Magic Mishap Dilemmas

Here’s a mechanic: when a player casts a spell, the GM can give them a choice between the usual cost of spell casting (losing an inventory slot to a "fatigue" condition in Adventure Hour!/Cairn; burning a spell slot, etc.) OR taking on some creative and situationally appropriate spell mishap effect. 

Using an ice cream wand to turn the goblin into a giant popsicle? It worked, but you rolled a mishap; do you want to take on a fatigue or suffer from a brain freeze for 2d6 X 10 minutes? 

Damn brain freeze...

Rolled a mishap on an explosive fire spell? The spell either fatigues you so much you have to drop some of the treasure you're hauling, or your hair starts on fire and burns away - your choice. 

Raising a zombie? Great! Do you want to loose your spell slot or have your skin grow pale and waxy like the Emperor in Star Wars?

This idea is a spell-casting variation on the diceless, dilemma-based combat/violence mechanics I read about in posts by Dreaming Dragon Slayer, Cosmic Orrey, and Odd Skull. Their combat/violence mechanic goes like this: when you want your character or monster to do some combat maneuver like disarming, tripping, chopping of a digit, poking out an eye, etc. - something other than your system’s default attack - then you offer a choice to the player who controls your target: either take on your creative hinderance, or take harm/injury/damage/“hits” as usual. Then they choose. Simple. As your targets get closer to being taken out of the action, they are increasingly incentivized to take your creative alternative. It reminds me of how a poké ball is more likely to catch a wild pokémon after you beat it up a bit.

I thought of the spellcasting variation on this mechanic while listening to Diogo Nogueira talk about his love of Dungeon Crawl Classics on the Bastionland podcast. They talked at length about DCC’s magic system and the risk of randomly rolled magical mishaps. I’ve read and loved DCC and DCC-inspired magic mishap tables (ICRPG, Shadowdark, Deathbringer), but never used them. Hearing about them again,  I thought of this magic mishap mechanic that I hope to try it at my table. It’s a modular mechanic that could work with any system (I'll use it with Adventure Hour! and 5e soon).

It’s different from the diceless dilemma mechanic because it's spell-casting rather than combat, and it's different than DCC because the GM generates the mishap on the spot rather than rolling on a table. I like rolling on tables, but right now I'm liking the sound of improvising a situationally appropriate creative mishap more. It sounds fun, I'm gonna try it out, and I offer it to whoever reads this to consider and play with! 

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