A Patterned Magic

Here's a mini-game for a wizard player, designed to encourage tinkering between sessions in a way that emulates downtime magical research.

Imagine a sudoku board with astrological symbols, which corresponds to the pattern of the wizard's preparations and meditations.

Certain tetris-like shapes of specific symbols are how wizards memorize spells. e.g. Fire over Earth with a Sun on both sides of the Earth is the Smiting Fire spell. If that's placed anywhere on the pattern between sessions, Smiting Fire is memorized.

Smiting Fire

Great Patterns

The GM prepares five or so Great Patterns, completed boards which each correspond to the ultimate expression of a particular divine imprint on the world, ancient unholy covenant, or the most secret teachings of a long-lost school of magic. In addition to the memorized spells, the more of the board that matches a specific Great Pattern adds different effects. (If you unwittingly include the shape for Drenzel's Eye, orcs will always find you, etc.)

There are also basic, sudoku-like rules. It's not good to have more than one of the same rune in any given 3x3 'house', for example. The the more rules you break, the higher the chance of spell failure or wacky outcome.

A small pattern containing 6 different spells

Newer wizards can always leave large parts of the pattern blank for safety's sake, or only bear smaller patterns less than full 9x9 size. Wizards bearing patterns with more than a dozen runes radiate faint magic to those who can see; wizards with completed, full-size patterns are psychically radiant, crackling with otherworldly sparks and eddies that tumble from their hair and fingers.

Advancing

Wizards advance in a few ways: Fragments of these boards are scattered throughout the campaign world.. a strip of runes on an altar, a 3x3 embroidered on the lich's frayed shroud, a dusty tome of mad scrawlings.

Sometimes it's a literal spell, sometimes it's just a part of a Great Pattern, or perhaps just a clue. ("The great meditation of Deel wants not for fire in the upper houses, and thrice Water.")

A wizard's meditation pattern can be changed in play, but this is usually a solo activity done between sessions. (It takes a game hour of time to change one rune if it does happen in play.)

Another way to advance is magical research. If a wizard has a month of downtime, they can submit a pattern of whatever level of completion to the GM. They make a research roll, modified by the money they spend, the time and the quality of their sanctum.

Based on their research success, the GM will reveal one or more clues, complete spells, or matching parts of a Great Pattern in the wizard's submission. (This could be a useful discovery, or perhaps something to avoid at all costs.)

Another way to learn more magic is to watch another wizard perform it. When encountering either instructive, helpful, or antagonistic wizards using magic, there is a chance for the player wizard to discern a fragment of the meditation in use.

A Magical Minigame

The point of all this is to give wizard players a minigame that feels a little bit like actual magical research. Bring the arcane arrangement of runes and symbols into between session play.

The 'minigame' is the tinkering with the patterns, taking all the scraps and clues of what the party has learned and trying to make the best pattern they can. What if that altar was actually to Deel, and the strip of runes we saw there does belong in the void pattern? How do I sandwich all eleven spells I know without having all those pesky suns fry me alive every time I cast a spell? Do I fully commit to the Great Pattern of Deel, or do I try to bash in a few of those handy Sorgite curses in the bottom row?

Some Assembly Required

This of course only works if the GM is ready to prep a few things, giving runic patterns to all the spells, creating however many Great Patterns.

Most of all, it all relies on some tool to quickly enter and analyze a player-submitted pattern so the GM can immediately see everything of interest that will affect gameplay.