Psionics--the Poll!

[Thomas Shey]

The closest that comes to mind for D&D is psionic things from the far realms and the far realms being outside of the multiverse, but even then you have countervailing stuff like 4e PC psionics being the Primal/natural world immune reaction to the far realms' outside the universe virus.

The Weave for example is part of the FR cosmology and part of the natural laws.

I can't think of a D&D setting where magic is an outside universe force contrary to the normal laws of that setting's universe and not an integrated part of the universe.

Is that like a deep secret of Radiance in Mystara? I could see that as part of its deep cut lore that I am not familiar with.

Deep Dragonlance lore has things like the gods coming from outside (not sure if it is the universe, the prime material plane, or the crystal sphere) and the moons being sources of arcane magic and the gods being sources of divine magic (until you get to the saga and going forward eras of non-theistic casters).

I remember the 1e Manual of the Planes sets up possible alternate primes where magic is not part of their universe and does not work, but these are not any of the 1e settings.

What specific D&D settings are you thinking of where magic is not part of the universe of that setting? Is it that magic is drawing power from planes and and the prime versus other planes is where you are drawing the line on part of the same setting universe?

What made you believe I was thinking about D&D? Note where this thread is. Heck, I'm not even talking about extent gaming settings. The point is, in principal, supernatural elements don't have to be a part of the world in any normal sense (the whole meaning of the term has this in implication), and in games you see elements of it in horror games all the time.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The focus on mechanical minutiae is, in my experience at least, a D&D-ism.

I will direct you to RuneQuest. Divine magic, spirit/battle magic and sorcerery all have notably different mechanics in part to distinguish them, and they aren't alone.

 

[Aldarc]

The focus on mechanical minutiae is, in my experience at least, a D&D-ism.

Other RPGs that I play don't rely on it. And my favourite version of D&D - 4e D&D - doesn't rely on it either.

I'm not really sure that D&D focuses that much on D&D minutiae either. At least nowadays, it mostly categorizes things as spells, gives classes niche-protecting spell lists, and then calls it a day. Prepared vs. unprepared casting are pretty minor differences. I don't think that the differences matter as much in this case as they do for a game like RuneQuest, which @Thomas Shey points out.

 

[Voadam]

What made you believe I was thinking about D&D? Note where this thread is. Heck, I'm not even talking about extent gaming settings. The point is, in principal, supernatural elements don't have to be a part of the world in any normal sense (the whole meaning of the term has this in implication), and in games you see elements of it in horror games all the time.

What game setting are you thinking of?

My understanding of World of Darkness is that magic is part of the laws of its universe, Everything from Vampire and Werewolf and particularly in Mage the Ascension. Conspiracy X, Kult, In Nomine, RIFTS, Deadlands, Shadowrun, its all part of the laws of nature of their worlds. Many might not know about the supernatural in their world just like many do not know about a lot of weird science aspects of our world, but they are a natural part of their worlds and obey their laws.

The closest I can think of is Torg where the explicit concept is multiple Cosms crashing into our world and imposing different laws of nature within their domains as they each try and take over and replace our world. That is a fairly specific and nonstandard cosmological setup though.

 

[Thomas Shey]

What game setting are you thinking of?

My understanding of World of Darkness is that magic is part of the laws of its universe, Everything from Vampire and Werewolf and particularly in Mage the Ascension. Conspiracy X, Kult, In Nomine, RIFTS, Deadlands, Shadowrun, its all part of the laws of nature of their worlds. Many might not know about the supernatural in their world just like many do not know about a lot of weird science aspects of our world, but they are a natural part of their worlds and obey their laws.

Call of Cthulhu comes to mind. Most magic in it is profoundly unnatural.

And I could probably find others where its not necessarily unnatural, per se, but comes from a distinct separate plane of existence reaching down into our own. This is more common among urban fantasy than traditional swords-and-horses fantasy because the latter usually wants it far more extensively present.

Even it wasn't baked into a system per se, there's absolutely nothing about a given campaign that can't take that tact; at most it has to presented in a way its clearly an intrusion and/or requires active effort to tap into these forces. As I said, the world "supernatural" is not a coincidence of construction.

 

[Voadam]

Call of Cthulhu comes to mind. Most magic in it is profoundly unnatural.

It explicitly is not unnatural in CoC it is just alien and reveals it is outside our limited understanding of reality, that is a big conceptual part of the existential horror. That this weird stuff exists and is a big part of our ultimate reality and we don't understand it and the more we understand of true reality the more it breaks our minds as it reveals how much what we think of as natural is limited and wrong and we are insignificant in comparison to where we comfortably thought we were as smart centers of the universe who had a lot figured out.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It explicitly is not unnatural in CoC it is just alien and reveals it is outside our limited understanding of reality,

The corrupting influence it has even on non-human involvement suggests all to the contrary. Some things in the setting are alien science, but some very much is not, and is foreign even to the alien entities in the setting. Look at anything that evokes Yog-Sothoth or Azathoth for example.

 

[aramis erak]

I will direct you to RuneQuest. Divine magic, spirit/battle magic and sorcerery all have notably different mechanics in part to distinguish them, and they aren't alone.

Palladium Fantasy 1r has (checks pdf)..
Arcane Spells: Magical (Wizard), Elemental (Warlock)
Pact Spells: Witch,
Wards: Diabolist
Circles: Summoner
Psionics: Mind Mage
Skill-like animal interactions and transformation: Druid
3 forms of clerical magic...

But they boil down to 3 mechanics: spells per day (Arcane, pact, Wards, Clerical), skill-like, and "inner strength points" per spell.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Palladium Fantasy 1r has (checks pdf)..
Arcane Spells: Magical (Wizard), Elemental (Warlock)
Pact Spells: Witch,
Wards: Diabolist
Circles: Summoner
Psionics: Mind Mage
Skill-like animal interactions and transformation: Druid
3 forms of clerical magic...

But they boil down to 3 mechanics: spells per day (Arcane, pact, Wards, Clerical), skill-like, and "inner strength points" per spell.

Which, to some degree, the three RQ spell approaches do. But there were also less common systems in the game that had major variations or combinations of the three in one fashion or another.

 

[Aldarc]

Invisible Sun by Monte Cook Games also has different mechanics for magic depending on what Order your character belongs to: Goetic (summoning), Vance (Vancian magic), Maker (artifice), Weaver (combining key words), or Apostate.