Nuclear Beasts

Words

Words represent cosmic forces and mages control them via their power over that Word. Words are sometimes called Arts or Realms.

Most Words can't create permanent objects... only the Elemental Arts can do that, because creation is part of their nature. Each Word should list off the sort of things it can do, along with some that it can't but it sounds like it might be able to.

For example, Fire can't create "fiery rage", "burning passion", or anything else that's merely metaphorical fire. It's oriented around real heat and actual burning. Sure, it can make a fire that burns without heat or even light, but it has no power over things that aren't actually burning. Since it's one of the Elemental Arts, though, it can create real flame that doesn't require magical energy to continue... although it will burn itself out rapidly if it doesn't have a source of fuel.

Demons

A goddess of Love turned to Hate leads an army of fiends and succubi. It's a matriarchy of sorts, but she subjects her female minions to more emotional pain and her male ones to physical agony. Fiends and succubi who do well may have bat wings grafted onto their backs, taken from the giant bats that their cavalry ride. Enemies are often tortured to death in special rituals.

A god of Peace turned to War leads an army of Brutes. They use all sorts of weapons and armor, including weird, impractical stuff like parasites. They have a kind of centipede-like creature that drives its fangs into the back of your head and the middle of your spine, then turns you into a psychotic warrior in their cause. If someone has been host to one of these creatures for too long, they'll die when it's removed because their heart and such won't work anymore without the critter to drive it. His equivalent to the succubi are Lamias, serpent women who can be diplomatic and alluring, but are trained to murder without remorse.

The god of Wisdom turned to Madness has simply holed up in his home plane and now denies the existence of the other realms. Those who disturb him are torn apart by his minions.

There's probably a god of Life turned to Death out there, who has turned his realm into a great mausoleum of the undead. Like the god of Wisdom/Madness, he's mostly concerned with the state of his realm, although sometimes his minions launch raids to acquire fresh corpses or to revenge some intrusion.

The demon-god armies would be much more effective if they'd team up, but like the Blood War in Planescape, they hate each other too much to ever do it.

Unified Magic Rules

I'm now thinking of doing something more like Synthesis from Tribe 8. A very generic magic system, with a ton of different powers/arts. Sure, we'll provide a lot of examples, but there could easily be more arts than the ones described.

General rules... roll Stat + Art + 2d10. Compare to a flat difficulty or an opponent's resistance roll (the exact resistance roll varies by art).

If you beat the target by 1-9, they suffer a minor effect. If you beat it by 10-19, they suffer a major effect. If you beat it by 20-29, they suffer a crippling effect. And if you beat it by 30+, they're totally toast.

Margin of Success < 10: target suffers a minor effect such as -2 to certain rolls (or -1 to everything). Effects last for rounds.

Margin of Success < 20: target suffers a major effect such as -5 to certain rolls or -2 to everything. Effects last for minutes.

Margin of Success < 30: target is utterly defeated by the effect. -10 to specific rolls or -5 to everthing. Effects can last for hours.

Margin of Success >= 30: target can be completely remade by the effect and the results can be permanent.

Is that appropriate? It kind of means that apprentice mages and master mages throw the same spells at their foes... it's just that the apprentice mage will make the target slow down a little and the master mage will turn them to stone.

Magic

Should I take away Air just so that there are 3 of each? With the elemental plane of air "missing", I could justify removing it as a "lost" art... or leave it as "proof" that the plane of Air must exist.

More Random Magic Thoughts

• Magic broken up into orders, with each one getting a specific symbol. Primal is a straight line... Nature a triangle. Elementalism a square. Summoning & Abjuration a pentagon/pentagram. Visions a circle. Evocation/Wizardry a hexagon. Mind magic, oddly, is an octogon. None of the current forms of magic are symbolized with a heptagon. A cross would be an appropriate symbol, too.
• Harnmaster magic had 6 areas, which were somewhat broad. Air/Light/Illusion, Fire/Pyrotechnics, Metal/Artifice, Earth/Life, Water/Hydrotechnics, and Spirit/Knowledge/Mind.
• The resistance check for a spell is equal to its casting difficulty. Which is equal to the mana cost. What you resist with will vary from art to art.
• As a general rule, the effect of the spell is equal to how much the target fails the check by.
• Long lasting spells take awhile to cast. In general, take the desired time interval, reduce it one step, and that's how long it'll take to cast the spell. For every step you make it longer lasting, add +5 to the difficulty.
• For a really loose magic system, the various schools teach Words or Arts. These are single name things like Summoning, Illusions, Fire, etc.. Each comes with a description of the sorts of things that word is good for. When combining Words, use the one with the lowest rating for your skill check. There will probably be some overlap between schools, like Wizardry and Elementalism both including Fire.

Mana Crystals

Theoretically, it should also be possible to make a self-sustaining spell... it feeds on the mana in the environment and fades away (or maybe just goes dormant) if the mana level drops too low. I'm not sure if that should be extra difficult (requiring a high skill in that kind of magic) or just some sort of tradeoff in making it (it's weaker, but self-sustaining). I wouldn't mind having stuff like glowing crystals as permanent light sources... hm, maybe there are only certain substances (ie- gems) that can absorb mana like that, so you can make self-sustaining spells but it's more expensive, cash-wise. I just don't want folks selling Continual Light spells as knickknacks since they don't cost them anything to make.

Hm. Okay, mana crystals. They have a mana rating equal to the amount of mana that they can store. Whenever they're below that, they automatically attempt to gather it from the environment, rolling their mana rating in a mana gathering check. So in a "normal" zone, they'll store mana equal to their rating. If there are penalties, they store less, bonuses, they store more. Whenever the spell in the crystal takes that much mana or less, it's active and will work. If it falls lower, the spell starts to fail and if it drops to zero the spell must make a survival check (based on the skill it was created with) or be destroyed.

There should probably be a distinction between zap spell crystals (ie- a wand that fires a zap if activated) that discharge themselves completely, then recharge and ongoing spell crystals that keep a spell going (like a ring of invisibility) as long as there's sufficient mana around.

Magic Musings

Hm. Well, if I go with this magic system, there are a few conclusions that could be extrapolated from it.

First, magic will generally be slower than a regular action since you'll have to gather mana, then cast the spell. Since it's not effortless (and rolls will always be required unless I add some "take 10" style rules for automatic successes), magic generally won't be used for really trivial stuff.

As long as the local mana holds out, you can work magic indefinitely, so few or no spells should have indefinite durations. It's okay if it's "sustained" and thus drains you a bit as long as you keep it going, but it shouldn't be effortless. I'm thinking here of stuff like Continual Light, Fire Trap or Wizard Lock. It might be okay to allow them, but only after careful consideration.

Control of a mana source would be a big deal. All attempts to gather mana will be easier there. And if extra successes on a mana gathering roll translate into bonuses for the spellcasting roll, then it'll make magic easier in general.

Becoming a god (via absorbing a mana font) should be difficult and dangerous, but doable. Of course, becoming a minor deity by absorbing a Mana +1 or Mana +2 font would really make you more of a target than anything else... I could see Hybris being a haven for several demi-gods in hiding from the more potent deities. Since they aren't much more powerful than a regular wizard, they'd seriously have to worry about folks trying to kill them for their mana source.

I'll have to decide whether sustaining spells automatically penalizes you, or whether you can sustain a certain amount of magic "for free", after which you suffer penalties. Allowing a few spells to be maintained for free (say your Drive rating in spells) would enable mages to sell the occasional enchanted sword or whatnot.

Hm. Healing spells should probably be sustained spells that boost the target's healing rate for the duration. Otherwise, folks could always get healed up to full every time.

Magic Basics

• You have to gather mana before you can cast a spell. This takes an action (if you critically succeed, beating the gathering difficulty by 10+, you can do it without blowing an action).
• The difficulty to gather that much mana is equal to the mana cost of the spell you want to cast.
• There's no exhaustion effect for casting spells... it's slower than normal actions (one action to gather, one to cast), but a mage can cast all day provided that there's sufficient mana.
• If you're near a mana font, the gathering roll is easier. If you're in a dead zone, it may be impossible or at least much harder.
• Every mage gets the Mana Gathering skill. It's based off of... Knowledge? Drive? Hm.
• Sustained spells (much like Delayed ones in Ironclaw) reduce your Drive as long as they're in action. If reduced to zero or less, you can't sustain any other spells... it's just too draining.
• It takes an Edge to get access to Mana Gathering and the spell-casting skills. Each Edge will grant you access to a small set of spell-casting skills appropriate for the kind of magic you're studying.
• A font of mana has a Mana rating. This adds to all mana gathering rolls in its vicinity. It also helps determine the difficulty of absorbing it and achieving godhood (probably something like Mana x 5 + 20). Oh, and if you get too close to it, you'll take its Mana rating in damage per round until you extract yourself.
• If you have a Mana rating yourself (only gods do), you act as a font of mana with that strength for everyone in your vicinity. It adds double to your own mana gathering rolls.
• For every 5 points that you exceed the necessary mana gathering difficulty by, you get a +1 to the casting roll.
• Absorbing mana is generally very obvious and draws mystical blue sparkles into you from all directions. If you want to do it slowly enough that it's not visible to the naked eye, roll Mana Gathering at -10.

Basics

• The average stat is 2. It's rare for someone to have one below zero (unless modified by your species), but it's possible. A rating above 5 is also quite rare.
• Skills start at zero, of course, with a "typical" rating being 2.
• The cost to increase a skill by 1 is equal to the new rating you're trying to reach. So if you have a skill of 3, it'll cost 4 points to get to a rating of 4.
• Tasks are resolved by adding Stat + Skill + 2d10. Equalling or exceeding the target number gives you 1 success. Every 10 points you beat it by adds another success. Rolling a natural 20 gives another bonus success.
• Missing the roll by 10 or more is a botch, as is rolling a 1 on both dice.
• If you have a rating of zero in a skill that requires training, you only get to add 1d10 to your roll instead of 2d10. A roll of 1 becomes a botch.
• "Saves" are calculated as the sum of 2 stats and are rolled just like skills... Stat + Stat + 2d10.
• Your knockdown rating is your Size + 10.
• Hit points are Size + Strength + Drive + 10.
• New characters get 90 xp to spend on skills, or they can take the simple package: 2 skills at +5, 3 at +4 and 5 at +3 (it still totals to 90).
• Your damage bonus with melee weapons is Strength + Size.
• Most "stat checks" are run against two stats, much like a Save. So what would be a test of Strength in D&D would probably be vs Strength + Size here. One vs Dex would be Agility + Perception. Et cetera.
• You'll probably have to allocate XP to skills each session, much like Ironclaw. I'd probably limit it to a max of 2 points per skill... dunno.
• Increasing stats should be possible, but I'm thinking that they should cost 5 or even 10 times as much as bumping up skills. There might well be a hard-coded limit that you can't increase the same stat more than twice. I could even put little check boxes next to each stat on the character sheet, so that you can see whether or not it can go up higher. But that's probably not necessary- the increasing cost per level should make it too slow and expensive to get really silly increases. Size is the one that I'd be most iffy on allowing unlimited increases... people generally don't get much bigger unless they were young to begin with.
• Edges generally cost 5 XP, with a handful of really potent ones costing 10.
• You can't learn spell skills unless you have at least one magic Edge. After you get one, you'll acquire a handful of magic skills at zero, but you'll at least be able to roll them now.
• The Gather Mana skill is available to all mages and is really critical to them. You have to gather X mana before you can cast a spell of power X.

Skill Chaining

I want some standard rules for using one skill to benefit another. Since I'm not planning on using an Ironclaw-ish system, it's not as easy as just rolling them all.

Chaining works like this: roll the first skill, the one that you're hoping will benefit the second roll. Figure out your margin of success. Divide it by two and round up (round to the next lowest number if it's negative). Apply that as a modifier to the follow-up skill roll.

So, if you want to combine acrobatics with an attack, you'd roll Acrobatics vs some reasonable value (probably either 15 or an opposed roll). If you beat the difficulty by 9, you'd divide by 2, round up to 5, and add +5 to your attack roll.

It will, of course, take playtesting to see if this works well. I see it mostly being used for stuff like Taunting foes in battle.

Fiends

They were probably satyrs, once. Now that their god has turned into a god of cruelty and pain, they have been remade. The primary changes have been to stretch their tails out into long, whiplike ones with a triangular tip and the removal of almost all the fur on their digitigrade legs. Most are hideously ugly and they are bred for size, strength and viciousness above all else. Their teeth tend to be oversized and very sharp. A lucky few get massive, twisted bat-like wings grafted onto their backs, "elevating" them above the lesser fiends both literally and figuratively.

Succubi: a handful, however, are bred for beauty and grace instead. They look almost like another species entirely, being slender and attractive, soft-spoken and elegant females instead. They are used to seduce enemies of their deity and whored out as a reward to her servants who perform well. Unlike most fiends, whose mouths are full of jagged teeth, they have only small fangs designed to let blood flow painlessly. They are vampires, and require a portion of their diet to be blood in order to survive.

What most people don't know is that, since their lord is cruel, a prospective Succubi's genitals are surgically altered as soon as they reach puberty, so that while they are still capable of performing sex acts, they are no longer capable of experiencing pleasure from them. This helps ensure that they hate all of their partners. What they hate most of all, though, is Succubi who escaped this fate for whatever reason.

Males of this clan (commonly referred to as Incubi) are mostly kept as slaves for breeding purposes and actual agents are encountered only very rarely. Their surgical alteration is even crueller (although more subtle), and only those who can perform despite the agonizing pain that sex causes them are used as agents. They tend to be thoroughly psychotic.

There are a tiny handful of "free" families in one of the nicer realms, though. These are the extended families of Succubi and Incubi who rebelled and eventually gave birth to children who were not surgically altered (although their upbringing is notably twisted at times). They have to avoid "true" agents of their deity, because there's nothing that their kinfolk hate more.

Mana and the Universe

Fonts of mana are not unknown, but are in short supply. These are natural rifts in reality that produce raw magic, sending it flooding out into the environment.

The problem, as far as natural mana sources are concerned, is that a mortal being can merge with the font. This requires a very difficult check against Realm Magic, and can be very dangerous if you fail, but if you succeed you'll merge with the mana source and incorporate it into your own being.

This gives you an enormous boost in personal mana, and enables you to draw mana directly from yourself rather than the environment (which is much safer; a botched spell cast entirely with internal mana generally won't harm you). Basically, it makes you into a god. Maybe not a major god, if the font was small, but a god nevertheless.

If slain, the font inside a god will remain... and gods can become more powerful by killing and absorbing the mana fonts of other gods. Of course, the more potent your total energies, the riskier this is... and it's believed by many that having too much mana eventually drives you mad. So prudent gods are often willing to tolerate lesser deities who keep in line.

There might be one or two heavily guarded super-fonts in the setting. Locations that the local gods guard because while they aren't willing to risk instantaneous destruction by absorbing it, other deities might be willing to take that risk. Magic is exceedingly easy there, so they are tightly controlled and generally guarded by multiple avatars and mortal troops.

Avatara

Avatars are magical constructs and thus don't need to eat or drink... they feed on mana, and must make mana gathering rolls to sustain themselves and to heal their wounds.

Due to their nature, they have difficulty casting regular magic if injured? Or they are incapable of spending internal mana? Basically, avatars get a lot of advantages and should probably be poor mages as well as vulnerable in low-mana areas.

Gods have to invest personal mana into Avatars to create them, and this is a permanent drain. As such, they won't make very many. And if they go rogue, the god generally wants them dead so that it can get the mana back.

Enchantments such as this should always require an investment (permanent or temporary) of internal mana.

They might not use a skill check to absorb mana... it could be an automatic thing (like taking 20), so it only matters if they enter an area where mana is too sparse. I'm not sure I like that, though. I like the idea of them working like mages, except that instead of drawing mana to cast spells, they draw it in and then absorb it completely.

Barbarians of Lemuria

A fairly nifty freebie RPG I downloaded. A few cute ideas:

• Skills are described as careers, so rather than Boating 3 and Swimming 1, you'd take Sailor 3.
• Combat stats are kept entirely separate from your careers and stats and are even purchased with different points, so that all PCs end up being decent fighter types... or having a really good Defense rating.
• Magic points spent on level 1 magic come back in a day, level 2-3 in a month, and level 3 always costs you 1 attribute point permanently (this could come from your magic attribute, or from some other stat).
• Spells generally have at least one Restriction. The examples for minor spells are Special Item, Line of Sight, Extra-long casting time, Intimate Materials (requires some personal item from the target), Special Knowledge (requires researching the target), Obvious (the spell is very obvious when you cast it), Hour of Power (can only be cast at a particular time of day) and Ritual Cleansing. If you take 2 restrictions on your spell, it costs 1/2 as much.
• Higher end spells have much nastier restrictions to choose from, such as requiring permanent scars/tattoos, human sacrifice, only cast during a specific moon phase, etc.
• Priest magic is somewhat similar, but you have to go back to your temple and perform specific rites to get your magic back. But they can only cast a number of spells equal to their priest skill, which I don't care for.

More Random Thoughts

• A realm where the world is ruled by a strange and subtle and possibly insane deity. No one really knows anything about them; the world simply changes randomly. Towns and inhabitants are conjured out of nothing, as though they had always been there... then fade away at random intervals. Items taken from this realm often vanish some time later, without warning. Other gods have tried to invade and take over, but have been driven back by armies that materialized out of nowhere around them. It is a realm of mystery and secrets, where the very fabric of reality is weak.
• A realm whose ruling deity was recently either slain or driven into hiding. Two major realms now fight an ongoing war here. If one ever manages to achieve dominance, they'll start drawing the realm into their own control, but right now it's a vicious and destructive stalemate.
• Arborelle, the Realm of Forest. Ruled by a nature-oriented deity, it's a relatively peaceful place. Rather than constructing buildings, they use nature magic to shape living trees and exposed rock into the shapes they desire. As such, it lacks serious siege engines and such, but has a lot of fierce and fanatically loyal warriors as well as animate vines and trees that can be turned against invaders.

Magic Brainstorming

• Spell DC being 5 * MP cost.
• Resistance target being basically the same (generally adding 2 stats together).
• Delayed spells costing MP that can't be recovered until the enchantment ends.
• (From Donjon) spend a round gathering magical energy before casting a spell. Casting from your personal reserves is very draining. The difficulty of that "gather energy" check is based upon how much mana is in the area. Priests get it easier if their deity is paying attention (such as in a temple). Otherwise, you need to contact them, first.
• Gathering mana is generally quite obvious. The energies spark through the air as they are drawn into your body. You tend to acquire a noticable glow (a bit like the godlike halo) and the restrained energies crackle across your frame. This is a bit dangerous so it's good to dispose of that energy immediately. Casting botches (or being injured while holding that power) tend to cause you to take damage. Gods tend to just use internal mana, which doesn't share this vulnerability.
• Internal mana comes back much more slowly... maybe something like it takes X days per point spent to get back 1 point. It's better to draw the energy from your environment, unless you're a deity, in which case you'll recover it comparatively rapidly (perhaps just 1 point per day, automatically?).
• Your locale will determine the difficulty of the mana gathering roll. In a place with no magic, the difficulty may be incredibly high. In the presence of a god, you may get serious bonuses. I could even see saying that each successful spell casting bumps up the mana gathering difficulty by 1 point for awhile, at least in enclosed (mana-shielded) areas.

Ironclaw

Some bits I'd like to steal from Ironclaw...

• Delayed spells. It's sort of like investing POW from CoC, but temporary instead of permanent. Since it eats up MP indefinitely, delayed spells are self-limiting without being crippled.
• Lazarus Heart. I definitely want something like this. It's a delayed spell, so you can't throw it on everyone you know, but cheap enough that you can protect a party with it. It allows fragile PCs to travel with tough ones and not eventually get killed. It doesn't prevent unconsciousness, so it won't always save you from defeat, but it generally can from death. The mage doesn't have to be present or even conscious for it to work.

Magic Format

Yeah, I like that format. Break the effects up into categories, then list off 4 levels... basically Minor, Major, Dramatic and Legendary. It's probably not worth listing off trivial stuff... that'll basically cover anything that's so weak it seems inferior to other "Minor" effects.

Depending on how it ends up in the end, I could assign a specific skill to each category, although in all likelihood some skills would cover multiple categories. That's assuming that I used the whole Shadowforce Archer-ish setup of buying access to a group of magical skills as an Edge/Feat, then purchasing each skill individually.

Realm Magic

The art which gods value and fear the most. It's hard to become a god without mastering it (although not impossible; you could steal the font from a dying deity, but killing a god is hard).

Low end effects:

• Creating view-portals. Like a regular portal, this is an area of overlapped space, but the synchronicity between the two spots is so poor that all you can do if you enter it and concentrate is to see the other side as though you were there. With a full portal, concentrating on it would move you to the other realm.
• Detecting the presence of inactive portals. Artificially created portals (as opposed to the naturally occurring kind) are often designed to remain hidden and inactive until triggered. You may not be able to tell how to trigger it, but you can detect its presence.

• Analyzing an inactive portal to try and figure out how to trigger it.

Interacting with Inactive Portals: triggered portals are normally almost indetectable when they're not in operation.

1. Detecting one.
2. Analyzing how to trigger it ("It needs a code phrase") or which Realm it goes to.
3. Analyzing exactly how to trigger it ("Say 'Shazam is Cool!' while clapping your hands") or exactly where it goes. Triggering it via magic, without needing the "real" trigger.
4. Changing its trigger to something else.

Creating Portals: create an overlap between two sections of space, quite possibly in different realms. Anyone in the overlapped area can concentrate on one or the other to end up there. A normal one is about 3 yards across. You can make bigger ones by bumping up the spell difficulty (house-sized +1 step, castle-sized, +2 steps).

1. Making a view-portal... a section of overlapped space that isn't connected enough to do more than look through. You'll have to be familiar with both ends.
2. Making a real portal that connects between two pre-prepared locations (you have to get to both spots some other way to do the prep). Making a view-portal without being familiar with the target destination.
3. Making a real portal between your current locale and a desired other locale. Making a triggered portal with prep on both ends.
4. Making a triggered portal between two spots without having to do prep on the other side.

Creating Pocket Dimensions: you take a certain sized area of the realm you're currently in, and cut it off, making it into its own realm.

1. Make a temporary one large enough to hold a person. Making a permanent one large enough to hold a pocket's worth of stuff.
2. Make a temporary one about the size of a house. Make a permanent person-sized one.
3. Make a temporary one the size of a castle. Make a permanent one the size of a house.
4. Make a one the size of a decent chunk of countryside... enough to house its own population. Once they're this big, they tend to be self-sustaining and don't need any special effort to make them permanent.

Interacting with Mana:

1. Create a "mana depression" where mana tends to settle there. It's easier to recover mana in it. If the mana level is really low, this may be the only way to do it.
2. Create a mana barrier... an invisible wall that mana can't flow through. This can be used to protect an area against many of the more subtle spells or to just make a zone where you can't recover mana once it's all used up in there.
3. Break a mana barrier. Create a huge mana barrier.
4. Open a font of mana within yourself, making you into a new god. Of course, established gods may well consider you a threat and smite you, and if you enter Hybris you're liable to vanish mysteriously. But for many students of Realm Magic, this is their ultimate goal. Make yourself into a minor deity, steal a decent chunk of someone else's Realm, and set yourself up as absolute ruler of a small population. Once you feel powerful enough, start seeking out other realms and try to expand yours.

I'd also need Closing Portals (might be part of Creating or Interacting) and Creating Stuff (really difficult... but making Avatars and such should probably fall under Realm magic, just because it's a god thing).

Post-Oncall Ideas

• The gray men. Stocky, gray-skinned human variants with yellow, red or orange eyes and little body hair. +1 str & con, -1 agi & cha. Probably created by a tough, warlike mountain-god.
• Variants on humanity are quite common. Many gods want to create wholly new species to serve them, but aren't really capable of it. So they content themselves with making bizarre avatars (since an avatar doesn't have to be capable of surviving without magic and can't breed anyway, it's much easier, you just can't have very many), and minor "tweaks" to existing species.
• No one has managed to successfully "tweak" the Lendehar... they're just so optimized for wisdom and knowledge that almost any changes either fail to show up in successive generations or kill them.
• The "Lost Realms". There are some realms that have been cut off from the rest of the cosmos for so long that the locals aren't aware of the existence of other realms anymore. They were generally ruled by a single god who exerted a lot of effort to seal them away. Of course, over time that god either went mad or died. Only the ones where the god died or went comatose tend to still be inhabited. The others are regarded as demon-realms, places full of monsters and death.
• Occasionally a lost realm will be reached by a random portal, so sometimes you get folks from distant realities stranded elsewhere, often unable to go back home, since random portals don't last long.
• A god contains a literal font of mana. This enables them to pull off really impressive magical feats. It also causes them to become physically more impressive over time, with most of their stats slowly rising over time. They also acquire Size points (even if that's not a standard stat anymore), and so become larger and larger over time, even if they don't want to be. The font often gives them a halo effect, especially in darkness.