Hi all.

This could have been a blog post... if I had a blog, so i apologise for the length. Please provide feedback or new ideas if you can be bothered slogging through it all.

I have a deep love for The Wheel of Time series, waiting patiently for each new book was bigger for me than any of those simpleton Harry Potter or Ice and Fire books... Robert Jordan’s death was as bad for me as any Hollywood actors. So developing a Genesys Setting, even one that I don’t even play, is on my to do list.

I started working on this a while ago, trying to nut out how it would all work... and it’s bloody complicated!

Fitst off, the time period. To simplify things a little I decided to set the game during the later books, Saidin is cleansed, vast armies march across the lands, the White Tower has discovered their darkfriend infiltration, the Black Tower is a ruthless military training centre with unknown allegiance. Mostly this decision is to remove the need to have a complex insanity mechanic, but also so that the Weaves known to the world are more complex. Discovery of new weaves is common, males and females are also more likely to work together. I expect many players to want to play a character with access to the one power, but not everyone, these are important and powerful characters but not replacements for the main heroes.

Basically everything is based upon the Fantasy setting, except weaving the one power. So how does forming a weave work? How do the five elements come into it? How does individuals strength in the one power come in? What about each individuals particular talent?

Weaving Skills, my thinking is that each element of the one power should be it’s own skill, making for 5 magic skills; Fire, Earth, Air, Water, and Spirit.

I could theoretically make each weave individually, but I would much prefer to keep the open spell system from Genesys core. I think it allows more experimentation and discovery which fits the particular time in the setting.

So each Weave instead is given an element, or selection of elements, that can be used to form it. Attack for instance could be “Fire, Earth, Air, Water” and any one of those skills can be used to weave an attack. Then each additional effect is also given an element or selection of, some may even require multiple elements together. So for example “Blast” could require “Fire+Earth”.

The normal Difficulty increases are still added, but in addition a version of the “two weapon combat” rules are used. Each element beyond one increases the difficulty of the check , so if you want to Attack (F/E/A/W) and add the Burn (Fire+Air) effect then you need to use at least Fire and Air. If you only have training in Water then the base spell will be using that skill, bringing the total up to three elements. With a base difficulty of 1, the increase of 1 from Burn and then the other 2 increases from the 2 additional elements, a total difficulty of 4 means you will be hard pressed to form the weave.

But talents can mitigate that increase for specific circumstances. As an example a Yellow Aes Sedai may learn two ranks of a talent called Gifted Healer that allows them to use Water and Air, in addition to the base Weaves Spirit, on a Healing Weave without increasing the difficulty.

But one thing I’m yet to work out is why you would train more than one skill. Perhaps the skill is always determined by the base weave, and each spell is very limited in element options for the base. In this way if you want more than a small number of Weaves available then you need a broader selection of skills. It may be that the entire system falls apart there and only having one casting skill with talents for each element is a better idea.

I expect there will need to be a few new additional effects added too, balefire as an example. And some spells will need modification, Healing typically has a cost associated in taking energy from the healed person so the base weave should reduce the targets Strain, with an additional effect that ignores the Strain cost.

Next on the list of things to deal with is the difference between Male and Female. I feel Females have to be calm and in control when Weaving, the Characteristic they use should reflect this, so Presence but also Intellect makes sense. Men on the other hand have to fight to control the one power, Willpower seems appropriate for that.

Then there’s the cost of casting, I have been thinking of reducing the cost to Weave to 1 Strain, but adding additional requirements based on the training a character has. Females would require a Prepare manoeuvre before any weave that they haven’t got significant experience in (represented by a talent). Males would require an additional 2 Strain, again with a talent to mitigate it. The Utility Weave would require no Strain at all.

Here is the limited list of talents I have in mind, as well as a very rudimentary look at applying Elements to the core book spells.

Talents:

Educated (Element):

Ranked: Yes

Tier: 3

Effect: Add (Element) Skill as career skill. Each rank choose another Element.

Practiced Saidar Weaves (Element):

Ranked: Yes

Tier: 2

Effect: Remove Prepare for Spells using (Element) Skill for the Base Spell. Each rank choose another element.

Affinity (Weave), (Element):

Ranked: Yes

Tier 3

Effect:

May add effects requiring (Element) to (Weave) without increasing the difficulty. Each rank choose another Element. May take the base talent multiple times. There should be a separate talent for each Weave.

Practiced Saidin Weaves (Element):

Ranked: Yes

Tier: 2

Effect: Reduce strain for each spell cast using the (Element) Skill by 2. Each rank choose another element.

Weaves:

Attack base: Fire, Water, Air, Earth

Blast: Fire+Earth

Close Combat: Fire, Earth,

Deadly: Fire+Spirit, Air, Spirit

Burn: Fire+Air

Anti darkfriend: Spirit

Ensnare: Water+Air, Earth

Impact: Earth, Water

Stun(Knowledge) + Autofire (only with additional increased difficulty): Air+Earth, Spirit

Manipulative: Air, Water

Non-Lethal: Spirit

Range: Any

Destructive: Any two + Spirit

Empowered: Any 3 Elements

Poisonous: Water+Spirit, Water+Earth

Edit: apologies for the text size, I’ll fix it on a desktop later on

Great start. I was also interested in making WoT for Genesys.

I might be jumping ahead a bit but what are your thoughts on being stilled/gentled?

First thought is a separate crit table for channeling. That way there is risk of losing your connection to one power if you over exert yourself.

As for madness, I don't think it needs to be that complicated. We can add (yet another) crit table to keep track of madness.

Very cool seeing someone working on WoT.

I'm not quite sure if each element should get their own skill. This becomes a huge experience drain for those who wan't to play Aes Sedai/Asha'man characters. A cheaper way of doing this could be to have two skills, Weaving and Knowledge (One Power) , where the Weaving skill represent how good you are at weaving elements together and is what you use for magic skill checks, while Knowledge (One Power) could represent your understanding of the different elements and you unlock one element for each rank in the skill (while also counting as the Knowledge skill referred to in the magic effects).

I like the increased difficulty of mixing elements.

Regarding gender differences, I feel that in both cases the One Power tests your Willpower and wouldn't link them to different characteristics. From the books as far as I remember men are better at raw destructive weaves and are better at doing things in the heat of the moment as well as having a higher capacity for raw power, while women need to be cool when performing weaves, potentially allowing them to create more complicated weaves. Hmm, at the moment I don't have a good idea for another way of doing this, but different characteristics feels a bit off for me.

And as for the mana cost, why not just use the RAW, 2 strain for each magic test (utility may very well be free) and see how it goes? Strain is already a precious resource, with people usually having around 12-15 strain, so having men have a cost of 4 is very harsh, and also an exp sink if you need to buy a talent only to get the cost down to RAW.

You sir are a madman! WoT was one of those series that blew my mind in it’s scope.

Have you ever read the WotC d20 version? You inspired me to blow the dust off of mine! Could help with ideas.

They broke things up into “schools”. Cloud Dancing, Conjunction, Earth Singing, Elementalism, Healing, Illusion, Traveling, and Warding.

I’ll have to mine this for ideas to share.

Thanks for the input guys

@Morridini I think I’m with you on the skill front, 5 is too many without enough benefits for each.

One thing I desperately want to emulate is that almost no one can weave all 5 elements simultaneously and regularly, basically it’s only Rand, Nynaeve and some of the Forsaken. Anyone else who can weave all five elements can only do it for a very specific weave. So having the knowledge skill unlock use of each element seems a little too easy.

I’m hopeful the final system is hard to learn, ie xp expensive, hard to get right, ie high difficulty on checks in all but your most proficient areas, but easy to keep doing, ie low strain cost to user upon casting.

Men are typically more proficient in Earth/Fire while women are typically more proficient in Water/Air. Realistically though for game purposes that’s just player choice, there are men proficient in Water/Air and women proficient in Fire/earth. Just so long as being good at all 5 is incredibly difficult it shouldn’t matter.

@ESP77 I do have the d20 book, somewhere, it’s an ok system but was written before it was even known that Saidin would be cleansed, so it has severe consequences for males who can channel both being hunted as dangerous and also going insane.

The way the Weaves are divided up could be a great way to segregate the Weaves in this. Create a single basic weave for each school then have a list of additional effects for each school. Talent ranks in your school could be the way of unlocking more element effects in that schools weave. Weaving outside your school is then harder, and unlocking a new school is very difficult with a T3 or T4 talent.

3 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

Thanks for the input guys

@Morridini I think I’m with you on the skill front, 5 is too many without enough benefits for each.

One thing I desperately want to emulate is that almost no one can weave all 5 elements simultaneously and regularly, basically it’s only Rand, Nynaeve and some of the Forsaken. Anyone else who can weave all five elements can only do it for a very specific weave. So having the knowledge skill unlock use of each element seems a little too easy.

While it does sound easy to "just buy 5 skills in Knowledge (One Power)" to unlock all elements, you'd still need to spend exp on the Weaving skill to be able to cast any complex combinations due to the increased difficulty system you have set up, so just having access to all 5 elements (which all channelers do to some degree) isn't that noteworthy, it is having access to all AND being able to cast them in combination. Aslo regarding it being easy to gain, it would still set the player characters back 100 exp to get all 5 elements, and that's not counting any skills to Weaving to actually use them. But this is just my two cents, I'm interested in seeing where you go with this.

Most male channelers would still be at least a little insane. Cleansing Saidin didn’t undo the damage done.

Perhaps that could be covered in the Strength/Flaw system.

I wonder if the Threat/Despair chart could have some unique effects for males and females.

Another task on my list is how to handle circles of channellers, beyond the usual assist that there is I wonder if there’s some other things that could happen. The Weaves of a Linked woman and man should be really awesome, but when you have a group of 5 pc’s all linked what happens? 2 Despair and a Forsaken appears!

There’s also the drawing in more Saidar/ Saidin. Maybe upgrading difficulty dice to gain more powerful effects but at the risk of Despair causing Stilling.

Stilling definitely sounds like a 2 Despair effect. Although there could be a new Crit chart for channellers, the “Over Channelling Chart”. You automatically roll on it when you exceed your Strain Threshold while channeling or when you roll a Despair on the weave. 150+ is Stilled

Then there can be a system that if you want to deliberately over channel you can choose to make a roll on the OC chart to gain an automatic success to the check, adding multiple success add +10 for each additional success to the roll.

The negative effects could be all sorts, from Strain to significant strain or Wounds and even Critical injuries setbacks, upgrades, leaving obvious signs of your weave, etc.

Perhaps the limit to 5 Difficulty could be removed too, then you can really try some crazy stuff, but most importantly it can help the Circle mechanic.

Each member of a circle could add 1 Ability dice to the pool too instead of the Boost of a usual Assist. Their training has no effect on how successful the weave is. It’s not perfect as the strength of each individual should impact how much they contribute but dice pool bloat could get out of hand.

Any negative effects of the Weave should impact everyone in the circle too, everyone suffers Strain,

A brief update. I dug out my old WoT rpg, published by WotC some 15 years ago (wow I had forgotten how much I hate that d20 system). Reading it is inspiring, but perhaps not as helpful as I had hoped.

My main task lately has been nailing down the archetypes based on place of birth, and I’m struggling to identify obvious differences between each of the major regions. Skills and special abilities are not terribly difficult, it’s the characteristics, and I’m tempted to just make everyone human with the normal ability removed and a bunch of “sub species” that grants various skill/ability/WT/ST combinations.

Careers is fun, I think I’m going all WFRP though with far too many of them. I’m considering an additional choice that players make with their career, a list of 4 unique abilities of which the player can choose one to give a little more flavour to each character.

As for Weaves, after a lot of shower thoughts I think I’m going to change the skills to be focused on different areas of talent; Healing, elementalisum, conjuring, etc. Spells will be similar to the core (and possibly Terrinoth) spells. Some, like Attack, will be available to more than one Skill with lots of restricted additional effects. The five elements will come in through a tiered talent, starting at t3 so that having skill with all five becomes incredibly difficult.

The characteristic used will probably be dependent on the skill, although I feel Male/Female and Trained/Wilder should have differences in their skill/characteristic combinations.

Just a thought on Sanity rules.

You could just use the Chaosium Call of Cthulhu Sanity rules. Very basic and already modeled. However, if that is not your vision, then leave it out.

I personally think the more you use magic at higher levels there may be a risk of Taint.

So, that's a discussion for another thread I think simply because it would definitely require another system bolted on to keep track of Sanity.

I've never read the series but from reading this it sounds bonkers.

18 minutes ago, thecowley said:

I've never read the series but from reading this it sounds bonkers.

13 books all around 1000 pages each. Jordan makes Martin look like a kid dressing up in his daddy’s clothes when it comes to complexity of plot.

5 hours ago, ESP77 said:

13 books all around 1000 pages each. Jordan makes Martin look like a kid dressing up in his daddy’s clothes when it comes to complexity of plot.

This, It’s an incredible story. Magic is much more prevalent, although it’s still not something everyone can do. Also throughout half the series any male who can use magic is doomed to go insane. There’s teleportation, even to entirely different worlds. War is fought between armies in the hundreds of thousands. But why did GoT get a popular tv series first? Because of all the sex, Wheel of Time has a lot less, oh and no dragons.

No dragons per se but those flying beasts the Seanchan ride around on are some analog. And we get Aes Sedai, Aeil warriors, Dream Walkers, Wolf Brothers, Trollocs, the Foresaken, the Game of Houses...

Man I need to read this series again!

Raken and To’Raken are a lot of fun, oliphant sized but with wings, although I feel the chance for a cinematic battle in the skies was squandered there.

Ok, I have new ideas, new thoughts, and a different approach to the magic system:

There are only two casting skills:

Wilder weaving which uses Willpower

Trained Weaving which uses Intellect (im considering a talent to allow Presence, Willpower or Cunning instead, I don’t know yet if it’s appropriate though)

A third new skill called Weavesight uses Cunning and is how a channeller studies someone else’s weaves, and potentially learns a new weave or additional effect.

The very first thing a channeler needs to do is “Embrace the True Source” which is normally an action. A talent called Quick Embrace can reduce that to a manoeuvre then finally Improved Quick Embrace can reduce it to an Incidental (probably with a 1 or 2 Strain cost). Once embraced there is no effort required to maintain that Embrace, but no strain is healed at the end of an encounter if maintaining the Embrace. Sleeping or exceeding Wound/Strain thresholds also ends the Embrace.

Only whilst embracing the source a channeller can form weaves (cast spells). Each weave has a base difficulty and an element that’s used. Then the upgrades have an associated difficulty increase as well as at least one element. At the moment I’m looking at 9 different spells, there could possibly be more though.

To determine the difficulty of a Weaving Check you construct the weave in the same way as normal Genesys spells. But then you upgrade the difficulty of the check a number of times equal the the number of elements used in the weave.

So as an example lets say a character wants to throw a Fireball to Medium range with Burn. The base attack weave can use any single element and is a single difficulty at Short range, so let’s base it on Fire with 1 Difficulty. Burn, being a fire thing requires the fire element and also adds 1 Difficulty. Range uses Air and adds another difficulty increase. So we end with a Hard Difficulty weave upgraded twice for the two elements. I’m expecting to have no strain cost as the increased risk from the upgrades could be enough, but I’ll come back to that.

So skill level and characteristic is important to success, but I want talents to also be very important to reduce the difficulty of casting. So I expect to have 5 separate sets of two talents for each element, that are designed to mitigate the upgrades and emulate the tendency for channellers to be strong with only one or two elements.

eg:

Fire Proficiency: T2; Ignore 1 Setback on any Weave where you have a Proficiency in all elements channelled.

Fire Proficiency (Improved): T3; Never count the Fire element when calculating the number of upgrades to a weaving check.

Fire Proficiency (Supreme): T4; choose a single additional effect for a single Weave that uses the Fire Element and normally adds a single difficulty to the check, never increase the difficulty of a Weave Check when adding that effect.

I also expect there to be an equivalent to Signature Spell for reducing the difficulty of one Weave.

Here’s the list of spells I have so far:

Attack

Heal

Sever (temporarily or permanently removing someone’s ability to use magic)

Ward (spells to mute sound or hide something, also to block people or magic from getting into an area)

Seal (lock spell)

Conjunction (read thoughts, compulsion etc)

Traveling (teleportation)

Illusion

Control Element