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Old 05-31-2020, 09:50 PM   #41
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: Common Magic for a TL3 Wuxia Fantasy Campaign

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Originally Posted by WingedKagouti View Post
And then we come back to cost vs benefit.

If it is easier/cheaper to make "Witchlight" the lawmakers are more likely to lean towards banning open fires.

If it is easier/cheaper to "fireproof" the most important (according to whomever makes the laws) structures, open fires are less likely to be banned.

In any case a city that has experienced many houses burning down is more likely to lean towards no open fires if a safer option is available and affordable. Even if the leaders live in "fireproofed" houses.

And if it's relatively cheap to "fireproof" the entire city you're likely to have no consideration of a ban.

There's also a discussion of politics and influential families having people with either skillset, either directly in the family or as part of a family business.
Damn it. That's a good point. I need to think more on this.
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Old 06-01-2020, 03:33 AM   #42
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Default Re: Common Magic for a TL3 Wuxia Fantasy Campaign

Or if fireproofing means that fires don't work. The well off can afford magical replacements but the poor have to get cooked food from kitchens that can afford the magic. Given how lots of places had laws requiring peasants to use the mill owned by the lord instead of grinding it themselves this could be considered a feature by the powers that be.
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Old 06-01-2020, 07:47 AM   #43
ericthered
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Default Re: Common Magic for a TL3 Wuxia Fantasy Campaign

I'm not sure that either having enough witchlight to ban fire or building everything out of stone is economically viable. Only 1 in 100 commoners is a mage after all.



*********************************



On transportation options, I took a look at the sorcery enchanting rules.


If you look at the "Under the Hood" part, its using gadget modifiers, and as the GM you can presumably apply them to new "shapes". Both a big sail and a large wooden vehicle are SM+0. The Vehicle has higher DR, and so is slightly more expensive. You can probably get that back if its complicated enough to break down an pick up the extra -5% for that. The question of stealing is an interesting one. Vehicles are stolen in different ways than the gadget table lists. Is it easier to steal a whole boat, or just its sails? And does being its own getaway vehicle count for anything? The sail might come out cheaper if you say its easier to sneak the sail away that the whole vehicle, but that only happens in some conditions.


If air is more associated with movement than wood, sails may just be more appropriate.



I'm trying to figure out what the best advantage to grant the self-moving boat/cart is. I'm trying to figure out if its broken to simply add move, or if adding DX is required. You may also want some allowance for size and ST, otherwise the winning strategy is to enchant the biggest thing possible.
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Old 06-02-2020, 03:46 AM   #44
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Default Re: Common Magic for a TL3 Wuxia Fantasy Campaign

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I'm not sure that either having enough witchlight to ban fire or building everything out of stone is economically viable. Only 1 in 100 commoners is a mage after all.
Which places a mage in just about every village. In the time period a common family structure would be 2 grandparents, 2 parents, 1-4 children per household, meaning you have more than 100 people living in a village of 20 households. Obviously some villages will have no mages and others two or more, but 20 households for a village seems on the smaller side from what I've read.

A trade hub city for a remote region would easily have more than 5000 people living in it (or about 50 mages). A more central trade hub could hit numbers above 20k with no trouble (200 mages) and a capital having far more than 100k citizens would be normal. Especially if mages are available to help constructing canals/aqueducts/sewers and help provide medical aid to combat diseases.

Obviously, since magic is inborn a local lord is likely to take interest in anyone living in his lands with the ability. Depending on what type of magic they can perform and their skill with it, mages are likely to have their social status elevated if they were born to peasants.

Also, since chi powers can be learned, there will likely be far more people who can help with city construction and maintenance than just the number mages. Same with healing and disease prevention.
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Old 06-02-2020, 09:56 AM   #45
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Default Re: Common Magic for a TL3 Wuxia Fantasy Campaign

The average village is probably more like 100 households rather than 100 people. Anything significantly smaller starts having issues with enough excess production to support a priest and an overseer, so it would be more of a hamlet under to authority of a local village. With one mage every 100 people, the average village would have one mage household.

In truth, talented mages will probably migrate to market villages (one out of every four villages), towns, or cities. Small cities will have an average of sixteen hundred households and, since the East Asian urban-rural population ratio was 1:4 at TL3 (with the city-owned ratio being 1:4), it will be served by an average of twelve towns and the total urban population of eight thousand households by a total of three hundred twenty villages (eighty of them market villages). The total population of the city and its environs would be forty thousand households (around two hundred thousand people).

So, with 1% of people being mages, a small city would have a significant pool of talent to draw from, around two thousand potentials. Now, twenty percent of them are children, so only sixteen hundred likely have any training, and the majority of them are likely untalented. The least talented will stay in their home villages while the most talented with move to the small city, so the proportion of urban mages might be 50%, or one thousand people in two hundred households (50% of urban mages in towns and 50% in the small city). The small city would have five hundred mages in one hundred households (~6% of the population of the small city).
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Old 06-02-2020, 10:03 AM   #46
ericthered
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Default Re: Common Magic for a TL3 Wuxia Fantasy Campaign

do remember that commoner mages aren't versatile. they know just a few spells, quite possibly one. So that's not 1 in 100 people that can make witch fire, that's one in 100 that could possibly do it. If only elemental talents are evenly spread, and half of all fire talents do witchfire, thats... 1 in one thousand people, I think. And remember that at any given time a given talent may be a child too young to work, and that talent won't be spread evenly.
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Old 06-02-2020, 11:09 AM   #47
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Default Re: Common Magic for a TL3 Wuxia Fantasy Campaign

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do remember that commoner mages aren't versatile. they know just a few spells, quite possibly one. So that's not 1 in 100 people that can make witch fire, that's one in 100 that could possibly do it. If only elemental talents are evenly spread, and half of all fire talents do witchfire, thats... 1 in one thousand people, I think. And remember that at any given time a given talent may be a child too young to work, and that talent won't be spread evenly.
If a mage's specific aptitude is in any way capable of making money, it is very likely that someone will want to train them as a future investment. The majority of those without any training will be those who live far away (at least a week worth of travel) from a potential teacher or have an aptitude that can't be easily profited from.

There will obvious be some who have an exploitable aptitude and a potential teacher, but never get any training for some reason. And there will certainly be some teachers who aren't good at it. But I expect schools/guilds/whatever to naturally rise up explicitly to take advantage of people with magical abilities. If there are martial arts schools/dojos, there will also be some sort of trade guilds (at least in larger cities). There's even potential for schools specifically for mages, depending on how generic the training can be and how large the city is.

In any case, putting 4-6 year old kids to work is almost always seen as normal in pre-industrial societies. If they can walk, carry stuff and understand what they're being told, they can work to help their family out. The kids are obviously not expected to be as competent, strong or knowledgable as adults, but if they have special skills/abilities they'll likely be put to work on tasks where those skills and abilities can be utilized, especially if they can use these abilities to earn more than what their family could otherwise expect. It is very likely that normal magical training includes lots of practical experience and not the Harry Potter like school stuff with book learning and classes. Except maybe for children of noble families, who might be sent to study in a renowned school or under a renowned teacher.
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Old 06-02-2020, 11:47 AM   #48
ericthered
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Default Re: Common Magic for a TL3 Wuxia Fantasy Campaign

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In any case, putting 4-6 year old kids to work is almost always seen as normal in pre-industrial societies. If they can walk, carry stuff and understand what they're being told, they can work to help their family out. The kids are obviously not expected to be as competent, strong or knowledgable as adults, but if they have special skills/abilities they'll likely be put to work on tasks where those skills and abilities can be utilized, especially if they can use these abilities to earn more than what their family could otherwise expect. It is very likely that normal magical training includes lots of practical experience and not the Harry Potter like school stuff with book learning and classes. Except maybe for children of noble families, who might be sent to study in a renowned school or under a renowned teacher.

I suppose that all depends on what magical aptitude is, how commoners get it, and at what age it shows up. Which are great questions for the setting. Do young fire-adepts start playing with witch fire at the same time they learn to crawl? Or does it come with running at age five? manifest at puberty? (that one is really common in fiction, for some reason) Or does it require a year of apprenticeship to do anything useful and generally not available until 18 years old? It could even be the domain of the middle aged or old.
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Old 06-02-2020, 03:50 PM   #49
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Default Re: Common Magic for a TL3 Wuxia Fantasy Campaign

Manifesting at puberty correlates with other significant changes in the human body, which is probably why it is popular. In an East Asian style magical system, one should considered Yin and Yang. The magical training of women would seek to strengthen their connection to Yin (Metal and Water) while the magical training of men would seek to strengthen their connection to Yang (Fire and Wood), with the connection to Earth being equally important.

For example, you could have magicians taking up to Magery 4. For women, Magery 0 would give them access to Earth, Magery 1 to Metal, Magery 2 to Water, Magery 3 to Wood, and Magery 4 to Fire. For men, Magery 0 would give them access to Earth, Magery 1 to Wood, Magery 2 to Fire, Magery 3 to Metal, and Magery 4 to Water.

When children would first manifest their Magery, they would manifest the connection to Earth, though naturally more talented mages would manifest more difficult elements. A girl whe manifested Fire or a boy who manifested Water would be recognized as quite gifted, and would likely be given patronage to allow them to perfect their magic. Conversely, most mages would only manifest Earth, so they would likely only receive training in the local market village.
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Old 06-02-2020, 07:45 PM   #50
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Default Re: Common Magic for a TL3 Wuxia Fantasy Campaign

Since some of the things they can do are permanent or at least semipermanent low level mages with the right spells might do circuit riding where they hit a set of villages on a every N week system so that there is business by the time they get back.
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