D&D General D&D magic inspired by...

[Reynard]

it would be cool if it was inspired by lovecraft. that would be interesting

What would Lovecraft magic look like? I am not especially familiar with his fantasy/dream lands stuff.

 

[Tonguez]

it would be cool if it was inspired by lovecraft. that would be interesting

The magic of Conans Hyborea is essentially inspired by Lovecraft. Its all dark ritual invoking ancient powers, a bit of illusion, mind control and sleep spells, summoning creatures, swarms and demons, touch of deaths, cloud kills and cataclysmic earthquakes and flash floods. Magic is corruption and will destroy mind and body unless the Scorcerer has access to powerful artifacts, complex rituals and blood sacrifices. Even then most powerful Scorcerers end up as Liches who regularly sacrifice their acolytes while been stalked by unnamable antidiluvian horrors.


I cant remember the titles but theres a series where magic involves taking the traits of others - so the powerful take the strength, beauty, intelligence etc of the less fortunate and make it their own. They become stronger and more powerful while the victim is drained.

 

[Deset Gled]

I think Gygax specifically picked Vance because it didn't match any real-world magic system.

Um... such as?

On topic, shield and magic missile were directly inspired by The Raven (Vincent Price, Jack Nicholson, Peter Lorre).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

While it's physically impossible for it to have been the inspiration, since it wasn't published until 1995, I think it would have been AWESOME to have a D&D with magic based on Sabriel. The whole "charter marks" thing is fascinating, especially since they explicitly manifest in many forms (written, spoken, musical notes, gestures with the bells, etc.), and presents a world where magic and mundane are a lot more blended together than they are in D&D proper.

 

[Dioltach]

beating an owl at a riddle contest.

Owl: "Who?"
PC: "Who what? I need more information than that."
Owl: "Who who?"
PC: "Nope, still not getting it."
Owl: "Who?"
PC: "Never mind, I give up" [Leaves]
Owl: "Dumbass."

 

[Blue Orange]

Holy cats, someone else who has read Nephilim! Whenever I bring up the game, most people look at me like I'm insane!

Using a little too much Moon Ka?

 

[James Gasik]

Using a little too much Moon Ka?

It goes more like this:

Me: "So there was this game I bought in the 90's where you play an immortal being that has magical powers."

Them: "Like...Vampire?"

Me: "No, actually..."

Them: "Oh! You mean Mummy!"

Me: "No, no, this game's magic system is steeped in Hermetic symbolism..."

Them: "Like Mage?"

Me: "No, not like Mage. Anyways, your character is constantly reincarnated into new lives, and as part of character creation, you develop who your past incarnations were!"

Them: "Still sounding like Mage. Or maybe Werewolf."

Me: "Argh! No, it's not a White Wolf game!"

Them: "Uh huh. And do you still have this so-called book?"

Me: "Well, no, it was destroyed when my basement flooded."

Them: "This is another one of those made-up games you insist are real, like Witchcraft or Marauder 2017, isn't it?"

Me: "They were real! Look, I found articles on the internet! And pictures!"

Them: "Don't engage with the crazy person; he might start talking about Torg again."

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

The magic of Conans Hyborea is essentially inspired by Lovecraft. Its all dark ritual invoking ancient powers, a bit of illusion, mind control and sleep spells, summoning creatures, swarms and demons, touch of deaths, cloud kills and cataclysmic earthquakes and flash floods. Magic is corruption and will destroy mind and body unless the Scorcerer has access to powerful artifacts, complex rituals and blood sacrifices. Even then most powerful Scorcerers end up as Liches who regularly sacrifice their acolytes while been stalked by unnamable antidiluvian horrors.

I think that if we remove Vance from the equation, there's a strong chance that Conan's magic system could take its place. Which means a lot of rituals and slow casting, with a few exceptions.

Other options, looking at Appendix N, would be de Camp and Fletcher Pratt's the Compleat Enchanter, which would probably see casters learning verses to cast spells. There are a lot of spells there that could have been cribbed to form the core of D&D magic system. Moorcock's spells, which also involve a lot of summoning and binding, make me think that summoning would've played an even greater role in D&D magic.

I also think we'd see spellcasters spending HP, spell points, or even Con to cast spells, as a lot of the remaining books show casters being drained and exhausted by working magic.

 

[Blue Orange]

Gasik: Point 'em to the link.

Nephilim - Chaosium | Nephilim | DriveThruRPG.com

Nephilim - Science is an Illusion, History is a Lie. In ages past you lived many times. Your slaves built the Great Pyramid to ho

www.drivethrurpg.com

The game is real. And so are you.

TORG recently got a rerelease, I think. Also a neat game--I like multi-genre. You can do medieval fantasy (Aysle), horror (Orrorsh), cyberpunk (Cyberpapacy), pulp (Nile Empire), post-apocalyptic cyberpunk (Tharkold), and I forget what else all in the same setting.

 

[Voadam]

For this thought experiment there would still be the Chainmail origins of OD&D magic where wizards were basically fantasy artillery with lightning bolts, fireballs, and cloudkill being basically reskinned howitzers and mustard gas.

Vance prepare and forget one shot magic paradigm came in as the basis for mechanics for individual special unit figures (hero and magic user) exploring a dungeon for OD&D. Vancian magic was an adaptation of Chainmail magic to OD&D.

Vance had a couple powerful attack spells from the stories I have read, but I don't recall straight on lightning bolt type of stuff.

So while Conan rituals, Lovecraft summonings, Earthsea true names, Dr. Strange comic eldritch blasts and evocations, might do different mechanics and influence a lot of the flavor and development of new spells, I think they would all accommodate battlefield magical artillery one way or another and we would still have fireballs as a classic wizard battlefield spell.

 

[Cadence]

Vance had a couple powerful attack spells from the stories I have read, but I don't recall straight on lightning bolt type of stuff.

Prismatic Spray was the go to.

 

[Blue Orange]

OK, I was looking for this Gygax quote, because it's relevant, and while I posted this elsewhere I'd say it's even more relevant here. From an older ENworld thread:

TSR - Jack Vance's Forgotten Contributions to D&D

Renowned and influential fantasy author Jack Vance passed away at the age of 96 on May 26, 2013, but his books were highly influential on several aspects of Dungeons & Dragons in more ways than just spellcasting. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Co-creator of D&D, Gary Gygax, explained Vance's...

www.enworld.org

The Dungeons & Dragons wizard is actually inspired by the wizards of Jack Vance's Dying Earth series. Gygax explained the four cardinal types of magic in literature: those systems which require long conjuration with much paraphernalia as visualized by Shakespeare in Macbeth and Robert E. Howard in Conan, those which require short spoken spells (like Jack Vance's Dying Earth series), ultra-powerful magic typical of DeCamp and Pratt in the "Harold Shea" stories, and "generally weak and relatively ineffectual magic (as found in J.R.R. Tolkien's work)." Taking into account the need for speed and balance, Gygax chose the most expedient form of spell casting, Vancian magic.

So Gygax was actually picking from (what he saw as four) options. Basically, Elizabethan was too slow, DeCamp/Pratt too powerful, and Tolkien too weak. The Vancian system was fast and intermediate in terms of power.

So if he'd picked one of the other options we might have a slow, coincidental-type system (a la Liber Ka and I genuinely can't think of any others), a more powerful system (Mage: the Ascension might actually fit here, or its predecessor Ars Magica), or a weaker system (a la some low magic games--some of the Conan games might fit here; MERP actually made magic more powerful as I recall).

Interestingly, he doesn't bring up Moorcock, Howard, or Leiber, which are listed as Appendix N inspirations. Which has all kinds of possibilities open.

 

[Arakhor]

David Eddings used The Will and the Way for his Belgariad/Malloreon books. You imagine what you want to happen and it happens, but if you do it too often or to too great an extent, it fatigues you (even to the point of unconsciousness). There is also an absolute prohibition on "unmaking" anything with the Will and will destroy any mage who attempts it.

Learning how to use the Will also meant that you no longer died of old age. It was never explained why this happens, but since only about 20 people could do so, it didn't really matter that much! Foresight/hedge magic also existed, as did demon summoning, which was an unrelated ritual magic system with its own complications, neither of which granted incidental immortality.

 

[Jer]

Let's imagine that Gygax and Co. were heavily inspired by someone other than Vance for the creation of the D&D magic system. Who might it have been? And what would that have looked like in OD&D and how might it have evolved all the way to 5E?

Realistically, I think Gygax knew he was making a game and his framework for Magic-Users was from a resource management angle. That's why the fire-and-forget framework is there IMO - because he wanted MUs to have a limited resource to track for their spellcasting and the "you have to prepare it beforehand" idea of Vance's magicians gave him a way to do that. (I also think the "having to prepare" part of being a MU played into his idea of what MUs were in the game - I don't remember where, but I remember a quote from him about MUs being a "thinking man's class" where if you weren't careful you were dead.)

So looking at it from a game mechanical perspective, if Jack Vance hadn't written his book and he and Arneson didn't come up with the fire-and-forget idea on their own, there would have been some other resource to track. Possibly spell points would have developed earlier. Possibly each MU would have just had some tricks they could cast at will that got better as they leveled up (a more Dr. Strange style MU).

 

[Ancalagon]

For those looking at "real world inspired" magic systems, I have 2 I know of:

COMMANDMENT: Magic-User Spells Based Off Egyptian + Mesopotamian + Grecian Magic Marquis has this list of spells with a very strong bronze-age flavor

My alchemist is based on spells and feats that alchemists were believed to be able to achieve: The GLOG alchemist (scroll down to see the spells)

 

[Baron Opal II]

I think Gygax specifically picked Vance because it didn't match any real-world magic system.

Um... such as?

Well, Chaldean Pyromancers, Assyrian Astrologers, Egyptian Talismongers and Truenamers, European Hermeticists, English Theurgists, Evenki Shamans, Chinese Alchemists, Yoruba Channelers, Scandinavian Galdrmann, Finnish Runesingers, and the marvelous hot syncretic mess that was the Mediterranean Hellenistic magical culture.

If you're not going to have a fatigue or magic point system, what we call "Vancian" these days is very gameable.

Furthermore, The Raven was a very fun movie. No idea it was the inspiration for those spells! Cool!

 

[Arakhor]

For those looking at "real world inspired" magic systems, I have 2 I know of:

COMMANDMENT: Magic-User Spells Based Off Egyptian + Mesopotamian + Grecian Magic Marquis has this list of spells with a very strong bronze-age flavor

That is a really interesting page. Thanks!

 

[Dave Goff]

For those looking at "real world inspired" magic systems, I have 2 I know of:

COMMANDMENT: Magic-User Spells Based Off Egyptian + Mesopotamian + Grecian Magic Marquis has this list of spells with a very strong bronze-age flavor

My alchemist is based on spells and feats that alchemists were believed to be able to achieve: The GLOG alchemist (scroll down to see the spells)

These are amazing!

 

[Charlaquin]

I think Gygax specifically picked Vance because it didn't match any real-world magic system.

He said that he picked it for game balance reasons; because magic could potentially be incredibly flexible, having to decide ahead of time which spells you would be able to cast that day was, he thought, a necessary limitation on that potential flexibility.