WorldBuilding: Family

BUILDING A CAMPAIGN WORLD

BLOODLINE FAMILY 

Ask every Player to write one of these lists for each of their Characters

To establish their Background and to develop the World and story.  

Professions, Places, People

Here we identify the Profession of each individual. 

From that we establish ‘the World they live in’;

their Trade networks and places involved. 

Relation to Character : Profession / Location / Contacts. 

* list Siblings (Uncles & Aunties and their Spouses) only if relevant and known.

Grandparents  Generation (age 50+ years)

Fathers Father :  

Fathers Mother : 

Grand-Fathers Siblings* : 

Mothers Father : 

Mothers Mother : 

Grand-Mothers Siblings* : 

Parents  Generation (age 30-50)

Father :   

Mother : 

Parents Siblings* : 

Player Characters / Protagonists  Generation (age 15-30)

Siblings: 

Cousins: 

Children’s Generation (age 0-15)

Tales of Two Cities

Several years ago before Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown of 2019; so here we are talking about more than five years ago but less than ten, perhaps it was ten years ago, time seems to fly faster and faster the more of it I soak up; two RolePlaying Games were released commercially, both of which I fell in love with. But to understand this, first we have to sidestep temporarily into a slightly different yet related tale of events... 

Sorcerers of Ur-Turuk

Graham Bottley, who heroically did a kickstarter to put Marc Gasgoine's Advanced Fighting Fantasy  gamebooks (accredited to Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson who along with John Peake founded The Games Workshop later of Warhammer fame, in Nottingham in 1975) back into print for another generation, published by Arion Games. 

A game system and world setting I love, having grown up on it and having been heavily involved with my evil mates Facebook AFF group 'Chalice of Storms' more than ten years ago. An infamous campaign which ran for three years very publicly before he and his gelfing disappeared into darkest Europe to avoid the curse of Brexit which has financially ruined the UK. I still have all the original editions along with quite a few of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks which I occasionally play through with my son, me doing the reading and him making the decisions.   

Graham Bottley produced Sorcerers of Ur-Turuk and more recently the City Guide to Ur-Turuk, illustrated with watercolours reminiscent of those produced by 19th century explorers of Ancient and (19th century) Egypt.  Initially the setting reminded me of a truly wonderful 1985 boxed roleplaying game consisting of a map of the City of Gate and a lot of curious picture-and-question cards, Everway, published back when Wizards of the Coast were good, before they went woke and screwed Dungeons&Dragons completely and for all eternity. 

The world of Ur-Turuk is largely a desert wilderness environment inhabited by 'lions, gazelle, giant lizards, aurochs and sword-horned oryx'. The city is populated by 'slaves and gladiators, thieves and murderers, nobles and priests'. It reminded me immediately of Conan (specifically Arnie the Barbarian movie and Conan Exiles video game) and elements of John Normans Gorean novels. 

Ur-Turuk is a city where a Wizard and their retinue, a small outfit all played by the same Player, join forces with others of the same, played by a different player, whose Wizard knows an entirely different type of magic, to go into the desert to raid ancient temples left behind by the extinct and missing ancient Gods, to discover trinkets imbued with Magic so the Wizards can use them to continue to develop their studies into practical uses of their own forms of magic. 

In some ways Sorcerers of Ur-Turuk is like Ars Magica by White Wolf Publishing (before they fired Mark Rein-Hagen and flooded the market with too much milking of the cash cow), with simplified (thank fuck) rules and placed in a different world setting inspired to an extent by romanticised Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, and especially Iraq of the ancient past. 

This is why it is perhaps better for one GamesMaster plus between one to three Players, than for a larger group of six plus. Not only because it makes the Sorcerers and their magic more important but also because each Player represents half a dozen characters which is a lot to keep track of. Having said this, to populate a city with every living Sorcerer and their retinue involving a larger playing group could be a lot of fun as far as world-building an epic series of movies is concerned. There is always the option all the Players take a character each from one Sorcerers retinue and be happy with that. It would be more like 'normal roleplaying groups' to do it that way. 

Unlike the thousand ISBN franchise of World of Darkness Mega-Munchkinism, Sorcerers of Ur-Turuk is ripe for expansion and needs it. Learning a complete new rules system and enjoying that Ur-Turuk city itself changes a lot every generation simply because "when a Sorcerer dies, so too do all their magics die with them" plugs us directly into the Arabian Nights atmosphere in feeling and theme. In practise it is a lot of work to go to given that 'you survive the arduous journey through the desert wastelands to a not previously raided temple'... did I mention this is Tomb Raider the Lara Croft video game and Indian Jones and probably some HP Lovecraft short stories with mythical Bronze Age protagonists? ...'only to discover there is not much content in the rule book outlining exactly what the ancient gods citadels were like to explore or what is to be found there'. There is reference to a lot of ancient art depicting the Gods eating of Humans who they grew like animals in slave pens for this purpose. 

Unfortunately the lack of deep development is one of two minor criticisms I have of Sorcerers of Ur-Turuk, perhaps unfair given how many other inspirational sources exist to personalise the World and how important the Sorcerer characters individuality has upon this. That is the direction to go in to do the game justice. It is suppose to be simple yet highly adaptable. It gains a boon in that it is not highly expensive to get into this, requiring more core books than I have shelf space for. 

The only other criticism I have is how difficult it is to transpose the vibe of Ur-Turuk into the Players imagination unless they also read the rulebook cover to cover to 'get it'. Developing a way to do that is challenging for even an experienced GamesMaster. It is the bulk of the work involved in training Players up to enjoy it both in designing their Wizards base and in playing City based scenario so they can get a feel for the place, the culture, the scents, which are invoked by reading the book and aspiring to bring this vision to life. 

I designed a bunch of Sorcerers and their retinues and bases, their personalities and backstories. It took a week. Then got distracted by the other things in life and regrettably had to put the whole thing on the shelf, for a decade. It deserves dusting off. It deserves a very dedicated play group who love it and want to put the time needed into collaborating to bring it to life. To do it justice, Ur-Turuk will take at least six months of your own and your friends life, even for a basic game (a round-trip tomb-raid). Thankfully even a basic game of Ur-Turuk is exceptionally exciting and rich with storytelling potential and flavour. The more ground work you put in, the better. 

It makes you want to prepare Karkade (Hibiscus tea) and eat spicy, aromatic food and baklawa with your fingers while listening to Duduk music and respecting belly dancing for raising kundalini flow as a highly skilled art form studied by the gems of an otherwise dry and desolate culture such as the wilderness of modern civilisation happens to be for the most part for most people. And you know what? You should. 

故事 高骚 市

JadePunk: Tales from Kausao City

First of all and of much importance, JadePunk RPG 

by Ryan M Danks with Jacob Possin and Mike Olsen, 

is amazing. 

In ten years I still have not yet properly learned to spell Kausao without having to look it up. 

It doesn't matter. 

Tonight I will look it up a long way. 

故事 Story

高骚 Gao Sao

市 City

There is a hidden language here. 

故 old, past 

事 thing, matter 

高 tall, high

骚 coquettish, flirtatious, playful sexual attraction, disturbance, chaos   

市 city 

So then... 

JadePunk, Tales of Kausao City is 

A world building on an attractive, sleazy past.  

JadePunk, city of old matters of highly seductive disruption.

JadePunk, city of old things grown high and extravagant. 

Jade relates to nobility and wealth, a protector of generations;

while feeling Jaded is weary bored and restless.

Punk is a derogatory term for an unimportant degenerate, young troublemaker 

opposition to authority expressed through outlandish and criminal behaviour.

This secret revealed  instructs how to GamesMaster JadePunk, how to handle the City politic. It is all about who fancies who, who fancied who a generation ago and what was done about that. Who had secret affairs with who. What are the secret relations between the elder generation who are now the institution and infrastructure we are growing up in? Does it matter that they are killing each other What of the generation before that? Does it matter now that many of them are dead of old age? 

Everyone has eyes on the Jade.

KauSao City is situated on the biggest Jade deposit the world knows, the source of its wealth. 

Who are the Houses and Institutions running the show? 

How did they get to be running the show? 

Digging up Jade is digging up the secret past. One is symbolised in the other. The cunning GamesMaster thinks about his own family background and those around to make right wrongs and air graces to the graceful heirs. I dared not delve into this mystery before finding the structure to superimpose what I know upon the Society and Underground of Kausao City.  But dare I do it? 

JadePunk is Film Noir Gangsters of the 1840s - 1940s. Except this industrial revolution is not of steam, steel and oil; it is Jade and the mystical supernatural powers it brings to some people. It is a Wild Western blended with Martial Arts in Wuxia fashion. It is a turn-of-the-century technological development where the next generation are about to skyrocket in directions which the previous generations had not and could not have anticipated. Each to their own world, leave the new ways for the young and the old ways to die out in forgotten memory. Best leave it that way, perhaps. Except for here is a way to offload, teach and train so much which is worthy of being shared and remembered. Here is a City, a place where overlaps overlap until something new and unexpected emerges as if nature had planned it that way all along. We were too caught up in our own drama to anticipate. 

JadePunk is about the families then. Family as in blood and family as in syndicates. The youths drive for recognition, the infamous elders discretion and desire for obsolescence lest the crimes of their own youths and dubious aspects of their private adult lives catch up with and expose them.  

I was having difficulty discovering direction in a game world which felt somehow deeply personal but simultaneously aloof and indifferent. Writing this blog has given direction. Kausao is huge so its easy for those pulling the strings to have their own strings cut and for no-one to notice, despite how fast things are changing due to the uses to which Jade is being put these days. The game system would benefit from establishing two or three stages of its evolution, the old world and the new world, those to whom Jade was a rare treasure and a minority of its mystical abilities explored slowly over generations then suddenly, abundance and chaos.  

JadePunk reminds me of 1st edition Shadowrun. The players consisting of an underground crew overpowered in their abilities but undermined and overwhelmed by the State and older generation of criminals alike. Characters exist in the shadow where the boundaries blur, only moral righteousness or its lack or the turmoil clash of decisions between affect every individual, ethics  compete with the oh-so-human need and greedy aspiration to better oneself through fame and wealth, power, to establish oneself into the infrastructure of a culture whose rules quickly change but have always stayed the same. The eternal game played in the speakeasy, a drinking, gambling and whoring den where the life happens because we love to feel alive, knowing how irrelevant we truly are. Except to that sleazy cloaked figure. That one is willing to pay a lot of money to whoever can help him/her hit the mark, no questions asked.  

Its ten years since I read and fell in love with JadePunk: Tales of Kausao City. Writing this I'm falling in love with it all over again. It has a much deeper exotic meaning now than ever it did. Perhaps that's what I felt about it long ago. Its potential for some deep and meaningful, light hearted fun. 

 

Otik's Spicy Fried Potatoes

"The scent of Eastern Promise." An Aromatic Boudoir. 

Kashmir means opulence. It was since the Bronze Age a wealthy cosmopolitan trading town. It was even mentioned in The Thousand And One Nights (Arabian Nights) by Scheherazade, greatest storyteller of all.   Please don't expect me to know which page. The history of Kashmir is worth researching for curiosity wonder and inspiration. For now all we are interested in, as usual, is the Spice. I am fortunate to have here a pouch of Kashmir Bazaar blend. It is luxurious and contains most everything. I do not personally know the proportions however I do know the greatest to least in order if the ingredients list is to be trusted to have followed the traditions. I see no reason to doubt it. 

Chilli Powder, Coriander Powder, Turmeric Powder, Oils (Mustard oil, Rapeseed oil), Fenugreek Leaves, Cumin Powder, Bay Leaves, Mustard Seeds, Cardamom Powder, Black Pepper Powder, Cloves, Fenugreek Powder, Nutmeg Powder. 

There is only one thing to do with such a blend for a well seasoned RolePlayer and that is to make another yummy batch of Otik's Spicy Fried Potatoes. It took me quite some experimentation to get this right even with the con fuddling misinformation given about by the impossible to achieve 'official' recipe from the Leaves of the Inn of the Last Home book. 

Otik is the proprietor of the Last Home and it is him (and Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weiss) who we have to thank for it. 

My method is to chop two average sized potatoes into cubes approximately 8mm square cubes and fry them in an inch of virgin olive oil. I do not ever use any other sort of cooking oil because Health is the most important thing in life. If you don’t care about your health now, you will do in twenty years when it’s too late. Don't worry about waste, the oil is reclaimed afterwards having been spiced (and starched?!) sufficiently to make it supreme drizzle-oil for other recipes if nothing else. I measure an inch because that's how big my skillet is, so long as the bubbling oil covers the potatoes thats all good. 

The biggest concern is to not mash the potatoes. Put the spices in. You want a thin layer covering the surface of the potatoes but not so much the spice will form clumps and fry independently of it covering the potatoes. Gently stir just enough to coat all the potatoes in spice but to too much, its not at all like stirring a broth where stirring is a necessary method. We're more pushing the potatoes around gently than stirring them to keep them intact. Use a wooden spatula, not a metal tool, to respect the potatoes which at this time are going squishy in the hot oil. Did I mention to get the oil hot enough to bubble but not to spit? Getting this bit right took me twenty years and a lot of spicy oily mashed potato experiments gone wrong. 

After the potatoes are cooked all the way through to their core, drain off all of the oil into a glass or metal container. Put the potatoes back on the heat (at the same temperature) and sizzle them to brown them off and cause their surface to go crispy. This is where you have to stir them again, as gently as before. Avoid them sticking to the skillet and burning.

There is another trick here. When cooking chips* in a deep fat fryer (the way they do it in British chip shops using cheap vegetable oil which it takes ages for your body to detox from), take the chips out when they are nearly done but not quite crisped and leave them to cool off. It usually takes at least twenty minutes. Long enough to turn the hot fat off and then heat it up again. Then return the chips to the hot fat. It makes them super-crispy. 

People might say this is bad for health because saturated fats but we’re using expensive virgin olive oil here none of that unhealthy cheap stuff. It’s worth the investment. Even at $8 a bottle for the good stuff which will last awhile. This is why traditionally top quality restaurants charge so much, it’s for top quality ingredients. You deserve to experience the difference. 

That medicine and surgical operations for your ailments from a habitually unhealthy lifestyle? That costs even more. 

Hey I used to eat out of skips in my twenties. I’ve starved to the point of medical intervention. Respecting diet and “we are what we eat” (quite literally) is a life lesson I learned the hard way. Don’t begrudge me my quirks. 

On the topic of hot oil, next up: home made fire-brands (“Torches”). Because caring about health is insufficient to prevent fooling around with fire-danger-death, obviously. 

When the spiced potatoes are browned and crispy all over, scoop them into a bowl for serving. Clear a space in the centre of the bowl for a big dollop of Greek style natural yoghurt which works wonderfully to balance the heat of the chilli. 

Enjoy.

* Americans beware; in Britain we call fries chip, chips crisps, pants trousers, underwear pants, asses fanny's and fanny's asses. 

ProGM Now

This week (14.2.2023) 

I ran my first paid gig as a paid GamesMaster.

I have been Games Mastering since 1984.

Doing it for money feels like prostitution. 

How would I know how prostitution feels? 

Despite my many years of accumulated youth being a lifelong heteronormative I lived at one time with a gay rent boy for six months before he robbed me and the landlady, called the police and told them I had robbed him and the landlady, to cover his rentable ass. That’s a whole other story.

Doing it for money reminds me of that. 

It feels like theft, somehow. 

Apparently it’s easy money because I find GamesMastering easy. 

I cobbled The Adventure Scenario together in the days before the session. It was last minute. Valentine’s Day happened and the usual gamesmaster being a heteronormative binary couple had decided to take the night off. I stepped in to fill the gap, offering to give the group their weekly entertainment. 

In the incredibly busy year between the session and the write-up, Kraken Gaming are no longer hosting evening-time D&D type games because its a pain in the ass. Sessions always over-run due to popularity and doesn't make them enough money to pay the heating bill. That is fair enough. Talk with Kraken about booking your table slots in the daytime. Nobody likes to mention how over-popularity makes it boring to play while simultaneously proving a need for more gaming sessions for smaller groups. I suspect the group now continue to meet up in smaller batches without involving Kraken Gaming. 

Nobody turned up to my session due to it being a last-minute arrangement with lack of advertising, the regular group having been told there was no group this week, and envious vocal parties not respecting my not actually being the lesser life-form they had pigeon-holed me to be. 

“What’s in it for me?” 

I was asked in the store by someone who has been regularly attending the weekly sessions. 

What’s in it for any of us? 

Why do we roleplay at all? 

‘To do more of that,’ 

would have been the obvious answer. 

I shrugged. 

I explained how he would be given food, lodgings and a few bronze coins per day of his service to the village which are hiring adventurers to protect them from bandits. That’s a whole lot more than no food, no lodgings and taking your chances alone in the forest with the bandits, wolves and whatever other creatures. 

That guy didn’t show up. I did the professional thing and took it all in my stride as you do when you’re being paid to run a professional game. 

In my understanding based on a lifetime of research, to be 'professional' is a combination of ability, intent and experience. It has nothing to do with being paid for a job. To Profess is a Latin word which means ‘to make a public statement of aspiration’. Quality has nothing to do with it. Apparently my research is wrong, however. Around here 'professional' means charging money of it. That's the only criteria.

One guy from the store who I didn’t previously know volunteered to experience what he described at that time as his “first ever time of doing this sort of roleplaying game.” 

He and my twelve year old son were the only players. That’s great as a smaller more intimate group makes for better storytelling anyway. The characters get exclusive focus without compromise. The problem is with larger groups where nobody gets airtime and the session is 90% waiting for your turn to roll a combat dice, 

We had zero combat during this session despite there being woodland bandits in the story. That’s a win. Combat is nasty and violent especially in the Game System I prefer to use, Brains&BrawnRPG® which is realistic and often rapidly fatal. 

Turns out BloodWolf the Wizard was rather more experienced at this sort of roleplaying games than he had let on. He sussed the rules in ten minutes which proves how quick they are to learn. The rules are adaptable to the players needs as play-style so it’s as much a case of the Gamesmasters adapting to that as it is to conformity to rigidity. 

My son played Rolof the Rogue. He always plays a rogue. 

Brains&BrawnRPG® encourages player ingenuity. The adventure scenario is a framework of non-player Characters, People with Motivations reacting to ever-changing Situations in Locations. 

Fortunately the Wizard player had an idea that he knows one of the elders of this village from many years ago, they are old family friends. Immediately the world became more real thanks to this connection. It later became important in the developing storyline as the plot indicates the finale is either integration (the PCs agree to move into the village permanently) or annihilation (the Bandits kill them all, unless they escape). 

The session is billed for three hours. This includes time required to create characters and learn the basics of the game system involved with that. 

The session went accordingly with short-cuts occurring in the GamesMasters prompts because several of them were out-thunk by the players ingenuity so as to be irrelevant, their curiosity driving the plot through. 

Essentially it is a mystery with a plot-twist. The village kids stole the show with mud-throwing and name-calling, fighting, following and running away in fear. With insufficient adults to parent the kids due to raids by bandits the village kids are an unruly bunch and highly entertaining. They provide predictable randomness and are useful catalyst for driving the plot along or distracting from it. 

GrimGreen

This adventure module was first used as a Brains&Brawn RPG® play-test at Kraken Gaming in South Wales in February 2023. It took two and a half hours to play through with two playtesters both of whom are experienced role-players. It went well.  SPOILER ALERT:  One of the Characters was a Wizard able to Speak-With-Dead so it was not necessary to bring in the Grave Diggers Daughter character as a Spiritist to help the story progress. 

HERE is a write-up of the actual game session.

we did not yet paint all the mini's

Grim Green

GrimGreen village is off the beaten track. For several months a year during late summer the access roads are so overgrown it is impassable by the main routes. Only those who know the local forest paths are able to find it. During autumn, winter and early spring the village can be seen from some distance through the barren deciduous trees surrounding it. 

Adventure Notes / Plot Outline

Adventurers come to village to protect it from bandits. 

Offer of payment later turns out to be in used adventurers gear from a store house. 

Raiding the storehouse reveals lots of adventurers gear. 

The village is in disrepair. 

It is made of wood. 

The Non-Player Characters Grave Digger & Grave Diggers Daughter 

can be persuaded into telling the truth - the freshly dug graves are adventurers. 

A cemetery named GravenStone is in the forest somewhere near the village. 

They might be there and back by nightfall.  

Village used to export food crops to outsiders 

but bandits have killed most the farmers in their raids.  

The villagers are themselves killing any adventurers they can persuade to come into their village. 

“Oh, you must all sleep in comfort.

We have many empty houses here now. 

Each of you can have a room.” 

The village houses are quite simple. The main room is the first floor, which has beds. The ground floor has storage mostly for hunter-gathering, agricultural and woodcraft related items. It was never a rich village. 

Nowadays, everybody is fed from the same cauldron, the village are working together. In some ways, the villages explain, it has brought the people together as a strong community. 

 

The villages do not have much food, they eat once a day. Most of them are involved in food related activities. The broth is made of nettles. Gritty, sour stodge. It is of course valid green, reflecting the name of the village and the adventure module. Surprisingly Nettles are a common and normal food in this world as it was in medieval times. The characters have eaten it regularly in their lives. It usually tastes a lot better than this flavourless grime. 

The characters soon realise the villages are trying their best to continue going while in a state of shock. Whenever anybody mentions the bandits they shrug their shoulders. 

Every villager has a different story to tell about the bandits. Children eventually blab that there are no bandits, the elders made it up. 

The villagers have resorted to preying on adventurers, who they can alert in here to exchange their goods at market.

What happened to the able bodied villagers are used to live here? 

The children say they disappeared, one by one. Always at night. The elders told them not to talk about this with anyone. 

During the night, a cloaked man enters the bedroom and attempts to stab some of the characters. The characters may fight or flee. 

With no room to draw weapons, unless they specified they sleep with a weapons, it is a fistfight, pushing and shoving, wrestling. 

Any player who says they character shouts out loud will probably wake the other characters and half the village. 

The assailant attempts to escape. If caught, it turns out to be one of the villagers. Interrogated he will explain everything. 

The villagers have turned to banditry, they are all in on it, except for the children. It wasn’t always this way.

The other villagers will deny this. They will act shifty about it. 

The assassin will attempt to wrestle free and attack one of the other villages in a frame verses counter-frame argument. The players will have to pull him off, or someone might accidentally get killed.  

At this time the remaining bandits will arrive, having surrounded the village. 

The children run over to them, shouting "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy is back!" and forming a protective shield around the bandits if necessary to protect their loved ones from any attack by the Player Characters. 

The villagers, probably the Elders, will mournfully explain everything to the Characters. 

Brains&Brawn RPG : Grim Green 

GM Guide

The purpose of Brains&BrawnRPG is open-ended development, encouraging players to use their imaginations to create the story. This involves improvisational skills. The role of the GamesMaster is simply to present a situation, listen to the player-characters decisions, present a new situation based on the most probable outcome of the player-characters decisions. The adventure scenario is a series of interrelated situations which progress the story in a certain direction of itself. Gamesmaster must weave these elements together. 

Characters 

Village Elders 

Old Crone

Younger Crone 

Old Gaffer 

Younger Gaffer 

Village Idiot 

Mother 

Gravedigger

Gravediggers Daughter 

The Hunter 

Thirteen children : aged between one and fifteen, continuously arguing and running amok. 

Several Bandits : men and women of the village. 

Act One

One : Arrival at Grim Green 

          Kids & Crones 

Two : Survey of Defences 

Three : The Locked Hut 

Four : GraveDigger & his Daughter 

Act Two

Five : Visiting Graven Stone 

          No freshly dug graves 

Six : Nettle Soup 

Seven : Dusk Into Nightfall

Act Three

Eight : Daddy’s Home 

Nine : Battle or Beginning? 

Playtester credits: 

Charley Jungle (Ralof the Rogue)

Chris Rugby (BloodWolf the Wizard)

Joe Russell (GM/designer) 

with great respect to Akira Kurosawa

Magic Is...

MAGIC

Magic is the Control of Elements by Focus using Energy. 

All four of these criteria must be described to cast a Spell. 

Magic is; 

the Control (Shaping) - wands - clubs 

of Elements  (World) - coins - diamonds 

by Focus (Intention) - swords - spades 

using Energy (Power) - cups - hearts 

All four of these Criteria must be described to cast a Spell. 

There are two Schools of Thought. 

To use Magic; 

is Energy (Power) 

expended (sacrifice), or 

re-routed (alchemy) ? 

This is the big question. 

If it is to be rerouted, from where do we take it? 

What is it doing the rest of the time when we are not applying it to our purposes? 

A mystical plane of raw magic inaccessible to most people most of the time. 

Why is that? 

In our world we have both. 

Most people cannot tap into and access the miraculous plane of raw magic 

but must instead access magic by paying a price. 

This is where the oh-so-many different traditions of 'magic' come into play.

"What is your sacrifice? What is your source?"

How do we rate this for a functional game dynamic?

What is the Control? 

What is the Element?