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Old 05-10-2021, 09:25 PM   #46
Polydamas
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
Default Re: Discussing Yrth History & Evolution of GURPS MAGIC

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
There are no new GURPS 4E fantasy settings. Dungeon Fantasy isn't a setting. It's something you plug into D&D settings.
There is one in GURPS Fantasy ("Roma Arcana"), several in GURPS Thaumatology. Oh, and Infinite Worlds! And the Collegio Januarii, and Bill Stoddard's "students in the college of magic at a medieval university" setting ... I think one was published as a series of articles in Pyramid #3 ... and GURPS Thaumatology: Age of Gold

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
There never been any indication in Yrth that there's a way short of a Wish for an adult human to acquire Magery.
Does GURPS 4e Banestorm say anything at all about who has magery, how they get it, or how common it is? GURPS 3e Yrth had some passage like that.

Lets put the sources on the table before we try to draw conclusions from them.

Edit: GURPS 4e Banestorm pp. 23-26 has carefully weasel words about genetics, magery, the demographics of mages, and available spells. To this published writer, this section seems to have been worded so GMs can interpret in different ways. It does warn that some unnamed spells in GURPS Magic do not exist or are known by only one wizard.

Edit: my rule of thumb is that a starting character or minor NPC should not be able to destroy your setting. So I am much more concerned with the ability of journeyman earth mages to replace miners and stonemasons and destroy castles than I am about estoeric issues. Few adventure settings are plausible (there are way too many interesting murders in Brokenwood, NZ!) but a game setting should be able to resist one character whose player feels mischevious, and that resistance should flow naturally out of the setting and not feel like the plot hammer coming down. If a setting can survive that kind of pushback, most players and GMs can suspend their disbelief. So I would work out rules of thumb of what magic can do on Yrth which pass this test while preserving as many core ideas of old GURPS Fantasy as possible. Creating a completely rational setting with magic is a red herring, when at the table, the biggest issues are creating a shared sense of how the world works and keeping the Brian van Hooses of the world from seizing power.
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Last edited by Polydamas; 05-10-2021 at 10:06 PM.
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