[Design] Magic: An Initial Sketch

[Lev Lafayette]

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

> At 6:31 PM -0800 3/12/05, Lev Lafayette wrote:
> >
> >Personally, I think having a grand reductionist
> scheme
> >isn't a bad thing in itself.
> 
> 	Sure. I don't think its necessarily a bad thing,
> but I've 
> never seen it work in a way that I felt really added
> to the game. The 
> HeroWars one comes closest, but even then its
> requires significant 
> tweakage and careful dealing with exceptions, and
> thats in a 
> fictional universe where they can set the cosmology.
> I think using 
> what is mostly the Rolemaster three way scheme is,
> umm.. unlikely to 
> give good results.

Point taken. I always liked the conceptual overview of
the Rolemaster system, but its execution left a lot to
be desired. I was very impressed with the four-part
system in Hero Wars and really I'm adding a
sociological/historical overlay to the system.

> >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.
> 
> 	In theory, but in practice it tends to work a lot
> more the 
> other way around.

It certainly can. I've seen in my time some very silly
attempts to correlate various mythologies of the world
into a unified system.



> >Classic theurgy is mainly derived from Channelling
> >(invoking a diety cf.,
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theurgy).
> 
> 	Mainly, but a good argument can be made that much
> classical 
> theurgy in practice is doing exactly the same thing
> as your Essence 
> users only anthropomorphising what you manipulate.

I thought of that five minutes after I made the post
:/

I think you're right. Rereading the Wikipedia article
what we're talking about is a combination and not a
neat one either. 

> 	And that it is clearly necessary to use this in
> many cases to 
> model real world magical traditions is evidence that
> the overriding 
> three way scheme is misguided.
> 	I mean if you are modelling a magical tradition
> that says 'we 
> use technique X which derives pwoer from Y, and
> technique A which 
> derives power from B' then fine.
> 	But if a real world magical tradition is saying 'we
> use 
> single technique X which derives power from Y' and
> your rules say 
> 'well, thats between Essence and Channeling (or
> whatever) so we model 
> that as two separate skills', then its your rules
> that are at fault.

OK... Yep, you're correct. I'm not the sort of person
that forces reality to fit my model. Mind you,
Rolemaster was quite happy to have cross-realm magical
professions.

> >  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
> 
> 	Don't let the limitations of your conception limit
> your system.

;-)

> 
> 	Indeed, which is why a mystic (explicitly not
> mentalist or 
> psychic, though) tradition made it into the HeroWars
> rules, though 
> then got removed in HeroQuest for, umm, several good
> reasons, one 
> being general maths illiteracy in the rules
> designers.

That is hardly a good reason to exclude it! Surely
reworking the difficulties etc would have been
sufficient?


> But RQ had the 
> benefit of being able to construct its own cosmology
> (and still ran 
> into some problems with the three fold division) -
> once it started 
> having to deal with real world traditions, it fell
> apart - Land of 
> Ninja features an entirely new magic system, and has
> some very odd 
> sitting parts (ninja magic is sorcery?), Vikings too
> has entirely new 
> magical systems to account for parts that can't be
> shoehorned into 
> the system as is.
> 

I agree, it was a strange explanation in Land of
Ninja. Missed the odd parts of Viking's tho'. That
seemed to largely work quite nicely.


> 
> 	No, you just design your rules such that cross
> cultural 
> schemes aren't that hard.
> 	Rather than have a few base game mechanics that are
> declared 
> to be the game manifestations of cosmological TRUTH,
> you have a few 
> base game mechanics (like RQs POW or D&D 3Es caster
> level, Ars magic 
> level of effect) that are either universal or easy
> to convert 
> between. You have a few reasonable pieces that can
> be used to build a 
> magical tradition from, and you apply a little case
> by case 
> customisation of the pieces to write up a magical
> tradition. Its not 
> that difficult.

OK. I think this can be done with relative ease.


> 	The problem is that while you can probably get
> together a 
> reasonable set of verbs, and a reasonable set of
> related skills, the 
> noun selections are going to be problematic.

Some nouns are more collective than others. A simple
value scheme could be placed on different nouns that
indicate the increased difficulty of mastering that
noun (e.g., control man, control woman, control
human). This of course would have cultural
restrictions.

> Cultures just don't 
> break up the world the same way. To some cultures,
> water and air are 
> two distinct and different things, to others they
> are both ably 
> manipulated by the same weather magic. To some
> cultures its natural 
> that the same magic should govern iron cooking
> utensils and iron 
> weapons, to another the idea of the same magic
> governing womens 
> things and mens things is laughable.

A theme well elaborated in Levi-Strauss' "The Raw and
The Cooked", which elaborated on different versions of
those two words (and other things of course).

OK, back to the designing board ;-)

Thanks for your comments btw. They are very useful and
appreciated.

All the best,


Lev

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


		
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