HOU: Word-Based Spellcasting, Diceless Version

A while back I shared my previous versions of a Word-based spell casting system. I've heavily revised it since though so, consider this a fresh-ish version. The basic guts of it go something like this:

To cast a spell: your character selects [Words] they know from their list of known [Words]- usually a [Verb] + [Noun] pairing- and describes what they are hoping to achieve with their spell and what they are targeting.

They then must determine what sort of Law(s) they must follow to cast the spell; sort of akin to this post at Was It Likely?. These Laws are given out by their templates, so different forms of spell casting might follow different Laws.

The rules your character must follow to learn [Words] and the specific rules by which they resolve these spells are determined entirely by the class templates which granted their spell casting ability.

That's really the main bones of it as far as the system-agnostic end of it goes. In a practical sense: imagine instead of writing unique spells, a lot of that energy gets shifted to going into creating unique ways for characters to interact with Words & unique Laws which they must follow in casting their spells.

1. Everyone interacts with [Words] differently depending on what "class" they are.

Besides there being a lot of variance with [Words], how a character acquires and uses [Words] also adds a lot of texture to how different forms of spell casters operate. This isn't just like, how a character literally learns a [Word] within the fiction of the setting, but I also mean on a practical mechanical level.

- What if you could only learn one Verb ever? one Noun? Creating a sort of hyper-specialised caster (a personal favourite of mine, Go Snake Wizard!) 

- What if your character only learned Nouns, but they could be flexible in their application?

- What about a character whom learns Adjectives?

- What if you didn't permanently learn [Words], but instead had to perform [Word] games that tell stories in order to use a [Word]?

- What if your character constantly had to be observant of whats around them, in order to pull [Words] from that and write freestyle poems to cast spells?

- What if your character could also use their [Words] to change their Laws? Or program their spells?

Certain [Words] are definitely very, very powerful (e.g. [Person]); so either limiting them or using them as high-end loot is important.

2. Basically: each Law for a spell is either a While or an If/Then statement.

I guess in theory there's probably other models that work? But wracking my brain this is what I thought was natural and practical.

"You can [Strike] [Lightning], but it only will strike the highest point nearby outdoors."

"While your character is touching the ground, they [Enhance] their [Strength]."

"If your character swallows an egg whole, then on the spot they can [Elongate] [Snake]."

Really the important part is that the Law needs to pose a significant penalty, restriction, etc. They need to make using the spell really fiddly and interesting and annoying to use, but fun to set up. Imagine trying to figure out how to [Strike] [Lightning] on a specific target in the middle of a dense city for example. Spells REQUIRING shenanigans by the player to activate.

If players want to do spell-research kind of stuff, creating or modifying Laws is a great way to do that too.

3. Some more personal, system-specific sort of magic thoughts related to my current rules draft:

- Since spell casting is super fiddly to activate and use, and it's also extra slow and interruptible, I don't intend to limit the actual usage rate of spell casting. Sling spells all day, be free wizard! The only mechanical limitation for that then is that I also limit spell casting so that it cannot restore wounds, heal the dead, etc. Any limited resource remains limited. (I personally also don't care for healers mechanically much anyway, but that's more a personal pick so grain of salt).

- I like every spell-caster to not just feel different, but to operate on different rules to each other whenever possible. The sort of chassis-differentiation thing from my last house rules carried over here, but now also the addition of Laws pushes that even further to make everyone a whacky bastard. Truly a precious revelatory yoink from Was It Likely.

- I feel like Words + Laws are easy to come up with on the fly as a GM, but I also hope the systems in play let players get loose with it too. In my last set of house rules, I had a player whom only could manipulate [Garments] who did all sorts of whacky anime bullshit despite that limitation, and just being surprised by players in that way is one of my favourite things.