Magic in IVAN - a new approach

All,
there is no magic spell system in IVAN so far. That is to say, there's no system like the one in Nethack in which you select a spell to be cast and consume a few mana points. But maybe we don't want such a system.

In many games with spells and mana points I've been bothered by the fact that spells are like guns and mana points are like ammo. The only difference between a spell and a weapon is that spells are weightless and cannot be given to another character because they aren't objects.

I've spent the last decade mostly preoccupied with metaphysical research. This research led me to develop a kind of a board game. The board game might be a fun alternative to the familiar "guns and ammo" mana system.

You can check out the board game if you use Google Chrome as your browser. The current version is written in JavaScript and works as a web page. The address of the game is: http://a.moq.fi/ver486-2.htm . You can click the button labeled Autoplay to start the game so that all players are bots. Most runs of the game turn repetitive after 10-100 turns. If the run turns repetitive you can refresh the browser window and start a new one. The runs turn repetitive because the AI I've written isn't very good yet. You can also play the game with human players.

This is a highly unusual game but I'll describe some features. First of all, the board is a Cartesian coordinate system. When one player moves, all other players move too. The moving player is transferred into the square in which he moves himself but all other players are transferred into a square which is the vector sum of their current position and the move of the moving player. The origin of the coordinate system is in the middle of the board.

Upon moving players gain or lose points according to which square they lands on. There are four types of points: diamonds, hearts, spades and clubs. Diamonds could be a factor that determines the health and attack ability of the player, hearts could be a factor of morale, spades could be a factor of intelligence and clubs could be a factor of magical ability.

There are four kinds of experience levels in the game, each one describing a direction to which a player may move on the board. A player gains an experience level so that other players move him to a square which is just beyond his reach and on the axes of the coordinate system.

We don't need to use this kind of an experience level system. Instead, we can model these experience levels with books. Ie. if you find "the Book of Holiness" then the player gets a level of four to the up direction, because the square labeled "Holy" is four squares up from the origin.

I don't really know whether this game can be implemented as the magic system of IVAN but I thought I should mention it. At least it's something completely new and different, so if it can be meaningfully included as a part of IVAN then IVAN will include something completely new and different. But first of all, I hope that what I wrote here is somehow intelligible to someone else. Feel free to ask questions.

I'm all for a unique system, as standard magic/mana is pretty cliche, and would work pretty much like wands currently do in IVAN.

I don't have time to look at the game in depth right now but I'll definitely look at it later.

So I think what you're saying is that we could have a magic system that is laid out on cartesian coordinates (x and y axis).

Each (x, y) point represents a different magic specialty/ability/quality. Maybe each quadrant (+x +y, +x -y, -x -y, -x +y) will have related specialties.

If you read a book or take some other action you will be moved to point (x, y). But you can later move somewhere else

Is that about right?

Does that mean you are limited to 1 specialty at a time? What effect do they have? For example, if you get "Holiness", what can you do with that?

I believe from looking at the game that you don't just have a position, you have a perimeter that you can move within. Anything within -X..+X and -Y..+Y are possible to move to, whatever that means.

I'm with Capristo that we need to have an idea of effects and what magic would cost if not bullets/mana. Are there discrete spells being cast? Does one move around the grid to do these things, or just pick based on which area they encompass?

I personally think gaining magic powers should be very difficult, much like in Dwarf Fortress.
As for the suggested system, I don't think it's set in to my head properly, I'll need to re-read it again later when my brain wants to work.

I may have understood wrong, but it sounds like based on your location on the grid you get certain magics available?

P.S. Welcome back Kahvi!

Fisrt of all, this is a really interesting game, well thought-out and richly illustrative of metaphysical concepts. I tested out some mechanics by adding two human-only players and deleting the rest. Now I am playing against two AI players and I am finding they are quite belligerent!

This took me a while to get the hang of, but now I understand how it works. It is easiest if you have at least one co-operative down-stream agent to help push you into the right square.

I don't know how the agents could be represented in IVAN. At least one of them could be the player itself. I wonder if the robot agents could act as a kind of zodiac, determining the greater part of the player's current position? As the player progresses into new positions along the major cartesian axes, this unlocks a new set of manoeuvers/abilities.

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I wonder what we might mean by a magic system in IVAN. If we look broadly, any actions that are not able to be performed by the player without the requisite items (scrolls, wands etc) can be said to be magical type actions. In short, magic.
We want to avoid a spell-casting system that works by mana points. Such a system is not in use at the moment, and I don't think one based on that ubiquitous mechanic is about to be invented for IVAN.

We want control over how magic is used. But there are lots of ways in which magic is used in IVAN. Sources of magic include: wands, scrolls, rings (states) and some item enchantments and definitely the gods, at the moment, and of course potions and in particular the ommel materials.
It occurs to me that there is no particular restriction on the use of magic; the player can use all types of magic, commune with the broadest range of most useful gods and make use of just about any magical item at any point in the game (unless you're maimed).

Kahvi's game depicts some metaphysical structure that IVAN could possibly make use of, and it prompts me to describe a way of structuring some exclusivity in the range of magical abilities at the player's disposal:

The four axes might represent the following ideas:
faith/cleric vs superstition/druid/sage (this is the Holy vs Extreme axis)
fighting vs rationalism (Champion vs Ruler axis)

(Holy) The player is faithful. Then player follows the gods and obtains favours and abilities this way. The player can learn about all the gods. Using rings and scrolls decreases favor with the gods? Player cannot use wands. [EDIT: balanced out by Ighalli's pray ideas which offer the player a panoply of "magic" abilities - or at least access to supernatural interventions].

(Extremist) Superstition, player does not follow all the gods, instead only a select subset (three or four?). Gods outside the subset are extremely punitive. Using unaligned materials decreases favor with subset gods. Slaying aligned monsters decreases favour with the subset of followed gods.
Player can use rings and wands, but not scrolls.

(Champion) Player is a fighter type and must use rings, scrolls and wands for magical benefits. Player can be monotheist? Atheist?

(Ruler) Rational player type that cannot use rings, only wands and scrolls, but can gain their altered states through learning/eating mushrooms/Astral projection (?) No religion.


I don't know yet what determines whether a player is extremist or champion or a hybrid of the two. Perhaps actions that the player takes in the game help to determine what direction things will be going. At the moment the above is only a model, as an attempt to connect choices about metaphysics to consequences for a player character trying to survive in a post-0.50 IVAN.

In fact, I don't yet know what role Kahvi's game mechanic might play at all. I looked upon his game and felt like the positions of the five agents in the game could represent the five cards the player holds in their hand for one hour in the game, and has this time to use them before the cards are re-shuffled/dealt again? (positions are moved). Each square would represent a special ability or a state (1 free teleport, polycontrol etc), and the player unlocks increasingly powerful abilities somehow in the game.

EDIT: I feel like willpower could be used to determine the number of human controlled or hybrid agents in the game. Higher willpower increases the odds that the player can move a hybrid agent on any particular turn in a Kahvi game.

If anything, Kahvi's metaphysics game reminds me of the plans to implement magic in an esoteric way. I need to think about it in a simple way. All roads lead to astral projection.

Ok so can someone help dumb this down for me?

I get that where you sit on the board determines the powers you'd have available, but I'm not clear on what - in the context of IVAN - would make you move around the board.
Would it just be something as small as prayers to differently aligned gods, actively avoiding prayers, slaying certain monsters and the like?
So each of those actions would give you "experience" in a cardinal direction and when you have enough it would move you in that direction, with the tiles at the edges of the board being the most powerful?
It also looks like half-assing yourself between two directions but not perfectly 1:1 penalizes you.

If so I think I can get behind this idea.

You're not alone in not knowing what in IVAN would make you move around the board. There are several ways this could happen:
1) Alveradok
2) The player's actions performed in the course of moving through the dungeon and killing things, eating spiders (passive actions)
3) Actions the player does with the intention of changing the movement on the board (reading books of wisdom?) (active actions)
4) a zodiac
5) irate gods
6) Sherry?


It looks like the tiles are actions or powers, and if you act on one (on the board by moving to it), then it carries out that action and moves the other agents. You need to get pushed into new territory along the major axis by another agent to unlock additional movement (new actions). I suppose the actions the other agents perform in their turn have consequences for the player...? Either benevolent or belligerent.

In Kahvi's game, I noticed you can push the other agents outside the map, which is weird. Another topology could be to have the peak in the middle, and the low values starting tiles in the four corners and use a toroidal map (playfield wrapping), with the four peaks in the middle.

I wonder if Zeno will stop by to take a look?

Oh boy, the guy drunk posts a couple of times and now he's an agent of chaos.


I'm thinking that you've gotten the gods to hate that agent, heretic status.

Also who are the other agents?

The other agents I initially thought might be like a zodiac. But then we'd need to make up new "gods" or "planets". Instead, the NPC's could be the other players, so like Sherry, Guugzamesh, Xinroch, Danny and Rondol. And not to mention Ivan. They could all be the computer controlled agents in a Kahvi game.

So I just had an idea today, thought I'd throw it out.

What if, the magic system was the prayer system? So it wouldn't matter what your alignment was, if you learned a spell from a god you'd remember it even if you start worshipping another, but to use magic is to invoke the power of the gods, so your level of devotion would affect the outcome.

So you'd navigate around the four mountains by worshipping different gods, obtaining magic spells once you'd unlocked new areas?
The spell's effectivness is proportional to your relation with the god that gave you the spell?

At first I wondered whether this would preclude atheists from learning magic. It could be that magic could also be wrongfully obtained, or stolen from the gods...

Chaostrom's idea of this magic system being the prayer system sounds pretty good to me. At least the magic system could be similar to the prayer system. The characters' scores on the coordinate system would be calculated once for each turn and they'd determine certain factors in the game.

Negative diamonds: more vulnerable
Positive diamonds: less vulnerable

Negative spades: less damaging attacks
Positive spades: more damaging attacks

Negative hearts: less morale
Positive hears: more morale

Negative clubs: less charisma, wisdom and intelligence
Positive clubs: more charisma, wisdom and intelligence

A slot along the X or Y axis: no effect?

Maybe, instead of "magic system" or "prayer system" we could call this the "energy system". This way we don't need to replace the already existing prayer system but we also leave the door open for other kinds of magic such as astral projection or telekinesis.

This way the energy system would not override the rest of the game. Even if you had lots of energy users as allies it wouldn't affect anything before someone tried to do something else than energy manipulation. But you could have an army of monks as your pets so that they wouldn't fight but would simply project good energies for you and bad energies against your enemies. Perhaps the housewives of Attnam would rather do this in battle than engage in physical combat.

A possible advantage of energy use is that you don't have to conflict your enemy in order to project bad energies at them. Therefore you can project bad energies at other characters before attacking them and causing them to become enemies. That is to say, characters could be neutral in the physical world yet belligerent in the energy world. Although too much bad energy projection might be a sufficient cause for conflict in itself.

I must admit I like the sound of being able to secretly debuff NPCs by thinking bad things at them, if you have the ability. Maybe their INT value can determine how likely they are to notice, with an even higher INT being likely that they'll notice it's you and turn hostile.

I wonder how frequently you can make a move? I notice when Izzy appears on the level, you pretty much get bombed straight away. It would be cooler if you have to align your chakras to do assymetrical energy fight with NPCs on the level. It doesn't need to be fatal outcome either.

Does J_kahvi have any good research papers or writings about metaphysics relating to his research?

I thought you could make moves as frequently as ordinary moves. Though, the moves could cost mana in a similar way as running makes a character exhausted.


See the MOQ.FI wiki

Awesome! This will be fun to read. I've got a copy of Zen staring at me on my bookshelf. Read it back in engineering school days. Still need to find a copy of Lila.