end up using it.
I love that this system doesn't have prepared spells and you can always look try to come up with creative spells for any situations.
This is one of the only interesting games coming out right now. Cant wait to back this on tuesday
I have to completely agree. The work Trevor has done BEFORE the kickstarter is amazing, professional, and appreciated. This is unlike a certain other game being developed that hauled in $4.2M and didn't even have a title yet! Worse yet is doing a cash-grab selling dice sets when they should be focusing on creating something smart like Trevor is doing. I am genuinely excited to play this game.
@@blacklodgegames yeah Trevor can take my money on Tuesday. Hopefully we all make it rain for him 💸
NOW KISS
Love this. This looks really fantastic. It seems to combine the pragmatic (can you use it at a table without spending 20 minutes in discussion about a single casting) with real creative flexibility. I love the idea of piety being hidden. Why not also hide “fraying”? The GM would need to make sure to let players know their general status (“the spell dissociates you greatly” or “you hear a whisper of your god”), but not knowing if this spell is the last seems incredible.
Fraying is hidden by default :)
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG Brilliant! The dramatic possibilities seem vast.
All the design are goals are just incredible! I really hope that the final systems are streamlined enough to be brought to the table. Wish you the best!
You are singin' my song, Trevor. I was already looking forward to TBE but this video has really clinched it for me. I've always loved playing magic users and have always hated the arbitrary restrictions placed on them by other RPGs (one in particular we all know and love {to hate}, but it's far from the only offender, just the most popular/egregious).
I am _so glad_ you kept the Kickstarter open for late pledges. I meant to back it in the second half of October when I got paid but... well, suffice to say a woman in a truck had other plans for me.
On the bright side, I can walk again and I'm super looking forward to running this for my group once the project's been fulfilled and continuing to expand their horizons on kick-ass TTRPGs that _aren't fucking D&D._
I love the magic system, because it encourages role play for wizard and cleric. The cleric must act according to his religion and serve his god to get power, while the wizard needs to avoid to be consumed by the weave. Both have now a rational that they have to consider when casting spells or miracles. This is a great principle!
I’ve been writing a magic system for my game for a few years now. We must be on the same wave length! There are a lot of similarities between your spell weaving and the way I’ve written arcane magic. I like your imagery of the tapestry, mine does not use that. Instead of sacrificing resolve, characters in my game sacrifice energy to cast spells which is the equivalent of hit points (which can also be sacrificed to nudge die rolls in the right direction).
Your divine magic system is almost identical to mine lol. I love the idea of keeping piety (I call it favor in my system) secret. That way it doesn’t seem so transactional with players deciding to do something for the god just to earn enough points to cast specific miracles. I may steal that (with your blessing, of course!)
There are many differences in my system to yours. But I was tickled at how close our magic systems were.
I am jealous. This is clearly well thought out and very similar to what I have made for my own homemade ttrpg. We are sympatico on how we view magic in our respective games. I will need to get a copy. Very cool and best of luck!
Good to see an intelligent approach to trying to put a lid on wizards, and in particular the players of wizards. There seems be a real running theme with them engaging in disruptive limit testing behavior with magic. Now the universe says: do what you want but your save or die is based on how poorly controlled your disruptive behavior is. I always get a laugh out of telling wizard players that I nerf the wizard class down to the observed power level of Gandalf. They want to get mad at having limits applied yet can't get mad because the limit is literally Gandalf.
@@nss5353 this works if you have players that also don't like wizards.
Gandalf was barely a wizard. He was basically there to neutralize the magical forces so that the characters without magic could do what they needed to do.
See the Spellmonger series. This is a setting where the fuedal system functions with magic as part of its economic system. It also shows what would probably happen if humans had magic and how ineffectual martial disciplines would become.
The way that powerful wizards don't want to use magic reminds me of Earthsea.
Never read it, always intended to.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG Definitely take the time. They're short, but LeGuin has a way of "weaving" amazing images and stories in an economy of words.
So excited for this game. I’ll be up early to get in on the Kickstarter. 🤘🔥
You are really killing it with those last minute rule dives! The system has come into its own during those last few episodes in season 4 and although I always preferred roll-over rather than roll-under systems, I feel I will really enjoy playing TBE! Ars Magica has been one of my favorite magic systems and one that I have never run as a GM. Enter TBE!
I love literally everything you've said about this game so far Trevor! I'm excited to support your craft and eventually to play the game
This is such an awesome blend of games I’ve grown to love. I’m so excited to learn more about this setting.
The free form magic system sounds really interesting. Recently, I have been thinking of how one would design a soft magic system reminiscent of LOTR and ASoIaF. I feel that free form is the closest one can get for a TTRPG. Gonna be interesting to give it a look.
I also loved the religious system in Artesia - it sounds similar to this. There were all kinds of small rituals that you could do to gain piety points that you later used to power your spells. It was great for there to be a reason to stop and pray at a roadside shrine - like people in a culture like that would. Can't wait to see Broken Empires as it seems to be hitting all the right notes.
Late but something about this game and it's magic systems is just... clicking with me a lot. It's like something I would try to incorporate in a game but never had the skill to do so. Good thing there's a talented man making a game that clicks with me so well :D
Much like in Mage the Ascension, better watch out for that Paradox! 😁
Yup, that was an influence!
I love the blend of DnD, Cthulhu, and Ars Magica. Can't wait!
Oh yes - I f#!@&!!ing LOVE this 😳
Trevor!!! I was working on my own little system but now I think I'm just gonna wait for TBE cuz it sounds EXACTLY like what I want!
what a great concept for magic with the weave. Magic should be something you don't use lightly (like in WHFRP) spellcasters in D&D use eldritch bolt to turn off the tv or signal that dinner's ready for the kids playing out in the street or to heat their tea kettle.
If the tapestry of the universe reacts so negatively and aggressively to attempts to use power to modify it that it can even end up pulling a person's thread out of the tapestry... What then is the nature or relationship that the gods have with this tapestry? And what is it that differentiates a mortal from a god?
I tend to assume, because of the concept of the tapestry, that the more one has lived and the more events and people one has affected/known, the thread becomes too long and too anchored to the tapestry to be able to be torn from it without causing a worse mess to the tapestry than simply leaving it. So, would the divine thread be differentiated from the mortal thread by a question of how long it is? How many years has he lived, how many people know him, how much has he changed the world. Could a mortal then end up becoming a god? Perhaps only a magic user since it would translate to that eventually, as centuries or millennia pass, he would see that the tapestry reacts less and less strongly to his modifications (perhaps it could even be perceived over the course of a mundane lifespan in the sense that the older a person is, the more powerful they are with magic as the tapestry reacts less strongly). Were the gods mortal in their origin then? Perhaps great shamans or priests of empires or forgotten tribes?
On the other hand, I find it very interesting that this concept of the tapestry of the universe (although it is true that it is nothing new because it has existed since Greek mythology), with the idea that everything and everyone are just threads in that tapestry, well... it could be an interpretation of the idea that we are all like worms in the 4th dimension, that is, that in time we are a line that begins with us as babies and ends with us being old (ideally)... very much like threads. Curiously, in the Nordic creation myth I think that humans emerged as worms from the earth when the giant god was killed and his blood flooded the earth. I find it interesting how there seems to be a concordance between the different interpretations, both from ancient mythologies and cutting-edge science concepts (such as string physics).
--- An excerpt from "Whence the Thread? A Treatise Most Profound on Philosophies Arcane", by Magister Epipan of the College Arcanum of Sal Martanne, Angevarre
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG
Epipan is a race or a title of of mine, that is why I'am "the" epipan 😉My name is unknown, because only a naive person would risk having the knowledge of his name used for curses.
(off-role, you leave me quite intrigued about that College Arcanum of Sal Martanne, Angevarre!)
*Whence the Thread?* is volume 3 of the author's collection of books, these issues are explored more deeply in his later volume 5 *"The Permanence of Threads"* , excerpt:
"The oft-proven fact that reality behaves like interconnected threads, along with my reflections on the possible anatomy of threads (see volume 4 of this collection) and the possible correlation between the extension of these threads in the dimension in which the tapestry exists with the power or permanence of the threads in the tapestry (see volume 3 of this collection) necessarily lead me to the conclusion that reality is something permanent. We know that the extension of a thread can be terminated prematurely, and the concept that each thread willfully chooses, albeit mostly blindly, how it will intertwine with others, each thread effectively being its own weaver, suggests that the tapestry is something that is continually being generated; it is not something predefined that has existed in its entirety forever. But if it seems to be so in terms of what we perceive as the past, and if something is defined and exists tangibly in some dimension... why does it seem to be an impossibility to modify it? It is not just my previous reflections, but the cases of disappearances of magic users... if their threads were simply cut, we would just see them die spontaneously, but the fact that they disappear is an explicit demonstration of the existence of the tapestry. If my reflections in Whence the Thread? are correct (the length of a thread is equivalent to the degree of power and permanence of that thread in the tapestry), then everything implies the existence of a past that remains in some dimension. Perhaps the answer is something like the effect of water pressure: so many tightly woven threads create a kind of Fabric or Thread Tension on each thread... and the further back in time we go, the more and more threads accumulate, increasing that pressure or tension (experiments should be done to check if there is a maximum point of pressure, after which it stabilizes and stops increasing; personally I am inclined to think that this must be correct, especially if it is true that the universe had an origin, which would mean that this Thread Tension would describe a descending bell graph after reaching a peak. If there was no origin of the universe, the pressure could increase infinitely as we move away from the present). But if this pressure is something that is increasing, I tend to think that it is a force that could be overcome, at least not too far in the past. Being something that could not be achieved yet, must mean that the pressure grows exponentially too quickly. Experimentation should focus on directing magical effects at targets with known coordinates. It is simple in the physical world, but we do not know how to move in the dimension of time, the dimension in which the tapestry is tangible matter. Mathematically it is difficult to achieve, we can barely have a certain notion of the shadows of things in those higher dimensions, but perhaps intuitively we could develop an ability to guess them (we know or perceive many things intuitively without having yet managed to explain them academically, such as consciousness itself, as well as several issues that we must apply as axioms in the sciences). The sensations of nostalgia and 'deja vu' are interesting points to consider. Mathematics and physics, however, suggest that it would be much easier to make a thread vibrate than to move it or cut it... a whisper, a sensation, the memory of an image or smell.
👏
@@the_epipan more please :)
Hidden piety :) Great :) Of all resources that could be hidden, this makes a lot of sense, that fear of capriciousness and indirect communication with some unknowable power :) Also a fan of creative spellcasting, since it feels a bit cinematic and is less a Solve Puzzle button since you have to worry about pushing things too far. How often per session were spells cast in the tests you did? How likely was it to get a frayed result? Since if I understood you right anybody can invest in spellcasting ability, could a dabbler in tiny utility spells basically "get away with" a lot with minimal risk?
It’s not quite that easy to become a Fade (a dabbler in Magic), but it can be done. Most play tests yielded a spellweaver being able to cast 2 or 3 times before things became dangerous. But there are so many variables that each situation will be different.
Ah yes, Lenz' law of arcanomagitism:
The magic induced in a thread due to a change in a magic field is directed to oppose the change in flux and to exert an arcane force which opposes the spell.
Love the fraying idea. Love the clerics.
This game gets more and more interesting with every video! Day 1 back for me!
I dig it. Will check out the KS later today.
It's seems that this system could work with the Wheel of Time magic! I like the vibes!
I'm looking forward to it, even dropping the 1 dollar to get the wound dice and whatnot. Love interesting magic systems that step away from Vancian styles.
The spell magnitude idea of subtle to blatant, 1 to 4, sounds similar to the Maelstrom RPG, which also has a totally free form magic system.
Reminds me of "Wheel of Time"
Sounds really cool!
Though in one video it was said this is more low magic, I imagine a high magic world could easily be made by allowing for just most ask for less risk - with the excuse of the area or maybe bonus resolve for certain magic types a mage knows really well.
I've been using a similar piety system in my Homebrew 5e. I'm kind of proud to have come up with a similar thing than you!!
In 1997 (I think) I had some experience with ttrpg like WFRP 1ed, Cyberpunk 2020 or MERP. I decided to crwate my won system and whennI got to the chapter about Magic I thought that I will not make spell list. Instead I created about 8-10 aspects that covered some elements like nature, death, life, elementals, summons, morph etc. It was up to player what spell he wants to cast. GM just had to set the difficulty level. And I loved, as magic is not always prepared with recipe. The game was called "Quentari". I don't know why I remeber that :).
A lot of cool stuff in TBE. I am very excited for it. I am a bit surprised how not solo friendly it is looking. Piety is a hidden stat. Magic is a negotiation with the GM. Solo you always have to make some compromises of wearing two hats but this sounds like it will be harder than most.
Well, I have said *repeatedly* that this is not a game designed explicitly for solo play. That said, I am working with some very talented people to make the solo experience more palatable. More information will be available on Tuesday morning when the Kickstarter launches!
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG That's fair Trevor, and you certainly have been up front about that. It's just you are sort of THE MOST FAMOUS SOLO PLAYER IN THE WORLD. So it feels a little off brand even though I know you also lead plenty of group play too. Also the DnD alternatives for group play is a bit saturated right now. Still you have come up with a great system with several things that make it stand out. I am definitely a supporter and I hope things go great for you Tuesday.
What can I say? I'm an enigma ;)
Wow this is fantastic!!!!!
Is it possible to learn weaving skills and also be a Godbound?
Theoretically yes.
I remember a thread from way back in Season 1 which was about some heretics in the world believing, that gods aren't real at all, and priests are just performing a different brand of arcane magic. I wonder if that makes it into the setting book in some form, because I think it was pretty cool.
Someone's found an Easter egg..... ;)
I'm really enjoying the videos about the system. I hope the price of the PDF is affordable for those living in countries that don't use the dollar as currency, as I would love to read it. Is there any price estimate?
Tiers will be revealed on Tuesday, but we are very much inline with similar products.
So question!! the magic system made my brain course with ideas, but one idea came to mind that i wanna know if it is supported by the system or is it left to the GM, the idea is : can i exploit the environment around me to reduce the magnitude of the spell? for example let say i wanna bind somebody to the earth and we are in a rocky terrain, obviously this is more vulgar more 'magical' so this should yield a higher magnitude since rock cannot cause people to no longer be able to move, while if i were to use the same effect in a muddy terrain its magnitude should be lower since it can be explained by oh yeah mud is very difficult almost sticky. am i correct in my understanding or am i off the chart a bit ? also i am loving this series a lot !! thank you for these video!!
Absolutely.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG freeaakkiinng awwesssoommmee!!! I am so excited can't wait for Tuesday!!
This sounds very much like the Dreamweaver in the Edge RPG, where they Weave (made up of thoughts, hopes, fears and desires) to manifest creation (cast spells) and suffer a Backlash by the Weave if they fail.
How will new players, or players used to defined spell lists, adapt to the free form magic system? Even more important, do you think GMs will have to be more experienced to handle such a system?
New players, I have found, actually tend to adapt *more easily* than us old grognards set in our ways.
Very cool stuff, I love what I am hearing!
Question: If the piety score is hidden from you how do you hide it from yourself when you play solo (with the solo rules)?
We’re working on it :)
Hmm... sounds interesting, but I'd probably need to see or run examples to actually know how that would be to run. I like the idea of it as a narrative concept.
Doesn't Ars Magika have a crafting element to spellcasting, though? Like aligning the tokens representing the physics of the functionality of its effect?
That element is here as well, to a point. The use of Threads (a kind of solidified Bind or Strand) is extremely valuable to a spellweaver. I don’t go too far into the weeds with creating magic items, certainly nowhere near the level of detail Ars Magica goes into (that doesn’t hold a lot of interest to me).
"Threads" and "weaving" also sound a bit like the magic in the TV show, A Discovery of Witches.
Don’t know that one
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG It's a Netflix series - the witches train and learn spells thru "tying" threads together to form spells. It's sort of a more "grown-up" version of Twilight.
Only 3 minutes in and it sorta so far sounds like a fleshed out ez d6 magic system... which sounds amazing
I don’t know enough about it to comment with authority, but thanks for your interest!
Reminds me of the Will and the Word from the belgariad.
Was divine magic inspired by Harnmaster? It being something that goes up and down, gained by serving the god and also being hidden from fhe player heavily remind of ritual invocations in HM.
Yup.
Interesting! These videos you made explaining the mechanics are so useful to understand the core of the system, and help gauge interest. In fact, the one about social mechanics inspired me to apply the same philosophy to my own games (a Harnmaster game in fact).
Sounds like a good system. Magic use should always have conditions and consequences
Omnus the One reminds me of UL from the Belgariad haha 😊
Never read it.
I haven't play Ars Magica yet, but in Burning Wheel there's a freeform magic style called art magic where you set the parameters of your spell and figure out the difficulty when you go to cast. It also requires a lot of back and forth with the GM. The moment someone goes to cast a spell it's an immediate 5-10 minutes of just trying to figure out all the parameters while the rest of the players sit around. For that reason, I avoid it as much as possible. Is this freeform system a bit snappier? How long does figuring out a spell take on average?
I really like Art Magic in BW, but it can take more time, yes. In our playtests, players internalized the costs to craft spell effects within 2 or 3 castings. By the end of their first session, they had it down. The "negotiation" of spell effects between player and GM is mostly based on what is obvious in the context, and on common sense (which this game assumes).
You got me so excited!
Any idea at what time the Kickstarter will be up on Tuesday?
8AM EST!
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG thanks so much, so 2 pm for me! I'll bear this in mind to back it when it launches!
Never played Ars Magica/Mage the Ascension but probably my favorite freeform magic system, love your take on it!
If I'm a spell weaver in this world, I would like a way to 'manage' frame points.
Not managing like limiting your debt, but going in-debt deliberately and spend the extra power to going even more in-debt. So that I have enough power to move frame points onto OTHERS. Or just use the power to float the frame points as a dub. Or taking over others' frame points as part of your ritual, then float it, and setting a time so it CAN explode then make others take your total points as one of the ways to end your ritual.
Just like people play bull-fights. You poke holes to the fabric of reality intentionally, and dodge away at the right time and the right angle. And if you do it with enough frame points and enough skills, I bet you can make something BIG to disappear entirely.
I'm wondering if these weaves/strands can be revamped into Runes to be able to play in Glorantha?
The Law of Reaction is clearly derived from the concept of Paradox in White Wolf's Mage: The Ascension.
It was an inspiration for sure, but not the principal one.
I love that you can create Spells on the Spot! My question is: Will there be Idiot proof examples for how to classify the Spells Magnitude?
Why do I think this would be great. I tried a couple of amazing systems like Maze Rats, Knave 1, Deathbringer and Pathfinder 2e. But since I am fairly new I did not get what they were talking about or how to run this as a DM. (pf2e was the most idiot proff here). The other systems seemed to have assumptions baked in the rules that would probably obvious to people that have played the older d&d variants for years. At the moment, if you can create spells in any shape or form on the spot, I can't imagine how as a DM I would judge these for power level : /
Yes :)
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG Awesome : ) I am very excited!!
Will there be solo rules for piety?
What are the Gods relation to the weave of magic? How would one become a lich if the weave eventually annihilates magic users?
That is a problem that spellweavers have been grappling with for ages...
Sound awesome Trevor!
Are you planning on making some adventures for the Kickstarter?
And what about a beginner set? Could be an easy entry point for newbies.
That's the plan! Check it out Tuesday morning!
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG sure will. Can't wait.
I absolutely love Ars Magica and its magic system is great, but one thing I find is that negotiating spontaneous spells takes time. I think it would significantly slow down the game. Ars Mgica addresses this problem by heavily encouraging the use of pre-determined Formulaic spells, rather than casting spontaneous ones. I understand the desire to enjoy the creativity and versatiity of spontaneous magc, but I do think adding Formulaic spells can increase both the ease and speed of play, and the 'realism' as now wizards spend their time studying and learning spells (among other things).
The image of unraveling is great, but I would consider adding back its gradual nature (Twilight Scars) as this would add great color to the world and wizards.
It works great in our play tests. I’m very happy with how it is turning out.
I vaguely remember Ars Magika, but some of this is reminiscent of Mage the Ascension (coincidental magic and “vulgar” magic, etc.)
Yes, that was also an influence. I've played over 150 RPGs - a little bit of everything seeps in at some point ;)
very cool
Are there ways to reduce fraying points?
Some mages dedicate whole lifetimes to that very question.
...does the restriction against resurrecting the dead preclude necromancy?
or does animating a zombie / skeleton not really count?
Necromancy is its own thing.
I think "Fraying" should work like Metallica's "Frayed Ends of Sanity" and "Bloodborne" Insight, combined... at least at my table.
I feel like magic is the most confusing system for me. The death by choices thing isn't really my thing. The rest of the game sounds amazing though!
Do monsters and evil wizards etc also get the fraying and weave backlash?
im curious how piety will work in the solo rules
At the moment, the same way any other “hidden” element works for solo players: track it, and separate player vs Character knowledge. That said, I’m still playing with a randomized method. We’ll see where it goes.
How are Piety points handled in a Solo game?
I like the fraying mechanic
How is Piety kept hidden for solo play?
Dunno yet! Figuring that out.
Sounds a like like Mage: The Ascension.
Shouldn't the accumulated "fraying" points also be hidden from the player just like the piety skill?
I think it'd put the weave magic users in an interesting position too
It is by default.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG I get it. You'd lose the ticking time bomb effect otherwise. Great mechanics. Kudos!
Is Cherilyn's Mantle in Season 4 a thread since it helps for magic?
Mot Zaroth tried to become immortal, but because of fraying sooner or later even immortals are going to be "plucked from existence".... does that mean that liches spend their immortality fighting the weave reaction?
If the player doesn't know the piety they have, I wonder what rules there could be in a solo play.
In The “Savage Worlds” of Simon of Argoston S1 Eps 14: Master of the Temple at 12:25, Simon finds a notebook that supports the idea that clerics are in fact just regular spell casters who believe their actions come from gods... but Simon witnessed a madman preaching the same ideas drown in the middle of his village years ago... hmm
Is Thur'zaan still a god in the Pantheon?
I've never been as excited about magic before, the possibilities are endless!!!!!!
All excellent observations. I will say that trying to find a solution for Fraying is one of the very things mages look to lichdom to accomplish...
(And yes, the Spiritmantle is definitely a Thread) ;)
What is the map behind you?
The Broken Empires!
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG Thanks!
Okay I'm almost sold
“Almost”?!? Dear god, what more must I do??? 😜
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG i live in Denmark, the last RPG kickstarter that was send my way from overseas was more expensive in shipping+customs than actual product. That stung😅
I hear ya, friend. Shipping costs suck.
Hi, I'm new here because your solo RPG episodes and I noticed The Broken Empires is also available to solo RPG players. I have a question after watching Divine magic. How does a solo RPG player deal with the amount of piety?
Hello! You just track it exactly as a GM would, since a solo player is the GM too. In solo play you have to constantly separate player knowledge from character knowledge, and this is no different. And there’s already a random element in spending and receiving Piety, so the will of the gods is still an unpredictable crapshoot, which was the intended feel of the hidden piety mechanic.
The big question is can you play this solo?
There's more information on the Kickstarter page but it is mentioned there will be a chapter dedicated to solo rules.
I saw the interview with Barron ( i sub to both) why dont you guys do a back and forth disagreement/philosophy ?) Maybe, 1 zinger per video. Purpose is not to win but entertain. And perhaps learn yourself and friends betteralong the way!
Dude!!!!
Great game, but cannot be played solo...
Have you seen Season 4? It's entirely played solo.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG possibly there will be a stretch goal on the kickstarter for solo stuff? maybe? question mark?
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG yes, sorry. I love Season 4, like the ones before. But you are great at finding inspiration extremely quickly
Thank you - but finding inspiration has nothing to do with the game system :)
It might not have oracles like Mythic but it seems designed for easy solo run and individual characters.
algo :)
I generally don’t care for magic in ttrpgs. To the point where I’ve almost completely cut or severely limited it in my games. The reasons being-it seems too easy mechanically and it’s usually narratively uninvolved and shallow. Obviously you can fabricate a coherent logic in your own game as to what magic is and why/how it works-but it’s great if it’s already worked into the game with specific mechanics that reflect the rationale for the seemingly impossible. So, yea. Hearing about the magic system here in TBE actually gets me very excited for Magic in a way I haven’t been in a long while. I’ll be backing as soon as I get that launch notification in my email.
Speaking in Wheel of Time terms, fraying sounds like spellcasters are bringing Balefire down on themselves. *poof* 😱💨
Excited for this! The "poofing" out of existence is so cool, but I would love to see it as "now you start to fade/unravel" to allow for existence through the end of the gaming session, allowing for heroic (or foolhardy) last stands narratively.
Those details are up to each table.