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08-07-2015, 11:23 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: On the road again...
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[Fantasy] Mages, Wizards, Sorcerers, and other Magical Nomenclature Issues
Let me describe the terms I've been using in my setting since before Thaumatology was released:
"Mage" and "magician" are synonymous (in fact, "mage" is just shorthand for "magician"), and are anyone with a Magery advantage and/or performs what I've called "arcane" magic - the standard magic system; what the Basic Set, Magic, and Thaumatology call Ritual Magic; Syntactic magic; Path/Book magic; Ritual Path Magic, etc. "Wizard" is a mage who uses the standard Magic magic system or one of its close variants. "Sorcerer" is someone who uses Path/Book magic. In fact, I've even gone ahead and renamed "Magery (Path/Book)" to "Sorcery" in the setting document to avoid confusion. Before Thaumatology was released, sorcerers used Ritual Magic, but that didn't quite fit how I envisioned it working; Path/Book fit it to a T. I'm also going to toss in a sidebox for sorcerers to use Ritual Path Magic, though that doesn't quite fit the way I want it to work outside of a single Book, as I use Effect Shaping rather than Energy Accumulation. ("Priest" and "cleric" are pretty synonymous for the clergy, though in the document I've been using "priest" for everyone in the priesthood and "cleric" for those in the priesthood blessed with spells or powers - in fact, the higher up you are in the Church hierarchy, the less likely you are to have spells, being political appointments. I also use "cleric" for those outside the Church hierarchy who the gods have blessed with spells - the gods have their agendas separate from the Churches', after all.) And now... there's Thaumatology: Sorcery (and even before that with the Pyramid article), which is a good fit for my setting's wizards, but not my setting's sorcerers. Terms are getting confused, since what my setting calls "Sorcery" is not PK's Sorcery! Players are getting confused as they think I'm talking about PK's Sorcery when I'm talking Path/Book; my use of the term in the setting document predates the Pyramid article - and even Thaumatology - by a few years. Seriously, I'm running out of terms to use. So, could people toss out some other names that I could use for my Sorcery to help avoid this confusion?
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