Low-Tech: Magic?
 

Am I the only one here who would love to see a Low-Tech supplement for magic?

It could stick strictly to the facts, explaining the place of this (non-working) technology in society. However, it would likely be very useful in games where magic is real.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

Isn't that just Fantasy Tech 1?

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

Fantasy Tech 1 is a work of creative fiction, not a guide to the way that this technology really fails to work.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

I'm a little confused about what you want. Are you talking about a book discussing the mythologies of past cultures, but only treating them as the fiction they turned out to be? There are certainly books that address myths, even in the "Historical" books (for example, 3rd edition's Japan, Imperial Rome, Russia) but they include information on how to handle those stories as though they were real.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

Not all mythology. My interest is in magic, as something actually used by humans in the real world.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

I think you need to explain more clearly what you would actually do with this information. Fantasy Tech 1 contains one shot inventions, alternate technology paths and pseudo-science. The first two work in reality but weren't used due to economic reasons. The last is the only set of things that doesn't work, but we are told how they were thought to work or the myths surrounding them. If they don't work in a setting then you just don't use the rules given for it working.

People won't use things that don't work, only things that they believe will work. Fantasy Tech 1 covers alchemy, astrology and medicine as it was believed to work. The reason alchemy and medicine didn't always work requires modern knowledge of the processes used. With astrology it is the simple question of do the stars actually influence events.

Ultimately though, telling you why something doesn't work doesn't tell you how it should work. What you really want is probably more along the lines of Thaumatology: The Real World.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

As long as it covers real magic in society (as Philosophers and Kings does for other social elements) I would find it interesting.

Or put it this way: GURPS Crusades covers real people acting on what they think are supernatural directions. It isn't a book of rules for miracles or paladin powers - it is a book covering the actions of people who believed in miracles.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

This or
Low Tech: Historical Magic

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

I would go with the comments about referring to the myriad of 3rd Ed. location books. Most historical magical systems were either religious in nature, pseudoscience or both and almost universally they were highly regional.

I'd also suggest the late Issac Bonewit's Authentic Thaumaturgy if you want to stick to SJ Games material, though he was one of the few, if only, people academically qualified to write on magic.

Having brought up Mr. Bonewits I'll add I would strong suggest avoiding a vast majority of "New Age" type books on "magic". Despite people drawing sincere religious and spiritual belief from them they are by and large works of fiction with little to no basis in historical fact. Many are so poorly researched that anyone with even a slight understanding of the subject can call out the B.S.

For example, I've seen books that call the Norse runic alphabet "Celtic" and my major beef with GURPS Thuamatology is using another totally inaccurate, openly and admittedly fictional work on runes as an authoritative factual source. A vast majority of books about Wicca refer to a historian's work that was universally discredited 70+ years ago and most draw from world traditions willy nilly so that their "Celtic ritual" might tell you to use Hebrew Kabbalist imagery and a Hellenist (Greek) view of Elements.

Just for full discourse, I consider myself a "Heathen" or a Norse Reconstruction Pagan and have read quite a few of the types of books I just mentioned. The main thing I've learned over the years of being a Pagan is to assume everything you read about it is false unless you (or the author) has an authoritative second source, which ideally would be a contemporary historical source or a well respected modern source.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

Maybe unlinking this from the Tech books, it would be possible to imagine an hipotetical GURPS Religion and Magic, or GURPS Esotericism or GURPS Cosmologies, trying to conceptualize and handle in a rules wise ways the spirituality and magic (BTW, often two different things) own of diverse ancient cultures. I'm thinking about this hypothetical work since 2007.

I believe that the purely technological, biological and materialistic approach about these things is already covered by Low Tech Companion 1: Philosophers and Kings ("Technicians of the Sacred", p. 16 (*)), and the purely fantastic approach -but sometimes anthropologically suitable, too- is handled by the Magic and Thaumatology books. Ah, and I was forgetting Fantasy . . . Right now, it's a bit scattered.

(*) From a purely mechanic point of view, there's not much additional room for expanding on these subjects. For that, you would need to enter into the beliefs, cosmologies and world-views of different "Low-Tech" peoples, which by the way didn't see themselves in the contemporary terms of their available technology ("Stone Age", "Iron Age", etc).

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

I fully agree with that. And theosophical authors are in the same vein. Not in vain the current "New Age" (with its many unessential trends) is a spin-off from the classic theosophism, spiritualism, and occultism (all them modern creations of westerners), mixed with some bits of scientific divulgation and modern day popular political notions.

I understand your point, sure, but the problem with this is that not all is documented, and many things were handled by oral transmission. This means that huge amounts of knowledge bring as references or sources for it . . . just persons, usually true spiritual masters -extremely and more and more hard to find, and even more difficult each day.

In the case of the Norse world and other European "paganisms", that's about a destroyed, dissapeared or dead knowledge, like the own of the Ancient Egypt . . . like the one own of the Templar Order.

It would be needed a kind of miracle for recovering such things lost to peoples in ancient times! (BTW, the Grail Quest, the Ark of the Covenant, the lost of the true pronunciation of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton, the Soma -all them are "lost items" or "things"- symbolize this loss, between many other things). So it's wise to assume that there aren't true sources for this, even if it's possible to assemble some partial data, but this is always completely insufficient.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

Sorry to be the bad news carrier, but probably there aren't any real magic in our world. If you think there is, James Randi is willing to give you a million bucks if you proves it.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

I believe he means just the beliefs, the way people act on those beliefs, and what actually happens when those beliefs hit reality.

As an example, we might say that a particular Norse pagan belief in "battle frenzy" meant that the disciples of this magical thinking could will themselves into a GURPS Berserker state.

One could then say that Norse shamans knew how to trigger that state and could use it to affect dying warriors and temporarily pull them out of a coma, or similar death spiral, which would then necessitate new HT rolls which might keep the wounded warriors from spiraling down into death.

In this situation we'd give the Shaman a Herb Lore roll at skill -4 to trigger Berserk in a dying warrior in a coma, the warrior would then get a roll at HT+4 to snap out of his coma for success seconds, and then have to make a normal HT roll to see if he remains conscious and alive.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

By my estimation, even that is really stretching the "power" of spiritual beliefs. A more likely occurrence would be a warrior, believing himself to be a berserker, charges naked into the fray, to be promptly skewered by his opponents' spear and dying in cold agony.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

You can do a lot with psychosomatic effects, Berserk itself is just a psychosomatic effect, so having 'magic' induce such effects would be in line with the base effect.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

What I mean is there's a difference between "based on what IS known and accepted by the historical and archeological community" and "my crystals told me this so it must be true". In the case of the Norse (and the Greeks, Romans and to a lesser extent the Celts) much of the oral tradition was recorded at some point. Now the actual processes of worship are mostly lost, but at least some the underlying lore is known.

Let's remember there's a difference between a holy text and "here is the process of a worship service". The Bible is a holy text but the differences between a Greek Orthodox Mass, a Catholic Mass, a Presbyterian service and snake handlers in the hills of West Virginia each claiming to be the word of God and each denomination's service are so alien to each other that one might call the others "Satanic" and not "Christian" according to their definition.


The point I was making is that based on my experience being a skeptic toward non-gaming works depicting "Low Tech Magic" (namely Paganism and mysticism) will be better than taking everything on face value.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

Yes. I mostly agree with your attitude.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

Indeed! Magic may be a dud technology, but as an element of human civilization, it is amazing.

Even if I'm using a setting where magic works, knowing more about real magicians would be helpful.

(BTW, I don't particularly care if the book is classed as "Low-Tech" or not, if it covers what interests me)

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

I suggest anthropology then, there are several authors that adress magical rituals and practices. Marcel Mauss has an anthropological theory on magic, if memory serves me. Authors of this period did a lot of investigation. Modern magic with traditional roots like Voodoo and Umbanda (brazilian version). Kardecists employ psychic healing techniques that are pretty much what we call "magic".

GURPS Cabal (3e), I'm told, and GURPS (3e) Voodoo have a lot of references to real world magic, as does GURPS Thaumatology (4e). But sometimes it's hard to tell what's real-world reference and what's game material.

In the real world most of this can probably be explained by the placebo and nocebo* effects.

*one example of this was the aborigine punishment of having a knee pierced by a "spiritual" spear, with the punished limping across the desert from the belief that his knee was pierced by the invisible spear. So hostile "magic" is possible too.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

Yeah, nocebo is amazing, just tell someone what the side-effects of x-medication is and watch them start developing those side-effects, this is especially telling when you read them the wrong side-effects.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

I hate to say it, but I'm not sure there's enough crunch in real-world magic to tie together a GURPS book, and maybe not even enough for a PDF.

I find the subject fascinating myself, though.

Most religious/magical tasks could be described by a number of GURPS skills. Aside from the obvious like Theology and Religious Ritual, I'd say that a practitioner of witchcraft or religion may have any one of the following skills:
Esoteric Medicine, Pharmacy (especially herbal), Psychology, Fortune-Telling, Body Language, Brainwashing, Acting, Artist, Astronomy, Autohypnosis, Meditation, Dreaming (the non-supernatural parts of the skill), Fast-Talk, Hypnotism, Performance, Group Performance, Musical Instrument, Singing, Leadership, Law, Literature (Possibly with an oral tradition specialization in preliterate cultures), Makeup and/or Disguise (for traditions in which practitioners dress up in elaborate costumes), Merchant (for cultures in which the practitioner is just another professional doing a job, albeit an esoteric one), Mimicry, Naturalist, Navigation (for seafaring cultures, probably), Occultism, Panhandling, Physician, Poetry, Poisons, Public Speaking, Teaching, Propaganda, Savoir-Faire, Stage Combat, Ventriloquism, and Writing.



And more, of course. It's important to note that the practitioner probably won't think of a lot of these skills by their GURPS names. An abbot likely won't think of the endless repetitions of chanting and fasting and suchlike as Brainwashing, but the monastic life certainly inspires a certain mindset, and men such as Francis of Assisi and whoever founded the Jesuits were using it when they organized their orders were certainly using that skill, although perhaps at default. Similarly the azande oracle board was influenced by the user's understanding of a situation, and its use was influenced by the answers of the person commissioning the divination; this falls under either Psychology, Body Language, or Fortune-Telling or possibly a mix of the three, but the oracle board practitioner and client are both convinced that they are consulting with a spirit.

Another thing to remember is the mindset of a magic practitioner. If a given working didn't work, then the practitioner did it wrong, or the spirits weren't willing, or someone else opposed the work strongly enough that nothing happened. The basic idea is that barring any interfering conditions, magic will always work.

This is all based on an anthropology course I took like two years ago, though.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

That's a good point. I agree with it very much. An Indian Shaman wouldn't understand what do you mean by describing him as an "occultist", or as having the Occultism skill. Likewise, a Taoist sage would look at you with a really weird expression if you're telling him that he has the skill Theology (Taoism).

That is a life of concentration.

If you want to talk about brainwashing, what's about watching TV? You see, is very easy to be controversial.

All that derives from Allan Kardec isn't but Spiritualism, an exclusively modern creation weirdly linked to discarded scientific theories for achieving what is often called "a transposed materialism". I mean, that isn't representative of any "Low-Tech Magic".

It's extremely easy to misunderstand these things. I can't be sure about this specific example, but there is the possibility of that being a kind of atonement ritual: and rituals needs to be "role played", sometimes even to uncomfortable extremes. If not, they are regarded as invalid. The symbolic items often used in rituals are material ones, but occasionally there are "invisible items" in play with the purpose serving as a vehicle of psychic or spiritual elements, too.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

The brainwashing skill is a cinematic skill based on how brainwashing works in movies like The Manchurian Candidate. Nobody has been able to make it work like that in real life; the best you can do is get your target in a position where they are inclined to listen to you and nobody else, which is more like Fast-Talk or the also-cinematic Persuade.

Historical religions and magical practices certainly used a lot of propaganda, but it's not very different from modern advertising. Pyramid #3/15: Transhuman Space contains a nice little system for simulating the effects of propaganda on a population. It's not really specific to the Transhuman Space setting, it just includes some modifiers to take that setting's concept of meme engineering into account.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

Come to think of it, if what you want is a book on how to induce the placebo/nocebo effect, you might be looking for GURPS Social Engineering. You need to make them really believe they are being magicked, right, and for that you need to run a con.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

Kind of weird that no one can just come up with some book suggestions for this topic.

"The Magic Book" by Harry Lorayne
Excellent layman's book written by one of the top professionals.

"The Amateur Magician's Handbook" by Henry Hay
don't let the term "amateur" fool ya. Solid entry to the hobby.
Magic happens in the minds of the spectators.

"Magic and Showmanship: A Handbook for Conjurers" by Henning Nelms
Theature knowledge applied to magic.


Oh. you mean the other kind of magic.

"Modern Magick" by Donald Michael Kraig
Very through introductory textbook on Western ceremonial magick.

Now you know GURPS Thaumatology? This is the book that should have been in its bibliography, cause this is the book on its subject matter.

In terms of game books, Thaumatology has all of the GURPS nitty gritty on different magic systems. The various world books tell how to apply it. They will say for example, this college of magic is missing, this spell is only known by kami or dragons or whatever, but not by player characters (implying a story hook or an unusual background cost to obtain), such and such is not known by anyone, what the magical elements are, if elementals exist, etc.

Taking the "this is how culture X thought about magick" away from other aspects of that culture does not strike me as a product that SJG is going to produce. Treating magical knowledge as technology levels like the Pyramid 3e article, "The Five Movements of Magic" might be what you are talking about concerning a Low Tech: Magic article/book.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

You're right, and I did trail off into non low-tech examples... what I meant to say was, that "magic" is present in a lot of traditions that are still around today. I also wasn't making a precise statement about kardecism or spiritualism, just a general imprecise comment that some modern day religions and traditions still use what was used as "magic" in the past.



Again, you're reading too much into casual examples. This one I drew from memory of an australian tour I took when I was 16 years-old, so the details might be hazy. I just needed an example for nocebo that showed how hostile magic was possible too, and that belief, boosed by ritual and tradition... I'm not even saying that's all there is to it. I mean, we could go further in and talk about cognitive dissonance too, and how practitioners would remember the times it worked far more than the times it didn't, or twist their perception or the facts to find results... or at least lessons and explanations, where there is just... stuff.

Anyway, my suggestion was looking into real world anthropological studies of relgious rites, shamanism and what have you. I can probably dig up some references, but its late, I'm not sure if that's exactly what you want, or if you're already familiar with the topic and thus the tip is empty... you seem to already know a bit about it.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

An awesome example of nocebo is in the episode "Nocebo" of the British series Wire in the Blood.
Without giving too much away, it involves how much havoc and power someone can initiate without involving any "real magic".

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

Of course, you're right. I understood your point, but I added a few comments to it. I wasn't really making a criticism of your lines.

What do you mean with "again"? It's also possible to read too little, or read wrongly (by saying this, I'm not looking exclusively at you). Sometimes, to read too little is to read wrongly, too (*). And who would be the one(s) reading too much into casual examples? Anthropologists are well known for interpreting them in their own way, discarding the so-called "emic" accounts of the "studied primitive people" for then consciously or unconsciously substituting them for their own so-called "emic" accounts, and this is why trying to render "culturally neutral" so-called "etic" accounts is mostly fallacious and delusional. By interpreting the mentalities and practices of "primitives", natives (etc.) through the anthropologist's own mentality and particular world-view, many anthropological accounts often attribute intentions and beliefs to these natives that they actually don't or didn't have, containing misinterpretations in varying degrees.

You're right in what I don't want exactly to dig into this particular example: there are lots of them, I'm sure you already know. One of my points is that a single "fact" or "casual example" can be seen from different perspectives, specially if the information about it isn't specially reliable or, as you say, hazy: in this case, your interpretation of it was related with "magic" and "hostile magic" through the "nocebo" theory, while my own was seeing it just as rite of atonement, having nothing to do with magic (at least not in a phenomenological sense, as it's usually regarded -specially in role playing games and of course, in this thread). It was only a viable interpretation as an example of these things; I'm not truly meaning that I am right about this case and you're wrong; I used it for showing how easily there can be misinterpretations and, at the same time, that there's room for different interpretations.

Digging more in this would be too much for me right now, specially because yesterday I posted a lot in other thread around here, and I'm lacking of time, in part because that. Another of my points is: I'm OK with the "nocebo" interpretation you provided about the "Spiritual" lance and the punished man limping around; but I'd expect that you were OK with mine, too.

(*) A part of my work is exegetical, I mean, it's expected from me to "read" more attentively than the usual reader (I'm not talking only about reading texts, BTW), to draw more from sources than the usual reader, and to use tools than a "lay" reader (and an anthropologist is included in such category) can't handle, but that doesn't means that I'm allowed to lie or to invent things at whim.

Re: Low-Tech: Magic?
 

Ok, now I get where you're coming from.

Anyways, in a nutshell...

IMO, low-tech magic are the fantastic or unexpected elements in low-tech religion, rituals and traditions... therefore the OP can look at sources of these (historical, anthropological, the religions themselves...) to find real-world low-tech "magic".

If one also understands much of this from being derived as placebo or nocebo effects, avoidance of cognitive dissonance, and many other processes... one can also extrapolate a low-tech magic system thinking up ways to activate these principles. For example:

1) the magician must be formally or informally recognized as such, as capable of such powers
2) the subject must believe in these powers and the authority of the magician
3) effects can be beneficial or malefic to the subject, but the subject must be able to produce them in some level, reinforcing his motivation, self-sabotage, psychosomatic effects and so on...
4) it might be possible to "counter" such effects by convincing the subject that the magician was not competent as he thought, or that the ritual was not adequately realized, or by invoking a superior power/authority to that of the magician
etc...