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SirKazum
2015-06-09, 03:08 PM
Inspired by the threads about De-Tolkienizing (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?418221-De-Tolkienizing-D-amp-D) and then Re-Tolkienizing (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?418264-Tolkienizing-D-amp-D) D&D, I got to thinking what could one change about D&D to make it more like "classical" fantasy - by which I mean the sort that was around before not just Tolkien, but sword & sorcery stories in general. Which means drawing from legends, myths and fairytales that people used to tell way back in the day, as if they were real.

One thing that springs to mind right away is that magic should be more low-key. I mean sure, there are all sorts of wondrous weird stuff that gets done by magic in fairytales like say, Jack and the Beanstalk, but the more out-there stuff either just "happens" or is the result of intervention by God, gods, or powerful beings such as genies, faeries, and so on. Heroes and other "normal" people (including most villains) don't get to do anything too crazy with magic. Which also jives well with the sort of powers promised by old grimoires and magical rituals - at most, you'll be able to get invisible or fly, or even strike an enemy dead, but most magic relates to subtle things like acquiring information, influencing people's behavior, and protecting yourself from harm in general.

Which, by the way, might be a nice way to "fix" D&D's balance issues. As we all know, spellcasting classes basically make everyone else obsolete - the core of the "tier" system - which not only sucks from a gameplay perspective, but also ruins in-character thematics, such as the idea that martial classes should be, y'know, good at combat. In order to remedy that, I personally think that spellcasting shouldn't try to do the same thing non-casters do - in other words, hurt/kill enemies, skulk around, investigate, and so on. Well, they might do such things, but in a significantly less effective manner than a member of a non-magical class that specializes on that activity. Instead, magic should be focused on achieving things that are outright impossible by nonmagical means. Predict the future, create extradimensional spaces, talk to the dead, that sort of stuff. In other words, magical and non-magical classes should not compete, but rather act in different ways. And this "classical" outlook on fantasy might be particularly conductive to that.

However, this approach necessitates making D&D about more than just combat. Newer editions, especially the 4th, are made under the assumption that all characters should be equally useful in combat. Under my approach, that's simply not the case - in combat, fighters shine, they're what carries the fight and decide which side wins. Other classes participate and help in different ways, but don't win fights. And that's not a problem because other classes will get to shine in other moments, since combat is just a small portion of the game.

Rant over.

Okay, so magic should be probably less powerful in general. And so should monsters, by the way - or at least, they should be less dependent on special abilities or attacks (energy attacks, magic weapons, buff/debuff spells etc.) to defeat. Most beasts should be able to be defeated by a band of reasonably powerful (i.e. level at or close to their CR) fighters using ordinary weapons, with rare exceptions.

The specifics of that are a matter of deeper investigation and homebrewing (a preliminary idea I came up with is restricting the world's existing classes to Warrior, Expert and Adept - as well as the Commoner for NPCs, of course), but thinking about what you tend to see in both legends/fairytales and real-world magical traditions, I've come up with the following magic system, which about sums up the sort of thing you see in those sources:

Magic is that which is out of the ordinary, outside the reach of human ability, and as such, requires some otherworldly source for one's powers, usually by calling upon supernatural entities. Classical Fantasy has the following types of magic:

Theurgy: This is perhaps the most straightforward kind of magic. Theurges invoke benevolent supernatural entities such as gods (or God), spirits, angels, genies and so on, and implore for their help, thus being granted the use of some magical effects by their otherworldly patrons. Theurgic magic is often protective or "buffing", but also frequently serves to undermine one's enemies by reducing their capabilities.

Summoning: This sort of magic also calls upon supernatural beings, but differs from theurgy in the nature of the relationship between such beings and the spellcaster. A summoner usually (though not necessarily) calls forth demons, devils, or other unsavory entities, and then forces them into servitude by binding them into a talisman or another such magically-sealed device. The entity then grants magical powers to its captor, at least until it manages to break free. Despite dealing with demons and other such evil beings, summoners are not necessarily evil themselves - after all, their relationship with the summoned entities is anything but friendly, and many rationalize their spellcasting as just making evil creatures work for the greated good, which is doubly worthy. Summoning spells are often aimed at granting supernatural powers (such as flight, invisibility, intangibility etc.) to the caster, uncovering secret information, or afflicting enemies with various curses.

Divining: Diviners are those magicians that know the secret lore of sacred words, sacred geometry, numerology, astrology, the music of the spheres, and other such patterns and imprints of the forces of Creation on the world. They do not depend on supernatural entities to work their magic, but rather on divine properties inherent to reality itself, usually echoing the creation of the Universe by God/the gods. They excel at discovering information, especially about the future, but Divining magic can do other things as well, such as casting protective charms, influencing the behavior of others or manipulating the forces of Fate.

Alchemy: This is the sacred, ancient doctrine of transmutation, which exceeds mere chemical reactions, but rather aims to transmute soul and spirit as well as base materials. Alchemy involves using magic (from any of the three sources above) to steer laboratorial procedures, attained through diligent effort and experimentation, in order to transmute physical things into other things, alter the properties of objects or substances, or create concoctions that can heal ailments or grant special abilities to their user.

Thaumaturgy: Also known as "miracle-working", Thaumaturgy is the result of the direct manifestation of divine entities on the world, through the vessel of a prophet, messiah or avatar (the thaumaturge). Being a manifestation of divine will, thaumaturgic spells don't have many of the restrictions of other forms of magic (such as verbal, somatic and material components), and can do miraculous things like heal the sick, protect the thaumaturge and fellow worshippers from harm, and even strike dead the deity's enemies. Thaumaturges also tend to have the gift of prophecy, which serves to both make their deity's words known to the public, and also steer the miracle-worker into carrying out their deity's will.

If the magic system is to have a distinction between "regular" spells, cast from spell slots, and rituals, which take more time and have costly material components but do not use spell slots (such as in 4th and 5th editions), there should be both "regular" spells and rituals of the Theurgic, Summoning and Divining types; Alchemical rituals only, but no "regular" spells (there should be no Alchemist class, but a feat or something that allows Theurges, Summoners and Diviners to perform alchemical rituals); and no rituals, only regular spells, within Thaumaturgy. (You do not perform rituals to tell your God what to do. Miracles come from your God, period, and if He wishes them to come true, they do so immediately.

I've got a couple ideas for how the different magical classes might work mechanically, but I'll leave that for a future time, perhaps in the Homebrew forum.

So, thoughts? Anyone here know more about this "classical fantasy", or even worked with it in RPG?

Knaight
2015-06-09, 03:16 PM
It really depends on what you're going for with regards to classical fantasy - take out Tokien, and the big influences left are mythology and sword and sorcery, which are very distinct. How you handle just about every aspect of the game depends on which of the two you emphasize. If swords and sorcery are emphasized then the monsters get toned down, magic becomes a largely evil force often centered in cults, the opposition becomes more human, and character level absolutely needs to be toned down. If going for mythology, bring on the big monsters, bring on the gods and divine intervention, and bring on the high powered characters.

Then there are the elements that come from it being a game more than anything. The level system is well suited to heroes journey type tales where the common person grows to become a mythical figure. It's not so well suited to much of anything else - mythological heroes are usually a cut above from day one, sword and sorcery heroes generally stay pretty human level, though they do become more skilled.

VoxRationis
2015-06-09, 03:22 PM
Being myself fond of sword and sorcery-type stories and characters, I'd argue that gaining experience should be the acquisition of skill, not power. A high-level swordsman might be nigh-undefeatable by combat in his chosen field, but falls quickly if someone does manage to land a hit on them. A magician, if a dedicated magician is even a thing in the system, can do "trickier," more difficult, and more complex works of magic, but they are never able to summon more powerful magics—any true power comes from extrinsic sources, and almost always at high risk and high cost.

Yora
2015-06-09, 04:57 PM
I am working on a lightweight Sword & Sorcery game based on B/X D&D and I am using a magic system based on the psionic system from Stars Without Number. Which in turn is mostly the Expanded Psionic Handbook system but without augmentation to make it faster and easier.

Cluedrew
2015-06-09, 08:21 PM
I love the feel of that. Lots of magic can be fun, but some times going back to the old ways, where it is rare and mysterious, is fun to. "Swish army knife" magic can lack character, especially in a game where the details are abstracted away.

I think you have a very good base there. For a minute I though you had left out the Witch Doctor type, but have some herb variant alchemy, theurgy for "good spirits" and summoning for "bad spirits" and you got it. I suppose you could add other fields but re-using the old ones probably would work as well.

hiryuu
2015-06-09, 09:25 PM
Sword & sorcery junk is going to be your primary inspiration if you want "low" magic - otherwise you're going to be dealing with things that make the stuff you do in D&D look like chump adventures. Whether it's gods/genies/whatever or not, remember that PCs (in D&D, at least) are supposed to be those people who can tell gods to intervene on their behalf, and gods do it because otherwise you're coming up there with a +1 axe to grind and half a bottle of NyQuil.

This is a peeve of mine, actually. Modern fantasy is seriously toned down - it got toned down heavily in the 1920s-30s during the sword and sorcery/planetary romance movement because "low magic" was different at the time.

In Hindu mythology you have people doing stuff like killing Death itself, taking archery shots that knock off heads and fling them around the world until they land in their father's lap and explode into a hundred pieces and killing the poor man, and orbital dive bombing during bar brawls. In European mythology you have armies of the dead being raised so they can ride liquid metal lions into battle against armies of dragons. In American mythology you have people having babies out of their hands and challenging gods to ball games and (more recently) dudes who ride tornadoes around like they're draft animals or carve the Grand Canyon by accident. China is pretty nutters, too, with dudes punching tiger demons so hard their evil falls out, takes on a physical form, dwells on the earth for ten million years, and has to be sealed up by a giant wall so big that it's the galaxy we live in. Hawaiian mythology has a sun-powered dude from space with super-strength, laser eyes, and fishing skills that let him catch fish that turn into islands.

You want magic items? How about a hook that turns any fish you catch into a continent-sized monster? Seashells that double as laser guns that shoot nuclear beams? An untanned lion skin cloak that provides you with indestructibility? A golden floating halo ring deal that starts a disco of Save-or-Die when you command? A bow that blows up the universe if you miss with it? A sword that can cut through eight dragon heads at the same time and can be telekinetically wielded from miles away?

This is the weak stuff, mind you.

I just never saw "classical" fantasy as low magic, I guess. Anyway, yeah, your best bet is to go with sword & sorcery (though if you've read a lot of the genre, most of the "cost" of doing magic is "you accidentally become an all-powerful dimensional being so strong you just stop caring about the problem you were trying to solve"), post-Atlantis type Howard stuff. One system that I've used for that is Cartoon Action Hour, and nWoD 2e - which makes a great system where getting nicked by a sword is potentially deadly. BFRP also does this well (it's based on the Call of Cthulhu chassis).

SirKazum
2015-06-09, 09:50 PM
Sword & sorcery junk is going to be your primary inspiration if you want "low" magic - otherwise you're going to be dealing with things that make the stuff you do in D&D look like chump adventures. Whether it's gods/genies/whatever or not, remember that PCs (in D&D, at least) are supposed to be those people who can tell gods to intervene on their behalf, and gods do it because otherwise you're coming up there with a +1 axe to grind and half a bottle of NyQuil.

This is a peeve of mine, actually. Modern fantasy is seriously toned down - it got toned down heavily in the 1920s-30s during the sword and sorcery/planetary romance movement because "low magic" was different at the time.

In Hindu mythology you have people doing stuff like killing Death itself, taking archery shots that knock off heads and fling them around the world until they land in their father's lap and explode into a hundred pieces and killing the poor man, and orbital dive bombing during bar brawls. In European mythology you have armies of the dead being raised so they can ride liquid metal lions into battle against armies of dragons. In American mythology you have people having babies out of their hands and challenging gods to ball games and (more recently) dudes who ride tornadoes around like they're draft animals or carve the Grand Canyon by accident. China is pretty nutters, too, with dudes punching tiger demons so hard their evil falls out, takes on a physical form, dwells on the earth for ten million years, and has to be sealed up by a giant wall so big that it's the galaxy we live in. Hawaiian mythology has a sun-powered dude from space with super-strength, laser eyes, and fishing skills that let him catch fish that turn into islands.

You want magic items? How about a hook that turns any fish you catch into a continent-sized monster? Seashells that double as laser guns that shoot nuclear beams? An untanned lion skin cloak that provides you with indestructibility? A golden floating halo ring deal that starts a disco of Save-or-Die when you command? A bow that blows up the universe if you miss with it? A sword that can cut through eight dragon heads at the same time and can be telekinetically wielded from miles away?

This is the weak stuff, mind you.

I just never saw "classical" fantasy as low magic, I guess. Anyway, yeah, your best bet is to go with sword & sorcery (though if you've read a lot of the genre, most of the "cost" of doing magic is "you accidentally become an all-powerful dimensional being so strong you just stop caring about the problem you were trying to solve"), post-Atlantis type Howard stuff. One system that I've used for that is Cartoon Action Hour, and nWoD 2e - which makes a great system where getting nicked by a sword is potentially deadly. BFRP also does this well (it's based on the Call of Cthulhu chassis).

Hm. I guess I was thinking about the sort of medieval folk-tales where the craziest stuff that happens is along the lines of "whoa I was talking to this dude, but suddenly he's totally not there anymore, and there's a feather or something where he was, I guess he's an angel or whatever". But yeah, mythology can get pretty crazy. Seems in the old-timey world (at least in tales set in the days of the ancients, as opposed to recent times), when gods are involved, all bets are off. I was thinking more along the lines of those low-key folktales though. Stuff that supposedly happened just around the corner to people like you and me, and you were supposed to take seriously, as opposed to creation myths and such.

Cluedrew
2015-06-09, 09:57 PM
It is a good point. Although I think there is a difference between "classic fantasy" and "mythology". Quite a big difference too, mythology is people trying to describe how the world works in ways they can understand and creating theories of varying accuracy.

I do agree though that there is a reason Thor became a comic book hero, even what some of the Hindu gods might have been more suited. I can remember one story where a guy threatened the sea with a bow and arrow. And it worked.

Zale
2015-06-10, 05:56 AM
I can remember one story where a guy threatened the sea with a bow and arrow. And it worked.


Rama said slowly, "The ocean is arrogant, Lakshmana. It seems that in this age of the world, the pacific way of sama is ineffectual. Even the Lords of the elements have regard only for violence, and honor is to be had only from fear. Varuna does not understand my gentleness, or he should have stood before us by now. But since he seems to believe I am a weakling, whose prayers are not worth hearing, I will change my method.
"Bring me my bow, Lakshmana. Let us see what Varuna does when I make vapor of his waters with my astras, and all his fish lie heaving on an arid bed of sand. The vanaras will walk on dry land to Lank, where my Sita waits in anguish for me."

Quietly, Lakshaman fetched the bow and quiver. Rama stood forth on that shore like the fire at the end of the yugas. He folded his hands briefly to the ocean. Assuming the archer's stance, alidha, he fitted arrow after arrow to his bow, and they flashed whistling at the waves.

The sky grew dark as twilight. Thunder echoed in the darkness, and supernaturally vivid lightning divided the sky in jagged gashes. Rama's shafts of light and flames flew hissing into the waves risen like giant shields to meet them. His arrows pierced the waves as common barbs do flesh. In amazement, in fear, Lakshmana and the vanaras heard the ocean screaming above the roar of its tide, in a cavernous voice. They heard Rama roar like an angry god. They heard the report of his bowstring, again and again.

The earth shook. They sky was agitated and waves rose like mountains in the stricken sea, tall as Mandara or Kailasa. The monkeys lost their nerve at the awesome violence; most of them fled screaming up Mahendra. Rama stood like a flame himself on the shore. The ocean howled back at him in pain and fury. But the arrows raged from his hands, a river of fire in spate. Whales, sea serpents, and schools of brilliant fish leaped above the seething water in terror. But they could not escape; all the ocean burned. Hilly flames danced beneath its surface, in the belly of the Lord of waves.

A shocked Lakshmana fell at his brother's feet and clutched his hand. He cried, "Abandon this wrath, Rama! Return to the peaceful paths of our fathers. You can win this war without laying waste the sea."

From the dark sea there rose a great lament, and a hundred heavenly voices cried to the prince of light, "Rama, do not dry up the ancient sea."

But Rama heard neither his brother nor the supernal ones. He snatched his hand from Lakshmana, and the river of flames flowed again from his bow. In a terrible voice that was hardly his, gentle Rama roared, "Varuna! I will make a desert of you and the vanaras shall cross into Lanka over your dry corpse."

He paused his prodigious archery, then cried again, "I will consume you and the Patalas below you. All your denizens, fish, and whale, shark and timmingala, will lie rotting under the sun."

Then, standing like a burning rock upon the tempestuous beach, Rama invoked the brahmastra. It seemed earth and sky would crack open when he chanted the mantra to summon that weapon into his hands. The twilight of the world turned to a night of dread. The sun and moon strayed dizziliy from their orbits. At midmorning, stars twinkled down clearly on the earth. A thousand meteors scorched down into the hissing water. All the slow and stable elements seemed ready to come undone, at the very quick of themselves, where the grace of creation held them bound in time. Chaos verged on the world.

Gale winds from the sea uprooted knotted old trees and blew them about like wisps of straw. Streaks of lightning fell out of the heavens, their rutilant whiplashes seeming to begin in the stars. Woven into the roar of the storm rang the piteous cries of the beasts of the earth, among them Sugriva's vanaras. Lions and tigers whimpered like frightened cats, and great bears wept for fear in their caves. The weaker, gentler animals were in an absolute frenzy. They dashed about blindly, shrieking, but found no refuge from Rama's ubiquitous rage.

As Lakshmana watched in disbelief, the ocean receded from the shore; like a whipped cur the sea fled from Rama's fury. A yojana of dry seabed lay exposed, its pale expanse strewn with the piteous carcasses of its creatures. Dolphin and shark, great whale, whale-eating giant squid, and floundering fish of every hue and size all lay gasping their last on the desert of Rama's anger.

Classic mythology is pretty high up.

Not that fairytales are any better. In them, magic is usually unknowable and inscrutable, narrow in scope but absolute in it's power.

Magic swords that cut anything, cloaks that make you utterly impossible to detect, horses that flew faster than anything could move, etc. Magic was more in things than something you cast.

hiryuu
2015-06-10, 02:12 PM
Hm. I guess I was thinking about the sort of medieval folk-tales where the craziest stuff that happens is along the lines of "whoa I was talking to this dude, but suddenly he's totally not there anymore, and there's a feather or something where he was, I guess he's an angel or whatever". But yeah, mythology can get pretty crazy. Seems in the old-timey world (at least in tales set in the days of the ancients, as opposed to recent times), when gods are involved, all bets are off. I was thinking more along the lines of those low-key folktales though. Stuff that supposedly happened just around the corner to people like you and me, and you were supposed to take seriously, as opposed to creation myths and such.

How about the one where the devil keeps meeting a guy every year to take his crops? How about the one about the guy who literally traps death in a sack? What about the one wherea witch feeds her husband his own sons and they're reincarnated as crows that attack the old lady with a giant millstone? How about that time a giant anthropomorphic hedgehog with a magical teleporting castle that can command entire forests to grow tries to marry a princess? I went to college for folklore. There is some crazy stuff.

It is important to remember that mythology with gods did supposedly happen just around the corner to people like you and me - and that such stories are meant to be contemporary, not ancient. The Greek gods really did live in Olympus and they tooled around cursing things all the time, I know because Orgus' best friend's cousin's sister saw Zeus do it! There are people in the modern era who claim that stuff like their house being attacking by eighty foot tall demons is happening now. Seriously, the Maui story is about a guy who just lives over there on the next island. Again, PCs are supposed to be the Arjunas, the Beowulfs, the Hercules with his labors. Wizards are explicitly (at least in 1e/red book) parallels to Gandalf and Merlin - who were gods in their respective mythologies. Pecos Pill is just a guy. Paul Bunyan is just a guy. Glooscapi is just a guy. The Jade Emperor was a human at one point. And these are people who flew on clouds, roped thunderstorms, and played music so wonderfully that it made eyeless, deaf beings cry.

As I said, if you're looking for something "low magic," you're looking for BRP or nWoD and you're going to want to dig around the fantasy fiction of the 20s-30s.

If you're looking for something "folk tale"-like, D&D works just fine. You just have to get players out of the mindset that they need to all optimize all the time and that they can get magic items by just hopping down to the corner druggist. Skill-based challenges will be common - and don't shirk away from letting them optimize that junk - getting a 50 on a Perform check is just stuff that happens in a folktale setting. Magic items everywhere (none of them are the big six, though). Skill challenges to do crazy junk - using the Ride skill on a cloud. Remember, in a lot of folklore, the form of something is its function. Clouds fly through the air and look like big pillows/sections of land, so they act like pillows/sections of land. The depth of water is measured by how obscure the bottom is, whether it's calm or fast moving (water moving rapidly over pebbles to obscure the bottom means the bottom is thousands of feet down). Perfectly normal items are magical, all of them - sacks can trap gods, supernatural beings have very specific, often weird, rules, wizards can cast the huge, impressive stuff but none of the mundane utility junk.

Wardog
2015-06-13, 02:20 PM
There are two long ridges of hills near where I live.

Supposedly they used to be a dragon that had been raiding the countryside. Until somone (just a local peasant, not the son of a god or anything) sneaked up on it while it was sleeping and cut in in half with an axe.

TheThan
2015-06-13, 04:10 PM
There are two long ridges of hills near where I live.

Supposedly they used to be a dragon that had been raiding the countryside. Until somone (just a local peasant, not the son of a god or anything) sneaked up on it while it was sleeping and cut in in half with an axe.

that's either a puny dragon, or a really big axe.

But yeah as others have said. when it comes to mythology, magic is a major force in the world. It's not always in the hands of the protagonists but it's there and usually has a direct influence on the narrative.

goto124
2015-06-14, 03:45 AM
or a really big axe.

I like the mental imagery already.

Ashtagon
2015-06-14, 03:55 AM
that's either a puny dragon, or a really big axe.

I'm here to chop dragons and grind axes, and I'm all out of grinding stones.

Closet_Skeleton
2015-06-14, 11:04 AM
If you're looking for something "folk tale"-like, D&D works just fine. You just have to get players out of the mindset that they need to all optimize all the time and that they can get magic items by just hopping down to the corner druggist.

Not in unmodified 3rd ed you can't. An adventurer without access to any magic item he wants is doomed to be a glass cannon.

You know what corner druggists used to sell in medieval Europe? Similar stuff to what they sell in some parts of China*. Unicorn testacles and dragon armpit sweat being available on the common market isn't "high fantasy", its just what people used to claim to sell.

The Boxer Rebellion isn't fantasy. A army of martial artists with so called magic weapons and armour actually existed less than 200 years ago. In Burma during the 19th century spells to make you bullet proof weren't rare and special, they were standard issue. If you want to go to a shaman and waste money on supposedly magic bullets that's something one can do quite easily in the real world.

A fantasy world where magic is more real but rarer than in our world is kind of weird when you step outside of your current cultural surroundings and think about it.

Jack in the Beanstalk is one of the most well known western folk tales and that's about a boy buying magic stuff on the common market.

*not that asia is especially backwards or in love with dodgy medicine, they just have more animal parts and less homeopathy

Eldan
2015-06-14, 11:22 AM
I'd say there'^s only one way to keep magic rare and mysterious: keep it away from the players.

If even one player regularly uses magic, it has to be regulated, predictable and at least semi-reliable.

Most "player characters", so to speak, in the source material, don't have the big magic. They fight it, or are steered by it.

Frozen_Feet
2015-06-14, 12:50 PM
@Closet Skeleton: But the thing is, those things didn't really work in real life. And you can copy just fine to a fantasy setting: not every thing claimed to be magical has to be so.

RPGPundit has a set of excellent articles on "Real Magick" in RPGs, and the single biggest point he makes is: 95% of self-proclaimed magicians are posers or frauds. They own the paraphernalia associated with magick, but don't actually practice it. Or never get beyond the apprentice stuff.

So if you want to rip-off imitate the feel of mythological and really-existing magic systems and still have a low-magic/low-fantasy setting, that's the way I think you should go.

SirKazum
2015-06-14, 05:59 PM
@Closet Skeleton: But the thing is, those things didn't really work in real life. And you can copy just fine to a fantasy setting: not every thing claimed to be magical has to be so.

RPGPundit has a set of excellent articles on "Real Magick" in RPGs, and the single biggest point he makes is: 95% of self-proclaimed magicians are posers or frauds. They own the paraphernalia associated with magick, but don't actually practice it. Or never get beyond the apprentice stuff.

So if you want to rip-off imitate the feel of mythological and really-existing magic systems and still have a low-magic/low-fantasy setting, that's the way I think you should go.

That sounds like a fair enough compromise. As well as the understanding that the more outrageous stuff in legends and tales and such is just that; just tall tales. Sure, the result wouldn't be ostensibly like what happens in legends, but it might be a more down-to-earth version of that, and might still resonate well with the mentality of a medieval or ancient society.

Closet_Skeleton
2015-06-14, 07:09 PM
So if you want to rip-off imitate the feel of mythological and really-existing magic systems and still have a low-magic/low-fantasy setting, that's the way I think you should go.

How many magic items are around isn't the same thing as how the world's culture is suffused with the concept of magic.

If you want a setting based on the mindset of the middle ages, then the Supernatural has to be everywhere. It doesn't have to have +5 swords and level 10+ wizards everywhere but it can't be 'most of the population would never expect to encounter magic in their lives'.

VoxRationis
2015-06-15, 03:22 AM
Wrong: The mindset of the Middle Ages was that people thought the supernatural was everywhere, because they understood very little of the natural (among other things). If the humans in your setting have anything like human mindsets in real life, they too would exaggerate, speculate, and even wholly invent fantastic elements that they might claim to exist. This is one of the problems I have with a lot of settings I see for campaigns: they assume that stories of fantastical elements can be taken at face value, because there is some magic in the setting. This implies a well-studied universe, with a history of research into the phenomena and rules of the world that mirrors that of the 20th century in Earth. But if the mindset and tone is really to mimic times from our past, then none of those stories would be reliable—a single wizard casting burning hands becomes a demonspawned sorcerer immolating towns, and a creature with one magical ability might become purported to have several, many completely unrelated and wholly the invention of storytellers.

Frozen_Feet
2015-06-15, 05:45 AM
If you want a setting based on the mindset of the middle ages, then the Supernatural has to be everywhere.

No, people only have to think it is everywhere. These are distinct phenomena and lead to very different settings. People can expect to encounter magic, yet never encounter any.

Yora
2015-06-15, 06:52 AM
The supernatural being there and the supernatural being available for your personal use are two very different things.

SirKazum
2015-06-15, 07:09 AM
Wrong: The mindset of the Middle Ages was that people thought the supernatural was everywhere, because they understood very little of the natural (among other things). If the humans in your setting have anything like human mindsets in real life, they too would exaggerate, speculate, and even wholly invent fantastic elements that they might claim to exist. This is one of the problems I have with a lot of settings I see for campaigns: they assume that stories of fantastical elements can be taken at face value, because there is some magic in the setting. This implies a well-studied universe, with a history of research into the phenomena and rules of the world that mirrors that of the 20th century in Earth. But if the mindset and tone is really to mimic times from our past, then none of those stories would be reliable—a single wizard casting burning hands becomes a demonspawned sorcerer immolating towns, and a creature with one magical ability might become purported to have several, many completely unrelated and wholly the invention of storytellers.

Very well-put. Much of fantasy, horror and other such genres make the assumption that the concept of exaggerating stuff or even making stuff up simply does not exist. That, to me, is even more unrealistic than warriors that take dozens of arrows before they die. And it's not just an RPG thing - in books, movies etc., if rumors claim there is a creature that does X, Y, and Z, there will be a creature that does exactly X, Y and Z, precisely matching the rumors. The exceptions to that rule are extremely rare. Whereas, in real life, people will often exaggerate the most mundane and day-to-day things, so it stands to reason that extraordinary stuff like magic and monsters will be even more wildly exaggerated. In other words - just because magic is real in a given setting, doesn't mean everything that people claim to do by magic is real.

Closet_Skeleton
2015-06-15, 05:31 PM
Wrong


No

I didn't put type point very well but you seem to be massively exaggerating my position. You could have made all the same points without being adversarial about it.

I never said you can't have charlatans in a fantasy setting. Though you would probably have multiple kinds of charlatans. You wouldn't just have non-magicians pretending to be magicians, you'd also have magicians pretending to be other sorts of magicians, gods pretending to be mortals, supernatural creatures pretending to be other kinds of supernatural creatures etc.

On the other hand, there's always the possibility that a fairy will come along and pull a prank by making a fake magician's spells have real effects. Or that some idiot will cast a spell by accident.

One problem is that the moment the 'army of guys who think they have invulnerability spells' get into a fight with the army of guys who actually are invulnerable, one of them gets wiped out. You'd very quickly end up with a setting where there are two kinds of soldiers, invincible ones and dead ones. Then your 'but most of the magic is fake' concept doesn't work because someone has already conquered the planet because there isn't enough magic going around for anyone to stand up to him.

Though a world where the supernatural and the mundane are completely separate categories is very modern thinking. Creating a world where some unicorn horns are fake and some aren't is not the same thing as a world where there are magic animals which are rare and nonmagic animals which are common. To a medieval person a dragon or a unicorn is not 'special', they are just animals in the same category as a sheep or a mongoose. Many animals we consider mundane today are described very weirdly in medieval sources. Most people in Europe never got to see an Elephant, as far as they knew such an animal might just be a tall tale. Many 'mythological' animals are probably just real animals who have gone through a Chinese whispers effect.

In some fairy stories magic items are exotic in origin and out of the ordinary, but in others a doll maker can make his creations come alive just by being a really skilled dollmaker, no magic added. You can have a setting where magic and mundane is a false dichotomy and the idea of 'fake magic' is nonsensical. That's the sort of thing you can do if you want to play around with different mindsets.

A 'magic creatures exist in secret but everyone believes in them' historical based setting is still very close to a typical masquerade based urban fantasy setting just transplanted back in time. It can be done well enough to make sense but its a inherently different story to a 'the past but the world works the way people used to think it did' setting.

VoxRationis
2015-06-15, 07:37 PM
To a medieval person a dragon or a unicorn is not 'special', they are just animals in the same category as a sheep or a mongoose.

Yeah... No. Such creatures were special even in the old tales, beasts of note and well-worth the attentions of saints and other notable figures.

Mighty_Chicken
2015-06-16, 01:25 AM
Everything that was different could be seemed as marvelous - that's what the word "monster" even means. Medieval Europeans thought black-skinned people were as real and astonishing as headless people.

If you'd ask my grandmother what a dustdevil is, she would say it's a devil indeed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saci_(Brazilian_folklore)). It's just a dustdevil, it's not the end of the world, it's not the X-Files; but it isn't something completely ok either. It's menacing because it has a soul and a mind and it can surprise you at any moment.

Forty years in the past, a friend of mine moved deep into Amazon, to the Rondonia territory - before it became a state. People there were either government bureaucrat and their families or the "native", descendents of Amerindians and white and black folk who had settled there for a century or so. When a young lady came up pregnant and no one knew who the father was, the young lady would say the river dolphin did it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_river_dolphin#Cultural_references). And the rest of the locals, my friend was surprised, would honestly believe the girl's version.

So sometimes the supernatural is eldritch and wonderful; other times people see it rather naturally, as part of the spiritual "ecosystem" of the universe.

This works very fine as people are just going with their lives and seeing magic in things they don't understand. When it's about magic users, however, you just can't have 99% of them being frauds. Because "magic" is very present in some cultures, and if 99% of magicians are lying to their neighbors, than you have a big conspiracy going on. We're talking about big numbers of people, including regular people who repeat small daily rituals the magicians taught them. In the very least they believe they are really doing something.

That's why I think that for magic to work in a low-magic setting, everyone should be able to dwell a bit in magic rituals, even if they don't know what they're doing and do not have perfect control of consequences. I think everyone being able to cast a ritual is more low-magic than only certain classes doing it; though no classes doing magic at all is probably even less magical.

VoxRationis
2015-06-16, 01:37 AM
This works very fine as people are just going with their lives and seeing magic in things they don't understand. When it's about magic users, however, you just can't have 99% of them being frauds. Because "magic" is very present in some cultures, and if 99% of magicians are lying to their neighbors, than you have a big conspiracy going on. We're talking about big numbers of people, including regular people who repeat small daily rituals the magicians taught them. In the very least they believe they are really doing something.


I don't understand why this follows. Why can't 99% of the magic-users be frauds in a setting? 100% are in real life, and such traditions still persist. One might argue that the verified nature of very real magic elsewhere in the setting would make people more susceptible to belief in fraudulent claims to magic. Take some of the minor cleric spells in 3.5 D&D, the ones that add +1 to a particular roll or somesuch. That's a marginal increase in one's success rate. It's verifiably magic, if you have the right means to detect it, but unless you run tests again and again in a scientific manner with large data sets, its effect can be hard to separate from sheer chance. You could sell hundreds of nonmagical amulets, claiming they provide this kind of benefit, without anyone (save an actual magic-user) being able to reasonably assert that they were fakes.
Not that I'm actually arguing that 99% is a good number in a fantasy setting, but I don't see why it couldn't be so high.

Mighty_Chicken
2015-06-16, 02:07 AM
I don't want to get into any kind of polemic here, but IRL most people who do "magic" (in contexts of little literacy and education) believe they're doing it. The unrealistic thing would be saying that all those half-illiterate shamans and spirit healers that every village has is lying to their neighbors. Specially if magical creatures and real magic users really are there to expose their bull**** or punish them for dwelling in things they don't understand.

The link here with what I said earlier is that a world were most people who claim to be magical are not frauds would not be that different from the world we already live in (in some parts of the planet), and even more in a medieval-like setting. "Small guy" magic users can be everywhere, doing very small things, like your 5% increase to a success rate and not claiming any bigger powers than that. So what I fundamentally disagree with is that ill-intended fraud would be so dominant when the contact with the supernatural (and I'm not even talking in a religious scope) is a part of the daily life of many communities. I mean, one might be a fraudulent doctor, but why would you pretend to be a barber? It isn't hard to be a barber, and thought people need a barber, they never had the kind of skill that made our modern doctors so respected, neither did they claimed to be able to do much more than they were really doing. So one has something to gain pretending he's a powerful wizard or a baron from another realm, but if someone tells you he's a minor magic-doer or a foreign corporal just passing by your town, they're probably not lying.

Frozen_Feet
2015-06-16, 04:00 AM
A 'magic creatures exist in secret but everyone believes in them' historical based setting is still very close to a typical masquerade based urban fantasy setting just transplanted back in time. It can be done well enough to make sense but its a inherently different story to a 'the past but the world works the way people used to think it did' setting.

Uh, yes. That is the point.

You're talking about a setting where things work like medieval people thought they'd work. I'm talking about a setting that's like the actual medieval world, where most of what people thought of the world was incorrect.

From where I'm coming from, talking about whether people considered unicorns natural or supernatural is a red herring. It's beside the point. The real point is that regardless of what people think, the real unicorns are what they are and might not be anywhere around.

Consider kangaroos. To a contemporary person like me, there's no question whether they're real or natural. I mean, I've seen pictures in a television (etc.). Yet, I've never seen a kangaroo live in the wild, and likely never will, because they live several continents away from me. It similarly follows that if someone claims to have seen a kangaroo around these parts, they are likely lying, delusional, or mistaken.

And that's the role of magic I'm proposing for a setting.

Similarly, worrying about how the guys with "real magic" might beat the guys who only think they have real magic is besides the point. That's like saying the guys with real aeroplanes can beat the guys who think a mixture of belladonna and mushrooms can make them fly. So what? Just because it's possible, doesn't mean it has happened, will happen, or is even likely to happen. You can quite comfortably start the setting from an era where the real wizard just hasn't taken over the world yet. And if he does take over the world during the game, who cares? Just because the setting starts from roughly medieval period, doesn't mean it has to exist in a medieval stasis.