(Heads up, this is a repost from the Discord server, since I believe some people don’t use it and I want to know your opinions if you only use the Atlas Forums)
I wanted to ask you for something, SGs for this game: How common is Twilight in your sagas? I've "complained" a lot that it's very very uncommon, even more if you have a Familiar, you master spells, or have Virtues that reduce the number of botch dice rolled. Last session I had a magus get two Warping points from Original Research. I had to check Twilight. Exciting! Only that he succeeded and didn't enter ir. It's been about two years out-of-game since we had a Twilight episode. I have a semi-weekly saga where each session several spells are rolled, and this might be a probabilistic outlier, but we have only had about 5 Twilight episodes in 24 years in-game and 4 years out-of-game. I started thinking about canonical stat lines for magi and how, for the older magi, they always have Twilight scars and high Warping scores. The sources of Warping I can think of are:
Spellcasting and Supernatural botches.
Original Research.
Studying from Vis, which I'm now suspecting is the major contributor to those stat lines.
I wanted to use this thread for asking how has this been in your sagas. I'd like to know:
How frequent is stressing spellcasting in your sagas.
How frequent are Twilight episodes in your sagas, and in which situations did they occur.
What do you think is the source of those canonical statlines and their Warping scores and Twilight scars.
To me, either Twilight is incredibly infrequent as to not be a factor at all within a normal speed saga and the canonical stat lines of older magi don't make any sense, OR I've been running this game wrong in terms of botch die adjudication OR something else.
One important source of Warping that you forgot is the Longevity Ritual. Once they start taking it, magi accumulate 1 point of Warping each year.
In general, I will consider that after Gauntlet but before starting on a Longevity Ritual magi will accumulate 1 point of Warping per year on average. Once they starting using a LR that foes to 2 points per year.
Flaws and life choice may then increase that amount of Warping accrued per year. Magi who spend much of their time adventuring, getting involved in combat, using vis to boost their spells or for study, using fatiguing spontaneous magic, whose covenant is in a Faerie aura (if they don't have the Faerie Magic virtue), experimenting or performing Original Reseach would accrue more Warping per year, on average.
I've often thought that most magi fresh out of Gauntlet should have a few pints of Warping, from mishaps during apprenticeship.
Now, all of this doesn't address the frequency of Twilight experiences. These would be few and far in-between, because these are transformative events IMHO. They forever change the magi, scarring them and their magic. They certainly lower the life expectancy of the magi by adding more Warping points.
As you say below, LR doesn’t give you enough WPs to enter Twilight, so it doesn’t even matter for my point.
Let me break down what you said, because I can only compare with my experience and my understanding of the rules over years of playing and SGing.
Adventuring: Yes, this does make you ocasionally make you check for a botch. Still doesn’t guarantee a Twilight episode. In fact it is very unlikely you get to have it.
Combat: Same as above.
Using vis: In my experience using vis has been very, very rare, but I do agree it should be encouraged and in fact it is intended for it to be common.
Spontaneous spellcasting: Same as adventuring and combat.
Faerie aura: This is unlikely, as most canonical covenants are magical, with notable exceptions for urban or faerie covenants, which do not make up the majority.
Original Research: This is an outlier and maybe, maybe one player in your troupe will do it, otherwise it’s perfectly ignorable.
Some sodalis over on the Discord made a simulation of what the life of a magus would be over time. And it turns out as you would expect: Almost no magus enters Twilight ever, and on top of that they get to live for 200+ years, AND they die of old age, not Warping. It’s probabilistically very unlikely you ever die from final Twilight, or even develop many scars with them, which seems to very patently contradict the canonical statblocks we have for seasoned magi.
Are the statblocks wrong and RAW is right, or are we supposed to play another way so we can approach that? Twilight feels incredibly toothless as is. That is why I made this post.
The convo has developed on Discord and I want to recapitulate the points we’ve talked about here as well. The possible “solutions” to the state of what Twilight really is could be:
[Cultural] Incentivising less over-reliance on books, heavier use of vis for studying and spellcasting.
[Mechanical] Making it so a simple botch already checks for Twilight. Twilight Prone changes to applying a penalty for resisting.
[Mechanical] Being way more generous with the number of botch die for (spontaneous) spellcasting, taking into account Aura, Regiones and other factors.
[Mechanical] Harsher rulings on casting the yearly Aegis spell plus Wizard's Vigil for a given covenant.
[Mechanical] Changing Warping Score so that whenever it increases it forces a Twilight roll.
Well, you post is titles "... and sources of Warping". Since you had not mention that one, it seemed only fair to mention it. And since a magus' likelyhood of enterring Twilight (when he has to check for it) is affected by his Wapring Score, it seemed only fair to mention it.
Yes, magi could reach a Warping Score of 10 without even entering Twilight. But the higher their score, the most likely they are to enter it when the conditions are met.
My point is that circumstances are very important when considering the likelyhood of Twillight. Where does most of your stories take place? The most likely circumstances for getting that famous double botch (for 2 points of Warping, unless they have the Twilight Prone flaw) in a single event will occur when magi are either:
In a foreign aura (pretty much only happens during a story),
Using several pawns of vis (most likely to occur in combat against a powerful supernatural enemy), or
Performing magic in a situation that imposes additional botch dice (most likely to occur in combat).
If most of the stories in your saga occur in a place that has no (or a low) foreign aura, against enemies that don't require vis boosting to penetrate their MR, and where magi can rely on their formulaic spells in an emergency... Well then their chances of entering Twilight are quite low.
If, on the other hand, they are confronting a group of infernalists (or faeries) when they just summoned a demon more powerful than the magi expected, and are at risk of dying... Well then factors stack up and the number of botch dice climb, almost insuring that at some point someone will accrue the Warping points necessary for them to check for Twilight.
In my experience, a player‘s willingness to accumulate Warping and risk Twilight varies widely. Some Ars players are very risk-averse. They will go to extreme lengths to avoid Warping and they consider any risk of Warping to be too much risk. This seems to come from the idea that Warping reduces your character’s lifespan. Every Warping Point you get dooms your character.
In fact, most campaigns don’t last long enough for a character to be affected significantly by Twilight. I’ve never seen a character enter final twilight in all my years of playing. (Obviously many players have, my point is this varies wildly by campaign).
My approach is to be direct with players and talk about the risk and consequences. I point out that a saga that plays 1 season every week of real time passes only 12 years in one real year, and we would need to play for many years before your character had a significant risk of Final Twilight. I use NPCs to model the behavior I would like to see. I encourage players to do things that might give them Warping by bribing them with Confidence Points. Over time I get success, but some players will never change, and avoid Warping at all costs, and I just have to live with that.
I agree with you Arthur. My point is that Twilight, as is, doesn’t really make sense even in intensive sagas".
How does a saga with at least an adventure a year, called “Legacy, Faeries and Demons” that has both the Monster Hook twice, two faerie courts, and an Evil Seed from a past mystical catastrophe that sealed a powerful demon within the belly of a covenant? That’s my saga!
I’ve played with 8 players over the course of almost four years of weekly play, with stories involving foreign auras, using many pawns of vis, AND combat. I’m not pulling this out of a hat, this is my lived experience with the rules of this game that I do not think reflect what the canon says. If you have a magus, you’re supposed to be involved in stories. Otherwise what is the point of playing the game about wizards if you don’t use a wizard a cast spells?
The problem is that even the most audacious of sagas won’t even see many Twilight episodes and magi won’t die from Warping at all. I don’t care if you get to Warping Score 10, if you’ve not played the magus, what’s the point? The point is not that magi could reach it, it’s that they do reach it and in the grand scheme of things it does not matter at all. From a rules perspective it makes no sense, and from a play perspective it’s incredibly unfun.
While I respect this way of doing it, and I agree with the difference between a trigger-happy player and a hoarder of vis can be decisive, I have had both those kinds of players at my table, and it doesn’t matter because the rules don’t incentivise that, and dying of Warping is virtually impossible (which contradicts the lore) and entering Twilight is entirely avoidable, which makes it pointless to scare any player.
My broader point is that it should feel important. Manipulating magic should be a big deal for the magus, and it should have a risk, and RAW, it isn’t and it doesn’t. I can try to incentivise behavior with Confidence points, and I have done it over the years, but that is treating the symptom and not the sickness imho.
I've seen a saga where a Twilight was seen almost on the first story, and several sagas where no Twilight ever happened. Most, however, have a few along the years.
The rest is about probabilities. Nothing is ever certain with dice!
So... what are you looking for? Do you simply want to force more Twilight experiences in your saga?
Some further thoughts:
Botches can also occur outside of spellcasting. Certamen or Second Sight (or any other Supernatural ability) in a foreign aura can result in multiple botches.
It isn't so much that players are adverse to Warping (they are), but the fact that they are even more adverse to botching. Warping will eventually take magi out of the game (doesn't happen often), whereas botching can kill them quickly. An ill-timed botch in battle can be deadly.
If you just want to have more checks for Twilight, introduce an opponent (or creature) that uses the equivalent of The Enigma's Gift to inflict at least 2 Warping Points.
Considers what counts as "a single event" giving 2 or more Warping points. Does being the target of a Ball of Abysmal Flame count as "being affected by a powerful magical effect" in your saga? If such a spell or power (sixth magnitude or higher) is multi-cast against the magi, then they might accrue 2 or more warping points in a single round. I would certainly consider that "a single event".
My players are extremely averse to anything that might cause them Warping and would definitely protest at any changes intended to make Twilight more likely. Things like making casting the Aegis more likely to cause Warping would probably mean no Aegis.
However, there’s probably opportunity to incentivize behaviors that may cause Warping/Twilight by making them more attractive.
Increase the spellcasting bonus for using vis to +5.
Improve the xp gained from studying from vis so it’s an equal option even in sagas where the covenant has a decent library. Mitigating the disappointment of “I rolled a 2” would be a good start.
Encourage Original Research. Probably the best opportunity would be to have Lab Texts available that cover successful Discoveries to reduce the 30, 45, 60 Breakthrough points needed to get a benefit.
Temptations for things like a substantial bonus to a Longevity Ritual for high-age magi but at a cost of gaining 2 Warping points each year (maybe an opportunity to re-envision Amaranth from Sanctuary of Ice).
First, I was in a saga where our Twilight Prone Flambeau hardly ever went into Twilight. I decided to try Twilight Prone as a Bjornaer in our next game, and proceeded to go into multiple Twilights and have three times the warping score of the rest of the covenant. Personal luck enters a lot into it.
Second, last week I was in a game where our Guernicus deputised a few of us as hoplites and we go hunting for the rogue mage who has stolen a box which may or may not contain a faerie homunculus. The mage has set a magical trap which gives four warping points at penetration 40 to everyone in the room. Nearly all of us fall into Twilight, and the SG then runs a scene of us all having a shared Twilight experience. If you really want it to happen, it can happen.
First, let’s not be so quick to dismiss the warping gained from the longevity ritual. Many players don’t perceive Warping as something you slowly gain, but rather as a clock ticking down, and when it hits midnight you can’t play your character any more. The longevity ritual represents the steady accumulation of those ticks, but any other risk of warping is like putting your finger on the hands of the clock and making it spin faster.
But I wanted to share something from my own table. I had six players meeting with me every week around a table. I had a pretty good mix of people, but one of those players was 14 years old. Now, he wasn’t the most sophisticated player. He didn’t really care about the rules. I spent days using the rules for legendary Irish combat techniques to build cool moves for him straight out of Assassins Creed, and he never used a single one of them.
But you know what he didn’t care about? Warping. He was in a faerie aura and botched and of course the Twilight was instantaneous because he was young, but we decided his Twilight Scar was that his head was perpetually on fire and this kid loved it. This became his favorite character ever.
Games benefit from what I call a “door kicker,” a player whose number one priority is not being bored. These players keep the group from stagnating in endless conversations over the best way to skin a cat (PeAn 5). And then, as GMs, we need to show that behavior is not stupid or disastrous, but rather something to be encouraged.
I agree with you. Twilight is very rare. I’ve had a few memorable experiences with it. It’s never been a big part of the saga. But I work to make it happen more often by seeking players who will risk it, by encouraging risky behavior at the table, and by putting the magi in situations where it’s more likely to happen. It’s never going to be common. But when it happens, it’s memorable. And I’ll take that.
Our campaign (nearly 20 years) has had one Twilight episode and two near-misses, where a young Twilight Prone mage had to spend Cnf to avoid it. I would say that scenario makes Twilight relevant, even if it was avoided. And it influences our choices at other times too.
It does seem clear to me that magi vary wildly in how often they hit Twilight: according to their activities, their Virtues and Flaws, and (as Darkwing says) luck. The scars for written-up magi seem like a very rough-and-ready system, but it's probably good enough for NPCs.
Is it possible (if unintentional) that the NPC mages are mages as the world as written expects them to be, but PC Mages are less prone to Twilight because they’re players using PC Tactics?
To compare, if you run an apprentice from opening to gauntlet with the mindset of “I, as a real person in the real world, want to maximize the potential of this apprentice” they’re almost certainly going to wind up with way more cumulative XP, spells, and social access than the average apprentice with the standard XP allotment - because that apprentice is being guided by the hand of someone who can see their stats and knows what XP is, which doesn’t exist within the fictional world.
By the same token, do mages in the fictional world have a sense of how much XP they’ll gain from a book, or their exact Warping Points, or Decrepitude? Probably not - they just have a sense of “This book is quite good and instructive” and “Wow the magic’s really getting to me” and “Man. Time’s a goon.” So an NPC may not have the same capacity to avoid warping and Twilight that a PC does, because they’re not being guided by the hand of a quasi-omniscient higher being who want numbers go up. They don’t have the empirical knowledge of how close to new flaws/death/Final Twilight they are, only at best a vague sense, and thus perhaps are more willing to take chances, make mistakes, and get messy.
And honestly, good for them. Would that we could all be so bold.
It does mean that it’s hard to get a sense of if you’re “playing right” based on the stats of NPCs, since on a philosophic level they aren’t actually the same sort of thing as your player character.
So far, in the saga I am taking part (25 players, covering 24 years, medium level power), I saw two types of PC’s magi behaviour:
the one that plan for the very long game, delaying until they reach 50 before their first LP, planning to reach 150+ yrs old;
the one who don’t care that much, considering that reaching 100 is good enough, without planning to min-max their existence expectancy (use life expectancy might not be adequate wording).
Regarding lab, there is clearly two behaviours: those who will never or nearly never experiment, and those who always experiment because they stack virtues/flaws to min-max the risk/benefit aspect. Usually the latter one are the one going a lot for Original Research. They are therefore accruing warping on a regular basis.
Form my personal experience, I am probably suffering from small sample bias, but my character had very quickly a Twilight experience because of spontaneous casting (always stress die, remember ?). Before that, I was not bothering with low level spells considering that I could always spont’ them (you know, those InVi to detect aura, assess vis, etc…). But this traumatic experience made me re-evaluate the situation, and since I could easily invent two or three low-level spells within a season, I decide to do so.
Because warping is very random, it goes by spike. Years can pass without a single warping point or just one because of LP. Then, one wrong stress die while experimenting or spontaneous casting and you get 5-10 warping points. I feel the 2 points per years is a rather accurate way to simulate it, even if it can be 10 years without warping, then suddenly 15 points out of the blue.
It gave me a better appreciation of Cautious Sorcerer virtue for example, what I would consider a must have for any combat-oriented magi, casting several spells per round (with the proper Finesse score).
I am not playing regularly, but I've witnessed two twilight experiences in the last year or so. Both were due to magical combat in a foreign aura. Auras add botch dice and make it harder to avoid twilight. Magi with low warping scores (0 or 1) may choose not to resist Twilight, hoping to get through it more quickly, because spending two minutes trying to control it means the fight will be decided without you.
According to my calculations, every spell you cast in an aura of 5 has a ~1% chance of incurring 2 WP (if you do not use vis or have spell mastery or careless/cautious sorceror etc.) Of course players may invest to reduce the risk of twilight and choose not to undertake risky endeavours. If chars spend confidence on avoiding twilight, then they really don't want the experience. In that case you have to choose whether you want to change the rules to force it on them anyway. My take is that most NPC wizards are not optimized in the way that some players optimize their chars.
My players usually avoid warping, and Twilight, like plague. Not sure why, I never expressed a opinion one or another to them. But the only character who actively risked warping was a Merinita who was trying to increase his warping score to help pursuing a House mystery. And he still avoided Twilight because the time spent got in the way of his plans. Why experience a cool psychodrama when you could spend the time doing risky and unwise things in a newly discovered faerie regio?