General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
1) We get magical tech, ranging from the spells tailors use on certain projects to do a seam, up to and including analogs of the guns, tanks, airplanes, the Manhattan Project & nuclear bomb, Project Habakkuk & Pykrete, and a necromantic Final Solution.
2) It is scientific magic- you get clued into the rules by which the magic was discovered and why it works...or doesn't. You even get to see some of the magical experimentation, with failures and successes.
Is scientific magic how we want magic to be in our games. I know one of my players definitely wants this; he detests the Sorcerer because it doesn't use Int and the implication that a sorcerer doesn't really understand what he is doing. Personally, I like it quite a lot - the wizard does magic, the sorcerer IS magic.
Views?
__________________ Carl Cramér
Member of the Netbook of Feats review board.
I personally like it when magic is a transgression of moral values held by the society in which it is performed.
__________________ "If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms" Burning Empires:Boldaq Keep on the Shadowfell
I like 3.X's dichotomy between the academician Wizard who studies the rules of magic and carefully learns or even constructs the spells he uses in contrast to "the Natural" Sorcerer who just does what he does because he can.
I don't think that the use of Cha instead of Int means the Sorc (as a class) doesn't know what he's doing, just that he doesn't need to know in order to function. A high-Int Sorc would be VERY aware of the nature of his powers. OTOH, a Sorc who is an absolute idiot might not even question why he can do things others can't.
Think of it this way: the Wizard is like the difference between a musician who trains for years and years at his chosen instrument; the Sorc looks at the instrument, says "Wow, cool!" and starts to play identifiable music in just a few minutes. (And yes, both kinds really do exist.)
My main complaint about the Sorcerer is that IM(not so)HO, it should have been more like the Spellfire Channeler PrCl- someone who is a conduit for raw magic as opposed to a caster of spells, possibly with rules for using Spellcraft for shaping raw magic into spells on the fly (and with some kind of Vitality point system as well).
When I made that comment about Turtledove's world, I meant that because it was scientific magic, it would be easy for gamers (on either side of the screen) to formulate ways of incorporating his ideas into almost any RPG.
A piece of fiction without visible and consistent rules of magic is MUCH harder to model in a game.
I like both scientific and mysterious magic - but it needs to be consequently one or another, not both mixed or both present in the same world.
If the magic is mysterious, it is available only for few - and it is the center of their lives. It should be powerful, but dangerous and unpredictable. It may be "understood", but rather in mystical than scientific way. This kind of magic is great for the story, as it closely follows the magic of legends and mythology, but isn't appreciated by some players - those who don't really like the risk, preferring a full control their characters' fate.
If the magic is scientific, it should follow rules and patterns. It also works the other way (and that is much rarer in RPGs, as it is hard to balance) - whatever satisfies those rules should be doable by magic. Scientific magic may be researched, spells may be modified or combined. It is either available to anyone willing and bright enough to learn it, or dependent on observable criteria. It is good for worlds with a lot of low-level, everyday magic and for games with strong tactical or exploratory themes. If done well, it is very fun to use, but requires a lot of system mastery, creativity or both.
If one goes with the idea that magic is scientific, then I like my games to be sci-fi: to take that scientific idea and have it comment on our lives in the here and now.
__________________ "If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms" Burning Empires:Boldaq Keep on the Shadowfell
I like both scientific and mysterious magic - but it needs to be consequently one or another, not both mixed or both present in the same world.
I don't agree. (Surprise!)
Scientific magic is like Newtonian Physics. The rules may be simple and well defined, or still in the process of being discovered, but they seem to be quite rational.
Mysterious magic is like Quantum Physics. Its weird & wonderful (spooky action at a distance, anyone?) and while it has rules, it seems to make a mockery of some of the rules of regular magic...possibly because it doesn't obey the same rules at all, or possibly because it just isn't understood as fully as the "normal" magic.
I think there is room for both scientific and mysterious magic in a game world. I would view scientific magic has civilized, human (or humanoid) magic; magic spells would be things we have figured out and utilized with a fair bit of predictability, hence a fireball spell is always a 20ft burst (unless modified with metamagic, of course).
On the other side of things is the mysterious magic; linked to primal, mystical forces that run unchecked in the campaign, this magic is uncontrolled (by mankind, anyway), and responsible for all sorts of mysterious things that cannot be explained: rivers that flow uphill, floating castles, healing springs, deadly magical viruses, etc. All people can do is scratch their heads and suffer through it, like the weather. Not all magic effects in the D&D world should be based of of a spell; there should be room for a little mystery.
I would prefer sorcerers to be more mysterious, instead of being wizard mimics, but what can you do?
__________________ Enemies are the price of Honor. ~Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander, Wizard of the First Order
Fear. Fear attracts the fearful. The strong. The weak. The innocent. The corrupt. Fear. Fear is my ally. ~Darth Maul
No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try. ~Yoda
I don't want the Tyranny of Fun to become one of PF RPG's design principles. That's 4e's province, and I'd happily leave it that way.
Last edited by EroGaki; 20th June 2009 at 10:56 AM..
Reason: spelling correction
I know what I like. But I know that everyone wants different things.
For instance, in the OP's quote, magic is treated with an eye for modernism; magic is either TECHNOLOGY or SCIENCE. What about magic being MAGIC, with mystery, sympathetic powers, and more metaphorical? For instance voodoo dolls, mucking around in dreams, changing the very nature of individuals' being, true names, etc? Being able to see the "True Desire" within someone's heart, being able to gaze into their soul and see what kind of person they are (beyond simple alignment), or stealing someone's innocence (literally).
So, here's my question: what can we all settle for?
3.X has a dualistic arcane magic system, more if you add in splatbooks (ToM, MoI, etc.). HERO and M&M can model any kind of magic you want. Other systems have only a single form of magic.
Personally, I'll settle for whatever the system I'm playing allows, as long as the GM is running a good game.
3.X has a dualistic arcane magic system, more if you add in splatbooks (ToM, MoI, etc.). HERO and M&M can model any kind of magic you want. Other systems have only a single form of magic.
Personally, I'll settle for whatever the system I'm playing allows, as long as the GM is running a good game.
Agreed.
__________________ Enemies are the price of Honor. ~Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander, Wizard of the First Order
Fear. Fear attracts the fearful. The strong. The weak. The innocent. The corrupt. Fear. Fear is my ally. ~Darth Maul
No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try. ~Yoda
I don't want the Tyranny of Fun to become one of PF RPG's design principles. That's 4e's province, and I'd happily leave it that way.
I don't like magic as a science in games. I know ideas like the Law of Similarity and the Law of Contagion, among others have some appeal in stories, but I'll be honest and say I don't enjoy such things in games.
Is scientific magic how we want magic to be in our games.
If we allow PC casters then it has to be. They need to know how their powers work. The other alternative, and it's a perfectly reasonable one though outside the history of D&D, is to allow only non-magical classes - fighting men, thieves, barbarians, warlords and so forth.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Starfox
I know one of my players definitely wants this; he detests the Sorcerer because it doesn't use Int and the implication that a sorcerer doesn't really understand what he is doing. Personally, I like it quite a lot - the wizard does magic, the sorcerer IS magic.
I prefer the sorcerer for that reason. I've always had kind of a hatred for nerds. Or a preference for cool people.
__________________ The female tiefling's horns are not 'handlebars'.
I like both scientific and mysterious magic - but it needs to be consequently one or another, not both mixed or both present in the same world.
Why can't it be both? Admittedly you might want to reserve the word magic for the mysterious stuff. But both types of power can certainly co-exist in one world. They do in the real world after all, which contains both the mysterious and the known.
__________________ The female tiefling's horns are not 'handlebars'.
Magic in my game works how people think magic in the real world works: in TONS of different ways.
Voodoo practitioners approach magic differently than medieval alchemists, new age mystics, religious evangelists, or baseball players. (You don't think they're superstitious? Watch the routines they go through as they come up to the plate.)
If you think magic requires strict logic and a scientific approach, then that's how magic will work for you. If you think magic depends on belief and faith, well, when your faith falters, magic won't work anymore. If you think that you're special and that the world bends to your desires, then you're egotistical *ss, and you'd better keep a high self esteem when you go to fight Tiamat.
To accomplish this, though, you either needs tons of classes, one for each culture or mindset on magic; or you need a more flexible magic system, with templates that you can apply to represent how your Nordic rune magic is different from that kid's magic which he just made up because he watched lots of anime and thought it looked cool.
__________________ Ryan "RangerWickett" Nock
Author of the War of the Burning Sky serialized novel, free at EN World. Part Two, The Irons Have Tolled, now available.
I prefer magic not to be like science. Otherwise it seems too much like, well, science, which I don't really want to think about in my fantasy game when playing a magic-user.
Mind you there is a tension between this and me wanting elements of a game to be governed by rules (as opposed to whim). So at a meta-level I guess I do want magic to obey some rules.
Thus I am consumed by a Hegelian dialectic.
__________________ 28 days... six hours... 42 minutes... 12 seconds. That... is when the world... will end.
Well. I think there's a difference between Science, and "it has rules".
Science is how it is treated. It's observed, quantified, measured and sterile. It's used to mimic technology in our world.
I think it's possible to have magic be, not necessarily MYSTERIOUS, but have a mythic feel to it. Exalted does this; there's only 3 levels of magic in Exalted. One of the spells in the first level cause all crops within a mile radius to immediately yield harvest, and all livestock become pregnant and give birth, within minutes. One of the Charms in Exalted (equivalent to say, a power in 4e), allows the player to know what someone desires most; you see what their price is, in the sense that if you give them the thing they desire, they would agree to any request.
The tone of that does not, to me, feel like "Latin for Fire / Bat Guano + Somatic Gesture = Fireball".
You cannot allow players to make use of magic without demystifying it due to the need to codify such access into the rules of the game. Therefore, mysterious magic requires that access to it be through NPCs and nothing else.
You cannot allow players to make use of magic without demystifying it due to the need to codify such access into the rules of the game. Therefore, mysterious magic requires that access to it be through NPCs and nothing else.
I disagree. In any edition, some system similar to 2E Wild Magic could be employed, with spells having a chance of random effects. The player doesn't need to know the list of possible effects; a significant chunk could be "DM's choice," or the entire list could be kept secret.
Triggers for "random effects" might be over-casting (allowing caster to exceed spells per day limit at a risk), enemy rolling a "20" on a saving throw, caster rolling a "1" on a caster level check, caster blowing a Concentration check, caster trying a new spell for the first time, ongoing spells interfering with each other, or some other triggers.
Obviously this only works with some degree of trust between the player and the DM. But rigidly codifying everything so the player can figure out the exact odds and make the optimal decision is not the only way to play the game.
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