One of the easiest ways to make your campaign and your setting feel real, immersive, and unique is by taking away the certitude that magic is always going to act the same way. This mysterious, world-altering energy should not ever be completely understood by your characters, as the discovery of it is a big part of the fun.
In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave sit down to respond to a listener question about their homebrewed idea of making magic work differently in different areas of their world. They ask how we might approach it in our ever-growing, crowdsourced Boomtown campaign setting.
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1:35 Our listener question from The OMG Father, Wyman!
3:15 Simple ways to approach making magic change, altering Difficulty Classes and Damage output.
4:15 DM Chris harkens back to the Green Lantern Corps and leans into our use of Components as trackable resources.
6:05 How DM Dave altered magic in the world in our recent Dragonlance campaign.
8:05 Making the zones of magic random, and DM Chris’ concern of specifically targeting arcane casters.
10:25 Motivating players to adventure by seeking tech.
12:12 Employing more narratively focused elements by having the player and DM work together to create something new.
16:45 Leaning into the resource management for spellcasting.
21:45 Allowing the tech to be utilized by any character. A Gunslinger with a Staff of Healing? Why not?
25:25 Good stories come from the characters having to struggle. Always beating the monsters is fun in a one-shot, but makes for a really boring campaign.
26:35 DM Tony asks what the tech looks like in Boomtown?
31:10 Charging up mundane tech… the Battery of the planet Oa and bringing in a usable Craft Item skill.
35:50 Final Thoughts.
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