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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dethklok" data-source="post: 6259493" data-attributes="member: 6746469">An old game world I used to like was atheistic in nature. There were  Christian friars who could perform subtle miracles, but these only  worked on the basis of reputation, superstition, and faith. The powers  of wizards, alchemists, and mystics were genuine in the sense of working  without the need for belief. But as the years passed, I gradually found  myself more and more troubled by the powers wielded by wizards in this godless game-world, because  these were based intrinsically on language.Alchemy was  plausible in pseudo-scientific terms, and the mystics drew upon what  could be described as an inner psychic well. But wizards worked magic by  studying weighty tomes, writing runes, or waving their hands and  speaking arcane syllables after the classical fashion. And this seems to  imply that there is something intrinsic to the words or gestures that  gave them power.The problem is that language is a human creation. In a godless universe, where words, symbols, and gestures have no intrinsic meaning, wizardry isn't plausible. Of course, magic in cultures of the real world generally has relied on rituals and incantations. But traditional wizards  of the real world didn't live in a godless universe. Their rituals and incantations were  always directed at something that would hear them. In other words, the ancient wizards were  also priests.In a prescientific universe filled with gods, it is easy to  see how language and ritual would be intertwined with thaumaturgy. Wonder-workers would call on deities to bring rain, or demons to curse their  enemies, or the dead to learn their secrets. Even a strictly  monotheistic universe, where so-called "superstition" is disregarded and there are no entities besides God to call upon,  gives rise to the possibility of the words themselves having intrinsic  power imbued in them by the Almighty: "in the beginning there was the Word."And  a corollary of this is that, long ago, clerics were also much like wizards. The ancient  priests often recorded a great deal of mathematical, astronomical, and  even alchemical and scientific information. And you can see how this  merging of theology with magic worked in film when considering Maleficent's  invocation of "the powers of hell" in Sleeping Beauty, or in  television with Simon the Sorcerer's calling on Hermes and "the  lords of darkness" in Robin of Sherwood (specifically at 35:45 in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02IpKpb1SaY" target="_blank">this episode</a>).But  what if we require that the incantations of wizards derive power without relying on a God or gods? How can words or symbols have any magic in them without supernatural  powers? Can classical wizards - dusty books, magic circles, spells and all - exist independently of clerics? And if  so, then how would their magic work?</blockquote>

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