It's not classic GLOG wizardry, but maybe its something you'll find interesting anyway.
A lot of Magic Word sort of systems suffer from the same thing they benefit from: flexibility and versatility. You lose that beautiful flavor & weirdness of things like GLOG spells. Things just kind of feel samey.
Besides that: sometimes a Word is just too damn useful. If a lot of tabletops treat magic as a toolset for interesting problems, sometimes Magic Words just become a sword for Gordian's Knot.
To address this I try and offload a lot of the fiddly differences and limitations onto the actual method by which players cast their spells. I like to think of it like Chuck Jones' rules for writing his cartoons rather than always operating on strict game-design niche protection. Each set of Features works differently, so they tend to play and feel different- simple enough.
For the flavor: I usually go the Dark Souls route of associating Words and Features with different factions, groups, etc. in the setting. Does your character want to learn how to permanently [Remove] their enemies [Bones]? Then they have to go learn the dark ritual of the Boner Lords. Rinse repeat. It fosters engagement with the world, affects decision making, seeds some cool rewards- it works the same as hunting for spells, but you tend to be able to use it more often I feel.
Muted Verse
If the last post I did showed off a standard, spell-slinging capital W Wizard, these two today are more the "shenanigans enabler" category.
As I write this Muted Verse- which I've described previously as being Gandalf-adjacent- I guess could better be described as something like an Old Testament prophet? There's definitely overlap, in so far as "mostly a normal person who occasionally shows off."
Firstly, compared to Mystical Knowledge, there's a similar theme of limiting Word choice. Adjectives are very versatile, but the fact that you can only grab Words under a very set slow rate really limits how often or how powerfully you can pump out spells.
That limitation also kind of forces a player to really pay attention. Not only because they can really only modify existing things, but if they want to cast the bigger spells they need to be creative with what's going on.
Poetic twists are a bit of a concession to ease things a little bit- but it also encourages players bringing in their own thoughts and their character's viewpoint into focus. In some recent stuff I've also been playing around with this Feature snapping up Words based on lore or history too, which feels appropriate for the vibe.
Unlike most other spellcasters, you also burn up your Words as you use them. As such what you're doing usually reflects where you've been or what you've been up to lately- if not literally, then poetically. If a player is hoarding specific Words, then it's still at least a callback in some form.
It also means there's more pressure for Word choice as far as combinations go. Do you burn up two Words now, or are you going to hold onto them for "the big one"? Do you grab lots of different smaller Words for utility, or are you going to lose variety pursuing "the big one"?
Most of these limitations are for flavor, as well as for simplicity of ruling on how one can modify stuff. It'll also make more sense after talking about the below.
As far as the flavor end of things go: I wanted the magic of this Feature to feel less bombastic and more subtle- no fireballs or summoning demons or such. I think by limiting it (mostly) to subtle modification of what's there, hopefully that's been achieved.
Hopefully the above limitations make a little more sense in context of that- just to prevent summoning a million things, killing every weaker being in the area, etc.
Often it seems used for shenanigans, but I've seen it still used for the occasional Biblical catastrophe or fighting via random natural disasters. You could easily clamp down on that more if you care about that.
I usually try to include some sort of interplay with Scores, but usually nothing major for spellcasters so the village idiot who somehow is lucky and gets magic is still viable. Also for when Scores might get affected or changed on the sheet, it's less of a monumental change for the flow of things.
This one here is almost pure utility & encouragement to do whacky stuff while limiting some of the chances of it blowing up in your party's face.
Melodramatic Enchantments
Muted Verse suffers lots of limitations in order to reject the limit of the number of Targets they can affect. Melodramatic Enchantments I feel is kindred but different in a good way- as players can choose to hold on to grudges and suffer themselves, in order to ignore Duration and sustain the suffering of others. Mechanically and flavorfully it befits toxic double-edged revenge sort of stuff.
I've been skipping some bigger blocks of text from the book- the Ritual section being one of them. More or less for context here: a player with Melodramatic Enchantments may only have one spell at a time, consisting of a [Verb] + [Noun] combo. If they want to swap out which spell they know, they have to perform some esoteric ritual which they've learned.
The latter limitation here- only affecting other beings- besides being there for flavor, is also there to prevent mechanically just buffing yourself and calling it a day. Your character is here to mess with others, while they themselves writhe and froth.
In my system: Courage is kind of a combined Sanity & Morale sort of deal, operating like a second pool of hit points which can be attacked. When your character runs out of Courage, they suffer varying status effects. It also refreshes differently then regular hitpoints, being more dependent on diegetic comforts and considerations.
So, in context here, M.E. users are pushing themselves closer and closer to breakdown in order to cast their spells. Besides the obvious risk reward elements there, it also does make their spellcasting a little slower and more considered then hammering every nail with just the one spell.
To be clear this occurs after a cast spell already lands.
I don't have too much to add here that hasn't been already mentioned- choosing to drop yourself into a fugue state just to inflict suffering on others is fun. Besides that it feels like a good way to set up ignoring a spell's Duration- as your character likely becomes more useless while the spell is useful, but you can also choose to relinquish and begin to recover whenever you'd wish.
And yeah- you can drop yourself directly into insanity for as long as you wish.
I've worried at the table about players just doing this and becoming a purposeful problems for their party, but it usually comes up more as a fun complication as part of a specific plan. "We need to keep the wizard safe" sort of stuff or sometimes "we need to keep the berserk wizard from punching a cop and starting a riot" kind of stuff.
Also, if you have magic be more commonly accessible, having a bunch of hirelings learn this Feature and constantly keeping spells up like living spell-dispensers could be a "solving out fun" kind of issue.
Does part of your plan require cursing the lord to forget who he is, while bewitching his vizier to look like him? This rule is there for that kind of situation, or if you want to hold a petty grudge and keep some specific target cursed for a looong time while you go about other stuff.
It also adds the weird little objectives of Rituals into other plans more easily- kind of easing the restriction of one spell a bit for doing more switching as needed.
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