Has there ever been a functional freeform magic system?

>>55283375
No, and there won't be anytime soon unless someone makes one.

>>55283375
define "freeform"

for instance very vague terms for what you can do with your powers, like those you find in forum god games can work with proper administration

such as
tier 1 action being on the level of making a legendary artefact, race, or region
tier 2 action being on the level of making and changing entire worlds
tier 3 action being on the level of making and changing of universes

also depends on the setting

I've always liked the whole idea of oration as magic and speaking things into being or truthfulness.

But how do you balance the levels of power of various spells? That's the tough part.

>>55283441
see donjon from nixon

>>55283375
Mage: The Awakening/Ascension
Ars Magica
Magic in a lot of rules-lite systems

>>55283375
Yes, the Runed Age.

Risus (The Risus Companion, specifically)

Difficulties are modified by how relevant they are to your field of expertise. Playing a generic Wizard (4) means you'll be able to do pretty much anything, but not as good as the specialist. You could cast Open Door or something, but you'd have a higher difficulty than the Thief (3).

There's also a table for deciding difficulties based on how much they solve the problem, with low difficulties for supporting other players, and high ones for "I teleport the bad guys into the sun, where they reconsider their wicked ways, swear fealty to us and give us all their gold."

Elements of Magic from E.N publishing.

>>55283375
>>55283539
>Ars Magica
This one in particular, although it's not exactly all the way to free-form.

>>55283375
Barbarians of Lemuria.
Unknown Armies for a semi-freeform.

>>55283539

These were the big innovators. GURPS ritual path magic and other related GURPS systems work very well and are freeform.

All credit to White Wolf for popping the RPG world's cherry on this, and now there are lots of games that have this and do it well.

>>55285731
Daily reminder that Ars Magica was used as the template for Mage, and the reason 3e of it was so shit is that WW was using it as free marketing (book of reason => technocracy, Order of Hermes being a faction in Ascension, etc).

>>55283375
Gurps symbol magic

>>55283375
SPELL is the best one on the market.

>>55283539
>>55285557
I just bought Ars Magica 5e core book and still reading it but it seems to be the closest system to freeform magic on the market

>>55283375

Champions

>>55283375
Depends on how freeform you're talking. GURPS has some decent ones along with Ars Magica and Mage and all the other ones that have been mentioned here, but fundamentally it's all about "here's the building blocks, make what you want from these".

And they do it pretty well.


There's also the extreme end of the spectrum, where you get pretentious shit like Wisher, Theurgist, Fatalist: a game where the freeform magic literally involves you changing the rules of the game to whatever you want them to be. More in the "guided freeform RPG" side of things, except that there's rules that you're expected to make yourself and maybe argue with the other players about and then resolve disputes with winner-takes-all dice rolls.
So less giving you LEGO and more handing you a typewriter and telling you that you're supposed to write a magic system within the next hour.

>>55283375
Yeah, barbs. Its got benchmarks for spell magnitude, and a system for hard and soft requirements. As a gm its really great because it lets players really get creative with shit and not get out of control.

Other than that, Mage the Ascension is basically as free-form as you could possibly get.

>>55283441
Its simple, you have three tiers of logarithmic power.

T1 is things which effect small targets temporarily
T2 is things which effect small targets long term or groups/large targets short term
T3 effects groups/large targets long term, or entire categories of things short term.
T4 is what gods do: categories long term.

Easy.

>>55286044
SPELL?

>>55283375
D&D.

Our bard once tried to talk the DM into letting him use Minor Illusion as a healing spell, 'cause placebo effect.

>>55286434
Fuck you. If you tried that at any sponsored event they'd tell you to get bent.

>>55283375
>Freeform
>System

Aaaaaand there goes the thread

For all it's flaws, Anima's spell creation system was pretty cool.

>>55286434
That's dumb. You're dumb.

>>55284384
Why does that name sound familiar?

>>55286308
That ignores magnitude. Turning someone into a toad for an hour should be harder than just giving them warts.

>>55290547
It evolved from stuff that started here.

>>55283375
I kinda like the magic in The Riddle of Steel.

>>55283375
d6 open

>>55284384

You wouldn't happen to have a link to the pdf?

File: What_Magik_Is_This.jpg (48KB, 435x571px) Image search: [Google]

48KB, 435x571px

>>55283375
I have not come across one that I can really recommend. A friend of mine is trying something similar to the example posted by >>55283428 but on a much less powerful scale (friend's system might have rank 1 as the highest with 2 and 3 being unattainable and there is a difference between casting magic and enchanting).

Closest good freeform-esque thing I have seen done with magic is the player wanting to cast a spell that is not detailed in core or 3rd party books and the GM figuring-out the mechanical details.