Why Not Magic?

[Bluenose]

So my question would be, what prevents violent popular revolt? It can’t just be fear of wizards and knights. People revolt against governments with bombers and mercenary armies who won’t hesitate to shoot civilians, they aren’t going to not do so because fireball exists. Especially when they can apperently learn magic in secret and there is a culture of pretending the peasant class doesn’t know magic.

Is it somehow a fair society?

Revolts happen. Not necessarily successful ones, but some are (usually if they're supported by the wealthy urban peasantry, who can afford time to train as part of their militia duties and can hire mercenary professionals from outside the realm to do some of the harder fighting).

I will note that I over-simplified by talking of "Western" culture. It's true from the point of view of how they approach magic (officially), and something of the caste system is found in nearly all places where that's true. But like Christianity or Islam, there's a lot of different cultures that practice the religious/magical aspects - and some of them are rather strange about it in the way the Taiping were "Christian". Some of them encourage caste progression, so a peasant who excels in their militia exercises might be approached to try to become a knight, and maybe later a wizard and even a lord. Although if you start off as the son of a knight then your chance of having the skills that are needed to become a knight yourself are much higher, but officially you will also start your career in some sort of peasant career.

 

[uzirath]

And so to accommodate the players who just want to play a fully mundane character, without having to just handwave the strangeness of the choice, you have to have in universe reasons a person might never learn any magic, or just expect them to compromise and be minimally magical, rather than fully non-magical.

There could be a metaphysical reason why some rare folks lack the magical trait. It could be an organ that some people are born without (or have a disease or injury that damages it). It could be their count of midi-chlorians (noooo!) It could be a spiritual angle, like a divine curse. It could be the result of a magical calamity (did they cause it or were they collateral damage?).

In many game systems, a player who chooses to play such a character might gain other benefits. It might be a disadvantage in GURPS giving them points to spend on other advantages, attributes, or skills. Or a class designed to be mundane that has other bennies (like more hit points or whatever). This can be rationalized as an explanation for how this individual has survived up to the starting point of the campaign. Through luck or grit or quirks of their background, they were able to become especially good at their schtick.

An intriguing possibility might be to also make these rare folks more resistant to magic. Might just be better saving throws (or whatever analog you've got). Or they might dampen the mana field, interfering with magical activity in their vicinity. Or some such. This would have bigger social repercussions and might not be to every player or group's taste.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, why don't people learn to read and write or do maths? Why do people not learn how to wield heavy armor and longswords?
I figure often it is the lack of opportunity. They just don't have access to the education.
Or does in your game mean learning to speak or read and write that you automatically pick up some magic tricks - if spells are just words of power, maybe some can be tought to a baby, and it can say the "Kaka-Go-Away-Spell" instead of needing to go too the toilet. In such a world, it's extremely unlikely you would not pick up magic, because you basically have to deliberately go out of your way at an age where you can't make such decisions, which suggests that the parents decided you shouldn't learn it.

The next step is - how long does it take to get better at something without magic that it's easier to learn magic to get better at the skill?

In D&D, the Fighter never learns to cast spells, and he gets better at his job ,and he goes toe to toe with dragons and giants. However, in the process of getting there he will usually pick up magc items.
I haven't experienced any gamers that were unwilling to do that for their otherwise non-magical characters. Though I am definitely personally part of the gamers that would prefer if the "math" of the game system doesn't require something boring as +X weapons just to make the math work out. It feels to me like it just turns magic into something too mundane. That's more something that you could do with technology, and say that at some point 9mm bullets or .22 caliber weapons aren't sufficient anymore, if you want to deal with dragon (body) armor, you need .45 Magnum, 5.54mm 7.72mm or whatever.

However, if your Fighter starts learning spells at some level, or you can only take 10 levels of fighters but characters can go from Level 1 to 40 and you could be a Level 40 Wizard, it becomes obvious that you need magic at some point or you just can't meaningful get better at a skill, or at least the type of tasks you can accomplish with pure skill. Maybe if you state this beforehand, it's no big deal to players that you can't make non-magical characters. However, if one could be a Level 40 Fighter and he can get away with no spells but not a Level 40 Rogue without spells, some might ask why you can get better at a physical skill like fighting that you never need to pick up spells, but to pick locks and sneak around you must learn magic?

 

[Umbran]

The question is, would that provide a good basis for fully mundane characters for the people who want them, or would it be a waste of effort I could put elsewhere. I don’t know.

So... I'll give a different perspective on this - that's a business decision. Building in-world justifications and game design elements comes after deciding whether these items matter in terms of your goals for what you are building.

For example, we can think of four cases:
1) I am building this for my own table or local community
2) I am building this just for the experience of building it.
3) I am building it to get 1000 sales over 5 years
4) I am building it to be the next Paizo

Each of these have different answers to the question, "Would this be a waste of effort?"

So, what are your goals?

That’s bad writing.

Others might say it is focused writing. Fafhrd and Grey Mouser walk through a world largely lacking in detailed history of failed projects, for example.

I’m probably not mistaking the intent of my own words, but skipping past that, being threatened by a big monster wouldn’t stop people from trying to develop better weapons, and vanishingly few fantasy stories I’ve ever read feature societies that are constantly under threat.

I think the point didn't hit home. My point is that when there's a big monster, nobody gives a whit about whether anyone tried a thing in the past that didn't work out. The world-building you see in a work is that which turns out to be relevant to the conflicts in the work. That which isn't relevant is largely absent.

If that history is absent, then, "nobody ever thought to try," becomes an unfounded assumption. Unless you are introducing a plot element about it, whether anyone has ever tried it in the past is not relevant to whatever present crisis the characters are engaged in. It isn't bad writing or worldbuilding - it is just not writing about items of no consequence.

Why are we arguing the fine particulars of fantasy worldbuilding instead of discussing...

Um... we are talking about it because you brought up having an issue with a lot of fantasy worldbuilding. And, when you are engaged in a worldbuilding question, the point that there's often unanswered questions in the worldbuilding seemed pretty relevant.

Does the world view electricity as inherently dangerous or evil? No. There being pockets of groups who do doesn’t make the general statement false. We are not obligated to constantly provide caveats and addendums to every general statement we make.

Wow. You have completely missed the point.

Let me try this way - what the world believes, in general, is not binding on individuals in that world. In the midst of a general belief, there are still likely to be notable minorities who do not hold that belief, and in doing so they may be irrelevant fringe or they may be impactful on the world, depending on the details of the situation.

I mean, look out the window. We live in a society that largely believes that education is a good thing, and in theory, everyone can get a high school degree at no cost other than time and effort. But, overall, the US has about a 5% high school dropout rate. Why does anyone choose to not graduate from high school?

This concept holds even more true for PCs. If you set forth a particular type for a culture, playing against that type is a fairly obvious choice in terms of both role-playing and tactical challenges. The more you stress how everyone has magic, the stronger the invitation to be contrary and subvert the trope, because it makes the "what if?" question even more pronounced and important.

You ask why people would choose to do other than follow the norm. I'm handing you answers to that question, and seem to be accusing me of requiring caveats and addendums. I'm not. I'm answering your question.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

what the world believes, in general, is not binding on individuals in that world.

What the world believes is what is relevant to the specific point I was making when I brought it up, which is that institutions and traditions exist in whatever forms they exist as a result of what the world believes, in general.

Broad belief isn't required for a thing to become a tradition, but if the belief is broad that the thing is useful and not evil or inherently dangerous to mess with, it will probably be encouraged and gain traction in some societies as part of that society's traditions.

eg, in Eberron magic is scientific, useful, reliable, etc, and so learning to be a blacksmith involves learning some small amount of magic. Baker recently made a post about weapons tech in Eberron, noting that in his Eberron crossbows are "mundane" in that they don't do any overt magical things, but their construction involves magical processes that make a crossbow that can be reloaded very quickly while providing great range and power. In short, truly mundane crossbow tech is pretty basic, but the common crossbow isn't truly mundane, it's basically magitech.

Those sorts of things exist in Eberron because they are the rational outcome of a world that views, and is right to view, magic in that way.

So the outgrowth from this line of discussion, for me, is to consider what "mundane" actually means in a world, rather than just taking for granted that the common usage of the term makes the most sense. Perhaps in a world like Eberron, we can simply consider the level 1 Fighter to have magical principles of self-empowerment, healing, and body mechanics, as seemlessly integrated aspects of their martial training, and not something they'd have to go to a special gish school for.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You realize this literally isn’t the Ranger thread, right?

Yes, but you asked a question about why people felt that way (its right in the title of the thead). As such, what other people think is still just as relevant, and what you feel is just as much not. Nor, in the end, does it make any difference what makes sense in an in-world context.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yes, but you asked a question about why people felt that way (its right in the title of the thead). As such, what other people think is still just as relevant, and what you feel is just as much not. Nor, in the end, does it make any difference what makes sense in an in-world context.

Well, no. I asked why characters would choose to not use magic, and you decided to swoop in a thread crap with baggage from another thread. Please stop.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, no. I asked why characters would choose to not use magic, and you decided to swoop in a thread crap with baggage from another thread. Please stop.

I didn't ever even see the other thread (I still haven't); the only reason I knew about it was you referenced it, and rangers.

And I think trying to separate what the players think from what the characters think is, if not a waste of time, still assuming most people will draw a sharper line there than I have any sign they'll do. Note I mentioned earlier that even if it makes sense in the world, many players will either just not participate if forced that way, or participate and act like its not true.

Now if you want to act like everyone, or even a majority of people will ignore what they feel because its not entirely congruent with the setting, well, carry on; maybe the kind of players you've hit are better about that than the average run. But don't be surprised if you hit people who don't. And no adjustment of the setting, per se, will change that; its a less extreme version of the people who play some version of the same character no matter where the game is set or even what genre, and those aren't exactly rare, either.

[Edit: to make it clear, I'm not trying to threadcrap; I'm just suggesting that the issue you're looking at isn't entirely possible to handle at the setting design end. Its another case where you have to get full and genuine buy-in by people, and I'm not sold that's all that entirely common. I watched someone stubbornly insist on building someone with no magic and no cyberware in a Shadowrun 1e game many a year ago, and that was a setting, character convention and system that really counterselected for that, but he did it anyway].

 

[Thomas Shey]

Let me step this back: do you actually care what results you're going to get in-play from your setting decisions? Because your reactions to both Umbran and my posts suggests not. If not I'll step out, because the point I'm making is irrelevant to you.

 

[jdrakeh]

For me, it honestly depends on the nature of the magic in a given setting. In D&D (and most D&D-derived settings) there's little to no consequence or downside to using magic so, sure, I think most people would use it, given the opportunity. But you get into settings like the Old World (WFRP), Melnibone (Stormbringer), Hyborian Age Earth (Conan RPGs), etc and, suddenly, magic is a wild and dangerous thing that not only could screw you pretty bad if you practice it, but it's usually linked to the forces of chaos or evil. In these settings, it makes a lot of sense for heroes to eschew its practice.