For this adventure-in-one-month-challenge, I am writing my adventure
as if it was a submission for an Irish gaming convention (we do things
differently over here). And I want to make it so that you can have the
system on a single page with the game (I've always loved that
concept). But I want to have magic for one of the PC and most of the
NPCs. What do you think the system should be, so that you can,
literally, pick it up and run with it without any assumption of
knowledge or experience by the players, yet still give a "magic" feel?

I have some ideas, but I'm not sure how well they work. One nice
consequence though of this being purely an adventure-once-off system,
is that there is no character development. The system only needs to go
as far as describing what the characters are capable of. My current
concept is that, that characters have a few rotes spells they know by
hand and can do with little preparation, more powerful spells that
require extra time and effort and a vague do-anything-fudge-it
capability but with very high difficulties and requirements. The magic
characters would have a magic skill of some type to roll with. Spells
would be powered by a "mana" point system, that would refresh
naturally over time (seeing the adventure is set within only a few
days, I don't need to cover anything else). Do you think that would
work and still give the flavor of a magic system?

Mark
--
http://thedeadone.net
http://lostheroesrpg.com
http://irishgamingwiki.com