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Old 09-17-2015, 09:29 PM   #11
Culture20
 
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Default Re: Making Magic Mysterious and Eldritch

A good mix between known laws of magic and mysterious magic can be found in the Staff of One from the Marvel comic series Runaways. The staff can only cast any spell once (presumably in the presence of any potential caster), and the caster can only suggest intent with a word or short phrase. Another well known Marvel mage, Dr. Strange, has the trappings of Mystery, calling upon Eldritch forces from beyond the veil of reality, but he has so many go-to spells like the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak that he's become kind of ho-hum.

A friend ran a fantasy campaign with a new system of magic that he didn't explain to us (we had to learn via trial and error), and the magic was just returning to a world that didn't know magic at all, so no NPCs knew it either (except for the dragons...) However, once we learned the basics, we started treating it as a tool. I would suggest creating two of your own magic systems, and using them alongside every magic system GURPS offers. That won't prevent the players from treating magic like a tool, but at least there will still be magic they don't understand.
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Old 09-17-2015, 09:38 PM   #12
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Default Re: Making Magic Mysterious and Eldritch

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Originally Posted by Randyman View Post
As for gaming, I concur with previous posters, because magic in the hands of PCs is inevitably magic as Tool.
The thing is, if you did succeed in making magic not a Tool, rational players would never use it, because they'd know it couldn't be made to do what they needed it to. And they would have a legitimate complaint if anybody else in the story did manage to make it do something they wanted, so it's difficult to justify the NPCs using it much either.

In some senses I suppose magic that never appears in play is pretty mysterious, but not in a very interesting way.
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Old 09-17-2015, 10:21 PM   #13
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Default Re: Making Magic Mysterious and Eldritch

There is a (somewhat) middle ground to allowing PCs access without taking away any of the mystery.

Do not allow PC spellcasters, but allow them to have Patrons, Allies, Contacts, & Dependents who are spellcasters, or be owed Favors from NPC spellcasters. They can access a little magic some of the time and the GM can tightly control what knowledge is available... go ahead and roll against your Thaumatology skill... oh, sorry, there is no default... you'll just have to rely on the cryptic explanations those friendly NPCs give you. You trust them, right?
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Old 09-18-2015, 02:15 AM   #14
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Default Re: Making Magic Mysterious and Eldritch

The idea that magic is a force to be controlled is a very new idea, and if you use that idea, it's hardly surprising that it becomes like a science, since the idea that magic is a force is, itself, an idea created by modern civilizations fascination with science. People noted that chemistry had its roots in alchemy, that astronomy had its roots in astrology, and so naturally physics must have its roots in magic.

But historically magic is two things. First of all, it is the knowledge of other realms/domains. A magician is not really someone who weaves spells, but knows lore, things like where one can go in the spirit world to find an answer, or how to control his dreams, or how meditation works. The second thing he has is a relationship with spiritual powers.

Magical thought shares a lot with religious and spiritual thought. If you poke an ignorant man with a scientific world-view and ask "Why does lightning strike," he will say "I dunno. Maybe there's something inherent in clouds and the ground and lightning that makes it so. We should investigate!" If you ask someone who subscribes to a spiritual view, he will say "God willed it so." A magician might then ask "How can I persuade God to strike my foes?"

This is the source of magic's uncertainy. If magic is a force, then you can reliably do the same thing over and over again ("If I cast a lightning spell, lightning will strike my foes"). If magic is the ability to talk to spirits and ask them to do stuff for you, it will not be reliable ("PLEASE strike my foe with lightning? I'll sacrifice a goat to you later if you do! I promise this time, I won't forget!"). The more human-like the spirit, the less eldritch it will seem ("The lightning god is just pissy because the thunder goddess stood him up on a date"), but the less human-like the spirit, the weirder and more incomprehensible and dangerous magic will seem ("The Shadow of the Universe has veiled its face to me. I... I think it disapproves. The stars are not right. I must change the stars in my eyes. I MUST CHANGE THE STARS IN MY EYES!")

So, the first half, knowledge, is more like a force. Once you know how to see spirits, or how to control your dreams, that always works, but it's really just a tool for accessing elements that give you real power, like artifacts that are fragments of godly might, or the favor of gods. It would probably be closer to divine powers than traditional magic, or so is my take.
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Old 09-18-2015, 03:18 AM   #15
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Default Re: Making Magic Mysterious and Eldritch

...there's also the Call of Cthulu route where PCs learn individual spells, often without being fully aware of what they do.

Actually, this should fit quite well with Mailanka's ideas above - most of the "spells" actually just contact something so that you can petition it for a favour.
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Old 09-18-2015, 05:40 AM   #16
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Default Re: Making Magic Mysterious and Eldritch

Having played Mage The Ascension extensively, Witchcraft, Arcanum, Ignis Fatuus and quite some different magical systems from GURPS Thaum (Currently using 5 different magical systems in my setting), I'd say that to attain the mysterious and eldritch feeling you're looking for, you'll have to go away from the usual "D&D/DF/DungeonCrawling-esque" mechanics.

If you look at books, movies, tales, legends... normally what composes mysterious is something you quite can't grasp as a whole or understand the full extent of the system and its outcome, even if you manage to understand some bits of it .

For magic, more specifically, what I mean is you gotta break some part of the system and take that away from players, so that leaves them wondering what could happen exactly.

I'd say at a very basic level, a straight hermetical magic type spell would be something like:

Effect Visualization > Performer/Material/Targets Gathering > Ritual Performance > Manifestation > Check of Visualization X Manifestation

So, as I previously said, this full complete system and its understanding takes away any (or almost all) variance and mysticism, because all possible variables are controlled or already expected by the performer.

Taking away 1 or more of these steps from the control of the performer would add degrees of variance which in turn could add mystery (Not necessarily, though...variance can be taken as annoyance if done wrong).

Braking each step to see what we'd gain from removing the performer control:

Effect Visualization removed

I find taking this away would be more annoying than mystifying, since if you can't even decide what you're trying to do or alter, how are you supposed to expect it to even work in the first place.
For me, this is a no no to remove from the control of performers and thus players.

Performer/Material/Target Gathering

Here things start to become interesting... What if materials are not strictly defined and/or depending on what you use you have somewhat different results?
Performers would have a wild guess on what could be used as material, but often could try different or unusual components to try different effects. This could lead to quests often found in tales for special materials or leave a feeling of "What's gonna happen" at each casting with different or improvised materials.

Performer is also quite a good one, imo. WHO actually performs the magic? What if the magi only puts things in motion, put the real magic is done by a superior thing from the void? What if performers only open energy lines to the primordial planes and then the entropic forces act on their own? What if performers are bound to ancient pacts with fey Thuatá De Danaan and their whimsical desires is what actually can mold reality?
Even if they know what actually performs the magic, not being the ones in control of it allows room for exquisite things to happen.
This, I believe, is a step with great potential for mysterious depth and adding. Depending on the variance of the true magic force matrix, even castings with exact same steps on the other points could come out quite different due to this step possible variance while still being true to its set definition.

I wouldn't mess with Targets, since it tends to get annoying fast, when performers and thus players, start missing their expected targets or simply not affect them the way they thought.

Material, good to tweak. Performers, very good to tweak. Target, bad. imo.

Ritual Performance

I like to mess with this step quite a lot for the purpose of mystifying magic, specially coupled with the previous Material and/or Performer step.

If the forces moving the universe around and thus the ones peforming magic are subject to considerable change and mutability and the rituals that put those forces in motion are also not quite defined or known, you have a lot of wiggle room for the players to be wondering what exactly would happen, how it would happen and so on...

Personally, I find this couple with the previous step is where your gold is.

Manifestation

I normally find that tweaking with this gets frustrating quite fast. If players are performing the same rituals, with the same mats, to the same forces and the results are wildly different they tend to treat it as an unreliable force quite fast and will only apply it when they can withstand the chance/variance or almost not at all.

If tweaking this, do it only for fluffy mostly and not really sweeping, significant variances, imo.

Check

This is simply the stage where the magi, the player, checks if the effects meets his desire.
Put it simply, is the step where somehing like "I wanted to cast a Fireball...did I cast a Fireball?" happens.
Sometimes magic takes time or doesn't leave any visual/material manifestation and not knowing straight right away if your magic worked as you desired it to work, if done in the correct amount and tone, can also add some degree of eldritchness.
You know those scenes in movies where the main characters push something, or perform a ritual or do something and there's that 2-5 seconds with complete silence and stillness and camera shows the whole area and you kinda stop your breath waiting what's gonna happen and IF its gonna happen?
While it's an excitement buildup, if you look from the magi/player perspective, not being 100% sure if/how it'll work, even after performing correct known magical formulae, it could add a layer of mystery to it.

Just don't overdo it or magic will fall into the "unreliable" territory quite fast.
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Old 09-18-2015, 07:06 AM   #17
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Default Re: Making Magic Mysterious and Eldritch

You could use GURPS Powers: Divine Favor as a base, where magic is this indescribable and fickle force. It doesn't necessarily need to model a deity, just this mystical force that you are petitioning for help... You might not necessarily get what you want, but you might get what you need depending on the request. Just ignore the pre-approved prayers part.
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Old 09-18-2015, 07:38 AM   #18
malloyd
 
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Default Re: Making Magic Mysterious and Eldritch

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Originally Posted by benz72 View Post
Do not allow PC spellcasters, but allow them to have Patrons, Allies, Contacts, & Dependents who are spellcasters, or be owed Favors from NPC spellcasters. They can access a little magic some of the time and the GM can tightly control what knowledge is available... go ahead and roll against your Thaumatology skill... oh, sorry, there is no default... you'll just have to rely on the cryptic explanations those friendly NPCs give you. You trust them, right?
This is much the same thing as magic is actually performed by those spirits or gods and you negotiate with them for it every time.

Part of the problem is that magic is mysterious is a late literary convention too. When a real magician works a spell, he does think it's a tool, one he expects has a good chance of doing whatever it is he wants to happen. If he didn't expect it to work, why would he bother. Likewise somebody buying a spell may not know how magic works, but he doesn't know how blacksmithing works when a buys a new ax either, he doesn't particularly think the magic amulet is any more mysterious.
Magic is mysterious is an *excuse* for why it didn't work, which you only need in a society that has gotten into the habit of investigating stuff to the point of noticing that it usually doesn't.
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Old 09-18-2015, 07:52 AM   #19
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Default Re: Making Magic Mysterious and Eldritch

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The thing is, if you did succeed in making magic not a Tool, rational players would never use it, because they'd know it couldn't be made to do what they needed it to. And they would have a legitimate complaint if anybody else in the story did manage to make it do something they wanted, so it's difficult to justify the NPCs using it much either.

In some senses I suppose magic that never appears in play is pretty mysterious, but not in a very interesting way.
This is the tension - for players to use magic, it must be Tool. For magic to be as the OP desires it, magic must be Other.
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Old 09-18-2015, 07:56 AM   #20
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Default Re: Making Magic Mysterious and Eldritch

I'm about to embark on GMing a TL2 fantasy campaign and approaching this problem what I will try to do is:

-use multiple skins over a fundamental magic engine known only to me in order to stovepipe mage types such that while they may have some mechanistic understanding of their own magic use, the capabilities and methods of other mages will be obscure to them;

-base threshold levels on CP levels;

-use a high threshold but make recovery slow;

-base spell threshold costs on the scale/scope of the effect, and make the scale and scope of effect partially unpredictable;

-make spell failure complications common and relatively manageable, but subject to potentially cascading if bad luck and foolish risks combine.

Last edited by Donny Brook; 02-07-2016 at 08:06 PM. Reason: typo
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