Michael Hopcroft Posted January 5, 2005 Report Share Posted January 5, 2005 Is it possible to use the standard fantasy tropes in a world with no magic? If magic is defined as "any action that violates the laws of cuase and effect", then magic is logically contradictory and therefore CANNOT exist. most fnantasy GMs don;t enforce a ligikcal cosmos, but if you did then there can;t be real magic. What there can be is a pervasive belief that magic exists, leading many people to think that magical effects are possible or even common. And you can have numerous con artists and charlatans taking advanmtage of that belief to sell worthless postions, take money for putting non-existant hexes on people's enemies, etc. Character can go to magical helaers who claim tot reat their injuries but in relaity do nothing -- and who then claim "the stars were wrong" when the patient, to their surrpise, dies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curufea Posted January 5, 2005 Report Share Posted January 5, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic Astrology used to be a fairly well believed part of medicine in medieval times, I've read. Anyhow - how we define fantasy and how we define science fiction are sometimes often blurred. To me, fantasy is anything that doesn't have scientific explanations for things. Thus Star Trek is fantasy because of the technobabble, Farscape and Starwars for the magic, and Firefly/Babylon 5 are borderline because they have psionics - but at least attempt to explain them. The fact that they have spaceships and high technology as well, doesn't mean a thing to me when looking at genre. Science Fiction on the other hand, to me, is based on the premise of exploring the idea of a scientific theory or concept being a fact - What if we had FTL? What if we invented AI? What if there was life on Mars? Fantasy can quite easily exist without magic. Fantasy is just another version of fiction after all. It really depends how you class the genre of Alternate History. Is Alternate History part of Fantasy, or Science Fiction? After all, it explores the question of "What if?" which is fundamental to Science Fiction. But it doesn't have the pure unexplainabilities, or irrationalities of what we think of as Fantasy. So it is really subjective - Is Fantasy always associated with the past and magic? Is Science Fiction always associated with the future and technology? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest The Comet Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic Is it possible to use the standard fantasy tropes in a world with no magic? If magic is defined as "any action that violates the laws of cuase and effect", then magic is logically contradictory and therefore CANNOT exist. most fnantasy GMs don;t enforce a ligikcal cosmos, but if you did then there can;t be real magic. What there can be is a pervasive belief that magic exists, leading many people to think that magical effects are possible or even common. And you can have numerous con artists and charlatans taking advanmtage of that belief to sell worthless postions, take money for putting non-existant hexes on people's enemies, etc. Character can go to magical helaers who claim tot reat their injuries but in relaity do nothing -- and who then claim "the stars were wrong" when the patient, to their surrpise, dies. Seems to me like a perfect idea for a fantasy campaign based in our world, in medieval europe perhaps! Charlatans, fakers, and false healers abound! I personally find such campaigns that closely follow our own historical past as very rewarding to play. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Hopcroft Posted January 6, 2005 Author Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic Several fantasy tropes are possible without magic. Fantasy races are quite possible, as variant of humanity or as other species who emerged into sentience. Thus the presence of, say, elves, does not neccarily require the presence of magic any more than the presence of Neandethals requires the presence or absence of magic. Other tropes in the fantasy genre might be possible without magic. Fantasy need not neccarily be assocaited with the past. It's A Wonderful Life is a fantasy -- it wasn't called one when it was made, but that was because people didn't use words like "Fantasy" in the 1940s nearly as often or as broadly as we do now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curufea Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic Anything which has unexplainable elements in it, is fantasy. Although technically, by definition, anything made-up is fantasy too... Anyhow - its subjective. But to answer the question - Fantasy, to me, can definitely still occur without magic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic Sure thing. While the overall goal in say, Lord of the Rings was the destruction of the ring of power, the majority of the series didn't have any magic in it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lupus Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic Sure thing. While the overall goal in say' date=' Lord of the Rings was the destruction of the ring of power, the majority of the series didn't have any magic in it.[/quote'] Or at least, what magic that was there could easily be removed, as it was mostly background/invisible/ignorable. Some would be harder than others (Nazgul, etc)... and you'd probably have to get rid of trolls and the like, as they simply couldn't support their own weight. Unless they were especially light, in which case they'd break easily... Ah well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curufea Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic Not necessarily - you could build a troll around the concept of a bipedal elephant. It was certainly shaped similarly in the movie. Nazgul, and the Shelob you couldn't do, or the giant Eagles. You could possibly have the Oliphaunts from the book - which weren't as large as the ones in the movie. The Men of Dunharrow would be completely out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lupus Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic Not necessarily - you could build a troll around the concept of a bipedal elephant. It was certainly shaped similarly in the movie. Hmm, making them similar to elephants might be interesting. Prolly not walking on two legs all the time... mostly four legs, but can go on two for short distances... hell, might just work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OddHat Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic No actual believer in magic (that I know of) would use that definition. It's a bit like saying "If we define G_d as an irational and untestable idea, can we still have religion?" Howver, Sci-Fi based Fantasy worlds and historical Fantasy worlds of every stripe could be played in without magic; just add whatever other fantastic elements you want. Played in this type of world for a while to please some Born Again players in my group. Had a fair alternate history campaign, got bored, found new players. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Hopcroft Posted January 6, 2005 Author Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic No actual believer in magic (that I know of) would use that definition. It's a bit like saying "If we define G_d as an irational and untestable idea' date=' can we still have religion?"[/quote'] To which an Athiest would say "We have no evidence that deities exist, therefore it is more rational to say that they do not than to say that they do." To the same Athiest, an actual believer in magic is in all likelihood insane. He would say that to believe in something that by its very definition cannot be proved to exist is self-delusion. Howver, Sci-Fi based Fantasy worlds and historical Fantasy worlds of every stripe could be played in without magic; just add whatever other fantastic elements you want. This implies a defintion of Sicence Fiction that does not involve techologies higher than those that are already known. Which is entirely possible and capable of producing very interesting stories. Alternate histories that do not involve the intervention of outside forces such as time travelers are perfectly valid as science fiction. Indeed, you can create a science fictions tory that features a "Science" of magic -- it would require a different definition of magic than "that which violates cuasality", but it can be done. randall Garret's Lord Darcy series is such such a fantasy/SF hybrid set in an alternative version of the late 20th century. Played in this type of world for a while to please some Born Again players in my group. Had a fair alternate history campaign, got bored, found new players. Why a Born Again player would insit on a mgaic-free cosmos in a game is beyond me. Most of the religious people I know have no strong feelings one way or another on the subject, and the book-burning fundamentalist who limtis his reading to the Bible and Chick pamphlets is very rare in real life. The religious objection to the practice of magic is based on the idea that it is Man attempting to do something that only God should do -- that is, that only God has the right to step outside the phsycial laws of the universe because He created them. the same objkections were raised to attempts to understand the universe in some circles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OddHat Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic To which an Athiest would say "We have no evidence that deities exist, therefore it is more rational to say that they do not than to say that they do." To the same Athiest, an actual believer in magic is in all likelihood insane. He would say that to believe in something that by its very definition cannot be proved to exist is self-delusion. Mike, you can run any campaign you like, and probably successfully; I just don't see the point in coming up with a definition of magic that's so far removed from the actual meaning of the term as used by believers. This implies a defintion of Sicence Fiction that does not involve techologies higher than those that are already known. No, it doesn't, and I'm not sure how you're managing to misread it that way. Why a Born Again player would insit on a mgaic-free cosmos in a game is beyond me. Most of the religious people I know have no strong feelings one way or another on the subject, and the book-burning fundamentalist who limtis his reading to the Bible and Chick pamphlets is very rare in real life. Why many people do many things is a mystery to me, yet they continue, day after day. I'm also not sure why you've thrown in the book burning fundamentalists thing. They were and are perfectly nice born again Christian gamers who had decided that magic and the supernatural were not things they were comfortable with in gaming. The religious objection to the practice of magic is based on the idea that it is Man attempting to do something that only God should do -- that is, that only God has the right to step outside the phsycial laws of the universe because He created them. the same objkections were raised to attempts to understand the universe in some circles. In part. It also relates to discrediting the religious practices of sects other than your own by labeling those practices as magic and deviltry, and to attempting to distinguish between your own sect's claims of miracles, fortune telling and dealing with spirits and the similar claims of outsiders. Personally I doubt that many people who hold anti-magic in gaming views are likely to be reading the fantasy hero forums, which leads me to believe that voicing the pro-magic in gaming point of view here is fairly pointless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic Is it possible to use the standard fantasy tropes in a world with no magic? If magic is defined as "any action that violates the laws of cuase and effect", then magic is logically contradictory and therefore CANNOT exist. most fnantasy GMs don;t enforce a ligikcal cosmos, but if you did then there can;t be real magic. What there can be is a pervasive belief that magic exists, leading many people to think that magical effects are possible or even common. And you can have numerous con artists and charlatans taking advanmtage of that belief to sell worthless postions, take money for putting non-existant hexes on people's enemies, etc. Character can go to magical helaers who claim tot reat their injuries but in relaity do nothing -- and who then claim "the stars were wrong" when the patient, to their surrpise, dies. Personally, IMO, a Fantasy setting without Magic isnt Fantasy -- it's more "Historical" or, for settings that are not based on our own past, "Archaic". The "fantasy" aspect of the Fantasy genre is all of the larger than life, mystical, legendary abilities for me. However, it is certainly possible to play a Sword & Shield game rather than Sword & Sorcery. It's just not all that interesting IMO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trencher Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic Is it possible to use the standard fantasy tropes in a world with no magic? You can use elements of fantasy in any genre, but it is not fantasy unless it has magic. If magic is defined as "any action that violates the laws of cuase and effect", then magic is logically contradictory and therefore CANNOT exist. most fnantasy GMs don;t enforce a ligikcal cosmos, but if you did then there can;t be real magic. I don't define magic that way. Magic ranges from demon texts to the "force". Magic is a mysterious power that transcends natural laws they do not break them. A logical cosmos would not have anything like magic in it but it could have several things that is similar. However it would not be fantasy then, fantasy requires a certain element of non-logic. What there can be is a pervasive belief that magic exists, leading many people to think that magical effects are possible or even common. And you can have numerous con artists and charlatans taking advanmtage of that belief to sell worthless postions, take money for putting non-existant hexes on people's enemies, etc. Character can go to magical helaers who claim tot reat their injuries but in relaity do nothing -- and who then claim "the stars were wrong" when the patient, to their surrpise, dies. How is this different from our world today? Magic needs to be mysterious and exiting. Otherwise you end up with your players looking behind the curtain. (Ignore the man behind the curtain! Ignore the man behind the curtain!) I have read books placed in world which does not exist nor did it ever, with cultures which does not nor will ever exist but they had no magic. Therefore they are not fantasy. Whatever you chose to do to your campaign don’t make it boring just to make it more logical. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic I've run a fantasy game without magic. I hope to resurrect it someday. I think it died because of a general lack of interest in rpgs; my current group would rather play video games. Unfortunately, I don't share their enthusiasm in it. I started a thread about this subject last year. I'll look for it and post the link. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic Okay, I found a few old discussions (dead but not forgotten) I started. I hope you find them useful: "Fantasy without magic" was about how I could run such a game. http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5309 "The Wronged" talks about my short-lived campaign. http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11198 "Alternate history" is just about that. http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8408 "Evolution of the races?" was about how other races could have evolved naturally. http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23117 "Yet another fantasy idea" is about putting it all together. You posted on this one, Mike. http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24541 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eosin Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic I want to drop back a little to the "Elves" part - while it is certianly possible that other races could develop in a non-magic but still middle-age type of campaign world the simple matter of calling them ELVES brings an expectation of magic into the game. Elves are not explainable like humans or even orcs - they are basically magical creatures, fey, los alfar, etc.... IMO you can't do elves in a non-magic, middle-age setting. You could do "tall skinny guys with pointy ears that live longer than humans" but if you call them elves there is implied magic in the world. Good examples of non-magical elves [The Pariah Elite] include both Vulcans & Mimbari. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markdoc Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic Hmm' date=' making them similar to elephants might be interesting. Prolly not walking on two legs all the time... mostly four legs, but can go on two for short distances... hell, might just work.[/quote'] Oh, it'd work OK. There were plenty of bipedal dinosaurs, some of which were much larger than the standard troll types, and part from the very largest, their body structure makes it likely that they could run. As long as your troll doesn't have a totally human build, I see no mechanical problems. They probably wouldn't be great jumpers, though The same applies to Oliphaunts - given that the largest quadrapedal dinosaurs were also oliphaunt size, I see no natural objections to them either. Cheers, Mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markdoc Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic I have read books placed in world which does not exist nor did it ever, with cultures which does not nor will ever exist but they had no magic. Therefore they are not fantasy. Whatever you chose to do to your campaign don’t make it boring just to make it more logical. Matter of opinion, I think. I have also read stories of imaginary cultures in which magic does not exist and I would very definately classify them as fantasy. Likewise, "no magic" does not by any stretch of the imagination equal boring. I've never run a no-magic game, but I have played in three. All were huge fun. One of those - a game set during the first crusade - evolved into a campaign that ranks among the best and most exciting I have ever played in. And given how fondly it is remembered by the other players, I doubt I'm alone in that assessment. cheers, Mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curufea Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic More than one sentient race on a planet is scientifically unlikely - unless there are reasons why one would never wipe out the other as a competitor, such as say they are physically unable to meet each other, or they eat different things and don't compete... I had an idea for a fantasy game with no magic today, actually - after watching Deep Blue. You could set a game, and a race - in the Marrianus Trench. 30 thousand miles long, 7 miles deep. Completely alien and fantastical (for a civilisation to exist there). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trencher Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic Well if you say you are going to run a fantasy campain then it will be boring without -some- type of magic. Offcourse it possible to run a fun game during the crusades but it is not fantasy. Let me ask you a question: How do you define fantasy? Starwars: a new hope is fantasy because of the force. Babylon five is not fantasy even thoug it got psycher's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CTaylor Posted January 6, 2005 Report Share Posted January 6, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic Is it possible to use the standard fantasy tropes in a world with no magic? No, it ceases to be fantasy without magic. Magic is what makes it a fantasy setting rather than simply historical or science fiction. Elves, Dwarves swords, monsters etc all fit just fine in sci fi, or even alternate history. You have to have magic or it's simply not fantasy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted January 7, 2005 Report Share Posted January 7, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic Personally, I define fantasy as a story set in a world different from ours. By that I mean there are elements in a world that is noticeably different from ours. I include alternate histories as part of the fantasy genre. It doesn't need to have magic in it, in my opinion. In my campaign, I use the map of the Old World from Warhammer. I removed all supernatural elements from it. But I still consider it fantasy because the world, while approximately similar to our own, has developed differently. The land masses are slightly different, and the history and religion are also different. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMcL63 Posted January 7, 2005 Report Share Posted January 7, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic My own fantasy world began with the premise of a fantasy world without magic. The inspiration for this was two-fold. One was a very interesting article in the old Spacegamer magazine on this very subject. The other was my decision to start a fantasy world using a homebrew rpg without a magic system (I was going to design the magic system). As my game developed, I soon realised that what I wanted was a world in which there is divine magic (because the gods are real, manifest, and therefore undeniable- something which contradicts my own beliefs, but what the heck, it's a fantasy rpg after all!), but none of the high-powered 'whizz-bang' magic that had become de rigeur thanks to D&D. What I ended up with was a world which was essentially divine, in which magic was the fundamental laws of motion of that divine essence, and in which the magic that did exist wasn't classic sorcery. None of the players who ever visited the world ever complained about that. The homebrew system went by the board, and the game developed under the first edition of Fantasy HERO. I am currently working to revive the game using HERO 5E and the new Fantasy HERO (which make my ideas even more accessible than the original did BTW). On the basis of this experience, I can say that it is quite possible to run a fantasy rpg without magic as it is commonly understood in the genre (and by this I mean what is basically D&D combat magic). All the same, I do think that it is worth considering what is meant by 'magic' in the terms of an rpg. On the one hand there is combat sorcery; and on the other hand there is the power of the divine. Speaking for myself, I think it is easy to imagine a credible fantasy world without the former, but not without the latter. That is to say: I think that it is the undeniably manifest nature of the divine that is more classically definitive of fantasy than magic (or even of any particular kind of magic). I admit that this is my own opinion, and that this is one which might not square with conventional defintions of the genre, but it is the one I work with in my own game. One thing I think that distinguishes this perspective from others is that the world is taken to be truly divine.This means that it is subject to laws that might appear to be similar to those of our own familiar world (and, let's face it- most of reality in any fantasy game will have to conform to our everyday expectations just for the sake of a viable game, otherwise GM's would have to spend too much time simply explaining the mundane for the game to function), but which are actually essentially different. Or, to put it another way: if your magic is really just science (after the fashion of the real world) misunderstood due to some variant on historical backwardness, then what you really have is a scientific (ie. natural) world setting in which magic is a form of superstition. This is perfectly fair enough if that's the kind of game you want to play (and why not?- it's a perfectly reasonable idea); but, when I set up my own fantasy world, I wanted real gods, and the unnatural world that their manifest existence entailed. What I am getting at therefore is the idea that, if you want a fantasy world without magic, then there is no reason why you shouldn't do this. But I would suggest that you have to consider what you mean by this. Do you want a version of, say, real medieval society- in which magic was a force because people believed in it due to superstitions now superceded by science; or do you want a genuinely fantastic world without the post-D&D trappings of 'zap-pow!' combat magic? Or would you prefer something more individual even than that? Either way, there is no better system for making your own personal fantastic visions real than HERO as far as I can tell. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted January 7, 2005 Report Share Posted January 7, 2005 Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic Another way to handle elves and dwarves is to make them human. Elves are a nation of people who adapted to life in the forest. Dwarves are a nation of people who live in high altitudes. Orcs are a nomadic people who often raid nearby villages to get the supplies they want or need. They may have a few distinctive features to them, but they would still be human. As for magic, people would believe in magic, whether or not it actually exists. They would probably have charms to ward off evil or grant them luck. And if their prayers are answered, they'd consider it a miracle (Someone wrote an article for GURPS that treated Christian rituals as ritual magic). Keep in mind nothing would be guaranteed to succeed; if something goes your way, you wouldn't be able to tell if it was actually magic or mere coincidence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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