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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4746703" data-attributes="member: 54707">I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this general subject matter. I’ve recently started re-reading The Power of Positive Thinking and it has given me a number of new ideas. As for the real world it has made me reconsider certain prayer techniques I practice, and to consider some new ones. Especially the thought of “deep prayer” and “big prayer.” Which reminds me a lot of the idea of “perfect prayer” as expressed in the Way of a Pilgrim.I’ve also been re-reading Napoleon Hill’s Keys to Success (along with my family) in the evenings and it has made me want to retake up my practice of meditation in a far more consistent and regular fashion (similar to when I was a kid).As for what this would imply in game techniques I thought I already had a good idea of how I would proceed in reforming clerical characters, as well as how I expressed the relationship between God and his various types of followers in the game I am writing, Transformations.But these new sources and thoughts have made me recognize more deeply the possibilities, both in real life and in-game. For instance, as regards the cleric, or any sincere or devout follower, I am considering the techniques I’ve already spoken about as having different and yet wide effects. But as for the cleric, hermit, monk, and paladin these practices would be far more consistent and regular. That is to say a soldier or fighter might practice and gain benefit from prayer, but a cleric, for obvious reasons, would practice prayer consistently and therefore draw both more regular and more powerful benefit from such a practice. And of course a fighter might or might not practice prayer, but most would probably not practice meditation or contemplation regularly, if at all, (though some Combatant classes, like the Samurai, would naturally practice meditation) also for obvious personality and professional reasons. And by contrast you would have those professions for whom a wide range of spiritual practices are natural expressions of their nature. A monk for instance would naturally and to some degree be very likely to practice prayer, meditation, and contemplation all three as a natural part of their “spiritual repertoire.”As for the possible benefits of these three technique forms, well, I’ve already detailed some. But I’m gonna now detail some more, although these are really just developmental sketch notes.Now as I’ve already said in my game, and in my reforms of the clerical profession (class), God, not the cleric will control how divine power and miracles are allocated, and how such power works, is employed, or dispersed. The cleric will act more as a conduit of focus for both the intended desire of change in the world, and for how that change might or might not be manifested (the form of manifestation - God being the ultimate arbiter, but the cleric, or monk, or paladin, etc. being the “advocate” of a certain desire for a certain type of action occurring within the world.)(For the moment I am going to define a miracle thus; the desired miracle is the positive change wished for by someone or some group in the world, the actual miracle is how that change is really manifested when it seems extremely unlikely that no real benefit could develop from a given set of circumstances. That is the desired miracle and the actual miracle can vary in both nature and effect, and that is the key difference between my reformed cleric and the cleric of D&D “magic.” A cleric can desire and work to accomplish a particular miracle, and the cleric can have an idea of how the miracle ought to occur from his point of view, but neither God nor the way he fashions or devises or creates the miracle are limited to that theoretical paradigm. The miracle is not limited to either the desires and wishes of the cleric, or to his imagination or understanding of the situation.)That being said I intend to give the “divine classes” access to at least three important techniques of “functional operation.” These obvious techniques will be prayer, meditation, and contemplation. I won’t limit the clerics or others to these three techniques, there will also be things like Divine Rituals and Sacraments, but as for how Miracles are addressed, that is to say “Divine Magic,” and as to how the cleric operates, the standard Technique Types will be Prayer, Meditation, and Contemplation. Now of course specific forms of meditation, prayer, and contemplation are possible, with slightly variant effects. Just as there are different forms of Sacraments: Baptism, Marriage, Communion, etc. So when I say Prayer is a technique type there can be many variations of sub-forms within that type and I probably will not attempt to detail them all and instead leave that up to the milieu designers, DMs, and players to describe for their own setting. Instead I’ll just suggest a few possibilities. Prayer, Meditation, and Contemplation will be definite game technique types, but I’ll probably avoid saying, these are the various sub-types of prayer, meditation, and contemplation possible within your game. That would limit setting flexibility and experimentation. I’ve already detailed above many of the fundamental advantages to the technique of prayer. Prayer will be far less a direct “spell effect” or a “manifestation of a miracle” and far more a technique, depending upon the level of success or failure of the prayer effort, and a method of amplifying or even altering miraculous effects. You might think of it as a power control or regulation system. Successful prayer can greatly amplify how God expresses miracles in the world. Or prayer might alter effects, or might even suppress effects. Let me cite an example: A plague is ravishing Constantinople. The wish of the people, and of the PC cleric might be to end the plague. A successful prayer might have different effects. A “True Miracle” might occur in which the plague simply disappears altogether, maybe practically overnight. Or, a cure might be found, miraculous or natural. Then you could have other types of smaller miracles. The plague might become rapidly suppressed, or the rate of those surviving after infection might drastically increase. So that the plague organism becomes far less effective and deadly, or so that resistance and immunity increase rapidly.Miracles therefore would not be as the result of prayer, but rather prayer would, depending on the level of success, regulate the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the expression of the miracle along a continuum of manifold possibilities.Meditation however would act more as a psychological and spiritual “lubricant,” for lack of a better term, of the dynamic powers of the cleric. Of course there are the obvious and natural effects of meditation. Greater state of relaxation, near immunity to panic or psychologically altering circumstances (meditation would be resistance against spells attempting to inspire panic or distress or despair or fear), better rates of recovery from injury and disease for the cleric himself. Possibly also for comrades or others for whom the cleric is advocating or assisting. Then again meditation could have other effects, not so obvious, such as flashes of insight, intuition, or information about something previously unnoticed. For instance a rogue takes up meditation. At night on an adventure, right before going to sleep he decides he will meditate for half an hour. It calms his mind and body and possibly helps him recover lost hit points more rapidly. But while meditating he also realizes that earlier in the day he may have noticed a secret door without consciously understanding what he had seen at the time. He has a reverse “flash of insight” regarding something he had previously seen but not recognized or not understood for what it was. (This kind of effect has often occurred to me personally while meditating.)For another example. A monk meditates right before having an important meeting with a prominent politician or nobleman. As a result the monk’s mind is relaxed and calm and his senses are highly tuned. Because his mind is in that state he quickly comes to the decision that the person with whom he is speaking is lying and being deceptive. He has a “flash of intuition” into the “character” of the other person as a result of having meditated and as a result of having a “mind open to all possibilities” in preparation for the event.This means meditation could have both enactive and reactive effects, depending on how it is approached and under what circumstances. I’ll talk later about meditation in more detail in another post.But because of potential effects like this I also intend to later detail the effects of meditation and contemplation upon, what in the game is called “psionic” (though I hate that term in relation to fantasy games) powers. Meditation and contemplation would have natural effects upon psychaec abilities and capabilities, as probably would prayer under certain circumstances, as an overlapping effect. I’ll take that up later though in another section or thread, though I see the natural overlap between spiritual and psychological techniques on the one hand, and possible mental and psychaec techniques on the other.Contemplation would be primarily, though not exclusively both a problem solving tool, as well as a method of innovation and invention. For clerics this would primarily, though not exclusively (as I’ll demonstrate in a moment), be a tool for spiritual and psychological innovation and invention, but for others it could lead to other forms of invention and innovation. Through contemplation of the human body, anatomy, biology, and/or of medicine for instance a monk might become much, much more skillful at diagnosing disease and at treating disease and injury. Therefore greatly increasing his facility as a healer. (By the same token a Bard, deeply contemplating psychology might become a far more skillful manipulator of “charismatic influence,” as well as by contemplating famous poets and musicians, a much, much more effective poet and musician.) Contemplation could serve as a kind of “bridging technique or point of focus” that allows the cleric to gain a greater understanding of how spiritual affairs relate to mundane and worldly affairs. (As might meditation in some cases.) It would also likely lead in my opinion, as happened in real life, to the development of a sub-class of clerics who specialized in proto-science and invention as was the case in our world, where many of the original scientists and technologists in the West were monks, priests, clerics, and devout men. How I’m going to express those benefits directly in game I am still contemplating (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun) but I have some general ideas. What I want to do with Transformations is to create a series of overlapping “effects” and “techniques” which can lead, through a process of individual player character recombinations, to a series of expressions so complex that it will be nearly impossible to pursue all possible combinations of potentiality in any given person (character), as is the case in real life. That is I want to create a system (eventually for all classes, or professions) in which individuals can create their own individual skills and capabilities through recombining various techniques and effects and therefore individuals can be constantly creating and inventing their own “personal applications” as to how they encounter and react to the world (and/or first act upon it). In this way characters become highly individualized, not based upon a set of “power-choices,” but based upon the natural personality and character expression of the character as to what interests they pursue in their life. But I’m still working on that. The reform of the Cleric and how he functions is sort of my “prototype” design for such future potentials regarding the other professions.I’ll continue this later when I have the spare time.</blockquote>

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