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Old 08-02-2020, 11:36 PM   #31
maximara
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Default Re: [Path/Book Magic] 'Grimoire' worldlines

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Originally Posted by Prince Charon View Post
I've started working on infoboxes for these timelines, which I should have done sooner. Since I'm doing them late and somewhat out of order, I've included links to the description, and will probably be editing links to the infoboxes into the earlier posts.
I'm adding these to the GURPSwiki. Grimoire-1 combines the infobox and details on one page as does Grimoire-5 if anyone is interested.
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Last edited by maximara; 08-02-2020 at 11:44 PM.
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Old 08-03-2020, 12:52 PM   #32
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Default Re: [Path/Book Magic] 'Grimoire' worldlines

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Originally Posted by maximara View Post
I'm adding these to the GURPSwiki. Grimoire-1 combines the infobox and details on one page as does Grimoire-5 if anyone is interested.
Thank you.



I might post a magician vampire character later, but for now, here's a set of advantages that are appropriate to one (probably on Grimoire-2): Magery 0 [5], Magery (Night-Aspected, -40%) 2 [12], and Path/Book Adept (Time, Space; Trigger: Blood (not from the caster), Very Common, -10%) [18]. The Trigger can be quite a bit more restrictive, of course, but I'm not completely certain how best to price the following:

Trigger: Fresh blood (not from the caster)
Trigger: Human blood (not from the caster)
Trigger: Fresh human blood (not from the caster)
Trigger: Virgin blood (not from the caster)
Trigger: Human virgin blood (not from the caster)
Trigger: Fresh human virgin blood (not from the caster)

Suggestions?

Human blood (from someone else, which as you see is usually the case) is probably going to be illegal in a lot of places, but not everywhere (it's legal in the Voivodeship of Transylvania and Wallachia (mageocratic dictatorship, CR5), for example, but that polity doesn't exist on every Grimoire worldline).
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Old 08-05-2020, 12:01 AM   #33
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Default Re: [Path/Book Magic] 'Grimoire' worldlines

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There's a reason I put the qualifier 'more' in there, and a reason that I put 'traditional' in quotes. This closer to (or has more emphasis on) 'vampire as plague metaphor' than 'vampire as powerful being.'

EDIT: Perhaps we're thinking of different traditions?
Likely as the plague vampire didn't get a write up in Classic: Blood Types
From the GURPSwiki:

"You see, Doctor, there are as many species of vampire as there are beasts of prey. Their methods and their motive for attack can vary in a hundred different ways. (...) Some can only be destroyed by hanging or decapitation, or fire or water, or by other means." - Grost, Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter

What is a Vampire?

The very term "vampire" comes from a specific Slavic states vampire, the Vampir which has a variant known as the Penanggalen. This happy little piece of nightmare fuel was a flying head with all its guts underneath.

Throw in the similarly spelled and pronounced exactly the same way Vampiir which killed not by drinking blood but by laying on top of is victim and stealing the very breath of its victims eventually causing death by suffocation and had no physical body and you see the problem.
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Old 08-05-2020, 04:46 PM   #34
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Default Re: [Path/Book Magic] 'Grimoire' worldlines

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Originally Posted by maximara View Post
Likely as the plague vampire didn't get a write up in Classic: Blood Types
From the GURPSwiki:

"You see, Doctor, there are as many species of vampire as there are beasts of prey. Their methods and their motive for attack can vary in a hundred different ways. (...) Some can only be destroyed by hanging or decapitation, or fire or water, or by other means." - Grost, Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter

What is a Vampire?

The very term "vampire" comes from a specific Slavic states vampire, the Vampir which has a variant known as the Penanggalen. This happy little piece of nightmare fuel was a flying head with all its guts underneath.

Throw in the similarly spelled and pronounced exactly the same way Vampiir which killed not by drinking blood but by laying on top of is victim and stealing the very breath of its victims eventually causing death by suffocation and had no physical body and you see the problem.
Basically, yeah. Also, thank you for pointing to a 'vampire' type that steals breath. I knew I'd read about one, but I was blanking on the specifics. The description seems like a spirit, either astral or manifesting.
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Old 08-05-2020, 07:05 PM   #35
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Default Re: [Path/Book Magic] 'Grimoire' worldlines

Hadn't wanted to double-post, but this one finally reached a postable form, I think:

Grimoire-4: Current year 1997, PoD prior to 1967; TL(7+1)^. This worldline appears to be another former historical echo of Grimoire-1, having apparently diverged during the 1960s, when some hippies learned magic who probably didn't on the base worldline. Acts of magic were first publicly demonstrated by various hippies in 1967, most famously during the March on the Pentagon (though the Pentagon did not levitate, and had no demons in it in the first place, the exterior did turn orange, and the building shook slightly); this failed to end the war in Viet Nam. The main effect of it was the government and the military trying to find out how they did it, and often not being polite about it. Some of the hippies, and some of their teachers, did decide to give the government some limited information on magic, in one case offering to teach Army medical personnel the Book of Asklepios, which mainly concerns healing rituals and dealing with serpents and snake-spirits. Later attempts to exorcise Congress and the White House (authorized and observed by the military and the President) likewise found no demons; many hippies reluctantly accepted that most politicians are evil all on their own, no need for possession (which is not the lesson that the politicians wanted them to learn).

With the secret out, it wasn't long before other mages, not associated with the hippie movement, made deals with various governments throughout the world. In early December 1967, in South Viet Nam, a group of traditional shamans who didn't trust communism spoke at length with Nguyen Van Thieu and others in his government, and were able to get a number of reforms passed as part of a deal for their help against the North. The Soviet Union and Peoples Republic of China developed, with the help of a number of odd individuals (including a man claiming and appearing to be 'the immortal Grigori Rasputin'), a form of 'scientific' Book magic, which of course they did not call magic - it was referred to as 'psionics' or 'psychotronics' (though the Cabal and Infinity are in agreement that it is still magic, just with modified styles), something that was not uncommon among the scientific community in the West. Because of the political necessity of avoiding the appearance of mysticism in public, and thus the need to rework (or invent) any Book style that they wanted to use publicly, the USSR and PRC lagged significantly behind other nations in the spread of magic, though their intelligence agencies and top secret research establishments were somewhat closer. The most common core skills for the Soviet 'psionic' Book styles are forms of Autohypnosis and Mathematics, as well as in a few cases Engineer (Soviet Thaumatronics) - an odd form of Engineer (Electronics) that has Symbol Drawing (Soviet Esoterica) as a prerequisite; the former defaults to other 'thaumatronics' styles at levels ranging from -1 to -6, and the latter defaults to Symbol Drawing (Futhark)-4. Similar styles were developed in the West, with electronic ('thaumatronics') and mechanical ritual styles often having a form of Symbol Drawing as a prerequisite and/or complementary skill. A few Book and Path styles use Symbol Drawing as the core skill (though they otherwise remain Path/Book styles).

In a number of East Asian nations, Book styles (multiple Book, in rare cases like Kalaripayit) based on existing martial arts styles became known. This prompted the PRC to develop a Book style based on state Wushu; once it worked, many other nations followed suit, whether with native styles (like Savate & French Smallsword in France, or Krav Maga in Israel), or adaptations of foreign styles (Karate, Judo, and Kung Fu were fairly popular in America in the 1970s, for example). In most cases, the core skill of the magical style is either Meditation, the Art form of one of the required combat skills of the martial style (usually Karate Art or Judo Art), or sometimes a less combative required or optional skill like Philosophy or Breath Control.

Over the course of the late 1960s and the 1970s, instruction in magic became common on college campuses all over the world, albeit more slowly in communist countries and some of the more religiously conservative Muslim and Christian nations (others taught magical styles based on the mysticism of their preferred faith, or even with Religious Ritual as the core skill). By the end of the 1980s, high schools and some middle or junior high schools have Introduction to Thaumaturgy classes or similar. About 50-60% of magical styles on this Earth are single-Book styles; less than 10%, total, are Path styles, all dating from 1985 or later.

In terms of technology, this Earth is a bit off from what would be expected by someone familiar with Homeline in the 1990s, looking almost like what someone from 1967 might think 'the world of thirty years from now' should look... but not quite: Flying cars and jetpacks exist, but are limited to the rich (and to magicians and friends thereof); the flying cars require a pilot's license and are expected to take off and land at airports outside of emergencies, though the jetpacks are considered ultralights or microlights. Magic fusion reactors are fairly new at this point, but expected to take off well, and petroleum prices are falling as a side effect (which does not make OPEC happy). Cellular phones have yet to take off, but pay phones and many car, home, or office phones have fax, e-mail, and video options. Bionics limbs and other organs (nearly all mana-dependant) are roughly equivalent to early TL9^, with very expensive examples equivalent to higher TLs. Attempts to regrow organs with magic have met with only limited success, however. A number of subcultures have arisen that make use of magic and cybertechnology to look like beings from fantasy or science fiction. Depending on how you look at it and where you are, the technological aesthetic of this world is largely Formicapunk (WARNING: tropes site link), with elements of low-level cyberpunk & cyber noir in poor or high-crime areas (including whole cities in some third-world countries), and low-level cyberprep in middle-class and wealthy areas.
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Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.
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Old 08-05-2020, 07:06 PM   #36
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Default Re: [Path/Book Magic] 'Grimoire' worldlines

Artificial Intelligence appears to be ahead of even Homeline, but the 'AIs' are really spirits possessing select machines through Fetish or Embody, while non-magical computers (and the internet) are closer to those of the 1980s than the 1990s; still, you can get a robot butler or maid (which might also be a sexbot). Compact discs haven't taken off, replaced by high-density cassette tapes. Netrunning, also known as cyberdecking or simply 'decking, exists as a magical form of hacking, and has lead to many businesses air-gapping and magically isolating computers with proprietary data on them, requiring would-be 'deckers to physically penetrate building security if they want to get it, often by running through the shadows at night with a few bodyguards. Black ICE is rare and highly illegal (LC0 in most nations, LC1 in a few like the USA and Japan, LC2 in strongly corporate-influenced polities like the Argentine Republic or the Principality of Dalmatia), but less-lethal anti-intruder curses may be as acceptable as LC4. The appearance of cyberspace tends to be a compromise between the mind of the 'decker and the intentions of the system's designers.

Magic had relatively little effect on the US space program at first, beyond a few astronauts being trained in certain styles at the request of curious magicians. It had rather more immediate (and very secret) effect on the Soviet lunar program, as the N1 rocket required enchanted parts (fetishes) to avoid blowing up on the launch pad (something that the USSR has never officially admitted to). This began impacting the Apollo Program in May of 1969, when successful N1 launches prompted President Nixon to order the Apollo 10 crew to land on the Moon. On May 22, 1969, Tom Stafford became the first human from this Earth to walk on the Moon. On May 23, 1969, Vladimir Shatalov, commander of Soyuz 6, became the first cosmonaut to walk on the Moon (contrary to the conspiracy theorists and some movies in this worldline, Stafford and Cernan did not meet Shatalov on the Moon, as the capsules landed hundreds of miles apart). The rocks and dust brought back by the two missions were of great interest to the mages in their respective space programs, as many of the rocks were found to be magically reactive, and the dust was likewise useful as an expendable component in many rituals. The first trained mage on a Moon mission was Fred Haise on Apollo 13, who performed a number of magical experiments both in orbit and on the Moon. In the early 1970s, moonbases were placed on Earth's moon by both sides of the Space Race; orbital and lunar colonies and factories are operated by a dozen nations by 1997, along with lunar and Near-Earth Asteroid mines. In 1975, Leonid Brezhnev declared that 'Mars will be a Red planet,' though as it happened, the first successful manned Mars mission was the joint NASA/ESA Project Ares, which first landed in 1987, while the joint Russian/Chinese did not arrive until 1989; long-term Martian colonies are still in the planning stages, though intermediate-term occupations of over a Martian year have occurred. By the mid-1980s, magical flying saucers were common government spacecraft, and by 1997, civilian models are widely used by big business, and approaching the regular civilian market.

Mystic Symbols are uncommon on this Earth. Those that do exist rarely grant Magery, but may grant some often-limited form of Path/Book Adept (e.g. Three Paths Only, Triggered by LSD, War Aspected, et cetra). Familiars capable of granting Magery or Path/Book Adept are known on this worldline, and are more common than Mystic Symbols. Many magical styles on this worldline (particularly the martial arts-based magical styles) have developed fairly efficient methods of learning Limited Path/Book Adept advantages appropriate to the style. In several cases, such as Soviet Thaumatronics and many forms of Ritual Alchemy, it is not possible to drop the 'Material and Symbolic Components' ritual element; this is also true of some styles based on traditional Celtic Tree Magic, and a few based on Ogham, Futhark, or other forms of Symbol Drawing, especially Sacred Architecture.

The people of this Quantum 5 worldline are unaware of Infinity or the Cabal.


Thoughts?
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Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.

Last edited by Prince Charon; 08-05-2020 at 07:11 PM.
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Old 08-21-2020, 09:22 AM   #37
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Default Re: [Path/Book Magic] 'Grimoire' worldlines

Apparently I'm bad at writing Current Events for timeline infoboxes, because I've been blanking on this and others for far too long. Suggestions are welcome.

Grimoire-2, 1951

Current Affairs
As the Cold War quietly simmers along and the Space Race continues apace, <something to do with supers?>


Divergence Point
Technically unknown, but historical inertia was weakened around 1770, when magic became slightly less secret, weakened again around World War One (some countries began teaching magic openly, and countries that did not exist on Homeline or Grimoire-1 formed), and may have died by the end of WWII.


Major Civilizations
Western (multipolar), Eastern (empire), Chinese (empire), Indic (bipolar).


Great Powers
United States of America (representative democracy, CR2), United Kingdom (representative democracy, CR2), Crowned Republic of France (oligarchy with democratic tendencies, CR3), Soviet Union (dictatorship, CR5), Republic of China (mageocratic oligarchy, CR4), Indian Republic (representative democracy, CR3), Dominion of South Asia (feudal with some democratic members, CR2-4), People's Republic of Transylvania and Wallachia (mageocratic dictatorship, CR5).


Worldline Data
TL: (6+1)^; Mana level: low with variations and ley lines at higher levels (some aspected)
Quantum: 4; Infinity Class: Z4; Centrum Zone: Inaccessible


Notes
The Dominion of South Asia is a not-very-united federation of territories on and near the Indian subcontinent, including but not limited to many of the Princely States of the region, whose one unifying ideal is 'we don't want to be absorbed by the Indian Republic or any of the other local polities, and will put up with each other and lingering British influence if that's what it takes to stop it.' This includes favorable trade agreements and British influence over the Dominion's foreign policy, British military basing rights in each member state, and a mutual defence treaty, but explicitly no official British influence on the internal policies of the member states (British influence on policies between member states is carefully not mentioned in any treaty or the Constitution). Member states vary from constitutional monarchies and republics to feudal mageocracies and near-oligarchies, though by the Dominion's constitution, actual dictatorships and full oligarchies cannot be members - the people must have some say in how they are governed.

The Republic of China is this Earth's largest mageocracy: originally, a few mages seized power separately in the Chinese Civil War (mostly after WWII), which inspired other mages to take power, sometimes successfully, and inspired non-mages to gather around them, eventually snowballing into a victorious mage-lead faction that had to figure out how to govern the huge territory and population for which they were now responsible. The RoC is carefully staying out of the Cold War, but would lean toward the capitalist side if forced to take one. Taiwan was briefly ruled by the People's Republic of China under the Gang of Four, but rapidly fell to a counter-revolution.

The People's Republic of Transylvania and Wallachia gives lip service to socialism and Marxist-Leninist communism, but is basically a dictatorship run by the centuries-old vampire magician Vlad Draculea (officially 'just' the Chairman of the Central Committee of the Transylvanian-Wallachian Socialist Party).


Thoughts?
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Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.
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Old 10-12-2020, 08:05 PM   #38
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Default Re: [Path/Book Magic] 'Grimoire' worldlines

Another one with an incomplete Current Affairs entry. Sorry.

Grimoire-4, 1997

Current Affairs
To Be Added <expansion of Martian colonies, debates over existence of corporate states>


Divergence Point
Divergence from homeline is unknown, but, but most likely more than a thousand years ago. Historical inertia was weakened in the early 1960s, when some hippies learned magic who probably didn't on Grimoire-1, and effectively died in 1967, when a group of magic-using hippies caused the Pentagon to shake and turn orange.


Major Civilizations
Western (multipolar), Eastern (empire with rivals), Chinese (empire), Indic (unitary).


Great Powers
United States of America (representative democracy, CR2); United Kingdom (representative democracy, CR3); France (representative democracy, CR3); Soviet Union (oligarchy leaning toward democracy, CR4); China (oligarchy, CR5); Argentine Republic (military & corporate oligarchy, CR4); Republic of Viet Nam (slightly mageocratic representative democracy, CR3); Voivodeship of Transylvania and Wallachia (mageocratic dictatorship, CR5); Principality of Dalmatia (corporate state, CR1 for the rich, CR5 for the poor).


Worldline Data
TL: (7+1)^; Mana level: low with variations and ley lines at higher levels (some aspected)
Quantum: 5; Infinity Class: Z3; Centrum Zone: Inaccessible


Notes
The Principality of Dalmatia is in theory a fairly free constitutional monarchy with a Westminster System, but in practice, significant privileges are given to the Saraka Group, the megacorp that the Prince owns: the corp has extraterritoriality on corporate property, which would be bad enough, but they also own most of the land, including schools, hospitals, farms, most homes, all poling locations ('your vote is company property'), the buildings in which the legislature and judiciary are legally allowed to transact official business, et cetra. About the only places where regular laws apply are the homes and estates of the very rich, a few tourist areas, and a scattering of other regions. Oddly, a very similar polity with the same name but a different founding family, founding date, and privileged corporation (and less influence beyond its own borders) exists on Grimoire-1.

Transylvania is sometimes called a 'necrocracy' or 'thanatocracy' in-setting, but in fact, one's capability with magic is the primary determiner of status in the Voivodeship, not one's state of life or undeath; the fact that Vlad Draculea is himself an old and powerful vampire is far less important than the fact that his age and experience have allowed him to become a very powerful magician, necromancer, and alchemist.


Thoughts?
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Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.
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Old 10-12-2020, 08:28 PM   #39
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Default Re: [Path/Book Magic] 'Grimoire' worldlines

The USA is not CR 2. It is CR 4 for Status -1 or -2, CR 3 for Status 0 and 1, and CR 2 for Status 2+ (when it comes to firearms, it is CR 2 for most people but CR 4 for ex-felons). The UK is also a parliamentary democracy, which has important differences from a representative democracy.
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Old 10-12-2020, 08:49 PM   #40
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Default Re: [Path/Book Magic] 'Grimoire' worldlines

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
The USA is not CR 2. It is CR 4 for Status -1 or -2, CR 3 for Status 0 and 1, and CR 2 for Status 2+ (when it comes to firearms, it is CR 2 for most people but CR 4 for ex-felons).
Grimoire-4 is not the Earth that we live on, it is a worldline that has diverged a fair bit in various places.

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
The UK is also a parliamentary democracy, which has important differences from a representative democracy.
I don't think GURPS Infinite Worlds makes that distinction.
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Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.
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