Monday Musings #145
Musings on PBTA Alchemy
Good Monday, Gamer!
“SHAZAM!!”
I'm potentially playing a sorcerer in a game I can't quite name yet, during a playtest. The themes of wizard quests and sky city ruins drew me in, plus I get to play with people I haven’t teamed up with in a while. We’re doing a session zero, which I really enjoy—whether I’m the host or a player. The narrative work created during this setup is fascinating, and I often feel that once it’s finished, it becomes the game's core premise. For example, three main pillars of my current Occulted KC game (Monster of the Week) come from the session zero. PBTA games usually provide many narrative elements immediately useful for session one. Cortex Prime’s Pathways excel at this; once a pathway’s session ends, you typically have a solid situation in place. The Black Sword Hack also emphasizes world and situation building through character creation. Champions/Now features player Situations (Disadvantages) that a group can easily rally around. I believe these tools are valuable for crafting campaigns that are uniquely ours from the very beginning - more games should normalize this!
Hacking: Ars Magica
There’s a version of Ars Magica that’s been bouncing around in my mind lately. What if we take the core concept of Hermetic magic and apply it through some PBTA alchemy? Ars Magica has always featured one of the most evocative magic systems in RPGs: verbs and nouns, Techniques and Forms. Your spells describe effects—that part feels classic. But the mechanics around it—the math, the magnitudes, the bookkeeping—can pull gameplay back toward simulation, even when I’m more interested in momentum, consequence, and myth.
So here’s my formula...
Magic is still built from Technique + Form. That grammar stays intact…mostly!
Each Technique is now its own move.
When you Creo, you bring something into being.
When you Intellego, you reveal what is hidden.
When you Muto, you change something’s nature.
When you Perdo, you unmake or diminish.
When you Rego, you command and control.
My first thought: forms are rated tags, from +0 to +3. You roll 2d6 + Form for the Technique move triggered. The Forms do what they’ve always done, but more cleanly: they grant permission. If you don’t have Ignem, you don’t shape fire.
It’s Ars Magicaesque. Still verbs and nouns. Magi are reshaping the world through will and knowledge. Just faster. Looser. A little more mythic. A little less academic.
It’s a rough pass right now. One could flip the process—my second thought: maybe the forms are all permission-only, and the Techniques have corresponding stats (or conditions, requirements, etc.).
I think some focused playtesting shakes this out better than reasoning about it.
I like different moves per technique, rather than one big Cast Magic move, then a move for Ritual magic.
If you’ve played Ars Magica, what would you want to see preserved? What would you gladly leave behind?
Playing: Occulted Kansas City
The Hunters are still hot off an interstitial session, I introduced the next mystery anyway!! In the Tome of Mysteries is The Curse Speech mystery, which has a cabal of contagious curse-talking occultists, which seemed absolutely perfect since we have a Curse Eater and an implied group of curse eaters🤷🏾♂️
It’s the T-Birds VS the Scorpions! And of course…our resident curse-eater has accidentally learnt/caught curse speech!
You're making me feel like it's Groundhog Day. Monday again?!