I've been thinking about magic in Genesys a lot lately. Noodling beyond al dente on the subject. I think I've finally resolved how I am going to run magic, and I feel like the intent of the system proposes magic, and I gain that insight from the Gencon Genesys characters. Shoutout to Silverfox for the thread:

On 8/22/2017 at 2:58 PM, Silverfox13 said:

I scanned some character sheets that I had from the demo here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzFUyVoAj_JlQThGMUxpaWpzQm8/view?usp=sharing

I look at Leoric and look at his spells. He has actual spells like you'd expect to see in D&D. He doesn't just use Magic type: Attack he has " Arcane Spear " which is based on the Attack magic type of course. But he also has " Imbued Strike " a completely different spell, but still based on the Magic Type: Attack.

The posts I've seen around about how to make magic feel more like other RPGs, I feel, is to follow this path.

My proposal: make individual spells, with their own flavor and trappings, stealing trappings from Savage Worlds, of course. With this kind of customization you can determine, on a spell by spell basis what spells are available to which skills, not only that but you can restrict which additional effects may be available to specific spells, don't think a "Fireball" should be able to add the Ice Effect? No problem! Maybe Fireball doesn't get additional effects, it's just an attack with blast and deadly. Adding limitations like this could be a good reason to reduce the difficulty of the action by 1 difficulty, without changing the strain cost. Another complaint I've seen around is that it doesn't make 100% sense that heal is only a divine or primal magic type. What about a spell like 'Life Drain' that is traditionally an arcane spell that damages a target, but also heals the caster? It might look something like:

Quote

Life Drain

Concentration: No

Skills: Arcana

Magic Action: Attack, Heal

Additional Effects: Close Combat

The caster makes a magic attack against one target at short range or engaged. The difficulty of this magic attack is Average (2 Purples)*. The attack deals necromantic damage equal to the caster's Intellect (because it's Arcana only) , plus 1 damage per uncanceled Success. The attack has no set Critical rating, so you may only inflict a Critical Injury with a Triumph. The caster may spend 1 uncancelled Advantage per wound, to heal a wound up to the amount of damage dealt.

*Note: I know the actual difficulty in the base rules system is 3 purples (Attack is 1, Heal is 1, and Close combat is 1), but I am using this as an example of a reason to reduce the difficulty of a spell when you add limitations.

Also, imposing a limit to how many spells a character can learn, may also help those who feel like the magic system is far too broad and open, like myself. Perhaps a limit like 'Spellcasters learn spells equal their Magic Skill rank.' That way they learn new spells when they gain a Skill Rank. Or 'Spellcasters learn spells equal to their Characteristic linked to their magic skill' so they'll probably learn more spells sooner, but then only gain more spells when their characteristic goes up. I'll also probably make a Talent like: Learn Spell. And even with the talent a caster at most will only learn 10 spells total, making casters pick and choose the spells they really want.

Quote

Learn Spell

Tier 1

Ranked

For each rank of this talent you may learn a new Spell of your choice available to your Magic Skill.

This can help differentiate between spells, that way Telekinesis, Transmutation, and Detect Magic aren't all a single Utility spell roll, and feel like distinct spells.

Overall I am pretty confident about this sort of limited spell based magic system from a roleplaying point of view as well as the intention of the Genesys magic design. But what do you think?

I think the spells from GenCon were essentially a short-hand to provide spellcasters with options without having to go into the details of the spell system. If FFG would have had to include the full range of casting options from the corebook, it would have bogged down play considerably and required lots of explanations. The way to provide defined spells helped to ease play, nothing else. I don't think it's an indication about how the default magic system should work.

Also, the limited "Vancian spell system" is a conceit of D&D to express how magic works and was basically designed back in the 1970ies and now everyone thinks magic has to work that way in a fantasy game. Even other fantasy games have shyed away from free-form magic and limited spells to single bits of rules. The only free-form magic systems I know of (before Genesys) are Ars Magica, Mage, and to a certain extent Witchcraft and Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of (spells there work almost like spells in Genesys). I think the free-form magic we are getting in Genesys is pretty impressive, and I am kind of disappointed that a lot of reactions seems to be: let's put spell limitations back into the system.

Genesys actuall offers various ways to deal with magic beyond the basic skills:

* Require in-game events/discoveries to raise the magic skill

* Change the default magic skills to new skills containing different arrangements of the existing spells.

* Add talents into the mix (something that is really lacking in the corebook, but could be explained with space and/or time constraints)

* Add new spells (something done in this very forum)

All these change will keep the basic system from the core.

Because what would you accomplish with limiting the magic skills?

* Help players to play a magic user without being overwhelmed by choice? (Cool, but that can be accomplished by helping them design a couple of effects before the game starts)

* Prevent the GM having to deal with a system that might be abused? (Not so cool in my opinion. The system already tells you that using magic to accomplish something should be more difficult than a mundane skill, magic costs strain, the magic threat and despair spends are more severe than the normal suggestions).

Last but not least: As opposed to the Vancian systems, using magic requires a roll. Thus, no free lunch. The spell might misfire or have unintened side effects. Also, you always get strain as a caster. Thus, your arsenal is limited.

I guess what I am trying to say is that Genesys re-thinks magic to fit a narrative and more free-form system.

7 minutes ago, JohnChildermass said:

I think the spells from GenCon were essentially a short-hand to provide spellcasters with options without having to go into the details of the spell system. If FFG would have had to include the full range of casting options from the corebook, it would have bogged down play considerably and required lots of explanations. The way to provide defined spells helped to ease play, nothing else. I don't think it's an indication about how the default magic system should work.

Then why were there two Attack based spell and a Barrier spell, with Additional Effects tables provided? Why not just add one attack spell with the additional effects table?

8 minutes ago, JohnChildermass said:

The only free-form magic systems I know of (before Genesys) are Ars Magica, Mage, and to a certain extent Witchcraft and Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of (spells there work almost like spells in Genesys). I think the free-form magic we are getting in Genesys is pretty impressive, and I am kind of disappointed that a lot of reactions seems to be: let's put spell limitations back into the system.

You must not be very familiar with many systems then. Especially more free form or universal systems: Fate, Savage Worlds, GURPS, BRP, Cortex, and just about every Supers game I've ever played all had free-form magic systems. My group is coming primarily from Fate Core. Where we're used to simply rolling a magic skill and defining what narrating what happens based on the roll, without any further structure.

Limitations are a flavor of life that many people enjoy. If you've ever played on God mode in a video game you'd know the feeling of being able to do anything at all times. It gets boring. And I know my players, if there are no limitations the whole campaign just becomes about "I cast the attack spell, I'll add blast" then next round "I cast the attack spell, I'll add range" then next round "I cast the attack spell, I'll add impact". Because that's the sort of gamers my friends are. So if I adjudicate the magic system to be something a little more limited, something more in line with the Genesys Gencon mage character spells (seriously, that character has two magic attack spells clearly defined based on the magic attack action with additional effects table available), then my players will use it to narrate what their doing instead of just repeating that they are using the attack spell every round with various modifiers. Or my friends will argue "I narrated that my magic attack spell is a fire spell, it should catch things on fire." even if they didn't add the fire descriptor to the spell, and narratively it should catch things on fire even without the extra difficulty, because we are more used to full narrative systems like Fate Core where if you say a magic attack is fire based then it catches something on fire.

16 minutes ago, JohnChildermass said:

* Change the default magic skills to new skills containing different arrangements of the existing spells.

Yes, I suggested that in the original post. See the life drain spell example.

17 minutes ago, JohnChildermass said:

* Add talents into the mix (something that is really lacking in the corebook, but could be explained with space and/or time constraints)

Yes, I suggested that in the original post. See the New Spell Talent example.

17 minutes ago, JohnChildermass said:

* Add new spells (something done in this very forum)

Yes, I suggested that in the original post. See the Life Drain spell example again.

18 minutes ago, JohnChildermass said:

Because what would you accomplish with limiting the magic skills?

I very clearly explained why.

19 minutes ago, JohnChildermass said:

* Help players to play a magic user without being overwhelmed by choice? (Cool, but that can be accomplished by helping them design a couple of effects before the game starts)

Yes, this is what I clearly explained the purpose of my entire post was.

19 minutes ago, JohnChildermass said:

* Prevent the GM having to deal with a system that might be abused? (Not so cool in my opinion. The system already tells you that using magic to accomplish something should be more difficult than a mundane skill, magic costs strain, the magic threat and despair spends are more severe than the normal suggestions).

The only abuse I am trying to "deal" with is my players using magic to solve every problem, because even if they have more dice to roll for a higher difficulty. I guarantee that my friends will definitely try to take the shorter even if it's more difficult path by using magic to solve literally everything.

22 minutes ago, JohnChildermass said:

Last but not least: As opposed to the Vancian systems, using magic requires a roll. Thus, no free lunch. The spell might misfire or have unintened side effects. Also, you always get strain as a caster. Thus, your arsenal is limited.

You're the only one here talking about Vancian magic systems. I didn't suggest that. I used D&D as an example of the type and scope of spells I'm going to make for my campaign. I never said anything about Vancian magic systems, and at this point I'm not even sure you read my post fully, or understand exactly the details of a Vancian magic system. I never said anything about magic not requiring a roll in Genesys. I enjoy skill roll magic systems. I've used them a lot, like for years and years. I don't think you understood what I was saying, instead decided to come at me like some white knight in defense of the all mighty Genesys magic system, which for a toolkit is very poorly explained (as in they don't bother explaining that you still need to use advantage to trigger additional effects even if you buy them with increased difficulty, but I digress), because 'Vancian magic bad!' And half of your "advice" are things I already suggested in the original post, which you obviously didn't read and/or understand. Thanks for your input.

Sorry that you somehow feel attacked that was not my intent.

Personally I agree with the idea of limiting the spells to more specific versions of the parent power. That said, I'd provide for a lot more spell knowledge depending on the setting.

I'm thinking Spells Known should be based on a combination of the magic knowledge skill (Lore on the GenCon sheet) and the governing Characteristic. So a Wizard might know [INT Rating + LORE Ranks] spells. If you really have a lot of spells in the system maybe Double that. Obviously this could be tweaked for different styles of casters such as differentiating a Wizard from a Sorcerer (to use D&D terms). [EDIT] For sorcerer I might go with the more true freeform, but limited to Lore in Base Powers.

Perhaps you could make it so you know INT in base spells powers (Attack, etc.) and LORE ranks in specific "spells" from that base power. You could also make each Base Power type its own casting skill and then you know Lore in "spells" from that power. (As I see Magic skill as your pure ability to draw in and form the magic (aka casting) and the Lore skill as your general knowledge of the magic.)

I'd create the spells so that their difficulty denoted their rank. So an Average spell requires 2 Ranks in the spellcasting skill. Create talents that allow you to reduce difficulties in certain conditions or on certain spells so you can technically cast spells higher than Difficulty 5. For instance add spellcasting characteristic to skill rank to determine maximum difficulties castable.

As an example, take Harry Dresden or Harry Potter. Both of their spells are specific lists of specific effects. For instance Dresden doesn't have the Attack spell that he mods on the fly to do whatever he wants. Instead he has spells like Fuego, Flammamurus, Forzare, etc. However, with Dresden he has a LOT of known spells. The equivalent from Potterverse would be Hermione who also has a walking encyclopedic knowledge of spells. Harry not so much, but he can out cast her in pure power (aka Casting vs Lore).

Anyway, just a few thoughts off the top of my head.

Harry Dresden doesn‘t have „spells“ per se. He uses words to focus his magic. And as a convenient short-hand in the novels to indicate what he is doing without repetitive descriptions.

When Harry Dresden uses ritual magic, he can basically do anything given enough time.

That‘s modeled rather perfectly in Dresden Files Accelerated. There you are also not limited to certain spells.

I definitely prefer the open version to encourage players to be more creative. Sure they can make up spells as a way of doing old favorites that we already agreed on the roll. To do anything less in my opinion I might as well play D&D.

3 hours ago, Khaalis said:

Personally I agree with the idea of limiting the spells to more specific versions of the parent power. That said, I'd provide for a lot more spell knowledge depending on the setting.

I'm thinking Spells Known should be based on a combination of the magic knowledge skill (Lore on the GenCon sheet) and the governing Characteristic. So a Wizard might know [INT Rating + LORE Ranks] spells. If you really have a lot of spells in the system maybe Double that. Obviously this could be tweaked for different styles of casters such as differentiating a Wizard from a Sorcerer (to use D&D terms). [EDIT] For sorcerer I might go with the more true freeform, but limited to Lore in Base Powers.

Perhaps you could make it so you know INT in base spells powers (Attack, etc.) and LORE ranks in specific "spells" from that base power. You could also make each Base Power type its own casting skill and then you know Lore in "spells" from that power. (As I see Magic skill as your pure ability to draw in and form the magic (aka casting) and the Lore skill as your general knowledge of the magic.)

I'd create the spells so that their difficulty denoted their rank. So an Average spell requires 2 Ranks in the spellcasting skill. Create talents that allow you to reduce difficulties in certain conditions or on certain spells so you can technically cast spells higher than Difficulty 5. For instance add spellcasting characteristic to skill rank to determine maximum difficulties castable.

As an example, take Harry Dresden or Harry Potter. Both of their spells are specific lists of specific effects. For instance Dresden doesn't have the Attack spell that he mods on the fly to do whatever he wants. Instead he has spells like Fuego, Flammamurus, Forzare, etc. However, with Dresden he has a LOT of known spells. The equivalent from Potterverse would be Hermione who also has a walking encyclopedic knowledge of spells. Harry not so much, but he can out cast her in pure power (aka Casting vs Lore).

Anyway, just a few thoughts off the top of my head.

I like the idea of splitting spell power ranks, from spell knowledge. This fits with a lot of other rpgs in their spellcasting, like World of Darkness, or Shadowrun. I probably won't use a subsystem of spell ranks equalling difficulty determining which spells someone can and can't cast based on their magic casting ability. Although I can envision settings that would benefit from such a system.

Reminds me of a magic mod posted recently:

On 1/4/2018 at 11:08 AM, Darian Ocana said:

I created this magical skill progression mod for the Genesys core magic rules because I felt that the power progression for spellcasters was too simple. The core idea of this mod is: “Knowledge is Power”. All magical powers are derived from the study of the Spellcaster’s Magic. This provides the spellcaster with points to distribute among the disciplines that are available for the type of Magic the caster is involved in.

Anyway, I hope some of you find this useful. Comments / Criticism is welcome

Knowledge is Power.pdf

The only problem with that system is that the points for schools is based on the primary casting stat every time the character raises the skill, meaning the player needs to use all their starting bonus xp to max their casting stat out or the setback compounds every skill rank.

The Knowledge is power system isn't bad, but the inexplicable idea that you can't backfill the ranks represented by a characteristic boost creates the problem that Doomgrin75 mentions. You basically need to start with a 4 in your primary stat or it's barely worth playing a caster, 5 if you can somehow find the points. Because otherwise you don't get as many ranks as the person who put all their XP eggs in one basket, and nothing you do thereafter will get you there.

For that matter, I never understood why boosting Brawn doesn't increase both wounds and soak, but I digress.

FWIW, I was thinking of using a hybrid system...

There are both "fixed" spells and "free form" spells. Fixed spells have a limited effect and cannot be modified, but can be cast at one difficultly less than a similar free-form spell. Free form spells work as per the book. A spell caster can memorize some number of fixed spells per day based on skill and/or stat. The caster would have a spell book and would have to find or research spells to add to it, hopefully providing additional motivations to adventure.

Using this system, "Magic Missile" would be an attack spell with a medium range that does 1 wound for each success. It is cast at easy difficulty and costs two strain. And that's it. The spell caster cannot increase the range or add effects or additional targets, but they can spend advantage in normal ways. If they wanted to free form an attack spell that included burn, they would have to free form cast it and it would have normal (i.e., rules as written) difficulty.

1 hour ago, Dragonshadow said:

The Knowledge is power system isn't bad, but the inexplicable idea that you can't backfill the ranks represented by a characteristic boost creates the problem that Doomgrin75 mentions. You basically need to start with a 4 in your primary stat or it's barely worth playing a caster, 5 if you can somehow find the points. Because otherwise you don't get as many ranks as the person who put all their XP eggs in one basket, and nothing you do thereafter will get you there.

For that matter, I never understood why boosting Brawn doesn't increase both wounds and soak, but I digress.

From this discussion I just decided to implement a similar system, but the school ranks are equal to knowledge squared in total, so 1 at 1, 3 more for total of 4 at 2, 5 more for total of 9 at 3, etc

Works well for what I had in mind before: each rank gives you access to one school + utility. With the points I just listed, you could get the same or you could chose to spread yourself out some.

Without wanting to disparage people too much - if you're creating fixed spells for your campaign (and you missed the point, which @JohnChildermass already covered above, about why the GenCon pregens had them) then you're probably missing the point of Genesys and just making your game experience more rigid and presciptive. And, as a result, less fun.

The consistent griping about magic strikes me as the result of one thing only, and it's not playing the system and feeling it doesn't deliver. It's opening the book and wanting a list of spells laid out just like D&D and in not seeing it, concluding it's a defect. If you or your players can't see how innately superior the Genesys approach is to d20, then I'm not sure what to tell you other than maybe stick to d20 because you'll just keep hitting snags where the NDS isn't d20 and you want to make it so.

If GB Shaw were a roleplayer, he'd probably have said: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the game system; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the game system to himself. Therefore all progress in Genesys depends on the unreasonable man."

17 minutes ago, Endersai said:

Without wanting to disparage people too much - if you're creating fixed spells for your campaign (and you missed the point, which @JohnChildermass already covered above, about why the GenCon pregens had them) then you're probably missing the point of Genesys and just making your game experience more rigid and presciptive. And, as a result, less fun.

The consistent griping about magic strikes me as the result of one thing only, and it's not playing the system and feeling it doesn't deliver. It's opening the book and wanting a list of spells laid out just like D&D and in not seeing it, concluding it's a defect. If you or your players can't see how innately superior the Genesys approach is to d20, then I'm not sure what to tell you other than maybe stick to d20 because you'll just keep hitting snags where the NDS isn't d20 and you want to make it so.

If GB Shaw were a roleplayer, he'd probably have said: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the game system; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the game system to himself. Therefore all progress in Genesys depends on the unreasonable man."

I would say the happy man manages to adapt himself to the heart of the system and is able in making it their own!

2 hours ago, Endersai said:

If GB Shaw were a roleplayer, he'd probably have said: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the game system; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the game system to himself. Therefore all progress in Genesys depends on the unreasonable man."

the first rule in roleplaying is "have fun", if you dont have fun with the rules "change them".

1 hour ago, Terefang said:

the first rule in roleplaying is "have fun", if you dont have fun with the rules change them.

Here Here! Contrary to the initial post that triggered this, there is NO one way to do magic. Genesys is NOT a RAW ONLY system, it's a TOOLBOX. If the magic system doesn't work for some of our needs for magic, don't tell us we're wrong and to suck up using the system RAW. Personally I feel that the magic system is an EXAMPLE and Starting Point. I'm absolutely certain that when setting books come out, magic will be modeled differently to fit those settings.

Saying magic by RAW only is limiting. Might work for you but not for all of us, and the "Us" percentage is pretty high. You may as well,say that the rules int the Supers section is all you ever need to run a supers game, which as we all know it is not. It's some basic theory on where to start for such a setting

Actually I had a question along the same vein. More actually to the point of how do you guys differentiate different magic schools. Like if I wanted a world where you got magic from different places and each one gave you access to a different kind of magic (just to go off the sample character sheet) such as arcane gaining magic from training and knowledge. Or Divine gaining magic through some sort of diety, or even Primal gaining magic innately through nature. How would you guys make these different? would it just be flavor difference and different skills that use them but functionally work the same??? that seems kind of boring to be honest. So what do you guys think would be appropriate? do you think maybe having most magic actions all 3 have access to, but have one of the magic actions be linked specifically to one of those 3 magic school skills.

i also love that one:

Quote

Kirk became the first and only student at Starfleet Academy to defeat the Kobayashi Maru test, garnering a commendation for original thinking for reprogramming the computer to make the "no-win scenario" winnable.

18 minutes ago, tunewalker said:

Actually I had a question along the same vein. More actually to the point of how do you guys differentiate different magic schools.

Depends on how much work you want to put into it. At the most basic level, you could simply reserve certain additional effects to specific schools.

More complex (and what I think this thread is largely about) would be to take the generic magic powers and effects in the book and create spell lists out of them. The PCs then are interfacing with the magic system through defined spells rather than generic powers. This allows for the gm to limit the power of magic, while making it look like there is more variety. This option could also provide more options for rewarding characters by providing access to new spells

Getting even more involved would be to actually alter the mechanics of magic in some way. Check out the ritual magic thread. Sorcerers might use the super flexible magic system as written, while hedge wizards learn from rote spells, cultists use a ritual magic system, and evil necromancers pay the strain cost of powerful effects by sacrificing living creatures.

You do want to be clear in your head whether or not such distinctions are inherent (ritual magic is a totally different ability to wizardry, with no cross over at all) or if they represent different approaches to manipulating the same force (a mage who powers spells through sacrifices CAN cast them in the “default” manner, they just don’t normally see a reason to do so).

One one thing I’ve been kicking around for a long time now is the idea of magic tech levels. Most of my formative role-playing was done back in the day with GURPS, which divided equipment up into tech levels as a tool to help GMs balance multi genre games. For a while now I have thought there should be a similar system in place to help define the development of magical skills over time. So, in our current discussion, societies that have only a slight understanding of magic might only be able to use spells from pre defined spell lists, representing rote actions that have specific effects, it they don’t know why it works. As the society discovers more about magic, they can start doing more flexible ritual magic. It takes longer because they still aren’t sure what is required and what is extraneous, but they can at least modify effects to add burning or vicious or what not. Even more magically sophisticated societies may have discovered core principles and can quickly produce a variety of effects as written in the book. With even more experimentation, they start learning how to enhance magic with various implements.

Basically, there are a lot of options, and it depends on what you want and how much work you want to put into it.

3 minutes ago, tunewalker said:

Like if I wanted a world where you got magic from different places and each one gave you access to a different kind of magic ... How would you guys make these different? would it just be flavor difference and different skills that use them but functionally work the same??? that seems kind of boring to be honest.

example would be Atlantis/The Second Age which features a magic system not unlike Genesys,

• where each Tradition (Animism, Dark Arts, Sorcery, Witchcraft, ...) has mechanically access to
• different Modes (ie. Genesys Spells, eg. Attack, Illusion, Influence, Kinetic, Manifest, Manipulate, Sensory, Shield, Summoning )
• but at various grades of difficulty

and special narratives have to be followed for each Tradition

Quote

Diabolist (Dark Arts):

Asha Khum, a necromancer of Acheron, is displeased with a servant who has failed him.

(Asha Khum wants to burst the servant’s heart with an attack spell)

Asha calls the name of his demon, and the diabolic entity shambles forth from the shadows
behind him. Asha commands that the heart of the man be brought to him. Before he can finish his
request, the demon is upon the man, savaging him with its gibbering mouths and gnarled fingers.

(Asha does 15 points of damage to the man, killing him)

The demon rips the beating heart from the servant’s chest, and throws it at the feet of its master.

vs.

Quote

Witch:

The Lemurian Chaska, a wandering witch-woman of Tamoanchan, poles through one of
the swamps in a low, dugout canoe. She spies some local tribesmen on the shore, but they are
Nethermen. Seeing that they have bows, she calls to the spirits, chanting to herself. Finally, she
drives a bone needle into the palm of her hand. As her blood wells, red and rich, she makes a fist
around it.

(Chaska wants to cast a protective spell to shield herself from the arrows.)

Her canoe sails past the Nethermen tribesmen, and their arrows seem to halt just above her skin
before falling harmlessly into the canoe.

50 minutes ago, Terefang said:

i also love that one:

50 minutes ago, Terefang said:

Kirk became the first and only student at Starfleet Academy to defeat the Kobayashi Maru test, garnering a commendation for original thinking for reprogramming the computer to make the "no-win scenario" winnable.

Um.... what did I miss? What does Star Trek have to do with magic systems in genesys?

1 minute ago, Forgottenlore said:

Um.... what did I miss? What does Star Trek have to do with magic systems in genesys?

ie. changing the rules by which you play

7 minutes ago, Forgottenlore said:

Basically, there are a lot of options, and it depends on what you want and how much work you want to put into it.

hmm ... remembers me of the laws of magick (or canon) from "Dangerous Journeys/Mythus".

• for magic spells following various magic laws made spellcasting easier
• for divine spells invoking more and more canonical holy entities made spellcasting easier

but you rarely free-cast'd because you had too many (optimized) spells to choose from

Yeah but you're changing the rules because prima facie they're not D&D. At no point am I seeing evidence people playing the RAW; it's just "well I can't see a list of spells, or a DC chart, or you know what was great? THAC0. I'll add that too, because Genesys is a toolkit. And maybe one day I'll actually play Genesys and find out."

Like, the high horse on this "change the rules" stuff has a slight setback in its name is Rocinante. And if Kirk turned up to the simulation expecting a game of Call of Medal of Battlefield and then changed the rules to make it like a first person shooter then he'd be analogous.

16 hours ago, Endersai said:

hanging the rules because prima facie they're not D&D.

Dont be bothered by this. D20 players are used to having everything predefined for them and narrowly focused due to the poor way these systems maintain internal balance. I won't play D&D but I am changing the magic system for my campaign. Not because its not like another magic system, but because I want the magic system to have a certain flavor that the simplified Genesys magic system doesnt quite capture. If I thought my setting should have a Vancian magic system then I would move towards implementing that, not because it would be like ol' DND but because I wanted that flavor of magic. You can't just make people free and expect them to act free, in their sudden freedom they will simply be lost. All you can do is open the door to their prison and let them discover what is actual freedom is on their own.