At last! Volume 3 “Magic” is now available.
In the intervening years various transcripts in Word format and even HTML have found their way into my inbox but to have at last the real paper version back in my possession after so long is (to my way of thinking, at least) a sign.
Prior to this I also received a scanned series of jpeg images from another source that I will use for other purposes but because this one is in pdf format and supported by a “real” copy I feel that this is the one so I have decided to make available via this blog.
So .... here it is:
There are several interesting points to make about Volume 3 that to my mind mark it out as a thing apart from the other sections of the rules. As far as I am aware what I am about to describe makes Bifrost rather unique in this respect – though I may be wrong and it would be interesting to hear from anyone if they know of any RPG rules that also take a similar line.
There is no question that the original writers and play testers of these rules had previously done some research into the subject of Magic. How can we infer this? One glaring clue is the section “Referees Notes on Demons” (page 60). Even back in the day when I first purchased my copy I immediately recognised that these were actually a list of demons from the Renaissance Grimoires because I had some years before read Idries Shah’s book “The Secret Lore of Magic”.1
The author(s) throwaway comment on page 52 is also revealing: “To produce our own demonology would have been a waste of time as we have an extremely comprehensive one in our own folklore.1
Their appreciation of how difficult it is to sort the wheat from the chaff when it comes to researching the subject of magic is also made apparent in the section “Gaining Spells” where (referring to the method of consulting libraries) they write: “Magical Knowledge that is not simply meaningless ritual or esoteric mumbo-jumbo will be hard to find.”
I could have based an entire campaign around Volume 3 with most of the characters being Magic Users and it would have been completely different to the game that we ended up playing. If I was going to create a campaign now then I would probably do that but at the time I was more interested in creating an entire planet and linking it to other worlds and other themes which I could then feed into novels or future campaigns. A lot of that didn’t however come together for reasons that I have explained in other parts of this blog. In response to that this blog is an attempt at being the culmination of many years work in the sense that it not only acts as a record of what went before but it also proclaims itself to be the “jumping off point” for new creative efforts that will unfold over the next few years.1
Back to Bifrost after that slight digression: I nevertheless created lists of “Magic Users” who underpinned the political system in my version of WestReim and some of them played a part in the events that unfolded (and which are detailed and embellished for literary purposes in my novel Kcrargon) but the overall shape and narrative of the campaign that we played back then was not overtly driven by “magic”.
That said, let us take a brief leisurely stroll through the magical realm as it is portrayed from the “Bifrostian” perspective.
Magic consists of some White, mostly Grey and some Black spells that depend for their effect / success primarily upon the amount of energy that the characters have. Factors such as the time spent performing a spell, the emotional state of the caster, a random factor and the resistance to magic of the target (if there is one) apply as well. If characters are to become more skilled at magic then they need a certain mental capacity (for example the ability to retain spells in memory is important – reading them off a scroll or out of a grimoire does not serve to improve a character’s efficacy). Energy can be pooled by a group of characters. Energy is recuperated using meditation. Energy is increased by successfully casting spells.
There are many instances where the rules fall back on the adjudication of the Gamesmaster to determine how to play out the results of spell casting. In a way this is as it should be though – magic (as discussed elsewhere on this blog) is such a fundamental premise underpinning any Bifrost campaign that the nature of the world created by the Gamesmaster is to a large extent determined by the kind of magic that the feel or the ambience of that world carries along with it – all too easy for the wrong kind of interpretation to jar with the effect sought, leading to a sudden surfacing out of the immersive experience and back into the stark reality of the room in which the players are seated (nb we never actually played Bifrost outdoors and seldom standing up) – a rude jolt from the Bifrostian Reams into “reality” which no one wants (Players or Gamesmasters!)
There is a whole section on Cosmic Magic which deals with inter-planar and inter-dimensional travel; the notion of the multiverse, basically. There is a complete rationale to this system that covers modes of travel and mechanisms for dealing with different time flows, anomalies, energy required to make the trip and so on. The rules also explain that the diversity of creatures in the game’s incident tables (Volume 1) can just as usefully cover other planes / dimensions – some movement of beings from one place to another takes place all the time resulting in encounters with similar beings in other dimensions. This also applies to humans so that there will be places where humans encountered could be displaced persons who have been swept through planar gateways out into the other worlds, for example. That said, nothing prevents a Gamesmaster creating creatures and beings that are unique to a plane or a dimension – in Bifrost the only limits are those of the participants’ imaginations!
More on Magic and Volume 3 in later posts.
Notes:
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