Alternate Magic Colleges

[yorkist-j]

I've been thinking about alternate methods of arranging the spell colleges. I thought that the Celtic tree system from Thaumatology was very well done, and I'd like to see some other variants. In particular, I'm intrigued by the thought of planetary colleges as suggested in Fantasy.

I'm concerned about rearranging 900 or so spells on my own; that seems like a lot of time. I thought, 'surely someone has already done this.' But a quick search on Google brought up no results that I was able to easily find. A slightly more thorough search of these forums gave me no results either.

Has this seriously never been done before? Or am I just not being sufficiently diligent in my research?

[fschiff]

An old 2e book, GURPS Witch World (an adaption of a literary work, and unlikely to show up in e23 anytime in the future), had the colleges arranged by color. Red magic, for example, deals with "health of the body, physical strength, and the art of war." Those colors could be used as substitutes for Planetary categories. So its possible, with some work.

The appendix to GURPS Thaumatology has magical correspondences which could be used to create Planetary colleges.

[Kuroshima]

Originally Posted by fschiff

An old 2e book, GURPS Witch World (an adaption of a literary work, and unlikely to show up in e23 anytime in the future), had the colleges arranged by color. Red magic, for example, deals with "health of the body, physical strength, and the art of war." Those colors could be used as substitutes for Planetary categories. So its possible, with some work.

The appendix to GURPS Thaumatology has magical correspondences which could be used to create Planetary colleges.

That system was a candidate for Thaumatology. At least something similar was in the playtest document at one time. I think it was cut because it was hard to put it in without infringing the (expired) license, and the book was already overlength.

[Brandy]

I've reorganized:

1) Most Colleges are self-sufficient and have no pre-requisites outside their own spells.
2) Colleges are organized into larger structures called realms.
3) Some spells and colleges have been removed.

Link

House rules and stuff are there too.

[MagiMaster]

While the idea is interesting to me too, I would be surprised if anyone had rearranged 900 spells, rather than just describing what kind of spells go where and pointing out some specific trouble cases.

Edit: Or taking Bookman's route of rearranging colleges.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Kuroshima

That system was a candidate for Thaumatology. At least something similar was in the playtest document at one time. I think it was cut because it was hard to put it in without infringing the (expired) license, and the book was already overlength.

It would have been nice to see it in the 4E book, but it would not have served much purpose to include it and the Tree Magic system. That latter gives a good idea of how colleges may be rearranged.

[Kuroshima]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

It would have been nice to see it in the 4E book, but it would not have served much purpose to include it and the Tree Magic system. That latter gives a good idea of how colleges may be rearranged.

Yeah. It was an early playtest casualty because of that (originally but color magic and tree magic were included as examples of rearranging colleges). Since the licence had expired, and as such the color magic would have to be significantly changed to file the serial numbers, it was deemed non-essential.

[David Johnston2]

So that'd be the Witch World magic system?

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

So that'd be the Witch World magic system?

Yes, if you mean color magic. A reorg of the college system, like tree magic was. I would have to dig to find my old copy, and I do not recall the particulars any more... I see a few retailers (and eBay) have some copies listed at reasonable prices *marvel*

[mlangsdorf]

Bruno and I put together an alternate college scheme for DF Bards based on the historical types of performance: comedy, drama, history, and tragedy. I thought Bruno was going to write it up for a Pyramid article but that may have been a different project.

She has most of the master files, so if she's not submitting it to Pyramid then I hope she'll post it here.