10-31-2015, 09:25 PM | #21 | |
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: New England
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Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
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10-31-2015, 09:31 PM | #22 |
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: New England
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Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
YES! But I'd want it to be able to also support the bookish types of magic, as well.
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11-01-2015, 05:27 AM | #23 | |
Join Date: Jul 2005
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Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
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One possible counter example might be a world where the powers of evil (Satan or whoever) are behind all magic. It's all sinful and damns your soul no matter how beneficial the effects are. The GM might be justified in holding that back in a game that is about that discovery, a game of accumulating horror. But not otherwise.
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Michael Cule,
Genius for Hire, Gaming Dinosaur Second Class |
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11-01-2015, 04:29 PM | #24 | |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
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The (A)D&D magic system always seemed to me an example of how not to do it ... leaving aside any hate for Vancian magic, and acknowledging that the fireball flinging flavour is fine for the genre, they managed to establish a way for "divine" and "arcane" magic to be tediously similar ... and in later editions made psionics (which always seemed sort of out of place in a setting with magic) just another version of the same thing. (Fair play, in old style AD&D psionics was fearsomely wierd as well as sort of out of place and so didn't used to be such a big offender). |
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11-01-2015, 04:34 PM | #25 | |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
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It should give a very different feel to the universe either way... |
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11-03-2015, 04:04 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: New England
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Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
This has all been very helpful; thanks to all who responded. The desire for a logical system which can be improvised upon resonates with me, as does the desire for a system that provides lots of support for the poor GM. I still wonder about the cosmological implications of competing magic systems in a single setting.
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11-09-2015, 07:58 PM | #27 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
Mystery, Awe. It should not be just a substitute for the internal combustion engine. And no midoclorines please!
Atavistic feeling. It should feel, OLD. It should feel uncanny and numinous. Certain things give off that sense. Old women, battered old trees, forests, springs, night, stars, etc. In other words it should be Gothic, Romantic, and in general from a part of this world that we like to put out of our minds except when we are "visiting". It should be from the Unconscious. In other words there needs to be a formulaic sensibility to make it but a poetic sensibility to make it great.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
11-09-2015, 08:34 PM | #28 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
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11-09-2015, 10:26 PM | #29 | |
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Alsea, OR
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Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
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Chemicals exist the way they do because of nuclear physics. Their interactions are all, fundamentally, just nuclear physics in useful combinations for the macro scales. |
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11-09-2015, 10:57 PM | #30 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
Well, really, no. The only property of the nucleus that matters for most chemistry is its charge. The actual chemical processes involve rearrangements of electron clouds surrounding nuclei. This is much lower energy than nuclear processes: the typical chemical reaction involves energy comparable to that of visible light, the typical nuclear reaction is up in gamma ray energy levels.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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gurps, magic, system |
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