Ellie peers at the spreadsheet, and thinks about Millicent suggestion. "Sounds right. If we really need the points, we could just get Gateways 1 and Transient. But that few gates could be annoying to manage? I am not sure."

"I mean, a lot of gates would also be annoying to manage. But that we can solve with just, hiring someone competent enough to not bother us trivially." Meghan shrugs.

Gateways 1 gets a 90. Gateways 2 gets a 30. 

"We could maybe automate it, if we're considering hiring someone, but it sounds like Portals have built-in functionality for that and Gateways don't."

She checks with the marbles. "If we took Gateways and Transient, would we have to move gateways personally when we wanted them moved?" 

Yes, they would either have to personally move the gateways or do complicated powerful magic to automate it. And having access to the magic they'd need for that would mean spending points elsewhere, because Gateways plus Transient doesn't automatically grant that capability. 

Meghan hmms, then says. "How much effort it takes to move a gate? And what are the valid conditions to specify the placement of one? As in, do we need to open each gate end personally each time? Could we do it based on coordinates or line-of-sight or whatever else?"

All you need to do is think clearly and decisively about where you want the gate ends to move to! 

"Neat. That sounds easy enough to manage. If we take Defender that also reduces our need to move people fast in emergencies."

"It's kind of difficult to predict how much Gate traffic we should expect until we've finalised other things. We're probably going to need to keep coming back to earlier sections and adjusting them as we go along." 

Millie rolls her eyes a little. "Let's just put down the ones we all agree on for now and move on, then. That was Insertion, Transient, Gateways 1, and Defense 1, right?" 

"Sounds good!"

"Alright. Let's see next. Oh, quick question for Assimilation, can we change it to work differently? Only parting traits like Longevity? And how quickly does it work?"

They can absolutely choose which traits Assimilation applies to! They can select from anything in the Inhabitants section except Culture & Customs and Political Systems, so yes, that would include Longevity. The only non-optional thing Assimilation does is that Assimilated people count as natives if that's relevant for the magic system and/or the afterlife. 

How quickly it works is also something they can decide if they want to, but by default it'll be instantaneous on arrival in the demiplane. 

"Okay. Then, my next questions: Can we reverse the change? Or, make different traits come in at different times? Or some way to control Assimilation better?"

"Oh, maybe we could make it a bit like my world, where the traits depend on touching an artifact or something? So everyone can have longevity without, like, worrying that they will turn into faeries or whatever we decide."

Assimilation can be made two-way, so people change back when they leave, but other than that it's permanent and can only be reversed by other magic. It applies all the specified changes to everyone unless that person already has a particular trait, but they can make different changes come in at different speeds. 

It sounds like what they want instead might be a magic system! Magic systems are very customisable and can do all sorts of things, including something like Ellie's idea. 

Isra scrolls through her notes and finds the Magic section. "So we'd have to spend at least 2 points to get magic at all, and then...it looks like, for every 2 points we spend after that, the maximum power level goes up by about an order of magnitude. I don't have a good sense of what that would mean in concrete terms, though. Do you have examples of things people can do at different power levels?" 

The marbles will use teleportation as an example! At Magic 1, a magic user might only be able to teleport the length of a city block before being exhausted, like someone who's only just started practising with the teleportation Power. At Magic 2, they could do that ten times in a row before getting tired, or they could teleport ten times further in a single hop, maybe a mile or two. 

Telekinesis works the same way: if at Magic 1 a powerful magic user can only levitate 70 kg for a few seconds, then at Magic 2 they would be able to levitate 700 kg, and so on.  Not every kind of magic is as easy to translate into concrete units, but all of them would have the same kind of progression. 

"What kind level of Magic would let someone do what I suggested?"

Making people unaging sounds like it would be fairly high-level magic! Lower magic levels could do some life extension, but for artifacts that can give out the effects of Longevity 2 freely to everyone who wants it, they probably want at least Magic 4. 

"Okay... that went on a detour that I didn't expect. But an informative one," she compares magic and inhabitant upgrades. "Metahuman Population costs 4 points, does it compare in power level with Magic 2? Is there something that Metahuman covers that Magic doesn't?"

Fun fact, raising the Magic level allows for more powerful metahuman abilities! But if they didn't buy any Magic, then yes, the strongest metahumans would be about equivalent to Magic 2. 

Metahuman Population is less flexible than a custom-designed magic system, but when combined with Species 2 it allows inhabitants to have biologically impossible forms, like being made of fire or crystal. 

"Aww, so Metahuman Population doesn't let us get more powerful magic without paying for it. I suppose that makes sense. Magic seems pretty cheap, though, honestly. Eight points to utterly destroy my world's economy!" 

"I am sure we can destroy all our worlds' economies! Anyway, to make the artifacts that Ellie proposed - or whatever solution we figure out - we would need Magic 4. Heh, probably not worth getting extra magic just for that."

"Is not cheating if we design a magic system that lets us have people that change into other species?"

A magic system that lets people shapeshift, including into fantastical forms, is fine, although depending on the details it might be expensive! Magical shapeshifting would take effort, and below Magic 5 people won't be able to stay in those shapes all the time, so it's different than if they took a Species option that changed people's base form.