Musings on Magic in The Fantasy Trip

Saint Jerome in His Study by Albrecht Durer

Learning Spells and a New Talent

One of the ways to describe The Fantasy Trip is “it’s simple.” It pares away a great deal of unnecessary rules found in other games to lay bare the basics needed for a satisfying role-playing system that is complemented with tactically interesting combat and magic. One thing TFT almost does away with is character classes; wizards can learn mundane talents and heroes can learn spells, though it is more difficult for each to do so than the other, and it there is nothing to differentiate wizards from mundanes except declaring them so at character generation. I like to take it a step further and to spell out an explicit path to magic use by invoking a house rule that all characters can learn learn spells and talents at the same cost AND that all spells have a new talent as prerequisite: Wizardry:

IQ 8 Wizardry (2) This talent represents the theoretical and practical training necessary to learn, cast, and create spells. 

I also suggest tweaking the system so that spellcasters can learn spells of any IQ level, regardless of their own IQ. This supports a more diverse array of low-stat characters with more interesting or “signature” spells, and it allows some of the highest level spells to be available to characters who don’t sink all of their points into IQ.  To keep things balanced and to maintain the importance of IQ, I also require that when casting a spell above their IQ, wizards suffer -2 DX per point their IQ is lower than the spell’s, and the spell costs 1 ST more to cast per point their IQ is lower.  This reinforces the importance of ST and DX while not diminishing the effectiveness of high IQ, and it creates a bit of a GURPSy world in which sorcerers can be better at some spells than others. I just like that.

Books and Scrolls

TFT allows casting spells from scrolls and books, which is fairly standard in the fantasy genre.  Scrolls are pretty straightforward according to the rules, being consumable enchanted objects into which a spell is bound.  Books are different.  The rules suggest that spellbooks are essentially cookbooks with the spells as recipes to be followed. Unfortunately, this has some implications to both theory and mechanics of magic that I find undesirable. 

When the Wizard microgame introduced TFT’s magic system, it presented a radical departure from that offered by D&D and which seemed almost like psionics; TFT magic was obviously linked to the mind because more powerful spells required a higher IQ to learn them, and the tremendous mental effort of wielding magic was reflected by the fact that casting spells was exhausting. To my sensibilities, this flavor to magic meshes nicely with the legends about the Mnoren introduced in In the Labyrinth, and I describe my take on this mental shaping of magic in this earlier Musing.  This interpretation of magic is also reinforced with the description of benefits one has when casting spells far below IQ, with some spells being able to be cast by thought alone [ITL 142].

The casting from spellbooks rules, introduced in the original In the Labyrinth and persisting in the Legacy Edition, undermine this cool take on magic by diminishing the mental aspect of magic in favor of a physical and somatic one, especially since they require the use of a Wizard’s Chest, complete with ingredients and props. Moreover, they let any wizard with enough wealth and access to spellbooks to be able to cast any spell below IQ 15—more than a hundred spells!

Although being able to cast spells from books this way is not at all to my liking, I still think that having coveted tomes of magical lore is highly desirable. After all, they present such useful plot devices! I resolve my opposing opinions about spellbooks by rejecting the Casting Spells from Books rules entirely; one simple can’t cast from books at all. But I retain books as one way to learn spells. In this approach, studying such a tome and grasping its contents provides one with the thaumatological theory necessary to wield the magical forces that compose any given spell, but the text is far too dense for the book to function as a grimoire with explicit, step-by-step instructions on how to cast it.  I especially like the idea that one might have to study multiple books to learn a single spell, because it explains why large libraries might be needed to contain the books necessary to support a single wizard, guild, or academy of magic, instead of a mere single book for each spell. Compare that to using rules as written, in which the entire spell list in In the Labyrinth would fit on a few small shelves! The GM should assign an XP cost to learn a book–perhaps anywhere from 50XP to that needed for a three-point talent.

It is worth noting that this approach to books about magic leaves the door open for schools of wizardry with radically different ways of acquiring the art of magic.  Some wizardry academies might require their students to be literate so as to be able to pore over tome after tome of occult lore stored in a heavily guarded library.  But hedge schools could also exist, with mental training passed from master to student through the oral tradition.  Still other schools might focus the mind to wield magic through activities governed by mundane talents like Unarmed Combat, Priest, Animal Handler, or Physicker. This makes learning mundane talents at normal cost even more important. And all of those possibilities are harmonious with a magic that is, at its core, fundamentally mental.

The material presented here is my original creation intended for use with the The Fantasy Trip system from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games. It may not be reproduced for commercial purposes without permission.