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

[bocephus]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

I'm curious to know more about other people's preferences, and experiences with players having strong feelings about these things.

t would be horribly wrong to say I have a “preference”, but I do have a world that I built using just Basic and Magic (that is to say using the classic system, not any of the Thaumatology options) that is a sort of a nod to my D&D roots. There is a sort of banestorm light backstory, but its not understood so thats about all you get.
The setting takes place at a time when most of the societies, that have survived, have been able to establish themselves and are getting comfortable enough to begin expanding their regions. Thus some of these societies are coming into contact with each other for the first time.
There is magic but not the magic that may have been used from where they came from. There are gods but not the ones that were known before being plopped here in times past (these gods seem to be able to talk back if they want). Also not all the races were dropped here at the same time. Thus, everyone has had to rediscover magic and Gods again, and depending on how they went about it they have developed some interesting blind spots.

The short of it is magicians are pretty much as written in Magic. Except mages can only learn from the healing college at double price and casting from the healing college as a mage costs double the energy. Because of how I want the world to feel I have omitted spells that haven't yet been discovered. Flight is one of the lost spells, along with most of the “higher level” spells of every college. There are some spells that Priests might get that just aren't available to Mages, thems the breaks.

Priests have a spell lists that is appropriate to their god(s) sphere of influence, and get their ability to cast from commune with their god. But priests don’t use Magery (by design). Instead I substituted a combination of Clerical Investment (mandatory prerequisite for Power Investiture), Power Investiture, and Religious Ritual to determine how many spells and of what “level” the priest is blessed with. Also Priests don’t get the benefit of Recover Energy at higher levels, they can cast it and receive it, but there is no inherent FP generation to the Cleric.

Thus far no Player has encountered a society that has more than ~500 years on this world. So most societys are caricatures of what they might have been when they were moved here. As of now less than 5% of the world is “known” to the players at all and of that large chunks are just geography on a map and not actually explored.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

What game magic can do needs to be well defined if PCs or major NPCs use it to resolve challenges in the plot AND the story is satisfying. I don't know if "well defined" and "rationalistic" mean the same to you.

Hmmm, let me rephrase. I agree the rules of magic should be well-defined for typical cases, but I think you can take something of a lackadaisical attitude to defining how magic works in edge-cases. Actually I think that being able to adopt that sort of attitude is one of the strengths of tabletop RPGs—if every single rule could be programmed into a computer, then you could just do that and play a video game instead. The thing is, when doing something like hard sci-fi, GMs can feel pressured to hide the fact that they're doing that. I'm suggesting that much of the desired "feel" of a certain kind of fantasy can be achieved by doing it openly.

For example, maybe magic runs on Aristotelean physics in your universe. Clever players may think to wonder what this means if you use magic to fly into space—which might only take an hour or two, depending on how fast magical flight is in the setting. What I'm calling the "rationalistic" approach would say you should try to rigorously answer that question in advance. The alternative is to not sweat it until it comes up. Furthermore, the first time it does come up, the GM should just making a ruling without worrying too much about being able to be "consistent" the second or third time it comes up.

[Fred Brackin]

If i was to take a stab to "Adeqately defined" that's simple. It means "I understand how the magic available to my character works.".

Adding "rationalistic" to it means that the magic I understand is internally consistant and that I can broadly anticipate how unknown magic based on similar principles will work. Magic based on different principles might change my understanding of how magic works but magtic will be consistant after that.

Example: A mage learns Magic beginning with "Ye Lesser Booke of Fyre Magick".He can't write "Ye Greater Booke of Fyre Magick" but can undestand it when he finds it. He may be surprised by what he finds in "Ye Lesser Booke of Water Magick" but after he understands that his magical world view isn't turned upside down by what he finds in "Ye Greater Booke of Water Magick".

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

If i was to take a stab to "Adeqately defined" that's simple. It means "I understand how the magic available to my character works.".

Adding "rationalistic" to it means that the magic I understand is internally consistant and that I can broadly anticipate how unknown magic based on similar principles will work. Magic based on different principles might change my understanding of how magic works but magtic will be consistant after that.

Example: A mage learns Magic beginning with "Ye Lesser Booke of Fyre Magick".He can't write "Ye Greater Booke of Fyre Magick" but can undestand it when he finds it. He may be surprised by what he finds in "Ye Lesser Booke of Water Magick" but after he understands that his magical world view isn't turned upside down by what he finds in "Ye Greater Booke of Water Magick".

This isn't a bad definition.

[thom]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Just as brief comment I'm usually annoyed at the commonly seen efforts to push mages into specialties. If i can play a generalist it means my mage can either follow what interests him at the time or focus on what he needs at the time. I find this much more realistic.

Specialists end up with one tool and have to solve all their problems with that tool regardless of its' appropriateness. Very artificial.

Hear, hear! I completely agree! I find it's my job as GM to modify/tinker with the spell list (and disallow some completely) in order to keep mages from "ruling the world". And that allows a wizard PC to follow his interest (as Fred said) or specialize if he so chooses - not because the world forces him to...

thom

[Tinman]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Thanks for the answers. I'm curious, would you prefer DF to a system where there are many quite distinct sorts of specialist mages, but where their magic is all ultimately one thing.

I'm OK with them ultimately being the same system (like DF). However, I do like the idea of multiple systems of magic: standard gurps, sorcery, ritual path magic ect. I find as GM the most balanced (unbreakable) magic system is the Sorcery system b/c it's advantage based.

[Refplace]

I like flavor and variety in my religions and magic. Monotheism tends to take over things more than polytheism.
GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits still sells on average a couple of supplements a month, more than two years after publication. And it was designed to not be a complete magic system but to expand one part of one (Spirit Vessels).

I'm ok with magic as an impersonal force or a personal one. But I like variety in my settings and prefer that magic - especially religious or mystic magic be more than "just a different spell list".
The treatment of shamans in most RPGs, including DF9: Summoners I find rather annoying, almost offensive.
That would likely bother me if religious magic were based on a religion I knew well and it did not meet my expectations.

Divine Favor I find really nice because it has a built in vagueness and versatility in buying the god as a Patron.
A magical version of GURPS Social Engineering: Puling Rank also works for me.
I would prefer religious magic to be more than just a different spell list.

For shamanism I prefer the spirits to be an important part of the system, not just background fluff like you tend to get using a spell system. Channeling a spirit through abilities such as Spirit Vessel, interacting with them through Medium, and abilities such as Astral Projection and Spirit Empathy add flavor that I like.
Magical Styles adds flavor to standard GURPS Magic and gives different mage groups a personality; I very much like that.
RPM tends to push for conformity, sure your likely to have different Path specialties but it still feels rather blah.
I would strongly prefer a styles approach to it and would like a supplement that gave us a practical system that applied the styles approach to RPM.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Thinking about this more... while I admit my knowledge of western esotericism is fairly superficial, it seems to me that there are quite a few of what you might call quasi-scientific or pseudo-scientific magical practices that date back to the Renaissance if not earlier. I'm thinking of things like alchemy, astrology, and sympathetic magic. My impression is that even in the case of incantations, the power was sometimes thought of as residing in the words themselves rather than the fact that some spirit would recognize the words as significant. That idea might sound ridiculous to a modern ear because we assume words and names are totally arbitrary signifiers, but people living 500 years ago would not necessarily have shared that assumption.

In medieval times you had the HERMETIC ORDERS - who were opposed by CABALISTS, who both had a pseudoscientific approach to magic. That goes all the way to the greeks, who had the pre Titan Hecate as the goddess of Magic and Hermes who were also a God of Magic (because he stole from Hecate). In fact, the medieval Hermetic Order comes from the cult of "Hermes Trimegistus" (or "Hermes 3 times great"), a mixture of the Greek God Hermes and the Egyptian God Thoth (the Egyptian God of Knowledge and that represented the primordial thought of Creation, thus was their first God).

Suffice to say that this was considered as paganism for the Catholic Church of course.

In Rome, you had the "Etruscan Mages", from which the word Magus (mage) comes from.

In China, you had taoist alchemists who were also "miracle workers" (the latin word "magus" or mage meant exactly "miracle worker").

There are similar cases in India too.

So yes, there are PLENTY of cases of Real Life belief systems that considered the "art of performing miracles" (also know as "magic") as a "(pseudo)scientific" art.

And that existed alongside beliefs of spirits, entities and gods.

So yes, I consider it perfectly valued to have technician "mages" working with impersonal forces and "clerics" holding the blessings of the gods or "shamans" working with spirits.

[KarlKost]

I like the approach from the game "Mage the Ascension", which is my favourite interpretation of magic and that I adapted for Gurps with Realm Magic for the mechanics, upon which EVERY single human has an Avatar, a "spark of the divine", which allows ANY human being to shape reality at their will - basically as a God would.

At least in theory. In practice thou, most of all people are Sleepers - just like those trapped in the Matrix, they are completely oblivious to the "world of darkness", populated by vampires, werewolves, mummies, demons, angels, fairies and other denizens hiding in the shadows.

The setting is modern fantasy, so it is our own world where the supernatural hides from the masses of sleepers.

Occasionally, some of those "sleepers" AWKEN - much like Neo from the movie Matrix is brought out to the REAL WORLD, an Awaken is one which his "Avatar" (or his inner soul, or the divine part of his soul - not the entire soul).

The power of those awaken thou is based on their BELIEFS. So for example, the "Technocratic Union", who are the self entitled "shepards of humanity", the group responsible for the world we have today by actively hunting down ALL of the Supernatural in order to protect the masses, who are better described by the Technocratic Convention (one of their sub groups) called "New World Order" they dont do "magic", dont be silly, nor do the technocrats have a superstitous thing called "Avatar", they are ENLIGHTNED SCIENTISTS and they do ENLIGHTNED SCIENCE, which is a form of "hyper science" that is beyond the compreension of the ignorant masses. The "Celestial Chorus", however, believe that the Avatar is a fragment of "The Uno" (The One), the primordial God, thus they are the agents of God's will, while the "Dreamspeakers" shamans believe that this world is Maya (ilusion), and everything is the "Big Dream", thus everything is Spirit.

Because of their beliefs systems, each group operates magic differently. So, for Dreamspeaker every "magic" they do is believed to be a spiritual contract (no, that doesnt mean that a spirit appears to sign a deal for every magic, just that they believe it to be), while a Technocrat "Mage Hunter" dont do magic at all, they do Science (with a capital S), thus they cant just simply wake a funny dance and summon a demon, instead having to rely on atomic Kirlian crystals to open a dimensional portal to an alternate quantum reality.

The original game has 9 Spheres: Life, Matter, Forces (Energy), Prime ("Mana" manipulation, also know as "meta magic" in Gurps), Spirit, Mind, Entropy (Destiny), Time, Space.

But I always found that terrible. Because those "Spheres" are technically for "mechanics only", while the mages (or "enlightned scientists) themselves had different fluff, but the truth is that I could NOT make my Space/Time relativist Enlightned Scientist except if I bought both Spheres togheter, which seems just... Wrong. Not to mention that for a necromancer, you would need Life, Matter and Spirit, while at the same time not using half of those.

So comes Realm Magic from Gurps Thaumatology. Beautiful.

Now, my Dreamspeakers have 3 magic Realms instead of 9: Mind, Body and Spirit. You see, the world is an illusion (to them), so they manipulate the reality in 3 different ways, instead of the 9 spheres of the Hermetic Order. Mind Realm ironically doesnt deal with minds (like mind reading or telepathy or mind projection or mind creation etc). Their Mind Realm is related to the "illusions of the senses" - the illusion of time, the illusion of space, the illusion of destiny. The Spirit Realm relates to the "illusions os consciouness", so mind, spiritual and "meta magic" manipulations are inside it, and finally the Body Realm relates to the "illusions of matter", therefore all matter and energy are controled by it.

With it, I also have my Technocrats with Space/Time Discipline and Biochemistry (instead of Life and Matter). I even have "Memetics" as a Sub Realm of Mind for the technocratic propagandists of the New World Order - a subrealm EXCLUSIVE to them.

Thus, each type of "Mage", a loose term to describe the "Awaken", have their own exclusive, unique and non translatable type of "magic". A Technocrat Scientist CANNOT replicate an Hermetic Wizard that studies "sacred geometry" in order to regulate the 4 humors of a person's body in order to heal the person, nor can said Hermetic understand the mystical principles upon which a Dreamspeaker attunes his soul to the spiritual world by a ritual transe in order to command the fire to obey his will, nor is this Dreamspeaker able to understand the vain materialistic "science" which uses short omega electromagnetic waves of 280 nn in order to create an hypnotic pattern in the victim that allows the technocratic scientist to control his victims minds.

I like that entire system A LOT, the best one I have EVER seen imho

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Refplace

The treatment of shamans in most RPGs, including DF9: Summoners I find rather annoying, almost offensive.

I think I've heard you talk about this before, but remind me of your specific complaints? Personally, I think it might be interesting to have a system where shamanism isn't its own "power" but really more about social advantages and knowledge of spirits. Many shamans might use Magery-based spellcasting or psionics to aid them in their dealings with spirits, but supernatural traits wouldn't be the thing that makes a shaman.