[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by hal

A mite confrontational wouldn't you agree?

Oh, perhaps a bit. You kept answering setting questions with game mechanics answers, and I wanted to jolt you out of that mind-set. :)

Originally Posted by hal

So, let's look at the questions you want answered...

1) let's presume that we're using GURPS CLASSIC spell lists for now...

(SNIP)

Okay, that's a specific answer.

Originally Posted by hal

2) what spells or abilities exist in the setting.

(SNIP)

Here, we might get to the crux of the communication problem.

GURPS is a toolkit, right? That means the game mechanics never dictate the shape of the setting.

Rather, the GM decides on a setting framework, and then uses the rules that give the results desired. That allows the GM and players to tell the stories they want to tell; play the game they want to play.

That's why the two GMs in your example have vastly different takes on their Banestorm campaigns. Fortunately, you get into more specifics with the next response.

Originally Posted by hal

1 in 50 have any magery at all, generally speaking, magery 0.

(SNIP)

Demographically speaking, roughly 30 to 40% of a human population tends to be children. So, call it 6,000 adult magery 0, 600 magery 1, 60 magery 2 and 6 magery 3.

We're short by one mage due to the factions involved, so let's call it a magery 1 extra man just for giggles.

Okay, just to be clear, you know your numbers are purely arbitrary, right? And that no reason exists why someone couldn't pick completely different numbers, because they wanted completely different outcomes? And that, by picking those particular numbers, you've already begun to steer the setting toward a particular result?

(Also, you dropped a zero out of your initial numbers for Magery 0. It should've been 10,000, and not 1,000.)

So, the closest we get to a number model that works is probably the clergy. You had some archbishops, a dozen or so bishops in residence at any one time (with plenty of empty diocese seats), a fair number of abbots of various monasteries who are effectively bishops, and a reasonable number of ordained priests.

As with the clergymen (who could read and write, which was tremendously powerful), your mages have special abilities that nobody else does. Moreover, by the standards of the day, the clergy lived pretty well.

The vast majority of villages only saw a real priest every month or two, as he rode on a circuit through the lands of a particular noble. A friar or layman did most of the every-day work, in a parish.

Originally Posted by hal

3) Let's presume that all spells known in GURPS CLASSIC MAGIC have been known to exist and history recorded them in one form or another.

(SNIP)

Sounds perfectly reasonable. It means you have one practicing wizard with Magery 0 for every 83 people; one with Magery 1 for every 833; a Magery 2 wizard for every 8,333; and a half-dozen "bishops" or "archbishops" (Magery 3).

Unfortunately, despite the fact that the numbers are about right for our priest model, the rest of what you wrote causes that to break down.

In the priest model, everybody technically answered to the hierarchy of the Catholic church. Your model mentions no equivalent organizational structure. Moreover, while each mage can find at least some spells, the ones possessed by particular mages may vary by quite a bit.

A fortunate few may find all the Magery 1 and Magery 2 spells, but most mages have limited subsets. Additionally, the learning model is "master/apprentice," but you mention no guild or other central authority.

At this point, I think we need to shift away from our "clergy" model and look, instead, to Medieval or Renaissance alchemy.

The alchemists worked in isolation, and mostly pursued their arcane studies in secret, with perhaps a trusted helper. They wrote everything down in books they mostly kept hidden, because they didn't trust anybody else with knowledge they hoped to use for themselves.

As a consequence, understanding advanced only slowly, in fits and starts, because nobody shared information, ever. As such, no means existed to cross-check and validate discoveries by reproducing experimental methodologies.

Moreover, if the alchemist couldn't find anybody with similar interests or, even worse, he got discovered and was accused of witchcraft, all the work got lost. At best, he might have stashed his tomes away in an old trunk, in a cellar or tower room, somewhere, and then died without telling anybody.

At some point in the future, some descendant might find grandpa's moldy old tomes and try to sell them quietly, so he or she didn't have to deal with that whole "witchcraft" thing.

I think the alchemist model works best, for this scenario, given that (unlike alchemy), magic actually does something immediately useful.

And that brings us to the last question, which confused you, but is the most important of all. :)

Originally Posted by hal

4) um, not certain what you're asking with #4.

(SNIP)

Okay, here's the thing. The most important part of the term, "magical power," is not "magical," it's "power." Power to do things, to make things happen, to shape things according to the will of the person who holds it. And, by "things," I mean "other people's lives."

That's the key concept. Power such as this only matters in societies. A mage who lives as a hermit, and never interacts with other people, can chuck lightning bolts around to his or her heart's content, and make absolutely no difference.

That person is just another oddball natural phenomenon, not that much different from a storm, or a forest fire, or anything else. He or she doesn't matter.

That's why the game mechanics answers had such limited relevance, when people kept asking questions about the setting.

Now then, the only people who can find mages are other mages. Moreover, the only mages who can find other mages are those who have already learned some spells -- at least enough to get to "Aura."

Fortunately, Aura isn't that deep into the Knowledge college; it has only two prerequisites, "Detect Magic" and "Magery 1." That means almost every set of spell books owned by anybody will include it, especially given it's the only means by which to find apprentices.

However, the fact that it requires Magery 1 to cast means that Magery 0 types, who comprise nearly 90 percent of the entire wizard population, depend almost entirely on those with higher powers. They can never find apprentices of their own. Moreover, the mage who found them and took them as apprentices can almost certainly perform spells the Magery 0 person cannot.

Additionally, given the secretive and decentralized lack of structure of magical practitioners, the discoverer may be the only source of knowledge the Magery 0 folks have available. That gives the master tremendous leverage over the Magery 0 types, who will almost certainly spend their lives in subordinate roles -- which mirrors the rest of TL3 Medieval society, anyway.

At this point, how the mages live depend mostly on the exact content of the grimoires available to them. If the grimoires hold mostly general utility or entertainment spells, then the senior mage may take a position with the local nobility or wealthy merchant clan. He or she trades the security of sinecure for work that supports the status quo.

If a Magery 1 or higher wizard has access to spells that allow him or her to strongly influence the actions of others, then he or she may angle to become the power behind the nearest throne.

By "influence," I don't necessarily mean the "Mind Control" college, either. For instance, any mage exercises tremendous influence if he or she can help ensure that an arranged marriage between nobles will be successful, by seeing to it that the wife can conceive and survive childbirth, and the children all reach adulthood.

(At least, as long as said mage isn't afflicted with unadulterated stupidity worthy of Rasputin. Healing spells are game-changers when it comes to dynastic politics.)

Alternatively, if a wizard has access to spells that make him or her more combat-effective, then he or she has the potential to become the local power structure. A warrior who can't be hit, bearing armor that can't be penetrated, able to dodge the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and able to deal death at a distance, discretely or not, is a force to be reckoned with.

No mundane noble in his or her right mind will want to go up against a combat-effective magic user. The noble will either come to an accommodation, or will probably die.

That's potentially a big deal, depending on how you decide you want magery to work in your setting. Does it appear randomly, throughout the population, regardless of sex, social condition, or status of the family into which the mage is born? Does it follow bloodlines? If two mages have babies, do the children consistently inherit the ability?

If the appearance of magery is truly random, and never "breeds true," then combat-effective mages are never anything but a threat to a status quo in which access to wealth and power is normally determined by family, by rank, and by inheritance.

That said, a lot of this depends on the choices the GM makes. The game mechanics do not dictate the impact on the setting, because how that plays out wholly depends on the choices made.

When you made even the few choices you did, you steered the setting toward an outcome. Make different choices, and you get different outcomes, even with the same game mechanics.