[Monday] Request for real world magic traditions.

[twofalls]

Authentic Thamaturgy

Written by Isaac Bonewits (author of Real Magic) this book was updated by the author for a publication by Steve Jackson games. Bonewits holds a Degree in Occult Magic from Berkeley, and is a popular writer on modern occult.

Authentic Thamaturgy, ISBN - 1-55634-360-4, SJGames Copywrite 1998, Isaac Bonewits.

It has a LOT of information on different magical traditions, approaches to magic in games, and how magic can be made more 'real' in an RPG. In addition, its just a darn fun read.

 

[Clueless]

I used them recently as part of the ritual that was used to bind a balor to an Untheric (aka Sumerian) burial mound on Toril that the PCs in my campaign were investigating.

... there are days I regret sending you links to the neat things I find.

I'll second the suggestion of Authentic Thamaturgy - it's an extremely fine read, and very useful for this sort of topic.

For more direct help - let's see if I can surface any useful collections of information for you. For example, exorcism rites. And the detailed rites.

Other collections of information, if this hasn't been mentioned yet the Cult of Mithras - I'd especially note that this diety was very popular with the soldiers surprisingly enough. Which can lead to some interesting implications.

There's often an importance (I believe it's Celtic, may also be Cherokee) lent to standing in the 'in between' points - crossroads, on beaches, or one foot in water and one on land.

The Cherokee have legends of a people called the 'Shining Ones' that are remarkably simular in tone to the Irish Tuatha De Danan. (Considering the implication that the Sidhe came from farther west over the open sea - this can lead to some interesting connections for the plot minded DM. It also led to some nice books by Tom Dietz.)

For Chinese myths/legendary stories I'd review The Journey West. It's one of the most well known and deeply engrained stories for that area of the world.

For a random tidbit of information regarding offerings to the dead: It's bad luck to pass someone a bowl of rice with the spoon/fork/chopsticks pointing up in the air. It's preferred that the eating tools are to the side, resting on the side of the bowl. Why? Because when food is placed out for the ancestors to symbolicly eat - the spoon is pointed straight up so they may grasp it. Passing a bowl with the spoon up to a *living* person is more than just a little awkward.

I would really not over look the influence of animist cultures. These are the ones with spirits and the like - and often have a much richer magical element to them than what may be commonly seen. Unfortunately the research on those involve me hitting a library, it's obscure even for me. So I can't be much more helpful than just listing them off. Your list covered Europe and North America pretty handily. It's a modern game though so they might run into just about anything. Russian mythology is downright *creepy*. If we have any Australians on the thread maybe they could fill us in with a more direct run down on the concept of the Dreamtime?

 

[RangerWickett]

Man, I need more time to read and research all this stuff. It's very interesting. Sadly, I'm having a bit of a hard time extracting from the traditions actual elements that would be fun for gameplay. For instance, I think the Tree of Life from Kabbala is intriguing and mysterious, but I can't think of a way to make it fit into spellcasting on a mechanical level. What would differentiate a kabbalistic spellcaster from a witch or a technomage or a hougan?

 

[Jolly Giant]

Seith

This is the Viking version of witchcraft. Seith focused largely on healing and nature magic. Freya - the goddess of love and fertility - was the one who brought the knowledge of seith out to the world, and was naturally considered the patron of all seithmen/women.

 

[Clueless]

Technique. Location of casting. Required materials. Length of time to cast. Legality. On a mechanical level in all of the above you're looking at the idea of a person building up a lot of energy over time for a big pay off.

For differences specific to the type of caster? Kabbalists require and bind things to act on their behalf. 'Witches' or pagans - depending on the approach, will *ask* a greater power to do something for them (simular to prayer) - or focus personal energy to do it without involving anyone else. Hougan, will involve inviting spirits to help or to manifest through them.

So mechanically I'd suggest something like:

Kabbalists have to beat a save dc, or the spirit called on has to make one, or some other such numerical system to obtain the services of the spirit called.

Prayer based effects would be a will save, modified by how much it matches the diety being called to, and any other contextural modifiers. (Never ask a Goddess of Darkness to light a candle.)

Playing on the idea of 'three fold returns' form Wicca beliefs you may want to keep track of a 'karma' score for pagan casters as well, where karma affects the critical successes/failures of spells.

Personal energy being used to channel a spell could be reflected by the character taking HP damage, or stat damage (see the system Call of Cthulhu d20 uses).

Systems that require the spirit manifesting in the body - play it like a temporary split personality for the character maybe? A will save to avoid doing the things the spirit wants to do, a length of time afterwards of feeling drained. Maybe even lingering effects - if someone commonly calls on a cat goddess they start having a fondness for sushi. Karma may be a good stat to track with this as well.

In all cases modifiers to the successfulness of the casting would include things such as:

how much time was taken: too little, too much

where the spell was cast: in the alley in back of the local bar, in a church, consecrated ground, stonehenge?

what materials were used: a cheap penknife, consectrated silver blade, great granddaddy's personal hunting blade, a 300 yr old broadsword

if there were sacrifices of animals or sentient blood or life: accounting for a difference between personal sacrifice and sacrifice of others and what spell/spirit/god is involved

There's a LOT of variables you can play with on that end of things. To look at a system that translated that pretty well take a look at GURPS Voodoo suppliement if you can find it.

 

[Clueless]

Those would make a nice Wondrous Item. I have no idea how they would work, but it would be cool. Maybe something like having any "demon" who comes within range be forced into the bowl as if they had been called using Lesser Planar Binding.

http://www.planewalker.com/snail/entry.php?intEntryID=10397

 

[eyebeams]

Hm. Lessee. What I'll recommend is gaming sources you can borrow/buy:

1) You want both books in Mage: The Ascension's Dead Magic series, which are grab-bags of magical practices from different cultures for a game with much the same premise as yours.

Dead Magic covers Africa, Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, Greece, the Etruscans and the Arctic Circle.

Dead Magic 2: Secrets and Survivors covers Polynesia, Australia, India, the Norse and European Shamanism.

You may also want to look at Dragons of the East, Mage's Asia supplement. The main thing you want there is the summaries for Asian religions, but you might also care for the Wu Lung, the game's Chinese magical group.

Mage gets the most airtime since, well, I wrote for the old game for 5 years (and incidentally, I have some stuff coming up for the new one, too). I know that line pretty well. I'm hesitant to recommend the Tradition books, since they do deliberately alter some real world concepts, but they are not without merit.

2) You want The Mysteries for Ars Magica, which is an incredible attempt to bolt on ideas from genuine Western magical traditions onto Ars' "fantasy hermetic" base.

3) You want GURPS Cabal, Ken Hite's update of Western Hermeticism into a modern conspiracy RPG.

You *don't* want Bonewits, who is extremely biased.

For general research, here are some pointers from somebody who has done what you are doing now:

1) Do not get ensnared by Chinese philosophy. For magic, you want Chinese folk religion. You want religious Daoism over philosophical Daoism.

2) Wicca is almost entirely unlike the practice of ancient polytheism and is, in fact, adapted from old Golden Dawn sources at its root. Look almost entirely at historical material instead. This is easy to find.

3) The summaries of texts of alchemy are generally more useful than the specifics. Same for hermeticism. You *do* want to specifically study the life of John Dee to contrast with modern hermeticism.

4) You *do* want to study Theosophy, which is one of the biggest influences on the modern occult -- and our understanding of religions, even. We're just starting to recover from their scholarship.

5) I will now shre the wierdest link I ever got looking for this stuff: http://www.xeper.org/maquino/

Michael Aquino is the head of the Satanist splinter sect called the Temple of Set. This is his fanfic page.

 

[Pseudonym]

Playing on the idea of 'three fold returns' form Wicca beliefs you may want to keep track of a 'karma' score for pagan casters as well, where karma affects the critical successes/failures of spells.

The Force point/ Dark Side point mechanic works well for this.

 

[Clueless]

The Force point/ Dark Side point mechanic works well for this.

That works. Not having played d20 Star Wars I didn't know they had a mechanic for that.

 

[wingsandsword]

Man, I need more time to read and research all this stuff. It's very interesting. Sadly, I'm having a bit of a hard time extracting from the traditions actual elements that would be fun for gameplay. For instance, I think the Tree of Life from Kabbala is intriguing and mysterious, but I can't think of a way to make it fit into spellcasting on a mechanical level. What would differentiate a kabbalistic spellcaster from a witch or a technomage or a hougan?

When I was converting Dark*Matter to d20 Modern, I answered this by giving each tradition a separate spell list. Most traditions had one or two unique signature spells, and a fair handful of normal PHB/d20M Core spells that only they could cast, and a number of spells that most or all traditions had in common.

I also made it so that for each separate tradition there was an additional requirement for the spellcasting class, about 4 ranks worth of skills appropriate to the tradition or some additional requirement in behavior or a cost to spellcasting.

Looking back on the exact document, I see it's got a fair amount of flaws, but I could send you a copy of it if you were interested for some ideas.