Yet another take on Ludomancy. Conflict and virtual spaces, with an old and new school in conflict.

You know what games are. You know what conflict is. You know what battles are.

They’re all really the same. Every war, real or imagined, is deadly serious.

Every battle takes place primarily in the minds of the competitors. Territory, control, destruction and protection exists on a strategic level, which you can see.

You live in the virtual world, more than the real.

If you’re an old school Ludomancer (called a Strategist or, less flattering, an “armchair strategist”) you have mastered the concepts of the great strategy games. Chess, go, Chinese chess, hnefatafl – your concept of the complex spatial relationships is deep, and your knowledge of the traditions of game-playing is astounding. You have inherited the weight of ancient wisdom, and you understand the map of the mind’s eye, tiled out in perfect elegant abstract squared.

If you’re a young school Ludomancer (called a Warclanner or, less flattering, a “ch34tz0r”) then you’re out for the perfect game. Your reflexes are fast and your information is never obsolete. You know the latest mods, skins, cheats and patches. You know what games are coming up and what games are going out of style. You’ve got the fastest machine, and you crank it further by exploiting every easter egg, cheat code, exploit and bot that can be found. Cheating? Who gives a fuck, if you don’t get caught? If the code allows it, it’s part of the game. Your world is on a shooter game, hair-triggered, accelerated, and full of nothing but enemies.

Reality is just another game – in fact, it’s kind of a tiresome one.

Gaining a minor charge: Play a game for four hours. However, only some games count. You must be playing a competitive game of skill with a concept of virtual space, and furthermore it must be one you know well. Games which involve a great deal of chance won’t work, though a few minor random elements are okay. Games without human opponents won’t work, games you’re still learning won’t work, and games which don’t include some kind of metaphor for spatial relationships won’t work. Typically, Strategists work with Mind-based games, while Warclanners work with Speed-based games.

Gaining a significant charge: Play a game which meets the requirements for a minor charge against an opponent better than any opponent you’ve faced before. You don’t have to win or lose, and you need only play a single game. Typically, novice Ludomancers have an easier time gaining significant charges than experienced ones. Experienced Ludomancers must seek out ever greater and greater opponents, or else learn new games to face new masters.

Gaining a major charge: Defeat the established worldwide champion of a game which meets the requirements for a minor charge. You can never gain a major charge for that game again.

Taboos: Both subschools have two taboos. Both Warclanners and Strategists lose all charges if they ever give up or intentionally lose any competition. This can be a strategy game, a game of chance, a legal battle, a fistfight or an argument. Losing is fine, so long as the ludomancer fights every step of the way. Refusing a challenge is also acceptable, but once accepted, the fight must be played out with full effort until its completion.

Strategists are also forbidden from cheating. Intentionally breaking any set of formal rules which governs a conflict causes the strategist to lose all charges.

Warclanners, on the other hand, can cheat all they want, and often do. However, they’re forbidden from playing any game that isn’t brand new. Any game which was publically played more than three years before is forbidden. This includes formally structured conflict of any kind.

Strategists and Warclanners typically despise one another on principle, and if they challenge one another, it’s impossible for them to back down, but their taboos are so incompatible that they seldom find any common ground to fight on. This gets messy and often means one or both violates taboo.

Blast: While Ludomancy includes a lot of ways to help you out in a fight, there isn’t any blast.

Symbolic tension: To the Ludomancer, the imaginary is more important than the real.

Random Magic: Minor magics deal with the concept of competition and conflict. Significant charges bring the reality of competitive games into the real world, often radically altering spatial relationships.

Charging Tips: It’s pretty easy to gain a minor charge every day, and three or four minor charges is possible if you don’t have to worry about the rent. Significant charges are harder – a fairly new ludomancer, or one actively seeking good opponents, can probably get a charge every month or so.

Starting Charges: 5 minor

Minor formulas
In cases where the names differ for the two subschools, the Strategist name is given first, then the Warclan name is given.

Friend or Foe?
1 minor charge
Identify if someone is an ally or an enemy. Complex and ambiguous answers are possible, such as “neither,” “both,” “could go either way,” “probably an ally,” or “mostly an enemy,” but this is a great way to spot spies, traitors and hidden allies. You have to observe some action they’re taking. This formula will probably spoil the “twist ending” of every poorly-written intrigue scenario written before 1995. Good.

Eyes Across the Table/Strategy Guide
1 minor charge
By observing any action an opponent is trying to make, you can identify what they’re trying to do with it. This will be very specific useful information. (“He’s buying that turmeric to build a golem, but he’ll also probably make some curry afterwards.”)

Hoyle’s Blessing/Download Source
1 minor charge
You instantly know all relevent rules and restrictions of the conflict. This includes only formal, unbreakable rules – you won’t learn any strategies, tips or guidelines. If it’s a computer game, you’ll get the complete logic of the game, in formal logic you’d understand. This formula is usable for any kind of conflict -there’s rumors that one Strategist attempted to use this formula for an ascension war, destroyinging his mind to pudding by what he observed.

Vizier’s Privilige/Threadjack
3 minor charges
Suggest a strategy to allies. You must sincerely believe it’s a better strategy. They’ll go with your strategy, rather than any other strategy.

The Enemy of My Enemy is My Enemy
6 minor charges
Name two opponents, who can be anywhere, as long as they’re well-identified. Something will happen to bring those opponents into conflict with one another. They may be able to resolve their difference and unite, but fate will conspire to give those two parties reasons to come into conflict with each other that would be compelling to them.

Strategists Significant Formulas

Konakis Throne
1 significant charge
Select a place that’s strictly yours – your home, your office cubicle, whatever. Nobody else, friend or foe can physically enter that space for the next day. They’ll be blocked as if by an invisible wall. Projectiles, thrown objects, and animals of less than human intelligence are not affected by the barrier.

En Passant
1 significant charge
To use this formula, you have to be in a place where a specific named opponent has been within the past hour. The opponent appears right before you.

King Me
1 significant charge
Name an ally, a skill and an enemy group. If you ally gets into the most secured area of an enemy group’s controlled territory, she gains +30% to a skill you designate, even if this brings them above the appropriate base stat. You can use this ability on yourself, and you can use it multiple times on the same person to give bonuses to several skills. All effects end 24 hours after you first cast this ritual.

Castle
2 significant charges
Select an ally who would be more capable of handling a current immediate conflict situation, and who would generally be willing to help you. You and that ally instantly physically switch places, ignoring any distance between you. The ally won’t necessarily be warned or advised on what’s happening.

Box
3 significant charges
Pick an ally you can see. For the next day, you cannot take more damage than that ally has taken during the span of this formula. Two Ludomancers can use this formula on each other to become immune to harm for a day – this technique is known as “making eyes.” Anyone who tries to attack you will become instinctive aware of this limitation.

Warclans Significant Formulas

Wallhack
1 significant charge
Your vision cannot be obstructed. You have perfect visibility for up to five hundred feet. This visibility is not hampered in any way by bright lights, smoke, darkness, clothing, obstructions, walls, or any other vision-impeding circumstance. Yeah, I said clothing, too – this is a favorite formula for adolescent Ludomancers.

God Mode
3 significant charges
You can’t be harmed for the next three turns. Any damage you incur is reduced to zero.

Item Spawn
2 signficant charges
Decide on a useful item worth no more than ten thousand dollars. The item (plus a reasonable amount of fuel or ammunition) will appear in an out-of-the-way place nearby – you’ll know where. After an hour, or if you try to give it to someone else, the item will disappear instantly.

Aimbot
1 significant charge
Specify beforeand a trigger event you’d be able to perceive, and a set of actions to take in response. When the trigger event occurs, you’ll perform the actions you chose, automatically winning at Initiative (as if you had +100% to your Initiative skill). You can’t choose to do anything else, so this can backfire on you if you make the wrong choices. You can only have one Aimbot ready at a time, but it will last until triggered, or until you violate taboo.

Bunnyhop
2 significant charges
For the next hour, you are capable of incredible prodigious leaps. As a diceless action, you can leap a number of feet equal to your Ludomancy score horizontally and/or half that distance vertically.

Major Effects
Grant yourself the abilities of a significant formula for a year. Force someone physically into the virtual space of a game. Make all of your enemies decide leave you alone until they have new reasons to fight you. Take back a recent action after discovering its results. Heal all harm to yourself.