Street Wise
This one is a daydream that is edging into a design. I mean, every daydream is, really, because I can’t usually separate thinking about a game setting or concept without also thinking about what system to use or make to run it. This one is working harder in the design aspect, though.
SETTING
There is magic in the world but it is a world of haves and have-nots.
The old families and firms live at the top in their fortifications, thinking about the fate of the world, their place in it, and their legacy. Down at the bottom are the masses, magic-less and, largely, unaware, just trying to live their lives. And then there is you.
You are a street mage. You’ve got the touch, you’ve got the talent, but you don’t have the connections. You’ve got to hustle for your mana and your money.
Or, maybe, you’re a Mute. You’ve got the touch but you don’t have the talent. You can see the magic but you can’t do the magic. Do you ignore it or do you take the dirty jobs that the firms offer you, hoping some of their scraps drop into your lap.
Several of you have banded together into your own little street coven for mutual aid and protection. The world can be a tough place and you need all the help you can get.
There are layers to the world.
There is the real world, 100%, the world we can see out our window.
Mages know that there is more to the world, though. They can step into the Shadow, the layer of the spirit world closet to the mortal world, where they can see the magic and the monsters. The problem is that the monsters can see them too.
Then there is the Twilight. That’s the layer of the spirit world where magic is free, free from the eyes and minds of the mortal masses that strain with disbelief if we show them too much. The Twilight is supposed to be locked beyond the Aegis, the barrier that keeps the mortal world safe from the monsters too weak to break through, but the old families, with their firms and enclaves, have built gates into the Twilight for themselves. The gates are supposed to be guarded but it’s not like anyone is checking. Monsters get through.
Beyond the Twilight is Darkest Night, full of the creatures of myth and magic. Rumor has it that there are worlds of wonder out there but you have to have the juice to go find out.
SETUP
The players are Street Magi and Mutes who have banded together for survival in this tough world. To avoid mundane work or the mana farms, they take freelance work from the firms or old families in exchange for money or mana. In between jobs, they try to survive and build a place for themselves in the world.
The game is played in phases:
During the Hustle phase, the group does jobs for the firms or old families to earn mana or money.
During the Obligations phase, the players deal with their relationships or real world obligations like paying rent or helping a sibling out of a jam.
During the Downtime phase, players spend time recovering or working on their own projects.
Once the players have gone through the whole cycle, it begins again.
COMMENTARY
This idea sprang from my initial goal to convert the original Mage: the Ascension game over to Fantasy Flight Games’s Genesys system. I had played in a brief Mage 20th game with some other folks feeling the nostalgia and it had reminded me just how complicated the Storyteller System feels in play.
I figured it wouldn’t be much work to convert M:tA over with a few tweaks and run it straight but, as with any project, once you start playing with things in the game other ideas come along to change things up.
In this case, while I like a lot of M:tA it feels like a weird mishmash of too much power and too little power. The M:tA characters can do a lot but there are always the hidden masters of magic. And on top of it all, there is Ascension War with the Technocracy. It feels like A Lot but, simultaneously, I remember we always used to struggle with what our characters were supposed to do in our games.
Anyway, this is what my thinking has turned into. Mages in the real world, struggling with income inequality and working hard to keep their heads above water without selling out to the corporate world.
On the system side, it’s starting to come together. I still want to use Genesys as the base, because I really like the custom dice that system uses and they way the dice create rich outcomes. The problem being, if I try take this game all the way to publication, I feel like the dice become a hindrance. Fantasy Flight has a program for fans to make supplements for Genesys but I feel like that limits the audience for the game.
On the other hand, I feel like leaning hard into the elements that I’ve borrowed from Blades in the Dark (for jobs and downtime) really changes the feel of the game and I’m not sure it’s for the better.
Next steps, I suppose, are to bash together a minimum workable system and playtest what I’ve got to see if it has legs.