Is Magic a Setting Element or a Plot Device

[mmadsen]

Most of the fantasy I have read (and there are many exceptions here, I'm painting with a very broad brush) treats magic as a plot device. The hero needs to kill the dragon, so, he finds/makes/is given a dragon killing sword/spear/lumpy metal thing. Off he goes, kills the dragon and the peasant's rejoice.

What fantasy are you thinking of? I won't deny that magic is often used as a plot device, but your canonical example doesn't match anything that comes to mind.

In SF, OTOH, the magic (ok, it's not magic in SF, I know that, just work with me here) is part of the setting. There's no quest for the dragon killing sword. Everyone has one. That's why dragons are so bloody rare. Instead of being gifted by a cloak of invisibility to get past the bad guys, the hero's install a cloaking device on their ship that is pretty much readily available at any Star Home Depot.

I would argue that the key distinction between technology and magic is that we understand and control technology, while we don't really understand and only barely manage to harness magic to our own needs.

Most roleplaying games treat magic as fantasy-technology, of course, which many people don't enjoy, for thematic reasons, but accept, because it lends itself to straightforward rules. You can design a system for Magic as Plot Device -- With Rules though.

 

[Janx]

And it hit me. Most of the fantasy I have read (and there are many exceptions here, I'm painting with a very broad brush) treats magic as a plot device. The hero needs to kill the dragon, so, he finds/makes/is given a dragon killing sword/spear/lumpy metal thing. Off he goes, kills the dragon and the peasant's rejoice.

I don't tend to run adventures where the quest is to get magic item X to solve problem Y.

As a player, I can't recall ever needing to do such a quest. It has never come up that one of my items was the MacGuffin to save the day.

We found or made our items over the course of play, and used them to solve problems.

I don't find the world's I've built or played in to be overly magical, in the sense of deviating beyond the faux-historical time period because of abundance of magic technologies.

 

[Desdichado]

Hussar, that's an interesting question you've stumbled across, and an interesting paradigm for how to approach it. Although not exactly with the same paradigm, I've given some thought to the question in other terms. Actually, I think that fantasy-dom in general is grappling with similar questions; I'm more and more struck by authors that are striking out away from the "traditionalist" Medieval fantasy approach and bringing other paradigms to bear on how to view their fantasy.

Let me, if you will, distill a few points out of the thread and respond to that distillation rather than to any specific post, though.

1) Mundane vs. mythic refers, if I understand correctly, to how "integrated" the fantastic elements are to the setting. I.e., is it a pseudo-historical setting with magic and monsters popping up as one-offs that make no difference to the setting overall other than to have the same kind of feel as a mythic character like Hercules or Beowulf? Or does the setting integrate that into its fabric, thus becoming something other than pseudo-historical as a result?

2) Although labeled at various times within this thread as a fantasy paradigm vs. a science fiction paradigm here in this thread, as a few have pointed out, it's not anywhere nearly so clear cut in the genre-space. Lots of science fiction doesn't really integrate the fantastic technology that it purports, and resembles instead something close to "stock sci-fi" with the fantastic elements grafted on in a "mythic" sense. Some fantasy also tries to integrate the fantastic elements, like Dark Sun or Eberron--although I'd argue that it's more of a handwavey token gesture in most cases rather than fully going through the exercise of really integrating the fantastic elements. Frankly, I think that's what most people want; lip-service to rationalism rather than a full-blown exercise that will probably only appeal to a hardcore niche of the market and will be too exotic and strange to be useable for almost any game that I can imagine.

3) I know nobody here has implied as much, but there are other paradigms besides "science fiction" and "traditional fantasy" that can be brought to bear. To offer at least one counter example that's been prevalent in many of my games and settings over the last several years, you can take a supernatural horror approach to the question. This one is interesting (in my opinion) because it offers possibly a holistic approach that covers both the science fiction and fantasy approaches, at least in some ways.

In horror fiction, the fantastic elements are never "mundane"--they are almost always exceptional and rare, and the world appears to be, at least at the get-go, much more familiar, not too unlike the pseudo-historical approach that traditional fantasy has. However, as the characters delve into it, it often turns out that the world is different than it appears to be, and that the fantastic elements are more tightly interwoven into the setting design than it first appears. This can come in at least two forms: a conspiracy-theory, secret history form in which everything the characters thought they knew was wrong, and it turns out that the fantastic elements really drive a lot of what's happened in the world and what's happening in the world after all behind the scenes. Or it can take a Lovecraftian approach, where (to paraphrase Shakespeare along with Lovecraft in the same thought--if that isn't too pretentious and strange) there are more things in heaven an earth than our philoso[phy is capable of rationally understanding, and to journey too far from the familiar shores of what we think reality is into the true nature of reality is to risk our health, our sanity or even our very humanity.

From a gaming perspective, I think it's a bit dangerous to go too far into exploring the nature of the setting. That way is risky, because most players are into showing up and having fun, often on a somewhat superficial level. Or, if not superficial, their enjoyment comes out of exploring their character, the relationship of their character to the other characters, and other things. I don't know that exploration of the deeper fabric of the fantasy setting or the fantasy genre paradigm are going to be something that they take a strong and sustained interest in. So, it's something that has to be done somewhat carefully, and I think level-setting up front is important.

For this reason, when I describe my setting to prospective players, I make a point of talking about the play expections. "It's a dark fantasy setting; it may look a bit like D&D on the surface, but as you get further into it, it's really more like Warhammer or Call of Cthulhu." For instance.

 

[S'mon]

You're missing the point. There weren't phalanxes 2500 years ago, nor were there siege crossbows. 2500 years ago, they probably weren't even using iron weapons, let alone something as advanced as a crossbow. The horsemen wouldn't have stirrups, so, no cavalry. And as far as siege weapons go, you might get some very rudimentary catapults, but, by the time of LOTR, you should have trebuchets.

I've said it before, but this Inevitable Progress view of history is a personal bete noire of mine*. To get some idea of just how silly it is, compare Central & South America in 500 BC to Central & South America in AD 1500. Or Egypt in 3000 BC to Egypt in 1000 BC. Or China in 500 BC to China in AD 1500. etc etc ad nauseam. Tolkien's heroes may be Men of the West, but clearly that doesn't include a Whig view of history - something he seems to have disliked.

(Do you like it that Peter Jackson gave the Gondoreans Plate Armour, BTW? Anachronistic in terms of Tolkien's Beowulf-era cultures, but worked well for some Victorian pre-Raphaelite style visuals!)

*See second link in my sig...

 

[Dausuul]

You're missing the point. There weren't phalanxes 2500 years ago, nor were there siege crossbows. 2500 years ago, they probably weren't even using iron weapons, let alone something as advanced as a crossbow. The horsemen wouldn't have stirrups, so, no cavalry. And as far as siege weapons go, you might get some very rudimentary catapults, but, by the time of LOTR, you should have trebuchets.

There most certainly were phalanxes 2500 years ago, or 4500 for that matter. It's one of the oldest formations in military history; get a bunch of guys with pointy sticks, pack them together, and point them at the enemy. There are pictures of primitive phalanx formations in Sumeria, dating from 2500 BCE.

The Iron Age started in different places at different times, but in the Mediterranean and the Middle East it mostly happened around 1200 to 900 BCE. Cavalry seems to have showed up around the same time. (You don't need stirrups to have cavalry.)

I'll concede the lack of trebuchets.

In any event, you're assuming Sauron himself isn't going to change with the times. If you were frozen in carbonite for hundreds of years, and emerged into a Star Trek future with replicators and stuff, would you insist on trying to get by with your old 21st-century tech? Or would you adapt? For that matter, there's no reason to believe Sauron spent those years in an unconscious state. He could well have watched the entire progression of technology.

Setting all that aside, I do agree with the larger point: Worlds in medieval stasis for thousands of years bug the hell out of me. I make a point of having a history of technological change in any world I design. Ancient ruins are noticeably primitive, except when I deliberately envision the present as a "dark age" where much knowledge has been lost.

 

[Umbran]

In any event, you're assuming Sauron himself isn't going to change with the times.

Note, specifically, that before he went all dark and evil, Sauron was a servant of Aulë, who was the equivalent of Hephaestus or Vulcan in Tolkien's pantheon of angelic beings. Sauron is the poster child for how craft and advancement can be abused.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Middle Earth is not a world in stasis, but a world in decline. And since part of its intent is to show the nature of will of human (or hobbit or elven) conduct, that part really has nothing to do with technology or lack thereof. Gonder fails to field technology capable of knocking Sauron out because they lack the will. (And also late, the means and the energy--but that lack is due to a long lack of will.) See Elrond's statements to Gandalf about who the elves can trust to fight. Moreover, this decline is not arrested by the defeat of Sauron but simply eased into a transition into something a lot more pleasant that what Sauron would have done with it, while Gondor has a brief resurgence and the elves leave.

This is often a common theme in magic as plot device--at least when not abused as such. The hero may use magic as a plot device to accomplish something, but the real story is that the hero had the will, guts, moxie, smarts, cleverness, nerve, luck, smooth tongue, etc. to see what the magic could do, to acquire it, and then to risk its use.

In my gaming, I prefer this style of magic, generally. I've gradually weaned myself off of the mistaken belief that I preferred magic as technology--no doubt an early preference reinforced by an appreciation of form, structure, logic. However, I've found in gaming that when I get too far along the technology line, magic simply becomes "color".

That is, it stops being plot device readily enough, moves into some interesting gaming space as a tool, and then rapidly loses my interest as "magic missile wand" becomes simply another name for "my character owns a laser rifle." Thoughtful and careful effort into the structure of magic as technology can resist this tendency somewhat, of course, but I find it more pursued than achieved.

Not that there is anything wrong with magic as mere color. If you like that sort of thing, your interests are likely on other parts of the game, and I can see the appeal of that. I simply don't share it. I want the fantastical to be fantastical. For that to happen, it can't be move very far into the technological realm.

My problem, then, is that I have to reconcile this preference with my other preference that magic be generally pervasive. The common way of making magic as plot without blowing up the system is to make it rare. So this is a tension that I struggle with constantly. I think part of my attraction to narrative and metagaming mechanics is that such offer a way out of this dilemma.

 

[Hussar]

What fantasy are you thinking of? I won't deny that magic is often used as a plot device, but your canonical example doesn't match anything that comes to mind.

I would argue that the key distinction between technology and magic is that we understand and control technology, while we don't really understand and only barely manage to harness magic to our own needs.

Most roleplaying games treat magic as fantasy-technology, of course, which many people don't enjoy, for thematic reasons, but accept, because it lends itself to straightforward rules. You can design a system for Magic as Plot Device -- With Rules though.

Note - I haven't read your link, so I'll have to get back to that. But, as far as examples, well, Lord of the Rings leaps to mind. Here's a world with fantastic elements - intelligent, immortal aliens (elves), giant intelligent animals, magic weapons and the like - but the setting pretty much entirely ignores these. Sting is a plot device, not a setting element.

Conan and most Sword and Sandals style fantasy fits this mold as well. You have magic, monsters and whatnot, but, it's all plot device, never part of the setting.

The thing is, even in these examples, magic isn't uncontrollable. It's very controllable - people make stuff with it. People use it. But, because it's a plot point and not a setting element, only certain, very specific people get to use it or make things with it and no one else can.

 

[Hussar]

/snip Or China in 500 BC to China in AD 1500. etc etc ad nauseam. /snip

*See second link in my sig...

I think that particular example is flawed. 1500 AD China was SIGNIFICANTLY more technologically advanced than pretty much any other nation on the planet. Look at the Chinese Treasure Fleets if you want more. Granted, once China closed its borders in the 15th century (ish) it stagnated quite a lot.

I would also point out that Central American technology in the 15th century equaled Europe when it came to things like glass and pottery. It's generally considered that the lack of horses or large draft animals that retarded their advancement in other areas.

There most certainly were phalanxes 2500 years ago, or 4500 for that matter. It's one of the oldest formations in military history; get a bunch of guys with pointy sticks, pack them together, and point them at the enemy. There are pictures of primitive phalanx formations in Sumeria, dating from 2500 BCE.

Sorry, misspoke. Meant 2500 years before the time of LoTR. Which would acutally match what you're saying pretty closely. And, while you do have cavalry as well, it's not what people generally consider to be cavalry - guys with lances and the like. Horse archers and hoplites were more the norm.

Not that there is anything wrong with magic as mere color. If you like that sort of thing, your interests are likely on other parts of the game, and I can see the appeal of that. I simply don't share it. I want the fantastical to be fantastical. For that to happen, it can't be move very far into the technological realm.

Oh totally. This is 100% a preference thing.

Like I said at the outset, I'm a much larger SF fan than fantasy and this is the main reason. If you have an immortal race living on your world, that's going to have an ENORMOUS impact on the world, IMO.

The idea of "world in decline" just never really appealed to me that much I guess. Even the whole "dark ages" thing seems to be getting debunked pretty thoroughly in historical circles. Progress might get stalled in some areas typically due to some fairly specific reasons, but, it's rare that it ever goes into decline.

Again, totally my own opinion and not meant as a blanket sort of thing.

 

[Hussar]

Hussar, that's an interesting question you've stumbled across, and an interesting paradigm for how to approach it. Although not exactly with the same paradigm, I've given some thought to the question in other terms. Actually, I think that fantasy-dom in general is grappling with similar questions; I'm more and more struck by authors that are striking out away from the "traditionalist" Medieval fantasy approach and bringing other paradigms to bear on how to view their fantasy.

Let me, if you will, distill a few points out of the thread and respond to that distillation rather than to any specific post, though.

1) Mundane vs. mythic refers, if I understand correctly, to how "integrated" the fantastic elements are to the setting. I.e., is it a pseudo-historical setting with magic and monsters popping up as one-offs that make no difference to the setting overall other than to have the same kind of feel as a mythic character like Hercules or Beowulf? Or does the setting integrate that into its fabric, thus becoming something other than pseudo-historical as a result?

Yup. That's my take on it. If these things exist in the world, are known to exist in the world, then someone, somewhere is going to exploit them and once they do that, everyone will do it.

2) Although labeled at various times within this thread as a fantasy paradigm vs. a science fiction paradigm here in this thread, as a few have pointed out, it's not anywhere nearly so clear cut in the genre-space. Lots of science fiction doesn't really integrate the fantastic technology that it purports, and resembles instead something close to "stock sci-fi" with the fantastic elements grafted on in a "mythic" sense. Some fantasy also tries to integrate the fantastic elements, like Dark Sun or Eberron--although I'd argue that it's more of a handwavey token gesture in most cases rather than fully going through the exercise of really integrating the fantastic elements. Frankly, I think that's what most people want; lip-service to rationalism rather than a full-blown exercise that will probably only appeal to a hardcore niche of the market and will be too exotic and strange to be useable for almost any game that I can imagine.

Again, totally agree. It's not a genre specific thing at all. And, I probably shouldn't have painted it as such in the OP. It's more that I see it occur more often in fantasy than SF. Probably more because I read a lot more SF than fantasy.

I mean, heck, look at Harry Potter or any of the Urban Fantasy stories. There are settings where the fantastic is woven directly into the setting.

3) I know nobody here has implied as much, but there are other paradigms besides "science fiction" and "traditional fantasy" that can be brought to bear. To offer at least one counter example that's been prevalent in many of my games and settings over the last several years, you can take a supernatural horror approach to the question. This one is interesting (in my opinion) because it offers possibly a holistic approach that covers both the science fiction and fantasy approaches, at least in some ways.

In horror fiction, the fantastic elements are never "mundane"--they are almost always exceptional and rare, and the world appears to be, at least at the get-go, much more familiar, not too unlike the pseudo-historical approach that traditional fantasy has. However, as the characters delve into it, it often turns out that the world is different than it appears to be, and that the fantastic elements are more tightly interwoven into the setting design than it first appears. This can come in at least two forms: a conspiracy-theory, secret history form in which everything the characters thought they knew was wrong, and it turns out that the fantastic elements really drive a lot of what's happened in the world and what's happening in the world after all behind the scenes. Or it can take a Lovecraftian approach, where (to paraphrase Shakespeare along with Lovecraft in the same thought--if that isn't too pretentious and strange) there are more things in heaven an earth than our philoso[phy is capable of rationally understanding, and to journey too far from the familiar shores of what we think reality is into the true nature of reality is to risk our health, our sanity or even our very humanity.

I can buy this paradigm, sometimes. Sure, I can totally see that some things might be hidden and not exploited. But, my problem is, once these things have been revealed, why aren't they being exploited?

And, to look specifically at D&D, these things are not hidden at all.

From a gaming perspective, I think it's a bit dangerous to go too far into exploring the nature of the setting. That way is risky, because most players are into showing up and having fun, often on a somewhat superficial level. Or, if not superficial, their enjoyment comes out of exploring their character, the relationship of their character to the other characters, and other things. I don't know that exploration of the deeper fabric of the fantasy setting or the fantasy genre paradigm are going to be something that they take a strong and sustained interest in. So, it's something that has to be done somewhat carefully, and I think level-setting up front is important.

For this reason, when I describe my setting to prospective players, I make a point of talking about the play expections. "It's a dark fantasy setting; it may look a bit like D&D on the surface, but as you get further into it, it's really more like Warhammer or Call of Cthulhu." For instance.

Yeah, I can get that. I know that my first foray into Dark Sun, currently, has been a bit challenging trying to catch up on the proper nouns and whatnot. There's just so much history and culture here that I'm a little intimidated by all of it.

OTOH, I think the DM can parcel it out in chunks over the course of the campaign. If the opening area is fairly run of the mill - not too many setting specific elements, and then, every session, introduce a small number (say 1-3) setting specific elements in such a way that it seems natural, then I think it doesn't make things too hard for the player.

Forex, Zeitgeist starts you out in the city with lots of steampunk machinery. But, the steampunk elements are fairly in the background - other than the warship of course. (I don't think that counts as a spoiler since you get introduced to the warship in the very first scene). As the adventures continue, more and more setting specific goodies can be introduced.