[Fantasy][Magic] Divine spellcasting, real-world religions, and fantasy settings

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by whswhs

There seem to be different senses of "care." My own worldview is naturalistic and atheistic and excludes any form of the supernatural; but I wouldn't be running fantasy campaigns if the supernatural as a premise offended me. But it does seem to me, in terms of world design, that a world with narrative causality, one dominated by anthropomorphic personifications, such as the worlds of myths, legends, and fairy tales that inspired fantasy, is one to which an "impersonal forces" approach may be a poor fit aesthetically, and I do care about aesthetics. I suppose the question there is "if a setting is going to have magic users who work with gods and/or spirits, do you care if it also has technicians working with impersonal forces?" (which is almost the reverse of your question). And I think that, for the most part, I do, though I won't rule out any possibility that I might run a campaign that had those technicians.

As for representing magic as "spells," it seems to me that spells actually make better sense if you DO assume personal agency by supernatural forces. If you treat those forces as slaves or servants, you can suppose that a spell is a way of giving them orders; if you treat them as participants in a bargain, you can suppose that a spell is a way of placing a standard order; even if you treat them as a superior that you serve, that is, as a god, while you can't give a god orders ("He's not a tame lion!"), a god might promise its worshipers that if they do certain things in its name it will provide certain benefits. (This is, for example, the Catholic definition of a "sacrament"—baptism, confirmation, communion, penance, and so on—that God has said that he will provide the benefits if you perform the ritual, rather than its efficacy depending on your having the proper intention, which is what defines a "sacramental" such as blessings or washing.) With impersonal forces, I'm not sure that reciting a short phrase and making a few gestures is quite plausible as a way of activating such forces.

To add to that:

A. If magic is part of the universe it is not supernatural at all just another strange thing among a universe full of strange things (we do not call nuclear power magic)..

B. If it is the invocation of spirits who HAVE to react to certain formulas then it is attempted slavery. Which is wicked in general terms and rather stupid in case of a spirit who has enough power to be of any use to you.

C. If it is making a request of a spirit which may or may not be granted, it is not magic at all but religion, and is better simulated by Divine Favor.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

If it is the invocation of spirits who HAVE to react to certain formulas then it is attempted slavery. Which is wicked in general terms and rather stupid in case of a spirit who has enough power to be of any use to you.

That's highly situational. If the spirit isn't sapient, it's more akin to domestication (or just running an operation on a computer, depending on particulars) than slavery. If the spirit made a prior agreement to respond to that invocation, it's simply holding up its end of the bargain (although if it made the agreement under duress, that muddies the waters). If the spirits genuinely enjoy performing such tasks, I suppose it depends on if they actually have a choice - if they do, but none would ever say "No," that's not an issue; if they don't, that's morally a bit muddy (on one hand, you're basically taking advantage of them; on the other hand, you're making them happy by having them do something they enjoy), but not dangerous. If they dislike doing the task, but have no choice but to do so, I would certainly agree that is both wicked and potentially dangerous - the latter as they may plot to find a way to punish you for such enslavement.

Originally Posted by jason taylor

If it is making a request of a spirit which may or may not be granted, it is not magic at all but religion, and is better simulated by Divine Favor.

I'm not familiar with Divine Favor, but I don't think it would be necessary. The Unreliable or Fickle (which is like Unreliable, but uses a Reaction Roll, and IIRC was specifically introduced in Powers to represent working with spirits) Limitations on an Advantage would accomplish what you're describing. Alternatively, depending on the campaign setting, a single Advantage (or maybe a few working together) that allows you to communicate with spirits would allow you to convince them to do what you want via a combination of roleplaying, social skills, payment, etc (just like getting any other NPC to do what you want).

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

To add to that:
B. If it is the invocation of spirits who HAVE to react to certain formulas then it is attempted slavery. Which is wicked in general terms and rather stupid in case of a spirit who has enough power to be of any use to you.

C. If it is making a request of a spirit which may or may not be granted, it is not magic at all but religion, and is better simulated by Divine Favor.

B) Is something that certain occult texts portray, even binding Angels. So it seems valid to me as a fantasy world option.

C) Some might call that semantics, certainly in many cases it could easily be described as religious. On the other hand what if the spirits are like faire? Spirits that have their own agency and can be bargained with to do something in return for something else, or perhaps just convinced because its a trivial thing and might amuse them.
GUPRS Powers: Divine Favor is based on a very powerful singular spirit. It is not appropriate for all circumstances or interactions.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

It's not that I don't understand what you're saying because it's too complicated. I'm a GURPS rules geek and I once ran a supers game where I made a batch of using Divine Favor, Psionic Powers, and a variant of Madness Dossier-style loa (similar to Rory's spirit totems idea) all in one game. And all those pregens got used. So I'm not absolutely opposed to that sort of thing in general, I'm just saying I'm not sure I want to make things that complicated for this game.

So you're just seeking for advantages as powers? Or as abilities inside powers? Or even standalone abilities?

Well, that's not hard, just construct the abilities you want. Add a few "divine stuff" like Serendipity, True Faith whatever, and some "powers" to your liking, like Detect (Evil - or Good), some sort of Affliction (Undead Only) with the Aura enhancement, that sort of thing, probably all of those with Required Disadvantages like Duty and that sort of thing. Is that what you're seeking? Im sorry, I dont if Im understand all too well what you're trying to do. Do you wanna it to be some sort of unique mechanics that could be extracted from the Basic only, is that it?

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

So you're just seeking for advantages as powers? Or as abilities inside powers? Or even standalone abilities?

Well, that's not hard, just construct the abilities you want. Add a few "divine stuff" like Serendipity, True Faith whatever, and some "powers" to your liking, like Detect (Evil - or Good), some sort of Affliction (Undead Only) with the Aura enhancement, that sort of thing, probably all of those with Required Disadvantages like Duty and that sort of thing. Is that what you're seeking? Im sorry, I dont if Im understand all too well what you're trying to do. Do you wanna it to be some sort of unique mechanics that could be extracted from the Basic only, is that it?

This is not a thread asking for mechanics help! At all! My understanding of what is possible under the GURPS rules is fairly comprehensive. This was meant to be a thread about world-building. There's some sort of disconnect here that I don't really understand the source of—unless your point is that you, as a player, would be bored by a game that didn't give each class its own distinctive mechanics.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

This is not a thread asking for mechanics help! At all! My understanding of what is possible under the GURPS rules is fairly comprehensive. This was meant to be a thread about world-building. There's some sort of disconnect here that I don't really understand the source of—unless your point is that you, as a player, would be bored by a game that didn't give each class its own distinctive mechanics.

I was confused by that asnwer, so I went to the top of the thread, and got even more confuse lol. Sorry, I guess it's I that am being a bad receiver. Do you wanna ask about opinions on different belif systems, and if real life religions are a good idea or not, or if fictional ones are better?

Well, the game Scion has you playing as a Demi God, son or daughter from a God from many historical pantheons, and it's a great game. Sure, nobody will be offended by having Zeus or Ra in a game, but one of the pantheons in the game is the hinduist pantheon, an active religion with 1 billion followers, and you can play as an offspring of Kali, with all the pantheons fighting a divine war against the "Titans", a catch-all term to design godlike entities that are Avatars of primordial forces (of course, "Titan" is a greek denomination) who predate the Gods.

So for example, you have the "Titan" Sultr, the leader of the fire giants (a race of "titanspawns"), who is the main Titan of the "Greater Titan" Musspelheim (Mussplheim is the "primordial fire" of nordic mythology). The "Greater Titans" are primordial forces, thus they are NOT self aware, they are not intelligent beings. However, the "Titans" "sprung" from the Greater Titans, as if the Titans were literally Avatars, conscious manifestations of those forces. In the case of Musspelheim it has other 2 Titans, one of them was the greek Prometheus, and the third is a japanese which I dont remember the name. Anyway, each of those Titans (or Avatars) represent an aspect of Musspelheim - Sultr for example represented the power of transformation, Prometeus the power of fire to create and the japanese one was a crazy Titan that represented destruction. Sultr was the most powerful inside Musspelheim, so he's the dominant one.

Each primordial force (in the game) thus have their Avatars, except the Primordial Chaos. Primordial Darkness has Mikakaboshi, a japanese entity that refuses to take on a physical form and instead only appear controlling a white smiling sinister mask. Erebus is another Titan inside the primordial darkness, but Mikakaboshi is the dominant. Primordial Water has Mama Tata as dominant, an entity of Vodoo, Primordial Light has Aton (which the Pharaoh Akenathon tried to institute as the single god in Egypt) and so on.

Each Pantheon has a divine Realm (or Plane).

And the story is that the Titans began to... Reproduce, in lack of better term, between each other, while battling one another to try to make their respect elements become dominant, but by mixing with Titans from different elements, they gave origin to entities that were not bound to any - the Gods. Thus there was the Titanomachy, Gods vs Titans, which ended with the banishment of the Titans under Tartarus.

But their prison weakened, and the Titans are back, and now there's one Greater Titan, guided by their dominant Titan, laying siege to each one of the Divine Realms.

For example, Olympus now is surrounded by the Primordial Earth, with Gaia sending her giants and Hecatonkeires to storm the bases of the mountain (not in the physical world), Valhala is sieged by the fires os Musspelheim, with Sultr preparing his armies to start the Ragnarok, and the great deep ocean is sieging the land of the Voudoon under Mama Tata, and so on.

It has many pantheons from real life, including hinduism, and also has the japanese pantheon which is highly regarded by the japanese people, and the Celestial Bureocracy of China, which is also culturally important for China, even if those last two no longer have many believers.

And it's a great game. And as far as I know, I never heard about people being offended.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Refplace

B) Is something that certain occult texts portray, even binding Angels. So it seems valid to me as a fantasy world option.

C) Some might call that semantics, certainly in many cases it could easily be described as religious. On the other hand what if the spirits are like faire? Spirits that have their own agency and can be bargained with to do something in return for something else, or perhaps just convinced because its a trivial thing and might amuse them.
GUPRS Powers: Divine Favor is based on a very powerful singular spirit. It is not appropriate for all circumstances or interactions.

I would call modern neopaganism on Earth religion. From what I have heard of them they just don't talk like people who wish to use thinking beings as machines. I couldn't call Yrthian magic religion because it is about manipulating the world as if it was technology. It really is a form of engineering.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

B. If it is the invocation of spirits who HAVE to react to certain formulas then it is attempted slavery. Which is wicked in general terms and rather stupid in case of a spirit who has enough power to be of any use to you.

I don't think B is always accurate.

Case in point: In Catholic (and I think Orthodox) doctrine, the seven sacraments (baptism, confirmation, communion, matrimony, ordination, penance, and extreme unction) are things that God said would work, and they are 100% guaranteed to work. They aren't dependent on the state of grace of the priest (that's the Donatist heresy) or on concentration or will or anything like that; the prescribed ritual produces the results. But that doesn't mean that God, or the Holy Spirit, is a slave; it means that God made a promise and will come through on it.

As I understand shamanism, it rests on bargains or contracts between mortal men and spirits. So if you've made such a contract, and you invoke it, the spirit is required to deliver. But the spirit need not have been coerced into the contract and generally was not; it undertook to provide some benefit to get some benefit from the mortal, or as the Romans put it, do ut des. I don't think of bargains or exchanges as slavery.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

"Fancy" maybe is too strong, but to the extent I'd be using powers I think I'd want to use the relatively straightforward approach found in the chapter on psionics in Basic Set, as well as the treatment of powers in Dungeon Fantasy and Monster Hunters. As opposed to an approach where you're using a lot of rules that may or may not be found in the main Powers book but definitely aren't found in Basic Set—which Divine Favor does.

If you don't want to deal with the transactions between men and supernatural beings, or bring the supernatural beings on stage as characters, I would suggest just selecting power modifiers from GURPS Powers. You could use Divine, and Spirit, and Magical, and perhaps Nature or Moral, and come up with groups of advantages that each of them could provide.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

It has many pantheons from real life, including hinduism, and also has the japanese pantheon which is highly regarded by the japanese people, and the Celestial Bureocracy of China, which is also culturally important for China, even if those last two no longer have many believers.

And it's a great game. And as far as I know, I never heard about people being offended.

First edition AD&D did stuff like this, and while I don't know if anyone was offended per se, I think it's now widely regarded as kind of cringe. Part of the problem is that unless you really know what you're doing, it's very easy to make eye-rolly mistakes. In much the same way that a lot of anime has a sort of eye-rolly portrayal of Christianity. I'm not offended by that sort of thing, I'm not even a Christian, but it definitely can be very weird.

My impression is that some of the GURPS 3rd edition stuff that incorporates real-world supernatural beliefs like Hermetic Qabalah and Voodoo is actually fairly well researched—but I don't know enough about those belief systems to vouch for their accuracy or whether they're cringe in subtle ways.

I don't actually have many strong concerns of my own here, I've just heard some people dislike the way Christianity, Islam, etc. are used in Banestorm, which was a lot of my original motivation for asking.