What spells does a TL3 government *really* want kept secret?

[Anders]

I'm guessing mind control spells and any spell which brings swift and indiscriminate destruction. Anything else come to mind?

I can also imagine scrying spells and spells for rapid communication. Governments really want to be ahead everyone else on the news curve.

[pawsplay]

Alter Body. Think of the problems you would have with imposters, or paternity accidents.

[benz72]

My first thought is that the TYPE of government is the determining factor here, not the TL.
E.g. TL 1 Democracy is probably closer to TL5 Democracy than it is to TL 1 Monarchy.

For tightly controlled governments, things that allow enough leisure time to think about how things might be better and gather with other discontented citizens might be seen as a threat (spells easing agricultural production, resource extraction, or manufacturing)
For class-based cultures, spells that infringe on the privileges reserved for those of higher station might be restricted.

Things as simple as Seek Earth, allowing efficient detection of resources could threaten those in power.

Spells like See Secrets, Invisibility, Lockmaster, and others that enhance skullduggery might be restricted 'for the good of the citizenry'.

I'm pretty sure that Harbor Masters and Castellans would be happier if no-one but their own staff had access to Find Weakness spells.

Summoning spells, especially for demons and spirits, are pretty easy to see as being restricted, probably along with most of the necromancy college.

[rkbrown419]

It depends on the government and in some cases the theology. Some might see necromancy as meddling in the affairs of the gods and forbid it on those grounds. Others might like the idea of undead labor, better than slaves since you don't have to feed them although the smell is a problem if you don't preserve them by some means. Sentences of death plus hard labor are actually mentioned in GURPS Technomancer and could fit well in some fantasy worlds.
Spells for mind control would likely be restricted to only those in power. Use if Truthsayer might be restricted to officers of the court or be encouraged depending on how comfortable those in power are with being honest with their subjects. Mind reading of any kind would likely be highly restricted even by honest and benevolent rulers. Even the most honest men like to have some privacy after all.
Transformation and disguise spells would likely be highly restricted but also likely quite popular among the upper classes. For those with access they'd likely have a role like cosmetic surgery in today's world. Lesser nobles might suffer the limitation of "Off the Shelf Looks" to any appearance advantages they have because of this. If you want to bring biotech magic into the picture spells to alter human heredity (dwarven, elven, orcish etcetera too) would likely be restricted. However, use of the same magic to improve crops and livestock might be encouraged. Renegade wizards conducting unauthorized experiments could explain all manner of odd creatures and promote laws against the spells.

[Donny Brook]

The challenge with these sorts of discussions is thinking that societies with commonplace magic would have much resemblance at all to our conceptual starting points.

What does even the concept of government look like in a world where some people can read the thoughts of others or feed a county with the wave of a hand?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

What does even the concept of government look like in a world where some people can read the thoughts of others or feed a county with the wave of a hand?

For your latter example the government is being affected by some hypothetical ultrapowerful form of variant "Magick with a K" that might be possible to create with Gurps Thaumatology.

Using the Food Spells from Gurps Magic (note the lack of a "k") it's possible for a Mage to feed himself and it'll be faster than working for a living but more fatiguing. A Mage might not be able to feed his whole adventuring group.

So "the government" has no interest in the Food Magic Spells from Magic. They would have no strategic impact on the world.

Perhaps peopel could start spelling it as "Magick with a K" when they aren't talking about Gurps Magic?

[DeadParrot]

You won't go too far wrong by looking at what technologies are discouraged or tightly controlled by real world modern governments then equating to spells that allow equivalent abilities in your TL3 setting. Things that can cause widespread death or illness, aka weapons of mass destruction. Also powerful personal weapons. Even in the US, there are very few fully operational tanks and field artillery pieces in private hands. Surveillance and spy tech is normally fairly tightly controlled. Things that allow bypassing security measures are normally discouraged. Modern laws against possession of "burglary tools" for example. A spell along the lines of "knock or unlock" might be a TL3 equivalent. Any version of teleport or fly will be very controlled.

Some spells might get a person invited to join the government team. Think the TL 3 version of early computer hackers often being offered nice jobs developing defenses instead of 20 years in jail.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by DeadParrot

You won't go too far wrong by looking at what technologies are discouraged or tightly controlled by real world modern governments then equating to spells that allow equivalent abilities in your TL3 setting. Things that can cause widespread death or illness, aka weapons of mass destruction. Also powerful personal weapons. Even in the US, there are very few fully operational tanks and field artillery pieces in private hands. Surveillance and spy tech is normally fairly tightly controlled. Things that allow bypassing security measures are normally discouraged. Modern laws against possession of "burglary tools" for example. A spell along the lines of "knock or unlock" might be a TL3 equivalent. Any version of teleport or fly will be very controlled.

Some spells might get a person invited to join the government team. Think the TL 3 version of early computer hackers often being offered nice jobs developing defenses instead of 20 years in jail.

You can also end up with weird idiosyncratic restrictions based on public perceptions, misconceptions by the lawmakers, etc. Avoiding the more politically-charged ones, consider all the weird laws about certain melee weapons. Nunchaku and shuriken are illegal in many jurisdictions despite being relatively useless (you're better off just leaving the stick whole and not bothering with the string for the former, and in addition to the latter only really being useful as a distraction it's typically inferior to perfectly-legal throwing knives). Switchblades and balisongs are similarly illegal, despite being functionally equivalent to legal spring-assisted or folding knives. From what I understand, across the pond in the UK a machete is perfectly legal (it's an agricultural tool, not a weapon)... unless you paint it green and write "Zombiekiller 3000" on it.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

For your latter example the government is being affected by some hypothetical ultrapowerful form of variant ...

No, just vanilla Plant College.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

No, just vanilla Plant College.

You can't feed a whole county by waiving your hands. Not all at once and not even by working at it all day and burning more FP than a marathon runner.

Quick Googling says that it would take the yield of 2 acres to feed a family for a year. Bless Plants would cut that down to 1 acre. So how many castings does it take to bless an acre? A acre seems to be about 70 x 70 yards or 4840 square yards in total.

The area of a circle is pi x R squared. A maxed out Ceremonail casting with spectators is 110 energy which gives us a radius of 110 yards (yes I am simplifying Gurps areas to circles instead of hexagons). That gives us a little under 8 acres per casting.

Bless Plants takes 5 minutes normally so it takes 50 minutes as a Ceremony. You probably can't quite get get off 1 Ceremony per hour once you figure in time for reqaining FP and walking to the next site but we'll use 8 Ceremomies a day covering 64 acres. Your acreage probably won't add up neatly like that.

Now we look of "population of medieval Britain by county" and we get numbers that come close to a polualtion of 100,000 for an average county though some counties are 2x or 3 x that and others half or 1/3rd. People who want to do more exacting research should feel free to.

Setting the size of the "family" fed by an acre to 4 we need 25,000 acres of Blessed farmland. 25,000 divided by 64 comes to 390 which means 1 caster can't get to every casting site in one year even if he swaps spectators as goes in an efficient manner.

So working at it all day every day a single caster could only feed a below average Medieval Engish County. Not bad as a st-up for a Druidic faith or "Green Priesthood" but not what i'd call "waiving his hands".