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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 9498908" data-attributes="member: 20564">To put this in terms that I know you'll get, I'm looking for mundane ways to affect the narrative in equal (but different) amounts as magic can.The traditional breakdown is that magic can do things mundane can't, so this has long been a problem.  No matter how much you flap your arms, you're not going to fly.But if instead we describe magic as ways to make authorial changes to the narrative, then there are mundane ways to do the same sort of thing.  Because "creating a helpful NPC who wasn't there before" isn't something you can do when you are looking at character abilities, but is something you can do when looking at player abilities if allowed, justifying it within a mundane in-world structure of "Contacts".In other words, I'm reframing the issue in the same way flashbacks reframe planning -- this has already happened in-world, we players at the table just didn't know the details until we just made them up.  And I think that can sidestep a lot of the traditional loggerhead that mundane can't be as useful as mundane+magic, by making it actually mundane+authorial_mundane vs. mundane+magic.EDIT:Actually, "Flashback" is a great example of an authorial-mundane ability, if it's not generally available.  I've seen games with "Preparedness" where you have chances to have just the right tool/collectable action figure/what-have-you that you need at the moment, which is another.</blockquote>

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