[Prince Charon]

That which is called 'Magery', 'magical aptitude', or 'the magegift' is not precisely an inborn talent. True, some are born with it to some degree, but you can also say that everyone is born with it, to some degree. Useful levels of this power, when not inborn, may be induced by spirits or spells, learned through study and meditation, developed due to exposure to psychic energy as a defensive measure, or even just suddenly appear for no readily apparent reason. At its core, magery is the ability to at least semi-consciously generate thoughtforms, and control, manipulate, or otherwise interact with them.

Was thinking of calling it 'Thoughtform Talent' instead of 'Magery', as suggested in the Steampunk section. Ten points per level, bonus to spellcasting. Might have a related advantage allowing the sensing abilities Magery 0 confers. The usual -5 penalty for Path/Book casting without Magery can be removed by a 1-point Perk (name needed; Active Thoughtform Generation?), which is contained within the first level of Thoughtform Talent (don't take both). It's a perk not because it's not useful or powerful, but because it's that easy to develop, in this setting... well, depending on the world. Might cost more on some Earths, or be free on others, but the logic is that everyone unconsciously generates minor thoughtforms when concentrating or emoting, so doing it controllably shouldn't be too hard.

Advanced magical styles (and there are a lot of them, mostly on Fantasy Earth) often have lots of spells, divided into specialties called Paths (or schools, or colleges, or chapters, spheres, pillars, et cetra) - in-depth study of these makes the spells within them easier to cast, but is not absolutely necessary. Many newer or less developed magical styles, such as those on Steampunk Earth and Clockpunk Earth, have few enough spells not to need such specialization, grouping the whole list in a single Book (which need not be a physical book - it's just a name to distinguish it from Paths). Path styles often grow out of Book styles, either by magic-users inventing enough new spells that specialization becomes useful or necessary, or because someone learned several Book styles, and integrated them into one compound style (which can be quite difficult, if the base styles were especially different from each other). Weird Sciences are nearly always personal Book styles. Alchemy varies between something very much like standard GURPS alchemy (mixing magical substances together and feeling them interact, on top of normal chemistry methods of monitoring) where magical materials are common, or various Book or Path styles, where they are rarely or never found in nature.

Most of the styles of magic on Clockpunk Earth, and nearly all on Steampunk Earth, are Book styles - indeed, many found on Steampunk Earth are very personal and informal, more or less unique to each spellcaster (though quite often based on extant styles that previously did little or nothing), and those that aren't, started out that way, before being taught to others. Having a few more generations to work on them, the styles on Clockpunk Earth are more fully developed, being more often taught and learned, than invented piece by piece from the ground up. Steampunk Earth has only a handful of fairly new Path styles, and Clockpunk Earth has barely more than a dozen. Dieselpunk Earth has a wide range of book styles, and a fair number of Path styles, while Fantasy Earth almost has more extant Path styles than Book styles. OTL Earth has a minor advantage in terms of creating new Path styles, in that thanks to games and a few fantasy novels, we already have the idea of magical styles being divided into specializations.

The 'prayers and miracles' system from Divine Favor is pretty much exactly that: a sufficiently blessed individual prays to the god(dess) that blessed him/her, and generally gets some appropriate form of miracle (as long as they haven't been abusing their position, anyway, and get a good reaction roll from their deity). You can learn specific prayers to mostly insure getting a fairly specific miracle, but in general, it's not that complicated. Generally, most gods will only grant consistent blessings and powers (as opposed to one-shot 'Well, I don't want you to die right now' deus ex machina) to those who have a great strength and sincerity of belief. How available this system is seems to vary from dimension to dimension: the gods on Stp-Earth and OTL-Earth, once awakened, rarely grant this blessing, rarely grant miracles to those who are so blessed, and even when they do, tend to go for minor miracles like accelerated healing or guards falling asleep, over anything showy. The power is more common on Clp-Earth and Dp-Earth, but even there, not nearly so common nor powerful as on Fa-Earth. It's difficult to describe an upper limit to this power, but generally, anything (other than not-too-strange weather) that covers a few square miles is a once-in-a-lifetime event, and anything much bigger is a legendary cataclysm that will be remembered for thousands of years (e.g. the Ten Plagues of Egypt). Large-scale miracles tend to be aimed more toward 'helping the faithful survive', or 'punishing great impiety (in the deity's own followers)', rather than 'wiping out the unbelievers', though (because the latter gets you into inter-deity conflicts, and no-one wants a 'hot' War In Heaven - well, no-one with any sense). This style is the easiest for beginning casters to perform very difficult feats like instant healing or conjuring food out of apparently nothing, because the gods have the processing power to manipulate large numbers of atoms and molecules in complex patterns (such as teleporting in all the material needed to turn one fish sandwich into a dozen fish sandwiches, and them building those atoms into the required shapes by copying the existing fish sandwich), and they're the ones doing all the work.

Use the normal Reaction Roll requirements on Fa-Earth, make all reaction roll requirements one level higher on Clp-Earth (except for 'Golem', which is one step easier, requiring only a Good reaction, on Clp-Earth - well, it is for Jews, anyway) and Dp-Earth, and make the requirements two steps higher on Stp-Earth and OTL-Earth.

Gods are mysterious, and no-one has any clear, established facts as to how powerful they are, whether some are more powerful than others, nor whether there are any gods who are more than 'just' massively powerful thoughtforms. No-one knows where spirits end and gods begin, either, though a total lack of miracles being granted is usually taken as an indicator, accurately or not. When a miracle is granted, the Presence of the deity is sometimes felt by anyone in the area, and more so by those who are the subject of the miracle, the one who called for it, or are psychically sensitive. Such Presences vary from god to god: for example, being healed by a war god so that you can go back into the fight feels totally different from being healed by a mother goddess because she loves all the 'children' (even when they're adults of a different faith), even ignoring the difference in rituals each priesthood uses. The Presence may be a simple feeling (calm strength, lust, being hugged, a desire for battle, et cetra), or might be accompanied by brief sensory hallucinations (the scent of blood or of roses, the sound of drums or a heavenly choir, a vision of the god(dess), and so forth). Different people tend to feel the Presense in different ways, depending not only on how sensitive they are, but how they feel about that deity, and how that deity feels about them. Likewise, the effect tends to differ somewhat between deities; again using healing as an example, war deities often leave scars, mother goddesses usually don't, and gods or goddesses of love and beauty only leave 'attractive' scars.

Continued next post.