[Design] Magic: An Initial Sketch

[Lev Lafayette]

--- David Cake <dave at difference.com.au> wrote:

> At 3:42 PM -0800 2/12/05, Lev Lafayette wrote:
> >  In traditional cultures (slavery and
> >feudalism), magic becomes split into - to use the
> >Rolemaster terms - Channelling (supernatural,
> >priests), Essence (paranormal, wizards) and
> Mentalism
> >(psychic, mystics).
> 
> 	Personally, this doesn't really work for me much at
> all. Its 
> a grand reductionist classification scheme for those
> things that by 
> their nature fit poorly such schemes, and its
> imposing a single 
> cultures view on the world.

Personally, I think having a grand reductionist scheme
isn't a bad thing in itself. Further, rather than
imposing a single cultural view on the world it's more
about finding correlations among different cultures
and deriving a workable synthesis.

> 	Many religions would strongly claim that their
> religious 
> practices fit none of these categories. the category
> of psychic is 
> essentially a modern concept, and one with
> relatively little 
> connection to mysticism. Mentalism and bodily
> control have nothing to 
> do with each other in many schemes. What are here
> clearly subdivided 
> into Essence and Channelling are indistinguishable
> in many schemes 
> (classical theurgy, for example).

Classic theurgy is mainly derived from Channelling
(invoking a diety cf.,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theurgy). Further, it was
clearly noted that characters may gain abilities in
multiple traditions, so too a school may have multiple
traditions in its teaching.

> 	I think you'll have much better results if you take
> out the 
> grand classification scheme with its implied 'three
> sizes fits all' 
> cosmology,

Four ;-) Don't forget Animism (OK, animism is all
three combined).

> and just have the concepts of achievable
> effects and 
> methods, and magical traditions with are able to
> access some subset 
> of those achievable effects and methods via their
> individual 
> techniques.

OK, I'll ponder on that, although you will notice the
three-world model does make some logical sense. I
can't imagine how a character through meditative
concentration influences body of people or physical
objects with ease. I can see how a priest preaching to
such people could do it, or a wizard with their arcane
knowledge of the essence of objectis. Likewise, I
don't think preaching to a rock would be that simple!
etc

> 	Its worth noting that the neat overarching schemes
> of games 
> like RuneQuest, Ars Magica, etc almost all start to
> splinter once 
> they hit actual cultures. Best to avoid that road at
> the start.

I thought that RQ did quite a reasonable job actually,
albeit they are missing a mystic/mentalist/psychic
tradition.


> At 3:42 PM -0800 2/12/05, Lev Lafayette wrote:
> >Like language itself (and like Ars Magica) the
> >practise of magic can be summised a noun/verb
> >combination. The nouns are limited according to the
> >elements; Earth, Wind, Fire, Water and Aether (or,
> to
> >use the Japanese, Chi, Fu, Ka, Sui and Ku, or the
> >Hindu Bhoomi, Vayu, Agni, Jala and Akasa) and the
> >humours; Sanguine, Choleric, Phlegmatic,
> Melancholic.
> >Actions on these nouns Perceive, Transform, Create,
> >Destroy and Control (it would be really good if I
> >could find correlations with the Chinese ways, but
> >it's not there :/).
> 
> 	There are dozens of such classification schemes.

Yeah, most I've read are pretty bad tho' ;-)

> A
> commitment 
> to any single one, no matter how universal it seems,
> will have 
> incompatibility problems with some others.

True enough and I happily admit that this is the
weakest part of the initial sketch. At this stage I
have been concentrating on more culturally specific
examples e.g., most characters in the Outbreak of
Heresy game have the magic ability "Pray" - which
gives a bonus to their Spirit trait for the day. One,
a gypsy, has also has "Divination" which acts not in a
predictive fashion, but in a manner that gives them
extra insight. A third, a Hussite, has the ability
"Testify" (which only works on Christians) to force
them to tell the truth.

> 	Its a difficult problem, and there are multiple
> strategys. 
> You can just declare solidly that one is true in
> game, and others are 
> approximations or minor variations. You can
> explicitly say some rules 
> are cultural dependent, and you'll write new rules
> for new cultures.

I'm tending towards the single cosmological argument.
 
> Or you can come up with rules for dealing with
> multiple 
> classification schemes.

Good lord, that would make the rule book so thick and
complex that it would require a PhD to play. Worse
still, it would also be ignoring the real benefits of
cross-cultural magical practises noted by
anthropologists. 

> 
> At 3:42 PM -0800 2/12/05, Lev Lafayette wrote:
> >The problem with monotheism denying the validity of
> >other magical traditions it was simply par for the
> >course that people began raising the question of
> the
> >validity of *any* magical tradition whatsoever.
> From
> >the 18th century onwards, the magical hold on the
> >universe gradually dissipitated leaving few
> creatures
> >and examples of Spirit left.
> >
> >Neat, eh?
> >
> 
> 	I think in game cosmological explanations for why
> magic fades 
> away are unnecessary and don't really add to the
> game, myself. Unless 
> your characters are actually going to live long
> enough to see the 
> process happen,

Or the characters are time travellers (meta-game
issue)....

> and its for some reason important to
> you to have your 
> fascinating fantasy universe become mundane as they
> do so, there is 
> no need for it. And do you really want to make it in
> game canon that 
> the universe becomes less interesting?

Extraordinary changes to technology, the possibility
of transhumanism or encounters with extra-terrestial
beings is hardly "less interesting". Also, historical
breakpoints in campaigns make interesting play. For
example, many years ago I game I ran had the
characters encounter the last dragon of Ireland - that
*was* interesting....

All the best,


Lev

Lev Lafayette
lev_lafayette at yahoo.com.au
http://au.geocities.com/lev_lafayette


		
__________________________________________ 
Yahoo! DSL – Something to write home about. 
Just $16.99/mo. or less. 
dsl.yahoo.com