Mageborn are like Coins - Worldbuilding TL 3

[hal]

OK, one of the things that was not readily apparent is EricTheRed is fully aware of HARN MANOR guidelines for building manors. This helped IMMENSELY as far as detailing his manor.

Others, if they would like the information, can comment here saying "hey, can you detail a manor for me and I can take it from there?"

If you do so, email me directly and I will send something to you shortly thereafter.

[hal]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I suspect the knight will be arguing with the peasants about getting the mages trained up, getting called to court to explain what on earth is going on on his manor, and dealing with brigands who notice a new ripe plum of a manor for the picking. Sir Zeedrick is built accordingly.

Hi Ericthered...

I apologize for not commenting upon Sir Zeedrick earlier, but nicely done.

Now for the bad news...

Sir Zeedrick inhabits his own manor, not me. ;)

Because you did such a nice job with this thus far, I'm going to ask you some questions about your Manor. Since I know you have Harn Manor, I know too that you have a bit more information at your fingertips as far as costs and the like.

Here are some questions for you...

How are the children discovered to have magery? Who does the testing? If a child is born of freeman parents, it is deemed to be free (status 0) and the Lord has no rights regarding the child. Only if the child is born in his family, or into the family of a serf does the Lord hold sway over the child by his rights.

So, why is this testing conducted? What is the testing? What are its costs? Who benefits from it?

Are mageborn "guilded" members or "unguilded"?

What happens to mages who refuse to join a guild? Are guilds strong enough to hold sway in villages?

Me? I know how I'd approach it, but like anything else, how I'd do it may not be how YOU would want to do it. This is above all, an exploration of concepts and their effects on society.

Me? I'd postulate that until children hit puberty, their magey aspects are not likely to develop unless the person has a STRONG magery aspect. I might go so far as to say that Puberty minus Magery level is when a child may be detected to have magery. Thus, a child with magery 3 might show signs of magery 0 three years before they hit puberty, magery 1 at two years before puberty hits, and magery 2 just before puberty hits. The question becomes one of "when does puberty hit?" **innocent look**

So - are there gender roles in this universe that models medieval technology and the like? It maybe politically inncorrect to say so, but I'd have to go with yes. Can a mageborn woman defie gender roles? Heck yes. Joan of Arc is but one example of a woman who defied her gender's expectations. But I digress...

Are women better healers over all? Are they asked to study such arts and avoid combative magic? Possibly. Are they expected to learn the arts of diagnosis and the study of illnesses so that they can cast cure disease with any chance of success? **shrug** You tell me.

So, define your manor, give us some highlights, and maybe some of the customs of the manor. You can specify that the prior lords of the Manor used to do something for the Village and now it has the aspects of an unwritten law - custom if you will, that the Lord is obligated towards. Just remember...

A tutor costs 1200 silver pennies (five pounds) per annum. The income of a mercenary soldier is about 2.5 shillings per month or roughly 30 shillings per annum. If a mage earns more income than a mercenary Soldier (in GURPS, that works out to about $700 per month), then what must the mages be paid overall?

In all, it might be interesting to see how one can test for mageborn using strictly only GURPS MAGIC rules.

On that note, time for me to hit the hay...

[Inky]

In case anyone's forgotten about it, there were a few notes about the hypothetical setting here http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...173234&page=11 but there seems to be a lot left open to messing about with.

I don't have Harn Manor, can I still play?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by hal

How are the children discovered to have magery? Who does the testing? If a child is born of freeman parents, it is deemed to be free (status 0) and the Lord has no rights regarding the child. Only if the child is born in his family, or into the family of a serf does the Lord hold sway over the child by his rights.

So, why is this testing conducted? What is the testing? What are its costs? Who benefits from it?

In all, it might be interesting to see how one can test for mageborn using strictly only GURPS MAGIC rules.

The simplest test I can devise is to show the youth a magic item, and then have them touch it. Later, questions can be asked about it. The magic item most likely to be available is a powerstone, and this test will be administered by a mage, either from this village or a visiting one.

checking every kid in the village once a year is worth two days labor to a renting mage in this village. Zeedrick has all of the kids born free on his lands checked as part of his duties as their manorholder. This also entitles him to be one of the first to know who the mageborn are. If a family refuses to have their child checked... He has options. The kid will know the instant he looks at a magic item, so finding out subtly is an option (though that might cost some of the precious mage days). As is making the argument that this service is being performed for free and nothing is owed back in exchange*, or declaring that he doesn't want to rent land to tenants who miserly hoard talents, stunt their children's opportunities, and don't get them trained on how not to summon demons.

*having another village will be useful, because it lets them point at each other's practices and compete.

Are mageborn "guilded" members or "unguilded"?

What happens to mages who refuse to join a guild? Are guilds strong enough to hold sway in villages?

That's a hard question. Can we kick that can down the road? I suspect they will end up guilded, but I also suspect they will end up in multiple guilds, and its simpler to run them as unguilded until we figure out the patterns. And I think the natural monopoly of birth will make unguilded mages turn up from time to time, but the preistige of a guild is likely to be a strong pull.

On Zeedrick's manor, they will be either renting or bonded craftsmen.

Me? I'd postulate that until children hit puberty, their magey aspects are not likely to develop unless the person has a STRONG magery aspect. I might go so far as to say that Puberty minus Magery level is when a child may be detected to have magery. Thus, a child with magery 3 might show signs of magery 0 three years before they hit puberty, magery 1 at two years before puberty hits, and magery 2 just before puberty hits. The question becomes one of "when does puberty hit?" **innocent look**

That wasn't a question, but sure, we can do that.

So - are there gender roles in this universe that models medieval technology and the like? It maybe politically inncorrect to say so, but I'd have to go with yes. Can a mageborn woman defie gender roles? Heck yes. Joan of Arc is but one example of a woman who defied her gender's expectations. But I digress...

Are women better healers over all? Are they asked to study such arts and avoid combative magic? Possibly. Are they expected to learn the arts of diagnosis and the study of illnesses so that they can cast cure disease with any chance of success? **shrug** You tell me.

I plan on using moderate gender roles that model medieval custom. I'm going to ask you not to overstate what that means. Joan of Arc's problems were first that she was an enemy, second that she claimed to talk with God, and being a girl was a minor issue compared to the first two.

The big "no-no" is that a woman should not be constantly leaving her families. So some magic is going to be impractical and discouraged, but with my main emphasis of healing, crop yields, and construction, I doubt it will come up too much. The real issue is female mages will still need to take care of their children and be pregnant fairly often, unless I want to fight some serious social mores.

A tutor costs 1200 silver pennies (five pounds) per annum. The income of a mercenary soldier is about 2.5 shillings per month or roughly 30 shillings per annum. If a mage earns more income than a mercenary Soldier (in GURPS, that works out to about $700 per month), then what must the mages be paid overall?

What are we using for the Gurps$ to penny ratio here?

So, define your manor, give us some highlights, and maybe some of the customs of the manor. You can specify that the prior lords of the Manor used to do something for the Village and now it has the aspects of an unwritten law - custom if you will, that the Lord is obligated towards. Just remember...

This will need to come later, just answering the questions for now.


The takeaways from this post are:

• Mages are craftsmen, either renters or bonded
• A mage will be paid/work in kind to identify the mageborn of the manor, using a powerstone
• Magery shows up Magery years before puberty
• Gender roles dictate that female mages are not excused from being wives and mothers
• We need a gurps to harn exchange rate

[ericthered]

Ok, here are my customs:

Each year the tuesday before midwinter the mages swear oaths to use their magic for the good of their community

• This is done in the church with everyone present
• The children are tested for magery at this time, so that no oaths will be missed

The Lord of the manor, or a member of his family if he is unavialable, makes a show of working the fields the first day of the harvest. Usually he is assigned to work with the pigs, and its usually actually a few days before the harvest starts in earnest.


More may be added as neccessary.


What I really need at this point is a list of all the families, including the mageborn, so we can see how this all turns out.



It may also be worth it for me to step through a typical "year" using the Harn rules for a manor, and maybe post the manor stats.

[StevenH]

I’ve got some questions about the manors.

1) What is the kingdom these manors are a part of like?

2) How often do the powerful lords poach our mages?

3) If they don’t poach, why don’t they? A powerful lord would naturally want to gather as many mages under his control as possible. What keeps them from stealing mages from the manors?

4) What’s the global economy like? Given that there are a lot of high mucky mucks in control of a large number of mages, how does that affect the economy?

5) Are there any “orders from on high” about what we teach our mages, assuming we get to keep them? And is it a prerequisite to keep them. That is, we can keep them if they at least do some work for the high mucky mucks and learn what they are told to learn?

6) Are we worried about prerequisites, or not? That will have a very large affect on what we can teach the mages, how fast they gain useful skill levels in spells, and when they start to become useful. Not to mention how long they have to be trained before we can turn them loose.

7) What is keeping the mages loyal to the manor from which they are born?

8) What is keeping the mages from becoming lords in their own right? Are there “mage collars” that enforce loyalty?

9) What is the kingdom’s attitude towards mages? I’m assuming that magic use isn’t against whatever religion the kingdom has, but what about mages moving from manor to manor, or setting up their own manor, or taking over the manor?

10) Can anyone think of a way (barring slavery, imprisonment, etc) that would keep a mage on a manor voluntarily, given that their value is far higher than just about anyone else’s? They would be welcome wherever they wanted to go. Or are there laws about runaway mages?

11) Are mages second class citizens? If so, what keeps them from staging a revolt?

12) What kinds of warfare are our manors going to get into? The king would want the mages to be combat-effective enough to act as force multipliers. While this may not mean that they can kill huge numbers of soldiers, it will at least mean that they must have the spells/skills to give their side an advantage. (This also circles back to the poaching comment, above.)

13) How do our manor lords pay for the political power they have? Contacts? Allies? Enemies? Legal Enforcement Powers are part of it, but how do you buy the amount of influence a US Senator has? Or the President? Granted, our lords are petty nobles, but they are competing with Barons, Counts, Dukes, and the King (not to mention all of the other layers of feudal bureaucracy).

14) Speaking of enemies, how often will Dependents be in danger? Is that something we need to worry about?

15) Which dovetails into how often will our political rivals harass us?


I'll likely have more questions of this sort when I remember more of the conversation I had with a friend of mine. We had a several hours discussion of this little socio-thaumic experiment.

[hal]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Ok, here are my customs:

Each year the tuesday before midwinter the mages swear oaths to use their magic for the good of their community

• This is done in the church with everyone present
• The children are tested for magery at this time, so that no oaths will be missed

The Lord of the manor, or a member of his family if he is unavialable, makes a show of working the fields the first day of the harvest. Usually he is assigned to work with the pigs, and its usually actually a few days before the harvest starts in earnest.


More may be added as neccessary.


What I really need at this point is a list of all the families, including the mageborn, so we can see how this all turns out.



It may also be worth it for me to step through a typical "year" using the Harn rules for a manor, and maybe post the manor stats.

Hi erictheread...

This is from the text file I sent to you 6/21/2022 via email.

Family    Tenant                 HD  Skill    Serf       Free     Labor      Rent      Rent    Notes
ID        Occupation            Size          Acres      Acres     Days      Kind      Fees
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
       1  Priest                  2    9         0        40         0         0         0     4040
       2  1/2 Villien             6   10        20         0        80        60        26     0
       3  Cottar                  2    9         5         0        20        60        11     0
       4  1/2 Villien             3    9        13         0        52        60        19     0
       5  1/2 Villien             4   10        19         0        76        60        25     0
       6  1/4 Villien            11    9         5         0        20        60        11     0
       7  Villien                 7   14        37         0       148        60        43     0
       8  Yeoman(MF)              2   10         0        30         0        60        36     0
       9  1/2 Villien             2   13        20         0        80        60        26     0
      10  Villien                 6   12        31         0       124        60        37     0
      11  1/2 Villien             3   10        12         0        48        60        18     0
      12  Cottar                  1   11         1         0         4        60         7     0
      13  1/2 Villien             5   14        15         0        60        60        21     0
      14  Small Farmer            2   11         0         2         0        72         8     0
      15  Cottar                  3   13         3         0        12        60         9     0
      16  Cottar                  2   11         3         0        12        60         9     0
      17  Miller                  5   10         0        25         0        60        31     240
      18  Cottar                  2    9         5         0        20        60        11     0
      19  1/2 Villien             2   10        13         0        52        60        19     0
      20  1/2 Villien             4   10        20         0        80        60        26     0
      21  Cottar                  4   13         3         0        12        60         9     0
      22  Virgate Farmer          4   13         0        32         0       252        38     0
      23  Small Farmer            2   11         0         4         0        84        10     0
      24  1/4 Villien            12   11         9         0        36        60        15     0
      25  1/2 Villien             5   12        16         0        64        60        22     0
      26  Metalsmith              3   10         0        30         0        60        36     144
      27  Small Farmer            4   11         0         4         0        84        10     0
      28  Cottar                  2   13         1         0         4        60         7     0
      29  Villien                 5   11        38         0       152        60        44     0
      30  1/2 Villien             6   11        18         0         0        60        24     0
      31  1/2 Villien             2   12        12         0        48        60        18     0
      32  Cottar                  1   14         4         0        16        60        10     0
      33  1/2 Villien             2   14        14         0        56        60        20     0
      34  Villien                 6   14        30         0       120        60        36     0
      35  1/2 Villien            10   14        19         0        76        60        25     0
      36  Cottar                  1   13         3         0        12        60         9     0
      37  1/2 Villien             5   10        19         0        76        60        25     0
      38  1/4 Virgate Farmer      6   12         0         7         0       102        13     0
      39  Cottar                  1   11         5         0        20        60        11     0
      40  Villien                 5   11        27         0       108        60        33     0
      41  Yeoman(LB)              3   10         0        43         0        60        49     0
      42  1/2 Villien             4   10        15         0        60        60        21     0
      43  1/4 Villien             3   14         9         0        36        60        15     0
      44  1/2 Villien             3   11        17         0        68        60        23     0
      45  Villien                 6   11        36         0       144        60        42     0
      46  Villien                 4   13        24         0         0        60        30     0
      47  Cottar                  1    9         4         0        16        60        10     0
      48  1/2 Villien             2   13        15         0        60        60        21     0
      49  1/2 Villien             4   12        13         0        52        60        19     0
      50  1/2 Villien             2   14        17         0        68        60        23     0
      51  Woodcrafter             8   14         0        20         0        60        26     120
      52  Cottar                  1   10         3         0        12        60         9     0
      53  Cottar                  1   14         4         0        16        60        10     0
      54  Yeoman(LB)              4   13         0        47         0        60        53     0
      55  1/2 Villien             6   10        15         0        60        60        21     0
      56  1/2 Villien             2   10        16         0        64        60        22     0
      57  1/2 Villien             6   12        18         0        72        60        24     0
      58  Salter                  5   13         0        30         0        60        36     120
      59  1/2 Villien            11   14        17         0        68        60        23     0
      60  Cottar                  3   10         3         0        12        60         9     0
      61  Cottar                  3    9         5         0        20        60        11     0
      62  Villien                 3    9        29         0       116        60        35     0
      63  Small Farmer            6   10         0         3         0        78         9     0
      64  1/2 Villien             5   11        11         0        44        60        17     0
      65  Cottar                  1   10         5         0        20        60        11     0
      66  Villien                 6    9        40         0       160        60        46     0
      67  Yeoman(LB)              4   12         0        42         0        60        48     0
      68  Cottar                  2   14         1         0         4        60         7     0
      69  1/2 Villien             6   13        18         0        72        60        24     0
      70  Cottar                  4   12         2         0         8        60         8     0
                                                                                               
                                                                                               
  TOTALS                        279            777       359      2940      4452      1510     4664

The population size is 279 people excluding your Noble's family. Let's say for the sake of argument, you have 5 in your family. That's about 284 people. At 2% of the population being mageborn, that leaves us with a total of 5.68 mageborn. Let's not split hairs (or people!) and call it 6 mageborn total.

Names			ST	DX	IQ	HT	Magery	Social	Gender	Age	Death	Skill Points
Cathaoir Rodway		10	10	12	10	0	Noble	Male	42.402	74.548	62
Garritt Hazell		9	11	8	10	1	Serf	Male	50.868	56.124	79
Ressie Till		10	12	12	10	0	Serf	Female	42.223	59.373	62
Llenlleawg Symon	9	10	11	9	1	Serf	Male	27.864	34.672	33
Giles Hoar		9	12	10	9	0	Serf	Male	34.821	52.287	47
Janette Rowley		12	9	10	9	0	Freeman	Female	45.095	65.689	68

Gross Acres: 1820
Woods Acres: 182
Cleared Acres: 1638
Tenant Acres: 1136
Demense Acres: 502
Labor Pool: 35,000 (note - labor pool days is an estimate)
Land Quality: 1.01
Fief Index: .90
Trade Index: 1.00

[hal]

Originally Posted by StevenH

I’ve got some questions about the manors.

1) What is the kingdom these manors are a part of like?

Since Harn World is loosely based on England, does that help? Much of my reading and book purchases etc, are largely based off England as well. I tend to go with what I know best, if that helps.

Originally Posted by StevenH

2) How often do the powerful lords poach our mages?

The answer to that question largely depends on any game world design by the GM, but if you want my gut instinct based on a more historical based medieval set up...

Any person who is born a freeman, could easily be "poached" because their tie to the land tends to be in terms of "Rents" or contractual obligations to the land they hold freely. Put another way - they're not serfs obligated to stay with the land, and their rental agreements with the Lord tend to be for a finite set period of time (generally, no more than 7 years). Lords could, and later on did - raise their rents for their free tenants, but were obligated to KEEP the original agreement on rents and the like LONG into the future - even when such rents were (due to inflation etc) way too low.

Serfs on the other hand, were bound to the Lord by their original contracts to the lord by their forefather(s) (depending on how many generations you go back!). As such, they were not free to leave the land, etc. Any more than a Lord was obligated to set free (manumission) any of his serfs. In theory, any serf mageborn would not be free to leave the land he was born on.

Originally Posted by StevenH

3) If they don’t poach, why don’t they? A powerful lord would naturally want to gather as many mages under his control as possible. What keeps them from stealing mages from the manors?

Social constraints (see above). But if that were the only issue, that's one thing, but the other thing is - nobility have a finite amount of resources. The more the spend on mageborn, the less they spend on other things. Sometimes, hiring a man at arms is more important than hiring a mageborn. Note too - that the feudal obligations of historical times, did not include mageborn because said individuals did not exist. Perhaps in a magical medieval time period, such mageborn WILL be included in the obligation a lord has to the liege who granted him his lands. I'll let YOU ponder that question...

Originally Posted by StevenH

4) What’s the global economy like? Given that there are a lot of high mucky mucks in control of a large number of mages, how does that affect the economy?

At a guess, I don't think the economy is going to get too out of whack with mageborn being present. Each mageborn you spend towards a given spell/skill set - means they won't be useful in other areas. This is what the thread is intended to explore. We'll see what effects the mageborn will have a little later in time.

Originally Posted by StevenH

5) Are there any “orders from on high” about what we teach our mages, assuming we get to keep them? And is it a prerequisite to keep them. That is, we can keep them if they at least do some work for the high mucky mucks and learn what they are told to learn?

I'm going to assume that All lords have the same level of autonomy they had historically. The Lords do what they do, and only in matters of war or advice, will they call upon their vassals.

Originally Posted by StevenH

6) Are we worried about prerequisites, or not? That will have a very large affect on what we can teach the mages, how fast they gain useful skill levels in spells, and when they start to become useful. Not to mention how long they have to be trained before we can turn them loose.

We're using Bog standard GURPS MAGIC. So yes, Prerequisites matter - not just because of the time it takes for them to learn spells, but in the order that they can learn their spells and then subsequent spells. Prerequisites play a major role in all of this.

[hal]

Originally Posted by StevenH

7) What is keeping the mages loyal to the manor from which they are born?

The EVIL GM in me would mention "Geas" - but the sociological response would be "Customs, laws, etc"

Originally Posted by StevenH

8) What is keeping the mages from becoming lords in their own right? Are there “mage collars” that enforce loyalty?

What ever you can find in GURPS MAGIC - will be your answer, but enchanters will be few and far between. In a population of 1111 mageborn, there will be 1 magery 3, 10 magery 2, 100 magery 1, and 1000 magery 0 mages. Since that accounts for 2% of the entire population, to produce 1111 mageborn, you need a population of 55,550 people. In England circa 1200 AD, the breakdown would be...

40,000 mageborn for a population of 2 million. Of that 2 Million people, a roughly EQUAL number would be Noble born (ie, roughly 2% of the 2 million population were nobility. That leaves the rest...

Originally Posted by StevenH

9) What is the kingdom’s attitude towards mages? I’m assuming that magic use isn’t against whatever religion the kingdom has, but what about mages moving from manor to manor, or setting up their own manor, or taking over the manor?

If one assumes an even vaguely Christian Population, the mere thought of the mageborn being in league with the Devil would be a major issue keeping them in check. On the flip side, if magic users were rigorously raised in the Christian faith and abjured any studies that hinted of black magic - who knows? I'm going to hold off commenting further on this, because it doesn't really help the exercise all too well. Suffice to say - having observed it in my own gaming group when they played nobles - but none of them had mages on their side protecting them from rogue mages - they FEARED mageborn!

Originally Posted by StevenH

10) Can anyone think of a way (barring slavery, imprisonment, etc) that would keep a mage on a manor voluntarily, given that their value is far higher than just about anyone else’s? They would be welcome wherever they wanted to go. Or are there laws about runaway mages?

If they are Freeborn, they can move and decide freely. If they are serfs, they are bound by law to their lord. Not exactly slaves, but not free either. As for runaway Serfs? Unless they live for a year and a day in "Free air" (usually free towns or king's mines) - they were subject to being apprehended and taken back. They were also considered to be oath breakers (violating the oaths of their forefathers). Of course, if they were deemed free, or left the land of their birth, their secret would be lost/hidden once they got to where no one knew them. But - ask yourself this: how well can a person hide from a Seeker spell?

Originally Posted by StevenH

11) Are mages second class citizens? If so, what keeps them from staging a revolt?

As a player in my one campaign found out the hard way - Numerical superiority has a quality of its own. Hunted by every hand in the Kingdom, even his own friends turned him in for the Emperor's hunters - because the friends were subject to the old fashioned "aiding and abetting a criminal makes you a criminal. Let us know when he comes by to visit you." Long story short - the general population outnumbers the mageborn by 50 to 1.

Originally Posted by StevenH

12) What kinds of warfare are our manors going to get into? The king would want the mages to be combat-effective enough to act as force multipliers. While this may not mean that they can kill huge numbers of soldiers, it will at least mean that they must have the spells/skills to give their side an advantage. (This also circles back to the poaching comment, above.)

This question would be best answered by spending your mageborn coins as you see fit. Once you spend them, you can find out how useful they would be in combat. Without power sources - those mageborn are going to be used up quickly in a battle.

Originally Posted by StevenH

13) How do our manor lords pay for the political power they have? Contacts? Allies? Enemies? Legal Enforcement Powers are part of it, but how do you buy the amount of influence a US Senator has? Or the President? Granted, our lords are petty nobles, but they are competing with Barons, Counts, Dukes, and the King (not to mention all of the other layers of feudal bureaucracy).

When you say "Pay" - are you talking meta-game with character points, or are you talking from the viewpoint of a Noble born "Knight" who pays to his liege in the form of gifts and his own payments owed (be it labor or kind or cash)?

Originally Posted by StevenH

14) Speaking of enemies, how often will Dependents be in danger? Is that something we need to worry about?

In a heartland manor, the people likely don't have to worry much about raids, wars, or much of anything else save that of brigands. In a campaign world with Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Gargu (Harnic Orcs hatched in eggs laid by a brood queen) etc - who knows. Frontier manors have a lot more to worry about.

Originally Posted by StevenH

15) Which dovetails into how often will our political rivals harass us?

Assuming that Mageborn do not really affect things (per GURPS MAGIC) without a ready supply of energy, and magery 0 mages are not major hitters in combat - probably strength of arms will carry the day more often than not.

Originally Posted by StevenH

I'll likely have more questions of this sort when I remember more of the conversation I had with a friend of mine. We had a several hours discussion of this little socio-thaumic experiment.

Keep in mind - the idea was to try and keep things as close to generic as possible and yet explore those things that are on point with the issues at hand...

Using GURPS MAGIC as written, just how strong of an impact will mageborn really have? If you spend them like coins (ie allocate them towards a given task/role - you can't repurpose them to other tasks).

I'm not even going to get into the issues inherent in "Mutable magery" where mageborn can change their magery levels after start of play. GURPS 2nd edition was quite specific in that inherent advantages may not be gained in play after start of play, and magery was fixed (initially) rather than mutable. Over time, No Magery, Magery 1, Magery 2, and Magery 3 - gained a new advantage called Magery 0. After that, mutable magery came into fashion.

For now, keep it simple and explore what immutable magery will result in as far as a Medieaval society and see where it takes you. THEN experiment with how mutable magery works, how it affects the demographics of the mageborn overall, and see what happens afterwards.

[hal]

If you're wondering at the "Skill points" entry is for the mageborn, that was a limitation imposed by GURPS 3rd edition that had an upper limit of character points that could be spent on a character based upon age.

There is nothing to keep you from simply using the attributes from the basic description, and then using the Time/use rules and aging them to the proper age in order to derive what their skills should be like after a given period of time.

So - for a 12 year old child who is first undergoing their apprenticeship as a village mage, you could simply use the Time Use rules and determine how long it takes for them to learn any given spell, any given skills, and give them some social skills, area knowledge, basics of village life based skills and what not.

The quick and dirty rolls do not determine the appearance of the NPC's, their talents, nor anything else. It is little more than a guideline for how they may or may not fit into the village itself.

Feel free to make decisions as you see fit - but at least explain the how and why of your decisions. If you want to theorize that your Noble lives within a secure area free from raids - by all means do that. If you want to have a fast and loose society in which the religions do not have a major problem unless the magic interferes with free will, necromancy, and other dark magics - go for it.

This is largely a means for structured examination of the underlying structure of GURPS MAGIC married to a more or less historical TL 2 or TL 3 society based loosely on England circa 1200 AD.

For those who like to do some FUN stuff, pick up A MAGICAL MEDIEVAL SOCIETY: WESTERN EUROPE for $18 and see how much more you can do with building your own version of a TL 2/3 society and merging it in with GURPS MAGIC.

Frankly? It has a lot of good stuff in there for determining how many manors there are, size of cities and towns, how to spread out the medieval lords and knights to where you know who owes who what levels of fealty and all that fun stuff.

At present, I own First and Second editions of the book, unaware that they came out with a Third Edition (darn it!). Having the ability to create names for fictional manors, towns etc - would be fun to have. Is it worth spending $18 dollars right now is the question.

Must resist the temptation. Aw heck, who am I kidding!

;)