Gurps Chaos Magic

[FuddFenderson]

Hello all. Was wondering if anyone knew anything about Chaos magic in GURPS. I believe technically psi powers are similar but still.

[johndallman]

What do you mean by "Chaos Magic"? There are many possible meanings:

• Magic systems that emulate the chaos magic or wild magic systems of other games?
• Magic systems that emulate the Chaos Magic of the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
• Magic systems that have very unpredictable costs for working magic, or very unpredictable effects?
• The postmodern Chaos Magick of real-world occultists?
• Something else?

[FuddFenderson]

Good sir I mean exactly the postmodern definition. I have been searching for such types of resources for chess with little success.

Thank you so much for your saintly response please let us keep this chat going.

I would say more but I'm not sure where you're at !

Best

JT

[Dalillama]

See if you can find a copy of Isaac Bonewitz' Authentic Thaumaturgy.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Chaos magic teaches that the essence of magic is that perceptions are conditioned by beliefs, and that the world as we perceive it can be changed by deliberately changing those beliefs. Chaos magicians subsequently treat belief as a tool... From the beginning, chaos magic has had a tendency to draw on the symbolism of pop culture in addition to that of traditional magical systems; the rationale being that all symbol systems are equally arbitrary, and thus equally valid – the belief invested in them being the thing that matters.

That description reminds me quite a lot of the metaphysics for magic in Mage: the Ascension. The White Wolf system had a GURPS 3e adaptation, which in turn was the basis for the "Realm Magic" system in 4e Thaumatology (p188, filed under "Syntactic Magic"). Tuning the exact number and scope of the Realms and levels within would be an important worldbuilding task to get the flavor that you want.

[hal]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

See if you can find a copy of Isaac Bonewitz' Authentic Thaumaturgy.

For a low price, you too can own a copy from warehouse 23 - a digital copy that is.

;)

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by hal

For a low price, you too can own a copy from warehouse 23 - a digital copy that is.

By following this link, even.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by FuddFenderson

Good sir I mean exactly the postmodern definition.

Aha! GURPS does not have a ready-built system for that, but it does have good tools for building custom magic systems. Start with GURPS Thaumatology, available here.

Authentic Thaumaturgy, available here, is not a GURPS book, but it may well help with the problem of making rules and setting limits for chaos magick. That isn't really in the spirit of that art, but is necessary for a game.

You may be able to save yourself work by "re-skinning" one of the many existing magic systems, such as Thaumatology: Sorcery or Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic. However, you're going to need to refine your model of chaos magick before you do that.

Addendum: Realm Magic, which is in Thaumatology, was suggested above. Another candidate would be Path/Book Magic, most of whose effects can be interpreted as lucky accidents or coincidences, which is appropriate for real-world systems that actually work. That's also in Thaumatology.