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Old 07-19-2018, 09:33 AM   #171
evileeyore
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Default Re: The Problem With Magic

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Originally Posted by Stormcrow View Post
Again, why is this a problem? Players are interested in going on adventures, not settling down to become bronze-sellers.
Not all Players are interested in adventure.

Or rather I should say, some of us are equally invested in our Characters simply making money. Let me tell you about the time I used the Teleport spell and the Economics skill to make more money in 10 minutes a month than my Character could ever earn on adventures...
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Old 07-19-2018, 09:45 AM   #172
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Default Re: The Problem With Magic

It also becomes a plausibility issue. If a character can make more money in a day than they could make in a month of adventuring, the campaign should be about something other than material rewards. Why save the princess when you can buy kingdoms with a few days of work?
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Old 07-19-2018, 10:06 AM   #173
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Default Re: The Problem With Magic

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Or rather I should say, some of us are equally invested in our Characters simply making money. Let me tell you about the time I used the Teleport spell and the Economics skill to make more money in 10 minutes a month than my Character could ever earn on adventures...
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It also becomes a plausibility issue. If a character can make more money in a day than they could make in a month of adventuring, the campaign should be about something other than material rewards. Why save the princess when you can buy kingdoms with a few days of work?
If in your setting it is especially cost-effective to set up Joe's Magical Teleportation Service or Mac's Money Machine, then pick the appropriate level of Wealth and do so! If you want the spells without the economic realities, then restrict the setting to make these spells not cost-effective.

This is not a problem with the GURPS magic system. This is a problem with ANY magic system that simply slaps magic on top of a "realistic" economy. In D&D, why don't magic-users sell Continual Light Lamps and offer teleportation services? Why don't clerics set up Emergency Care Centers? In fact, the way most people play D&D, they do! I've seen many articles over the years about how medieval castles are inadequate against dragon attacks, so why do fantasy rulers build them?

Many settings make magic have a Social Stigma attached to it. No one wants to buy your stinking magic bronze, or they assume you'll be giving them wizards' gold that will disappear in a day. Most settings restrict which spells are available, or the means to acquire them. You can't set up Mac's Teleport Taxi if the Teleport spell is a trade secret nobody will teach you unless you have guild membership, and then when you get guild membership you learn that, to control the magical economy, members aren't allowed to sell teleportation services except under guild terms. You also can't sell it if the spell simply doesn't exist. In some settings, magic may take a Vow or have a Code of Honor that restricts your use of magic that might otherwise allow you to take economic advantage.

None of this is the fault of the system, it's the fault of the GM for expecting the system to be added to an existing setting without changing that setting. You're taking a "realistic" setting and changing fundamental physical laws, and then demanding that the look and feel of the setting not change drastically. This is not a realistic expectation.

You can do one of two things. You can just add magic and explain to your players that you want to maintain the quasi-medieval (or whatever) feel of the setting, so please don't abuse magic in a way that breaks that. Or you can tailor magic to be appropriate to your setting so that the resulting magic can be exercised to its full extent by players and they're simply unable to change society.

Otherwise you're really just complaining that magic breaks reality. Of course it does; it's magic!
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Old 07-19-2018, 01:00 PM   #174
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Default Re: The Problem With Magic

IMHO, I guess the biggest problem with gurps magic is that magic does not exist in a vacuum and GMs for a long time lacked a critical mass of good examples that show balanced working templates of the magic system fitted to a fantasy setting, similar to what we have now with DF Spells

The book is more about showing how to do most things than guiding you into knowing what breaks the game in what way, and so it can lead to a lot of times when you discover that spells such as flight/teleport/create food, etc. break the game mid campaign

Once the GM is experienced and knows the shortfalls of the system, it is as good as any, but the lack of guidance makes fewer people get to that point than we would hope

For instance, I think it is important to illustrate how each spell might affect the economic and social fabric of a society if let unhindered, and to add suggestions, both in terms of banning/changing spells as well as background and metagame solutions that hinder them and thus prevent them from breaking the game.

For every problem the system creates there is an elegant solution waiting to be discovered, and it can range from outright banning spells and altering the pre-req lists to simply adding in lore explaining away why despite something existing it not being passible of abuse

For example, maybe teleporting and planeshift spells exist, but due to powerful wizards messing around and causing a demonic invasion in the past, powerful wards were put in place by the powers that be that prevent these spells from working except in certain times/locations, or maybe they work at a huge penalty unless you manage to acquire a magical attunement with said powers, and if you travel without the attunement because you have the spell at a ridiculously high skill level then it triggers a warning and now those who guard the world against trespassers and super powerful wizards are onto you, and of course in such a setting it is super fitting to charge a ridiculously expensive UB to allow a PC to start knowing such spells in the first place, if not outright ban the possibility

But that requires you somewhat know and plan all these interactions in advance which goes back to having acquired knowledge about the game that more often than not is only gained through trial and error due to how the book is presented, so to me thats the problem, but the system itself is wonderful
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Old 07-21-2018, 06:54 AM   #175
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Default Re: The Problem With Magic

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Superscience like Magic totally screws up the GURPS TL scale.".
That's the point. Superscience always stands outside of the TL scale or it wouldn't be superscience.
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Old 07-21-2018, 12:28 PM   #176
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Default Re: The Problem With Magic

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Originally Posted by Stormcrow View Post
This is not a problem with the GURPS magic system. This is a problem with ANY magic system that simply slaps magic on top of a "realistic" economy. In D&D, why don't magic-users sell Continual Light Lamps and offer teleportation services? Why don't clerics set up Emergency Care Centers? In fact, the way most people play D&D, they do! I've seen many articles over the years about how medieval castles are inadequate against dragon attacks, so why do fantasy rulers build them?
They could be show castles such as like the ones Mad King Ludwig II built. Its like the people who got suits of armor for their kids even though they would quickly grow out of them: it's a status symbol not for actual defense.


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Many settings make magic have a Social Stigma attached to it. No one wants to buy your stinking magic bronze, or they assume you'll be giving them wizards' gold that will disappear in a day. Most settings restrict which spells are available, or the means to acquire them.
These are cultural specific restrictions and have their own set of issue. Not every culture is going to a bunch magicphobes and the ones that aren't are going to steam roll over those that are.

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You can't set up Mac's Teleport Taxi if the Teleport spell is a trade secret nobody will teach you unless you have guild membership, and then when you get guild membership you learn that, to control the magical economy, members aren't allowed to sell teleportation services except under guild terms.
Kings can (and historical in some case did) tell guilds to take a hike if they want something bad enough.

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You also can't sell it if the spell simply doesn't exist. In some settings, magic may take a Vow or have a Code of Honor that restricts your use of magic that might otherwise allow you to take economic advantage.
Again this only works if everybody agree. In one of my friend's campaign he had it where the deities had a finite amount of energy they were were saving for their final battle and so clerical magic was very limited. The one exception was Bazangi who was totally stark raving bonkers and had a really goofy sense of humor.

A cleric prayed to Bazangi and got a rubber chicken that functioned as a +4 flail. A Fighter then prayed to Bazangi for a magical weapon and got a +4 rubber. When the fighter asked why Bazangi replied that it was he was fresh out of chicken.

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None of this is the fault of the system, it's the fault of the GM for expecting the system to be added to an existing setting without changing that setting. You're taking a "realistic" setting and changing fundamental physical laws, and then demanding that the look and feel of the setting not change drastically. This is not a realistic expectation.
Agreed.

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Originally Posted by Stormcrow View Post
You can do one of two things. You can just add magic and explain to your players that you want to maintain the quasi-medieval (or whatever) feel of the setting, so please don't abuse magic in a way that breaks that. Or you can tailor magic to be appropriate to your setting so that the resulting magic can be exercised to its full extent by players and they're simply unable to change society.

Otherwise you're really just complaining that magic breaks reality. Of course it does; it's magic!
See Clarke's and Niven's Laws regarding magic and technology. :-)

Preventing players from changing society doesn't explain why TPTB with access to the same abilities don't change society. Even the so called Dark Ages has changes in society brought on by improvements in technology.

Rulers are going to use everything they can get their hands on to improve the defense of their lands or the ability to take their neighbor's lands easier.
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Old 07-21-2018, 01:15 PM   #177
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Default Re: The Problem With Magic

This is not the game's fault, the system's fault, or even the setting's fault. This is the GM's fault for not only losing control of their game but actively allowing the players to hose it.

A GM that allows a player to abuse the rules (especially a modular one like GURPS with a lot of edge cases) deserves the wreckage of their campaign.
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A cleric prayed to Bazangi and got a rubber chicken that functioned as a +4 flail. A Fighter then prayed to Bazangi for a magical weapon and got a +4 rubber. When the fighter asked why Bazangi replied that it was he was fresh out of chicken.


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Old 07-21-2018, 01:57 PM   #178
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Default Re: The Problem With Magic

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This is not the game's fault, the system's fault, or even the setting's fault. This is the GM's fault for not only losing control of their game but actively allowing the players to hose it.

A GM that allows a player to abuse the rules (especially a modular one like GURPS with a lot of edge cases) deserves the wreckage of their campaign.
It's a setting fault if you believe settings should hold up to cursory inspection, and think that the rules are actually describing the world rather than being a disconnected minigame.

Some people don't think the first is important or outright reject the latter, though I don't know how any of the second would get into GURPS.
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Old 07-21-2018, 05:49 PM   #179
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Default Re: The Problem With Magic

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It's a setting fault if you believe settings should hold up to cursory inspection, and think that the rules are actually describing the world rather than being a disconnected minigame.

Some people don't think the first is important or outright reject the latter, though I don't know how any of the second would get into GURPS.
I should mention my example came from AD&D1 which had huge mechanics problems. The economy was on the totally fubared list.

By the rules in the DMG a character was supposed to "automatically expend not less than 100 gold pieces per level of experience per month".

When getting several sliver (10 silver = 1 gold) for monster kills was average for low level monsters and many items were in silver this is a insane amount of money into the economy. Never mind that just to maintain their standard of living the PCs are going to run out out of things in the area to kill for silver.

But it gets better. The cost of leveling was "Level of the trainee character * 1,500 gp = Weekly cost during study/training" with the number of weeks being 1 to 4 depending on how good the player role played.

At a bare minimum that means a party of six 1st level adventures all leveling up would pump 9000 gp into the economy. Hyperinflation in any town even one of these guys levels up in should be the rule and yet D&D ignored this basic concept of economics.

Worse any poor DM who tried to follow this rule and gave out enough wealth that his players could easily get to the next level quickly found themselves in a death spiral of having to giving out more and more treasure to "one up" the previous adventure resulting in the dreaded Monty Haul campaign.
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Old 07-21-2018, 06:03 PM   #180
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Default Re: The Problem With Magic

That's not how it works in practice. "Monty Haul" means giving out treasure incommensurate with the challenge of getting it. Those training costs get higher because you are gaining a level, and by definition gaining a level means you're capable of acquiring more treasure. It's not a death-spiral; it's keeping up with the Joneses.

And all this ties in with "the problem with magic" in GURPS in that it's your expectation of a realistic economy that's giving you trouble, not anything in the game. The AD&D rules specifically point out how unrealistic the hyperinflation of the game is, but it's set up that way because it's no fun to slay a dragon and get a few measly rings of hacksilver out of the venture. GURPS isn't set up just to do AD&D-style adventuring, but that's one of the genres it allows you to do. You have to prune away that sort of thing to get at the bits you want.

GURPS is not a model of reality. It's a bunch of tools to construct a game. Some of those tools are realistic, and some of them are not. Not all of them are supposed to be used together in every setting. It's the GM's job to use the tools to put together the game he or she wants. If the ability to teleport at will without fatigue is contrary to your idea of what you want in a setting, then don't include that ability. Construct a setting that works the way you want. Other people may want to construct a setting that you think doesn't make any logical sense... and that doesn't mean the system is broken. Not everybody plays with the same goals.

P.S.: In AD&D, 20 sp = 1 gp. And you didn't get treasure for killing monsters; you got it for taking it from monsters or traps. You might kill a monster to get it, but you're just as likely to sneak it out or trick a monster, and those are safer, more effective methods. That's why treasure gives you so much more experience than killing monsters.
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