Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - [Thaumatology] Real world magical traditions

Icelander · 02-25-2020, 05:10 PM

I set all my urban fantasy / Monster Hunter campaigns in the same world where the supernatural started returning to the world in the 1980s, but so subtly and gradually that the world is virtually identical to the real world until the mid-90s and even in the 2010s, most Western, secular people in my campaign setting still believe they are living in our real world.

I like the feel of Path/Book magic, but the inability to design rituals that weren't already published eventually drove me to switch to Ritual Path Magic. In-setting, the gradual rise in mana levels from No Mana to Very Low Mana and now sometimes Low Mana within the Vile Vortices means that magicians who were confined to only the subtlest Path/Book rituals in the 2000s can perform RPM rituals in the 2010s, as long as they are subtle enough so that they can still be explained by skeptical observers as anything other than actual magic.

I'd like to use port the feel of Mandatory and Significant Modifiers over to RPM as much as possible (also useful for overcoming the -8 to -10 Mana in most places where magic works at all). I'd also like real-world magical traditions to be distinct from each other, even though the best thaumatologists theorize that the outer trappings all obscure one, as yet undiscovered, universal system of magic.

Any thoughts on how to accomplish what I was trying to do in this thread with RPM instead of Path/Book?

02-25-2020, 05:10 PM	#38
Icelander Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Iceland*	Updating for RPM I set all my urban fantasy / Monster Hunter campaigns in the same world where the supernatural started returning to the world in the 1980s, but so subtly and gradually that the world is virtually identical to the real world until the mid-90s and even in the 2010s, most Western, secular people in my campaign setting still believe they are living in our real world. I like the feel of Path/Book magic, but the inability to design rituals that weren't already published eventually drove me to switch to Ritual Path Magic. In-setting, the gradual rise in mana levels from No Mana to Very Low Mana and now sometimes Low Mana within the Vile Vortices means that magicians who were confined to only the subtlest Path/Book rituals in the 2000s can perform RPM rituals in the 2010s, as long as they are subtle enough so that they can still be explained by skeptical observers as anything other than actual magic. I'd like to use port the feel of Mandatory and Significant Modifiers over to RPM as much as possible (also useful for overcoming the -8 to -10 Mana in most places where magic works at all). I'd also like real-world magical traditions to be distinct from each other, even though the best thaumatologists theorize that the outer trappings all obscure one, as yet undiscovered, universal system of magic. Any thoughts on how to accomplish what I was trying to do in this thread with RPM instead of Path/Book? __________________ Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela!