You got magic in my scifi game!

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Chris Goodwin

I'd like to see magic in a "big grey spaceships" type SF game. By which I mean, the magicians are people who call what they're doing magic, and they call themselves wizards or sorcerers or another word meaning "spellcaster", and they fly around in spaceships that look like they would come from science fiction media, in somewhat realistic space where stars are compressed balls of fusing hydrogen, space is largely vacuum, and so on.

I think 40k is 80% of the way there...


I've seen this idea in the webcomic "Arthur, king of time and space".


Yeah, it'd be a fun idea. I'd be sticking the mages in a warp core where they are responsible for the FTL.

[Anthony]

One thing I've considered is that FTL works by shifting the ship into an alternate dimension with weird and different physics. Including what can be called 'magic'. Outside of FTL (and maybe other specialized areas where they create similar zones) physics is normal.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

One thing I've considered is that FTL works by shifting the ship into an alternate dimension with weird and different physics. Including what can be called 'magic'. Outside of FTL (and maybe other specialized areas where they create similar zones) physics is normal.

There's something roughly like this in the Ender's Game series - I forget the specifics, but there's essentially a stopover dimension that can be used to functionally teleport to anywhere in the universe, and while there it's possible to basically create something just by thinking about it. One character has figured out a self-replicating cure for a disease that's ravaging her world but has no way to produce it - traveling through this stopover dimension allows her to basically conjure it up into a vial. Another character has a crippled body; he recreates his body prior to the accident and migrates his mind over to it (the old one collapses into dust IIRC). And yet another character ends up creating clones of his siblings, with his own subconscious essentially split three ways between himself and them (this was a mistake on the character's part, but ultimately worked out pretty well). It's pretty wild.

A setting with modern fantasy style magic while traveling through hyperspace could certainly be interesting. If things created through the use of magic are maintained, this could be utilized for manufacturing (even if conjured objects vanish, you could still potentially use magic to rework existing matter, to a similar effect). You can have all kinds of crazy adventures while on a months-long journey on such a vessel. And, of course, you'll have people who get (mentally) addicted to being able to use magic, and who purposefully try to travel through hyperspace as much as possible.

[thestor]

What I hate is how a protagonist becomes super at magic because he is the chosen one or because he has so much moar willpower / love than any other schmuck. For me that is the difference between magic, whatever it is named, and technology, the super laser-rifle usually doesn't work for the hero just because he so much of a better person. Especially terribad if the hero is better because he follows the author's worldview.

Theoretically, this doesn't have to be the case, but apparently, eventually lesser writers come around, thinking that making the hero more powerful will make him a better character

I am a bit annoyed, too, with special bloodlines having (more) magical power, since hardly ever does a setting follow through with this and have these families go all-out Habsburg.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by thestor

I am a bit annoyed, too, with special bloodlines having (more) magical power, since hardly ever does a setting follow through with this and have these families go all-out Habsburg.

Some of that is constraint of the heroic genre. If we weren't so obsessed with origin stories from nothing and plots built around family drama weren't such a big theme in heroic stories. But if the hero needs to go from zero to strong enough to be the lynchpin of everything fast, and his family members need to be at least strong enough he can't brush them or their problems away with his now great powers, well, it's a tight constraint.

[Lovewyrm]

Magic in sci fi games?
That could very well be a completely natural aspect of humanity, think placebos that heal people 'right now', but with less interference due to the world being tech and science heavy, 'superstition based noise' is reduced and thus magic is more potent...

For those who can use it due to the investment in it.
Which is anyone.,
It's just that tapping into it is a bit equivalent to setting up your own xmpp/jabber server to evade discord, or using pgp to encrypt your mails instead of just using gmail, 'today'.

Something that most people don't bother and their tech gets similar effects anyway.
(Exploding a head with a plasma rifle vs sitting at home and concentrating on that, causing a cause and effect chain that has the victim ultimately run over the head by a cyber bus )

And since that is probably too extreme, it can be time compressed. Hocus pocus eat fireball vs squeeze the trigger and eat plasma ball.


Disruption of this magic can be done by anyone too, simply hammer the mage with mental noise, a barrage of asinine surface level stuff like "our earth is flat" to wives tales, horoscope tier mysticism etc.

Keeping in thematicism with the premise that the more tech is used, the less people indulge in magical thinking, the less polluted the magical fabric of the world is (which actually internally uses a proper way/logic and thus CAN be affected and tainted by nonsense) and the easier it is for those 'into it' to master it, but again, they too need to be quasi technological about it.

You can't put circuits toghether willy nilly to have a high tech device (unless you're, I don't know, lucky or some sort of savant or whatever), and you can't put magic together willy nilly by doing something completely unsuited for its innate nature.

It's just something that most people don't bother with.

As for actually putting something like that into a game.
Well, it's been said already, it could simply be indistinguishable from magic anyway, tech.


Edit:
And to add to the 'warding via nonsense' bit.

It could give cyber/information warfare a new angle, too.

Where troll wars are actually magical, and letting 'info agent squads' reign free, then their messages and the like could actually have an effect.
And troll bait that already stops people in their tracks even today can disrupt it.

That is probably a goofy, cinematic angle, though...but I gotta say, I'm kinda liking it.
Your spell of shaping the public mind is almost done, but this guy is a hacker, his post can't be erased by normal means, and he just threw in some extremely potent bait that hijacks the thoughts of the readers and leads it into nonsense!
Curses! Foiled again!