Wildsea has a magic system called whispers. A whisper is an evocative phrase that is stuck inside the character’s mind; for example my Wildsea character had the whispers “the dark remembers”, “waiting in vain”, “all tunnels end”, etc. They are stuck inside your head until you either whisper it out loud, speak it, or shout it; depending on which you do, you get different magical effects. Whispering out loud will give you a secret related to your phrase. Speaking will let you choose a relatively low level magic effect related to your phrase. Shouting will allow you a more powerful magic effect, but the GM decides what it is. Once you “cast” your whisper, you lose it. I resonate most with speaking a whisper and proposing an effect. In general, I’m a huge fan of negotiations between players and the GM at the table, especially when that negotiation centers on the fiction. At their core TTRPGs are just conversations, and a negotiation is an interesting kind of conversation.

Side note: this whisper system feels very similar to Whitehack’s miracles. In that game you have a magic phrase, but instead of disappearing on use it takes hp away from your character depending on how powerful it is

Another magic system that inspires me is Mausritter. Mausritter has magic runes that let you cast a specific spell, like how scrolls work in other classic fantasy games. The interesting part is that runes are reusable. Each rune has a sort of ritual or action you can perform in order to recharge it. Your fireball rune needs to be left inside a bonfire for 3 days and nights to fully recharge. To recharge your invisibility rune, keep your eyes shut for a whole day. The rune that lets you speak to other species requires you to give the rune away freely to a member of a different species. These little rituals are fascinating, and the killer app of Mausritter’s magic system. This system made me feel more like a magic user than any other, because it felt like magic was an in-universe system. That system required something esoteric from me if I wanted to continue wielding its power.

Initial Idea

What if you took the open-ended magic effects of Wildsea whispers and the recharge mechanic from Mausritter, and mashed them into a unique magic system?

Each character has access to a magic phrase. This phrase creates any kind of magic they want related to that phrase (à la Wildsea’s spoken whispers or Whitehack’s miracles) and the GM tells the player how much mana it will cost them for that spell effect. Players can negotiate with the GM, making spells take longer to cast, require material components, require a roll, whatever necessary to reduce the cost of mana for that spell effect. Once players run out of mana (they can’t go into the negatives) then they cannot cast magic with that magic phrase. To regain mana, players need to perform magic rituals, which will restore the mana pool. Each magic phrase comes with a prewritten ritual (or menu of rituals?) that recharges x amount of mana.

This system is very open-ended, and would require guidelines and reference points. At a minimum, there would need to be numerous examples of magic phrases like there is in the core Wildsea rulebook (there’s example whispers on basically every spread in the character creation chapter). I imagine the strength lies in setting specific reference points. In this world, what are examples of magic effects for one mana? Three mana? Seven? In a high-magic setting maybe some spell effects are “cantrips” and cost no mana at all. How much mana should players have access to in the first place?

This idea was super appealing to me, but I wondered if I could take it further and make it more my own.

Making it Cursed

The system I’ve been making is about the blurred line between humans and monsters. So what if “running out of mana” was more interesting and… risky?

Instead of a pool of mana and a mana cost, the GM would give the character a number of curse points. If players gain a number of curse points above their maximum, then they transform into a magic beast or spirit related to their magic phrase and the character is retired from play. A proper magic ritual clears all curse points related to that magic phrase.

This has the added benefit of adding a new lose condition beyond simply dying. This is really appealing to me because it complicates decision-making for players, they have to balance their need to survive and their need to not turn into a dragon and eat the party.

I felt pretty good about these rules, but I wanted support for using magic items. Using magical equipment feels like the most human way to use magic (keeping with the monster-human theme.) It appeals to me in much the same way that the magic rituals to recharge runes in Mausritter do; it makes magic feel more real than innate power, because you aren’t modifying what a human being is capable of but still allowing them to manipulate magic.

To me, there are two kinds of magic items: limited use items like scrolls, wands and potions and enchanted items that can be used continually. We can say that enchanted items can hold their own magic phrase and ritual. We can re-introduce charges/mana for these magic items instead of curse points and require the character to periodically recharge the item. For limited use items, they are just like enchanted items, but they cannot be recharged; when they run out of charges, they’re just expended.

There are so many directions to take this idea from here. I think that’s a good sign the idea is rich. Here are some of my ideas:

Alchemy and Enchanting: Players can craft magic items from magical ingredients or materials. The GM gives the magic phrase for the item, and the ritual is constructed by modifying a pre-written ritual in the core rules to fit the phrase. Items start with zero charge. Crafters need to use the ritual to determine the number of charges for the limited use magic items. Crafting feels woefully underexplored in ttrpgs (where are all these magic items coming from?), and this is where I want to take the idea next.

Switch the negotiation: The spell effect is codified, and the ritual is negotiated.

Reintroducing “Shouts”: Players can inversely tell the GM how many curse points they are willing to gain and the effect being determined by the GM. Maybe players can have effects that are twice as powerful as usual as long as they don’t get to decide the effect.

Reintroducing Whispers-For-Secrets: Players can ask for a secret related to their magic phrase. If there is a qualifying secret, the GM can tell the players the cost in curse points to reveal it.

Magic Focuses: Maybe things like magic crystals, spellbooks, and divine amulets temporarily increase the curse maximum (like temp hp), and the focus becomes inert after being depleted.