This is an RPG concept I have floating around. It's been wanting me to actually do something with it. So I will be sticking pieces of the rules and setting up. Expect clusters of daily posts separated by days, weeks, months, or years of downtime.
Showing posts with label would have been. Show all posts
Showing posts with label would have been. Show all posts
This rank of Invoke allows for the reflexive unleashing of emotion, reaction, and power on the world. This is the proper rank of effect for catching something thrown at you, sharing a first kiss, shouting down an enemy, and calling upon your fairy nature to act upon the world.
Rank 1 Invoke is a primal mode of action. It manifests a single impulse; it has no place in it for higher-order goals; it has no guarantee of success. Instead, rolling an 18+ guarantees that you've put your full strength, speed, heart, or whatever into it; rolling anything less means that you hesitated, goofed, or just weren't at your best.
The calling for this rank of Invoke is a description of your character or their current mental state—something, presumably, relevant to what you're intending to do. For instance, suppose someone throws a ball at your character's head. You want to catch it. You could invoke any of the following callings:
Calling: "I'm athletic."
Calling: "I'm not putting up with that today."
Calling: "It's groovy, it's groovy."
Calling: "I guard what is given me."
Calling: "Not for nothing have I trained among the ball-throwing mountain yeti for seven years!"
Before following this up with
Action: "I grab the ball out of the air."
Inchoate and Formal Actions
Many of the actions you take during a game of Fairies are inchoate—they have no specific system motivation or form. For instance, your character might go around doing daily chores and looking up information on the web while amidst a telephone conversation with someone else: most of the time, most of what you're doing there (and certainly 99% of the individual sentences you say on the phone) have no game mechanics associated with them.
If the GM asks you to roll for something you're doing, or otherwise makes it mechanical, then it's become a formal action. Most of the time, if an action goes from inchoate to formal, it's a rank 1 Invoke effect: if you roll 18+, you put your best foot forward, and if you roll 17-, you . . . don't.
What if putting your best foot forward isn't enough?
That usually means you actually want to be consciously taking an action of a higher rank or a different Attribute. Either accept failure or talk to the GM about what you should be doing instead.
Fairy Power
Each fairy type has a set of callings that are suited to invoking their magical nature. When you want to reflexively do something magical, you use such a calling. The action is then something that you can cause to happen through a relatively unfocused and primal application of that power. This will probably still be a little more sophisticated and complicated, when it comes to describing it, than most Invoke 1 actions, simply because English doesn't have basic kinesthetic vocabulary for fairy magic actions.
For example, for summerkin, the standard callings are:
I am things turning out all right;
I am things being OK;
I am a power of safety;
I move with this, flow with this, make its motion my own;
I help these things move together.
And an example rank 1 invocation is:
Calling: "I am things turning out all right."
Action: "The plane may be plummeting furiously towards a nuclear silo, but seriously, don't panic. We'll figure something out!"
Effects at this rank of Praxis transform a conceptualization — a description you have of something you are seeing or experiencing — into the is. That is, you take something that you can see, which may or may not be a wholly accurate or reasonable portrayal, and transform it into something trans-subjective or even objective: something which everyone can see, something which is real. You illumine something in the world and make its suchness stand out: that's the fairy glamour of rank 0 Praxis.
The thing you are cultivating must not be patently false; or rather, if it is thus false, then it is treated as falsified by another's action. Thus, you say: "I see a monster in my closet!" The world responds, saying, no, that is just socks; your action fails. Similarly, if you attempt to name someone a murderer because they are your suspect, or if you insist that someone who loathes you is charmed by you because you think you're charming; . . .
But here already, we tread close to the line.
It is the GM's duty to treat falsification of this sort as a weighty matter; to speak up for the world's truth only when the world vehemently objects. It stands to reason, if one looks at the world around you, that there is an objective truth but that it is diffuse, quiet, shy: it steps in when it must to say, "No, you cannot actually fly; yes, you are actually sleepy; no, Florida is not a portion of Canada." But much of the time, it leaves subjective matters to quibble amongst one another: is one person stronger than another? Well, what is strength?
With just that discretion that objective reality exerts, in stepping in only once strength has been defined down to "this much force, this much muscle fiber, this many falls out of five, or seven," the GM must be careful to allow even most skew notions to prosper, using the Naming of Things.
The purpose of the Naming of Things is thus four fold.
The first is, to make the suchness of a thing stronger; to highlight it, to make it burn with its truth. And in the contrary side of this same coin, and second, it is to test that suchness. For if you are to put your weight on a stair step over an endless void, it is best to lean one foot upon it first; and to Name a Thing is also to verify that reality will not intervene. The third purpose is to secure the reality of an ambiguous proposition, that you may lean upon it later. The last is, assuming success upon your roll, to inject a thing straightaway into the would have been.
"I see a monster in my closet;" and then, when the world objects, you have failed; but still, there would have been a monster, there is something there that you have seen. And this is something that may be drawn upon at a later time in magic.
It is incumbent on the player, of course, to be honest; it always is. But this honesty may be slanted somewhat for fun. It is all right to develop interesting things for your character to see in the situation around them, and both the player and the character may skew the situation slightly to make best use of the Naming of Things and Forms.
To use this level of Praxis, then, make a declaration defining what you see. This should be relatively modest: 50 words at the most, with 15 more typical. This, like all Praxis, is a 3-round action, so you'll need to spend the next 3 rounds engaging with your declaration — defining it further, interacting with it, in any case doing something to honor its presence in the world (literally, or with acknowledgement, or even by struggling against it.) At the end of this three-round action, make your Praxis roll. If you succeed on the roll, and neither reality nor another character has intervened, you have manifested what you see as real within the is. If you succeed, but reality and/or another character intervenes, it manifests instead within the tenuous would have been: there, but for reality! There, in a sense. There, lurking, waiting to exist. Failing the roll and denying reality, or failing the roll and being opposed, means that your desire falls straightaway into the might have been.
Thus if you believe that you can cook a decent meal, and you fail the roll, and someone meddles in the kitchen to boot — then no. No, what you are experiencing in that belief is an illusion brought on by error and compounded by self-deceit; your conception dissolves and cannot take root within the is. Conversely, if you see that someone is enjoying themselves at dance class, and you succeed at the roll, and nothing operates to prevent you: lo! That enjoyment is part of the is, it shines out like a star.
Here's an example:
Declaration: "He's acting suspicious. There's something he's not telling us!"
Praxis: he's acting suspicious! There's something he's not telling you!
Fairies usually call this effect sharpening, limning, illuminating, or numinizing. It's surprisingly handy as a social tool: if you're right, for instance, that somebody's acting suspicious, then as soon as you've limned it, it becomes something everybody and particularly your fairy peers can see. It's also extremely helpful when you're in a study group — the ability to limn a principle of mathematics or an intention of a poet is extremely useful for teaching and inspiring others, as long as you aren't both wrong and so subtly wrong that reality won't step in. Of course, if you are, then you can screw up everything and everyone from first principles, so there you are.
Waylings and nicknobs can waive their roll for rank 0 Praxis, succeeding unless opposed and failing utterly if reality or someone else intervenes. Waylings may accomplish this through a persuasive power of limning; nicknobs have the inner peace to only manifest those forms that ought to be. The elemental spirits with the character of Naming include various ephemeral spirits of beauty and the small gods or small angels that live inside or outside each thing and keep it the way it ought to be. The former are unstable creatures resembling firework fairies, save only that their lifespan is smaller and their origins less human; the latter are a matter of metaphysical dispute, as some fairies believe that there is no thing but with its guardian host of angels and others suspect that it takes either keen observation or a confluence of peculiar effects to imbue an item or experience with a guardian entity or god.
Effects at this rank of Praxis manifest qualities in yourself. For instance, you might use rank 1 Praxis to become strong, or truthful, or disciplined, or pretty, or wise for a scene. The new quality will tend to suffice for the immediate needs that prompted the action — if you need to move something or impress someone, and you make yourself strong, you will generally become strong enough to move that thing or impress that person. If your purpose in becoming pretty is to deflect suspicion or fit into a social group, then you'll be pretty enough — if being pretty is enough — to do so. However at this rank of Praxis, achieving your goals is not the effect, and so the GM has the option to put limits in place. A fey may only use Praxis rank 1 to become as strong, wise, smart, fast, or skilled as the GM allows, and that means that smashing mountains with your fists, racing jet planes, and instantly resolving the philosophical questions of the age is probably out of line. Most fairies in most games of Fairies cap out at the legendary hero level, with anything beyond that no longer falling under the aegis of ordinary words like strong or smart or wise.
Rank 1 Praxis is always personal. You may want strength to defeat some other person: you may want to be faster than an enemy, as smart as a friend, cleverer than a fox. And you can invoke Praxis to these ends — but your glamourie is not binding upon them. You become strong, and you may even try to be "stronger than he is," but he is under no obligation to comply. You may become "cleverer than a fox" — but that doesn't mean that a fox can't come along and outclever you. It makes you better, that's all, and usually enough better, but sometimes you're dealing with someone who is better yet.
To use rank 1 Praxis, start by declaring the quality you are cultivating in yourself. This should take 1-4 words (for the quality) plus whatever you have to say to indicate that you're using Praxis at this level, e.g., "I'm cultivating my quality of insight," or "I want to be faster than the wind."
Spend the next three rounds cultivating this quality in yourself, and optionally throwing yourself against whatever problem necessitated this use of Praxis. On the third round, make a Praxis roll with a base difficulty of 18.
For example, if someone is trapped under a car, you could do the following:
Declaration (in round 1): I need to be stronger.
Round 1: I'm struggling with the car.
Round 2: I have to lift this!
Round 3: I'm tapping hidden reservoirs of strength!
Praxis roll (in round 3): Nineteen!
If you succeed at the Praxis roll, and if nobody has interfered and sabotage your efforts, you have become something more. The strength or beauty or wisdom or cleverness or insight or speed or whatever else you were reaching for becomes part of what is. If somebody else was doing something that relied on your being weak or ugly or foolish or whatever fault you've overcome, then you've successfully interfered with their action. If you need to use strength or beauty or wisdom or whatever, you can now call upon it with an Invocation or just assume that it's there. In short, the power you reached towards inside your soul has arrived.
Here's another example:
Declaration: "I'm going to be dazzling."
Praxis: you become dazzling.
And another:
Declaration: "I'm going to surpass myself on this test."
Praxis: you surpass yourself on this test.
If you fail on the roll, or if someone sabotages your efforts at cultivation, then your new desired quality or attribute goes into the would have been. If both happen, then it goes into the might have been.
So in that first example, if you'd aced the roll but someone got in your way, then you would have been dazzling — except for their interference. In the second example, if you fail the roll, then you pushed yourself hard, but you didn't really do any better than ever. In that same second example, if both happen — if you fail the roll and someone acts to keep you from doing better than usual on the test — then the attempt at doing better just kind of founders and gets lost in the shuffle of things.
The fairy term for rank 1 Praxis is glamouring yourself or donning a glamour. Because it's the same thing that humans do when they push themselves or cultivate themselves with an act of will, not every exertion of this sort is actively magical. For instance, you could say: "I'm going to stick to my guns this time!" You're usually painfully shy or passive or a doormat or whatever, but no — this time you're going to be stronger. And that's donning a glamour, in the sense that you're pulling a shroud of a new nature over yourself and living in it, but it's also not necessarily magical at all.
But the boundary between magic and mundanity here is fuzzy, and the reason is just this: the magical power that can make a fairy much stronger and faster, or actively prettier without a makeover, or force wisdom from a foolish head, is just what happens when that mortal will gets echoed and taken up and amplified by the fairy in your soul. It starts with the hard effort of change and self-improvement, and then suddenly your power kicks in and it's magic. Suddenly instead of just using mundane effort, you're maintaining something in an arcane flow.
It's easier in some ways, but it's hard in others, and it generally both accelerates and influences the transformation into a fairy in your soul. If you're constantly glamouring yourself to be wiser, you'll turn into a fairy faster, and you're more likely to end up wise. If you're constantly glamouring yourself for kindness, strength, and speed, then you're likely to end up a strong, fast, kind fairy and to quickly convert the remnants of your mortal soul. That's not a good thing and it's not a bad thing, it's just a thing, but most schools discourage excessive glamour of this sort out of a sense that it makes you "grow up too fast."
Spark sprites have a +3 bonus on rank 1 Praxis. The elemental spirits of this sort of effect include the hollow Dutch wood-nymphs, phantasms, and arguably kindle-ghosts and "cards." The kindle-ghosts and cards are two sorts of amnesiac spirit, the first a nonspecific ghost and the second a helper spirit sometimes associated with the fey; kindle-ghosts don't know whose ghost they are while cards experience a sense of having been something else before. For most of history it was assumed that kindle-ghosts had forgotten their human life due to some trauma and that cards were remnants of something (e.g., random fairy magic that escaped when a human successfully destroyed the fairy part of their soul, or the ghosts of elementals, or fairies destroyed by some specific effect.) In the 1800s, Dr. Szoren proposed that they were instead elemental spirits of glamourie that autopoietically adopted a guise as a person or human. In his theory the kindle-ghosts had no memory of their past because they had never actually lived a human life, but rather were just the kind of experience that one would expect from someone who had; the cards, similarly, believed themselves amnesiac because their existence had the tang of better than that caused them to infer that they were better than something specific. This was the dominant understanding until 1971, when a Svartheim graduate student noticed a formal implication in Dr. Szoren's math that suggested that the very same was true of humanity and the fey. Now there is a sizable scholarly debate on the matter; things have shaken out such that the fairy community denies Dr. Szoren's theories and methods but accepts his basic conclusions on kindle-ghosts and cards, with a few camps of scholars arguing that kindle-ghosts and cards have a prior existence and a few others believing that humanity and the fey are in fact self-created from nothingness with an erroneous belief in a natural process that created them.
Effects at this rank of Praxis call forth the substance of your desire and your intention into the is.
Start the effect with a declaration of what you shall achieve.
Typically this is several sentences—about 7-40 words, using about 15 seconds of real time (not counting hesitation, panic, uncertainty, and "um," so let's call it "up to a minute.") This is usually made in character, which is to say, you use the same declaration in real life that your character silently affirms. If this is impossible for some reason—e.g., your character is declaring an image that you don't have the time or skill to quickly draw, or your character doesn't quite know what they're doing but you do—then you can spend a few more sentences clarifying.
In any case, though, the core is something that your character is focusing their mind and intention and actions to achieve, and something of a mundane character. (That specifically means that you're not trying to manipulate the abstract magical environment like power tokens, diodes, and so forth—it's OK if you want to achieve something magical like enspelling someone or squeezing through a passage smaller than your head or whatnot.) You then spend the next three rounds acting on this intention and make a roll; if nothing interferes, and if you succeed, then your declaration joins the is.
The effects of Praxis are limited to the component in which you act, plus the surrounding generic continuum. It's OK if it diffuses somewhat to affect others, but when you're acting on somebody far away who isn't connected to you with the scene rules above it doesn't have the clear character of the is.
In a similar fashion, actions, in order to interfere with you, have to have a path (connection or diode) to the component in which you act. Nobody in Rome gets to do something that randomly messes with your action in Santa Ynez, at least, not unless they're already magically a "part" of what's going on.
Should you fail the roll, or should someone interfere with your action, then the magic of your declaration falls into the would have been. It remains with you, echoing, but does not manifest. If you both fail the roll and are interfered with, or if the interference is of a particularly perverse or effective character (see the rules for certain Mist effects), then your declaration becomes part of the might have been instead.
Here's an example:
Declaration: "I'm going to ace this math test."
Praxis: you ace the math test.
What if you fail the roll? Then you don't ace the test; you just would have aced the test. If . . . something had been different. If you'd been better at magic, or if you'd studied differently, or something. The matter is ambiguous. If someone sabotages your efforts and you fail the roll, then it's more like, wow, you really told yourself you were going to ace that test, didn't you? But in the end that was just a dream, a myth, a fantasy that dissipated on the morning. That's when reality sinks into your stomach like a cold hard stone and you find yourself weeping mathlessly into your milk. Or acelessly. Maybe even testlessly if this terrible conjunction of misfortunes has caused you to be unable to take the test at all.
You can use Praxis for more important things than simply acing math tests, if one accepts that education can pale beside other things in worth. For example, if you're suddenly stuck piloting a plane because the pilot has gone into deliria, you might try something like:
Declaration: "I'm going to land this plane safely. On a cumulus cloud!"
Praxis: you do exactly this. The problems that may follow on the heels of this endeavor are really nobody's fault but your own.
The skill that you may or may not have in piloting is irrelevant to the case, and so is the inherent improbability of the landing you have planned. These things color what you choose to do, what you decide on doing, and ultimately whether you're going to succumb to Mist—but the only major advantage of feasible action is that it helps you remain true to the world and who you are. And again if you succeed, and if you are not opposed, then your declaration becomes an element of the real.
That said—and bearing in mind that this is a description of modality and not of fallibility—you do have to be able to act to bring your declaration to pass. The rule of Praxis is that your intention is a thing you are trying to achieve. So you can certainly ace a math test even if you have no skill at math—but to do so you must enact a plan or series of uncoordinated actions in service to that intention. You may land a plane on a cloud, even though clouds are typically gaseous and fairies unpracticed in piloting planes, but you have to set out to achieve this goal and take a series of sensible actions to that end. If necessary or desirable, either to yourself or to the GM (or to the other players, but mostly only if you or the GM wish to satisfy their curiosity), you should make a short statement in each round (again, 1-2 sentences) explaining what you are doing towards your declaration.
This would look something as follows:
Declaration: "I'm going to land this plane safely. On a cumulus cloud!"
Action #1: "I am frantically scanning instruments and pulling on things."
Action #2: "I can see a cloud. I'm moving in!"
Action #3: "I'm strengthening the cloud with glamour so that I have a place to land."
In rare cases, factual issues may raise their head at this juncture. For instance, the GM may say, in action #2, that no clouds are present. Or remind the player, in action #1, that they are not actually in a plane. If something like this happens, the player may then yield the action (as if preemptively failing the roll); try a new strategy; or request that the GM provide a reasonable alternative path to fulfilling either their original declaration or something closely related.
The fairy term for the result of such an action is a trod: a point of certainty in the vastness of the world. You are not creating a nexus, flow, connection, token, Mist, or anything of the sort: you are creating a single trod, a point of certainty on which to stand, a thing—if you succeed—that you have successfully done. This becomes part of the fabric of your component, fading with time only insofar as time renders the success itself irrelevant.
There are no fairy types that have a bonus on rank 2 Praxis, but Knacks often offer +1. For example a studious fairy could ace a test with an 18, and a terrifying wolf could scare someone with the same roll. Nexuses sometimes oppose the formation of contrary trods; in this case, the character must overcome the nexus' quality in order to succeed. Failure is counted just as if the character was successfully opposed; thus, in the unusual case of a nexus with quality 18, the character would either succeed (19+) and plant their trod in the is, or fail (18-) and have their action instantaneously banished into the might have been.
Elemental Spirits of Rank 2 Praxis include worgs, poltergeists, and pictsies, specializing respectively in "you are devoured in the woods;" "that object is broken;" and "this person has become mazed, disoriented, or lost." These creatures are not required to specify their actions insofar as their very existence is the enaction of their declared prophecy; should they take form and engage in other activities, this benefit ceases and they must perform actions to produce results in a normal fashion.
And underneath what is, like the deeper currents beneath the ocean's face, is the would have been.
The would have been, too, is made of forms.
They present themselves to the mind: look, here ought have been a cat; here, there could have been a table; here, but for that which intercedes, a person would have died.
The would have been is more personal than the is.
The forms shift; they are ambiguous; they are keyed, in respects, to the mind that watches. They are ghosts and shadows. But they are not unreal. Any fairy can touch upon the would have been, see into it, pull pieces of it closer to the surface or push them farther down.
Something is, beneath the is. Something is, that would have been.
We can say, roughly, that there are two large categories of things that fall into the would have been. The first is myth and story. These are great underdeep currents, powers that shoulder their way in and about the is, things constantly seeking to disturb reality with themselves. These are the things that wish to be and they impinge on the mind as things that we feel, see, believe, but know at the same time they are not true.
These are the closet monsters; these are the triumphs of righteousness; these are the perfect towns that exist somewhere in the country, the perfect lives, the perfect people. These are the killer bees. These are Elvis, still alive, and just a little over at the gas pump next to your own.
And then there are the actions of the fey that fail to be true.
When a fairy seeks to act, and is prevented, then their action falls into the would have been. The fore-echo of their intention still lingers in the world. The thing they would have achieved still hangs about them like an aura in the air. It lives. It is like a snarling cat, retreating with reluctance from the good food of the world.
The marks it leaves as it departs the real become a portion of what is.
Then last there is a spare small scattering of forms that emerge on their own into the would have been. It is always possible, after all, to come upon a person and realize, "They would have been a car!" Or to find an apple tree and say, "This would have been an orange!"
Here, there would have been a building---if the project hadn't failed.
This cup! It would have broken, if the floor hadn't been so soft.
These things are unique in their behavior; they have no characteristic quality; they do not organize themselves into rivers of myth or partake in the actions of the fey. They are simply padding in the would have been---things that came close to happening but did not; things too strong for the might have been.
And the meaning of all of this is simple: that the forms of the world, and the actions of the fey, conduct themselves with a certain mindfulness to the thrumming currents of the would have been below. They are shaped by them, buffeted by them, mindful of them: though they are not the same, what is knows what could have been.
It can be denied truth, but not existence.
It lives and piles up in echoes within the substance of the Mist.
