Tired of "Mana"

[Henrix]

Lleri (Swedish) *
---
* May not actually be a Swedish word.

I dare say that it certainly isn't a swedish word. I have never heard of it, or anything similar I can think, nor has Staffan, both of us native speakers, and at least I am fairly well versed in history and older language. Nor does google give any resonable results at all.

Either the word is grossly misspelled, or it does not exist. And that goes for most languages.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Or, in the tradition of naming a unit of measure after somebody...

Hee! Like mouse movement, measured in Mickeys

-Hyp.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I dare say that it certainly isn't a swedish word. I have never heard of it, or anything similar I can think, nor has Staffan, both of us native speakers, and at least I am fairly well versed in history and older language.

Could it be Lapplander, or whatever language they speak? Just trying to exhaust possibilities among Scandinavian languages.

 

[Gez]

So if somebody cast a spell on you would you be getting leyed?

Allow me to alley your fears, without deley: no. (You'd need raw ley. Spells are refined ley, "shaped" or "weaved" into being a spell. So you're enspelled instead. )

 

[The Mad Kaiser]

Either the word is grossly misspelled, or it does not exist. And that goes for most languages.

Trolleri; it was mangled due to a sloppy cut-n-paste.

Hurma, noituus, taikuus - Finnish

 

[Remathilis]

In Mage, there is an underlying framework to reality (called the Tapestry, which includes the Umbra, or spirit world) that mages have the ability to radically reshape. This Tapestry is commonly thought to be composed of a unique energy/material that defies conventional physical law, known as Quintessence, or the "Fifth Essence." Real-world names for the Fifth Essence include aether, akasha, void, or any other number of "divine elements." Quintessence (as well as the Tapestry in general and every mage) can have a resonance that is either dynamic, static, entropic, or some combination of the above. These primal forces are personified by the Triat in the Werewolf: The Apocalypse game line.

This might Work as an alternative

 

[Henrix]

Trolleri; it was mangled due to a sloppy cut-n-paste.

Aha, but that just means magic, pure and simple.

 

[DonTadow]

I hate it when RPG designers needlessly invent new terms for the same ol' stuff. Like Hollyhock God for gamemaster

You know, we're just a great big family here at ENWorld, so you can tell us: does it really bother you, or was this just a chance to school us on the origins of the word, and how it's misapplied? I mean, the original meaning of mana is already lost .. it's just magical oomph to everyone now. It happens to words :\

I'm with you on this. Renaming a word (even if it means the same thing in another translation) is wasted writing and research. My PCs have enough to worry about than me inventing new words for things when the first word works fine. Mana is pretty much the universal defination for magical energy. I can speak to videogame, anime, board game and rpgers and say mana and everyone knows what Im saying. If i'm trying to start a game with new players, unless the setting is about (the mana) then its no point in renaming the word. The only other case I could see renaming it is if you're going for another culture setting.

To say that using a word lacks creatitvy is silly. When you make anything creative, heck even a sentence, you always want to emphasize what is important. Heck, I can call it poppydooby but it means the same, but why go through the trouble if it serves no purpose for the game.

As someone said, its too late. WE've already put it in the dictionary and its apart of our culture and thats what it means in this culture. If you want to flavor up your game by renaming things knock yourself out. But don't critize dms because we don't run through the dictionary to rename common elements of thegame.

 

[The Mad Kaiser]

My gripe isn't the insistence (or lack thereof) of using a certain word to repesent such a concept, but the odd insistence by some that it somehow serves the game better or is more "realistic" to treat magical energy like a battery or a tank of gas.

Hmmm... how about "joules" or "gallons" since that seems to be the truth of the matter.

I don't really have a problem with expressing mana as a quantifiable force, since that was the main thrust of The Magic Goes Away; that spellcasters were depleting a natural resource. Niven was, at the time, developing a once original concept for his book. But it has gone from being a clever inovation to a horse-whipped cliche', and as evidenced by several posts, an uncredited cliche' (and it would seem that Nevinyrral's Disk was too subtle an homage)

So now I have a new word to accompany "Tolkienesque" whenever I see "mana"; "Nivenesque." That should mitigate my distaste for tired plagerism.

 

[Nuclear Platypus]

How about "chutzpah"? Sure its something far from the original meaning. Side note: no, I don't use that phrase for someone with lots of courage, opting for the phrase "testicular fortitude" (thank you Mick Foley!) with the female equivalent being "ovarian fortitude".

I'm somewhat partial to using aether instead of mana tho ether is more likely to help me sleep. But I also insist that instead of hit points / wound points / vitality points, the next edition of D&D uses "hurts" as a unit. Thus a short sword would do d6 hurts of damage while a great wyrm would conceivably do megahurts of damage.

Or does that smell too much like Rifts?