Narrative ways for characters to interact with the supernatural other than spells

[NichG]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

Spoiler

Show

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.