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Old 10-20-2016, 12:38 PM   #21
sir_pudding
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Default Re: GURPS Powers and Enchanting

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
Cite some examples.
Upgradable items in nearly every fantasy roleplaying game? You can usually add plusses to a mundane weapon or more plusses to your magic thingy. This is true in D&D since at least third edition, Pathfinder, and GURPS.

Harry Dresden adds enchantments to his stuff (and starts with mundane but symbolic stuff).
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Old 10-20-2016, 12:40 PM   #22
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Default Re: GURPS Powers and Enchanting

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Cite some examples.
You mean outside of GURPS Magic?
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Old 10-20-2016, 12:51 PM   #23
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Default Re: GURPS Powers and Enchanting

Of course the fluff that matters is THE SETTINGS fluff.

And that changes from game to game. Particularly in powers.
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Old 10-20-2016, 01:17 PM   #24
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Default Re: GURPS Powers and Enchanting

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Upgradable items in nearly every fantasy roleplaying game? You can usually add plusses to a mundane weapon or more plusses to your magic thingy. This is true in D&D since at least third edition, Pathfinder, and GURPS.
No, I'm sorry, you can't justify the inclusion of upgradable items in fantasy rpgs by pointing to the existence of upgradable items in fantasy rpgs. That's assuming what you set out to prove.
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Old 10-20-2016, 01:21 PM   #25
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Default Re: GURPS Powers and Enchanting

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No, I'm sorry, you can't justify the inclusion of upgradable items in fantasy rpgs by pointing to the existence of upgradable items in fantasy rpgs. That's assuming what you set out to prove.
I have no idea what you're saying here. No one needs to justify what people like playing, because their liking to play it should be all that matters.
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Old 10-20-2016, 01:33 PM   #26
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Default Re: GURPS Powers and Enchanting

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No, I'm sorry, you can't justify the inclusion of upgradable items in fantasy rpgs by pointing to the existence of upgradable items in fantasy rpgs. That's assuming what you set out to prove.
If you are setting out to emulate a setting that works this way, like Golarion or something, then going back to Middle Earth as some kind of ancestor of it and insisting that it should be the same doesn't make much sense. I guess you can say that Middle Earth is the only valid secondary world setting, but that seems incredibly snobbish. My ancestors are fish, but I don't assume that I have gills.

However:
  • Dresden Files like I said. He makes magic items out of clothing, potions out of coffee, ect.
  • Many real world occult beliefs involve imbuing an object with a spirit, or creating a sympathetic or symbolic connection between objects through ritual.
  • In the Hellblazer comic, John Constantine and other practitioners often give magical properties to mundane objects.
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Old 10-20-2016, 01:58 PM   #27
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Default Re: GURPS Powers and Enchanting

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I have no idea what you're saying here. No one needs to justify what people like playing, because their liking to play it should be all that matters.
What I'm saying is that the claim "“Enchanting” is not usually creating an object" is clearly wrong; there are lots and lots of examples of its being exactly that, not only in old, old legends, but in widely read recent literary works. Setting aside Tolkien, note that the wands in the Potter books are made of clearly magical ingredients; they don't just take a mundane wooden stick and recite bad Latin over it.
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Old 10-20-2016, 02:00 PM   #28
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Default Re: GURPS Powers and Enchanting

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However:
  • Dresden Files like I said. He makes magic items out of clothing, potions out of coffee, ect.
  • Many real world occult beliefs involve imbuing an object with a spirit, or creating a sympathetic or symbolic connection between objects through ritual.
  • In the Hellblazer comic, John Constantine and other practitioners often give magical properties to mundane objects.
Okay, fair enough. On the other hand, I think it's also fair for me to point out that there are certainly examples of enchanting by making, and that discussing the creation of objects of power in these terms is not inherently off topic, either.
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Old 10-20-2016, 02:04 PM   #29
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Default Re: GURPS Powers and Enchanting

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Okay, fair enough. On the other hand, I think it's also fair for me to point out that there are certainly examples of enchanting by making, and that discussing the creation of objects of power in these terms is not inherently off topic, either.
Sure, I wasn't disputing that, but you were asking for examples of sources where enchantment is or can be imbueing existing objects with power, and I provided some.
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Old 10-20-2016, 05:24 PM   #30
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Default Re: GURPS Powers and Enchanting

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
What I'm saying is that the claim "“Enchanting” is not usually creating an object" is clearly wrong; there are lots and lots of examples of its being exactly that, not only in old, old legends, but in widely read recent literary works. Setting aside Tolkien, note that the wands in the Potter books are made of clearly magical ingredients; they don't just take a mundane wooden stick and recite bad Latin over it.
Perhaps there's a semantic issue — in my view of such things, not every magical artefact is an enchanted object. Enchantment itself as a specific process, in all the literature I am familiar with, involves permanently infusing magic into an object that would otherwise be utterly mundane with a particular spell or ability. Very often, yes, this only works on objects made out of magically “charged,” “resonant,” or otherwise symbolically appropriate materials, but it is still a process of “put (semi-)permanent magic into the item.”

Take your Potterverse example — wands are one of the few exceptions to the rule, when things like the Weasleys' Ford Anglia or Sirius's motorcycle were charmed to be able to fly (amongst other things) — it's implied similar enchantments of a similar process power every broomstick in the books, and a wide variety of other items.

If we look to Robert Jordan for another example, ter'angreal were made by creating an object and then weaving flows of the One Power into and around it to give it the desired abilities.

Dresden Files has already been mentioned, and I could dig up countless others — perhaps “usually” was the wrong word, here, but instead i would state it no more weakly than “enchanted items are often, but not always imbued rather than created”.
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