Setting implications of Book Magic

[VIVIT]

I have ideas in mind for a fantasy setting to which Book Magic feels quite thematically appropriate. (Specifically, a TL4+^ world that is in the process of shifting from a low-magic one to a high-magic one due to the proliferation of magical knowledge via the mundane technology of the printing press.) But I just can't wrap my head around how Book Magic is supposed to work.

Originally Posted by THM122

A version [of Path/Book Magic] that uses Books is more arbitrary and eccentric [than one that uses Paths], being based on a set of grimoires or similar references that exist as physical objects in the game world. Each Book may have some kind of theme or internal logic, but this is often obscure to all but advanced students – the organization of magic is much more a matter of style, or of the interests and peculiarities of various authors. Books do have a certain underlying coherence, however; anyone who studies a book will gain some idea of how to work any of the magic it describes.

Each Book corresponds to a skill to which all rituals contained within it default as techniques. I have so many questions about this, and I'm having difficulty articulating any of them because they're all trying to come out at once.

My basic assumption about spellbooks, which this idea of Books seems to support, is that they each contain a finite number of spells the way a cookbook contains a number of recipes. Applying this to Book magic as written means that any new rituals invented, because they are not a part of any existing Book, must be included in a new Book, which then becomes a whole new skill for magicians to learn before attempting the ritual.

Modernly speaking, an author could either write many short Books with a few rituals each or could write one long Book with many rituals. Basically, they could write GURPS Thaumatology, or they could write GURPS Thaumatology: Chinese Elemental Powers, GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery, GURPS Sorcery: Protection and Warning Spells, GURPS Thaumatology: Magical Styles, GURPS Magical Styles: Dungeon Magic, GURPS Thaumatology: Urban Magic, GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic, How to Be a GURPS GM: Ritual Path Magic, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy: Incantation Magic, etc.

Book Magic as written seems to suggest that each of these would be a different skill. The single-volume tome called GURPS Thaumatology is highly eclectic in content, but it says that Books are often eclectic. The moderately disorganized sprawl of closely related content across multiple books in the Thaumatology series is arbitrary, but the book explicitly calls Book Magic arbitrary in structure. And suppose that the whole series was later compiled into a single volume. Would "magicians" (GMs) studying "magic" (GURPS) from that volume then learn all of its "rituals" (rules) as a single skill even though earlier magicians had to learn it as separate skills? If not, then Thaumatology the book shouldn't be a single skill either, because it contains material taken from GURPS Cabal, GURPS Voodoo, and other sources. Does that mean we have to keep track of the original source of every single ritual in a Book and in order to know what skill to assign it to? If not, what's stopping a magician from compiling all the rituals he wants to teach his students into a single Book written by him so that they can learn it as a single skill?

This way of looking at it is very informed by modern publishing, but similar questions remain even looking at it from a more classical perspective. An apocryphal fourteenth and a fifteenth book of Euclid's Elements were sometimes included in the collection. The Septuagint includes one psalm more than the Masoretic Text. A magicians familiar with one version of a Book shouldn't logically be able to perform rituals from any other version, but what if he later studied another version? How would that work out with the skills system?

Path Magic on the whole seems much simpler to extend during a campaign. You think of a new ritual, decide which Path it goes with, assign penalties/energy requirements and you have a new ritual. Players could do it using the invention rules. How would that work out with Book Magic?

I've avoided Book Magic up until this point because of this confusion, although I haven't really taken the time to work out exactly what bothered me about it until now. How do you guys do Book Magic? Do you treat it as a static system where no new magic is being actively discovered and no new books are actively being written, possibly because the theoretical principles behind magic have been forgotten and no one wise enough to invent new rituals is alive anymore? That seems unsatisfying to me because it feels like dodging the question of "where does magic come from?"

[Plane]

I always took these to mean "it's Path Magic if you use our pre-established paths grouping more-similar-than-different rituals" and "it's Book Magic if you make your own paths grouping more-different-than-similar rituals".

[Donny Brook]

"Book" is shorthand for a body of magical knowledge (represented by a Skill) which links any group of diverse rituals (represented by Techniques) under it. GURPS: Thaumatology conceives of such a body of magical knowledge being traditionally bound in a volume, but at some point it also says a "Book" doesn't actually have to be in the form of a book.

So the "Book" magic mechanic can be used just as readily for, say, a song (represented by a Skill) containing musical phrases or themes (represented by Techniques) which when sung invoke magical effects like rituals do.

For new "Books", it's a GM decision how extensive and diverse the Techniques under it can be. And it's a GM decision whether and how new Techniques can be added to the same "Book" or whether the conception of them is 'too different' from the thematic concept of a given "Book" and so must be put in another "Book".

For example, a "Book" could be a stick with ideographic carvings, passed down from one shaman to the next, with each using the same "Book" skill while adding new rituals (Techniques) to it. Such a "Book" would gain in value from one author to the next but still be the same book. On the other hand, one mad Cthulhu priest might scrawl down his entire revelation on a single scroll ("Book") that amounts to only a handful of useable rituals (Techniques) and while they can be learned, they are too conceptually idiosyncratic for any subsequent mage to add too.

[Anaraxes]

Book magic is, I think, meant for settings in which there exist very few books that contain real spells -- a dozen, half a dozen, maybe only one. They're not settings where magic is widespread, with many guilds of mages studying copies of the book. More like Army of Darkness / Lovecraft, with the one and only Necronomicon, or Agents of Shield and their Darkhold book.

There might be various partial or distorted versions of the true "book" -- this would be more Lovecraftian, with various cults having pieces of the proper information. Many physical instances, all of which are incorrect or misleading to some degree. But it's all one "Book" for this purpose.

You might also think of books as more like schools of philosophy -- based around one master, perhaps, but not necessarily. The collected writings of the school (so not necessarily one physical item) are the main source, but the skill also includes studying the additions of various followers, commentators, and historians.

Since the definition of a "book" is fuzzy, you can extend it in play just by having the PCs make the appropriate discoveries. Or inventions, as the canon isn't necessarily fixed. (If the setting says that magic is just knowledge from the Elder Gods, then you're not going to invent a spell. But if it's more along the lines of the papyri collected by one particular ancient scholar, there's more to be found, and more possibility of later invention along those principles.) Different books don't have to represent incompatible kinds of magic; their different skills just means it takes a lot of study to comprehend that particular author, particularly when you have to deal with his obscure forgotten tongue, eccentricities, predilection for hiding the point behind riddles to test seekers, ciphers to hide from the witch-hunters, or floridly poetic imagery because that's his style, rather than neat formulae. The next Book over has a whole different set of obstacles to learn that have nothing to do with executing the magic per se. (Maybe there's a PC with the goal of organizing it all into a nice clear encyclopedia.)

As the intro to Path/Book puts it, "The difference between the two approaches is largely one of flavor." There's not a need for hard boundaries unless that's the way you want your books to work. There's no real difference mechanically between the two. Just that "Paths" are meant to give the flavor of some related bunch of knowledge, like standard Magic colleges or Realm magic realms and spheres. "Books" are more arbitrary collections not so thematically structured, and so might cross those path/college/realm sorts of boundaries.

In short, Books contain whatever you want them to contain. One reason GMs might want to use Book magic is simply to control PC access to different spells, rather than the expectation that anything in the spell list or implementable with the design system is available at the local wizards' guild.

[Michael Cule]

I'm currently thinking that the diverse collections of magic taught by the Temples of Tekumel, with some spells known to all ritual magic users, some known to some Temples and not others and yet others the exclusive secret of one Temple alone are functionally Books. They're collections of magic that are partly the result of the obsessions of the gods (Vimuhla has the biggest range of magical means to set things on fire: Thumis has the best information seeking spells) and partly the result of historical accident.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by VIVIT

My basic assumption about spellbooks, which this idea of Books seems to support, is that they each contain a finite number of spells the way a cookbook contains a number of recipes. Applying this to Book magic as written means that any new rituals invented, because they are not a part of any existing Book, must be included in a new Book, which then becomes a whole new skill for magicians to learn before attempting the ritual.

Well, you could do it that way if you wanted, but it seems to imply that Books are very hard to create or extend. If you want Books to be created by Greater Powers of some kind (Gods, great mages of the golden age, Illuminati, etc), then this is a way to accomplish that.

If you want PCs to be able to create new spells, then the descriptions of Book magic do imply that adding a spell to a Book is only possible if it's quite closely linked to the existing ones in the Book. So extensions and variations would be possible, but if you wanted to create a new Book, you'd have to devise a new linking concept for it, create its first spell and a new skill, and then start extending that.

Originally Posted by VIVIT

Path Magic on the whole seems much simpler to extend during a campaign. You think of a new ritual, decide which Path it goes with, assign penalties/energy requirements and you have a new ritual. Players could do it using the invention rules.

I agree with you there.