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Designing holistic versus gamist magic systems?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7639065" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>It's very clear that magic in LotR doesn't obey the principles of the Vancian inspired magic of D&D, and it is a stretch to try to force those principles to apply to Gandalf. But, the really interesting thing is that even though the principles D&D magic presumably works on don't apply to the LotR, Vancian magic with spell slots tends to create in practice the same frequency and diversity of magic observed in the story. Gandalf may not be observed memorizing spells or carrying spell books or using material components or doing a lot of the things we'd expect a Vancian caster to do, but neither does he use magic all the time, nor use the same spell in the same situations, and he does seem at times to run out of magic. This suggests not only limited access and a need to horde magic against emergency, but also that at different times he has access to different magic. Gandalf might not actually have been a 5th level Magic-User, but very few other game systems replicate the actions of the story well. In the story Gandalf hides his magic because he's charged by the Valar not to meet might with might, but from the perspective of the reader this ambiguous idea might as well be implemented behind the scenes with Vancian spell slots. Gandalf's lack of freedom to do magic regardless of the narrative reason conforms to the same lack of freedom a player is given to perform magic for balance reasons.</p><p></p><p>Of course, if we want to make magic feel numinous and well magical, I don't think this explanation however satisfying it may be is sufficient. Plenty of tables use the system either because that's what the rules are and whether they like it or not, it's what they got, or else in understanding of why it works this way from a game and narrative perspective, but believing that the system is solely an artifact of that game balance and that it doesn't make sense. And further, they believe that this not making sense is tied to the fact that it is a game mechanic, and not to the mysterious nature of magic. When I was a kid I always used to hear the complaint that spell points or mana systems would be much more "realistic", and it was only as I got older that I started to wonder how you could know whether a system for something that doesn't really exist was realistic. I think the real issue is not "realism" but suspension of disbelief. </p><p></p><p>So for my point #3 above, "There is a sense of depth to the magic of the setting. And in particular the mechanics of magic feel tied to the setting.", I think the first thing you have to tackle is getting the players to suspend disbelief, and to do that you have to explain how magic works in the setting in a way that makes a good deal of sense.</p><p></p><p>In D&D the fundamental precept of magic is that it's impossible for a human to use magic in a short period of time as a mere act of will. Humans aren't magical enough to do that, or that is to say they don't have as strong of connection to the rest of reality as that. Whereas a magical being might be bound to the skein of reality by many strong cables, for a human if they have the talent at all, they find it is like drawing on a fish with a very thin line. Most human magic users therefore come up with an agreement with some more powerful magical being and have that being grant or perform the spell on their behalf, so that the magical being rather than the human does most of the work. That's what's known as divine magic. A few human magic users aren't fully human and have a more innate connection to magic than normal humans may have. These are sorcerers. For humans that wish to perform their own magic without having a magical heritage, they must do the following:</p><p></p><p>a) Slowly train up their ability to perform magic, much as an athlete must slowly train up their body. Rush it too fast and you risk dangerous side effects and strain on your mind and body, which might cripple or permanently destroy your ability to do magic. Over the years wizards have come up with a regimented program for slowly training up the necessary magical 'muscles' in a way that minimizes risk of crippling injury, and most wizards wisely hold pretty closely to this program of study though the more gifted may risk slightly more effort.</p><p>b) Slowly prepare spells over the course of many minutes. When a Wizard 'memorizes' a spell, he's doing much more than just carefully memorizes the gestures and words necessary to complete a spell - he's preparing the spell to reach that point in the first place. Each spell a Wizard 'memorizes' must be carefully constructed in the minutes that is spent memorizing it so that it is almost but not quite ready to cast. Since human wizards can only lift very small loads at a time, they have to construct the equivalent of magical machinery - pulleys and levers that allow the wizard to leverage forces that would otherwise break their minds and bodies. Constructing these magical machines by slow labor is the work of several minutes for each spell that the wizard wishes to cast, as the wizard slowly drags into place the fabric of reality into the structure needed to work the magic. Spells are bits of known technology which wizards have discovered and devised over the years by long research, which have the unique property that you can perform most of the work ahead of the time and then leave the magic stored in a state where it's almost ready to work and requires only a comparatively simple set of directions to complete and target the spell. </p><p>c) When a wizard completes a spell, it's not just that the instructions for creating the spell are wiped from their mind, but the physical machine that they created is wiped from their mind and because humans are so comparatively unmagical beings, they can't simply create new ones. They used up all the strength that they had save the little necessary to cast the spell when they prepared the spells in the morning. The part of their being that is needed to cast magic is at this point as tired as the body of one that just ran a long distance race. They are flagged out. The part of their being that cast spells is not a part of their being most people are even aware exists, like a muscle so little used that no thought is given to it unless you strain it or train it. And tiring that part of their being in no fashion tires the muscles in their legs or arms. The fatigue they experience is not a fatigue that ordinary people every experience or ever notice experiencing, but something you can only understand if you like the wizard have strained to use that part of your being. This is why a wizard who was careful about preparing and using magic can be out of magical strength while still able to perform physical activity.</p><p>d) Different schools of magic exist which draw on different power sources and different targets for the energy they create. Evocation and Conjuration magic for example relies on the fact that observable universe is not all that exists, but instead the observable universe is embedded in a larger universe which is thinly separated from or own and to which doors can be constructed by those with the skill. Transmutation magic particularly relies on a fact all human magic relies on, that universe was created through words and that there is a close relationship between the name of a thing and the thing itself, so that the act of giving a name to something by a physical law changes it. By employing snippets of the secret language by which the universe was made, the transmuter can temporarily or permanently alter the nature of things around him. Enchantment magic relies on the fact that minds are delicate and most are easily swayed by comparatively small amounts of force, while Illusion magic combines this observation with some of the skills of transmutation and conjuration to alter perception and ultimately reality.</p><p></p><p>If you look at that explanation for how magic works, you realize that there are huge gaps in the existing rules regarding magic. There are tons of things about the nature of reality and about the nature of magic that are implied by that explanation for which we have no mechanics. Your typical hedge mage practicing magic as a tradesman on behalf of a small community may never even think about the gaps and confine themselves to the rituals they were taught without ever thinking about or understanding how they work, but it ought to be possible for a PC to break out of this paradigm and explore the magical reality in a fuller way. My belief is if the mechanics for that fuller magical reality existed, then D&D magic would feel magical.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7639065, member: 4937"] It's very clear that magic in LotR doesn't obey the principles of the Vancian inspired magic of D&D, and it is a stretch to try to force those principles to apply to Gandalf. But, the really interesting thing is that even though the principles D&D magic presumably works on don't apply to the LotR, Vancian magic with spell slots tends to create in practice the same frequency and diversity of magic observed in the story. Gandalf may not be observed memorizing spells or carrying spell books or using material components or doing a lot of the things we'd expect a Vancian caster to do, but neither does he use magic all the time, nor use the same spell in the same situations, and he does seem at times to run out of magic. This suggests not only limited access and a need to horde magic against emergency, but also that at different times he has access to different magic. Gandalf might not actually have been a 5th level Magic-User, but very few other game systems replicate the actions of the story well. In the story Gandalf hides his magic because he's charged by the Valar not to meet might with might, but from the perspective of the reader this ambiguous idea might as well be implemented behind the scenes with Vancian spell slots. Gandalf's lack of freedom to do magic regardless of the narrative reason conforms to the same lack of freedom a player is given to perform magic for balance reasons. Of course, if we want to make magic feel numinous and well magical, I don't think this explanation however satisfying it may be is sufficient. Plenty of tables use the system either because that's what the rules are and whether they like it or not, it's what they got, or else in understanding of why it works this way from a game and narrative perspective, but believing that the system is solely an artifact of that game balance and that it doesn't make sense. And further, they believe that this not making sense is tied to the fact that it is a game mechanic, and not to the mysterious nature of magic. When I was a kid I always used to hear the complaint that spell points or mana systems would be much more "realistic", and it was only as I got older that I started to wonder how you could know whether a system for something that doesn't really exist was realistic. I think the real issue is not "realism" but suspension of disbelief. So for my point #3 above, "There is a sense of depth to the magic of the setting. And in particular the mechanics of magic feel tied to the setting.", I think the first thing you have to tackle is getting the players to suspend disbelief, and to do that you have to explain how magic works in the setting in a way that makes a good deal of sense. In D&D the fundamental precept of magic is that it's impossible for a human to use magic in a short period of time as a mere act of will. Humans aren't magical enough to do that, or that is to say they don't have as strong of connection to the rest of reality as that. Whereas a magical being might be bound to the skein of reality by many strong cables, for a human if they have the talent at all, they find it is like drawing on a fish with a very thin line. Most human magic users therefore come up with an agreement with some more powerful magical being and have that being grant or perform the spell on their behalf, so that the magical being rather than the human does most of the work. That's what's known as divine magic. A few human magic users aren't fully human and have a more innate connection to magic than normal humans may have. These are sorcerers. For humans that wish to perform their own magic without having a magical heritage, they must do the following: a) Slowly train up their ability to perform magic, much as an athlete must slowly train up their body. Rush it too fast and you risk dangerous side effects and strain on your mind and body, which might cripple or permanently destroy your ability to do magic. Over the years wizards have come up with a regimented program for slowly training up the necessary magical 'muscles' in a way that minimizes risk of crippling injury, and most wizards wisely hold pretty closely to this program of study though the more gifted may risk slightly more effort. b) Slowly prepare spells over the course of many minutes. When a Wizard 'memorizes' a spell, he's doing much more than just carefully memorizes the gestures and words necessary to complete a spell - he's preparing the spell to reach that point in the first place. Each spell a Wizard 'memorizes' must be carefully constructed in the minutes that is spent memorizing it so that it is almost but not quite ready to cast. Since human wizards can only lift very small loads at a time, they have to construct the equivalent of magical machinery - pulleys and levers that allow the wizard to leverage forces that would otherwise break their minds and bodies. Constructing these magical machines by slow labor is the work of several minutes for each spell that the wizard wishes to cast, as the wizard slowly drags into place the fabric of reality into the structure needed to work the magic. Spells are bits of known technology which wizards have discovered and devised over the years by long research, which have the unique property that you can perform most of the work ahead of the time and then leave the magic stored in a state where it's almost ready to work and requires only a comparatively simple set of directions to complete and target the spell. c) When a wizard completes a spell, it's not just that the instructions for creating the spell are wiped from their mind, but the physical machine that they created is wiped from their mind and because humans are so comparatively unmagical beings, they can't simply create new ones. They used up all the strength that they had save the little necessary to cast the spell when they prepared the spells in the morning. The part of their being that is needed to cast magic is at this point as tired as the body of one that just ran a long distance race. They are flagged out. The part of their being that cast spells is not a part of their being most people are even aware exists, like a muscle so little used that no thought is given to it unless you strain it or train it. And tiring that part of their being in no fashion tires the muscles in their legs or arms. The fatigue they experience is not a fatigue that ordinary people every experience or ever notice experiencing, but something you can only understand if you like the wizard have strained to use that part of your being. This is why a wizard who was careful about preparing and using magic can be out of magical strength while still able to perform physical activity. d) Different schools of magic exist which draw on different power sources and different targets for the energy they create. Evocation and Conjuration magic for example relies on the fact that observable universe is not all that exists, but instead the observable universe is embedded in a larger universe which is thinly separated from or own and to which doors can be constructed by those with the skill. Transmutation magic particularly relies on a fact all human magic relies on, that universe was created through words and that there is a close relationship between the name of a thing and the thing itself, so that the act of giving a name to something by a physical law changes it. By employing snippets of the secret language by which the universe was made, the transmuter can temporarily or permanently alter the nature of things around him. Enchantment magic relies on the fact that minds are delicate and most are easily swayed by comparatively small amounts of force, while Illusion magic combines this observation with some of the skills of transmutation and conjuration to alter perception and ultimately reality. If you look at that explanation for how magic works, you realize that there are huge gaps in the existing rules regarding magic. There are tons of things about the nature of reality and about the nature of magic that are implied by that explanation for which we have no mechanics. Your typical hedge mage practicing magic as a tradesman on behalf of a small community may never even think about the gaps and confine themselves to the rituals they were taught without ever thinking about or understanding how they work, but it ought to be possible for a PC to break out of this paradigm and explore the magical reality in a fuller way. My belief is if the mechanics for that fuller magical reality existed, then D&D magic would feel magical. [/QUOTE]
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