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NichG
2022-08-19, 04:06 PM
This thread is for brainstorming different ways that we could conceive of characters perceiving, interacting with, and manipulating supernatural forces without just defaulting to compartmentalizing it entirely behind 'there's a spell that lets them do it', 'there's a ritual that lets them do it', etc. In terms of broad motivations, this is about trying to see supernatural elements in various settings as equal parts of the world as 'gravity' and 'chemistry' and the like, such that we have a richer set of ideas to draw from in conceptualizing things that a character could 'just figure out how to do' by living in that world, without needing specific secret knowledge or particular forms of specialness.

We can look at something like parkour and say, this person has figured out the way their body moves well enough to drop from heights without injury, keep momentum while moving, etc. While there might be particular named movements that someone does in parkour, that's there for people to talk about those movements and teach each-other, but the essentials are deeper than that and have to do with how bodies move, something that everyone living in their body in principle has access to. We don't have to be electricians to be able to build up a static charge by scuffing our feet on carpet while wearing wool socks, to figure out how to discharge ourselves before touching delicate electronics, or for that matter to tell that we're in the presence of a strong DC field by feeling the hairs on our arms raise, or to identify whether powerlines are carrying a large current from the particular characteristic humming sound. There are ways to train yourself to see the direction of polarized light, due to slight differences in propagation within your eye leading to a visual artifact called Haidinger's Brush that aligns with the direction of polarization.

Or you can even go deeper and look at how amazing it is that we can manipulate air flow through our vocal tract to produce sounds, speech, music, whistle, etc. The range of what a voice can do is much larger than the range of what most people use it for.

So what sorts of things might there be like this for supernatural forces in a setting?

You could have a form of the supernatural where in general strong emotional states distort currents and flows that would normally be settled into comfortable cycles in an environment, things which could be noticed by those familiar with what to look for. The lights really do get dimmer when someone falls into a rage, if only a bit. Someone hiding something or trying to avoid talking about a secret induces distortions in the flow of air or other things, that very perceptive people can pick up on. Maybe there's even a direct sensation where 'as someone's emotions act on the currents around them, those currents also act on emotion' and people can sort of tentatively push on their own mood to feel the 'energy' of a place or a room. It's not that you'd have a 'sadness sense', but rather someone could notice that joyful memories are harder to recall and harder to keep in mind.

You could have a sort of conceptually expressive supernatural force that manifests abstract metaphors associated with its working - dice rolled near strong enchantments or supernatural hotspots tend to land on numbers that spell out messages, birds form flights with a prime number of members, every third glass on the shelf of a tavern falls over and breaks, etc. If that interaction with metaphorical things is bidirectional, you also have a natural way to manipulate those forces. A loose whorl of potential comes through rearranging the rocks on the ground into a ring - someone goes and reshapes that into a star or a square, and that exerts a force back on that energy.

You could have something where altered states of consciousness act as a bridge - for each bit of perception or awareness that is removed from someone's control, something else can manifest in its place and also be manipulated in that place. So anyone who dreams would be detecting and manipulating supernatural forces based on their actions within the dream, if only a little.

What else?

King of Nowhere
2022-08-19, 05:58 PM
i have the whole world run on supernatural. basically, magic is the power to alter reality, and everything that does not work under normal science is powered by magic.
you are a high level fighter, you can survive dropping from a cliff onto spikes and you can punch through walls. that's a manifestation of magic.
A dragon flies and makes faces at the square cube law, that's because dragons can take magic from the environment and use it to break reality.
and for all of their differences, the most powerful dragon and the most powerful humanoid are relatively close in power. that's no coincidence, nor is it some gamist construct to give the party worthy opponents; no, it's because both of them are absorbing magic from the environment to break reality and become stronger. One by being much bigger than possible and breathing fire, the other by shrugging off multiple impalements and punching through walls. but the magic they have available roughly the same, so it's no surprise that they have comparable power.
pretty much every creature in the monster manual that would be incompatible with actual natural laws, that's magic too. guess what, they also appear to have the same power limitations of dragons and humanoids.

NichG
2022-08-19, 06:26 PM
Right, but at the level of personal experience, how do people experience that 'magic'? How do people nurture it? What affordances does it provide? How do they detect it and start to understand it?

E.g. all known real life is based on chemical reactions, but we actually do have senses to let us viscerally experience that and do things with it. We can detect whether something is an acid or base by smell, taste, and feel. We can even identify distinct compounds in minute quantities with our sense of smell. We can eat different things and do different exercises, and have that produce different effects in how our chemistry molds our bodies.

So how do beings in a universe where magic is just like everything else relate to those magical aspects of the universe? What kinds of adaptations or handles do they have which real humans don't have, on which you could hang explanations for how someone is doing something? E.g. Bob decides he wants to be able to crush stone with his bare hands. To us, maybe that means he takes a bunch of levels in this or that class. What is it like for Bob in the in-character perspective? Is it completely passive and out of his control, are there specific 'muscles' he has to learn to flex and train associated with channeling magic, is it a state of mind thing, etc? Not looking for 'the answer has to be X' kinds of things, but rather a collection of different ways that feel like they make sense and are intuitive.

Jedaii
2022-08-19, 06:46 PM
Magic words are keys that open doors. The way the melody of an instrument unlocks song. Casters speak ancient words and the world around them blurs not because they completely understand the words but rather because certain words in certain order unlock reality. The caster experiences a rush of lucidity - that place between the dream and the real world. In that place anything is possible and thus with specific words reality bends in specific ways.

Of course casters never discuss the sensation. It's their secret that reality is malleable and if pressed they couldn't accurately describe the nature of spellcasting to the mundane anyway. They simply know that when casting spells distance vanishes, gravity fades, sound warps and time wobbles on command.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-08-19, 06:57 PM
Right, but at the level of personal experience, how do people experience that 'magic'? How do people nurture it? What affordances does it provide? How do they detect it and start to understand it?

E.g. all known real life is based on chemical reactions, but we actually do have senses to let us viscerally experience that and do things with it. We can detect whether something is an acid or base by smell, taste, and feel. We can even identify distinct compounds in minute quantities with our sense of smell. We can eat different things and do different exercises, and have that produce different effects in how our chemistry molds our bodies.

So how do beings in a universe where magic is just like everything else relate to those magical aspects of the universe? What kinds of adaptations or handles do they have which real humans don't have, on which you could hang explanations for how someone is doing something? E.g. Bob decides he wants to be able to crush stone with his bare hands. To us, maybe that means he takes a bunch of levels in this or that class. What is it like for Bob in the in-character perspective? Is it completely passive and out of his control, are there specific 'muscles' he has to learn to flex and train associated with channeling magic, is it a state of mind thing, etc? Not looking for 'the answer has to be X' kinds of things, but rather a collection of different ways that feel like they make sense and are intuitive.

Prefatory note: For me, everything is made of magic. There is no magic/mundane divide, really--there is only one type of matter/energy. Aether. Created by souls growing and changing, then given aspects that form it into "things". Including the diffuse, mostly unaspected aether all around us. Spells (more precisely resonant aether manipulation abilities) create resonant effects in the ambient aether, creating "standing waves" of aspecting that do various things.

Each living being has a "nimbus" as part of their soul--this is the interface between the "self" and the body as well as between the "self" and the immaterial (including the ambient aether). It surrounds you like an aura (and many people call it an aura). You can train to be more sensitive or active with it in a myriad of ways, of which spell-casting is but one small portion.

Everyone, for instance, has some limited ability to "feel" strong changes in the ambient aether. Such as active spell-casting within a short distance. It takes some understanding to figure out that that's what's happening, but everyone gets on edge if you start casting spells around them, even if they can't articulate why. The aether manipulation "ripples out" and impinges on the nimbuses of the people around you. People who are around magic more (either adventuring or doing it) become more sensitive at discriminating between various manipulations. Everyone experiences it slightly differently, synesthesia is quite common here (crosswiring the nimbus senses into the channels used for the physical senses). You might "see colors/auras" or "hear sounds" or even "smell things" (many paladins report smelling good and evil, and it turns out that if your nose is sensitive enough, you can actually smell the difference between an artificially-created body (such as a conjured or summoned creature) and a real body. Devils have somewhat of a cinnamon smell, like a shot of Fireball whisky. Except not quite. At least according to one dragon.

Monks become really good, through meditation, at listening to the flow of aether through their own body and eventually that of those around them. They use their nimbus actively to reach out and touch other people's nimbuses, even if they're not touching them physically.

Barbarians, for whatever reason, connect their nimbus to the primal energies around them via strong emotions. "Rage" isn't necessarily anger, but anger is one of the easiest and strongest, so it gets the attention. Especially since the first barbarians to channel Rage were the old orcs, who had a demonically-powered Rage that was literally a "everything goes red" bloodlust. That ended a while ago, but they're still good at channeling energy through emotions. Training is necessary here to control the flow.

Most everyone can chant. Simple rhythmic "spells" that create little ripples/effects as long as you chant the right words. Things like "flies are slightly repelled from horses near by". Or "the coefficient of friction in the wheels of this cart is slightly lower". "Whistle while you work" is a real thing. And the effects grow non-linearly with people--get 50 people all chanting in unison and the effects are more than 50x as large. In more potent form, this is bardic magic--the magic inherent in harmonies. Bards just have enough moxie (stored energy) to punch out real effects that last longer than the chanting.

Sacrifice is another way. Willing sacrifice is the most potent, but blood magic also works (if messily). And it doesn't have to be blood--a paladin's power comes from the sacrifices inherent in the Oath. So a devotion paladin who has a temper, but takes the Oath to be nice all the time has tons of potential power--he's actively sacrificing his natural temper. But the risk is that by breaking his Oath, he loses that power. Paladins are basically fueled by confidence in their own sacrifice. But larger-scale sacrifices, up to and including sacrificing your entire existence, past, present, and future are even more potent. Especially when channeled through artifacts.

Spells are just nimbus-level patterns, learned by any number of ways. Feed energy (aka spell slots) through them, including the components[1], and you get the effect. The real difference is how people learn them. And where they get the energy from--rituals work by slowly gathering the energy from the world around you, but that takes training. And opening the spell slots (places in your soul to hold energy for use) takes practice and meditation, and most people can't really do it very quickly (like...a few years per spell slot, capping at 1-2).

Even something like a fighter and a rogue "use magic"--they manipulate (mostly unconsciously, but due to training) the aether in and around themselves. Evasion is wrapping a very thin layer of Shadow (the liminal plane) around you to shunt the destructive force there (or maybe to be there, not where the fire is). Action Surge is overclocking your body for a few seconds by pumping stored energy through it (like hitting the nitrous button). Etc.

Early magic happened via runes and words; that power's broken now (stupid titans and their hubris).

awa
2022-08-19, 07:08 PM
Salt could allow you to interact with incorporeal creatures placed on a blade to make a ghost touch weapon at least for 1 hit. Silver could do something similar.

Place salt at a doorway to prevent teleportation or entry by incorporeal creatures.

faeries have a wide range of taboos that could be expanded upon to interact with other supernatural creatures.


Armor and weapons made from monster parts might retain a portion of their power. For instance the easy dragon scale armor granting energy resistance.

Like wise troll blood might make a crude healing potion.

These might need to be used in a special way to get the full benefit keep it from being to easy to acquire.

NichG
2022-08-19, 08:44 PM
So e.g. with the salt thing, I'd take it a step back and say something like...

The reason salt interfaces with the undead is because in general things absorb the history of their formation. Sea salt made by evaporating layers of water in the sun for days on end stores up that association with the sun's power, and undead relate to it as such. But this principle generalizes, so someone who received a burn scar can forever more both feel the presence of fire, but beyond that they gain some potential for being able to interact with fire and things that connect to fire in new ways via the scar. Or if you generalize even to the abstract, someone whose livelihood was ruined by a curse will, in the future, find that their economic activities tend to entangle with curses (everyone else's curse becomes their opportunity) or their enemies in business tend to suffer small curse-like effects or things of that nature.

So everyone whose body or life has been impacted in a significant way by something exerting a principle of force upon them, in turn has the seeds of developing a relationship with those forces, and the interface is always the part of them which was changed.

animorte
2022-08-20, 02:21 PM
Of course casters never discuss the sensation. It's their secret that reality is malleable and if pressed they couldn't accurately describe the nature of spellcasting to the mundane anyway. They simply know that when casting spells distance vanishes, gravity fades, sound warps and time wobbles on command.

I like the following (paraphrased from memory) quote on that topic: ”If you can’t explain it simple enough for a child to understand, you don’t understand it well enough yourself.”

What you said sounds more like the factotum barely understanding how to mimic the effects of things. I would like to think people who have dedicated their lives to the arcane (or any magic) have a little better understanding than that. Especially those that literally study it (Wizard).

The spell components (verbal, material, somatic) themselves suggest that casters understand some of the things required to create varying effects. Instead of just, “yeah, things happen.”

Eldan
2022-08-20, 02:45 PM
I like how magic works in Unknown Armies and, to a lesser degree, in Mage the Ascencion.

There's a consensus reality that works because that's what everyone thinks it should be, and then there's a conspiracy or several conspiracies behind the curtain that can change reality when no one's looking.

The characters in Unknown Armies are deeply, deeply disturbed people. They have in some way, be it social isolation, or violent trauma, or disociation or hallucinations or all of them, arrived at the conclusion that the world doesn't actually work the way everyone else thinks it does. And as a result, they have at least some power to change the world through the strength of their convictions.

My current character is a conspiracy theorist. His mother was killed by something weird, it was hushed up by someone and since then, he's convinced that just about every authority figure in the world is in on some kind of conspiracy and he's the only one who can figure it out. His power, without him even always realizing, fabricates evidence out of thin air, whenever he investigates. He keeps finding suspiciously specific notes people made detailing their crimes and abuses of authority. He gets people to admit crimes that, probably, didn't exist before he investigated them. Or maybe they did. He has a little notebook of facts he "researched", where he can just pull out useful information by switching to a random page. Phone numbers, adresses of people, and so on.

His friend is what we called out of character Paladin of Civilization, though the term doesn't remotely exist in the setting. He's an avatar and he protects people. When someone in his city district is in danger, he just happens to be there. He also always has an unoccupied taxi driving by when he needs one, that's one of his main powers. Also, doors are are open suspiciously often.

Telok
2022-08-20, 07:44 PM
I've always enjoyed world building where there isn't a "one true way" magic explanation. I don't like the tendency to mechanize all magic and make it just another form of chemistry.

I like having real differences between things like a magic of secret names, a magic of precise rituals, and a magic of being "just that good at it".

NichG
2022-08-20, 07:56 PM
Well I don't think you have to have zero ideas or structure about how things might work in order to enable there to be many different approaches to it.

What it comes down to is something like, can you get into a mindset where for example, if a PC with no magical training is being possessed by a ghost, they say 'I want to rearrange my soul to force the ghost to experience all of my traumas, while searching for any hint of the ghost's own history as it reacts and deals with my inner demons' you can determine e.g. 'that's not how that works', 'sure, give me a Charisma check', 'its not a bad idea, but you find that your experiences are so connected with each-other that you can't freely re-arrange them, you have to lure the ghost to follow associations with what it's trying to do with your body in the now if you want this to work', etc.

Or if someone says 'I've been hit by a lot of paralysis magic, I want to think back on those experiences to figure out how exactly my body shuts down and freezes up and in what order, and develop a technique to get just enough time to do one small thing the next time that happens', to have ways to reason about how that might work and what exactly would be required.

Or if someone says 'Somehow my body can withstand being stood on by a 20 ton creature, at least for eighteen seconds or so; and when I'm wielding a weapon or wearing armor, it seems my resilience extends at least a little bit to those objects. Can I feel my way through what's going on enough to use it to turn a playing card into a solid edge able to cut through a rope?'...

Or to put less of a fine point on it, how do we create fictions where we don't need there to be explicit mechanics enabling each individual supernatural interaction, so that in a system that says 'for everything not covered by the system, roll an ability check' we can let ourselves see ways for people who aren't playing 'the guys who are about magic' to actually be able to interface with those parts of the world. What are the stories which, if we get used to seeing them, make it seem reasonable that the average person could trick a dweomer, draw a ghost into a bottle, convince a river to stop for a moment to let them cross, or whatever.

TaiLiu
2022-08-20, 09:01 PM
I guess there are two ways of approaching this.

The first is to assume that the world is very similar to ours, but that supernatural explanations are correct theories of the world. This is, well, what many people currently believe. Mediating focuses your qi. Acupuncture is a successful remedy. Prayer has a causal effect on the world. (Would that count as too ritualistic?) The dead can hear the living. Water contains memories and homeopathic cures work. Our world is rich in supernatural folklore that you might be able to draw on for inspiration.

The second is to assume that the world is fundamentally different. This would involve changing the physics of the world, and there are sci-fi books and games that explore how strange the world would be without the physics that mostly explain our world right now. In such cases, abilities to interact with the "supernatural" would be a necessary consequence of those laws.

Notafish
2022-08-21, 07:09 AM
I think in a magical world, people can sense the presence of magic powers and effects at some level, even if they can't do it with the precision of a Divination spell. Things like the scent of the air inside a magical structure or an enchanted grove, or prickles on your skin if you are close to where a spell was cast. There would also be folkways that are practiced because they demonstrably work - leaving offerings at shrines in exchange from protection from supernatural mischief, for example. The means by which things and items become magical, too, might not be direct spells but supernatural care in the crafting, rare materials, or an object's history - if a sword was used to slay a dragon, might that be what makes it a Sword of Dragonslaying?

noob
2022-08-21, 07:51 AM
You could make more supernatural things interact with mundane things ex:the ability to see through walls of that creature is impeded by walls with radioactive compounds within due to the glow obfuscating its sight.
Or that ghost who possesses people is attracted toward the most weakened mind and you could protect yourself from possession through carrying animals tortured up to the point their minds breaks.
Each time you design a supernatural ability imagine at least one way to interact with it accessible by anyone willing to make a sufficient effort and you will grant all the players willing to interact with those something to do (even if it is something silly like torturing rats for avoiding possession later on).

Quertus
2022-08-21, 11:32 AM
Or to put less of a fine point on it, how do we create fictions where we don't need there to be explicit mechanics enabling each individual supernatural interaction, so that in a system that says 'for everything not covered by the system, roll an ability check' we can let ourselves see ways for people who aren't playing 'the guys who are about magic' to actually be able to interface with those parts of the world. What are the stories which, if we get used to seeing them, make it seem reasonable that the average person could trick a dweomer, draw a ghost into a bottle, convince a river to stop for a moment to let them cross, or whatever.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but… by not doing that?

Ok, fine, I suppose that there are at least two philosophies one could take. In one, it’s physics, everything happens for a reason, the rules and effects make sense, and one can logically think from action to effect to resolution.

In the other, there’s more of a hand-waving system of “you just do”, and it’s perfectly fine to have Invisibility be a mental effect… that doesn’t extend to other life forms… or things you pick up after the fact.

That is, you can go bottom up, and start with “first principles” of how the magic works, or you can go top down, of, “every interaction is a stat check, with this DC table”.

So, if you want to create a fiction where it makes sense for the character to turn cards into cutting edges or all rivers to hold off on flowing for a few moments so that they can cross, you don’t want “a system that says 'for everything not covered by the system, roll an ability check' ”. Instead, you want a system where every effect is grown from first principles. Just like physics.

What those physics can look like, how people can interact with them, can vary greatly, from “spirits” to “altering reality” to one or more “power sources”. How one relates to “the invisible world” can vary greatly, but the easiest for the reader to understand (although possibly the least satisfying to a world builder) is to simply map it to existing senses and existing views on magic. For example,
As we were walking, granny suddenly stopped and drew out her ragged deck. “The threads feel thick - important events are coming together”, she explained before closing her eyes, falling into the Flow as she shuffled. I rubbed my cross for good luck as I watched, hoping she didn’t attract too much of the wrong kind of attention. She began tossing cards into the dirt, then opened her eyes. “Ah, that explains it,” she said with a wry smile as she picked her cards out of the street. “Come. We’ll be burning the candle at both ends tonight if we want to be ready to what tomorrow will bring.” I was left wondering whether her rituals actually did anything, or were just for show, so she didn’t have to explain how she knew (or guessed) what other people were up to. And whether we’d be burning an actual candle this time.

I don’t need a lot of world-building for that little exchange to make sense, because we can crib on real-works beliefs of how magic works to interpret that scene, right? Whereas, if I created a system more whole cloth, where, say, (unbeknownst to the practitioners) each periodic table element has a power it’s related to, and granny was peering at the street through her Diamond wedding ring, it wouldn’t be as clear without more words, right?

NichG
2022-08-21, 11:47 AM
Not to put too fine a point on it, but… by not doing that?

Ok, fine, I suppose that there are at least two philosophies one could take. In one, it’s physics, everything happens for a reason, the rules and effects make sense, and one can logically think from action to effect to resolution.

In the other, there’s more of a hand-waving system of “you just do”, and it’s perfectly fine to have Invisibility be a mental effect… that doesn’t extend to other life forms… or things you pick up after the fact.

That is, you can go bottom up, and start with “first principles” of how the magic works, or you can go top down, of, “every interaction is a stat check, with this DC table”.

So, if you want to create a fiction where it makes sense for the character to turn cards into cutting edges or all rivers to hold off on flowing for a few moments so that they can cross, you don’t want “a system that says 'for everything not covered by the system, roll an ability check' ”. Instead, you want a system where every effect is grown from first principles. Just like physics.

What those physics can look like, how people can interact with them, can vary greatly, from “spirits” to “altering reality” to one or more “power sources”. How one relates to “the invisible world” can vary greatly, but the easiest for the reader to understand (although possibly the least satisfying to a world builder) is to simply map it to existing senses and existing views on magic. For example,
As we were walking, granny suddenly stopped and drew out her ragged deck. “The threads feel thick - important events are coming together”, she explained before closing her eyes, falling into the Flow as she shuffled. I rubbed my cross for good luck as I watched, hoping she didn’t attract too much of the wrong kind of attention. She began tossing cards into the dirt, then opened her eyes. “Ah, that explains it,” she said with a wry smile as she picked her cards out of the street. “Come. We’ll be burning the candle at both ends tonight if we want to be ready to what tomorrow will bring.” I was left wondering whether her rituals actually did anything, or were just for show, so she didn’t have to explain how she knew (or guessed) what other people were up to. And whether we’d be burning an actual candle this time.

I don’t need a lot of world-building for that little exchange to make sense, because we can crib on real-works beliefs of how magic works to interpret that scene, right? Whereas, if I created a system more whole cloth, where, say, (unbeknownst to the practitioners) each periodic table element has a power it’s related to, and granny was peering at the street through her Diamond wedding ring, it wouldn’t be as clear without more words, right?
[/quote]

Well the context here is people saying that they support systems which leave a lot up to the DM to decide with on-the-fly rulings without having explicit lists of things characters can do and how difficult they are... but at the same time, accepting spell lists as a thing which is okay. So I'm taking people at their word that what they want is to make a bunch of rulings on the fly about whether characters can do things, how hard those things are to do, what stat those things should use. But then there's this issue that while we have a natural basis for thinking about how someone would jump over a stream or climb an embankment or hike 20 miles in a day on rough terrain or throw a stone to knock a bird out of the sky, we don't really have a natural basis for thinking about 'someone grabbing the local mana flows and twisting them into a light effect' or 'someone interpreting their sixth sense in order to determine if the ghost haunting a place is natural or summoned' or whatever.

So with this thread, I'm hoping to provide a set of ways of thinking about supernatural forces that people could pull together to inform their on-the-fly rulings about whether e.g. a Wisdom check should let you comprehend the language of magical plants or a Charisma check should let you persuade the dreaming wind to let your loved ones know that you probably won't be surviving this battle.

Because 'just say what you want to do and have the DM make a rulings' is very strongly influenced by the culture that the DM is immersed in. And we have this kind of feedback cycle of talking about magic as if it's something only the magicals should participate in. And then you end up with the Shadowrun decker problem of there basically being two games.

Now, you could say 'just make a system where this stuff is explicit', and sure, there are lots of systems like that. But if people want to play systems that aren't like that, I don't think that's an inherently bad thing. However, I think you do need to do some kind of legwork to do so, and this kind of exercise is basically the freeform equivalent of the legwork you'd be doing to make a crunchy, physics-based system. Draw together a body of fiction that puts you in the mindset to evaluate things like e.g. 'I want to try to condense my Qi into several small reservoirs at the junctions of my nervous system rather than in a single pool in my Dantian, what happens?' or 'what do I get if a fae and a vampire have a kid?'

Quertus
2022-08-21, 01:44 PM
Well the context here is people saying that they support systems which leave a lot up to the DM to decide with on-the-fly rulings without having explicit lists of things characters can do and how difficult they are... but at the same time, accepting spell lists as a thing which is okay. So I'm taking people at their word that what they want is to make a bunch of rulings on the fly about whether characters can do things, how hard those things are to do, what stat those things should use. But then there's this issue that while we have a natural basis for thinking about how someone would jump over a stream or climb an embankment or hike 20 miles in a day on rough terrain or throw a stone to knock a bird out of the sky, we don't really have a natural basis for thinking about 'someone grabbing the local mana flows and twisting them into a light effect' or 'someone interpreting their sixth sense in order to determine if the ghost haunting a place is natural or summoned' or whatever.

So with this thread, I'm hoping to provide a set of ways of thinking about supernatural forces that people could pull together to inform their on-the-fly rulings about whether e.g. a Wisdom check should let you comprehend the language of magical plants or a Charisma check should let you persuade the dreaming wind to let your loved ones know that you probably won't be surviving this battle.

Because 'just say what you want to do and have the DM make a rulings' is very strongly influenced by the culture that the DM is immersed in. And we have this kind of feedback cycle of talking about magic as if it's something only the magicals should participate in. And then you end up with the Shadowrun decker problem of there basically being two games.

Now, you could say 'just make a system where this stuff is explicit', and sure, there are lots of systems like that. But if people want to play systems that aren't like that, I don't think that's an inherently bad thing. However, I think you do need to do some kind of legwork to do so, and this kind of exercise is basically the freeform equivalent of the legwork you'd be doing to make a crunchy, physics-based system. Draw together a body of fiction that puts you in the mindset to evaluate things like e.g. 'I want to try to condense my Qi into several small reservoirs at the junctions of my nervous system rather than in a single pool in my Dantian, what happens?' or 'what do I get if a fae and a vampire have a kid?'

Ah. I was unaware of that context. Did my reading comprehension fail me again, or is there some “spawning thread” I missed?

If I understand your purpose, then I might be opposed to your purpose? That is, I think that this should be handled at the system or setting level, not at a universal layer. This is, I don’t care if you think it makes perfect sense to interpret your 6th sense to determine whether a ghost is natural or summoned, if you try that on Placia, I’ll tell you now, it’ll fail.[*,**] Whereas, if you followed world physics, there are several ways that one might attempt to make that determination through perfectly mundane means (yes, even though there aren’t explicit rules for most of them).

So, how do *I* run a world where characters can do - or learn to do - things that go beyond the rules? Is that a question whose answer would be of value here? (Although, if so, I’ll have to answer how my “better self” does so, as I’m often not my better self, and err on the side of limiting people to what’s in the rules (which is both “the book” and “the setting”, btw) more than perhaps I should.)

ok, that’s… kinda a lie? Placia has a special form of “grandfather clause” as part of its physics. So, a character from another world, who genuinely believed that that’s the way the world works? I suppose that they would have a nonzero chance of success.
[**] having a predefined “6th sense” that operates unlike any Placia has seen before would also allow this to succeed.

NichG
2022-08-21, 01:54 PM
Ah. I was unaware of that context. Did my reading comprehension fail me again, or is there some “spawning thread” I missed?

If I understand your purpose, then I might be opposed to your purpose? That is, I think that this should be handled at the system or setting level, not at a universal layer. This is, I don’t care if you think it makes perfect sense to interpret your 6th sense to determine whether a ghost is natural or summoned, if you try that on Placia, I’ll tell you now, it’ll fail.[*,**] Whereas, if you followed world physics, there are several ways that one might attempt to make that determination through perfectly mundane means (yes, even though there aren’t explicit rules for most of them).

So, how do *I* run a world where characters can do - or learn to do - things that go beyond the rules? Is that a question whose answer would be of value here? (Although, if so, I’ll have to answer how my “better self” does so, as I’m often not my better self, and err on the side of limiting people to what’s in the rules (which is both “the book” and “the setting”, btw) more than perhaps I should.)

ok, that’s… kinda a lie? Placia has a special form of “grandfather clause” as part of its physics. So, a character from another world, who genuinely believed that that’s the way the world works? I suppose that they would have a nonzero chance of success.
[**] having a predefined “6th sense” that operates unlike any Placia has seen before would also allow this to succeed.

I mean, its okay for the answer to not just always be 'yes, you do that'. The issue is when the answer is categorically always 'you can't do that without a class ability or spell' when combined with a system philosophy of leaving most things unspecified. Because then 'lets just leave things unspecified' is just code for 'lets just have a system where most people can't do many things, but lets pretend that isn't what we're doing'.

But I'm also not really intending this thread to be a debate about that sort of thing, because well there's dozens of other threads on that subject. I specifically chose to frame this in terms of work-shopping fictional and narrative senses because I think the exercise of thinking about how it would be to be a lifeform adapted to a magical world has a lot more potential to resolve things than yet another argument about the Guy at the Gym or what systems should have mechanics for or whatever. I'm not setting out to convince people that the way they like to play the game is wrong and that some other way is right, I'm setting out to give people exposure to ways of thinking that might be richer than 'everything that isn't like the real world has to be compartmentalized into this do-anything box called magic, with narrow avenues of controlled access that we do not ask about how it works'.

Anyhow, again, less about 'how you would run something' or 'how you would justify the rules' and more about exploring different ways of thinking about supernatural and magical things and their whys and hows.

Anonymouswizard
2022-08-21, 03:53 PM
I like how magic works in Unknown Armies and, to a lesser degree, in Mage the Ascencion.

There's a consensus reality that works because that's what everyone thinks it should be, and then there's a conspiracy or several conspiracies behind the curtain that can change reality when no one's looking.

That's one theory among those in Unknown Armies who care to think about this stuff. Personally I support the 'shoddy construction' theory. The universe of Unknown Armies was explicitly constructed by a committee of 333 people, only one who has any experience with this stuff. Plus they probably subcontracted the details to meet their deadline. Would you really expect such a universe to be well made.

Don't worry though, it might all be redone next week.


Personally I'm fond of magic having currents and fields. This lets you do tricks like using an enchanted item to detect magic fields. Stone is a particularly good way to store it, which is why castle's are haunted, while wood is a great magical conductor.

Quertus
2022-08-21, 04:36 PM
I mean, its okay for the answer to not just always be 'yes, you do that'. The issue is when the answer is categorically always 'you can't do that without a class ability or spell' when combined with a system philosophy of leaving most things unspecified. Because then 'lets just leave things unspecified' is just code for 'lets just have a system where most people can't do many things, but lets pretend that isn't what we're doing'.

But I'm also not really intending this thread to be a debate about that sort of thing, because well there's dozens of other threads on that subject. I specifically chose to frame this in terms of work-shopping fictional and narrative senses because I think the exercise of thinking about how it would be to be a lifeform adapted to a magical world has a lot more potential to resolve things than yet another argument about the Guy at the Gym or what systems should have mechanics for or whatever. I'm not setting out to convince people that the way they like to play the game is wrong and that some other way is right, I'm setting out to give people exposure to ways of thinking that might be richer than 'everything that isn't like the real world has to be compartmentalized into this do-anything box called magic, with narrow avenues of controlled access that we do not ask about how it works'.

Anyhow, again, less about 'how you would run something' or 'how you would justify the rules' and more about exploring different ways of thinking about supernatural and magical things and their whys and hows.

Hmmm… lacking any other context, I’ll use 3e D&D as a base.

I think it would not be unreasonable for even an open-ended rules GM to decide that it fits the “theme” of the world and rules that “any access to Magic is through Foci. Wizards actually use *fewer* foci than ‘normal’ access to magic would require, due to the specificity of their spells.”

So, if anyone wanted to learn to make a playing card have a sharp edge? Well, the card itself is a nice Focus component, but any attempt that didn’t also involve Verbal, Somatic, Material, and XP components would automatically be doomed to failure.

If the would-be card cutter spent a week experimenting / practicing in an appropriate setting, they might develop an ability that allowed them to make that specific card into a cutting edge for a limited time, at the cost of 50 XP each time. Once they spent 250 XP, they realize that they can now do it to any similar surface at no XP cost (ie, they paid 250 XP for this ability, in installments). Or maybe they can only do it to the card at will, until they add a new Focus component (perhaps a tattoo on their body, or maybe a suitably snarky Focus, like a +1 dagger that they keep hidden in their hands, but allows the random object to cut for d4+1 damage, or for its base damage if the target is a weapon, whichever is more.

This would follow the world logic of, “Wizards spend time and resources to add discrete abilities to their playbooks”, and, even so, still may Captain Hobo the Wizard who spent 1 week and 1k gp learning a “Ray of Frost” variant, especially given that, in 3e, Cantrips are not usable at will. So maybe the Cutting Edge ability also requires a Sacrifice component - maybe a couple of stat points with each use?

So, in that setting, people who say prayers and do dances while hanging horseshoes over their doors might be unsuccessfully copying the person who actually figured it out, and has a live fey in their pocket as the Focus component, and still loses 2 wisdom and takes 1 Chaos Taint every time they bring good luck to a place with a horseshoe.

Feeling magic in this setting? Wierwood is about the only thing I know of that reacts to magic. So, if a Warforged were to be built / rebuilt with Wierwood as part of their composition? Then they might start to “feel” magic the same way photo luminescent beings feel when their lights are on. We could theorize about that sensation, or wait for gene-spliced humans or uplifted animals to tell us what it’s really like.

In short, to not Captain Hobo the system-equivalent of the Wizard (and to not have the Wizard just exclusively use the new system), it would not be unreasonable to want these abilities to cost noticeably more than whatever spell-equivalent the system has, in one or more of money, XP, stats, time, action economy, opportunity cost, or whatever other currency the system lets one pay.

Or, to switch back to chemistry… Breaking Bad (?) says “Moron can make drugs; chemist can make much better drugs (that are much less likely to kill you?)”. If there’s not a noticeable difference, what’s the point in being skilled? So, unless we really up what the *simplest* of “trained only” spells / whatever can do, then what *everyone* can do should be much weaker, and/or much more costly.

Would that be a potential response from one edge of one spectrum of the subset of people who understood what you were looking for? If the… least permissive / most balance focused crowd had an adherent of this mindset?

NichG
2022-08-21, 06:38 PM
Hmmm… lacking any other context, I’ll use 3e D&D as a base.

I think it would not be unreasonable for even an open-ended rules GM to decide that it fits the “theme” of the world and rules that “any access to Magic is through Foci. Wizards actually use *fewer* foci than ‘normal’ access to magic would require, due to the specificity of their spells.”

So, if anyone wanted to learn to make a playing card have a sharp edge? Well, the card itself is a nice Focus component, but any attempt that didn’t also involve Verbal, Somatic, Material, and XP components would automatically be doomed to failure.

If the would-be card cutter spent a week experimenting / practicing in an appropriate setting, they might develop an ability that allowed them to make that specific card into a cutting edge for a limited time, at the cost of 50 XP each time. Once they spent 250 XP, they realize that they can now do it to any similar surface at no XP cost (ie, they paid 250 XP for this ability, in installments). Or maybe they can only do it to the card at will, until they add a new Focus component (perhaps a tattoo on their body, or maybe a suitably snarky Focus, like a +1 dagger that they keep hidden in their hands, but allows the random object to cut for d4+1 damage, or for its base damage if the target is a weapon, whichever is more.

This would follow the world logic of, “Wizards spend time and resources to add discrete abilities to their playbooks”, and, even so, still may Captain Hobo the Wizard who spent 1 week and 1k gp learning a “Ray of Frost” variant, especially given that, in 3e, Cantrips are not usable at will. So maybe the Cutting Edge ability also requires a Sacrifice component - maybe a couple of stat points with each use?

So, in that setting, people who say prayers and do dances while hanging horseshoes over their doors might be unsuccessfully copying the person who actually figured it out, and has a live fey in their pocket as the Focus component, and still loses 2 wisdom and takes 1 Chaos Taint every time they bring good luck to a place with a horseshoe.

Feeling magic in this setting? Wierwood is about the only thing I know of that reacts to magic. So, if a Warforged were to be built / rebuilt with Wierwood as part of their composition? Then they might start to “feel” magic the same way photo luminescent beings feel when their lights are on. We could theorize about that sensation, or wait for gene-spliced humans or uplifted animals to tell us what it’s really like.

In short, to not Captain Hobo the system-equivalent of the Wizard (and to not have the Wizard just exclusively use the new system), it would not be unreasonable to want these abilities to cost noticeably more than whatever spell-equivalent the system has, in one or more of money, XP, stats, time, action economy, opportunity cost, or whatever other currency the system lets one pay.

Or, to switch back to chemistry… Breaking Bad (?) says “Moron can make drugs; chemist can make much better drugs (that are much less likely to kill you?)”. If there’s not a noticeable difference, what’s the point in being skilled? So, unless we really up what the *simplest* of “trained only” spells / whatever can do, then what *everyone* can do should be much weaker, and/or much more costly.

Would that be a potential response from one edge of one spectrum of the subset of people who understood what you were looking for? If the… least permissive / most balance focused crowd had an adherent of this mindset?

I mean, I'd say this attitude is basically the source of a lot of problems, because it specifically looks at the rules as a mandate to pigeon-hole the supernatural. This reads to me as taking the rules as something you are obligated to warp the narrative and fiction around to support, so if the rules only happen to say that wizards cast spells, this is starting from there and going backwards to say 'I have to come up with excuses for why magic cannot be accessed unless you take levels in wizard'.

But if you have systems which say 'we'll have a few specific things detailed (but only for those who are casting spells), but for everything else the DM should decide whether it could work or not, and what an appropriate ability check would be', then that kind of attitude creates problems, because the system is explicitly asking you not to go out of your way to justify the specific things in the rules as being the only things which can be done. So that mindset will create the usual disaster that either you go the route of a class explicitly allowed to touch the supernatural and all of your stuff is very precise and 'you can just do it', and the things you can 'just do' increase with level. Or you try to go some other route and now you find that maybe your combat damage and durability increases but your ability to bypass sealed containers is limited by the DM's feeling of 'how much can I allow before it becomes not-mundane and therefore begins to step on the toes of the supernatural?'

If instead you take a stance like PhoenixPhyre mentioned where every single thing everyone does in the setting touches the supernatural, because in that setting it isn't actually 'super', its just that setting's version of nature, then you don't end up with this issue, and everyone can have a mix of explicit and implicit capabilities. The person who studies locks and mechanisms and machinery all their life can reach a point where they have Fonzie-like abilities to fix devices by giving them the perfect technical tap, or by looking at them cross-wise until they behave. Not because 'that is something that is realistic for a very skilled real-world human to do', but because it fits with, say, an overall animistic view of the nature of the supernatural in that setting - that everything has sentient spirits which are mostly asleep all the time - but those spirits notice those who pay particular lavish attention to them or can be woken up by those who have gathered the attention of many others, and as a result sometimes the world just goes someone's way more-so than would be possible in the real world. The daredevil attempts a jump across a chasm and makes it, even if there's no way it would be biomechanically possible for their body to survive exerting enough force to create that parabolic arc - because the spirits are impressed and help lift him the extra 15ft. Or, mechanically, a high DC Strength check (or Jump check or whatnot) is allowed to not just be mundane.

You can still have wizards in that kind of setting - those are the people who have dedicated their lives to the academic study of the phenomenon of spirit-mediated effects, and have formalized the ability to reliably form pacts or contracts with particular spirits, without having to be a passionate gardener or a consummate thief. But because they're doing this through formal entreaty and pacts rather than through passion, rather than having those effects available to them at all times and without fail, they have to prepare things in advance, fulfill the obligations and rituals needed for each such spirit or force, and once they've asked their favor they might not get another for a bit until they've done the whole thing again. There can still be a reason to be a wizard in such a setting - beyond just 'being interested in the academic study of that phenomenon', there's both a difference in reliability (this pact always works this way, there's no 'roll to succeed' in invoking it) and in the ability to broaden access to effects by just finding and performing other pacts. But there also isn't some kind of thing where 'supernatural things are only for characters who cast spells and everyone else is stuck with the mundane' because you have a mindset of carefully not wanting to create the ability to do things that the rules haven't explicitly given people.

Edit: and again, it is absolutely possible to make mechanics for this for some particular system. But this isn't about a particular system, its about the narratives we're ready to accept and the concepts we have access to. We do not owe fealty to copy even the conceits of 3e D&D much less to reinforce 3e's mechanics when thinking about 'how could we conceptualize relationships with the supernatural?'

Satinavian
2022-08-22, 12:16 AM
Maybe take a look at Earthdawn for inspiration. It does do this magically boosted mundane looking abilities for some classes along spells for other classes.


And thinking about that, maybe because of shared origins, SR with its physical adepts alongside its spellcasters does the same thing.


If the would-be card cutter spent a week experimenting / practicing in an appropriate setting, they might develop an ability that allowed them to make that specific card into a cutting edge for a limited time, at the cost of 50 XP each time. Once they spent 250 XP, they realize that they can now do it to any similar surface at no XP cost (ie, they paid 250 XP for this ability, in installments). Or maybe they can only do it to the card at will, until they add a new Focus component (perhaps a tattoo on their body, or maybe a suitably snarky Focus, like a +1 dagger that they keep hidden in their hands, but allows the random object to cut for d4+1 damage, or for its base damage if the target is a weapon, whichever is more.That sounds not much different from a spell in a point buy system.

We could certainly change spells to work that way and call the prople leaning lots of them "wizards" while getting rid of the classes. But as i undertand, that is not really what NichG wants.

Cluedrew
2022-08-22, 07:27 AM
This seems like such a D&D problem thread, not as extreme as some of the others mind you.

Anyways, I believe the solution is consistent lore. Not that it is easy to create a bunch of quality consistent lore, but I think that might be all you have to do.

Why? Well if we aren't using mechanics to help decide something then we must be using fiction. So we would need preexisting fiction to help guide that. And to try and arrive at consistent results from that, the lore has to be consistent so extrapolating from it is (relatively) consistent as well.

And that is kind of it? As much as adding more would be this explanation's "consistent lore" I'm not really sure where it is needed. So feel free to ask questions.

Martin Greywolf
2022-08-22, 08:09 AM
The problem is, DnD doesn't have a magic system, it has some mechanics for doing magic. And there's a very big difference between the two.

Take Harry Potter as an example. You could run a DnD game in that universe, all you'd have to do is give everyone a massive number of spell slots (possibly infinite) and create a whole bunch of discrete spells. (discrete in mathematic sense, e.g. this spell does this one, specific thing) It would be a game that functions, but it would be useless for our purposes.

Because in HP verse, we see what magic can do without seeing the specific spells being cast more often than not. Expanded streets, weirdly shaped buildings, teleport spam, odd games and so on. To have even a hope of doing this, you need a magic system - an understanding of how and why magic works, what it can and cannot do and why. Now, with HP specifically, we are rarely ever told the rules explicitly (no resurrection, no conjuring food), but we can extrapolate what these rules are over time (spell speed in low, manipulating space is easy, manipulating time is hard, focus in spells matters, wand movements matter, pronunciation matters). Don't get me wrong, this system in HP has a few plotholes, but it is there and we can discover it as we go along.

This works very well for a book, and not at all for a game.

For a game, you need the magic system to be explicitly stated and consistent, or you'll run into trouble, and DnD does neither of those things. Healing is divine magic only, unless it isn't. Divine casters are based off of wisdom, unless they aren't. Damaging spells are evocations, unless they aren't. It's a mess and we know nothing about how or why it works.

And with that being the case, you can't do anything but "there's a specific spell that did this", because that is quite literally all that (the lack of) DnD magic system offers.

The solution? Make your own and go from there.

NichG
2022-08-22, 11:18 AM
This seems like such a D&D problem thread, not as extreme as some of the others mind you.

Anyways, I believe the solution is consistent lore. Not that it is easy to create a bunch of quality consistent lore, but I think that might be all you have to do.

Why? Well if we aren't using mechanics to help decide something then we must be using fiction. So we would need preexisting fiction to help guide that. And to try and arrive at consistent results from that, the lore has to be consistent so extrapolating from it is (relatively) consistent as well.

And that is kind of it? As much as adding more would be this explanation's "consistent lore" I'm not really sure where it is needed. So feel free to ask questions.

Well, in particular this is something inspired by a problem I saw crop up in a D&D thread (specifically with regards to a claim that having D&D move towards more freeform rulings with fewer benchmark references unlocks DMs imaginations and allows them to do more). And the issues we're having now in this thread are definitely a D&D problem - namely, because spells exist in the rules and are explicit, people seem to really be struggling to think of 'the supernatural' as meaning something other than spells. So in that sense, maybe the struggles to get beyond the spellcasting metaphor indicate an issue with the idea that just removing rules without adding something else in place of those rules would actually help people expand what they could imagine. E.g. while some DMs will be able to freely come up with their own metaphors for how the supernatural works, other DMs (and players for that matter) are likely to just take the absence of text about a thing as an indication that the stuff that has explicit text about it is all there is...

I think the broader point is relevant outside of D&D, though, and its basically the point you make - if you want to have a rules-light, freeform game with strong supernatural elements, you don't just want to have 'no text'. You want to have a lot of non-mechanical text that describes in detail the concepts behind the supernatural forces in that setting or game, such that people have a framework to construct their rulings and determinations around. That kind of lore is the sort of thing I was hoping people would post in this thread. Though, not just stopping with universe creation myths and 'there is this energy', but specifically going through the thought processes of 'how does a person in that setting actually experience those forces on a day to day basis'. So basically getting people used to the process of moving from 'here's the grand unified theory of four forces' to 'your hair stands on end when lightning is about to strike'.

Because I think ultimately if you want to build things for rulings-based semi-freeform play, that's an important process to become familiar with. Even if all the PCs will be supernatural creatures (wizards in a muggle world or whatever), if the rules aren't telling players 'here are the twenty things you are allowed to try to do', you need to be thinking of other ways to communicate to the players what sort of things are reasonable to try to do. If you're a vampire without an explicit list of disciplines and abilities, how do you describe 'being a vampire' such that a player will intuitively grok that e.g. there's a whole richness to their relationship with blood that can be explored in a hundred ways - identifying someone from their blood, tracking them, getting fragments of the history of the person's life as they drink, using their own blood to convey a boon or bond a person, to heal a mortal's wounds with or without turning them as well, etc.

So if some people go and take one of this and run, dunno, 5e D&D but everyone with a class level is secretly a qi cultivator no matter what the rules say, and ability checks can be used for qi-bsaed effects, great! If some people go and take these and make their FATE games richer by having a fully connected lore behind things rather than trying to say Aspects are actually how things work metaphysically, great! If in general people have a better idea of how to treat fluff and narrative text as actually suggesting how things should work, and there's even a small shift towards treating fluff with as much respect as crunch receives, great! Heck, if its just that the next time someone complains about how unrealistic is that a character could do something, if more people are just starting from a mindset of 'well, I could imagine systems of metaphysics in which that would work', rather than needing to use only the real world as the reference point, great!

Quertus
2022-08-22, 05:28 PM
That sounds not much different from a spell in a point buy system.

We could certainly change spells to work that way and call the prople leaning lots of them "wizards" while getting rid of the classes. But as i undertand, that is not really what NichG wants.


I mean, I'd say this attitude is basically the source of a lot of problems, because it specifically looks at the rules as a mandate to pigeon-hole the supernatural.

That was not entirely unlike my point. “Electricity”, existing in the real world, as part of its physics, is kinda pigeonholed to behave a particular way. The layperson (or the electrician using the general / layperson system) shouldn’t be getting electricity to do things that the electrician (or the “electrician system”) can’t do - what a layperson can do with electricity should look a lot like what an electrician does to a point buy system.

Electricity has rules regarding pathing and conductivity, for example. My point was, if we’ve established the rules electricity has to follow in our physics, the electrician should seem the “miracle worker” in comparison to the layperson, not the other way around.

To switch it up yet again, what if someone (say, the Wizard, but it doesn’t matter who) wanted to learn an “attack” ability that allowed them to, no roll, behead an unaware target with their trusty, rusty axe? I mean, it makes perfect sense in our world for someone taken unawares to be beheaded in a single blow, right? And “like our world, unless noted otherwise”, right? Never mind that the Wizard in this hypothetical system has a form of Invisibility that makes “catching someone unawares” trivial.

So, do we want to let the Wizard CoDzilla on past the Fighter in combat performance? Or do we want to mandate that everyone’s playing by the same rules, with the same system, and the Wizard can’t just ignore things like “the combat system”? (Curiously, D&D, which we aren’t talking about, except as a common example everyone reading this forum can theoretically follow, has always allowed everyone to do just that to a helpless target; depending on the edition, it may trigger calls to additional rules, like “coup de grace”.)



This reads to me as taking the rules as something you are obligated to warp the narrative and fiction around to support, so if the rules only happen to say that wizards cast spells, this is starting from there and going backwards to say 'I have to come up with excuses for why magic cannot be accessed unless you take levels in wizard'.

I can see why you’d think that. But the point was for Magic to follow rules, like any other physics. Those happened to be the only rules that the Magic in question in my example seems to follow, so I asked, what if those rules were “mandated by physics”.

Suppose someone lived in a fantasy world that was *unlike* ours in this key way: in their world, electricity *only* existed in their reality briefly, when spells are cast, when dragons breathe, and when storms discharge lightning bolts. There is no other electricity in their world.

Suppose someone from that world tried to understand and explain our electricity, and our electricians.


“They can call lightning from the skies at will, and hold it in their hands, channeling it against their enemies, and to power their diverse spells, like making things hot or cold.”

“The electrician? Uh, they use arcane apparatuses, usually involving precious metals like gold or copper, to create the foci for everyone’s spells. And, if you draw near to an electrician’s place of power, you can hear it, like a humming in the air.”

“Oh, and of course I haven’t tried to experience it first hand, but I’m told that, in their world, you can *feel* it right before lightning strikes.”

Although not an entirely unfair depiction, it might make one wonder: why would anyone ever play an electrician? Or, stepping back, “what role does an electrician play in a game?”. With all the infrastructure the electricians have built, and the ease with which the layperson can use power lines / electrical outlets and batteries to power their electronics, what isn’t covered by “person using tools”, especially from this outsider’s or a game developer’s PoV?

Or, to switch back to talking about Magic, if magic is an integrated part of the world’s physics, what is the distinction between “person who uses magic” (ie, everyone) and “Wizard”? If everyone can utilize magic, what role does a Wizard play in the game, that anyone would want to play a Wizard?

In case I’ve misheard you, let me check: this is going under the assumption that your system has “Wizards” and “Spells”, but also has muggles making stat checks to make rivers stop flowing, not through mundane action like “building a dam”, but as part of their interface to the magic system.

What I’m asking is, how do you build a coherent combat system, where anyone would ever play a Fighter, if the Wizard is already one-shotting everyone with their rusty axe via their “unskilled” interface to the combat system?

Maybe my experiences are atypical, but, IME, there’s a seemingly infinite number of answers to your question, but very few make for good games, and, IME, the homebrew that failed usually did so by not thinking through the implications of devaluing skill and training.

To state that again, for clarity: I believe that, to build a successful *game*, you need to not just start at “how does the layperson interface with physics?”, but “how does the interface to the physics differ between the layperson and the expert?”.




If instead you take a stance like PhoenixPhyre mentioned where every single thing everyone does in the setting touches the supernatural, because in that setting it isn't actually 'super', its just that setting's version of nature, then you don't end up with this issue, and everyone can have a mix of explicit and implicit capabilities. The person who studies locks and mechanisms and machinery all their life can reach a point where they have Fonzie-like abilities to fix devices by giving them the perfect technical tap, or by looking at them cross-wise until they behave. Not because 'that is something that is realistic for a very skilled real-world human to do', but because it fits with, say, an overall animistic view of the nature of the supernatural in that setting - that everything has sentient spirits which are mostly asleep all the time - but those spirits notice those who pay particular lavish attention to them or can be woken up by those who have gathered the attention of many others, and as a result sometimes the world just goes someone's way more-so than would be possible in the real world. The daredevil attempts a jump across a chasm and makes it, even if there's no way it would be biomechanically possible for their body to survive exerting enough force to create that parabolic arc - because the spirits are impressed and help lift him the extra 15ft. Or, mechanically, a high DC Strength check (or Jump check or whatnot) is allowed to not just be mundane.

You can still have wizards in that kind of setting - those are the people who have dedicated their lives to the academic study of the phenomenon of spirit-mediated effects, and have formalized the ability to reliably form pacts or contracts with particular spirits, without having to be a passionate gardener or a consummate thief. But because they're doing this through formal entreaty and pacts rather than through passion, rather than having those effects available to them at all times and without fail, they have to prepare things in advance, fulfill the obligations and rituals needed for each such spirit or force, and once they've asked their favor they might not get another for a bit until they've done the whole thing again. There can still be a reason to be a wizard in such a setting - beyond just 'being interested in the academic study of that phenomenon', there's both a difference in reliability (this pact always works this way, there's no 'roll to succeed' in invoking it) and in the ability to broaden access to effects by just finding and performing other pacts. But there also isn't some kind of thing where 'supernatural things are only for characters who cast spells and everyone else is stuck with the mundane' because you have a mindset of carefully not wanting to create the ability to do things that the rules haven't explicitly given people.

Ok, great. Here we have clear rules for magic (“spirits”), and both trained (“formal entreaty and pacts”, “prepared ahead of time”) and untrained (“passion”, “areas of extreme skill”) access to the interface.

However, it still doesn’t make the kind of system you’re describing, afaict. Because I cannot draw clear connections between the effects you’ve described, and areas of mastery.

Only a master Engineer? Chronomancer? can spontaneously ask a River to stop its flow. Only a master Weapon Smith? Tailor? can spontaneously ask the spirit of an object to become as hard and sharp as a blade. Only a master Fire builder? Glutton? can ask a torch not to burn him as he swallows it.

But, fine. Maybe nobody in such a system can do those particular things, and they’re just bad examples for that system. Maybe there’s therefore a lot of things that are exclusively in the realm of “spells”. Maybe we should instead ask what characters with particular masteries and passions can do. So… what can I imagine that particular characters with particular masteries might do?

Let’s pretend each has 3 masteries & passions (and that those match up, so we don’t have to wonder what happens when you approach the interface with only half the requisite variables).

[magic theory, art, technical writing] - ???

[tactics, lying, caring] - maybe ask spirits to fabricate evidence to match their lies?

[partying, carnage, confounding reality] - ???

[athletics, archery, continuing after failure] - maybe asking arrows to do stunts?

[double-speak, breaking the 4th wall, “taking aggro”] - ???

Ok, maybe I’m not very good at this?

Or maybe my characters’ passions are the problem?

[Nature, architecture, driving] - yeah, I could see asking Nature spirits all kinds of stuff, but while “Nature” works as a passion, it’s not exactly a skill. With architecture, could you ask favors of the spirit of a place, or just places you’ve built? Either way, I can see applications. Driving? Yeah, the spirit is the car lets the driver ignore certain constraints of physics normal people deal with.

So…. it’s just that my characters have suboptimal passions for such a system?

——-

Are we anywhere close to on the same page yet?

NichG
2022-08-22, 07:05 PM
That was not entirely unlike my point. “Electricity”, existing in the real world, as part of its physics, is kinda pigeonholed to behave a particular way. The layperson (or the electrician using the general / layperson system) shouldn’t be getting electricity to do things that the electrician (or the “electrician system”) can’t do - what a layperson can do with electricity should look a lot like what an electrician does to a point buy system.

Electricity has rules regarding pathing and conductivity, for example. My point was, if we’ve established the rules electricity has to follow in our physics, the electrician should seem the “miracle worker” in comparison to the layperson, not the other way around.

To switch it up yet again, what if someone (say, the Wizard, but it doesn’t matter who) wanted to learn an “attack” ability that allowed them to, no roll, behead an unaware target with their trusty, rusty axe? I mean, it makes perfect sense in our world for someone taken unawares to be beheaded in a single blow, right? And “like our world, unless noted otherwise”, right? Never mind that the Wizard in this hypothetical system has a form of Invisibility that makes “catching someone unawares” trivial.

So, do we want to let the Wizard CoDzilla on past the Fighter in combat performance? Or do we want to mandate that everyone’s playing by the same rules, with the same system, and the Wizard can’t just ignore things like “the combat system”? (Curiously, D&D, which we aren’t talking about, except as a common example everyone reading this forum can theoretically follow, has always allowed everyone to do just that to a helpless target; depending on the edition, it may trigger calls to additional rules, like “coup de grace”.)


If someone was running a system based on a mix of freeform adjudication and more specific rules for particular combat maneuvers, and got into their head that because there's a Lv8 Fighter combat move to chop off someone's arm, only Lv8+ Fighters should be physically capable of dismembering bodies in that universe, and therefore there is no way that the Lv3 Rogue who committed a murder could chop up the corpse and hide it, I'd say just outright 'they're doing it wrong'. They're saying they're running something freeform, but actually they're just running something where the answer to any freeform thing is always just 'no, you can't do that'. Which if you take the freeform part seriously, is essentially throwing out the half of the rules that they don't actually understand.

To me this sort of argument just reads like when you see some LitRPG webnovel where for whatever reason the character who got a [Mage] class literally can't lift an axe from the ground because it isn't a class weapon for them. It's a particular kind of fiction, sure, but if that's all you've got as a way to think about any number of imaginable fantasy worlds I think that's pretty sad.

Now, how do I think someone should run 'someone wants to chop off someone else's head in combat, in a system built on freeform adjudication that doesn't have an explicit rule for it'? Well, what you do is you make sense of the situation and the action with regards to your various models of the world. That is, you think to yourself 'okay, what does it take to chop off a head?', 'okay, if someone started to feel that kind of attack land, what would they do?', 'in this genre of fiction that we're going for, are things grim and gritty with death around the corner ever and always for anyone, or is it more swashbuckling where people spend 5 minutes giving a death monologue?', etc. Then, you find the set of things from all of those factors which would make sense given the intent of the player, you decide the level of abstraction appropriate to the situation, and you make a ruling as to how that should work, or whether it's even possible or appropriate. The answer can be for example something like 'this setting basically has something like Aura from RWBY, and you have to get through someone's Aura before you can start lopping off limbs' or it can be something like Black Company where when you go to behead the Lv30 epic army commander, the body picks up the head, puts it back on, and the wound heals, because of all sorts of random profane ritual stuff that they've been subjected to over the course of their career. Or you find that actually its pretty hard to chop through an armored neck with a rusty blade in one blow while you're trying to be stealthy, and there is some check or set of checks called for. Or yeah, it just works, you just kill the guy, that's life and death in a grim and gritty setting. Or for this game, everything else is handled at a higher level of abstraction, and the entire thing ends up modeled as a stochastic bidding war between you and that guy where what your declaration did is to set the consequence of that guy failing to win the auction being 'you're beheaded'.



I can see why you’d think that. But the point was for Magic to follow rules, like any other physics. Those happened to be the only rules that the Magic in question in my example seems to follow, so I asked, what if those rules were “mandated by physics”.

Suppose someone lived in a fantasy world that was *unlike* ours in this key way: in their world, electricity *only* existed in their reality briefly, when spells are cast, when dragons breathe, and when storms discharge lightning bolts. There is no other electricity in their world.

Suppose someone from that world tried to understand and explain our electricity, and our electricians.


“They can call lightning from the skies at will, and hold it in their hands, channeling it against their enemies, and to power their diverse spells, like making things hot or cold.”

“The electrician? Uh, they use arcane apparatuses, usually involving precious metals like gold or copper, to create the foci for everyone’s spells. And, if you draw near to an electrician’s place of power, you can hear it, like a humming in the air.”

“Oh, and of course I haven’t tried to experience it first hand, but I’m told that, in their world, you can *feel* it right before lightning strikes.”

Although not an entirely unfair depiction, it might make one wonder: why would anyone ever play an electrician? Or, stepping back, “what role does an electrician play in a game?”. With all the infrastructure the electricians have built, and the ease with which the layperson can use power lines / electrical outlets and batteries to power their electronics, what isn’t covered by “person using tools”, especially from this outsider’s or a game developer’s PoV?

Or, to switch back to talking about Magic, if magic is an integrated part of the world’s physics, what is the distinction between “person who uses magic” (ie, everyone) and “Wizard”? If everyone can utilize magic, what role does a Wizard play in the game, that anyone would want to play a Wizard?

In case I’ve misheard you, let me check: this is going under the assumption that your system has “Wizards” and “Spells”, but also has muggles making stat checks to make rivers stop flowing, not through mundane action like “building a dam”, but as part of their interface to the magic system.


Lets take something like cultivation stories as an example of another way you can think of the fiction that doesn't create this sort of weird barrier. In cultivation stories, basically everyone who is a relevant character cultivates. But there is some kind of inner logic to all of the cultivation stuff, and characters are amateurs or experts on the basis of how well they navigate that inner logic. So someone can become, say, an alchemist, and use their qi shaping and controlling abilities to refine ingredients into pills that do crazy things. Someone can become, say, a formations expert, using principles of feng shui to bring about different kinds of field effects in combining naturally occurring qi with qi contributed by them and others. Someone can use their qi to survive a poisoning, or to throw a punch, or to rewrite the rules of reality within a 3 meter sphere of them such that the karma of the act of attacking them unjustly reflects back upon the attacker, or whatever. But one characteristic of this literature is that it cares more than, say, Arthurian myth, about where those abilities come from, why they're possible, how they make sense given everything else. And that means that a lot of those stories feature people who are forced to get to the same places but in different ways - because they're working around some injury, or because they're using borrowed power that fights them, or because they're using some weird form of qi that has its own preferences, or whatever.

So you don't have 'muggles' and 'non-muggles'. You just have characters, all of whom are constantly touching the supernatural elements of the setting at all times. Even the most mundane characters in a cultivation story are subject to qi, have injuries and sicknesses related to the flow of their qi, can be healed by qi manipulations, etc - they're just the Lv0 nobodies who haven't yet figured anything out about the real nature and forces of the world they live in, or haven't had a chance to put in the basic practice to actually do any of that stuff well yet. But it's not inaccessible to them - in most of those stories, you can take any of those characters, give them a cultivation manual, and if they spend a few weeks at it they can start sensing their qi and doing stuff, even if its really minor stuff.

Or, we can take something like RWBY, where again, all of the relevant characters have 'unlocked aura', and unlocking aura is something that can be done to basically anybody with a simple ritual. Anyone in the setting can use dust stuff. But each character has a theme, a particular style of weapon, a particular semblance, all of which direct their interaction with the basic principles of the setting in different ways. But you don't have relevant characters who are basically 'I don't engage with the supernatural stuff in the setting', even if one character has a semblance that literally looks like runecasting and summoning stuff, while another makes body-clones, and another just acts as a damage capacitor and can discharge that with their attacks. You wouldn't say that the damage capacitor character is a 'muggle', even if they're more about hitting things than about more involved workings. And when that character uses their damage capacitor trick to, say, survive the part of the basic academy intro exam that involves being dropped out of a helicopter without a parachute, it makes sense given the underlying structure of that setting. That doesn't invalidate the characters whose semblances are more caster-y.

So you don't have to have someone who is just 'the guy at the gym' for 'I am a wizard, I study the arcane, formalize it, and use its deepest mysteries' to be relevant. Just like you don't have to have someone who literally physically cannot pick up an axe or stab a sleeping guard in order for 'I'm a grizzled veteran of a thousand fights' to be relevant. I can absolutely push water around with my hands or get it to flow from vessel to vessel by pouring or even hook up a hose to water my lawn, but I'm still going to hire a plumber when I want to have my bathroom renovated.



What I’m asking is, how do you build a coherent combat system, where anyone would ever play a Fighter, if the Wizard is already one-shotting everyone with their rusty axe via their “unskilled” interface to the combat system?

Maybe my experiences are atypical, but, IME, there’s a seemingly infinite number of answers to your question, but very few make for good games, and, IME, the homebrew that failed usually did so by not thinking through the implications of devaluing skill and training.

To state that again, for clarity: I believe that, to build a successful *game*, you need to not just start at “how does the layperson interface with physics?”, but “how does the interface to the physics differ between the layperson and the expert?”.

Ok, great. Here we have clear rules for magic (“spirits”), and both trained (“formal entreaty and pacts”, “prepared ahead of time”) and untrained (“passion”, “areas of extreme skill”) access to the interface.

However, it still doesn’t make the kind of system you’re describing, afaict. Because I cannot draw clear connections between the effects you’ve described, and areas of mastery.

Only a master Engineer? Chronomancer? can spontaneously ask a River to stop its flow. Only a master Weapon Smith? Tailor? can spontaneously ask the spirit of an object to become as hard and sharp as a blade. Only a master Fire builder? Glutton? can ask a torch not to burn him as he swallows it.

But, fine. Maybe nobody in such a system can do those particular things, and they’re just bad examples for that system. Maybe there’s therefore a lot of things that are exclusively in the realm of “spells”. Maybe we should instead ask what characters with particular masteries and passions can do. So… what can I imagine that particular characters with particular masteries might do?

Let’s pretend each has 3 masteries & passions (and that those match up, so we don’t have to wonder what happens when you approach the interface with only half the requisite variables).

[magic theory, art, technical writing] - ???

[tactics, lying, caring] - maybe ask spirits to fabricate evidence to match their lies?

[partying, carnage, confounding reality] - ???

[athletics, archery, continuing after failure] - maybe asking arrows to do stunts?

[double-speak, breaking the 4th wall, “taking aggro”] - ???

Ok, maybe I’m not very good at this?

Or maybe my characters’ passions are the problem?

[Nature, architecture, driving] - yeah, I could see asking Nature spirits all kinds of stuff, but while “Nature” works as a passion, it’s not exactly a skill. With architecture, could you ask favors of the spirit of a place, or just places you’ve built? Either way, I can see applications. Driving? Yeah, the spirit is the car lets the driver ignore certain constraints of physics normal people deal with.

So…. it’s just that my characters have suboptimal passions for such a system?


I think you're too fixated on the idea of 'being a master' being like having X levels in a specific class.

Since you like 3e D&D, an example would be that anyone who can hit a DC 100 Sense Motive check can manifest an effect like 'Detect Thoughts'. It's true for anyone, no matter how they manage to put together that DC 100 result - they could be a Bard with an Item Familiar for extra skill ranks, a +20 magic item, who is using Improvisation to buff their check. They could be a Lv90 Commoner just got there the slow way by investing a ton of skill ranks. They could be some epic level monster with no class levels other than monster HD, but with a Wisdom in the 100s and a lot of ranks. The thing that makes 'can read someone else's mind as if through telepathy' permitted there is not 'I am playing a character with enough levels of Telepath' (or 'I am playing a Lv4 Wizard'), but rather just the ability to pass a competency threshold which is measured via other means than 'unlocked as a class feature'. A high enough Escape Artist check and you can teleport through a Wall of Force. A high enough Balance check and you can cloudwalk.

Those aren't muggle abilities, but they do not (at least in principle) require anyone to cast a spell. In practice you won't see those things at levels below 20 in most 3e campaigns. But there's no reason why you couldn't. And I think there's no reason it would make for an inherently bad game for those things to not be locked behind spells, but rather to have a model of the fiction in which e.g. learning and casting a spell is a particular kind of shortcut to doing those things via a different avenue of competency than doing it through pure embodied skill.

So for this spirits thing, lets say we had a system with a bunch of different skills, and as you level you can invest ranks in those skills like in 3e, and other sources of competency also contribute to those skills. Real world applications of skills are all capped to DC 30. So that is to say, if any real world human could do it, the rule is that it cannot be above DC 30. A character who can hit above DC 30 in something is doing something empowered by the supernatural of that setting, no pretending that its 'mundane' allowed. We can have classes in this system as well, but each class represents some specific kind of shortcut that lets you touch a set of connected supernatural competencies without having to hit that DC 30 level. Those who go, say, the route of Shugenja end up with a rolodex of spirits on call, in exchange for not being able to improvise or be flexible about the effects they can bring about that way. Those who go the Monk route undergo methods of training that basically fuse spirits into their skin, muscles, organs, and bones, giving access to specific and reliable benefits which someone who wasn't a Monk could temporarily create with a good check, but the Monk has them always and forever on with no check required and probably gets them at a lower level than someone who went the pure skill route.

(As far as scale of bonuses and stuff, lets say 1 rank per character level investment max, a good ability modifier for low-level is +4, mid-level around a +6, high level a +8; you can pick up +6 max from other build customizations like feats and synergies, maybe a max of +5 from items, and lets just entirely get rid of buff spells that directly boost skills so no chaining your way up by making a skill check to get a bonus to skill checks - so a Lv1 character could be made who could touch the supernatural in a single thing if they went all out to spec for it, but only say 5% of the time; but by Lv10, characters would be expected to be doing supernatural stuff in a few areas on the regular, and a Lv20 character could hit supernatural tier effects in their things with 100% reliability every time, but only within the things they spec'd for).

But at the end of the day, a Lv20 Commoner could be built who should be able to bring about any single particular effect that a Lv1 Shugenja could produce or a Lv1 Monk or a Lv1 Blademaster or whatever, if not in the same fashion as someone trained as those things. In fact, you could take any 'spell' or 'move' or even 'class feature' in the system and give it a set of skills and corresponding DCs for anyone to be able to spontaneously manifest that ability. That doesn't by any means make those classes redundant or unnecessary, because you're likely playing a Lv3 character rather than a Lv30 one. And if you are playing a Lv30 character, well, by that time there are going to be some Lv30 Shugenja things to do that would correspond to, say, DC 60-80 skill checks - not impossible to hit for a character spec'd to touch them who is also receiving assistance from others, etc - but not something they can just pull off with 100% reliability every single time.

So if someone wants to stop a river from flowing without being a Shugenja? Well, if they've got 20 ranks of Diplomacy or Feng Shui or something, Skill Focus, a good ability score, and roll well - why not?

Cluedrew
2022-08-22, 08:43 PM
The problem is, DnD doesn't have a magic system, it has some mechanics for doing magic. And there's a very big difference between the two.That is a nice turn of phase, I like that. It also leads into my big point for this post.


[...] if you want to have a rules-light, freeform game with strong supernatural elements, [...]. You want to have a lot of non-mechanical text that describes in detail the concepts behind the supernatural forces in that setting or game, [...]. That kind of lore is the sort of thing I was hoping people would post in this thread. Though, not just stopping with universe creation myths and 'there is this energy', but specifically going through the thought processes of 'how does a person in that setting actually experience those forces on a day to day basis'.Yes! Exactly, that is what I'm going for. There are details to work out but that is the big idea.

Except I can't do that for D&D. Because there are no underpinnings for which I can draw that lore from. I have read the entire book about Elminster learning to be a wizard and I don't know what spell perpetration looks like. (I haven't read it recently, maybe there is something in there I forgot.) I guess I could make things up whole-cloth, and maybe if I was playing D&D again I would, but I'd be playing connect the dots when the dots were never meant to form a picture.

On the other hand, the setting for the fantasy epic that I may someday actually write? Yes, that is a thing I have hammered out excruciating detail on. I've also thrown out a lot of ideas because they contradicted the world building. Some times the thing they contradicted was something I might never reveal to the reader, but they could probably infer it.

D&D has so many oddities that trying to create a cohesive narrative explanation for all the things in it strikes me as... unpleasant. I mean I already throw out the official lore explanation for HP, as I find its doesn't match up with the mechanics of around getting hit.


Are we anywhere close to on the same page yet?I don't even understand how what you two are going on about relates to the original quest. I get something about how if you don't think the consequences through you can get problems, but that's it. (And that is definitely true, but there have been many similar problems with mechanics as well.) Do you think you could trace out the connection in a few sentences?

Satinavian
2022-08-23, 01:16 AM
I think the broader point is relevant outside of D&D, though, and its basically the point you make - if you want to have a rules-light, freeform game with strong supernatural elements, you don't just want to have 'no text'. You want to have a lot of non-mechanical text that describes in detail the concepts behind the supernatural forces in that setting or game, such that people have a framework to construct their rulings and determinations around.True.

But the first thing is "do i even want a rules-light, freeform game with strong supernatural elements" ?
The next is "Why would i even have classes in my rules light free form game and why specifically caster- and non-caster classes when everyone is suppossed to interact with the supernatural in freeform ? Seems unnecessarily complicated."
And the third is "Wouldn't it be best to just use an established non-TRPG setting with halfway consistent supernatural elements for such a freeform game ? Ideally something several of my players know and like ?"



To switch it up yet again, what if someone (say, the Wizard, but it doesn’t matter who) wanted to learn an “attack” ability that allowed them to, no roll, behead an unaware target with their trusty, rusty axe? I mean, it makes perfect sense in our world for someone taken unawares to be beheaded in a single blow, right? And “like our world, unless noted otherwise”, right? Never mind that the Wizard in this hypothetical system has a form of Invisibility that makes “catching someone unawares” trivial.Why not ? If everyone learns spells the same way and we call someone who learns lots of them a wizard, then everyone should learn attack abilities the same way and we should call someone who learns lots of them a fighter. Maybe we can call someone learning both and neglecting other skills a combatmage. Or not.




Except I can't do that for D&D. Because there are no underpinnings for which I can draw that lore from. I have read the entire book about Elminster learning to be a wizard and I don't know what spell perpetration looks like. (I haven't read it recently, maybe there is something in there I forgot.) I guess I could make things up whole-cloth, and maybe if I was playing D&D again I would, but I'd be playing connect the dots when the dots were never meant to form a picture.

On the other hand, the setting for the fantasy epic that I may someday actually write? Yes, that is a thing I have hammered out excruciating detail on. I've also thrown out a lot of ideas because they contradicted the world building. Some times the thing they contradicted was something I might never reveal to the reader, but they could probably infer it.

D&D has so many oddities that trying to create a cohesive narrative explanation for all the things in it strikes me as... unpleasant. I mean I already throw out the official lore explanation for HP, as I find its doesn't match up with the mechanics of around getting hit.True.

In nearly every other fantasy system i have played, when some GM tells me about an reclusive wizard doing a new ritual for X after years of study, i can tell pretty instantly whether that ritual makes sense in the magic fiction of the game and i can also instantly tell how it should interacting with most of the other magical and nonmagical things in the world. I can't do that for D&D at all.

Elves
2022-08-23, 01:32 AM
I like how magic works in Unknown Armies and, to a lesser degree, in Mage the Ascencion.

There's a consensus reality that works because that's what everyone thinks it should be, and then there's a conspiracy or several conspiracies behind the curtain that can change reality when no one's looking.

I don't like how it works in those games because it makes it just a metaphor -- for thinking outside the box, being creative, having the will to change the world, etc. Those are important things but if you want to engage with them you should do so directly.

To me the secret of magic is about the difference between our sensory experience and the external world it maps. The depiction of magical and unrealistic events seems to be about celebrating the possibilities of conscious and phenomenal experience, separate from its use as a survivalist tool to map the external world. Of course, you could say that the most important thing about phenomenal experience is to let us obtain understanding of the world and that it's not interesting in itself, but then I hope you have fun when the non-conscious robots or whatever take over.

NichG
2022-08-23, 02:29 AM
True.

But the first thing is "do i even want a rules-light, freeform game with strong supernatural elements" ?
The next is "Why would i even have classes in my rules light free form game and why specifically caster- and non-caster classes when everyone is suppossed to interact with the supernatural in freeform ? Seems unnecessarily complicated."
And the third is "Wouldn't it be best to just use an established non-TRPG setting with halfway consistent supernatural elements for such a freeform game ? Ideally something several of my players know and like ?"



For the first and second, evidently there's a contingent of people who see 5e D&D as intentionally moving in this direction with regards to ability check resolution. So I'd hope that those people do have some kind of encompassing fiction for the transmundane and supernatural in mind, and to the extent that maybe it hasn't been obvious how necessary having such a thing is when removing explicit structure, this thread should hopefully be both a wakeup call and a useful workshop of ideas that can be used when the system now says 'make it up'.

I don't think you need classes to talk about how people might relate to the supernatural, but it seems to be a strong anchor in people's minds as to how to think about games, so it may inevitably be necessary to at least address it somewhat in order to be able to get to the more interesting bits.

As far as the third, that's fine if that's what you happen to want to play, but it seems limiting to restrict yourself only to that. Especially if the motivation for wanting to move in the more freeform direction is so that the GM has more creative freedom.

Satinavian
2022-08-23, 03:09 AM
For the first and second, evidently there's a contingent of people who see 5e D&D as intentionally moving in this direction with regards to ability check resolution. So I'd hope that those people do have some kind of encompassing fiction for the transmundane and supernatural in mind, and to the extent that maybe it hasn't been obvious how necessary having such a thing is when removing explicit structure, this thread should hopefully be both a wakeup call and a useful workshop of ideas that can be used when the system now says 'make it up'.I don't think people should try to move D&D there. D&D has way too much baggage and way to many players who want it to be some other thing. If you want to talk about 5E D&D again, well, that is fine, but not something that is interesting to me.

Furthermose, "encompassing fiction" ? Whatever the fiction is, it will be setting specific. You won't get anything that works with D&D in general. Every single campaign will have its very own guidelines about what can and can't be done in freform magic.

I don't think you need classes to talk about how people might relate to the supernatural, but it seems to be a strong anchor in people's minds as to how to think about games, so it may inevitably be necessary to at least address it somewhat in order to be able to get to the more interesting bits. I think it will make your life just harder. Don't do classes that are about magic and classes that are not and then try to fit a system where everyone does magic. You won't get anywhere.
I see that as a concern if you wanted to specifically modify D&D. But as said above, that is a bad idea. Also you already see Quertus coming trying to protect the wizard class from getting their toys stolen. That is the kind of hurdle you would be fighting all the time. One one hand you have to make the classes that are about magic the strongest in magic. On the other hand you don't want magic to be unappealing to others. And then you have to navigate all the exclusivity and synergy and redundancy concerns. And you have to find strictly nonmagical abilities for your nonmagical classes in a world where everyone uses magic and also find a reason why casters can't learn those as well.

As far as the third, that's fine if that's what you happen to want to play, but it seems limiting to restrict yourself only to that. Especially if the motivation for wanting to move in the more freeform direction is so that the GM has more creative freedom.What, now you are doing it for the GM ? I thought it was for the players to get creative with this new magic, which obviously would require a shared understanding of it. If it is all about the DM getting the ability to pull even more stuff out of their behind, it seems utterly unappealing to me.
Sure, you could theoretically have the GM build a setting and magic system that is his own and still robust enough for proper free form.

But this is a lot of hard work. Which is why no one just presents those ideas here. It is way too much work to do for a forum thread. At best people can point you to existing settings and their magic.

Asmotherion
2022-08-23, 08:22 AM
I like to use "invisible" forces as a means to make the supernatural more... mysterious?

For example, I might describe that someone's peripheral vision catches something off with the carpet; "For a moment you think you saw a it smiling at you with a creepy smile."

Other times I describe a feeling they may experiance, one that does not come from them. For example, a particularly evil precence might make them feel a chill in the atmosphere, a creepy feeling down their spine.

Sometimes I like playing with their sences. "This person's pressence makes you think of the taste of hot spice" or "You smell cheese in the atmosphere, yet you don't"

NichG
2022-08-23, 11:04 AM
I don't think people should try to move D&D there. D&D has way too much baggage and way to many players who want it to be some other thing. If you want to talk about 5E D&D again, well, that is fine, but not something that is interesting to me.

Furthermose, "encompassing fiction" ? Whatever the fiction is, it will be setting specific. You won't get anything that works with D&D in general. Every single campaign will have its very own guidelines about what can and can't be done in freform magic.
I think it will make your life just harder. Don't do classes that are about magic and classes that are not and then try to fit a system where everyone does magic. You won't get anywhere.
I see that as a concern if you wanted to specifically modify D&D. But as said above, that is a bad idea. Also you already see Quertus coming trying to protect the wizard class from getting their toys stolen. That is the kind of hurdle you would be fighting all the time. One one hand you have to make the classes that are about magic the strongest in magic. On the other hand you don't want magic to be unappealing to others. And then you have to navigate all the exclusivity and synergy and redundancy concerns. And you have to find strictly nonmagical abilities for your nonmagical classes in a world where everyone uses magic and also find a reason why casters can't learn those as well.
What, now you are doing it for the GM ? I thought it was for the players to get creative with this new magic, which obviously would require a shared understanding of it. If it is all about the DM getting the ability to pull even more stuff out of their behind, it seems utterly unappealing to me.
Sure, you could theoretically have the GM build a setting and magic system that is his own and still robust enough for proper free form.

Hm, how to respond in a way that doesn't just create an even bigger digression. Discussions on the forum about 5e D&D are the thing that gave me the idea that a thread like this could be useful. That's not the same as me wanting to discuss D&D here, or this thread needing to be about D&D.

So the underlying point here is broader and really isn't D&D specific, even if the instigating event came from a D&D discussion. And that is that without some form of guidance or framework making the unreal aspects of a setting concrete we tend to have strong asymmetry between how we envision a character interacting with things we recognize from the real world, versus things which have no real world equivalents for us to reason about. It's equally relevant if we were talking about running FATE for example, since that implicitly relies on treating Aspects as 'this is actually a property of the character or situation and should act as a narrative enabler' rather than just being 'Aspects = +2 to a roll when tagged' in order to have any kind of richness of interaction. Whether or not you personally like freeform games is a digression - there are people who want to run things that way (or want to run things which assume that they will do this part of the job), and out of those people maybe 25% understand that they need to do this kind of legwork and 75% either don't realize that or actively reject it. So I want the 25% to help the 75%.

But I don't particularly want to talk about systems here, despite that being the direction the conversation seems to be pulling. Because the point of the thread isn't to reach a consensus about 'what the system of magic for particular system A and setting B should be'. It's to give people access to a different mindset about how to think about magic in their systems and their tables. Whether that just takes the form of people realize they do need to include a page or two about the nature of magic in their notes to themselves, or the form that when a surprise interaction comes up during play they have the experience of being exposed to ways of thinking about magic that aren't strict compartments, that would count as a success.



But this is a lot of hard work. Which is why no one just presents those ideas here. It is way too much work to do for a forum thread. At best people can point you to existing settings and their magic.

I mean, there's a good quarter of posts in this thread that are actually presenting these ideas. Even if those ideas are from their own settings, that still counts as an idea and a reference for this kind of workshopping. Even having a discussion about other settings that do this and what the features of those settings are that make it feel more natural is progress. I've posted a mix of 'these are things I use in my own campaigns, from my own bit of hard work' and references to media. I prefer to lean away from the media references because they come with the baggage of, well, the story, the characters, the style, etc, which people may just dislike independent of the things about the supernatural; and you risk people just not being familiar.

Things like the following are exactly the sort of thing I was looking for:


I don't like how it works in those games because it makes it just a metaphor -- for thinking outside the box, being creative, having the will to change the world, etc. Those are important things but if you want to engage with them you should do so directly.

To me the secret of magic is about the difference between our sensory experience and the external world it maps. The depiction of magical and unrealistic events seems to be about celebrating the possibilities of conscious and phenomenal experience, separate from its use as a survivalist tool to map the external world. Of course, you could say that the most important thing about phenomenal experience is to let us obtain understanding of the world and that it's not interesting in itself, but then I hope you have fun when the non-conscious robots or whatever take over.


I like to use "invisible" forces as a means to make the supernatural more... mysterious?

For example, I might describe that someone's peripheral vision catches something off with the carpet; "For a moment you think you saw a it smiling at you with a creepy smile."

Other times I describe a feeling they may experiance, one that does not come from them. For example, a particularly evil precence might make them feel a chill in the atmosphere, a creepy feeling down their spine.

Sometimes I like playing with their sences. "This person's pressence makes you think of the taste of hot spice" or "You smell cheese in the atmosphere, yet you don't"

There's lots of stuff one could do with this as a starting point I think. You could build from the specific anomalous perceptions by asking 'what if someone treats those anomalous perceptions as real and tries to interact with them?' or 'what if someone further modifies their perceptions while experiencing these things?' or 'what if someone records these perceptions and looks for consistent patterns between them and the supernatural source, location, event, etc?'. Another way would be to start with a grand principle like 'perceptual illusions actually reflect the perception of an alternate reality, and stuff like magic eye diagrams or Necker cubes or synaesthetic experiences can be used as foci to peer into that alternate layer of truth. Whether you want that to go to solipsistic 'only I exist, and if I don't perceive my own death I don't die' types of magic (sort of a world-walker vein where its not that you create a fireball, its that you force yourself to exist only in sheafs of reality in which the fireball was always there) or go a panpsychic route where the world itself also has perceptual illusion and ambiguous stimuli, and permanent transformations occur when the mind of the world determines that that alternate layer of reality is the correct one, well, you've got options.

Satinavian
2022-08-23, 12:44 PM
But I don't particularly want to talk about systems here, despite that being the direction the conversation seems to be pulling. Because the point of the thread isn't to reach a consensus about 'what the system of magic for particular system A and setting B should be'. It's to give people access to a different mindset about how to think about magic in their systems and their tables. Whether that just takes the form of people realize they do need to include a page or two about the nature of magic in their notes to themselves, or the form that when a surprise interaction comes up during play they have the experience of being exposed to ways of thinking about magic that aren't strict compartments, that would count as a success. I am really not that sure what you want, but I'll go ahead and describe the magic system of the standard TDE setting, which is a very conservative fantasy RPG setting. :

There are two primordial forces :

Sikaryan, which is everything that is, which in practice means pretty much any kind of matter or energy and which is subdivided into the 7 elements.

Nayrakis, which is everything that could be. Pure possibilities, thoughts, abstract concepts, memories and dreams. Also sould for some reason.

Both forces, when interact, compromise the world. Specifically, when Nayrakis, the possible acts on Sikaryan, the real, you get change, a possibility becoming a new reality. Also, one can nearly never find them in pure form.


So, what about magic :

Well, magic power is one of the 7 elements. It is out there in the world, but there are some places where it is more concentrated, there are some river-like laylines it flows through, it can be manipulated and stored. Some beings can accumulate it in their bodies and use it. Those are magical beings and magic users.

However, magic power alone is not magic. It is what can power magic. Spells are more akin to thoughts or concepts and thus basically belong to the Nayrakis side of things. Again, only by bringing both forces together actual change can happen. This is what is called magic. There are some beings with innate magical abilities, but that is not considered real magic.

Now, generally Nayrakis can change Sikaryan, but not the other way around. Which means that no magic can directly interfere with thoughts, concepts, souls etc. But indirect nfluence is possible. There can't be a spell that targets a dream, but there can be a spell that targets a dreamer and changes what they dream. There is no spell that targets a sould, but there sure are many spells that target persons who have souls and those souls can be affected by what happens to the person

There is one exception : Gods can give out powers that affect Nayrakis directly and are even pretty likely to do so. Generally the power of priests is not considered magic at all, because it does not use the element of magic power. Divine power usually relates to abstract concepts the gods stand for.



TDE being a traditional setting has most humanoids not being able to store magic. And even those that can store magic power, don't have a sense for external magic and have to use spells for that.
However, there do exist some animals that, while not being able to store magic, have a magic sense. And there are animal trainers using that fact. While those animals are not really able to analyze magic very well, the fact that they can sense it all the time and without expending magic power, makes them better at it than mages.
Furthermore there are plants reacting to magic. There is one plant that only grows in magic rich locations. Everyone knowing it, can recognize such places and also find and follow Ley-lines.
There is another plant with leaves that change color when exposed to magic. With special training, one can pretty exactly measure with it how magical something or someone is.
Beside those there are other plants that don't react to magic but are magical enough to produce a "magical" effect. There is a plant that can repell ghosts and it is easy to grow and pretty pupular for articifial hedges. There is even a plant that can transform people into apes, which is pretty annoying.
A completely unmagical botanist can do a lot in this setting.
Similarly there are minerals and gems that can provide some small supernatural effects when used correctly, even when handled by complete nonmagical people.




Is it stuff like this you want ?

NichG
2022-08-23, 01:01 PM
I am really not that sure what you want, but I'll go ahead and describe the magic system of the standard TDE setting, which is a very conservative fantasy RPG setting. :

There are two primordial forces :

Sikaryan, which is everything that is, which in practice means pretty much any kind of matter or energy and which is subdivided into the 7 elements.

Nayrakis, which is everything that could be. Pure possibilities, thoughts, abstract concepts, memories and dreams. Also sould for some reason.

Both forces, when interact, compromise the world. Specifically, when Nayrakis, the possible acts on Sikaryan, the real, you get change, a possibility becoming a new reality. Also, one can nearly never find them in pure form.


So, what about magic :

Well, magic power is one of the 7 elements. It is out there in the world, but there are some places where it is more concentrated, there are some river-like laylines it flows through, it can be manipulated and stored. Some beings can accumulate it in their bodies and use it. Those are magical beings and magic users.

However, magic power alone is not magic. It is what can power magic. Spells are more akin to thoughts or concepts and thus basically belong to the Nayrakis side of things. Again, only by bringing both forces together actual change can happen. This is what is called magic. There are some beings with innate magical abilities, but that is not considered real magic.

Now, generally Nayrakis can change Sikaryan, but not the other way around. Which means that no magic can directly interfere with thoughts, concepts, souls etc. But indirect nfluence is possible. There can't be a spell that targets a dream, but there can be a spell that targets a dreamer and changes what they dream. There is no spell that targets a sould, but there sure are many spells that target persons who have souls and those souls can be affected by what happens to the person

There is one exception : Gods can give out powers that affect Nayrakis directly and are even pretty likely to do so. Generally the power of priests is not considered magic at all, because it does not use the element of magic power. Divine power usually relates to abstract concepts the gods stand for.



TDE being a traditional setting has most humanoids not being able to store magic. And even those that can store magic power, don't have a sense for external magic and have to use spells for that.
However, there do exist some animals that, while not being able to store magic, have a magic sense. And there are animal trainers using that fact. While those animals are not really able to analyze magic very well, the fact that they can sense it all the time and without expending magic power, makes them better at it than mages.
Furthermore there are plants reacting to magic. There is one plant that only grows in magic rich locations. Everyone knowing it, can recognize such places and also find and follow Ley-lines.
There is another plant with leaves that change color when exposed to magic. With special training, one can pretty exactly measure with it how magical something or someone is.
Beside those there are other plants that don't react to magic but are magical enough to produce a "magical" effect. There is a plant that can repell ghosts and it is easy to grow and pretty pupular for articifial hedges. There is even a plant that can transform people into apes, which is pretty annoying.
A completely unmagical botanist can do a lot in this setting.
Similarly there are minerals and gems that can provide some small supernatural effects when used correctly, even when handled by complete nonmagical people.




Is it stuff like this you want ?

Yep, that's the kind of thing, and discussion of the interpretation of those concepts.

So e.g. here, 'magic energy' is explicitly one of seven physical elements, so it seems relevant to ask how the other six elements might interact with Nayrakis. Are there thoughts and concepts and dreams and so on which directly influence other forces? Even without storing magic, does the relationship between Nayrakis and Sikaryan mean that someone without magic could still step into an active magical effect and influence it? Or perform a distributed working with some agents of the working being there purely to move magic through themselves, and other agents of the working being there to not move magic but rather to provide the conceptual structure that the magic-movers are making use of. For example, if someone is using magic during a sermon or poetry reading, can the poem infect the magic use? If someone eats of the plants that change color in the presence of magic, is that something they can temporarily develop (the way over-eating carrots can have an impact on skin pigmentation), or is it less about the 'stuff' of the plants and more about the 'pattern'. Etc.

Or, given the inability of things to directly impact Nayrakis, can someone learn to protect themselves by leaning into that - if not in the form of directly ignoring a magical effect, rather in the form of knowing what they can safely risk and what they cannot safely risk when interacting with a complex magical scenario - their brain might be damaged such that they don't experience a certain love anymore, but the love itself would be immutable and therefore in principle recoverable, etc.

Satinavian
2022-08-23, 01:38 PM
Answers in green to not have a long list of quotes


So e.g. here, 'magic energy' is explicitly one of seven physical elements, so it seems relevant to ask how the other six elements might interact with Nayrakis. The other elements interacting with Nayrakis is the explanation for pretty much all the non-supernatural stuff that happens. This cosmology is not purely about magic. Additionally there is some divine intervention that would fall into this category as most of the gods are very much about concepts. Are there thoughts and concepts and dreams and so on which directly influence other forces? That does exist but mostly in myths, especcially about the origin of elves, which are said to have dreamed themselves but also lost their dreaming power when they entered the world. It seems stuff like that can still be true in the settings equivalent of the feywild. And of course in the hells, where Sikaryan is really sparse and every single thought can have wide reaching but ephemeral effects. Even without storing magic, does the relationship between Nayrakis and Sikaryan mean that someone without magic could still step into an active magical effect and influence it? Theoretically yes, practically hardly ever. Most spells and rituals are designed to be somewhat robust against interruptions. But there are exceptions where simple touch of a ritual focus by literally anyone instantly ends the effect. Or perform a distributed working with some agents of the working being there purely to move magic through themselves, and other agents of the working being there to not move magic but rather to provide the conceptual structure that the magic-movers are making use of. That is possible and basically how the settings circle magic works. Though usually the one providing the spellcasting instead of the energy does have some magic he used to become so skillful. For example, if someone is using magic during a sermon or poetry reading, can the poem infect the magic use? There are magic traditions where that is the case and casters use it to get into the right mood for the spells and other traditions where casters train to block out such distractions. If someone eats of the plants that change color in the presence of magic, is that something they can temporarily develop (the way over-eating carrots can have an impact on skin pigmentation), or is it less about the 'stuff' of the plants and more about the 'pattern'. Nice idea. That indeed can't be answered with the official material. Though, as those plants can be used in alchemy providing this effect, i would go for "it is possible".
Or, given the inability of things to directly impact Nayrakis, can someone learn to protect themselves by leaning into that - if not in the form of directly ignoring a magical effect, rather in the form of knowing what they can safely risk and what they cannot safely risk when interacting with a complex magical scenario - their brain might be damaged such that they don't experience a certain love anymore, but the love itself would be immutable and therefore in principle recoverable, etc. That is not really explored much, but there are some things that could be read this way. Additionally, willpower and meditation based techniques to shield the mind from any magical meddling quite generally do exist as well.



Now again, TDE is relatively traditional and does not want to make everyone a magic user, so the answers might be less empowering than you like. But it is a system and setting with a relatively well developed concept of how its magic work. Well enough to do even freeform decisions about it with some common understanding.

Quertus
2022-08-23, 01:45 PM
I don't even understand how what you two are going on about relates to the original quest. I get something about how if you don't think the consequences through you can get problems, but that's it. (And that is definitely true, but there have been many similar problems with mechanics as well.) Do you think you could trace out the connection in a few sentences?

Ostensibly, I’m still trying to understand the original question.

I think my best bet in that regard is the post NichG made immediately preceding (but after I had already begun) my previous post. I may respond to that one next.


If someone was running a system based on a mix of freeform adjudication and more specific rules for particular combat maneuvers, and got into their head that because there's a Lv8 Fighter combat move to chop off someone's arm, only Lv8+ Fighters should be physically capable of dismembering bodies in that universe, and therefore there is no way that the Lv3 Rogue who committed a murder could chop up the corpse and hide it, I'd say just outright 'they're doing it wrong'.

Sure. But my point was, if the “level 8 fighter maneuver” requires a sharp edge, the unskilled Rogue had better have a **** good reason why they can chop an arm off with a blunt chess piece, or a pillow.

And that Rogue’s ability should make sense given the rules for the physics of “chopping” that exist in the universe, shouldn’t seem shocking or mind-numbing stupid to someone who understands and accepts the physics.

(For example, I might allow the Rogue to do so with a hacksaw, a non-resisting body, and half an hour - all noticeably worse / all much stricter requirements than the “Fighter 8 ability” that just requires “a sharp edge” and “an action”)


So you don't have to have someone who is just 'the guy at the gym' for 'I am a wizard, I study the arcane, formalize it, and use its deepest mysteries' to be relevant.

I… don’t follow “cause” to “effect” to reach that conclusion from what you wrote, but… I get the idea of “not a muggle Pholbetium user”, I think.

What I’m struggling with… I think I’ll save that for replying to your “thread objectives” post.




I think you're too fixated on the idea of 'being a master' being like having X levels in a specific class.

Not even remotely. Honestly, I’m kinda surprised you could even say this, after my “character masteries” including things like “partying” and “caring”. Unless you somehow inferred that my sample characters had levels in the “Pinky Pie” class…


3e D&D, anyone who can hit a DC 100 Sense Motive check can manifest an effect like 'Detect Thoughts'.

So for this spirits thing, lets say Real world applications of skills are all capped to DC 30. So that is to say, if any real world human could do it, the rule is that it cannot be above DC 30. A character who can hit above DC 30 in something is doing something empowered by the supernatural of that setting, no pretending that its 'mundane' allowed.

In fact, you could take any 'spell' or 'move' or even 'class feature' in the system and give it a set of skills and corresponding DCs for anyone to be able to spontaneously manifest that ability.

These I like. (Well, not as much the 3e one - I think it’s dumb in several vectors, but the biggest one being “it’s not enough”… which might be the closest to “on the same page” we’ve been in this thread?)

NichG
2022-08-23, 02:06 PM
Answers in green to not have a long list of quotes


So e.g. here, 'magic energy' is explicitly one of seven physical elements, so it seems relevant to ask how the other six elements might interact with Nayrakis. The other elements interacting with Nayrakis is the explanation for pretty much all the non-supernatural stuff that happens. This cosmology is not purely about magic. Additionally there is some divine intervention that would fall into this category as most of the gods are very much about concepts. Are there thoughts and concepts and dreams and so on which directly influence other forces? That does exist but mostly in myths, especcially about the origin of elves, which are said to have dreamed themselves but also lost their dreaming power when they entered the world. It seems stuff like that can still be true in the settings equivalent of the feywild. And of course in the hells, where Sikaryan is really sparse and every single thought can have wide reaching but ephemeral effects. Even without storing magic, does the relationship between Nayrakis and Sikaryan mean that someone without magic could still step into an active magical effect and influence it? Theoretically yes, practically hardly ever. Most spells and rituals are designed to be somewhat robust against interruptions. But there are exceptions where simple touch of a ritual focus by literally anyone instantly ends the effect. Or perform a distributed working with some agents of the working being there purely to move magic through themselves, and other agents of the working being there to not move magic but rather to provide the conceptual structure that the magic-movers are making use of. That is possible and basically how the settings circle magic works. Though usually the one providing the spellcasting instead of the energy does have some magic he used to become so skillful. For example, if someone is using magic during a sermon or poetry reading, can the poem infect the magic use? There are magic traditions where that is the case and casters use it to get into the right mood for the spells and other traditions where casters train to block out such distractions. If someone eats of the plants that change color in the presence of magic, is that something they can temporarily develop (the way over-eating carrots can have an impact on skin pigmentation), or is it less about the 'stuff' of the plants and more about the 'pattern'. Nice idea. That indeed can't be answered with the official material. Though, as those plants can be used in alchemy providing this effect, i would go for "it is possible".
Or, given the inability of things to directly impact Nayrakis, can someone learn to protect themselves by leaning into that - if not in the form of directly ignoring a magical effect, rather in the form of knowing what they can safely risk and what they cannot safely risk when interacting with a complex magical scenario - their brain might be damaged such that they don't experience a certain love anymore, but the love itself would be immutable and therefore in principle recoverable, etc. That is not really explored much, but there are some things that could be read this way. Additionally, willpower and meditation based techniques to shield the mind from any magical meddling quite generally do exist as well.



Now again, TDE is relatively traditional and does not want to make everyone a magic user, so the answers might be less empowering than you like. But it is a system and setting with a relatively well developed concept of how its magic work. Well enough to do even freeform decisions about it with some common understanding.

Well, I think I said before but the answer in any given particular framework doesn't have to be 'yes, you can do that'. The empowering thing is actually more the exercise of discussing it rather than having any particular Thorwalian start to dance on rainbows. Basically, normalizing asking and answering these sorts of questions and allowing those answers to determine resolution - even expecting that these sorts of questions are how one should go about resolving things - is itself empowering, and helps move in a direction of resolving the gaps I was seeing.

Cluedrew
2022-08-23, 08:12 PM
Ostensibly, I’m still trying to understand the original question.

I think my best bet in that regard is the post NichG made immediately preceding (but after I had already begun) my previous post. I may respond to that one next.Let me take a crack at it, NichG can say if this is right, or at least close enough, but I think I can state the goal of the thread in a slightly more wordy way.

The goal of this threat is to create/present a framework for deciding how interactions with supernatural things play out when there are no rules stating how it does. Instead of rules/mechanics, the goal is to use narrative information about the setting, magic system, the supernatural thing involved and the characters to determine what can be done narrative. (Presumably you would then translate it back to mechanics as one would for a "natural" interaction.)
If I may through one more particular thing I would like to throw onto the pile. I actually hinted at this in my first post but didn't think to highlight it: Make sure to explain what using magic actually looks like. This is one that role-playing games can miss totally* if they just describe the rules of using magic in the same way they might describe the rules for leveling up. Or climbing a way, but most people can fill in that without setting information.

This is kind of the opposite view of the "magical theory" side of it. What are the actual mechanics of using a particular spell in setting. This is great for flavour and narrating an actual scene, but also helps in filling thing in. Especially around using magic in different situation, how can we shut a magic user down, what can the magic user to get around missing things they usually need?

* But I also read a story where eventually I realized I didn't know what wards looked like, how they were set up, how they were triggered, what happened if they were triggered and how one slipped by them. They were just around secure locations and sufficiently skilled rogues got in anyways.

NichG
2022-08-23, 09:06 PM
Let me take a crack at it, NichG can say if this is right, or at least close enough, but I think I can state the goal of the thread in a slightly more wordy way.

The goal of this threat is to create/present a framework for deciding how interactions with supernatural things play out when there are no rules stating how it does. Instead of rules/mechanics, the goal is to use narrative information about the setting, magic system, the supernatural thing involved and the characters to determine what can be done narrative. (Presumably you would then translate it back to mechanics as one would for a "natural" interaction.)
If I may through one more particular thing I would like to throw onto the pile. I actually hinted at this in my first post but didn't think to highlight it: Make sure to explain what using magic actually looks like. This is one that role-playing games can miss totally* if they just describe the rules of using magic in the same way they might describe the rules for leveling up. Or climbing a way, but most people can fill in that without setting information.

This is kind of the opposite view of the "magical theory" side of it. What are the actual mechanics of using a particular spell in setting. This is great for flavour and narrating an actual scene, but also helps in filling thing in. Especially around using magic in different situation, how can we shut a magic user down, what can the magic user to get around missing things they usually need?

* But I also read a story where eventually I realized I didn't know what wards looked like, how they were set up, how they were triggered, what happened if they were triggered and how one slipped by them. They were just around secure locations and sufficiently skilled rogues got in anyways.

This is pretty close I think. The only thing I might do is to use the phrase 'a framework for thinking about' rather than 'a framework for deciding', in the sense that I wasn't thinking to construct, say, a particular protocol or sequence of of steps for resolution. On the other hand, a sequence of questions one might ask to ground a metaphysical system the same way some character generation systems have a list of questions to ask about your character could be a neat output for this thread so I wouldn't object to that sort of expanded purpose.

Vahnavoi
2022-08-24, 02:17 PM
The reason why D&D lacks other ways to interact with the supernatural than spells, is because historically, methods to interact with the supernatural were made into spells. Then TSR decided to scrub the details so that no-one would mistake D&D rulebooks for actual manuals for magic.

Yet, a perceptive player who knows the source mythologies can still trace what is actually supposed to happen when a "spell" is being cast. Material components for a fireball reference components of blackpowder; charm person classically involves a coin and piece of string, referencing stereotypical method of hypnosis; augury and divination refer to age-old method of casting bones, or using coins or sticks to form I-ching hexagrams; so on and so forth.

So the key to achieving what NichG wants is to blow up the concept of a "spell" and do away with generalist "spellcaster", going from back from the abstract to concrete in-game actions. If you have guano and sulfur, you can try making blackpowder explosives; if you have a coin and a piece of string, you can make a pendulum of them and try using it for hypnosis; if you have bones, you can cast them in attempt to divine the future... just beware of recursion, because rolling dice to see what happens in the game is just a variation of the same theme.

If you have time and resources, it's possible to achieve this with diegetic game elements - as in, give your players some bones to cast, some runes to form words with, even an Ouija board, whatever. Let them play with those to interface with the game reality.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-08-24, 02:35 PM
The reason why D&D lacks other ways to interact with the supernatural than spells, is because historically, methods to interact with the supernatural were made into spells. Then TSR decided to scrub the details so that no-one would mistake D&D rulebooks for actual manuals for magic.

Yet, a perceptive player who knows the source mythologies can still trace what is actually supposed to happen when a "spell" is being cast. Material components for a fireball reference components of blackpowder; charm person classically involves a coin and piece of string, referencing stereotypical method of hypnosis; augury and divination refer to age-old method of casting bones, or using coins or sticks to form I-ching hexagrams; so on and so forth.

So the key to achieving what NichG wants is to blow up the concept of a "spell" and do away with generalist "spellcaster", going from back from the abstract to concrete in-game actions. If you have guano and sulfur, you can try making blackpowder explosives; if you have a coin and a piece of string, you can make a pendulum of them and try using it for hypnosis; if you have bones, you can cast them in attempt to divine the future... just beware of recursion, because rolling dice to see what happens in the game is just a variation of the same theme.

If you have time and resources, it's possible to achieve this with diegetic game elements - as in, give your players some bones to cast, some runes to form words with, even an Ouija board, whatever. Let them play with those to interface with the game reality.

Except...no one's making blackpowder explosives with bat guano and charcoal in D&D. Especially not within 6 seconds, limited by spell slots, and only using a pinch of such. From a distance of 120 ft, without any container. Spell components are, were, and always will be jokes, not a serious attempt at modeling magic.

NichG
2022-08-24, 02:56 PM
The reason why D&D lacks other ways to interact with the supernatural than spells, is because historically, methods to interact with the supernatural were made into spells. Then TSR decided to scrub the details so that no-one would mistake D&D rulebooks for actual manuals for magic.

Yet, a perceptive player who knows the source mythologies can still trace what is actually supposed to happen when a "spell" is being cast. Material components for a fireball reference components of blackpowder; charm person classically involves a coin and piece of string, referencing stereotypical method of hypnosis; augury and divination refer to age-old method of casting bones, or using coins or sticks to form I-ching hexagrams; so on and so forth.

So the key to achieving what NichG wants is to blow up the concept of a "spell" and do away with generalist "spellcaster", going from back from the abstract to concrete in-game actions. If you have guano and sulfur, you can try making blackpowder explosives; if you have a coin and a piece of string, you can make a pendulum of them and try using it for hypnosis; if you have bones, you can cast them in attempt to divine the future... just beware of recursion, because rolling dice to see what happens in the game is just a variation of the same theme.

If you have time and resources, it's possible to achieve this with diegetic game elements - as in, give your players some bones to cast, some runes to form words with, even an Ouija board, whatever. Let them play with those to interface with the game reality.

Older editions of D&D also have a lot more sources that focus on narrative explanation than mechanical explanation, though they do tend to be very incoherent with each-other. But there's stuff like non-magical shielding versus magic missiles by carrying a bunch of sardonyx on your person, or using serpentine gems to draw off magical fire and cold effects or samarskite acting to confer DR against damage from the undead or properly cut rosaline being able to bypass layers of Prismatic walls/spheres...

BRC
2022-08-24, 03:03 PM
I've always been on the lookout for a good "Magic" system based more around knowing the rules for dealing with the supernatural rather than channeling power. Like, such things exist, but it's usually pretty standard "Werewolves hate silver" type stuff gated behind a knowledge check, but I feel like there's a lot of room for depth there, a whole "Spellcasting" system for a character with no supernatural abilities.

Like for example, recognizing that a spellcaster's magic is granted to them by some very vain eldritch entity, and knowing that you can protect yourself from such magic by wearing depictions of said entity, since it's so vain that it won't want to risk damaging a picture of itself.

Or being able to identify a subtype of ghost and learning what sorts of techniques might work to banish it.


The idea is that the character in question isn't a Spellcaster, they have no supernatural abilities, but that the supernatural itself is governed by a series of esoteric rules that you can engage with beyond throwing spells around yourself.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-08-24, 05:01 PM
I've always been on the lookout for a good "Magic" system based more around knowing the rules for dealing with the supernatural rather than channeling power. Like, such things exist, but it's usually pretty standard "Werewolves hate silver" type stuff gated behind a knowledge check, but I feel like there's a lot of room for depth there, a whole "Spellcasting" system for a character with no supernatural abilities.

Like for example, recognizing that a spellcaster's magic is granted to them by some very vain eldritch entity, and knowing that you can protect yourself from such magic by wearing depictions of said entity, since it's so vain that it won't want to risk damaging a picture of itself.

Or being able to identify a subtype of ghost and learning what sorts of techniques might work to banish it.


The idea is that the character in question isn't a Spellcaster, they have no supernatural abilities, but that the supernatural itself is governed by a series of esoteric rules that you can engage with beyond throwing spells around yourself.

That's the sort of thing that requires heavy setting-and-campaign-specific adjustment. Because many, if not most campaigns and settings don't want to go into such heavy detail on everything ahead of time, and "roll to make up facts" just doesn't sit well with a lot of people.

BRC
2022-08-24, 05:09 PM
That's the sort of thing that requires heavy setting-and-campaign-specific adjustment. Because many, if not most campaigns and settings don't want to go into such heavy detail on everything ahead of time, and "roll to make up facts" just doesn't sit well with a lot of people.

Yeah that's always the problem

The other issue with any sort of system based on knowledge alone is that it's hard to really make it a facet of the character.

Once the players know that an iron horseshoe can block Fairie magic, it's no longer the remit of that one specific character, even if they made the original roll to remember it. So having "The Guy Who Knows The Magic Rules" in the party doesn't especially work if those rules are hard-and-fast enough to become player knowledge


I guess in a rules light game you could have a general "Roll to figure out WHAT sort of thing works against whatever supernatural baddie you're up against" without getting into the specifics as the character pulls out some combination of charms and salt and silver and iron nails.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-08-24, 05:25 PM
Yeah that's always the problem

The other issue with any sort of system based on knowledge alone is that it's hard to really make it a facet of the character.

Once the players know that an iron horseshoe can block Fairie magic, it's no longer the remit of that one specific character, even if they made the original roll to remember it. So having "The Guy Who Knows The Magic Rules" in the party doesn't especially work if those rules are hard-and-fast enough to become player knowledge


I guess in a rules light game you could have a general "Roll to figure out WHAT sort of thing works against whatever supernatural baddie you're up against" without getting into the specifics as the character pulls out some combination of charms and salt and silver and iron nails.

Agreed. It's the sort of thing that works well in games where basically no one has fixed "buttons to press" and everything works on the same sort of narrative logic.

NichG
2022-08-24, 06:21 PM
I think the way to do it is to have those things be at the intersection of knowledge and skill. Anyone can know that the 9-fold 4-pleat knot woven in someone's hair can protect that person against possession. But you still need to invest in dexterity, craft (basket weaving), use rope, whatever in order to execute with that knowledge.

Or settings like the Witcher, where lots of the monster hunting stuff is very specific lore, but you probably do want to be a mutant of the right type before you start getting too heavily into the potions and oils.

Cluedrew
2022-08-24, 09:27 PM
Another way to do it might be through equipment. I mean usually equipment is a pretty cross character thing, but if you have character skills for knowing exactly what to put in an "extortionist's kit" and how to use them, or some sort of resource for maintain the gear, then you could have a some non-transferable equipment. Now we just have to do the narrative leg work to figure out what that equipment is and what it is used for.

NichG
2022-08-24, 09:54 PM
Another way I've seen to bind things a bit more to character investments is to make it so that everything constantly needs to be adjusted to the particulars of a situation, according to fairly dense details that can - and are - abstracted away for the metaphysical understanding held by the players and GM. So for example, lets say the arrangements of planets against the background constellations - in a way that does care about latitude, season, and time of day - are key elements for the working of rituals. From the perspective of the players and GM, the important thing is the concepts that the planets and constellations represent. But in order to take the high-level view of 'I need to use Mars in conjunction with Jupiter set to the background of Virgo in order to control and focus the anger of our troops into a blessing in battle' (or the fantasy-world equivalents of those planets/constellations), the character actually needs to be able to do the calculations as to when and where to do the ritual, and whether or not maybe they need to use some kind of amendments of the ritual due to otherwise bad alignments or extra influences being available.

Vodahim
2022-08-24, 10:04 PM
In the same way as The Witcher, you have Supernatural (TV serie).

I'm not a DM (yet) but this how I (wish I) would go :

First, for the supernatural that looks like casting spell :

* For D&D, if a player plays a rogue and wants to cut trough things with a deck of cards instead of carrying multiple daggers (first, checking that it's not to emulate Hisoka, then) I'll just let him do it. If it's fun, and not really impactful, I don't care.
If I really want to not break the balance (*cough loudly*) of the game, I would make him buy a deck of cards that cost multiple daggers. Or if it's on the go, make 2po mystically vanish from his pockets when he use this ability.

If one character have an intricate relation with water and somehow wants to stop a river momentarily, ability check seems like a good idea. I would make him rolls the same way I would do for climbing a wall. DC could be harder for each round the effect take place, or any other things that suits the difficulty of the task.

To keep to the rules, you could also decide that those abilities are limited to Proficiency/day.



For the rest :

It's important to think of a setting first IMO.
Let say that magic is in everything and everywhere, does anyone feels it ? Do one needs to have some sort of experience with it (trauma from burning/drowning, being the target of a spell, knowing about the possibilities of "magic") ? Is it a passive feeling or does one needs to be actively searching for it ?


* The feeling that magic is present could needs some prerequisites : magic should be in high quantity/quality, a strong (lvl ?) spell is cast, a powerful (lvl ?) spell was cast in this particular place, etc.
For nefarious magic : the player(s) will only know "As you step inside the chamber, you feel a sudden chill. It doesn't last long but you think to yourself that something, somewhere is up to no good."
Nothing is here, but there was a dreadful curse once, that the players will learn after investigating the place. And that's what the player felt. But it is his job to connect the dots between the two.

That could be the first time I describe it. It's in a passive way, and no magic actively tried to jump on them.
As their adventure goes on, this sort of events could, or not, be more frequent.
If a player try to roleplay with it regularly (aka being in touch with his Ghost Busters's side) I might let him know once in a while if someone is casting a spell at the party, without anyone realising it, and let him take one action before the spell is cast.


* Emulating magical effect for non caster : as it was discussed before, I totally see potions doing this sort of things.
The players can buy them or order them from someone, but they will need to be versed in alchemy to make them themselves (or anything that makes sense). Maybe if they stumble upon the secret recipe of grandma for recovering from the flu they may be able to do it themselves without experience.

They could find/craft/have some minor "magical" items. A little like miners were taking small birds with them to be able to know about gas vein.
It could be : traumatizing a rat to avoid being possess, curse a coin and then take it to a crossroad to invoke a demon (the kind who likes to bargain for souls), or a piece of kryptonite to overcome the quasi perfect invulnerability of the BBEG.

It surely would be a one use only. It depends on the thing. But IMO anything that they can use multiple times begins to be a common magical item and should be treated as such.


* For bigger effects, you could also think of an alternative way of casting magic :
Let's say that, in order to cast a spell, you need to make a pact with a divinity (or really anything).
Timmy being a psycopath, no divinity wants to make a pact with him.
Now, Timmy is sad, but Timmy also knows that magic resides into everything and everyone.
Timmy develops a technique that lets him consume things to cast spells. Not being limited by moral (Timmy is still a psycopath) he could cast a really powerful spell during his walk to the town's square.

But this is more an other way to do magic than a way to flirt with the supernatural.

Vahnavoi
2022-08-25, 05:16 AM
The other issue with any sort of system based on knowledge alone is that it's hard to really make it a facet of the character.

Once the players know that an iron horseshoe can block Fairie magic, it's no longer the remit of that one specific character, even if they made the original roll to remember it. So having "The Guy Who Knows The Magic Rules" in the party doesn't especially work if those rules are hard-and-fast enough to become player knowledge

It really isn't hard.

It simpy requires embracing the idea that a character is what character does and then being "the Guy Who Knows the Magic Rules" by, as a player, actually keeping notes and applying found knowledge to new situations. (This easy to make diegetic - a player's notes can just be their character's spellbook, and if something happens to the book, a game master takes away the notes.) And on the flipside, if you don't wish to be that, you don't keep notes and don't apply the knowledge.

The same principle can be applied to other endeavors as well. Want to know how you play a knight in an OSR game with just four classes (fighter, thief, cleric, magic-user)? You buy your lance and your armor and your warhorse, then get on said horse and employ tactics associated with knights. Sure, any player with enough knowledge about what a knight is could do the same - doesn't mean they will. A niche can be had just by being the one person around willing to do the thing, others don't also need to be mechanically unable to fill that niche.

For another example, there's maps. If characters in my games find maps, I give maps for players to read; and if a character wants to draw maps, then the player will have to draw those (so on and so forth). Who is "the Map Guy" is not gatekept behind any abstract game mechanics, no player is kept from handling the maps in shared possession, yet still it often happens that, like magic, one person becomes "the Map Guy" by simple virtue of being more interested in that facet of gameplay than others.

Quertus
2022-08-25, 10:48 AM
Let me take a crack at it, NichG can say if this is right, or at least close enough, but I think I can state the goal of the thread in a slightly more wordy way.

The goal of this threat is to create/present a framework for deciding how interactions with supernatural things play out when there are no rules stating how it does. Instead of rules/mechanics, the goal is to use narrative information about the setting, magic system, the supernatural thing involved and the characters to determine what can be done narrative. (Presumably you would then translate it back to mechanics as one would for a "natural" interaction.)
If I may through one more particular thing I would like to throw onto the pile. I actually hinted at this in my first post but didn't think to highlight it: Make sure to explain what using magic actually looks like. This is one that role-playing games can miss totally* if they just describe the rules of using magic in the same way they might describe the rules for leveling up. Or climbing a way, but most people can fill in that without setting information.

This is kind of the opposite view of the "magical theory" side of it. What are the actual mechanics of using a particular spell in setting. This is great for flavour and narrating an actual scene, but also helps in filling thing in. Especially around using magic in different situation, how can we shut a magic user down, what can the magic user to get around missing things they usually need?

* But I also read a story where eventually I realized I didn't know what wards looked like, how they were set up, how they were triggered, what happened if they were triggered and how one slipped by them. They were just around secure locations and sufficiently skilled rogues got in anyways.


This is pretty close I think. The only thing I might do is to use the phrase 'a framework for thinking about' rather than 'a framework for deciding', in the sense that I wasn't thinking to construct, say, a particular protocol or sequence of of steps for resolution. On the other hand, a sequence of questions one might ask to ground a metaphysical system the same way some character generation systems have a list of questions to ask about your character could be a neat output for this thread so I wouldn't object to that sort of expanded purpose.

So, to try to put this into my own words… the purpose of the thread is not to produce any of the NI possibilities of “ways that the supernatural could work”, but to help train people to be able to think through a) given a setting, how does one adjudicate (turn into actionable rules) an idea for interacting with that system; b) the level and types of details necessary to make “a” b1) possible; b2) “cause and effect” logical; b3) consistent across tables?


Older editions of D&D also have a lot more sources that focus on narrative explanation than mechanical explanation, though they do tend to be very incoherent with each-other. But there's stuff like non-magical shielding versus magic missiles by carrying a bunch of sardonyx on your person, or using serpentine gems to draw off magical fire and cold effects or samarskite acting to confer DR against damage from the undead or properly cut rosaline being able to bypass layers of Prismatic walls/spheres...

Are you just making stuff up, or are those part of rules unfamiliar to me?

Because my characters have explicitly made “Magic Missile, but fails if the target is carrying X”-type spells (both to protect themselves from betrayal, and to create “safe” AoE spells. It’d be funny if that was wasted effort, as such already existed in the rules.

NichG
2022-08-25, 10:58 AM
So, to try to put this into my own words… the purpose of the thread is not to produce any of the NI possibilities of “ways that the supernatural could work”, but to help train people to be able to think through a) given a setting, how does one adjudicate (turn into actionable rules) an idea for interacting with that system; b) the level and types of details necessary to make “a” b1) possible; b2) “cause and effect” logical; b3) consistent across tables?


Effectively yes, ideally via the exercise of actually coming up with stuff and thinking it through, rather than just talking about whether someone could do it.



Are you just making stuff up, or are those part of rules unfamiliar to me?

Because my characters have explicitly made “Magic Missile, but fails if the target is carrying X”-type spells (both to protect themselves from betrayal, and to create “safe” AoE spells. It’d be funny if that was wasted effort, as such already existed in the rules.

Those are from 2E Volo's Guide to All Things Magical. For each sardonyx someone carries, it intercepts a magic missile on a 1 or 2 on 1d6. Same source that if you are in physical contact with someone who is trying to deceive and you're wearing a ring made of emerald that both you and that person are touching, the ring will shatter.

DirePorcupine
2022-08-25, 12:06 PM
Dreams.

Some of the best scenes I've ever been in were pure roleplay scenes where a DM had a character confront their past and their demons through several dream sequences orchestrated by a deity to challenge and help them mature. And the dreams, while mostly harmless, did have bearing on their waking life.

Quertus
2022-08-26, 06:53 AM
Effectively yes, ideally via the exercise of actually coming up with stuff and thinking it through, rather than just talking about whether someone could do it.



Those are from 2E Volo's Guide to All Things Magical. For each sardonyx someone carries, it intercepts a magic missile on a 1 or 2 on 1d6. Same source that if you are in physical contact with someone who is trying to deceive and you're wearing a ring made of emerald that both you and that person are touching, the ring will shatter.

Sigh. I lost a much longer post, where I tried to detail a system of game physics to workshop. I may try again later; meanwhile, I’ll see if I can track down this new (to me) sourcebook.

Vahnavoi
2022-08-26, 07:14 AM
Sardonyx protecting from magic missiles is based on a real idea that sardonyx symbolizes strength and protection. So stop hunting for RPG books and just Google some site about faith healing with crystals (etc.) and rip the ideas from their source.

Quertus
2022-08-26, 12:41 PM
Sardonyx protecting from magic missiles is based on a real idea that sardonyx symbolizes strength and protection. So stop hunting for RPG books and just Google some site about faith healing with crystals (etc.) and rip the ideas from their source.

Oh, I wasn’t mining for ideas (I’ve used Google to pick gemstones for particular enchantments before, when the system/setting left me without inspiration), just trying to correct oversights in my D&D play / knowledge.

Cluedrew
2022-08-27, 09:43 AM
Effectively yes, ideally via the exercise of actually coming up with stuff and thinking it through, rather than just talking about whether someone could do it.What sort of examples are you looking for?
What sort of background should they be from? I can easily pull some from my musings and writings but most of those have no context in role-playing games.
Any thoughts on what sorts of characters we want to look at? A magic-user without spells vs. a different archetype reaching into the mystic space on occasion.
While I'm rattling of questions, what your preferred types of supernatural?I've just got a bunch of half formed ideas about where this could go so I thought I would try to direct it a little bit.

NichG
2022-08-27, 10:34 AM
What sort of examples are you looking for?
What sort of background should they be from? I can easily pull some from my musings and writings but most of those have no context in role-playing games.
Any thoughts on what sorts of characters we want to look at? A magic-user without spells vs. a different archetype reaching into the mystic space on occasion.
While I'm rattling of questions, what your preferred types of supernatural?I've just got a bunch of half formed ideas about where this could go so I thought I would try to direct it a little bit.

So aside from settings in which there actually is an innate muggle/non-muggle separation baked in already (at which point its kind of a lost cause for this sort of thing...), I think the largest dissonance or difficulty comes from bridging the sort of intuitive/perceptual 'feeling around' of a thing with the existence of formal manifestations that compartmentalize everything: 'Spells are a thing that casters use, therefore everything conveniently gets sucked into the framework of spells, and we should stop asking about how spells work or why spells exist - because magic obviously!'.

If you contrast that to fictional settings that are centered on supernatural martial arts, in those settings its often a trope to explore how a character invents their own signature moves, which helps peel back the compartmentalization. Often that's something like noticing something in the world that has the attributes the character needs - but only in a physical metaphorical - and then trying to render that in terms appropriate for the character's own body; or the character starts with some kind of idea or concept like 'a balloon becomes rigid when you pump it full of air' and you get crazy stuff like Luffy in One Piece inflating his bones like an inner tube in order to punch harder. Or in Xian Xia literature where you do see a lot of named moves and techniques and such, but the literature likes to actually get into 'what is the principle that makes this technique work so well for the character' rather than tending to avoid that. So yes you have your Half-Moon Retrograde Breathing Technique, but that gets explained as e.g. a technique which takes into account the cumulative effects of unidirectional Qi circulation to leave minute striations on the practitioner's meridians which can become points of failure in the future and can lock the practitioner out of certain kinds of badly-aligned Qi, and uses a bidirectional ebb and flow circulation approach to trade slower progression for a more neutral foundation, or whatever.

So I guess the best place to start is the middle question you asked, namely - you've got a setting in which there are people who make use of compartmentalized, named, highly idiosyncratic effects. In that sort of setting, the exercise as it were is to break down those compartments and come up with ways to understand the forces that make it possible to create those compartmentalized effects as being part of the world rather than just being part of the user. E.g. meaning that the principles that make it possible to shapechange or teleport would be omnipresent in the world and would have existed before there were 'casters' to turn them into spells. Then look at the process by which the first people to interact with these forces would have been able to know they were there, to know that they could be influenced, and what would that feel like as a character in the world - neither 'caster' or 'non-caster', but just as an inhabitant of that world. So in the end, you have a way of thinking about the supernatural in that world in terms of omnipresent influences and potentials and so on, out of which bundling all of that into the form of a 'spell' still makes sense in some way, but such that 'spells' are not actually the underlying building blocks of the supernatural. Then, having done that, imagine different paths of access, different challenges or necessary skills in order to walk far along those paths, etc, to the extent where it would make sense to for example tell the story of a character who accidentally rediscovers a few steps of 'how to use magic' without formal education, and you could resolve where they would get into trouble, what their limits would be and what they would need to practice or comprehend or do in order to get further, etc.

Quertus
2022-08-28, 11:06 AM
So aside from settings in which there actually is an innate muggle/non-muggle separation baked in already (at which point its kind of a lost cause for this sort of thing...),

Dagnabbit, I may have failed before I even started! :smallannoyed:

Ok, before I go posting a(n incomplete) system to workshop, I’d better ask: why is the existence of “haves” and “have nots” antithetical to the purpose of this thread, of worshipping magic systems / alternate physics into explaining how “super muggles” / “extraordinary mundane actions” can be supported by the phlobitinum (sp?)?

That is, it seems to me that “Sherlock Holmes can exist, but not everyone can be Sherlock Holmes” should be just as fine as “babies can exist, but not everyone can have babies” for setting logic. If this is false (for the purposes of this thread), why is it false?

Cluedrew
2022-08-28, 08:43 PM
To NichG: I'm actually going to disagree with premise that this discussion is not useful beside a muggle/non-muggle divide*. Basically, the existence of special-magic-people does not prevent other people from interacting with the supernatural (or the special-magic-people interacting with the supernatural in non-standard ways). ... I think it is that simple, is it?

That being said, I don't have any good examples from such a system. At least for muggles interacting with the supernatural, I could talk a bit about spell creation in a setting that a muggle/potential-non-muggle/non-muggle/extra-non-muggle divide. It least for the non-muggle group (the extra-non-muggle group is very inconsistent and comes out of no where). But the inheritors (AKA the non-muggles) basically have a supply of essence/mana in them that they can shape. Unlike many magic systems, it is pretty much impossible to do this internally, so you need some way to shape it and something to hold it together. So long ago they found out that drawing did the trick. And then started drawing different patterns trying to find ways to shape the magic within them. Anyways some people are still into this research and know what all the shapes do and the rules of composition, but a lot of people just carry some chalk around and memories the patterns for the spells they find the most useful. Is that the type of thing you are looking for?

NichG
2022-08-28, 09:34 PM
Dagnabbit, I may have failed before I even started! :smallannoyed:

Ok, before I go posting a(n incomplete) system to workshop, I’d better ask: why is the existence of “haves” and “have nots” antithetical to the purpose of this thread, of worshipping magic systems / alternate physics into explaining how “super muggles” / “extraordinary mundane actions” can be supported by the phlobitinum (sp?)?

That is, it seems to me that “Sherlock Holmes can exist, but not everyone can be Sherlock Holmes” should be just as fine as “babies can exist, but not everyone can have babies” for setting logic. If this is false (for the purposes of this thread), why is it false?

Well, anyone can make a setting with any sort of elements they want. You can have a setting where superpowers only exist for individuals that extradimensional aliens are experimenting on, or for people blessed directly by the gods, or everything supernatural erases itself from your mind automatically if you weren't an Atlantean in a previous life. If someone actually actively wants to prevent a subclass of characters from touching or interacting with magic and that is their intentional decision, there's not much to be done since I'm not arguing 'you should like X kind of setting better than Y kind of setting'. Mostly, I think this is relevant to people who are stuck in a rut where this kind of muggle/magicuser separation seems like the only way to do things or the natural way to do things, or people who don't have a strong 'yes I actually do want to do this' existing view.

For those who do actually want magic to be untouchable unless you're the chosen ones, fair enough, but I'd hope they'd say pretty explicitly to their players 'in this system, you probably need to play a chosen one'. If they don't give that warning and then later on someone complains because they feel useless, well, that's a self-inflicted wound by the GM so lets not say its the fault of the setting or system at that point...

Anyhow, to put the problem with a strict muggle/magic separation, its not like 'only some people are good enough at deduction to be Sherlock Holmes', its 'logic only actually functions for descendants of space aliens, and everyone else is interacting with a universe in which attempting to use deduction - even if it makes sense - is guaranteed to give random results that have nothing to do with reality'. I'd say its incompatible, or at least moving in a strong compatibility-decreasing direction, with a universe in which the supernatural is just the natural law of that universe.


To NichG: I'm actually going to disagree with premise that this discussion is not useful beside a muggle/non-muggle divide*. Basically, the existence of special-magic-people does not prevent other people from interacting with the supernatural (or the special-magic-people interacting with the supernatural in non-standard ways). ... I think it is that simple, is it?

That being said, I don't have any good examples from such a system. At least for muggles interacting with the supernatural, I could talk a bit about spell creation in a setting that a muggle/potential-non-muggle/non-muggle/extra-non-muggle divide. It least for the non-muggle group (the extra-non-muggle group is very inconsistent and comes out of no where). But the inheritors (AKA the non-muggles) basically have a supply of essence/mana in them that they can shape. Unlike many magic systems, it is pretty much impossible to do this internally, so you need some way to shape it and something to hold it together. So long ago they found out that drawing did the trick. And then started drawing different patterns trying to find ways to shape the magic within them. Anyways some people are still into this research and know what all the shapes do and the rules of composition, but a lot of people just carry some chalk around and memories the patterns for the spells they find the most useful. Is that the type of thing you are looking for?

I think its fair game for differences to exist between individuals in a setting with, lets call it 'integrated supernatural'. But I do think its important that the supernatural not 'be a property of the people who use it', and rather that it 'be a property of the world, which people happen to use (possibly in very different ways)'. Often where things get stuck is that magic/superpowers are seen as belonging to and defined by their user, rather than being part of the world that the user touches - that then gives the excuse to make it impenetrable and non-interactable to those other than the holder or those like the holder.

So e.g. in the system where some are born with mana and others without, it should not matter who draws the pattern - even if a muggle does it, it should shape the non-muggle's mana just as well as a non-muggle drawn symbol would. And if a muggle happened to capture a magical creature that produces mana and wired it into the patterns, that should 'work' (possibly at some horrible efficiency, or with a high rate of stuff going wrong sure) just as if a non-muggle powered the pattern. And if a muggle got a mana-producing implant and the right kinds of 3d stitchwork layered inside their own body...

Of course you can invent justifications of why this might not be, and why every single method for a muggle to touch magic is doomed to fail. But then haven't you just decided you want muggles to be unable to touch magic (e.g. rejected the premise voluntarily)?


There's a webnovel I like called Ar'kendrithyst that does a good job of sort of both playing into and also subverting this kind of theme. There's a big deal about 'wizards' who basically just make magic that does whatever, versus everyone else in the setting who is a 'magic user' empowered by a highly constrained system installed by the divine. It's unclear for a long time whether or not the MC is a 'wizard', because he does stuff that looks totally novel and just made up but its actually based on an internal logic that is just different than the sense of most people in the setting. Then later, they reveal that actually everyone is a 'wizard', but in practice some people generate ten or a hundred or a thousand or a million times as much of the resource that lets one just make stuff up than others, and there are ways for a normal person to save up for a thousand years to perform a single act of wizardry - stuff like 'creating a new element', so these aren't just one-off deals anyhow, they're worth saving for if you realize you can.

Similarly there's a lot of litRPG system elements which seem like just compartmentalized effects, but over the course of the novel there's a lot of digging into 'what was this effect before the system existed?' and in the end it turns out the whole compartmentalized litRPG system is just packaging up actual tricks that people had discovered long ago (and the most skilled know how to 'remake' the authentic way and get extra customizability/bonuses from doing so). It does a good job of in the end of presenting the 'system' as an abstraction - one that has real in-character weight though - over an underlying world that in the end does actually have precedence.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-08-28, 09:41 PM
Well, anyone can make a setting with any sort of elements they want. You can have a setting where superpowers only exist for individuals that extradimensional aliens are experimenting on, or for people blessed directly by the gods, or everything supernatural erases itself from your mind automatically if you weren't an Atlantean in a previous life. If someone actually actively wants to prevent a subclass of characters from touching or interacting with magic and that is their intentional decision, there's not much to be done since I'm not arguing 'you should like X kind of setting better than Y kind of setting'. Mostly, I think this is relevant to people who are stuck in a rut where this kind of muggle/magicuser separation seems like the only way to do things or the natural way to do things, or people who don't have a strong 'yes I actually do want to do this' existing view.

For those who do actually want magic to be untouchable unless you're the chosen ones, fair enough, but I'd hope they'd say pretty explicitly to their players 'in this system, you probably need to play a chosen one'. If they don't give that warning and then later on someone complains because they feel useless, well, that's a self-inflicted wound by the GM so lets not say its the fault of the setting or system at that point...

Anyhow, to put the problem with a strict muggle/magic separation, its not like 'only some people are good enough at deduction to be Sherlock Holmes', its 'logic only actually functions for descendants of space aliens, and everyone else is interacting with a universe in which attempting to use deduction - even if it makes sense - is guaranteed to give random results that have nothing to do with reality'. I'd say its incompatible, or at least moving in a strong compatibility-decreasing direction, with a universe in which the supernatural is just the natural law of that universe.


I agree with this. I think one big thing to avoid is the idea that formalized magic (aka spells in a D&D context) is the only way (or even the best) way to interact with magic. In fact, spells and spellcasting (as outlined in the rules) may only be a convenient abstraction layer. For example, a dragon may do magic. And in-game, we say he's casting a spell. Why? Because that framework is already built and we're all comfortable with it. But he's not actually casting the same spell in the same way that a mortal would do so. He's just expressing his innate magic nature, imposing his will on the world around him. Etc.

Quertus
2022-08-29, 11:43 AM
So, normally, this kind of information in my games isn’t player-facing - it’s intentionally hidden, as an opportunity for Exploration. So this is kinda weird for me, letting others see the background mechanics. But, here’s one setting that I could never make approachable, that I present (in abbreviated form) for workshopping.

Once upon a time, before the creation of this universe, were two Divine beings, who existed beyond the scope of mortal comprehension. There may have been more Divine beings, there may not, but only two are relevant to our tale. Let us call them “Malevolence” and “Benevolence”.

While one set to “improving” and “bettering”, the other acted to thwart their efforts. This was largely ineffectual, until the Thwarter hit upon an Idea. They created something hitherto unknown, something new. They forged their creation into a weapon, and launched it at their opponent.

When it struck, it ripped free a portion of the Divine being, and catapulted both itself and the shards of the Divine into another universe (perhaps creating that universe in the process). We call this event the Big Bang.

Everything we can see - the stars and planets and galaxies - all come from that one event, that one attack.

But the seen is only half the tale - there is also the Unseen.

A small part of the Unseen is now known as Dark Matter - invisible to human perception, but able to touch and shape the world. For that is what the shard of the Divine did - it shaped the formation of stars and galaxies and, yes, even life. Out of the broken shards of the weapon, it created and maintains the universe as we know it.

The setting was “designed” with the thought that the PCs would be Touched by the Divine - individuals with great(er) affinity for the Unseen, (usually) those whose (metaphoric) 3rd eye is opened.

But also inhabiting the world are Nephilim, beings much more in tune with the Unseen (and much less attuned to the physical), Possessed, humans or animals or plants or even objects controlled and empowered by the Unseen, Divine Beasts, animals of greater intellect and great power, rarely even capable of speech, Oracles, able to (mis)hear the will of the Divine, and aberrant Psions, channeling a power that is not of the Divine.

The Divine is unknowable, unfathomable. But if we assign purpose to its actions, then it would seem that the purpose of life is to grant access to the will and the abilities of the Divine.

The most common abilities are to understand the will of the Divine and see the Unseen.

Oracles have by far the greatest ability to understand the will of the Divine; in modern times, some describe it as being like having a radio in their heads that’s always playing.

The radio metaphor seems very apt, as, like tuning in to a single radio station, the human mind seems capable of only understanding a single frequency that the Divine communicates on - and not everyone is tuned into the same frequency. Those who are not Oracles can usually only get vague versions of the same information Oracles would hear {think… how Sheridan? interpreted being possessed by Kosh}.

Seeing the Unseen, by itself, simply allows one to understand when the Unseen is affecting the visible world, when Unseen actors are nearby. But no such explanation would be complete without explaining what the Nephilim have to say. Comprised of much less matter, the Nephilim possess the ability to walk Unseen. Simply put, they surround their matter with Dark Matter (or other elements of the Unseen), rendering them invisible. They say that they can hide from those who can see the Unseen, as well, although they liken it to being more like “hiding from a guy with a flashlight by making sure there’s always something between themselves and the beam”.

More generally, “magic” in this world allows one to perceive and manipulate objects in ways that are perfectly natural from the PoV of the object being acted upon, if not the actor. Anything that can be done with human levels of “force” and (somewhat imprecise) perception if given access to extradimensional limbs is reasonable to expect of users of Power. So, doctors that can tell what’s going on with a patient without an MRI, mothers who seem to have ESP wrt their children, and even those who can manipulate objects at range are all normal users of Power.

Whereas things like throwing cars, instantly regenerating lost limbs, turning lead into gold, werewolves / “polymorph” effects? Completely outside the realm of the possible. (Ok, elephants can probably throw cars, so a Divine elephant certainly could… but I think you know what I meant)

Psions “use a completely different physics”, so to speak. Probably not worth discussing, even if I had worked it out - especially given that they are functionally the only beings in the universe that interact with those physics {think… Green Lantern power rings: every living being generates willpower, but only the Green Lanterns harness it}.

One minor “setting conceit” is that the weapon, for all the changes the Divine has made, is still a weapon. If too much “Divine touched” lingers in one area for too long, the weapon that is reality will respond. The sinking of Atlantis is one such event; Pompey (if it existed in this world) might be another.

In case anyone wonders, “after millions of years, why hasn’t the Divine guided the world to Tippyverse yet?”.



That’s the much-trimmed-down version of the post I started and lost a while back. Anything worth workshopping?

NichG
2022-08-29, 08:23 PM
So, normally, this kind of information in my games isn’t player-facing - it’s intentionally hidden, as an opportunity for Exploration. So this is kinda weird for me, letting others see the background mechanics. But, here’s one setting that I could never make approachable, that I present (in abbreviated form) for workshopping.

Once upon a time, before the creation of this universe, were two Divine beings, who existed beyond the scope of mortal comprehension. There may have been more Divine beings, there may not, but only two are relevant to our tale. Let us call them “Malevolence” and “Benevolence”.

While one set to “improving” and “bettering”, the other acted to thwart their efforts. This was largely ineffectual, until the Thwarter hit upon an Idea. They created something hitherto unknown, something new. They forged their creation into a weapon, and launched it at their opponent.

When it struck, it ripped free a portion of the Divine being, and catapulted both itself and the shards of the Divine into another universe (perhaps creating that universe in the process). We call this event the Big Bang.

Everything we can see - the stars and planets and galaxies - all come from that one event, that one attack.

But the seen is only half the tale - there is also the Unseen.

A small part of the Unseen is now known as Dark Matter - invisible to human perception, but able to touch and shape the world. For that is what the shard of the Divine did - it shaped the formation of stars and galaxies and, yes, even life. Out of the broken shards of the weapon, it created and maintains the universe as we know it.

The setting was “designed” with the thought that the PCs would be Touched by the Divine - individuals with great(er) affinity for the Unseen, (usually) those whose (metaphoric) 3rd eye is opened.

But also inhabiting the world are Nephilim, beings much more in tune with the Unseen (and much less attuned to the physical), Possessed, humans or animals or plants or even objects controlled and empowered by the Unseen, Divine Beasts, animals of greater intellect and great power, rarely even capable of speech, Oracles, able to (mis)hear the will of the Divine, and aberrant Psions, channeling a power that is not of the Divine.

The Divine is unknowable, unfathomable. But if we assign purpose to its actions, then it would seem that the purpose of life is to grant access to the will and the abilities of the Divine.

The most common abilities are to understand the will of the Divine and see the Unseen.

Oracles have by far the greatest ability to understand the will of the Divine; in modern times, some describe it as being like having a radio in their heads that’s always playing.

The radio metaphor seems very apt, as, like tuning in to a single radio station, the human mind seems capable of only understanding a single frequency that the Divine communicates on - and not everyone is tuned into the same frequency. Those who are not Oracles can usually only get vague versions of the same information Oracles would hear {think… how Sheridan? interpreted being possessed by Kosh}.

Seeing the Unseen, by itself, simply allows one to understand when the Unseen is affecting the visible world, when Unseen actors are nearby. But no such explanation would be complete without explaining what the Nephilim have to say. Comprised of much less matter, the Nephilim possess the ability to walk Unseen. Simply put, they surround their matter with Dark Matter (or other elements of the Unseen), rendering them invisible. They say that they can hide from those who can see the Unseen, as well, although they liken it to being more like “hiding from a guy with a flashlight by making sure there’s always something between themselves and the beam”.

More generally, “magic” in this world allows one to perceive and manipulate objects in ways that are perfectly natural from the PoV of the object being acted upon, if not the actor. Anything that can be done with human levels of “force” and (somewhat imprecise) perception if given access to extradimensional limbs is reasonable to expect of users of Power. So, doctors that can tell what’s going on with a patient without an MRI, mothers who seem to have ESP wrt their children, and even those who can manipulate objects at range are all normal users of Power.

Whereas things like throwing cars, instantly regenerating lost limbs, turning lead into gold, werewolves / “polymorph” effects? Completely outside the realm of the possible. (Ok, elephants can probably throw cars, so a Divine elephant certainly could… but I think you know what I meant)

Psions “use a completely different physics”, so to speak. Probably not worth discussing, even if I had worked it out - especially given that they are functionally the only beings in the universe that interact with those physics {think… Green Lantern power rings: every living being generates willpower, but only the Green Lanterns harness it}.

One minor “setting conceit” is that the weapon, for all the changes the Divine has made, is still a weapon. If too much “Divine touched” lingers in one area for too long, the weapon that is reality will respond. The sinking of Atlantis is one such event; Pompey (if it existed in this world) might be another.

In case anyone wonders, “after millions of years, why hasn’t the Divine guided the world to Tippyverse yet?”.



That’s the much-trimmed-down version of the post I started and lost a while back. Anything worth workshopping?

Well, where I'd begin would be something like, what is it about life or minds or whatever that allows it to act as a conduit to these divine forces? That is to say, what does the unseen need. Is it because the concept of malevolence or benevolence only makes sense with regards to an agent for whom something could be beneficial or harmful? If so, that would suggest that e.g. times of great need or great vulnerability could act as magnets for those forces - things being a little more solid to the extradimensional stuff than they should, etc.

There's also a action/reaction thing here, that when someone does use these extradimensional limbs to do things, limits apply - so presumably in that moment of usage, the material is pushing back on the immaterial. Meaning that with the right mechanism to bring the material and immaterial into phase, material things might be able to - if only temporarily - shape or direct the unseen.

There's also opportunities with the metaphysics in the autonomous action of the unseen - if the unseen directs the organization of matter, why those specific forms? When does an organizing influence take place and what triggers it? Is there continual pressure to keep certain kinds of matter into patterns it would not naturally be able to sustain, or is it just tweaking trajectories? What is the underlying state the universe would tend towards without those organizing influences, and can tension or pressure from that state induce the unseen to be more active than normal or even to retreat?

If there are situations where those organizing influences are continual, then presumably someone whose body contains organs, implants, etc where that is taking place would experience some kind of effect going from high to low density of the unseen, or benevolence-dominant to malevolence-dominant or the like.

Quertus
2022-08-30, 04:42 PM
Well, where I'd begin would be something like, what is it about life or minds or whatever that allows it to act as a conduit to these divine forces? That is to say, what does the unseen need. Is it because the concept of malevolence or benevolence only makes sense with regards to an agent for whom something could be beneficial or harmful? If so, that would suggest that e.g. times of great need or great vulnerability could act as magnets for those forces - things being a little more solid to the extradimensional stuff than they should, etc.

There's also a action/reaction thing here, that when someone does use these extradimensional limbs to do things, limits apply - so presumably in that moment of usage, the material is pushing back on the immaterial. Meaning that with the right mechanism to bring the material and immaterial into phase, material things might be able to - if only temporarily - shape or direct the unseen.

There's also opportunities with the metaphysics in the autonomous action of the unseen - if the unseen directs the organization of matter, why those specific forms? When does an organizing influence take place and what triggers it? Is there continual pressure to keep certain kinds of matter into patterns it would not naturally be able to sustain, or is it just tweaking trajectories? What is the underlying state the universe would tend towards without those organizing influences, and can tension or pressure from that state induce the unseen to be more active than normal or even to retreat?

If there are situations where those organizing influences are continual, then presumably someone whose body contains organs, implants, etc where that is taking place would experience some kind of effect going from high to low density of the unseen, or benevolence-dominant to malevolence-dominant or the like.

What can I answer with single sentences?

I’m used to describing things to players, often from the flawed PoV of NPCs, so lest it seem like these should be the platonic ideals of Benevolence and Malevolence, allow me to switch to the more neutral terms for the Divine of the “Architect” and the “Rebel”.

Yes, the material can absolutely “touch” the Unseen; however, truly changing it would require literal universe-wide simultaneous “touching”. (This is, in point of fact, exactly how the Weapon worked, simultaneously “touching” this tiny speck of the Divine, and drawing it into / creating this universe).

The Divine is constantly “touching” the universe, making adjustments; this is because the universe as we know it is inherently unstable without the Unseen (ie, imagine if gravity “stopped working” - the universe as we know it would cease to exist).

The universe is comprised of 4 things; from “largest” to “smallest”, they are: the Architect, the Weapon, the Rebel, the psi field.

Matter (ie, the Weapon) is formerly unknown to the Architect; just as two objects rubbing together produces heat, unbeknownst to the Architect or the Rebel, the Unseen interacting with Matter produces an energy: the psi field.

Psions channel and convert the foreign energy of the psi field to seem to break the laws of physics, creating matter or energy seemingly out of nothing.

In empowering and shaping the Weapon, the Rebel accidentally/unknowingly sent a piece of itself with the Weapon; this accounts for its presence in the new universe.

The Architect and the Rebel collectively make the Unseen; the Rebel can be thought of as not unlike a virus that the Architect is constantly (if perhaps subconsciously, or even unknowingly) fighting to purge.

The presence of the Rebel, and the fact that the Unseen will therefore at times act in highly malicious ways (the Rebel actively desires to destroy all life) adds to the difficulty in accurately ascertaining the nature of the Architect.

The detractors of the Architect claim that its intentions are like… “it” from “a wind in the door”(?).

The Architect would claim that asking what it is about life that allows access to Divine forces is backwards - it is an inherent property of the Unseen to react to will.

The Architect is wrong in the above - but explaining how takes more than a sentence.

Best as I can answer that…

1) like electricity and magnetism can cause one another, sentience and… whatever the Unseen counterpart is… can interact. By design.

2) thus, “the mechanism for thought” interacts (in)directly with the will of the Unseen, but only one with enough “copper” counterpart to cause the reaction; however, like a program, both sides only respond to certain “interfaces”.

3) I once read a story of a sighted individual raised by blind parents, who groped sounds as though blind, because they had never been taught to use their sight. I picture much of the inability of the Touched to control the Unseen being related to not having any clue how to “flex nonexistent muscles” (and other metaphors that the Nephilim laugh at the Touched for).

What does the Unseen need? Hmmm…

Using words like “want” or “desire” wrt the Divine may be less accurate than thinking of them in terms of “is”. Still, if we personify them…

The Rebel is easy to answer for: it wants to destroy all life - both “material” life, and the Architect. Really, it just wants freedom, to stop the voices in its head, to be itself.

By design, “sentience” can control the Unseen. The Rebel does not want to be controlled. Thus, it wants everyone else dead.

The Architect… wants to “uplift” and “perfect” everything. Where the Rebel saw its creation as a Weapon, something to use to silence the Architect, the Architect saw it as something that could some day become like the Divine. Thus it began the process of sculpting and guiding the material universe.

The end goal would thus be that the material gains universal sentience, and the ability to run its own processes (gravity, particle physics, whatever).

The ultimate goal… conspiracy theorists might claim that the Architect intends to use us to reverse its exile. More charitably, that it intends to take us with it… which makes “the destruction of the universe” quite possibly its honest goal. It all depends on your PoV.

The biggest problems are…

The Weapon was built as a weapon. On one layer, this explains why the world seems to react to concentrations of those Touched by the Divine. However, equally true is that, when too many people control the Unseen, the Architect is no longer directing the Unseen in that area. Because the Touched do not (understand enough to) prioritize things like “maintaining physics”, the inherently unstable world experiences local existential failure.

Also, the Rebel keeps creating plagues and ELEs and such in an attempt to silence the voices in its head. Not truly omniscient or omnipotent (just omnipresent), the Architect doesn’t catch / completely fix all the (metaphorical) “bugs it keeps finding in its code”.

If the Architect is capable of “wanting”, whatever its plan to get what it wants, the Psions are decidedly not part of that plan. Perhaps worse, the self-destructive (or “Divine destructive”) portions of human nature (ie, of the Weapon) work against the will of the Architect, in ways it does not fully understand.

Perhaps a better way to put functionally the same thing is, the Architect knows how to Be, it doesn’t know how to teach… or really even the concept of needing to be taught. Much like our brain sends signals to our limbs, the Architect transmits intent (and expects to receive like signals from the material), and at least doesn’t seem to get that that isn’t enough for humanity.

I don’t know if that answered any of your questions, or just raised more. I’m sure I’m not used to looking at things the way your workshop intended.

NichG
2022-08-31, 10:07 PM
What can I answer with single sentences?

I’m used to describing things to players, often from the flawed PoV of NPCs, so lest it seem like these should be the platonic ideals of Benevolence and Malevolence, allow me to switch to the more neutral terms for the Divine of the “Architect” and the “Rebel”.

Yes, the material can absolutely “touch” the Unseen; however, truly changing it would require literal universe-wide simultaneous “touching”. (This is, in point of fact, exactly how the Weapon worked, simultaneously “touching” this tiny speck of the Divine, and drawing it into / creating this universe).

The Divine is constantly “touching” the universe, making adjustments; this is because the universe as we know it is inherently unstable without the Unseen (ie, imagine if gravity “stopped working” - the universe as we know it would cease to exist).

The universe is comprised of 4 things; from “largest” to “smallest”, they are: the Architect, the Weapon, the Rebel, the psi field.

Matter (ie, the Weapon) is formerly unknown to the Architect; just as two objects rubbing together produces heat, unbeknownst to the Architect or the Rebel, the Unseen interacting with Matter produces an energy: the psi field.

Psions channel and convert the foreign energy of the psi field to seem to break the laws of physics, creating matter or energy seemingly out of nothing.

In empowering and shaping the Weapon, the Rebel accidentally/unknowingly sent a piece of itself with the Weapon; this accounts for its presence in the new universe.

The Architect and the Rebel collectively make the Unseen; the Rebel can be thought of as not unlike a virus that the Architect is constantly (if perhaps subconsciously, or even unknowingly) fighting to purge.

The presence of the Rebel, and the fact that the Unseen will therefore at times act in highly malicious ways (the Rebel actively desires to destroy all life) adds to the difficulty in accurately ascertaining the nature of the Architect.

The detractors of the Architect claim that its intentions are like… “it” from “a wind in the door”(?).

The Architect would claim that asking what it is about life that allows access to Divine forces is backwards - it is an inherent property of the Unseen to react to will.

The Architect is wrong in the above - but explaining how takes more than a sentence.

Best as I can answer that…

1) like electricity and magnetism can cause one another, sentience and… whatever the Unseen counterpart is… can interact. By design.

2) thus, “the mechanism for thought” interacts (in)directly with the will of the Unseen, but only one with enough “copper” counterpart to cause the reaction; however, like a program, both sides only respond to certain “interfaces”.

3) I once read a story of a sighted individual raised by blind parents, who groped sounds as though blind, because they had never been taught to use their sight. I picture much of the inability of the Touched to control the Unseen being related to not having any clue how to “flex nonexistent muscles” (and other metaphors that the Nephilim laugh at the Touched for).

What does the Unseen need? Hmmm…

Using words like “want” or “desire” wrt the Divine may be less accurate than thinking of them in terms of “is”. Still, if we personify them…

The Rebel is easy to answer for: it wants to destroy all life - both “material” life, and the Architect. Really, it just wants freedom, to stop the voices in its head, to be itself.

By design, “sentience” can control the Unseen. The Rebel does not want to be controlled. Thus, it wants everyone else dead.

The Architect… wants to “uplift” and “perfect” everything. Where the Rebel saw its creation as a Weapon, something to use to silence the Architect, the Architect saw it as something that could some day become like the Divine. Thus it began the process of sculpting and guiding the material universe.

The end goal would thus be that the material gains universal sentience, and the ability to run its own processes (gravity, particle physics, whatever).

The ultimate goal… conspiracy theorists might claim that the Architect intends to use us to reverse its exile. More charitably, that it intends to take us with it… which makes “the destruction of the universe” quite possibly its honest goal. It all depends on your PoV.

The biggest problems are…

The Weapon was built as a weapon. On one layer, this explains why the world seems to react to concentrations of those Touched by the Divine. However, equally true is that, when too many people control the Unseen, the Architect is no longer directing the Unseen in that area. Because the Touched do not (understand enough to) prioritize things like “maintaining physics”, the inherently unstable world experiences local existential failure.

Also, the Rebel keeps creating plagues and ELEs and such in an attempt to silence the voices in its head. Not truly omniscient or omnipotent (just omnipresent), the Architect doesn’t catch / completely fix all the (metaphorical) “bugs it keeps finding in its code”.

If the Architect is capable of “wanting”, whatever its plan to get what it wants, the Psions are decidedly not part of that plan. Perhaps worse, the self-destructive (or “Divine destructive”) portions of human nature (ie, of the Weapon) work against the will of the Architect, in ways it does not fully understand.

Perhaps a better way to put functionally the same thing is, the Architect knows how to Be, it doesn’t know how to teach… or really even the concept of needing to be taught. Much like our brain sends signals to our limbs, the Architect transmits intent (and expects to receive like signals from the material), and at least doesn’t seem to get that that isn’t enough for humanity.

I don’t know if that answered any of your questions, or just raised more. I’m sure I’m not used to looking at things the way your workshop intended.

So, not exactly. I didn't really mean 'what are the goals of these powers', more like 'what are the reasons these powers can't just jump to the state they want but instead have to play games where stuff like atoms matter'.

Maybe zoom out a bit to 'why these questions?'. Basically the idea is to go from a sort of just-so story stance to viewing things in terms of influences and causality. From that stance, every big thing is a merging river of smaller reasons and justifications. That then let's you see how maybe even things that aren't the high level 'imagined as highly functional' elements of the setting still have a connection via those thin streams of cause and effect.

Quertus
2022-09-01, 08:26 AM
So, not exactly. I didn't really mean 'what are the goals of these powers', more like 'what are the reasons these powers can't just jump to the state they want but instead have to play games where stuff like atoms matter'.

Maybe zoom out a bit to 'why these questions?'. Basically the idea is to go from a sort of just-so story stance to viewing things in terms of influences and causality. From that stance, every big thing is a merging river of smaller reasons and justifications. That then let's you see how maybe even things that aren't the high level 'imagined as highly functional' elements of the setting still have a connection via those thin streams of cause and effect.

Maybe I don’t get your question because it’s too real-world, but… Gravity has to work with Atoms according to the laws of physics (mostly) because Atoms is what matters is made from? Because the Rules have to be consistent (mostly) and make sense in order to promote and facilitate Intelligence?

The Unseen (the Rebel) did create Matter, but they “can’t” change how matter functions, can’t change its base rules, only interact with its interface. Now, if Gravity isn’t a property of Matter, but of how the Unseen chooses to interact with and structure and repurpose the Weapon, then it’s something that the Touched can manipulate and control.

I haven’t actually decided whether Gravity is a property of Matter, or whether it’s part of the Unseen.

NichG
2022-09-02, 09:20 AM
Maybe I don’t get your question because it’s too real-world, but… Gravity has to work with Atoms according to the laws of physics (mostly) because Atoms is what matters is made from? Because the Rules have to be consistent (mostly) and make sense in order to promote and facilitate Intelligence?

The Unseen (the Rebel) did create Matter, but they “can’t” change how matter functions, can’t change its base rules, only interact with its interface. Now, if Gravity isn’t a property of Matter, but of how the Unseen chooses to interact with and structure and repurpose the Weapon, then it’s something that the Touched can manipulate and control.

I haven’t actually decided whether Gravity is a property of Matter, or whether it’s part of the Unseen.

I suspect I should rewrite a mirror universe version of your cosmology which wouldn't be the same, but would be ideally set up for the kind of thing I'm talking about...

So, in this alternate version, I would write as follows:

Before the existence of matter, two conceptual entities were engaged in an endless struggle that, if one were to experience, would be like one mathematician introducing axioms and building up systems of proofs, with another mathematician constantly finding the places where the axioms contradicted each other or where Godelian inconsistency created unprovable statements. Except here, the concepts could be far broader things. Despite that, there were rules of consistency that both entities had to follow, as this was not just a debate of words but an actual expression of those concepts against each other.

However, without the material, none of these clashes ever created consequences beyond the minds of the entities themselves. Testing love against betrayal would create a flash of comprehension revealing the results, but would not prevent either entity from expressing those concepts in the future.

The critic grew frustrated, for despite revealing the fundamental flaws in all concepts, the creator kept building. So the critic, in a rare act of creation, invented the intentionally flawed concept of permanency, of irreversibility, of consequence, and slipped it into the next exchange, thinking that the creator would grow despondent by being forced to see their disproven and flawed inventions persist forever, and would itself turn to destruction.

This was the 'weapon', and from there the current 'debate' gave rise to matter which can itself remember what was and use it to bind what will be.

Now as to constraints and physics and such: the energies of the entities are things which express or distort concept in form. That is their limit: to influence matter, they can only amplify or twist concepts that already apply to that matter. As far as what drives them - what invokes those energies - that is the subject of the debate that was taking place when Permanence struck. Specifically, the debate was about the possible dynamics of the boundaries of the self, with the creator attempting to build a framework in which something like a self of a consciousness could be continually self-creating, and the critic arguing that ambiguity of selfhood would cause the emergent self to inevitably betray it's own nature and therefore fail to make sense as a single coherent identity - that there would be no long range persistence of anything recognizable.

So, what interacts with the energies of the creator entity are any cases in which the boundaries of consciousnesses shift - moments of awakening from dream, births, creation of artificial minds, development of multiple personalities, etc. And because of Permanence, each of those events in the history of a piece of matter accumulate that association and make that matter more able to interact with the creative energy. So those who the brains of animals increase their magical potential, if only temporarily and only by an extremely small amount. Those who find a way to participate in the experience of another mind's death likewise can turn that into small amplifications of other concepts. The easiest concepts to amplify are those associated with how someone experiences themselves, that being the subject of the debate at the time, but greater things are possible if someone can truly envision those things as part of their body.

On the other side of things, the critic's argument is about the loss of selfhood and identity even as consciousness persists. So those who break and change, especially those who go against the principles, reasons, and character of their past self end up interacting with the critical energy, connecting them to the supernatural distortion and twisting of concepts in things around them. This is primarily directed outwards, towards concepts that are not-self.

In this framework, matter was created by these entities but now in this debate, matter binds them. It is more persistent than the flowing arguments the entities are used to dealing with, and each past event - from the entities' points of view - actually binds their power further. Thus as a counterforce to works of magic, setting things up so they are conceptually distant from acts of agency and creating material chains of cause and effect can weaken or suppress the 'supernatural' influence of the entities. A Rube Goldberg device is like a jammer. An intricate machine used by someone who doesn't understand it's mechanisms likewise.

As far as using magic, connection to the powers concentrates with the history of matter. Inheritance can contribute, but more important would be for someone to be conceived, born, and raised in a place where charged matter has accumulated. Or for someone to absorb or subsume a large number of other consciousnesses, or repeatedly fragment and fuse their own. But anyone who sleeps grows very very mildly magically more potent as they live.

In this version, magical potency and magical sensitivity are only weakly related. Someone who knows what to look for can detect the amplification or twisting of ambient concepts through purely mundane means - they can notice for example that red colors in their sight become anger and danger and pain when someone is Amping. Or sense a faint influence to become contemptful of things they loved in their childhood when someone is Twisting. It just requires quick and precise emotional awareness.

Those using the creator's influence can do things like Amp their own vision to literally see such things, but it's not the only way.

Anyhow, that'd be my version of it.

Cluedrew
2022-09-02, 07:51 PM
So this is an interesting setting/magic system, but I remember another one I have that might be interesting to talk about.

First off it is for an authored story, not a game setting so some parts of it may be different because of that. For instance, physical energy is an important cost, but nothing really has a fixed cost, just some relative thresholds. For instance, telekinesis is tiring enough to use most people would rather get up, walk across the room and pick something up with their hands than use it (there are some other factors too). On the other hand if you have a bunch of cultists chanting a magical ritual, I can sometimes work out from first principles how they should hold their hands.

I initially discarded this setting for discussion because it doesn't have "compartmentalized, named, highly idiosyncratic effects". But then I realized it does, it is just they aren't used nearly as often because you have to do that build up of parts of the spell/ritual when you cast it. Although this is still much simpler than designing such a spell, the amount of practice required to get one spell down is non-trivial. So most people might know a few, but knowing many spells means you are some kind of specialist. And I say "some kind of specialist" because the spells will usually be related to some trade that is you real job. Developing a spell requires more work, because even within known areas of mystic practice the rules are very complex and so there is a lot of guided trial and error to develop new magic. (Or sometimes an angel or god explains how to do it.) And that is just one of the sub-systems within the setting. Although it may be the lowest level.

Now I also want to throw in the "spells as mental objects" system too. I'll come back to that. We would have to fill in a lot of the details, as I know much less about this one.

NichG
2022-09-12, 11:45 AM
So this is an interesting setting/magic system, but I remember another one I have that might be interesting to talk about.

First off it is for an authored story, not a game setting so some parts of it may be different because of that. For instance, physical energy is an important cost, but nothing really has a fixed cost, just some relative thresholds. For instance, telekinesis is tiring enough to use most people would rather get up, walk across the room and pick something up with their hands than use it (there are some other factors too). On the other hand if you have a bunch of cultists chanting a magical ritual, I can sometimes work out from first principles how they should hold their hands.

I initially discarded this setting for discussion because it doesn't have "compartmentalized, named, highly idiosyncratic effects". But then I realized it does, it is just they aren't used nearly as often because you have to do that build up of parts of the spell/ritual when you cast it. Although this is still much simpler than designing such a spell, the amount of practice required to get one spell down is non-trivial. So most people might know a few, but knowing many spells means you are some kind of specialist. And I say "some kind of specialist" because the spells will usually be related to some trade that is you real job. Developing a spell requires more work, because even within known areas of mystic practice the rules are very complex and so there is a lot of guided trial and error to develop new magic. (Or sometimes an angel or god explains how to do it.) And that is just one of the sub-systems within the setting. Although it may be the lowest level.

Now I also want to throw in the "spells as mental objects" system too. I'll come back to that. We would have to fill in a lot of the details, as I know much less about this one.

Did you want to workshop this here? It'd be useful to have more specifics or details, since I'm not sure this is enough to latch on to for me yet.