Official ICE Forums
Gamer's Corner => General Discussion => Topic started by: RandalThor on December 30, 2011, 10:39:02 AM
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Anyone see or hear about the show 17th Precinct? It is a cop show set in a world of magic, but never got off the ground. Check it out here: http://io9.com/5872010/ (http://io9.com/5872010/)
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Is that similar to those Dresden Files a couple of years ago?
I really liked that setting, sad it was cancelled.
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No, Dresden Files was (is for the books) a wizard in our world, though there is obviously magic, just the majority of the human race doesn't think so. In this non-show, the whole world believes and uses magic at all times. Plants and fire are power generators ("Power Plant"). The coroner was called a necromancer and summoned the spirit of the deceased in order to get information, though the spirits seemed to be uncooperative, and they did other things not shown.)
It is sort of how I would imagine a world would be like with the RM rules where everyone can learn spells & magic. (No, not everyone can be a mage, but it doesn't take a special talent to learn spells/spell-lists and power point development - it is just costly. But then, so is learning to be a doctor: the schools and instructors aren't cheap for higher learning, are they?)
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I haven't watched it yet, but the premise sounds reminiscent of Harry Turtledove's The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_of_the_Toxic_Spell_Dump
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It is sort of how I would imagine a world would be like with the RM rules where everyone can learn spells & magic. (No, not everyone can be a mage, but it doesn't take a special talent to learn spells/spell-lists and power point development - it is just costly. But then, so is learning to be a doctor: the schools and instructors aren't cheap for higher learning, are they?)
Sounds very much like what a Mythus campaign usually turned out being. Gary's rules had everyone and their dog casting some sort of spell and it was much more available than the standard RM stuff.
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It is sort of how I would imagine a world would be like with the RM rules where everyone can learn spells & magic. (No, not everyone can be a mage, but it doesn't take a special talent to learn spells/spell-lists and power point development - it is just costly. But then, so is learning to be a doctor: the schools and instructors aren't cheap for higher learning, are they?)
Sounds very much like what a Mythus campaign usually turned out being. Gary's rules had everyone and their dog casting some sort of spell and it was much more available than the standard RM stuff.
Alas poor Mythus. I knew him...
Now that I think of it, Mythus reminds me of SW. Most people live in a medieval fantasy world but then there are places like Aegypt that have enough Heka to do near anything. They had tech reminiscent of Stargate.. at least that's how we played it. :)
I did like the magic as a limiter of population growth, yet everyone knew something about magic.
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I did like the magic as a limiter of population growth, yet everyone knew something about magic.
Not sure how magic could be a limiter on population growth - unless we are talking about magic contraceptives. Otherwise, the ability to use magic would help you increase your population, I believe.
Now, the prevalence of monsters on the other hand...
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Magic could be easy to use, even causing pleasure in its use, and thus greatly reducing the desire for sexual intercourse as magical intercourse is more satisfying. Likewise, magic could be easy to use (think prosaic list usable by 95% of the population) and use of said magic causes infertility, not curable by magic for obvious reasons.
It could get even stranger: magical radiation is unknowingly causing a lowering of birth rates...inplants to use magic cause infertility, etc. Lots of reasons and possible story archs.
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Or perhaps magic has mutational effects. . .
"Never marry a magician, their children come out with four eyes, or none at all."
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I have thought about the possible addicting effects of skill bonus spells and possible Flaws.
MDC
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physically addictive and psychologically addictive are two very different disorders. To express addiction to use of spells, be it haste or protections or whatever, I have called for a reaction roll by the PC, modified by the intensity of their psych addiction. I only did this in a brief cyber type game for a single player, but it worked nicely (mostly because he enjoyed the flaw and had no problem roll playing the swings in behavior).
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physically addictive and psychologically addictive are two very different disorders. To express addiction to use of spells, be it haste or protections or whatever, I have called for a reaction roll by the PC, modified by the intensity of their psych addiction. I only did this in a brief cyber type game for a single player, but it worked nicely (mostly because he enjoyed the flaw and had no problem roll playing the swings in behavior).
I can see that.
MDC
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Aahhh. You guys are throwing all sorts of things in there that usually aren't - though there are some notable exceptions (like the Aes Sedai and Channeling). But, I can see how getting addicted to magic can hurt ones social life, much like anything that takes over so completely. But, one big difference is that magic would likely be considered one of those "necessary evils" as it can perform a big service, unlike things such as meth or crack. (Yeah, the users would say it performs a big service......)
I generally don't do any of that unless the campaign setting calls for it - like the afore mentioned Wheel of Time.
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Likewise, magic could be easy to use (think prosaic list usable by 95% of the population) and use of said magic causes infertility, not curable by magic for obvious reasons.
It could get even stranger: magical radiation is lowering birth rates..
Otherwise you'd run out of room fast. It was still a cool idea and a good game system.
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I've been trying to get HARP magic and the real world to mesh as closely as I could. The discussions we've had on the subject are here:
http://www.realroleplaying.com/rmsmf/index.php?board=565.0
(Feel free to comment)
And yes, there are a number of things you could add for flavor, but there are a few "uh ohs" already implicit in the fact that you're using magic in an earth-like setting where normal physics prevails in all other instances.
Physics supersedes biology. Biology trumps desire. Except where magic is concerned. :o
The most obvious 2 I have found are:
1. Magic exists, and the law of conservation of energy works. This throws all kinds of dangers into a game all by itself, simply by virtue of the fact that the energy you used had to come from somewhere. A fireball cast with poor source energy control could freeze the caster solid.
2. Magic alters reality. The definition of psychosis is "a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a loss of contact with reality". This doesn't mean all spell casters are mad, but it does mean they are more at risk, because refusing the existing reality and creating their own is their stock in trade.
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I thought it germane to this topic, the comment I made re: Option 9.1 "Item casting is always instant"
IMO the logic built into "items cast as instants" is more akin to magic as tech, where the user isn't casting, they are pointing and using. . .but for that logic to fit, there would need to be a malfunction table rather than spell failure on the user for that kind of item. Not wanting to write up a table like that, I stopped using that option in favor of 9.1.
If magic is tech, then using magic needs to be more like armor or weapon bonuses, where the user needs no magical skill, and is not casting, just using the item, the item does the casting, and failure would need a "Magic Item Malfunction" table.
As is, magic items are like foci, but the user is still casting the spell from it via atunement and subject to spell failure if it goes belly up. . .if you have a magic gun which has X charges and fires a shock bolt out the barrel every time you pull the trigger. . .and where a misfire causes the "gun" to malfunction, rather than the user to go into spell failure, you have crossed over to magic as tech.
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I thought it germane to this topic, the comment I made re: Option 9.1 "Item casting is always instant"
IMO the logic built into "items cast as instants" is more akin to magic as tech, where the user isn't casting, they are pointing and using. . .but for that logic to fit, there would need to be a malfunction table rather than spell failure on the user for that kind of item. Not wanting to write up a table like that, I stopped using that option in favor of 9.1.
If magic is tech, then using magic needs to be more like armor or weapon bonuses, where the user needs no magical skill, and is not casting, just using the item, the item does the casting, and failure would need a "Magic Item Malfunction" table.
As is, magic items are like foci, but the user is still casting the spell from it via atunement and subject to spell failure if it goes belly up. . .if you have a magic gun which has X charges and fires a shock bolt out the barrel every time you pull the trigger. . .and where a misfire causes the "gun" to malfunction, rather than the user to go into spell failure, you have crossed over to magic as tech.
What if the item is keyed or has a command word to use. Then pressing a stud, pulling a trigger or saying BANG might make it function with no sort of attunement required. Now imagine ALL magic items work this way and always have.
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magic as tech. . .
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I thought it germane to this topic, the comment I made re: Option 9.1 "Item casting is always instant"
IMO the logic built into "items cast as instants" is more akin to magic as tech, where the user isn't casting, they are pointing and using. . .but for that logic to fit, there would need to be a malfunction table rather than spell failure on the user for that kind of item. Not wanting to write up a table like that, I stopped using that option in favor of 9.1.
If magic is tech, then using magic needs to be more like armor or weapon bonuses, where the user needs no magical skill, and is not casting, just using the item, the item does the casting, and failure would need a "Magic Item Malfunction" table.
As is, magic items are like foci, but the user is still casting the spell from it via atunement and subject to spell failure if it goes belly up. . .if you have a magic gun which has X charges and fires a shock bolt out the barrel every time you pull the trigger. . .and where a misfire causes the "gun" to malfunction, rather than the user to go into spell failure, you have crossed over to magic as tech.
Which is a good way of instituting the idea. Like the fax/internet/downloader-thingy from the show that started this thread, 17th Precinct, where anyone could stick their hand in it, "search" for the information, and either receive it mentally or get a blank piece of paper and get the info put on it for a hard copy. But, there could be a problem instituting such items in a wide spread manner if they still take a long time, lots of energy, and possibly even life-experience (i.e. XP) to manufacture. The reason we all use computers is because someone doesn't have to give up a 3 year stretch of experience, $5G in materials, and the next 6-months locked away in their lab in order to make them. If/when magic items can be mass produced and used by anyone in a setting, that setting has just been altered forever.
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True, and mass production of passive items like weapons and armor would do so. . .but attunement crosses it over to some mystical act of use with active items, even mass production wouldn't make them technology like the passive items.
At best, it's similar to the logic HARP SF uses for tech. . .at experimental stage, it's a crazy device only the inventor can get to work, bulky, fragile and temperamental.
Latter stages get the item more user friendly, through prototypes to standard models to advanced or highly advanced mature versions.
The stage of current, widespread use is where you only need to know how to use the gun/computer/widget, you don't need to understand how it works, how to get it to run, keep running, and fix or modify it to get it running. . .you just need to know "Point it at the target and shoot, after 8 shots, you need to re-load".
Active Magic items in RM work more like experimental or prototype tech, where only savants familiar with the principles can use them. . .to get magic to tech, you need to push it over that line to where it's a mature, normal thing to use them, where you can touch the fire rod to the kindling and say "Alight!" and it lights the fire. . .no need to study attunement or attune to the item, just buy a fire rod at the store, take it home and use it.
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...where you can touch the fire rod to the kindling and say "Alight!" and it lights the fire. . .no need to study attunement or attune to the item, just buy a fire rod at the store, take it home and use it.
And if it is at that stage,
2. Magic alters reality. The definition of psychosis is "a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a loss of contact with reality". This doesn't mean all spell casters are mad, but it does mean they are more at risk, because refusing the existing reality and creating their own is their stock in trade.
does that caveat still apply? The users of such are still altering their reality on a regular basis, even though they don't understand any of the mechanics (nor consequences) of what they're doing.
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A glass bottle dropped out of a plane over the kalahari was magic in "The gods must be crazy".
A magic thing, that looked like water but was hard as rock, smooth, hollow, so many strange qualities.
It drove the tribesmen mad, until they ordered the man who originally found it to carry it away and dispose of it back to the gods who had sent it down as a curse.
Technology as freakish thing of unreality for the most mundane of modern things, a bottle. Similar strangeness can be seen in real life, where some native tribesmen literally couldn't see the European ships moored offshore as boats, things made of human hands. . .instead they were strange looking islands or piles of flotsam. . .they were so beyond comprehension as to be impossible to be seen for what they were.
If your culture casually uses fire rods, I suspect you'd use one casually without batting an eye. . .if you'd never seen one before, likely it's as dangerous to your safety and sanity as a Zippo handed to paleolithic man.
In our world, overt magic ala "Fireball" is fantasy, so believing in it is insane, but in any magic using fantasy world the magic is real, and thus part of reality, so it's sane to believe in it. It is only madness if as the world designer you decide, "and even if magic is real, it's still unreal, and makes you mad." (Heck, I feel that way about a lot of quantum physics in the real world, it's only rational if you're a little crazy).
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IMHO if magic exists then it is part of reality. Whether you can access that ability has nothing to do with your reality.
In my game there is a tug and pull method to magic as energy. in that some spells are mana hogs and some are very frugal in that they have excess energy to give or need extra energy from the energy whole.
MDC
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(Heck, I feel that way about a lot of quantum physics in the real world, it's only rational if you're a little crazy).
Only because you never interact with anything at that level. The physics of the very small are very different from the physics of our scale. Even above the quantum level, for example water is very sticky and viscous at very small scales.
If you interacted with things like this all the time, it would be normal.
The reason we all use computers is because someone doesn't have to give up a 3 year stretch of experience, $5G in materials, and the next 6-months locked away in their lab in order to make them. If/when magic items can be mass produced and used by anyone in a setting, that setting has just been altered forever.
You just need to make magic items enchanted with the spells that allow the creation of magic items. As soon as you have done that, you can create an accelerating spiral of development and increasing scale.
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So It takes the first 10 alchemists 50 years to get their workshop going, the next generation keeps going while non casters use the machines, and it grows from there, more alchemists, more machines, more output. . .
That'd work, not far from the logic of engineer makes machine, laborer works it, engineer builds another, etc.
I'd always been partial to the Symbols spell for creating magical assembly lines. . .only work once a day, but if you have a long row of them, you just advance every item up the row once a day, then trigger all the symbols, repeat. . .if creating item A takes 60 days, it'll take 60 days after you get all the symbols laid before the first item A rolls off the last step finished, but after that you'll get a completed item A off that line once a day. (And non casters can do all the item moving and symbol triggering once the line is set up)
You might get an irate god dropping in about your power bill though, so make sure to keep up your praying, tithing and sacrificing.
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Or you can just not let items create items.
MDC
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The mass production of magic items...well, thats a space opera approach for sure...I don't think I like it because:
most enchantment spells have a 24 hour duration. Each casting requires a lengthy process of saturating and shaping the object with essence.
otoh, I can see reducing the time requirements to as low as one hour per spell ( 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100% with five stages of spell master. the 100% results in 1hour. this is a LOT of spell mastery rolls to make all te symbols).
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As a GM, I'd not allow it in almost any situation, but it's one of those things that's not explicitly refused in the rules. . .with the symbols, the rock is the caster, the rock can only cast once a day, so no problem for it to keep beaming essence into the blade all day, it doesn't get tired or bored. .. and there's no skill check needed to be made, just a spell roll, then the caster must stick with it all day.
For those who object to the feel of the industrial age, if I had instead described it as:
"In the Kai temple of Zardoz (The temple of sixty altars), master smiths in the forges make the famed Kai swords of the order of the dragon, which after passing rigorous inspection to ensure their perfection, are brought to the first altar. Each blade has an acolyte who spends all day praying over it, and each day at dawn, the acolyte takes his blade to the next altar, eventually reaching the high altar at the top of the temple. After sixty days on sixty altars, the blades are infused with the dragon spirit of Zardoz, and worthy of the name Kai. From here a squire is elevated to knight, and the new Kai blade is placed in their hands."
Suddenly it feels better. . .but it's still an assembly line in actual result.
Yes, it's easy to just say no to that and keep it from happening, but this thread was about "How do you make magic like tech" not "How do you prevent magic item proliferation in play"
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Don't symbols require one ton stone blocks? How to arrange 60 one ton blocks to cast there spells on the item at the same time (I accept the symbol/stone has all day to work the spell).
Eh, I'll also accept it could be engineered. In fact, in a high magic world, wouldnt such feats of magic be inevitable? Magic factorys making utterlight lamps for the masses...the creations list could make tables to feed the world...hmm, a high magic world that is 100% dependant on magic, and the magic turns off. A post apocolytic setting indeed.
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Eh, I'll also accept it could be engineered. In fact, in a high magic world, wouldnt such feats of magic be inevitable? Magic factorys making utterlight lamps for the masses...the creations list could make tables to feed the world...hmm, a high magic world that is 100% dependant on magic, and the magic turns off. A post apocolytic setting indeed.
I guess that is why they call those times "dark" ages. :o - Oh yes I did!
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Since the so called dark ages happened after the "light" of Rome was extinguished, I can't argue with you.
I winder how much a Roman Utterlight Lamp, the gold and silver kind, not those cheap wooden kockoffs from late in the empire, would be worth?
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I winder how much a Roman Utterlight Lamp, the gold and silver kind, not those cheap wooden kockoffs from late in the empire, would be worth?
I now a guy.....
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Hook me up. It will go great with the bridge i just bought.
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Don't symbols require one ton stone blocks? How to arrange 60 one ton blocks to cast there spells on the item at the same time (I accept the symbol/stone has all day to work the spell).
Eh, I'll also accept it could be engineered. In fact, in a high magic world, wouldnt such feats of magic be inevitable? Magic factorys making utterlight lamps for the masses...the creations list could make tables to feed the world...hmm, a high magic world that is 100% dependant on magic, and the magic turns off. A post apocolytic setting indeed.
As I understand it, when kerosene was available to the masses, people could read after dark w/o sooty lamps. This way, the common man had more time to work or increase their knowledge through books.
If a magical light existed, it could really change the culture in a region..
On another note, check out Arcanum. It's a steampunk/magic PC game. It's really interesting how the cultures collide/mesh.
On the one ton symbol factories, I could see this in many "modern" cities. Even smaller towns might have a standing stone hospital with different beds for the patients while they heal by magic.
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Granite is 168# per cu ft. . .so 12 cu ft, say 3' x 4' x 1'. . .an altar top the size of a folding card table. I've seen 60 card tables set up in a gym, no reason you couldn't set up 60 altars in a decent sized building. (or 100, or 1000 if you want to build a couple big old warehouses) Moving around mere 1 ton stones was fairly casual even in the ancient era, we're not talking stonehenge sized menhirs here.
The items move from altar to alter via a horde of low skill required lackeys. . .i.e. the acolytes in the example. . .they only need to shift each say "sword" over one altar once a day. ("What do you do for a living?" "I pray, and I pick up three score swords, one at a time, move them five paces and put them down again." "Wow, that sounds rather boring" "It's a divine vocation friend")
It's not really engineering, it's just mass production logic.
And I did say, you might face an irate god with the power bill in hand.
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Mass production is engineering. Anyway, 60 alters would not be needed. A system to rotate the stones, take out stones and replace with various other with diferent enchantments, would be devolped. All thoat would be required is an energy sourse, be it slaves, an essence flow, or a water wheel. As i said, i accept the engineering would be resolved. We built the pyrimids after all.
Your blue collar sword mover would be out of work in the final stages of production development, unemployed, and mad as hell. A program to train sword movers in glyph carving would be needed. Enter the money grubbing politians.
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moving the stones destroys the symbol. They need to be motionless. . . .and I was sticking to what I could pull off out of the book RAW.
true, when they decide they can kill you, raise you as a type I undead and put you back to work moving swords it'll save feeding or paying you.
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Motionless is relative. Place them in a lattice, with frames for each stone. The stones never leave the frames, its the frames that move and are inserted into the lattice. Like a spindle on a CNC lathe.
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I think it actually says "The stones may not be moved" which is fairly non relative. I don't think it refers to planetary revolutions or rotations, galactic or continental drift. . .but putting the rock in a frame and hoisting it around the room is moving it as far as I see it.
It came up when we wanted to make something like a flying boat with symbol rocks powering things, but the rocks "may not be moved" so the GM said that's a non starter to put them in something that moves like a boat or wagon. I wasn't happy, it was a cool plan, but he seems to be right based on what the spell says.