Magic Marshaling is one of those jobs in our game that simultaneously seems impossibly hard, and is weirdly sort of easy.
By that, I mean it doesn’t take very much to be a bad magic marshal. You can sort of sit back, expect your players to know the obscure details about their own spells and how they work, and ask them for clarification, if you don’t happen to remember a specific detail. Honestly, you should probably ask them anyway, because it sort of tells you how they think the spell should work, whether they’re right or not. But that’s a different commentary.
Being a good magic marshal on the other hand, in my opinion, is a bit more than just sort of winging it. You have to balance out the rules with the story you’re trying to create, and the playable character types that the players come up with.
For example, it may not be a good thing if one character has semi-phenomenal, nearly cosmic powers at your event, because of some calls you made about marshalling. However, you shouldn’t punish someone for playing a legal character build, making smart casting choices, and playing to the plot. Sometimes players find good reasons to rise to the occasion, and it’s okay to let them.
So with those thoughts in mind, I’d like to take a look at a part of our spell system that I often hear berated by magic marshals, Seer Magic, and sort of talk about my strategy for dealing with it in a fair way that lets the player have their tool, gives them something, and doesn’t sort of ruin your encounter, and your plot.
So let me ask you? What about Seer Magic makes it hated? Generally speaking Seer Magic can feel like a shortcut or a cheat in the system. When marshaled, or used inappropriately, it can seem like it’s throwing away a lot of backend effort put into an encounter. Whether the player just asks to see the answer to a riddle, with a vision, or the player asks to know the answer to a puzzle. Or what have you.
I don’t mean to say that Seer Magic is universally hated among the event holding community, it’s absolutely not. But the shortcut reasoning is probably the main argument for why it’s disliked.
So how can you sort of marshal it without having it cut corners and solve the puzzle for the players.
My first strategy is to frame the answer in the form of the story that’s being created. So this goes into a different vein of event holding that I’m fond of, which is story distribution, and communicating the plot. One of my favorite things to do as an event holder is to find multiple ways to get my story out into the community, so it’s pretty natural for me to dip into this vein. As a general rule. I think a lot of eventholders over estimate how much of their story is being received by, or communicated to the playerbase.
To me the common idea that “players are dumb” is a cheap excuse for saying that you didn’t communicate the rules of your encounter to them well. You did a poor job of telling them your story. You didn’t immerse them enough. Players aren’t dumb, they’re misinformed, or confused. It’s on you as an eventholder to communicate your plot to them, and using seer magic as the method to correct their line of thinking is a great tool.
You might be wondering how you go about that, and that’s kind of the challenge, isn’t it? You’re going to have to explain to them why the Mad Mage turned those dragon teeth into wind chimes, and decided the passcode was going to be in music notes.
But at least the players will know that the mad mage was involved now, and maybe they didn’t before, maybe they missed that tidbit. Or maybe they knew that it was a mage, but had no idea that the mage had gone mad. Give them a story. That’s what they want anyway.
My second strategy, is to control the timeline that you give them the information in. This makes the most sense with Prophesy, as the spell has a built in on going effect, that I just sort of love. But with the other seer spells, you can do the same sort of thing. For example if someone uses a vision to ask me the answer to a rune set, I might show them my translation key for 10 seconds and let them try and get as much out of those 10 seconds as they can. You might think that’s a dick move, because you’re playing a character and that character has a perfect memory for everything they see in a vision, and thus you should have the opportunity to write it all down. But I challenge that. Real world skill, and all.
The third option is to just say that it doesn’t work. I don’t particularly like that option, it feels like you’re cheating the players out of an ability they allocated their power into. That being said, occasionally it’s important to say no. People do push the line, and if someone is abusing your good nature as a Magic Marshal, then you need to tell them that their spell is wasted and they can use it more appropriately next time.
Well there you have it, those are my strategies as a second rate magic marshal for dealing with Seer magic, and sometimes other spells. Think of the story, control the timeline, and when you have to, say no. I hope this has been helpful for all the budding magic marshals out there, so that you friends can learn from my experience.
I’ll see you on the field,
Keith “Saegan” Cronyn