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Old 12-05-2018, 02:26 PM   #31
martinl
 
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Default Re: DF Implied Cosmology

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Originally Posted by b-dog View Post
You what might be interesting in DF is to include both alignment and the method used to achieve that. ...
That's already there in advantages and disadvantages though.
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Old 12-05-2018, 03:00 PM   #32
Black Leviathan
 
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Default Re: DF Implied Cosmology

If your Good and Evil aren't related in any particular way related to good or evil it might do you better to refer to them by name rather than using confusing codewords. When they guy in the black and red robes who's tossing infants into a fire because they were recovered from a witch's den passes your detect even spell without breaking a sweat you have to start asking yourself why you bother casting it anymore.

I'm all for brightly-lit heroic words with a clearly defined nemesis and wholesome villages that are in harm's way. I don't need my roleplay to be complicated or morally ambiguous. I just get fussy when words that define the fundamental value of a world start to lose meaning.
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Old 12-05-2018, 03:20 PM   #33
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Default Re: DF Implied Cosmology

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Originally Posted by Black Leviathan View Post
I'm all for brightly-lit heroic words with a clearly defined nemesis and wholesome villages that are in harm's way. I don't need my roleplay to be complicated or morally ambiguous. I just get fussy when words that define the fundamental value of a world start to lose meaning.
I'm not sure there is much non-technical vocabulary for the approval/disapproval of the gods. I suppose you could substitute Detect Sanction/Damnation for Detect Good/Evil, but unless you plan to play up the unpleasant nature of the gods I bet the players will fall back on the simpler wording.
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Old 12-05-2018, 03:53 PM   #34
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Default Re: DF Implied Cosmology

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Cities are basically insulators. Just about all magical hokum has sources and insulators and amplifiers and so on. Pollution is harmful to life, ergo it soaks up life energy – something like that.
Hm, as life energy in the nameless wilds gets sucked up into "Nature" and made available to casters, perhaps the life energy in cities is likewise sucked up, but because of the presence of a name ends up in a differently named pool.

Sure there don't happen to be any classes that draw on the "City of New York" or whatever energy pool in DF at the moment, but maybe it's theoretically possible. If enough energy builds up untapped in the pool, maybe it births a new City God.

Perhaps equally usefully as a plot hook, the same process might happen in named bits of wilderness - so if the Forest of Impenetrable Darkness keeps its name long enough, maybe Druids start suffering penalties in it and a weird new kind of spell casting becomes viable there.
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Old 12-05-2018, 04:23 PM   #35
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Default Re: DF Implied Cosmology

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Originally Posted by Black Leviathan View Post
If your Good and Evil aren't related in any particular way related to good or evil it might do you better to refer to them by name rather than using confusing codewords.
Normally I am against confusing terminology, but in this case I love it.

The gods themselves simply assertively conflate themselves and their powers with moral good, and their opponents and opponents' powers with moral evil.

It's both simple and open to a wide array of interpretation by both GMs and players, without getting into the traditional mess of verifiable moral alignments in RPGs.
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Old 12-05-2018, 05:40 PM   #36
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Default Re: DF Implied Cosmology

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Normally I am against confusing terminology, but in this case I love it.

The gods themselves simply assertively conflate themselves and their powers with moral good, and their opponents and opponents' powers with moral evil.

It's both simple and open to a wide array of interpretation by both GMs and players, without getting into the traditional mess of verifiable moral alignments in RPGs.
I don't think I'd want to mess with the ambiguity of two players potentially getting different results from their Detect Evil abilities for DF.

If you've expanded the game to the point stuff happens in Town and there are opponents who might *not* kill the party even if they win the fight, then sure, but that's more of a standard Fantasy campaign. There's stuff about huge labyrinths full of monsters that stops making sense on closer thought well before you get to the possibility of moral subtleties.
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Old 12-05-2018, 08:15 PM   #37
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Default Re: DF Implied Cosmology

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Sure there don't happen to be any classes that draw on the "City of New York" or whatever energy pool in DF at the moment...
Quibble:

There aren't any in DFRPG, but there are in good old DF. Clerics and Holy Warriors of the God of [City Name] (GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 7 Clerics).
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Old 12-06-2018, 08:07 AM   #38
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Default Re: DF Implied Cosmology

Pretty much the only reason why the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game doesn't have casters who are more powerful in town or only powerful in town is that – unlike the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy series and more generally the GURPS Fantasy series – the Dungeon Fantasy RPG offers next-to-no support for urban adventures. It treats town as a "black box" to visit between quests.

But even then . . . Things are possible for magic-using NPCs in town that aren't possible for caster PCs: recharging power items (Adventurers, p. 115) and rechargeable magic items (Magic Items, p. 15), working the most potent curative magic under Yes, The Temple Is Open! (Exploits, pp. 62-63), and of course manufacturing magic items. There are also hints that the Wizards' Guild deals in "forbidden" spells (Adventurers, p. 4, and Exploits, p. 94).

In light of that, it seems probable that there town-based casters whose spells work only in town . . . in effect, cities have the equivalent of normal mana/sanctity for this magic, while everywhere else has the equivalent of no mana/sanctity. Those spells are clearly very powerful, so settlements probably act as gigantic Energy Reserves or power items for such casters, too. Of course, magic-users of this kind wouldn't make good delvers, because all their abilities would be nigh unto useless in wilderness, dungeons, or other dimensions; that explains why such powerful people hire delvers for quests instead of going out and doing those jobs themselves.

As to whether these casters are highly specialized clerics and magic-users or in fact a whole other species of magician ("anti-druids" in a sense) would be up to the GM. Players of full-on GURPS might prefer wizards who have limited Magery, or clerics of city gods. Myself, I kind of like the idea of urban magicians who are their own profession, with its own template, and who have a distinct spellcasting talent, supernatural energy type, and spell list. Call them "sages" or whatever.
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Old 12-06-2018, 09:43 AM   #39
martinl
 
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Default Re: DF Implied Cosmology

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
I don't think I'd want to mess with the ambiguity of two players potentially getting different results from their Detect Evil abilities for DF.
I think we are agreeing here, with the caveat that I assume the gods are all on the same side, regardless of squabbles.
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Old 12-06-2018, 10:14 AM   #40
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Default Re: DF Implied Cosmology

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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
Pretty much the only reason why the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game doesn't have casters who are more powerful in town or only powerful in town is that – unlike the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy series and more generally the GURPS Fantasy series – the Dungeon Fantasy RPG offers next-to-no support for urban adventures. It treats town as a "black box" to visit between quests.

But even then . . . Things are possible for magic-using NPCs in town that aren't possible for caster PCs: recharging power items (Adventurers, p. 115) and rechargeable magic items (Magic Items, p. 15), working the most potent curative magic under Yes, The Temple Is Open! (Exploits, pp. 62-63), and of course manufacturing magic items. There are also hints that the Wizards' Guild deals in "forbidden" spells (Adventurers, p. 4, and Exploits, p. 94).

In light of that, it seems probable that there town-based casters whose spells work only in town . . . in effect, cities have the equivalent of normal mana/sanctity for this magic, while everywhere else has the equivalent of no mana/sanctity. Those spells are clearly very powerful, so settlements probably act as gigantic Energy Reserves or power items for such casters, too. Of course, magic-users of this kind wouldn't make good delvers, because all their abilities would be nigh unto useless in wilderness, dungeons, or other dimensions; that explains why such powerful people hire delvers for quests instead of going out and doing those jobs themselves.

As to whether these casters are highly specialized clerics and magic-users or in fact a whole other species of magician ("anti-druids" in a sense) would be up to the GM. Players of full-on GURPS might prefer wizards who have limited Magery, or clerics of city gods. Myself, I kind of like the idea of urban magicians who are their own profession, with its own template, and who have a distinct spellcasting talent, supernatural energy type, and spell list. Call them "sages" or whatever.
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