D&D General Should magic be "mystical," unknowable, etc.? [Pick 2, no takebacks!]

[Fanaelialae]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

But that presumes there is sufficiently advanced technology in the D&D universe. I know that the D&D universe encompasses many worlds, but I'd say most of them exist somewhere between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. ** - D&D is a fantasy game after all. Not a SciFi game.

I suppose the aliens from the "Expedition to the barrier peaks" could be involved, but they were never fleshed out beyond that one module.

** Personally, I don't view D&D as a version of "Land of the Lost" where different ages get tossed together.

Actually, Arneson's Blackmoor campaign was a fantasy campaign with lost technology. It's literally part of the roots of D&D (Supplement 2).

 

[Lanefan]

I view magic as tapping into power that exists everywhere in my campaign world. Call it the weave, aether, dark (magical) energy, what have you. Even things like anti magic zones only cut people off from easily accessing magic, it doesn't rid the area of inherent magic.

Well, that's boring!

I use the same underlying idea, that there's inherent magic everywhere except places where there isn't*; but I have it that anti- (temporary) or null- (permanent) magic zones do dispel the area's inherent magic. and thus...

Some creatures such as dragons have evolved to use magic internally, it's part of their very essence with is why they aren't affected by anti magic zones.

...a Dragon finding itself in one of these zones would be in a heap o' trouble - as in utterly unable to survive - if it couldn't get out within a pretty short time. Ditto for an Elf; we even have a term - "magic sickness" - for what happens to an Elf that gets caught in a null-magic zone, as it's happened in my games on numerous occasions.

The more magical a creature is, the shorter its life expectancy in a null-magic area: Dragons, Sylphs, Unicorns etc. have a few minutes but not many, Elves have under an hour, Dwarves are good for maybe a day or two, Giant [ordinary animal]s might last for weeks and in some cases might survive outright, and so forth.

The underlying reason I do it this way is to allow non-magical worlds such as Earth to co-exist in the same universe as magical worlds.

* - the presence of a specific element on the periodic table is the usual cause of widespread lack of magic.

 

[beancounter]

Actually, Arneson's Blackmoor campaign was a fantasy campaign with lost technology. It's literally part of the roots of D&D (Supplement 2).

I think D&D ultimately went with Mystra, and relegated Blackmore to somewhere in the Artic as a destroyed civilization. But did they ever use Blackmore to explain how magic worked?

 

[Lanefan]

If the player character wizards can use magic, the players need to know the rules - which means there need to be rules to follow. Otherwise the whole game losses coherency. Th idea that a wizard doesn't know how spellcasting works just breaks my brain.

I know how to operate various pieces of machinery but often have little to no idea how they actually work - the fact that they work consistently and do what they're intended to do when I use them is enough for me.

No reason magic can't be the same way - various people have learned how to consistently make it do what they want it to do and yet don't know how it does what it does. Put another way, they've learned the controlling mechanisms but have not learned what it is they're controlling.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I think D&D ultimately went with Mystra, and relegated Blackmore to somewhere in the Artic as a destroyed civilization. But did they ever use Blackmore to explain how magic worked?

I don't have a sufficiently detailed familiarity with Blackmoor to say whether the magic was technology based, though I do believe that the tech was typically mistaken for magic.

 

[Seramus]

I really like how Mage the Awakening 2e does it. That’s one of my favorite magic systems in an RPG, and certainly my favorite version of a gamble mechanic. Basically, you have your various Arcana (essentially schools of magic) which determine the base effects you can produce, which default to single target, touch range, instantaneous duration, etc. and then you have a resource called “Reach” that you can expend to scale those factors up - kind of like Metamagic in D&D. As your mastery of an Arcanum increases, you get more base effects, and extra Reach to spend on spells using the lower-level effects within that Arcanum. The kicker is, you can actually spend more Reach than you technically “have”, but if you do, the GM gets to roll some “Paradox dice”, and successes allow them to cancel out some of your Reach effects or add additional ones of their choosing. I’m simplifying a bit, but that’s the basic premise. The important part for this conversation is that it creates a feeling that magic is extremely flexible, but risky to attempt to perform feats that are beyond your level of mastery. If you stick to simple stuff you’ve done a million times and know you can do safely, it’s quite reliable. But if you push yourself to do more, the magic can escape your control. (Sort of; in the lore there’s more going on there than the magic itself being chaotic).

Steering the topic back to esoterica, the other cool thing about Awakening 2e’s magic system is that you can give yourself bonus dice (which can help you contain the effects of paradox - you only need one success to achieve your intended effect, and you can spend additional successes to cancel out the effects of the GM’s successes on their Paradox dice) by using symbolic and ritual elements in the casting. Theoretically a mage can do magic naked, blindfolded, and gagged with their hands behind their back. But using magic words, gestures, tools, and other accoutrements makes it easier to reliably achieve your desired effects, and reduces the risk associated with over-reaching.

I have such a love hate relationship with it. I'm an enormous fan of Ascension, and still a big supporter of Awakening as a game concept (as in, I back and buy the products), but I can't get into an actual game of Awakening anymore because of the sheer amount of math necessary to play it. It's tongue-in-cheek referred to as Mage: the Arithmetic among my peer group (a play on Pathfinder being called Mathfinder, I suppose).

I'm totally off topic, now.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I know how to operate various pieces of machinery but often have little to no idea how they actually work - the fact that they work consistently and do what they're intended to do when I use them is enough for me.

No reason magic can't be the same way - various people have learned how to consistently make it do what they want it to do and yet don't know how it does what it does. Put another way, they've learned the controlling mechanisms but have not learned what it is they're controlling.

True - but I don't assume that no one knows how a computer works or could build one. It's not a mystery just because I don't know it.

The idea that, to some people, magic needs to be a mystery is a mystery to me.

 

[Charlaquin]

I have such a love hate relationship with it. I'm an enormous fan of Ascension, and still a big supporter of Awakening as a game concept (as in, I back and buy the products), but I can't get into an actual game of Awakening anymore because of the sheer amount of math necessary to play it. It's tongue-in-cheek referred to as Mage: the Arithmetic among my peer group (a play on Pathfinder being called Mathfinder, I suppose).

I'm totally off topic, now.

I adore Awakening conceptually, but yeah, actually playing it can be a challenge for a number of reasons. I think a lot of CofD 2e suffers from ideas that look great on paper but in actual practice end up being rather unwieldy. Probably because Onyx Path recognized that a significant portion of their audience is people who spend a lot more time reading and discussing the books than actually playing the games, and started writing for that audience (and by that audience; a lot of their freelance writers were drawn directly from that well). I say this as a member of that audience myself, or at least I was when 2e started coming out.

 

[Yaarel]

I feel all magic is human in origin (humanoid).

Despite finite appearances, the consciousnesses of humans are infinite mystical beings.

 

[MGibster]

I know we get a lot of "it depends" answers in this kind of thread, but should we? If we're talking about gaming in general, sure, it depends, but we're talking about D&D. And for the most part, the universe pretty much works the same across all D&D settings so far as magic is concerned.