GURPS and Harn

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

It was the 80s. And very, very early on in the history of the hobby. I wonder what Robin Crosby would do differently now.

I know - it just as a bit of a whiff of fanfic about it.

[Warden]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Book/path magic would seem appropriate to me whilst Spirit mediated magic would probably be better for the "divine casters".

Where would I find the information on book/path magic and mediated magic?

[hal]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Its a standalone that first appeared in Monster Hunters.
Its for a flexible system, probably too much so for a harn setting.

Ironically enough, if you pick up Shek P'var - Columbia Games "Magic System", you will find that the magic system is indeed, Flexible.

In Shek P'var, there are essentially 7 colleges/paths, with a Mage being required to specialize in one of the Paths. All other paths have varying degrees of difficulty relative to the chosen path, which has no penalties to the caster. A diametrically opposed path has the worst penalties, while the immediately adjacent paths have the least penalties. The Shek P'var philosophy of magic is such that it is a while of sorts (hence the adjacent paths and opposed paths).

In order to become a Grey Mage (the 7th path), one needs to reach a given level of expertise within all of the six paths.

The problem with a "Flexible" Magic system is that it doesn't help the GM because all of magic is "individualized". That is - all mages will not be studying from a standard spell list - but will have their very own flavor of spells. One mage might have created a fireball spell that requires a given amount of fatigue, while another mage by have a different fatigue cost, but faster speed in casting, etc.

I would suggest getting your hands on a copy of the PDF Shek P'var for two reasons...

The first is that it details the background for which mages operate within the secret society of mages, and can expect up to and including execution by the secret council of mages if the mage gets out of line.

The second is that it gives the GM a chance to decide if they like the Shek P'var for use with their own game world or not.

I always caution people that when Harn first came out, it was system agnostic. It could be played with D&D, Tunnels and Trolls, TFT, RuneQuest, DragonQuest, RoleMaster, etc.

There is nothing that says the GM has to utilize the magic system of HARNMASTER or anything else. As ever, once you purchase a product, it is YOURS to run/modify/mangle, mutilate etc. :)

It just so happens that I tend to run three styles of game worlds for the most part (Four if you include Cyberpunk).

1) GURPS HARN WORLD
2) GURPS ATLANTIS (or GURPS ATLANTIS THE SECOND AGE
3) GURPS MODERN FANTASY
4) GURPS Cyberpunk (with Night City)

THe first three are the campaign worlds that my group favors most since 1986. The last is a favorite of one lone player and used to be a fun campaign with a fourth player who had died in 2001.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Warden

Where would I find the information on book/path magic and mediated magic?

GURPS Thaumatology.

[Warden]

Thank you.

[Warden]

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

I've changed my mind slightly over the past year and I'd now see the way to go with magic and miracles would be to give the priests a variant of Ritual Path Magic with each deity having their own path skill.

Is this from GURPS Characters p242?

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

I would give the Shek-Pavar Realm-based Syntactic magic with the ability to have 'rotes' or pre-generated fixed effect spells which cost a Perk point.

And this from GURPS: Magic p 202?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Warden

Is this from GURPS Characters p242?

No. The word "ritual" has been used in several of GURPS' magic systems and is not uniquely characteristic of any of them.

Mike is talking about the "Ritual Path Magic" system in this PDF. While that PDF is part of the GURPS Thaumatology series, the system in it was invented several years after the main Thaumatology book.

Ritual Path Magic was originally created for the Monster Hunters setting, but that isn't relevant to Harn.

And this from GURPS: Magic p 202?

That is a very simple syntactic magic system. The main Thaumatology book has a toolkit for creating customised syntactic magic systems, which is what Mike was talking about. If you want to customise magic systems for GURPS, you need the main Thaumatology book, and most of the conversation about magic systems assumes people are familiar with it. I think the lack of it may be causing you confusion. .

[Warden]

I think you're right John

Thanks for clarifying

[Mailanka]

Here, a quick run through on magic systems.

The standard magic system is found in Characters and GURPS Magic. It treats spells as unique, individual skills on a chain of prerequisites. If my mage wants to throw fireballs, he needs to learn the Fireball spell as a skill. This allows him to cast a fireball by spending some fatigue and some time building the fireball up, etc. But to know this spell, he first needs to learn Create Fire and Shape Fire. And to learn those, he needs to know Ignite Flame. Which kind of makes sense: If I can cast fireball, I think I can also light some candles with magic.

There's a variation of this called Ritual Magic, where I do not learn Fireball, but the Path of Fire, the whole college, as a single skill. The individual spells become techniques: I can cast Ignite Fire and Shape Fire and Fireball and Rain of Fire and Fireproof and Smoke and Summon Fire Elemental and everything else, bu Ignite Fire is much easier to cast than Rain of Fire.

Thaumatology introduces even more of these variations. It discusses changing (or removing!) prerequisites. It discusses "clerical" magic. It discusses magic where you pay the costs out of the "mana of the world" rather than your own energy, called "Threshold Magery." It also includes some completely new magic systems.

The first is Path/Book Magic, which is a system created for GURPS Voodoo. It's sort of like Ritual Magic in that you have a single skill per "college," but the spells are different, subtler and have no energy costs. Instead, they take something on the order of hours to cast and require consecrated space, are going to do things more along the lines of cursing people or summoning spirits rather than chucking fireballs or summoning flaming demons. This is generallly considered more realistic and accurate to how "real world" magic purportedly works.

The second is Realm magic, which is magic from Mage: the Ascension with the serial numbers filed off. Here, characters master some element of the world, perhaps fire, and then just do whatever they want with it. There are levels of mastery. Perhaps the ability to sense your element requires level 1, and the ability to shape it requires level 2, and the ability to attack with it, or destroy it, it level 3. Then if I have level three, I could make a fireball, or extinguish flames, or detect where the nearest flame was, or move flames around. I might even talk the GM into letting me see through flames, and shape them to look like me, so I can inhabit fire, walking around in it, talking to people with the roaring of flames. It's very free-form.

There are a few other systems in there. It's really a great book to read, but what you should really understand is that it's a toolkit for building your own approach to magic.

Ritual Path Magic blends the concepts of Realm magic, Path Magic, Ritual Magic and a few others to create its own unique thing. it is, in effect, a worked example of what Thaumatology can do. It was introduced with Monster Hunters and proved so popular that it was expanded into its own book. It has the slow magic of Path magic and the free-form/elemental approach of Realm magic. So you have the Path of Energy, which you learn as a skill, and you use it to do "Energy Things." I might point out that light is an energy and that I can control light to wrap it around me, making myself invisible. The GM might agree and there's a system for working out the "cost," which determines how much time I need to spend casting and what sort of cool accouterments I need to use when casting the spell, similar to Path magic.

Personally, I find it too involved for my tastes, though a friend of mine quite likes it because it allows you to "rigorously create your own spells."

I've been following your Low Fantasy design (and I've worked out a few ideas of my own) and if it were up to me, I'd just use the Path/Book magic. It's detailed enough, it's all right there, it'll probably give you the feel you're looking for, and magic isn't THAT big an element of your setting that it needs to be the focal point of the game. It'll do and won't take any additional work.

[Warden]

Thank you very much Mailanka

I can now buy Ritual Path Magic as it definitely feels like the right version of magic to go for

As you touched upon, this will work for both my low fantasy Saxon series and Harn (also low fantasy)

Thanks again and to everyone who chipped in with advice