Elemental Reductions

    Hello Friends! It was a blast to host RPG Blog Carnival 's 2024 year-end topic, Beyond Vancian Magic ! Thank you all so much for your input!  In no particular order, here's what some of you shared as your response to the topic, along with attempts at summaries: Robgoblin kicks things off with Skills for the Magic-User .  Starting with propositions for turning read magic and detect magic into skills, then suggesting some innovations with counterspells, upcasting, and harsher spell recovery to bring wizards closer to linear power progression. Xaosseed shares a spell point and spellburn system of magic , which briefly talks about the system Xaosseed uses to add more risk to magic when magic-users run dry, and shares a wish list of what the perfect magic system would have. VDonnut Valley gives us Beyond Vancian Magic - Wizards of Sword of Don II , which talks about magic of the culture in the wake of the fall of the Bronze Towers of Marano.  Where onc...

  Hello Friends! I'm thrilled to be hosting December's RPG Blog Carnival topic, Beyond Vancian Magic ! I'm not a hater, but I'll admit I prefer different systems being different, and clerical and magic user magic systems are basically the same.   I'm looking forward to seeing your interesting takes and contributions on evolving past that kind of magic system.  While I chose this topic about half a year ago, it's come up recently on r/osr, in the post Vancian Magic - What It Is How It Works and Where Did It Come From? Here are some ideas to get you started if you don't already have something in mind: Creating entirely new magic systems, or emulating those of other works, such as those by Brandon Sanderson or Jim Butcher. Spellcasting based on the undead turning table, as illustrated by ktrey of d4 Caltrops suggested using in Alternative Spell Casting . Expand on existing the existing "Vancian" system: Make spells truly Vancian, so that they a...