The Magicians
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@helvetica Yeah that sounds about right, I can’t keep all my MUSH drama straight
It really is a great theme that I would love to play, I just don’t see how it can be done. Even from a systems standpoint, the magic system is so complicated, it doesn’t seem like something you could just throw together or “make work” on FS3 or anything.
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@bear_necessities Magic systems can be done. It is known. I wouldn’t call them sustainable on large-scale games per se, or ones that don’t cap their players. I miss how old school Marvel games approached powers where there’s just a reasonable narrative scope that requires the consent and cooperation of the player characters who might be impacted. But I might just be burnt out on crunchy game mechanics. Systems should serve the story, not the other way around.
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Thanks. I remember reading that thread for a while and losing interest 'cause it seemed to be all gamerunner being a fuckwad rather than theme issues.
Now I wonder, though, how did they handle the character ages?
In the novels Brakebills is an undegraduate program that takes five years. The characters are 17-18 when they start. It has a bunch of those ‘school novel’ tropes, Grossman lampshades them with Quentin wondering why the hell it’s like a prep-school.
The show made it three-year graduate program. And changed the name from ‘Brakebills College’ to ‘Brakebills University’ because people think that grad-programs make it a uni? I dunno. But the students are in their mid-twenties. Which seems like a better choice for a MU, especially if you are wanting to avoid the more squicky interpretations of “It’s Adult Harry Potter!”
I don’t really want to do the ‘School Novel’ stuff, and yeah, it wasn’t really that big a part of the IP. I think of The Magicians more as Mage minus WoD, plus extra queerness, plus neurodiversity, plus subverted Narnia tropes. (I’m all for magical talking animals who are assholes, sweary-fairies, and the like.)
"This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!"
– A. Bertram Chandler -
@Gashlycrumb I personally would start a game after where the show ended. Fillory is destroyed, the Fillorians are in a new world, and you can establish from there. It would be a blank slate that you could really create from, vs having to deal with book/show stuff involving the alternate timelines and cannon characters, etc. And I would just require all the PCs to be post-Brakebills at that point.
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@Gashlycrumb I lean more towards the grad school approach, and think magic school can be fun.
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@bear_necessities I like. My own druthers would be to set it in the 1930’s or 1960’s, but I bet the appeal of that is too narrow. I’m pretty much against cannon characters as PCs and want every PC to be original. Roster PCs created for the game and played by someone who didn’t create them are great, but the characters from the shows and books, naw.
@helvetica Same. I think magic school can be fun, but don’t want the boarding school kids (Harry Potter/Wednesday/The Wolves of Willoughby Chase etc) YA subgenre to be a big theme-element. I thought the show largely eliminated that, which was good. I’d figure to mix-and-match book and show elements and have thought about having a Brakebills with both graduate and undergraduate levels, but I have enough RL dealings with young undergraduates these days. It sounded more fun when I wasn’t teaching.
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@Gashlycrumb said in The Magicians:
@bear_necessities I like. My own druthers would be to set it in the 1930’s or 1960’s, but I bet the appeal of that is too narrow. I’m pretty much against cannon characters as PCs and want every PC to be original. Roster PCs created for the game and played by someone who didn’t create them are great, but the characters from the shows and books, naw.
I would totally be down for 1930s or 1960s, but I think you’re right about the appeal being too narrow. Your scope is probably already narrow enough with an existing IP that isn’t currently “popular”, and you could always run ‘back in time’ or alternative timeline events which work with the existing magic system.
And don’t get me wrong, I am sure magic school could be a fun concept. It’s just the appeal of The Magicians to me was never Brakebills, it was everything else. TBH if I was making a game, I’d probably base it in Fillory or new-Fillory, or maybe even the Neitherlands.
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The Magicians is one of those series that I could never get into. I have nothing against it, I even own the whole trilogy (a kind Christmas gift from an old friend years ago). Everytime I pick it up to read the first one, I get about a third of the way in and just stop. It never clicked, even after my SO made me binge watch the TV series with them.
As far as magic school subgenre of stuff, there are examples of that I do enjoy. Most recently the anime / manga series Mashle. I’ve just never been able to get into the Magicians for whatever reason.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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@bear_necessities I toyed with the idea of both current-day-ish and 1930’s – somebody set up a portal so they can go see Billie Holiday. But its a theme where it’s already very easy to get PCs spread apart. I figured to base it around New York, grid for a bit of Brooklyn, the Flatiron and Greenwich Village, Brakebills. Ya gotta go adventuring to end up on other worlds, like Fillory, but it’s also gotta happen.
@MisterBoring Yeah. I read the first novel when it was first published and was really in love with it, it’s the first fantasy I’d read in decades that really enchanted me. But a lot of friends dropped it about when you did, feeling ‘who cares and the main character is an annoying wanker’. I think I’m just the right kind of annoying wanker to relate.
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@MisterBoring said in The Magicians:
As far as magic school subgenre of stuff, there are examples of that I do enjoy. Most recently the anime / manga series Mashle. I’ve just never been able to get into the Magicians for whatever reason.
I love Mashle so gd much
