ICRPG?

Magic in General: Globally, only about 5% of the population is magically adept and in limited ways. With proper training and the attunement of artifacts, they can channel magical energies into specific effects (essentially one 'spell' per artifact). There are limits to how many artifacts one person can attune and carry as the latent amount of competing magical energies can overwhelm a lesser mage's ability to control it, resulting in all manner of unfortunate things. Also, attunement comes at a cost of one's life energies.

What Makes You Unique: Less than 1% of the population is innately magically gifted. Magic is simply a part of them, and they don't require artifacts to channel magical energies and turn them into effects. This means that unlike adepts, the gifted can create 'spells' on the fly and tailor their effects to the situation. There are some downsides to innate magic, however. Each gifted is born with affinities for certain techniques and forms, but are incapable of using the others. Gifted are also incapable of attuning artifacts. They make up for this, however, in their ability (with sufficient training of course) to channel the energies of raw essence to empower their free form spells. The gifted also grow in power as they gain experience without having to sacrifice life energy to attune to more and more powerful artifacts. You are all gifted.

Q: Yeah, that would be bad. ;)

I agree with everything you posted. I think that some of the Gifted would choose to keep their gift a secret, as most of them would probably be given little choice of career and such because of their low numbers and importance. Or maybe they can do whatever they like, like a sort of mercenary that the academy hopes to guide in the right direction.

And I kind of like the idea of volcanic leylines.

Turtledragon, I'm reminded of rogue telepaths in Babylon 5 (which I finished rewatching recently). Refusing to join the overbearing PSICORP, they were branded criminals and hunted.

Yes, there might be something like that going on. Some of the gifted trying to tear new portals and advance the shadow walkers or something.

My concern with tying the leylines to some kind of easily identifiable phenomena, like volcanoes or seismic faults, is that if this were known, it would lead to a mad scramble by the imperial powers to control those resources (a little like oil now). If that were the case, it might be hard to find a place that was magically empowered but remote enough that it wouldn't get absorbed by one empire or another. Of course that doesn't mean that a leyline nexus couldn't be located at one of those sites just by coincidence....

I like the idea of rogue gifted! And it makes perfect sense - power corrupts, and just being gifted doesn't preclude a weakness for the seductions of power.

Man now you got me thinking of Iceland and it's Lava Demons (black cats) yelling at them to get back in their Lava Bucket from the webcomic...

Okay maybe not volcanic leylines then. But what about the portals discussed earlier? I'm fine with them being able to open randomly anywhere but that would mean that people know about them and that the Academy sends some kind of strike teams to close the portals. Which would be cool. Another possibility is that the Academy sits on top of the only portal.

People would be aware of the portals as magical phenomena, but maybe not exactly what risks they represent? When governments or corporations (hmm, hadn’t thought about them) find portals they cordon them off to ‘protect’ the public (partially true), then send in adepts to exploit the resources the can get out of them before they close.

I was thinking of you all as a sort of mobile strike force that often gets to a portal before anyone else. That’s because Seymour Pliddington, putz that he he is almost all regards, is a savant in terms of Metamagic (Form: Magicae) and is capable of sensing ley line surges and rifts before other mages. This is one of the reasons why he was selected to head the new academy.

Do you all think we are in a good place to start? A lot of the other details we can flesh out as we go. If you’ve read the ICRPG QuickStart, you can see that I’ve riffed on the rules regarding loot, skills, and leveling. Is that ok, or would you rather stick closer to RAW for your first go round with the system?

Hmm, should I create an actual game thread? If so, let’s vote on an official name for it. :)

That sounds about right. I must say the strike team thing with it's dungeon crawling possibilities is right up my alley. How about moving this up to a game page?

We could run a very short one shot with some pregens so you can get used to the system, and then decide if you want to keep with the rules as written, or try some house rules. What do you think?

This game is sounding more and more like the beloved TV show Fringe.

I agree with your plan KaeJae.

Sounds legit.

Hi all, I'm working on the pregens and the rule tweaks that need to happen and will start up the test game thread soon. Anyone who wants to give it a shot, let me know and I'll send an invite. :)

Sure, send me an invite when you're set up.

Agreed, I'll play.

I'm game.

I am interested, never played it, but just grabbed the quick start.