Happy Happy Joy Joy – a new school of magick for Unknown Armies

The passing month’s German bloggers’ carnival continues to inspire.

The topic (emotions in RPGs) didn’t seem like much to me in the beginning, but one by one, ideas (d6 of them?) for it began to pop up.

Like this one:

A new school of magick for Unknown Armies, only this time not using overtly negative, shady or at the very least weird concepts as its foundation.

A school based on joy and happiness.

Feliciomancy
Perhaps Feliciomancers are so rare simply because the people having what it takes usually have not the slightest reason to actually bother becoming adepts.

That’s not to say that there isn’t any number of people obsessing about happiness. Feliciomancy, however, doesn’t work by wanting to be happy, but rather by being happy.

A smile opens doors. Some leading within, others leading beyond. Both the meaning of life and the secrets of the universe lie right between the dimples of your face.

Blast Style:
You’d imagine that Feliciomacers didn’t have a blast, but the opposite is true. At least, you die a happy death, as your heart gives out and your vessels burst.

Stats:
Generate a Minor Charge:
Feliciomancers get a minor charge, every time they smile directly at someone. They cannot get more than one charge per day per person, though.

Generate a Significant Charge:
Happiness is a matter of both Give and Take. To generate a significant charge, the feliciomancer has to be smiled at by a stranger. Per day only one charge can be generated in this fashion.

Generate a Major Charge:
The feliciomancer gets a major charge by making a huge number of people happy, all at once. (This requires at least a stadium full of people, or better yet a nationally televised event to have any chance of working.)

According to rumour, though, feliciomancers may also generate a major charge completely from within, by engaging in long and intense meditation. If that is true, then all the smilers who have succeeded so far, seem to have immediately reinvested the gained charge in their continued happiness. Enlightment biting itself in the tail.

Taboo:
Unhappiness. At the very latest, a failed stress check or the use of his rage or fear stimulus will send all of the collected charges tumbling from a feliciomancers grasp.

Feliciomantic spells are confronted with one additional limitation beyond that: The adept as well as his target if applicable both have to smile, while the spell is cast – otherwise it automatically fails. These smiles can generate charges (which can even be used in the very spell), unless the smiles themselves are a result of magick.

Random Magick:
Feliciomancers manage to step up to anyone and anything bearing a smile on their faces. Their magick deals with overcoming obstacles, blocking the path to happiness.

Starting Charges:
A newly created feliciomancer starts the game with 7 minor charges.

Minor Formula Spells:
Tears of Joy
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: An intense burst of joy makes the target’s eyes water for a moment, resulting in a -10 penalty on any rolls related to sight.

Smile!
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: The core formula of feliciomancy, this makes a smile involuntarily appear on the target’s face (lasting about a combat round, when that becomes important). Smile! is not subject to the usual feliciomantic limitation of only working on already smiling targets.

Laughing Hurts
Cost: 2 minor charges
Effect: Laughing Hurts is the feliciomancy minor blast.

Ignorance Is Bliss
Cost: 2 minor charges
Effect: The level of the next stress check the target of this spell is forced to take is reduced by 1.

Blissed-out
Cost: 2 minor charges
Effect: The target is literally overcome with happiness, so lost in the joyful moment that it is unable to act for a few seconds.

Happiness is …
Cost: 3 minor charges
Effect: Using this formula, a feliciomancer may divine what happiness truly means to a smiling person.

Significant Formula Spells:
Zen and the Art of …
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: Exercising one’s abilities and excelling at one’s task are two pillars of happiness. This spell lets the target make the next skill roll as if it was less risky or time constrained as the situation would indicate (i.e. a major roll becomes a significant one, while a significant one becomes a minor one).

Always Look at the Bright Side
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: To be able to use this spells, the feliciomancer has to know about a trauma suffered by his target and talk about it. This may result in the adept talking to himself about his own problems. On a successful casting, the spell then removes one stress notch associated with the trauma discussed.

I Am So Happy to See You!
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: This is a more powerful version of Smile!, which makes a target smile automatically, every time it lays eyes on the feliciomancer. This effect lasts for a week.

Death by Choclate
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: This is the feliciomancy significant blast, the cutesy name notwithstanding.

Serenity
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: The target of this spell becomes immune to stress checks for one day, but is also unable to trigger their rage or fear stimuli for the same time. A feliciomancer trying to cast the spell on himself immediately loses all charges – the school’s taboo isn’t that easily blindsided.

Endorphine Shots
Cost: 3 significant charges
Effect: All wound penalties suffered by the target are negated and replaced by positive modifiers of the same magnitude. This effect lasts until the target is wounded again, or until the wounds begin to heal, whatever happens first.

A Heartbeat Lasting an Eternity
Cost: 4 significant charges
Effect: Even though moments of true happiness often are too short, they still seem to stretch on forever. For the feliciomancer casting this spell, this time dilation becomes a tangible reality. Upon successfully casting the formula, the adept may immediately perform up to three actions without penalty and without taking any extra time.

Major Effects:
Achieve permanently lasting happiness, either for yourself or another person.

Doesn’t seem like much at first glance, does it? But the “how?” is as important here as the “what?”. The inner and the outer world come together, permanent happiness resulting from anything in between turning one’s mind, soul and desires inside out, to completely changing the outside circumstances of one’s life.