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Rev03: Magic & The Mind
By Corvus | June 15, 2009
This post is the seventh in an ongoing series explaining the basics of Rev03, the RPG system underlying the HoneyComb Engine. We’re finished talking about all the structure on the Life Wheel and are moving onto magic and psionics. The next post will briefly cover using the life wheel for world and item creation, and the basics of combat. The final post will explore renown and how all the pieces comes together during play.
Magic in Rev03, like the character system, is elemental. Storytellers may choose to focus on Life, Earth, Water, Energy, Air, or Fire magic as one of their professions. I personally restrict storytellers from choosing secondary or tertiary elemental foci that are the balance of the first elemental focus they chose. That means–if the storyteller first choses to align their character with Fire, they may never chose water. If they first chose Life, they may never chose Energy. That’s due mostly to how I portray the use of magic within my primary storyworld, where characters literally absorb elementally charged crystals into their being–thus intimately attuning themselves with the element of their choosing.
I also have storytellers roll an uncontested extra-normal action to determine how powerful the crystal is, once absorbed. This determines the maximum possible effect any given spell they cast may have. Alternately, the potential can be determined by the character’s spirit influence. I’ll cover how this works in more detail over the next two posts.
Once the character has chosen an elemental focus, they may exert their will into shaping the Source of that element in the world, as well as affecting the elemental conduits of other characters. I commented in an earlier post that Spirit, Mind, and Body are the elemental spheres through which Will can be channeled. You can think of them as layers of influence through which Will can flow.
- Spirit, the innermost sphere, allows you to directly exert your Will upon the Will of another person or object.
- Mind, the central sphere, allows you to exert your Will upon another’s (or your own) perceptions.
- Body, the outermost sphere, allows you to exert your will upon the physical world.
So exerting your will on the spirit influence in order to craft magic effects actually affects other characters (whether sentient or non) at the core of their being–at their source.
Rather than having tiers of spells to memorize, the Magecrafter’s Wheel contains nine words that correspond to the nine Influences on the Life Wheel. These words can be used individually, or strung together to produce more complex effects. If the character has multiple elemental foci, they may be combined to produce even more powerful and elaborate manipulations of reality.
In my primary storyworld, the positions of the words on the Magecrafter’s Wheel correspond to points in their bodies. Characters must focus the absorbed energy at the correct locations in order to activate that crafting word. I encourage storytellers to represent this, moving their hands as if performing a kata, so they can feel the flow of energy moving from point to point. There is no reason that other expressions of the system could not be used. The important thing is to keep the magecrafting thematically consistent with the storyworld you’ve created.
The nine crafting words and their corresponding influences are: Observe (Mind), Attune (Body), Embody/Reject (Spirit), Summon/Banish (Mastery), Deflect (Persistence), Focus (Design), Stagnate/Translate (Poise), Strike (Sleight), and Project (Charm). You’ll notice that three of the crafting positions contain two opposing words. This is because they are aligned with either a pure spirit influence (Embody/Reject), or because they align with the first ego and will influences.
The exact effect of each word depends on the element being used and the imagination of the storyteller crafting the effect. A character with an energy focus, for example, would cast Translate in order to enter the Vae Realm, which is a non-corporeal view of the world (and where such nasties as haunts and wraiths dwell). A fire crafter may Focus on a bonfire on the other side of a battlefield and then Observe the actions of their enemies around it.
Psionics works very much the same way as magic, with storytellers choosing psionics as one of their professions. Rather than exerting will on the spirit influence they exert it on the mind influence and rather than affecting source and actually crafting reality, they affect perceptions of reality and self.
The nine words of psionics also correspond to the nine influences. I haven’t used psionics much in the past, but one of my current storytellers and I are busily exploring how they work in the world and experimenting with various naming schemes for the Psionic Wheels. Like magical foci, there will eventually be tools that increase the potential of a psionic’s power beyond what their own mind influence allows.
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