Fallout and Dramatic Tension

From the Magical Burst ReWrite manual, beta 3, pp. 22–23.

The Overcharge and Fallout systems are arguably what make Magical Burst what it is. Together, they define the consequences for using magic and fighting Youma, provide dramatic escalation to conflicts, and interfere with the girls’ ability to lead normal lives. While this system is core to the game, it can be difficult to roleplay correctly for new players. This section is an attempt to solve that problem, by providing guidelines for how to properly handle Fallout to preserve the dramatic balance in your game.

The golden rule of Fallout is that it should have some kind of impact on the Magical Girl or the world around her (though this varies greatly with what level of Fallout is involved.) Any Fallout that truly has no effect on the Magical Girl or the world around her is not worth removing Overcharge over. However, overplaying Fallout is nearly as bad for the game as underplaying Fallout. The key is finding a balance between the two extremes.

This brings us to one of our first rules of Fallout: Generally, no more than one or two (and often, two is pushing it) Fallout effects should be actively in play at once, especially if they are similar or the same. New players will often want to begin discharging Fallout immediately after a battle, all at once. While discharging Fallout immediately after a battle can be interesting, it needs to be limited to the point where individual Fallouts don’t lose their impact. That said, there are interesting things that can happen by combining individual instances of Fallout, you just need to make sure that nothing involved is losing the impact it should have.

A point that extends from this is that Fallout under Change level should almost never be taken in the midst of battles (or even directly before them, in most cases.) This is because basically anything unusual that can happen in the middle of the battle is likely to get brushed aside by the vastly more imminent threat: that being whatever is trying to kill you.

Of course, not all Fallout is created equal. Distortions, the lowest level of Fallout, are meant to be minor quirks and annoyances in a Magical Girl’s life. They may surprise normal people, or cause oddities in the Magical Girl’s life, but they’re generally not supposed to have a large impact. If a normal person’s reaction to a Distortion is to scream in terror or be more than minorly concerned for you, then you are almost certainly overplaying the distortion.

Next up comes the Flare — a significant step up from the minor annoyance that a Distortion presents. These are events far out of the norm, either outright violations of reality or something severely unusual happening to the Magical Girl suffering through them. Some of them even present some kind of danger, though this can usually be minimized if the Magical Girl is cautious. If an average person’s reaction to a Flare is less than being startled, frightened or disturbed (or perhaps worried), then it’s probably something that’s being underplayed. However, if a Flare is causing destruction on more than a small scale, it’s almost certainly being overplayed — only Bursts are supposed to cause things like that.

As a side note, taking a temporary change on another Magical Girl is usually pointless and GMs are encouraged to disallow it except in special circumstances — it’s almost like handing off your Overcharge to another player to deal with.

After Flares, we progress to Changes, the first and only instances of permanent Fallout in the game. It’s hard to provide guidelines for these, but thankfully they’re relatively straightforward in execution. Effects that only happen occasionally should generally just happen whenever it would feel appropriate or enhance the scene in question.

However, certain Changes are so outright magical, so visible on your character that they effectively ruin her chances at holding a normal life, or sometimes even being around normal people. Taking one of these Changes is an incredibly significant turning point for the character and the campaign at large, with the potential to outright change the tone of the game. They render the character unable to participate in normal life scenes, which necessitates a change in your game sessions so they can continue to be included. This is something that both the player and the GM need to heavily consider before it enters their game (and the GM should not be afraid to tell the player that they cannot take one of these changes if it does not currently fit the game.) That said, don’t let this scare you off from ever including these changes in your game. They can make for excellent drama and roleplay if used correctly, as the Magical Girl struggles with the fact that she can no longer live a normal life.

Finally, we come to Bursts — the pinnacle of Fallout, incredibly destructive and dangerous backlashes of raw energy gone far out of control. These are incredibly significant events, almost certain to affect the tone of your game. There’s little to say about what happens when a Burst is in play — it’s guaranteed to be significant, almost no matter what. However, there’s one thing you might have noticed about Bursts — it’s incredibly difficult to actually have one happen, as you can take Changes as soon as you hit the 6–7 Overcharge range, dropping to 0 Overcharge and being nowhere near the danger of taking a Burst. This means a player almost has to want to have a Burst happen to have one occur. This is entirely intentional. Bursts have a very large impact on the game, and usually on the character generating them. As such, they’re not something that should occur without at least some forethought, or something that should occur anywhere near often. An entire game could pass with only a single Burst going off, or even without a Burst going off at all. There’s nothing wrong with this, Bursts definitely aren’t something a game needs to be successful.