Evolution and Magic.

[Jkeown]

As a periphery to the whole "Encounters Paradigm" notion... how do you folks handle magical physiology? In a setting where magic has been around a while (for example, my world of Caleon takes place in a universe 12.5 billion years old) natural selection might select for "mage genes" and certain critters would develop spell-casting ability. Or, more likely, abilities would develop that resembled spell casting. Think of it as the difference between a bird's wing and a 747... they do the same thing, but one was a naturally-occuring evolutionary change and the other was purposefully designed. This is also handy for explaining a system where Mages are born, not trained or where magic is an inherited trait.

 

For example, say a latent gene allows wolves to use Lightning Magic of some form... the same mutation causes the fur to crackle and turn blue shortly after birth. Or a predator that cooks its food with a handy fireball before eating it. I think in all cases evolution would provide physiological changes to "warn" the environment... like the wacky colors that poisonous animals adopt. Heck... there could even be genes for elemental affinies, turning ordinary squirrels into Fire Squirrels and normal flightless waterfowl into Infernal Penguins From Hell.

 

I think some fudging might be required to explain why there are still normal, non-magical variations of some animals... if Lightning Wolves are so superior, why are there still Timber Wolves? And do llamas really need to be improved? I think not.

 

Now, most fantasy worlds are only a few thousand years removed from their Creation Event. I think some really wild beasties arise from using Darwinian Concepts... Even if you do have to break the Fantasy trope of the Thousands-years Young concept. Then again, Theistic Evolution is considered by some to be a realistic viewpoint, perhaps the gods made them that way... and it's genes that do the gods dirty work...

[Teflon Billy]

Re: Evolution and Magic.

 

In my campaign, magic is completely abstract. It is metaphysical, its ways are in no way related to the rules of the physical world. Any similarity is merely coincidental.

 

This is how I explain why magical creatures don't completely dominate and overwhelm the mundane creatures. While arcane beasts can and do have a large leg up over the run of the mill animals, they will not dominate to such an extent as to completely supplant them. It just won't, it has nothing to do with natural selection whether a magical creature will succeed.

 

TB

[Markdoc]

Re: Evolution and Magic.

 

My approach to this has been to distinguish between "monsters" and "animals".

 

Animals I tend to run in an at least semi-reasonable fashion. In area where you have dragons, they are top predator. You don't find much in the way of other large predators about. In areas where Skereagh (a big nasty, more or less wolf-like creature) are found, you don't have ordinary wolves. They just can't compete (actually there are no ordinary wolves in my game - they've been competed to extinction).

 

Animals breed, compete and behave in an animal-like fashion. Some species exist which have obviously been magically altered at some stage in the past - or else extensively bred for certain traits - but it's hard to tell the difference, because if you alter an animal too much (whether by magic or cross-breeding), it can't interbreed with normal animals. In short, you have made a monster.

 

Monsters are created by magic. They are one-of-kind, never seen before, never seen again (unless the Mage who made them likes them so much, he decides to make more of the same sort...). In my game, monsters by definition are not natural, don't breed and don't, therefore, compete in an evolutionary fashion.

 

That allows me to deploy nasty, magical beasties when I want without worrying about why they don't overrun the local countryside.

 

As an aside, I have a largish city-state run by mages in my game called "The Minglers of the Blood" whose economy is based on making magical creatures for sale. They buy up slaves or animals and then alter them to their customers specifications. Such creatures are, of course, very expensive, but The Minglers of the Blood make good patrons for adventurers who want to earn some cash by capturing dangerous creatures or acquiring rare magics to infuse into their creations. They also make a good source (though only one such source) of magical hybrid thingies for me to torment players with.

 

cheers, Mark

[Jkeown]

Re: Evolution and Magic.

 

As an aside, I have a largish city-state run by mages in my game called "The Minglers of the Blood" whose economy is based on making magical creatures for sale. They buy up slaves or animals and then alter them to their customers specifications. Such creatures are, of course, very expensive, but The Minglers of the Blood make good patrons for adventurers who want to earn some cash by capturing dangerous creatures or acquiring rare magics to infuse into their creations. They also make a good source (though only one such source) of magical hybrid thingies for me to torment players with.

 

Duuude, I totally wanna steal that.. the whole concept is great. They are an established presence in your game, yes? If given permission to nick that off of you, I think I'd introduce them slowly.... get some PCs to capture some beastie, then 5 episodes later, something like it goes on a rampage...

Please... let me snatch that...

[Black Rose]

Re: Evolution and Magic.

 

Some things to consider when playing with Natural (or in this case, Unnatural) Selection:

1. Is this trait an advantage that enabled its possessor to edge out its fellows for purposes of reproduction, or improve its likelihood of survival?
   
2. Why did this trait not get its possessor killed before it could breed?
   
3. Is this trait not necessarily an advantage, per se, but merely something that hasn't impacted its possessor's chances for reproducing?
   

[CourtFool]

So you want to start a revolution

 

Why no mention of magical llamas? We are innately mystical.

[Jkeown]

Re: So you want to start a revolution

 

Why no mention of magical llamas? We are innately mystical.

 

Re-read my original post, O Furry One.

[Markdoc]

Re: Evolution and Magic.

 

Duuude, I totally wanna steal that.. the whole concept is great. They are an established presence in your game, yes? If given permission to nick that off of you, I think I'd introduce them slowly.... get some PCs to capture some beastie, then 5 episodes later, something like it goes on a rampage...

Please... let me snatch that...

 

Hey, go right ahead

 

I've had a lot of fun with these guys/gals. In my game, the mages form an overclass - the whole city runs at their whims and they are decadence personified. Not only do they experiment on making new creatures, but they also experiment on each other and themselves. To do what they do, of course they have to be comfortable in slave trading, which is another reason to dislike them.

 

In my world science and magic are pretty much interchangeable, so anyone who studies one messes with the other - it's all arcane knowledge. So to these mages, everything they do is just a kind of breeding. Instead of marriages, they make contracts for one or more babies with each other or suitable external people, choosing their mate on the basis of desired characteristics, the same way they would make a monster.

 

One female mage in the game had mutated herself with a lot of cat-like features but was still mostly human (and fertile). She wanted to make a baby with one of the PCs who was big and strong and good-looking and to her surprise, he was really, really negative about the whole thing

 

The creatures they make are fun too - at one point the players had a run-in with one of the Lords of Chance (a crimelord from another small city-state) and ambushed him in his boudoir, away (so they thought) from all his guards.

 

He had a half-dozen dancing girls/pleasure-slaves who had been magically crossed with big cats - women's bodies, with short, soft bluish grey fur and cat's heads (made by the same female mage). The players had seen them before, performing a sword-dance at a feast. What they didn't know was that Balthar's slaves had also been bred for fighting prowess and extensively trained, so that he had his bodyguard with him all the time. They were really fast, telepathic and had retractile claws and kewl martial arts skillz...

 

Oh, and they always landed on their feet if you dropped them

 

The look on the players faces as they got their butts kicked by the "dancing girls" was priceless...

 

cheers, Mark

[Jkeown]

Re: Evolution and Magic.

 

I had, in games past, hinted that such things might be possible. It's also cool because Caleon has always been the opposite of Star Wars. Star Wars is Fantasy disguised as Sci-Fi. Caleon is Sci-Fi pretending to be Fantasy. The inhabitants know not only that the world is round, but that stars are suns, and that around those suns are planets. They aren't sure where this particular bit of lore comes from, but it's accepted by everyone.

 

That said, the whole idea of Dr. Moreau style bioroids is appealing, as they'll look just like ordinary Cat-people.... but will be so much more. And they won't be called Bioroids either... Chimerae has appeal... It's both a fantasy term and a real world biological term (admittedly, I think it was coined because of the fantasy beast... but that's still cool...)

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: Evolution and Magic.

 

The Slayers world has something similar in the form of the chimeras. it is possible in that world to use magic to give one being the phsycial characteristics of another. The most famous such charatcre, Zelgadis, had his essence merged with those of a "rock golen" and a 'brass demon" against his will. The result was a human with stone skin and wire hair who had massive intergal magic power -- and a case of angst and self-loathing that was utterly legendary.

 

There is a lot of dispute in Slayers fandom on whether Zelgadis can sire children and, if so, whether they would carry his "curse". Zelgadis is constantly searching for a way to lose his alterations and become "fully human" again, but since the man who cursed him has been killed (twice!), it seems unlilkely that he will ever be 'cured".

 

The famfans are also in agreement that Zelgadis is one of the sexiest guys in anime in a series full to the brim with hunks (Gourry, Zangulus, Valgaav) and babes (Lina, Amelia, Naga).

[Markdoc]

Re: Evolution and Magic.

 

I had' date=' in games past, hinted that such things might be possible. It's also cool because Caleon has always been the opposite of Star Wars. Star Wars is Fantasy disguised as Sci-Fi. Caleon is Sci-Fi pretending to be Fantasy. The inhabitants know not only that the world is round, but that stars are suns, and that around those suns are planets. They aren't sure where this particular bit of lore comes from, but it's accepted by everyone.[/quote']

 

This actually how my game runs - educated people know the world is more or less a sphere, goes around the sun and is one of several planets - and indeed that the sun is just one of many stars. How? Because mages who specialise in astronomy have checked these things out (although those who sail off to other stars rarely, if ever, come back). One of the other planets (and the moon) are both inhabited (though the inhabitants have to live in cities with wizardly life support).

 

Of course, to most people this is just more of the stuff that mages babble on about and the sun is that big light in the sky, while stars are little lights in the sky.

 

Interestingly enough, however, magially blended animal/mosnter/human hybrids ARE called Chimera in my game.

 

cheers, Mark

[Outsider]

Re: Evolution and Magic.

 

In my game world the use of magic requires sentience. My game world may or may not have had a creation event (I am not going to say here) but, given such an intellegence threshhold for magic use, a non creation event world would have no animals that used magic until regular evolutionary processes developed human or near human level intellegences to make them via magic. Assuming a similar development path as earth, this squeezes the magical era on a (say) 12.5 billion year old world int the last million (or maybe even 100,000) years, depending on just how much brain power is required and what hominid evolutionary timeline one uses.

 

At that point, magical power/finesse may have had a long 'paleolithic' period where it really wasnt developed enough to create magical animals. If this is the case, then magical animals/monsters would be a product of the equivalent of the 'neolithic magical age' or later, cramming the era of magical animals into the last 10,000 years or less.