05-18-2022, 11:41 AM | #51 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: [Fantasy][Magic] Divine spellcasting, real-world religions, and fantasy settings
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A. If magic is part of the universe it is not supernatural at all just another strange thing among a universe full of strange things (we do not call nuclear power magic).. B. If it is the invocation of spirits who HAVE to react to certain formulas then it is attempted slavery. Which is wicked in general terms and rather stupid in case of a spirit who has enough power to be of any use to you. C. If it is making a request of a spirit which may or may not be granted, it is not magic at all but religion, and is better simulated by Divine Favor.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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05-18-2022, 12:15 PM | #52 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: [Fantasy][Magic] Divine spellcasting, real-world religions, and fantasy settings
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I'm not familiar with Divine Favor, but I don't think it would be necessary. The Unreliable or Fickle (which is like Unreliable, but uses a Reaction Roll, and IIRC was specifically introduced in Powers to represent working with spirits) Limitations on an Advantage would accomplish what you're describing. Alternatively, depending on the campaign setting, a single Advantage (or maybe a few working together) that allows you to communicate with spirits would allow you to convince them to do what you want via a combination of roleplaying, social skills, payment, etc (just like getting any other NPC to do what you want).
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GURPS Overhaul |
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05-18-2022, 02:01 PM | #53 | |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: [Fantasy][Magic] Divine spellcasting, real-world religions, and fantasy settings
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C) Some might call that semantics, certainly in many cases it could easily be described as religious. On the other hand what if the spirits are like faire? Spirits that have their own agency and can be bargained with to do something in return for something else, or perhaps just convinced because its a trivial thing and might amuse them. GUPRS Powers: Divine Favor is based on a very powerful singular spirit. It is not appropriate for all circumstances or interactions.
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My GURPS publications GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits; GURPS Template Toolkit 4: Spirits; Pyramid articles. Buying them lets us know you want more! My GURPS fan contribution and blog: REFPLace GURPS Landing Page My List of GURPS You Tube videos (plus a few other useful items) My GURPS Wiki entries |
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05-18-2022, 02:03 PM | #54 | |
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Brazil
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Re: [Fantasy][Magic] Divine spellcasting, real-world religions, and fantasy settings
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Well, that's not hard, just construct the abilities you want. Add a few "divine stuff" like Serendipity, True Faith whatever, and some "powers" to your liking, like Detect (Evil - or Good), some sort of Affliction (Undead Only) with the Aura enhancement, that sort of thing, probably all of those with Required Disadvantages like Duty and that sort of thing. Is that what you're seeking? Im sorry, I dont if Im understand all too well what you're trying to do. Do you wanna it to be some sort of unique mechanics that could be extracted from the Basic only, is that it? |
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05-18-2022, 04:09 PM | #55 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Fantasy][Magic] Divine spellcasting, real-world religions, and fantasy settings
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Handle is a character from the Star*Drive setting (a.k.a. d20 Future), not my real name. |
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05-18-2022, 05:11 PM | #56 | |
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Brazil
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Re: [Fantasy][Magic] Divine spellcasting, real-world religions, and fantasy settings
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Well, the game Scion has you playing as a Demi God, son or daughter from a God from many historical pantheons, and it's a great game. Sure, nobody will be offended by having Zeus or Ra in a game, but one of the pantheons in the game is the hinduist pantheon, an active religion with 1 billion followers, and you can play as an offspring of Kali, with all the pantheons fighting a divine war against the "Titans", a catch-all term to design godlike entities that are Avatars of primordial forces (of course, "Titan" is a greek denomination) who predate the Gods. So for example, you have the "Titan" Sultr, the leader of the fire giants (a race of "titanspawns"), who is the main Titan of the "Greater Titan" Musspelheim (Mussplheim is the "primordial fire" of nordic mythology). The "Greater Titans" are primordial forces, thus they are NOT self aware, they are not intelligent beings. However, the "Titans" "sprung" from the Greater Titans, as if the Titans were literally Avatars, conscious manifestations of those forces. In the case of Musspelheim it has other 2 Titans, one of them was the greek Prometheus, and the third is a japanese which I dont remember the name. Anyway, each of those Titans (or Avatars) represent an aspect of Musspelheim - Sultr for example represented the power of transformation, Prometeus the power of fire to create and the japanese one was a crazy Titan that represented destruction. Sultr was the most powerful inside Musspelheim, so he's the dominant one. Each primordial force (in the game) thus have their Avatars, except the Primordial Chaos. Primordial Darkness has Mikakaboshi, a japanese entity that refuses to take on a physical form and instead only appear controlling a white smiling sinister mask. Erebus is another Titan inside the primordial darkness, but Mikakaboshi is the dominant. Primordial Water has Mama Tata as dominant, an entity of Vodoo, Primordial Light has Aton (which the Pharaoh Akenathon tried to institute as the single god in Egypt) and so on. Each Pantheon has a divine Realm (or Plane). And the story is that the Titans began to... Reproduce, in lack of better term, between each other, while battling one another to try to make their respect elements become dominant, but by mixing with Titans from different elements, they gave origin to entities that were not bound to any - the Gods. Thus there was the Titanomachy, Gods vs Titans, which ended with the banishment of the Titans under Tartarus. But their prison weakened, and the Titans are back, and now there's one Greater Titan, guided by their dominant Titan, laying siege to each one of the Divine Realms. For example, Olympus now is surrounded by the Primordial Earth, with Gaia sending her giants and Hecatonkeires to storm the bases of the mountain (not in the physical world), Valhala is sieged by the fires os Musspelheim, with Sultr preparing his armies to start the Ragnarok, and the great deep ocean is sieging the land of the Voudoon under Mama Tata, and so on. It has many pantheons from real life, including hinduism, and also has the japanese pantheon which is highly regarded by the japanese people, and the Celestial Bureocracy of China, which is also culturally important for China, even if those last two no longer have many believers. And it's a great game. And as far as I know, I never heard about people being offended. |
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05-18-2022, 05:35 PM | #57 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: [Fantasy][Magic] Divine spellcasting, real-world religions, and fantasy settings
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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05-18-2022, 07:13 PM | #58 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: [Fantasy][Magic] Divine spellcasting, real-world religions, and fantasy settings
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Case in point: In Catholic (and I think Orthodox) doctrine, the seven sacraments (baptism, confirmation, communion, matrimony, ordination, penance, and extreme unction) are things that God said would work, and they are 100% guaranteed to work. They aren't dependent on the state of grace of the priest (that's the Donatist heresy) or on concentration or will or anything like that; the prescribed ritual produces the results. But that doesn't mean that God, or the Holy Spirit, is a slave; it means that God made a promise and will come through on it. As I understand shamanism, it rests on bargains or contracts between mortal men and spirits. So if you've made such a contract, and you invoke it, the spirit is required to deliver. But the spirit need not have been coerced into the contract and generally was not; it undertook to provide some benefit to get some benefit from the mortal, or as the Romans put it, do ut des. I don't think of bargains or exchanges as slavery.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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05-18-2022, 07:16 PM | #59 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: [Fantasy][Magic] Divine spellcasting, real-world religions, and fantasy settings
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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05-18-2022, 07:30 PM | #60 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Fantasy][Magic] Divine spellcasting, real-world religions, and fantasy settings
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My impression is that some of the GURPS 3rd edition stuff that incorporates real-world supernatural beliefs like Hermetic Qabalah and Voodoo is actually fairly well researched—but I don't know enough about those belief systems to vouch for their accuracy or whether they're cringe in subtle ways. I don't actually have many strong concerns of my own here, I've just heard some people dislike the way Christianity, Islam, etc. are used in Banestorm, which was a lot of my original motivation for asking.
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Handle is a character from the Star*Drive setting (a.k.a. d20 Future), not my real name. |
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