A Jakkard RPG actually sounds awesome.

What kind of game?

~SE++

Yeah Jakkard is an obvious starting point. The first time we tried this we selected Sertaria which had some good qualities and bad qualities to it--mainly, it was a HUGE HUGE HUGE plane and it was a little hard to get a sense of where things could possibly go with a size that massive. I recommend maybe limiting the scope to one region of one plane. Jakkard is great for that since you can either pick Verkel or a town in the Wastes and you're solid. I'd need to ponder it a bit but I'm sure there's other planes that'd work out well. (Possibly Szat's Norse/Lovecraft mashup plane? That's a fun one.)

I think the idea of this being fanfiction/noncanon is the right one. I think initially we talked about the first RP being canon but it just never developed to the point where that made sense. HOWEVER I think this could feed back into canon as inspiration in interesting ways... I still think the core ideas of the first RP were good and if I ever get a chance to develop Sertaria further, something like the scenario we came up with is probably going to be in the makings.

One thing worth noting though is that we already have trouble getting people to pay attention to our stuff, and a lot of us are also super busy. I'm not sure it's actually going to wind up boosting things as much as you'd hope. Not to be a naysayer, particularly when it comes to M:EM which I think has produced some truly amazing works of fantasy... but I feel like realistically for all that we've achieved we don't exactly have a huge fanbase eager to launch a RP set in our worlds.

Aralheim. Coincidentally, I'm just now wrapping up spoilers for a large NGA expansion set there.

You tease. We don't even get an spoiler here?

~SE++

It's up in YMTC with an index thread in the M:EM

Here's an index of all things Aralheim (Minus the Planeswalker/Illarion stories, since they don't bear too much on the plane itself.)

Data
Aralheim
Set Archive
Lexicon: Witch

Stories
Riddles and Rime
The Hunter
Rangridsaga (3 Stories)

I'll keep that in mind. I did some research back before the great White Blight (as in, I read every one of Skibo's voting games I could find and wrote down the major hiccups in play and in mechanics) in order to make one for M13 that I never went through with -- partially because I took so long that M14 came out before I was done, and partially because Tevish rightfully pointed out that while I was trying to keep it simple, I had chosen some convoluted abilities more in line with the later, larger games that didn't mesh with the other abilities.

Jakkard would have been my first thought, for whatever it's worth. There's plenty of source material to go on, from stories to the plane guide, but there's also plenty of unexplored Waste out there, so you could blaze whatever sorts of trails you wanted. And any RPG system that works with gun combat seems like it would be pretty easy to adapt.

we should just make an RPG system for playing Planeswalkers in, ez

i think hair colour is pretty important

To take this idea seriously for a moment, that doesn't actually work because you already have that in the form of freeform RPs. Hell, I'm moderately certain that it wouldn't take but a short bit of tinkering to take D&D rules and just replace things with stuff found in the M:tG canon.

And it would still possess the exact reasons that I generally avoid RP threads/games.

Some people enjoy roleplaying systems for what they are. Which is presumably why there's only like one active freeform on the forum right now, and 4-5 D&D threads or however many there are. I really don't know what you mean with "that doesn't work." What doesn't work?

You know how to push my buttons, don't you?
Let me just leave it at "No. No, it wouldn't."

Only being familiar with M:tG settings? Where was the problem with that again?

So a quick question for the Magic players. What, exactly, can a planeswalker do that a powerful wizard couldn't? That is to say what do the planeswalking spark give you? As far as I am aware it let's you jump between planes right? Is that it? Cause if that's it I could make up planeswalkers for a half-dozen systems in like 10 minutes.

Just because you can mechanically fit a setting into a roleplaying system doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.

@ Mown:
Re the "that doesn't work" line:
I believe what I meant was that you already have the ability to play in a Magic setting and didn't need to make an RPG system for it, but after sleeping on it I am not sure what I was trying to get at. The best I can come up with is that there's a general lack of interest because if there was interest in playing an M:tG RPG there theoretically already would have been a game or two started up.

Re adapting Magic into the D&D system:
Okay, obviously I'm not familiar with the D&D rules system to properly speak of this, but I know of at least one person who has tried adapting parts of the D&D ruleset to a Magic setting, and I know I've heard of other people doing similar things with other IP. That tells me it can at least be done, even if it wouldn't be simple enough to do in an afternoon.

Re my problems with RP threads:
I'll admit I phrased that poorly, but I was referring to this from my earlier post:





While I will side with Mown on this one (there are flavorful reasons some games wouldn't work without a mess of tweaking), I'll try to answer the question as best I can.

Pre-Mending planeswalkers were much closer to gods than what we see now. There was, I believe, a bit of a power creep over time compared to the original conception of planeswalkers, but a lot of oldwalkers ended up just being, essentially, beings of pure mana. They could shapeshift at will, channel entire worlds of mana to destroy entire planes or create artificial planes in the aether, they were ageless and nigh on impossible to kill, they could use planeswalking as teleportation within a plane, and at least some were able to open portals to other planes which mortals could walk through.

The Mending took a lot of that away, essentially making them mortal again. I believe there was an article when Nicol Bolas got his first planeswalker card about the basic effects: their bodies became fallible again, memories fading, time catching up to them, mana bonds leaving them, planeswalking within planes becoming impossible, becoming stuck in whatever shape they were at the time, etc. Many pre-Mending planeswalkers are still close to godlike in power due to their advanced age and huge number of mana bonds, but they are still fallible again and must take care in most situations -- as such, a lot of oldwalkers are out searching for ways to regain their lost power or at least a way to stay immortal.

Post-Mending planeswalkers (neowalkers or Bradywalkers) are another matter entirely. The gift of the spark tends to make the bearer a bit of a prodigy at something, with that something usually being spellcasting, but can be anything magic-related (and I think in some cases not-magic related). Besides that, neowalkers tend to reach a higher-than-average power level just by sampling spells from different planes, but they still have to bond to lands and learn spells the same way most mages do (with some individual exceptions, of course). So, in essence, a neowalker would just be a mage with the ability to planeswalk.

I mean, a system with light rules wouldn't be too hard to start setting up. Something with a mana system, like starting with access to 20 mana a day, more if you bond to different parts of the lands you travel to. Spells that burn through your mana per day, and rules on frequency of planeswalking just so its not done 100,000 times a day with no consequence. That'd cover most of it besides combat.

~SE++

For whatever its worth (probably very little!), I would be highly interested in seeing a more introductory set of D&D games, which are far lighter on RP. I've been interested in trying, but know very little about D&D, and sort of feel silly diving in to the level of RP I typically read when browsing these forums (Not saying the heavy RP is silly, you just have to own it to function well, and I simply dont see that in myself at this stage.)

Or even a faster paced alternative, for NGA members. Like a chat room style game. Shorter, faster, lighter on the RP, and more accessible to people like me who want to start learning the groundwork to participate...

(Yes, I know there are plenty of websites offering exactly what Im talking about there, but my interest is specifically because I have enjoyed most of my interactions with players on these boards, and want to play because its this community, not just because its the game.)

I always thought planeswalkers were best represented by White Wolf's Mage. It is a much more freeform type of magic and it is better at high octane levels of magic. There are even five Paths, though they don't match up with the five colors except superficially. Astigos, the illusion and fate magic of fae, could be blue but enchanters are meant to be flighty and impulsive. Mastigos, the magic of demons and nightmares, could be red? but their focus is mind and space (like teleportation, etc.) so maybe more black. Moros is power over death and matter but more stoic than evil, so Erebos. Obrimos is the magic of angels (white) but it's also chaotic and primal and manipulates elemental power like lightning (red) and like pure magic (blue). Thyrsus is passion and nature.

In conclusion, I once realized that there are no hard limits on how many zombies you can make as a Mage in Mage: The Awakening and I desperately wanted to just make a necromancer who just used zombies for everything including a walking throne and then later they printed that card with Liliana on a zombie throne and that was the moment I loved her.

Ah no don't get me wrong I understand that entirely. I just never really understood what a planeswalker could do and figured that understanding would be the first step towards working out enough kinks to make a system that would accurately represent them.


Honestly? Reading what you wrote below you could just chuck Plane Shift as a natural spell-like ability on someone in D&D and they would basically become a functional planeswalker. Mechanically anyway. Fluff-wise would be an entirely different ball game.


Thanks for that. Interesting read.

is this a general discussion thread or a pbp meta thread