Genre Conventions: What is fantasy?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mechanical resonance takes time. And you still get loss.

Don't get me wrong- M.R. is POWERFUL. Nicola Tesla supposedly caused tremors in a town near his laboratory by using the principle- he was using a piston-like setup to strike the earth at its resonant frequency. But it took him a long time to do (many many hours) and a LOT of fuel, and the tremors were only enough to cause a jiggle.

Merely speaking a word and doing a boogie for a second cannot be enough to incinerate someone without violating thermodynamics.

 

[Wild Gazebo]

mythusmage :

Sorry about my babbling last night--I hadn't slept in over 24hrs...things were really beginning to look the same.

I'll get back to you...hopefully a lot more intelligibly...later today, when I have more time.

 

[Celebrim]

Merely speaking a word and doing a boogie for a second cannot be enough to incinerate someone without violating thermodynamics.

In this universe, I don't doubt that that is true. In the game universe, there is this thin fabric separating reality from a nearly infinite ammount of energy, and getting to it takes no more energy than turning on a spigot.

What is interesting to me though is how rigorously you attack such notions. Would you attack with the same rigors the thermodynamics of nano-replicators (or insert your conventional science fiction device)?

PS: There are alot of questions about the setting that you are asking that I'm ignoring simply because I don't want to get derailed on a tangent.

 

[Desdichado]

PS: There are alot of questions about the setting that you are asking that I'm ignoring simply because I don't want to get derailed on a tangent.

If being the starter of the thread means anything, I don't mind it drifting off on a tangent. I think that kind of stuff is fascinating, personally.

 

[mythusmage]

mythusmage :

Sorry about my babbling last night--I hadn't slept in over 24hrs...things were really beginning to look the same.

I'll get back to you...hopefully a lot more intelligibly...later today, when I have more time.

The game's that good, eh?

Considering how coherent your writing was when you were incoherent, I look forward to what you produce when rested. Hey, I used to translate Col. Pladoh, your compositions were a cinch in comparison. And thanks for helping to focus my thoughts.

 

[mythusmage]

In this universe, I don't doubt that that is true. In the game universe, there is this thin fabric separating reality from a nearly infinite ammount of energy, and getting to it takes no more energy than turning on a spigot.

In Mythus such matters are governed by the Law of Emanation and the Law of Conduction. To quote myself:

The fifth Law is the Law of Emanation. The Law of Emanation deals with energy, source and flow. It allows for the use of energy, enabling the drawing and/or direction of energy for use in any number of purposes.

The Law of Emanation deals with all forms of energy. It applies in castings that affect mental ability as will as those that alter the local gravity. That is, such castings can quicken thought, or render thinking sluggish. A change, you could say, in the flow of mental energy.

***

The Law of Conduction (6th of the 7), on the other hand, deals with the storage of energy in an object, or with the flow of energy through an object. Where the Law of Emanation deals with the energy flow itself, the Law of Conduction is concerned with what the energy is flowing through, and how that impacts flow.

The Law of Conduction governs such matters as Powerstones (Gurps) or Glyphs and Pyramids (Mythus) where such are used to store energy. It also applies in the case of dweomers designed to increase carrying capacity. To allow a greater volume of energy for a given volume of conductor.

That is, the Law of Emanation deals with the flow of energy itself. The Law of Conduction deals with what that energy is flowing through. You use the Law of Emanation to direct energy, you use the Law of Conduction to make the medium the energy is flowing through better at conducting energy.

Hope this helps

 

[Celebrim]

Hope this helps

That's interesting, but I don't really need 'help' per se. I've been thinking about this for at least 20 years.

None of your laws are actually applicable to the setting. Energy doesn't really flow through objects, and in fact, energy doesn't have a meaningful existance in the universe anyway. All energy is effectively the downward flow of the cascade draging on a particle. 'Energy' in the form of moving particles can tunnel through channels in an object, put there isn't really anything like 'electrons' (or there magical equivalent) in the game universe. Hense, there isn't really anything like capacitors either. You can't really store energy (the cascade would suck it off even if you could), but you can store potential energy in the form of 'wound' rune wheels, and you can keep a rune wheel continually turning by building a self-feeding gate system with an appropriate set of sinks, effectively building a mini-cascade.

You can also get help by tieing into the Great Tree and letting the tree's own self-organizing principals do the complex work for you. This is the principal behind spells that do seemingly impossible things like 'comprehend languages', and the principal involved in divinations.

It's worth noting that there is no such thing as 'supernatural' in my campaign universe. Everything operates according to the same principals. If you have mage sight - and are stupid enough to try - you could magnify your vision to the point that you see the little spinning rune wheels winding and unwinding a person's muscles, the tree's branches extending into your own mind helping you to organize your thoughts, tiny little spells effects transforming the matrixes of your food into different shapes, and so on and so forth. This however would classify as one of those things that mortal minds where just not meant to know, and if you were to try it without proper filters in place they'd be feeding your catatonic form through a straw for the remainder of your natural life.

While I'm still side tracked, I'll answer a few questions:

How does one gain that magical sight? Is it inborn?

Anyone inborn with full fledged mage sight would probably not survive unless they weren't fully human (I suppose I should say not fully one of the Free Peoples). However, mage sight can be trained into anyone of sufficient intelligence and patience. You could assume that anyone that could complete as Masters program in Engineering could also develop mage sight. In fact, the hard part isn't getting the eyes to see 'magic', because everything is magical. The hard part is overcoming the natural fliters in your mind protecting you from information overload without killing you or driving you insane. I suppose someone could come up with a spell that actually gave mage sight to people, but as should be obvious giving mage sight to a mind without sufficient knowledge and discpline to handle it would be an extraordinarily cruel thing.

Sorcerer's can develop mage sight as a consequence of exploring thier abilities, but most of them aren't fully human anyway and in general Wizards can't help them with what they do and vica versa.

Those are not "devices" in the strictest, mechanistic sense of the word- they are concepts and symbols.

In this universe, concepts and symbols are abstract things that lack tangible substance. In the universe I'm describing, concepts and symbols are tangible things that anyone with sufficient intelligence and training can physically see. In fact, the whole universe is at some level nothing more than a bunch of little concepts and symbols turning like intermeshing gears powered by little water wheels.

What you have described is the direct manipulation of reality without intervening mechanical devices.

No, what I've described is an intervening mechanical device. A wizard can draw out on a peice of paper what the final device that the spell creates is supposed to look like. In fact, that's exactly how one goes about learning 'spellcraft'. A wizard can watch his apprentice building the device as the spell has cast and then say things like, "The spell failed because you put Exarch's Third Rune of Warding two finger spans from Molybion's Excellent Circumscribing Coil, which caused you fire channel to come unwound after travelling only a few inches. Try again this time using less wiggle when transforming from the Eighth Position of the Wounded Crane into the Upturned Hand of Enlightenment"

No levers, no pulleys, no nuclear generators, no nanites.

No, but there is a little more going on than just wish fulfilment (and for that matter, there is ALOT going on in wish fulfillment).

But the point of all this was that at some level what science fiction authors are doing in thier universes is no different than what I just described to you. The frame of science if usually only superficial. It's just there to help you suspend your disbelief because fantasy is more powerful if you at least in part believe in it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One last point of clarification about my position on Celebrim's fireball: the quantum events he described as being a potential sci-fi origins of a fireball only occur at incredibly high temperatures. So, yes, you do get particles arising out of a sea of energy, but only when you're talking millions of degrees kelvin...birth of the universe/heart of a star/inside a supercollider type environments: Truly unlikely energy levels to be contained and controlled by an old song-and-dance man with a stick.

Which is why if find Mitichlorians more likely than quantum fireballs.

In the game universe, there is this thin fabric separating reality from a nearly infinite ammount of energy, and getting to it takes no more energy than turning on a spigot.

And how much energy does it take to control?

You're getting the impossible free lunch. To get "near infinite amounts of energy"-say, clean fusion- in a sci fi setting requires years of resarch, unimaginable amounts of money, physical plant, as well as human capital- just to set up the mechanism capable of tapping that source. Then there's upkeep.

Your universe? Education and training are required, to be sure, but mere words and paper and ink to open a gateway to limitless power? You're getting a lot more out than you're investing.

No, what I've described is an intervening mechanical device. A wizard can draw out on a peice of paper what the final device that the spell creates is supposed to look like. In fact, that's exactly how one goes about learning 'spellcraft'. A wizard can watch his apprentice building the device as the spell has cast and then say things like, "The spell failed because you put Exarch's Third Rune of Warding two finger spans from Molybion's Excellent Circumscribing Coil, which caused you fire channel to come unwound after travelling only a few inches. Try again this time using less wiggle when transforming from the Eighth Position of the Wounded Crane into the Upturned Hand of Enlightenment"

Um...your "mechanical device" is nothing more than movements and ink and parchment. It doesn't interact with reality in the way a true machine does. The most favorable readings I can give what you described above is either a set of engineering plans or a magical battery. Plans only describe the specs for a machine, and batteries don't do anything except store energy for use by a machine.

In the universe I'm describing, concepts and symbols are tangible things that anyone with sufficient intelligence and training can physically see. In fact, the whole universe is at some level nothing more than a bunch of little concepts and symbols turning like intermeshing gears powered by little water wheels.

Well, that's convenient for you. We're trying to define and describe differences between magic and sci-fi, and you're redefining vocabulary to fit your purposes. That's pretty counterproductive.

For the record, examine how far these words have been twisted:

Merriam-Webster
Concept
1 : something conceived in the mind : THOUGHT, NOTION
2 : an abstract or generic idea generalized from particular instances

Symbol
1 : an authoritative summary of faith or doctrine : CREED
2 : something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship, association, convention, or accidental resemblance; especially : a visible sign of something invisible <the lion is a symbol of courage>
3 : an arbitrary or conventional sign used in writing or printing relating to a particular field to represent operations, quantities, elements, relations, or qualities
4 : an object or act representing something in the unconscious mind that has been repressed <phallic symbols>
5 : an act, sound, or object having cultural significance and the capacity to excite or objectify a response

Where real world concepts and symbols are not things in themselves, your "chimaera" are both metaphysical entities AND things in themselves.

To be perfectly clear, I'm not asserting that magic can't operate by teachable rules. I know it can- I said as much in previous posts.

And yes, I AM as critical about high-tech in sci-fi when I have to be. The point of Dannyalcatraz's Arcane Observation was to illustrate that while magic and tech may look alike, when you start looking "under the hood", so to speak, there are discernable differences. Magic usually doesn't require cause and effect to involve traceable physical connections, and technology- in every sci-fi book I've read- does. Warp Drive requires power from matter/anti-matter reactions. Nanites?- powered by temperature differential or decay engines.

The requirement of intervening mechanical devices is one of few non-cosmetic (read: setting and trappings) distinctions (along with magical thinking versus scientific thinking) that is pretty consistently different between the two genres.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I don't think he was interested in the particular facets of this discusion. He was more interested in amusing parallels. If we were to break-down the boundries of our rather 'binded' or 'cyclical' arguments and focus more on the pure abstraction of an individuals recognition of other 'things' compared to those 'things'' innate characteristics--that make it a 'thing'--we might be able to draw him back in...but only if he had enough time. And I'm sure we would lose the interest of several other people...and be terribly off topic.

I seriously need to respond to the genre elements of the Grim and Gritty thread sometime soon. Not to mention the promised analysis of Kill Bill.

 

[Wayside]

One last point of clarification about my position on Celebrim's fireball: the quantum events he described as being a potential sci-fi origins of a fireball only occur at incredibly high temperatures. So, yes, you do get particles arising out of a sea of energy, but only when you're talking millions of degrees kelvin...birth of the universe/heart of a star/inside a supercollider type environments: Truly unlikely energy levels to be contained and controlled by an old song-and-dance man with a stick.
...
You're getting the impossible free lunch. To get "near infinite amounts of energy"-say, clean fusion- in a sci fi setting requires years of resarch, unimaginable amounts of money, physical plant, as well as human capital- just to set up the mechanism capable of tapping that source. Then there's upkeep.
...
Your universe? Education and training are required, to be sure, but mere words and paper and ink to open a gateway to limitless power? You're getting a lot more out than you're investing.

I can't rationalize Celebrim's setup for him, but "magic" is both mystical and mechanical in my game. Well, first there are a multiplicity of magics, but the one that has access to "near infinite amounts of energy," as you're talking about here, is mechanical without having anything to do with incantations or the waving of sticks in super-secret patterns of power. It's a question purely of "will," but not will in the modern sense of an autonomous agent who navigates between a number of possible choices (that would be will in the sense of, say, Dune), not "will power" or anything like that. In fact will in the sense we generally use it, and also self or ego or personality, aren't the causes of actions at all, but their effects. What I mean is that commonly, we posit a thinker behind every thought, and the thinker is the cause of the thought. But in my game the thinker is produced as an effect by the thought, is its slave not its master, and there is a deeper entity than this surface effect of an ego or self. One is able to "do magic" by undrawing the territories of the self and becoming a nomad in the steppes of this deeper entity, by taking the self out of play, in a sense de-mechanizing it. One takes oneself out of play as an effect--one learns to become a cause--and when the full power of a will begins to be unleashed in this way it can do almost anything. It can draw energy out of n-dimensional space and manipulate it, it can move backward or forward in time as easily as turn left or right (which makes for some insanely interesting fight choreography, incidentally), it can become other selves completely at that surface level, can know your next move in a fight by becoming you, and I don't see any of this as really handwaving science, no more than believing in human free will handwaves science. You could even make quantum uncertainty a product of the competing powers of these deeper wills, that is, could found science on this mystical possibility, as all science is already founded--that is, on a mystical possibility.