A Thread For Random RPG Musings

[Chris Goodwin]

On 2/17/2024 at 11:04 AM, Duke Bushido said:

Anyway, for that reason and many others, if I ever think Chris is being anything but courteous, I always assume I missed somw important context.

 

I should admit, it was me being a bit grumpy, and a bit less courteous than I ought to have been.  @Doc Democracy I hope you'll accept my apologies for that.  And I hope in my latter post I was less grumpy about it.  

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

anyway, thanks for ruining that personal high, Old Man. 

 

 

 

Just doing what I do best!  Although this time you might have mistaken me for someone else.

 

 

 

 

7 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Agreed.  However, it also needs to be reasonably consistent and more-or-less reliable to be useful for players-- or at least for other players to risk allocating resources on even a periodic basis.  In DnD, why would I waste a spell slot on something that, when cast, does whatever the heck it wants without regard to what I need?  A spell from which any utility is unlikely and coincidental.  In HERO or GURPS terms, why would I spend points on magic with unknowable results when I can buy a club and a crossbow  that do more or less the same thing every time? 

 

This is a good point, although I have to mention that spells can do things that clubs and crossbows cannot.  It is hard to turn someone into a newt with a crossbow.

 

 

7 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

My favorite example of this is actually kind of useless amongst the general public, simply because it requires an intimate knowledge that the general public does not possess:

 

Teaching and learning motorcycle riding.  Most people have no idea that the _vast_ majority of motorcycle riders in North America do not actually  know how to ride a motorcycle.  They know how to _operate_ one.  They know how to work the controls, how to to start it and get where they want to go, but when a truly bad thing comes along, they will make the worst decisions because they actually have no idea how the motorcycle works.  Why?  They were taught by people who really didn't know, either.

 

This is an excellent method to keeping magic mysterious: sheer complexity.  And it's something I ought to have thought of myself, given my line of work.  But yes, for the vast majority of people, modern devices are akin to magic items.  Motorcycles and mobile phones alike are such complex creations that very few individuals would be capable of explaining, in detail and completeness, how they even work.  Even those of us in the field are often reduced to the role of Adeptus Mechanicus: lubricating the sacred sprockets with mystical unguents without understanding why, copying the script of the python into the wizard's window in blind faith that it will find meaning in a page of gibberish.  Indeed, this is what Vancian magic actually is--distant descendants of a once-advanced society, memorizing and forgetting the last spells with no comprehension of how the spell causes the effect.  Wandering the ruined Earth in search of more priceless fragments of knowledge.

 

So you take this phenomenon and apply it to a culture where literacy is so rare that the mere act of reading and writing is viewed as near-witchcraft, with suspicion and distrust, and it almost doesn't matter whether magic/technology is learnable and teachable.  Because you don't even know whether it can be understood, let alone understand it.  Even now there are technologies and mysteries that have been lost to the ages.  We don't know how Archimedes burned the ships at Syracuse.  We don't know where Ulfberht steel came from.  We think we know what Greek fire was.  We think we know what Viking sunstones were.  We don't know who built the Antikythera mechanism and we only figured out what it was for in the last few years.  Knowledge gets lost; advanced knowledge gets loster.

 

Mechanics aside, that's why I appreciate things like Gloranthan disease spirits--it evokes a time when people simply didn't know what was going on.  That, in and of itself, lends a sense of mystery to the setting and the magic within it.  It doesn't even matter whether that's canonically how disease actually works in the setting, what matters is that that's how the characters understand things to be.  A world that is poorly understood has exponentially more possibilities than one which is not.  You don't get to write "Here be dragons" on a thoroughly explored, dragon-free part of the map.

[Duke Bushido]

56 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

Just doing what I do best! 

 

 

 

Nice!

 

 

56 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

Although this time you might have mistaken me for someone else.

 

You are quite correct.  It was our friend,Hugh Nielson who sent me on a googke quest to learn what Spellsinger was, and take some,puff out of my chest on having done so.   

 

 

 

 

 

56 minutes ago, Old Man said:

This is a good point, although I have to mention that spells can do things that clubs and crossbows cannot.  It is hard to turn someone into a newt with a crossbow.

 

Sure; no argument there.  But when you buy "turn infidel into a meet" (or select it from a chart or whatever), you want more-or-less that very thing to happen every time, right?  (Barring "saving throws" and what not, of course.)

 

You might be happy of it turned them into a salamander every now and again, or you might accept it if now and again you had to cast it twice for the full effect, or even if there qas a one percent chance it killed them outright, so long as it would reliably and typically  do what it is supposed to do.

 

You picked it because you knew the outcome,of using it and had an idea of how consistent that outcome was.

 

If it did just any random,thing, or if it only worked one percent of the time, you'd likely be less happy with it, right?  At least when you consider that for the same (and possibly less) investment, you could have gotten a crossbow that did what it was supposed to almost every time.

 

 

 

56 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

 

This is an excellent method to keeping magic mysterious: sheer complexity. 

 

 

Not only,do I agree, but most of my,magic (when I can be pushed into eunning a fantasy game) incorporates that very thing to simulate the delicate, difficult complexity of harnessing magic in a way that is useful to you.

 

On Chris Goodwin's HERO board, some time back, I went through an old campaign grimoire (I like to let players design their spells.  If I approve of them, I record them in a notebook both to keep track of what is what and for other players to look through when they are ready to l learn a new spell: spell, build, SFX, character who created it, etc.)

 

Anyway, I went through a particulalry old one before tossing it out and posted a list of controls.  Looking through the modifiers on the builds will demonstrate what I just said: I like complexity in my magic.  Partly it for its own sake- so that characters wiahing to pursue magic understand that they will work as hard- or perhaps harder- than the sword-slinging barbarian to practice their craft, and,because some things should necessarily be paced a certain way in a certain kind of game (the expression "spamming fireballs" comes to mind as something I frown upon, at least nit until a certain power level is achieved, but mostly to enforce a bit of roleplaying of the preparation or complex rituals required to make the magic do what you want it to do.

 

 

56 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

 

And it's something I ought to have thought of myself, given my line of work.  But yes, for the vast majority of people, modern devices are akin to magic items.  Motorcycles and mobile phones alike are such complex creations that very few individuals would be capable of explaining, in detail and completeness, how they even work.  Even those of us in the field are often reduced to the role of Adeptus Mechanicus: lubricating the sacred sprockets with mystical unguents without understanding why, copying the script of the python into the wizard's window in blind faith that it will find meaning in a page of gibberish.  Indeed, this is what Vancian magic actually is--distant descendants of a once-advanced society, memorizing and forgetting the last spells with no comprehension of how the spell causes the effect.  Wandering the ruined Earth in search of more priceless fragments of knowledge.

 

👍

 

 

Precisely (though I have no idea about the Vancian magic; I will take,your word for it, given my relatively poor fantasy knowledge base).

 

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

I've come to a particular meta-explanation for the relation of magic to science for my own games. Since it seems relevant to this discussion, and in case someone might find it interesting or even useful, I'll briefly transcribe how and why I came to it. There's more involved than what I'm putting down here, but that's not germane enough to this discussion.

 

Most folks here probably know that I'm fond of gaming in the various iterations of the published official Hero Universe time-line, with my own modifications of course.   In those settings it's repeatedly mentioned that magic has the effect of warping physical laws, so that normally impossible events become possible, at least in certain circumstances. That led me to speculate that magic could be fundamentally aligned with Chaos, and opposed to the laws of science which are a manifestation of Order. Scientific laws are dissociated from a person's perception of reality. They exist in and of themselves, objective, unvarying and inviolable. Science studies those laws, and discovers how to direct them to serve our purposes. But magic is a subjective force. It follows no laws except the will and the imagination of the mind of one who uses it, and it bends reality to conform to that imagination and will.

 

However, a while back when I discussed some of these ideas with Dean Shomshak, he pointed out that real-world magic traditions have their own philosophies and laws and techniques needed to utilize magic, which argues against it being wholly within the realm of Chaos. While that's true, I can't help but notice that those laws and techniques are multitudinous across human history and around the globe; and they can differ widely and fundamentally from each other in terms of what magic is and how it works. Moreover, there are numerous beings and creatures in myth and folklore who produce magical effects at will, without any of the trappings typical for mundane spell casters, even in fantasy magic systems.

 

I decided to try to reconcile those paradoxes, by saying that beings and creatures who are fundamentally magical by nature, including the rare "wild talent" magicians, utilize magic instinctively, without conscious thought, the way we all walk or breathe. But the great majority of sapient beings aren't able to access magic that way. They have to approach it intellectually, by imagining a conceptual structure for it that they can comprehend, and symbology, formulas and rituals consistent with that structure, by which they can focus and channel the power of magic. Such a structure is not fundamental to magic, but it is fundamental to and necessary for the creation and casting of spells, enchanted items, and other magical crafts which can be studied and taught.

 

Now, since I know someone will say this means that all magicians are really narrow-minded deluded fools , I'll just respond by pointing out that if magic alters reality, then the magic system from any tradition creates a reality in which these laws are true and necessary for the practice of magic by anyone from one of those traditions. Another point reiterated in the Hero Universe is that with magic, belief that something is real makes it real. (We've all seen plenty of examples of that kind of magical thinking in the real world today, but without actual magic it's much harder to pull off.)

[Duke Bushido]

I accept your breathing example as being without consxious thought, but you are talking to a guy who has learn to walk twice, Amigo.

 

It's much trickier in your late thirties, you know!

 

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

You have my sympathies, Duke. 😟

 

FWIW I've known a couple of people who had to learn how to breathe again. But once one gets there, I stand by my point.

[Scott Ruggels]

Yeah physical THerapy was kind of a bitch after the bad sumer of 2018.

 

[tkdguy]

 

[Lord Liaden]

Themberchaud!

[tkdguy]

I usually cobble my homebrew campaigns from different sources. I'm not good at designing urban areas, but I have city maps from different rpg products, so I just adapt them to my game. So what if my fantasy version of San Francisco looks more like Lankhmar? It's FANTASY after all. It just makes my life easier.

[Lord Liaden]

I'm terrible at drawing maps. I'm the kind of draftsman who draws a straight line when I'm trying for a crooked one. I save every game-applicable map I come across, in hope of repurposing them later.

[Lord Liaden]

For some reason, I'm fascinated by the inland Sea of Mhorec, from Hero Games' Turakian Age setting. It's a freshwater "lake" which by my calculations is at least half the surface area of the Mediterranean Sea, somewhere in size between Hudson Bay in northern Canada, and the Gulf of Mexico. The idea of a freshwater lake as big as a major sea is just compelling to me.

 

That prompted me to research the largest lakes in real-world history, with the record going to the Paratethys Sea, which formed about 12 million years ago. Covering much of what's now Europe and the Near East, this mega-lake was a little larger than the Mediterranean. It was generally shallow, although with much deeper basins within it; but it still held ten times the fresh water of all today's lakes combined. It also supported a thriving ecosystem with unique species of life.

 

Here's a map of the Paratethys, with an outline of the region's modern geography superimposed:

 

 

This shows that there's ample precedent for a more diverse and distinctive hydrology in a fantasy world than most of us tend to think of. And it proves you don't need some cataclysmic global geologic upheaval to produce drowned or desertified kingdoms, or unusual sea creatures. Merely enough of a change in climate to raise or lower water levels, or a shift in local geography, for a sea to be cut off from direct access to the world ocean, as with the Paratethys.

Edited February 20 by Lord Liaden

[Cygnia]

 

[tkdguy]

I've built up a collection of resources over the years: not just sourcebooks and adventures, but also writings, homemade maps, downloads, etc. But I've also forgotten or misplaced a lot of what I have, mainly due to disuse and disorganized bookkeeping. As a result, I tend to reinvent the wheel a few times instead of recycling what I've already got. Worse, I usually can't find what you need when I look for it.

 

My next project will be organizing my stuff so I can find what I want without having to go over everything with a fine-toothed comb. It will also save me a lot of time and effort when I need to add details to my homebrew campaigns.

[Lord Liaden]

There is no substitute for a good index in a game book. When you have a big collection of them, it can be hard to find which book holds a particular detail you vaguely recall. I really appreciate the near-omniscient indexes that DOJ put in all their Hero books from 5E on.

[tkdguy]

Some ideas for a pulp or fantasy adventure

 

 

[tkdguy]

I noticed the costs of services such as weddings and funerals are sparse in rpgs. Since I had a PC buried in town, I needed to calculate the cost. I did some digging and found this:

 

Medieval Price List

 

It doesn't cover every cost, but I can extrapolate.

[tkdguy]

I run multiple PC groups in my solo campaign. I just ran a game, and it ended with the second TPK for characters on their maiden adventure. Maybe I should create a folder for dead characters.

 

I will use TSR's Elves of Alfheim Gazeteer and transplant it to my world. Wood Elves now inhabit Muir Woods. The High Elves are making wine in Napa.

 

Here's my lazy GM method for detailing the setting. It keeps things easy.

* What's the date of the adventure? Look at the calendar.

* What's the weather like? Look out the window.

* What time is it? Look at the clock.

[Lord Liaden]

The D&D Gazeteer series was a real eye-opener for me. I'd never seen such an in-depth dive into a single fantasy region before. The attempt to justify and make logical a lot of details that the original writers of the setting just threw together; the creation of a consistent historical timeline; the wealth of unique cultural details... I know most campaigns probably won't need all that, but my coherence-loving brain and heart ate it up with a spoon.

[Old Man]

On 2/27/2024 at 12:13 PM, tkdguy said:

Some ideas for a pulp or fantasy adventure

 

 

 

Everything in this video is both annoying and completely fictional.  Some decent ideas for pulp though.

[Duke Bushido]

Well, at leasr I now know how to pronounce Kamehameha.

 

That'a aomething I have wondered,about since high school.

[tkdguy]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

 

Everything in this video is both annoying and completely fictional.  Some decent ideas for pulp though.

 

It doesn't have to be factual to make good adventure.

[Old Man]

54 minutes ago, tkdguy said:

 

It doesn't have to be factual to make good adventure.

 

Which is what I said.  But it ought to be factual if it's being posted on youtube as factual.

[assault]

8 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

The D&D Gazeteer series was a real eye-opener for me. I'd never seen such an in-depth dive into a single fantasy region before. The attempt to justify and make logical a lot of details that the original writers of the setting just threw together; the creation of a consistent historical timeline; the wealth of unique cultural details... I know most campaigns probably won't need all that, but my coherence-loving brain and heart ate it up with a spoon.

Is it coincidental that Aaron Allston wrote GAZ1 - The Grand Duchy of Karameikos Gazetteer?

Just curious.

😉

Edited February 29 by assault

[tkdguy]

Here's a blog entry that will help you spice up your dungeon decor.