#mtg rpg

[frosidon]

Playtesting the MTG RPG

My planeswalker character who doesn’t know what Innistraad is: I killed the wolf-man creature who stalks the forest outside your village! Can I have some food? Kessig Villager: ...You should be gone by nightfall.

[simic-initiate]

The MTG Illuminati wants a party. Rumored to be a riot.

[frosidon]

Did I ever tell you guys how I realized that I was Blue-Red?

I made a Magic the Gathering RPG. And while I was playtesting with some college friends. I made the colors with specific motivations that were in opposition to eachother, just like in the actual game. In the playtest, I think it took about 30 minutes for the Planeswalkers to throw down, pick teams and start fighting eachother over their beliefs.

I was sitting there in the middle of the flames like. This system I designed to engender in-character conflict has functioned perfectly. But WHY did I make this?

[redwizardofgay]

A lot of MTG concepts translate shockingly well into an RPG format. Like devotion, as an extension of the magic system, works really well as a way of elaborating on the Cleric.

Vigilance, to use an evergreen example, also works by giving characters immunity to ambush and flanking.

[redwizardofgay]

Ok but high key an MTG (TT)RPG would be so fun so thank you for trying to make one!!!

Also, if you want a suggestion for how mana works (if not then just ignore this paragraph), maybe something similar to like how mp/pp works in JRPG’s? Where like each ability costs X mana but you gain back Y mana each turn?

Howdy there anon!

That's pretty much what I landed on! The challenge I ran into though, was how to manage there being five distinct colours, of which someone can use only one or all five. I didn't want trivialise mana as a resource by saying that you just get mana of the colour you want each turn, nor did I want to do what MTG video game adaptations have done, where you start with no mana and get mana back each turn, as while that IS how the card game works, it doesn't play as well in RPGs --- namely because it means encounters take FOREVER to get to the good part.

So what I did was bake the colours of magic you use into character creation. You choose your colours of magic at the same time you choose your tribe, class, and background. Unlike these other elements you can change your mana affinities later, however, doing so is *supposed* to be a big deal.

In actual gameplay, you begin each day with an amount of mana equal to your magic score. Magic is a score like Strength or Dexterity, though I'm retiring the idea of score vs. modifier for this d20 run, so it'll range from -3 to +5. (Sidenote; this assumes you can play a non-magic using character, even though I'm not really planning on write rules for them). Note: that as you gain levels you can increase your magic score to get more mana, but that as this is an RPG magic isn't everything (so be wise when deciding how much of your energy to sink into magic).

Whenever you use a spell or magical ability, you expend mana. Mana costs are written in the same way they are in the card game, calling for a certain amount of coloured mana and (usually) a booster of mana that can be any colour. Lightning bolt, for example, might cost 1 red mana but fire ball might call for 2 red and any amount of other mana to increase the size of the explosion.

Once you spend mana, it regenerates rather slowly. At the start of each turn that you don't have a full mana pool, you can roll to get mana back. Do this, you roll a d20 for each colour you have access to, in an order you choose. The DC is equal to a base, set by the number of colours you use, minus your magic score (so that the more powerful you are, the more likely you are to get mana back)

The base table is:

Use 1 colour = get mana back on 12 or higher.

Use 2 colours = mana back on 16 or higher.

Use 3 colours = mana back on 17 or higher.

Use 4 colours = mana back on 18 or higher

Use 5 colours = mana back on 19 or higher.

You roll until you have a full pool of mana again or until you've rolled once for each colour, whichever comes first. If you roll a natural 20 you get 2 mana back instead.

If you need/want more mana than you would regain by this method, what you can do is use one of your 3 actions each turn (Pathfinder 2e style) to try rolling again. This is called a channeling check. You can gain more mana than your normal maximum by channeling, though you can only ever have mana equal to twice your magic score, and mana in excess of your magic score is lost at the end of each encounter.

And that's mana! I've also figured out the rules for spells (cause by GOD I am not using Spell Slots) but this post is long enough!

Thanks for the ask, friend! ☺️

[frosidon]

The adventures of LEON THE CONTENDER

Imagine if there was a huge boy who talked like macho man randy savage who’s main goals were partying and fighting who was also a planeswalker. These are his tales Threw a building at an zorius cop, got a critical fail, got detained. Visited in prison by Boros Angel, offered release if he swears a magical oath to obey. 

They put him on the wall as the gruul hords pull up with a giant wurm to attempt to break down the wall for the millionth time. Leon proceeds to use his super strength to leap onto the wurm and wrangle it, riding into the rubblebelt sunset before anyone can react. Can’t be compelled to fulfill your oath if you can’t hear what the angels are saying because you’re riding a wurm at mach fuck through buildings

One visit with a Gruul cursebreaker later, a newly oathless Leon comes riding back to the wall, leaps off the back of the wurm, crashing it into the wall and breaking a hole, and punches the angel who attempted to shackle him into a building with a critical success and planeswalks away.

NEXT TIME ON THE ADVENTURES OF LEON: Theros or bust!

[tlatotem]

MTG RPG

The system for generating a random number was kind of complex. The forum would display a person's timestamp when they posted: The Day, Hour, Minute. I was able to add a command for $seconds and used that to determine the "roll" for each post. It went from 00 to 59, and I chose intervals of 5 to be the numbers we wanted. Like rolling a d6. There were many different ways to go about this. 55 was super lucky, but 54 and 56 were incredibly unlucky, a 05 was like a critical multiplier but surrounded by mediocre effects. Every ten seconds had a possibility of something cool. Now, people could manipulate the score. Wait until a specific time, then try for the super luck, the crit, the best dodge, etc. But this was the early 2000s. Everyone was on dialup. Sometimes you made a post and didn't know what happened for 45 seconds. Connections are so fast now, and our system was easily outdated. But damn was it fun.

[tlatotem]

MTG RPG Forum

Back in the early 2000s, I ran a website for MTG stuff and things. I had about eight different javascript games loosely based on MTG stuff, a chatroom, and a bunch of forums. I was getting pretty good at writing cgi stuff, so I figured out a way to make the forum print random numbers whenever someone posted. This led to making a forum for an MTG RPG. We did not use a mana system. Instead it functioned like having abilities built into your profile, and you called out which ability you used when you posted. The random number generated would affect how well or poorly your ability did. You always led with a defensive move, then an offensive move. And that was novel for a little while. Then I started getting more and more complex. I devised a code to alter the forum at certain times of the day. So, you could have random encounters with an "ai" opponent in a specific section of the forum. Also, some of the images we were putting on the forum would change according to am or pm, to keep track of when you visited. I personally created characters to fight, too. They had profiles, special moves, etc., and I gave them names accordingly. Oliver Displace had teleportation. Roland Don, The Reaver, had a special water attack. It just kept getting more and more complicated. Tragedy struck, however, when the website's host programming got updated incorrectly. It believed my website had gone over its 100 megabyte storage, and whenever a page was updated with new information (i.e., a post was made) it would delete all information on the page. When I heard the pages wete deleted, I went into the control panel and told the website to reinstall the backup files, but with the error believing my site was over its allotted space, it deleted everything, including the backup. I was not alone on that forum, and I was not the only person excited about the MTG RPG. I had a few things saved from editing the cgi files, but the sheer amount of work that would have to be redone was too much... we all went our separate ways. I wonder sometimes... what could have been?