Okay, I'm doing some design so, open forum.
When rolling for random magical mishaps, wild magic and the like, what kind of effects do you like? What kind of effects do you think are bullshit?
Mostly ttrpg stuff and a lil art.
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in reply to @Partheniad's post:
I love Songbirds’ worst case scenario for psychic strain of “a nightmare made of milk appears, it will destroy everything you love”. Also just creatures appearing in general and changes to the environment, like suddenly gravity disappears
To clarify this is for doing the really big stuff, and when you do the really big stuff you always have to roll on that table, so maybe not exactly what you were asking for
the real trick i think is to find effects that mess with whatever situation is going on without creating a whole new situation. "your hair turns green" type effects are usually trivial, but effects that are worse than whatever you were casting magic for in the first place are just annoying. Gotta find that sweet spot.
Yeah, I'm going for a real boon/bane situation. Like worst options I am thinking of right now are: "You teleport with your target, swapping places. Your spell hits you" and "You summon a hostile outsider"
But mostly I'm going for things more along the lines of... hmm how do I put this- ah. The room is now on fire. We are adding something to the scene that adds to the narrative and dramatic stakes.
Start with great things that could happen (money, fame, power, wish-fulfillment), and then apply the classic "malevolent genie" treatment to it and find ironies that could make those same wishes actually bad to fulfill.
As long as you stay with the right scoping in terms of size of wish, you'll wild up with a table of either good things or things that sound good until you read through them all
A corollary to this imo is fulfilling a wish by having their character cast a more powerful spell (higher level, different class, etc) and having it just not be the spell they were planning on, regardless of if the spell itself is useful
Having run a wild magic heavy game for a few years now:
- Folks have very different tolerances for transformation and mental influence effects. Poll your table and/or your play test groups ahead of time.
- The more severe an effect is, the shorter the duration needs to be.
- Folks enjoy whimsical effects more in the moment, but weird transformation stuff is what sticks with folks, for better or worse.
- Have and telegraph a clear way to remove unwanted permanent effects. This can have a cost - spending downtime, owing a favor to a witch or priest, spending a mild-to-moderate amount of resources - but it should be something folks can readily access.
Personally, I like weird transformation stuff. Polymorph effects, limbs going weird, hair coming alive - stuff that changes how I interact with the game but isn't purely a negative. I also prefer effects to complicate a scene or a session, but don't become the driving force of the scene or the rest of the game. If my miscast spell or whatever causes walls of flame to bust through the room and complicate a fight, that's cool. If the spell instead summons a malicious flame elemental that starts destroying the whole dungeon, I'm going to have less fun.