How do YOU define magic in your campaign?

[Ringan]

I've been thinking about this for a while...what distinguishes magic from some other nonmagical, yet powerful ability? Is magic more fluff or crunch?

Magic is sometimes usable at will, at other times it is greatly limited. Some people like the feel of low-magic campaigns, others prefer high-magic.

Clarke's quote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," comes to mind here. Conversely, is magic just some kind of technology?

I know it would be difficult to come up with a universal, absolute definition for magic that we all agree on, but I was wondering what your personal opinions are and how you define magic in your campaign.

 

[Hjorimir]

I've been thinking about this for a while...what distinguishes magic from some other nonmagical, yet powerful ability? Is magic more fluff or crunch?

Magic is sometimes usable at will, at other times it is greatly limited. Some people like the feel of low-magic campaigns, others prefer high-magic.

Clarke's quote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," comes to mind here. Conversely, is magic just some kind of technology?

I know it would be difficult to come up with a universal, absolute definition for magic that we all agree on, but I was wondering what your personal opinions are and how you define magic in your campaign.

I prefer to keep magic (and gods) as enigmatic as possible; I find that there is more wonder to be had in the mysterious.

 

[Graybeard]

Magic in my campaign is is controlled by the gods. I run a high magic campaign. The gods are active in the worldmand my campaign is loosely based on ancient Rome, Egypt, Greece, etc. The players know that if they displease the gods, there are repussions. They may lose some, or all, access to magic and magical items.

 

[Woas]

They players are in charge of this.

Because I use Arcana Evolved, there is no arcane/divine/pseudo bard arcane divisions of spells. Nor are there seperate classes that use these seperate spell lists. So the player is totally free to claim divine sources... inner sources.. spiritual. Whatever they want to explain it.

 

[an_idol_mind]

My setting's magic is broken into three distinctions: faith, innate, and spoken. Faith magic is granted to clerics, druids, and the like, and is unknown in origin. Most people assume it is granted by a higher power, but those worshipping dead gods or even no gods at all can also use faith spells. Innate magic is used by the sorcerer class, and is powered by the divine light that some humans and all elves have inside them. Spoken magic is any other sort of arcane magic, including bard magic, and involves having to learn the true name of an object (such as fire or stone). Once that name is known, a trained magic-user can manipulate the object in any way he can imagine, as long as he has the inner strength to manage it.

Unfortunately, the D&D magic system is woefully inadequate for emphasizing this flavor. However, I have yet to come up with another system that can work simply while providing a wider range of possibilities for spellcasters.

 

[Umbran]

I prefer to keep magic (and gods) as enigmatic as possible; I find that there is more wonder to be had in the mysterious.

I agree - I try to not actually define it unless I want it to become a plot element in and of itself.

 

[paradox42]

Since my game features both magic and high technology (which does, indeed, work like magic ), I long ago came up with a pseudoscientific definition of what magic and psionics are. Essentially, they're a fifth fundamental force of the universe, and specifically a force that is in some sense alive and capable of recognizing its own existence.

Fragments of this force embed themselves in objects and that's how life comes into being. Accumulation of "life energy" grants a being more of this fifth force to work with, which is why high-level people can do such absurdly powerful things; likewise those who can learn to manipulate the various "spectra" of the fifth force can cause events which would be impossible to create by any other means (thus explaining spells and psionic powers).

In this scheme, psionics is basically thought of as a different "frequency" (if you will) of this fifth force. It's the same basic energy as "magic" proper, but those who can use psionics can't necessarily use magic and vice versa, because of the difference. Likewise, psionic energy can affect things differently than magical energy can- obviously I use the "Psionics are Different" rule in my campaign.

One convenient side effect of this schema, I've found, is that it allows for the existence of clearly supernatural powers that are neither magical nor psionic, like the core rules Monk has, without needing them to be tied to either sort of "flavor" (unless I really want to).

Players and PCs in my game don't really have any knowledge of this schema; I drop hints in game now and then about what's going on (from the mouths of gods and other such beings, for example), but nobody's been interested enough to follow up on it and get the real low-down. Oh well. Internal consistency is what's important for the game anyway; let the players pursue what's important to them.

 

[ValhallaGH]

I've been thinking about this for a while...what distinguishes magic from some other nonmagical, yet powerful ability? Is magic more fluff or crunch?

Depends upon your interpretation of what magic really is. For some people it's fluff, a way of explaining the unexplainable. For others it is crunch, with rules as complex and absolute as the hardest of physical sciences.

I was wondering what your personal opinions are and how you define magic in your campaign.

In all of my games:
Magic is the ability to make the universe cry "uncle" and do things it doesn't want to do.

Sometimes this ability comes from gods (mortals just convince them that it's worthwhile); other times this ability comes directly from a person's faith, force of will, or understanding of where the cracks in reality are and how to tweak them. I've even got a world where it's the manipulation of the energies of life to trick the universe into doing things the way the mage wants.
I've got a couple of games where no one can make the universe cry 'uncle' and others where it's fairly common.

For my games, magic is not technology, it is not a hard science with predictable rules. It may have certain predictable trends but it is by definition the violation of natural order, thus it is never fully comprehensible or predictable.

I'm quite happy with it.

 

[Emirikol]

M.a.g.i.c.

We play in Robert E. Howard's "Hyboria - world of Conan the Cimmerian" so it's a gimme that magic is an invisible force that can be manipulated. The secrets of it's manipulation are discovered or revealed (usually by demons).

In it's essence, it's multitudinous abracadabra gobbledygook of invisible conjury or M.A.G.I.C. for short.



jh

 

[DrNilesCrane]

I've integrated magic into the physics of the world ("The 6 Elements"). For example:

As the elements are all natural forces of the world, magic is viewed as another way in which a person can change his or her environment: while a blacksmith could expend time and sweat into creating a sword, a Savant (who is skilled in manipulating matter and energy) could form one with a simple thought and action. Both are natural methods of creating the sword: the first is the most common method while the magical method is simply quicker.​

Since magic is just manipulating the environment (whether it's the physical environment, living creatures, thoughts, or the past), it's not really "magic" in the D&D sense. No arcane/divine distinction, for example.

The idea for the system started before the campaign: I worked with my players to take what we liked out of the D&D magic system and put it into a context that made a lot more sense to us. As our previous big campaign dealt a lot with "what is magic anyway?" type questions, we took the mystery (i.e. wonky rule mechanics, contridictions, and high powered world defining spells) out of it and made a more streamlined, personal system. We integrated all the metamagic feats right into the spells so all casters can use them on the fly (Need a longer duration spell? Bump it up a level. Even longer? Two or three levels...etc.), borrowed the combining spell slots ideas from Arcana Unearthed, narrowed the spell lists like in Wheel of Time...sort of took the best of the d20 buffet and made a system that with nearly a year (plus playtesting) under our belt has worked extremely well.

We sort of look at it as "Iron Heroes" style magic (personal and tactical) as opposed to D&D high-fantasy magic (which we like as well, but just got tired of it after awhile).