Rarity of Magic?

[Cantriped]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Part of my problem with a world in which deific intervention is necessary to survival and said intervention comes only through the actions of people is that for such a model to be workable, it requires that humans were created with an infallible knowledge of certain universal truths, such as the presence of gods and what must be done to apease them.

This would fundementally change how a culture develops in ways I'm not even going to try to theorize.

As for Axis' of magic:

I'd use High/Low to represent magic's effencicy, if it takes just as much or more effort to do something with magic as it does to do it "by hand" or with technology, then it's Low.

I'd use Wide/Narrow to represent the bredth of the "mage" demographic, if everybody can learn a few spells it would be wide, where as if the "mage gene" is recessive still takes training to produce a mage then it would be narrow.

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Part of my problem with a world in which deific intervention is necessary to survival and said intervention comes only through the actions of people is that for such a model to be workable, it requires that humans were created with an infallible knowledge of certain universal truths, such as the presence of gods and what must be done to apease them.

This would fundementally change how a culture develops in ways I'm not even going to try to theorize.

That's how people believed the real world was for thousands of years.

 

As for Axis' of magic:

I'd use High/Low to represent magic's effencicy, if it takes just as much or more effort to do something with magic as it does to do it "by hand" or with technology, then it's Low.

I'd use Wide/Narrow to represent the bredth of the "mage" demographic, if everybody can learn a few spells it would be wide, where as if the "mage gene" is recessive still takes training to produce a mage then it would be narrow.

I think we're all in agreement on what "Wide/Narrow" means. As to "High/Low," I think it has to include level of power as well. If it's really efficient to fling sparks out of your fingertips, but those sparks only do 1d6 of normal damage, I wouldn't call it "High Magic."

 

Another axis that just occurred to me is (I can't think of what to call it. Maybe ...) "Substitutional/Innovative" (that's probably not the best term). By this I mean magic that substitutes for something that can be done mundanely, versus magic that does something that can't be done otherwise. A fireball spell is used to kill people at range, which could be done mundanely with a crossbow. A far-seeing spell can't be duplicated without magic (until someone invents television). So Fireball is Substitutional and Far-Seeing is Innovative. In general, Innovative magic will have a greater impact on changing the world than Substitutional.

[JackValhalla]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

I like that idea a lot. That would let you continue to make magic "wide" and easily accesible but still determine whether or not magic is going to require a fundamental departure from accepted historical fantasy settings. If magic can only do things that can be done by other methods, then you can have a setting almost identical to medieval Earth in all practical ways. Maybe magic is the best way to accomplish a goal, maybe not. But, if the magic can do things that are totally outside of the scope of normal means, such as controlling weather, killing at extreme range, stealing knowledge from your enemies' minds.. then you have a fantastical setting with lots of possibilities that are foreign to the players.

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

The example that came immediately to my mind (based on my Fireball example) is a fantasy world that would probably have a tone and attitude similar to the old west. Everyone can cast a fireball spell as easily as pulling a trigger on a gun. Everyone needs to be nice to others. "An armed society is a polite society." And everyone has access to deadly force if somebody steps out of line. It wouldn't change economics or industry that much. Though the forms of government would be different. Hard to have tyrannical monarchies when the peasants are armed. There's nothing that says you can't have a free democracy in a fantasy world. In this case, you'd probably have to.

[Curufea]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Part of my problem with a world in which deific intervention is necessary to survival and said intervention comes only through the actions of people is that for such a model to be workable, it requires that humans were created with an infallible knowledge of certain universal truths, such as the presence of gods and what must be done to apease them.

This would fundementally change how a culture develops in ways I'm not even going to try to theorize.

As for Axis' of magic:

I'd use High/Low to represent magic's effencicy, if it takes just as much or more effort to do something with magic as it does to do it "by hand" or with technology, then it's Low.

I'd use Wide/Narrow to represent the bredth of the "mage" demographic, if everybody can learn a few spells it would be wide, where as if the "mage gene" is recessive still takes training to produce a mage then it would be narrow.

 

That's based on the premise that dieties created their worshippers.

My campaign setting has deities that were created BY their worshippers.

[Kristopher]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Part of my problem with a world in which deific intervention is necessary to survival and said intervention comes only through the actions of people is that for such a model to be workable, it requires that humans were created with an infallible knowledge of certain universal truths, such as the presence of gods and what must be done to apease them.

This would fundementally change how a culture develops in ways I'm not even going to try to theorize.

 

That's based on the premise that dieties created their worshippers.

My campaign setting has deities that were created BY their worshippers.

 

If deific intervention is necessary for the world to function, and the worship of mortals created the deities, where did the world come from and how did it function before the introduction of mortals and their deities?

[Markdoc]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

A fireball spell is used to kill people at range' date=' which could be done mundanely with a crossbow. [/quote']

 

While I agree with your point in general, this is a poor example of a "substitutional spell" simply because it's area effect. The existance of area effect attack spells automatically invalidates the majority of medieval/ancient tactics - if you have a fireball-flinging wizard around, a pike block or a spear wall ceases to be a threatening force and instead becomes what you could call "a tempting target" - unless it's magically shielded.

 

Changing the balance of military power (which will happen if magic is powerful and common) will irrevocably alter most early societies which were almost always built up around a military framework. Feudal levies, for example, are useless encumbrances against magically enhanced troops (think the Fuzzy-Wuzzies charging British colonial troops) which rather makes a standard feudal system unworkable.

 

You can of course design a feudal system that *is* workable, but this is the point: if you have one man in one hundred who can cast "fireball", societies will alter radically from what we have known - and that's just a single spell.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

The example that came immediately to my mind (based on my Fireball example) is a fantasy world that would probably have a tone and attitude similar to the old west. Everyone can cast a fireball spell as easily as pulling a trigger on a gun. Everyone needs to be nice to others. "An armed society is a polite society."

 

Is it like the old west or not? That was an armed, but extremely *impolite* society - as was, for example, pre-christian Iceland. I tend to think a society where most people had access to magical lethal force would look more like Somalia, tribal Afghanistan or today's Iraq, where most people have access to lethal - albeit, non-magical - force.

 

cheers, Mark

[Vondy]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Its a question of personal taste and genre. And its probably directly related to what people prefer to read. I'm ambivalent about Tolkein, and its a rare piece of high fantasy that I actually enjoy. I'm much more interested in fantasy in the style of the pulps, which ranges from swords and sorcery to historical stories with a touch of the supernatural. I also enjoy historical novels. And even then - I have preferences in terms of style.

 

Also, while I tend to focus on character driven stories, I want that character to exist in a well-founded and cohesive world. You can have that with magic, but the more prevalent and powerful the magic, the harder it is to ensure the world really makes sense, or can be related to. Commonplace magic also has a tendency to lose its mystery and become like an ACME product - and diminishes character and story.

 

Also, the standard fantasy RPG magic is pretty generic - McMagic - and that's not interesting. Its one reason I Harn's Shek-Pvar. They have to develop their own spells for the most part. And magic and spells should have a distinct feel to them. "Make undead slaying sword," is far too broad and not very interesting: "Okay, so we tapped the fighter's sword with the wizards wand and now the vampire is our meat." Yech - I'm bored already.

 

If the party, on the other hand, needs to use ash from the coffin of a hanged-man in the tempering process of forging a new sword things get interesting - or finding out a demons secret to blackmail it, or its true name before casting "banish." The hitches that make magic "difficult" are also what make it interesting, and they give potential plot-hooks or complications to work with as well.

 

The personal price a wizard is willing to pay for his power, or the moral choices made in using it are interesting - a 10d6 fireball is not. But those things are best explored in a solo adventure. In a group they don't normally come up because they are complex and everyone needs airtime, and there are group goals to pursue. As a result, mages with easy magic tend to become artillery pieces or "hi-tech" replacements for problem solving. And how a character solves problems is also something that defines them.

 

All of this comes into my thinking, but its really just personal preference. I don't mind high-fantasy or moorcockian (oh my!) swords and sorcery as a side-dish, but I don't care for them as a main course. I like pulp-fantasy in the vein of Solomon Kane or Conan; or Farfd and the Gray Mouser; or even Hawk and Fisher. I also like historical fantasy, or even just "historical" stories with sharp pointy things. In terms of worlds, I prefer hyboria, the young kingdoms, harn, or the real world with low-key (pulp style) fantasy elements.

 

On the other hand, sometimes its nice to whip out "power word kill" and "meteor swarm" to show the world how big a howitzer you really are.

[Vondy]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

If deific intervention is necessary for the world to function' date=' and the worship of mortals created the deities, where did the world come from and how did it function before the introduction of mortals and their deities?[/quote']

 

My problem with religious magic in rpgs is that it essentially removes the hard-questions that make religion a meaningful part of the human experience, and a driving cultural power. All the questions are answered because they have to be for the magic to have a premise. Its just clicking the right buttons to download programs from the great server in the sky. Who cares?

[Markdoc]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Its just clicking the right buttons to download programs from the great server in the sky. Who cares?

 

"Cleric, we're getting over-run by zombies! Do something!"

 

"I'm trying, but I keep getting a 404!"

 

More to the point, this is why I decided there would not be any "raise dead" or "speak with deity" spells in my world. Most people in my game world are convinced that there is life after death and there are certainly big powerful entities moving in mysterious ways out there, but you can't go to heaven and then come back and tell your buddies what it's like.

 

Cheers, Mark

[Cantriped]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Is it like the old west or not? That was an armed, but extremely *impolite* society - as was, for example, pre-christian Iceland. I tend to think a society where most people had access to magical lethal force would look more like Somalia, tribal Afghanistan or today's Iraq, where most people have access to lethal - albeit, non-magical - force.

 

cheers, Mark

 

Actually I think that has a lot more to do with religious and cultural conflicts then the presense of absense of commonly available "lethal force". People in those areas have been killing one another for millenia before the invention of guns. Introduction of commonly available lethal force just means that the distinction between the "warriors" and the "peasents" has blurred.

Culturelly speaking Guns are the universal equalizer in a sense, when just about anyone has a good chance of killing just about anyone else you'll see one of two results.

In an already relativly stable group, the introduction of weapons will tend to deture people from becomming criminals because there is no beneit.

In an already unstable or heavily conflicted group, the introduction of "lethal force" will pretty much give them all the excuse they needed to start 'paying back' all the indignancies they and their ancestors had 'suffered' over the generations.

So really, I think if were going to talk about the effect of magic of a society or culture we have to look at what the society or culture was like before it's introduction, and what forces drive that cultures existance.

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

While I agree with your point in general' date=' this is a poor example of a substitutional spell" simply because it's area effect.[/quote']

"Fireball" is an area effect spell in D&D, but I don't play D&D. Fine, call it a "Magic Zappy Spell."

 

And BTW, for a mundane AE, try a catapult or a trebuchet, or even a group of archers.

 

Is it like the old west or not? That was an armed, but extremely *impolite* society - as was, for example, pre-christian Iceland. I tend to think a society where most people had access to magical lethal force would look more like Somalia, tribal Afghanistan or today's Iraq, where most people have access to lethal - albeit, non-magical - force.

It is like the old west in reality. Contrary to what you might conclude from movies, gun fights in the street were not a common occurrance. People tipped their hats at each other and said, "Sir" or "Ma'am." You took your hat off when you went inside, and it would still be on the hatrack when you left. People who stepped too far out of line were quickly dispatched. I don't know about pre-Christian Iceland, but your other examples, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, are *not* armed societies. They are regions where there is a small armed group of whackos which the UNarmed society is powerless to stop. If the normal people of Iraq were all armed, the fighting would stop immediately.

[Markdoc]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

"Fireball" is an area effect spell in D&D' date=' but I don't play D&D. Fine, call it a "Magic Zappy Spell."[/quote']

 

OK, fair enough - I admit I had assumed the area effect. But as noted, I agree with the substitutional aspect you mentioned. If you have a spell which does no more - or not much more - than arrows or ballistas, than it won't have much effect. But it doesn't take much to tip the balance.

 

It is like the old west in reality. Contrary to what you might conclude from movies' date=' gun fights in the street were not a common occurrance. People tipped their hats at each other and said, "Sir" or "Ma'am." You took your hat off when you went inside, and it would still be on the hatrack when you left. People who stepped too far out of line were quickly dispatched. [/quote']

 

"Quickly dispatched" - kind of makes my point, doesn't it. While the old west was not a seething mass of gunfighters, nor uniformly violent, it had in many places, rates of violent crime which were extremely high. Bodie, in California, had 162 murders in 1878 and shootings and brawls were everyday occurences. This in a town of about 5,000. It was said (probably not quite true,but you get the idea) that during its heyday there was murder a day in Bodie. The famous birdcage saloon in Tombstone, Arizona saw 28 murders in the building during it's 8 years of operation. How many bars in the US today do you know of, that have about 4 murders a year? The town itself, of course had many more, and it was teh size of a small US suburb today. At Canyon Diablo, Arizona, the main street was so rowdy it was called "hell street". Eventually the government attempted to restore law and order by sending a sheriff. Within 5 hours he had been murdered, as were 5 other lawmen over the next couple of weeks. In the end they had to send the army in to restore law. There are plenty of other examples, but I figure you can google up your own. But any way you slice it, much of the west was extraordinarily violent by modern US standards.

 

Yes, people were polite in their speech compared to today (and my personal feeling - also more considerate). But that's due to their era, not their hardware: the same was true of 1880's London. But in today's world the same tribal head who greets you effusively, offers you a free meal and his own bedroom to sleep in and would never dream of stealing any of your belongings while you were visiting would not stop at murder and theft if he stopped your car outside his own boundaries. Flowery speech, geneuine politeness and lethal violence are not at all exclusive.

 

I don't know about pre-Christian Iceland' date=' but your other examples, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, are *not* armed societies. They are regions where there is a small armed group of whackos which the UNarmed society is powerless to stop. If the normal people of Iraq were all armed, the fighting would stop immediately.[/quote']

 

This, sadly, is a mixture of dreams, misinformation and wishful thinking. If you don't know about pre-christian Iceland, you should - the sagas are excellent reading for any fantasy geek.

 

As for the others, alas, you are very, very far from the truth. And unlike you, I have been to some of these places (the western Somali border country, specifically). I know from personal experience exactly of what I speak and I work routinely with people from these other areas. I know their daily lives. When I travel in the Horn, we usually don't go armed (as westerners, it's safer just to pay up if we are stopped by shiftas) but the drivers occasionally just bring their own guns, just in case. In the fighting I witnessed in Addis last year, even the poorest slum dwellers had some firearms, despite the fact that for them, they are illegal.

 

The short version is yes, in these areas, the bulk of the population is armed. Virtually every family, and every adult male, except the very poorest has a weapon and it is not in the slightest bit unusual to go to a stall in the market and see 40 guys, 36 of whom have AK's casually slung over their shoulders or pistols stuck inthe back of their trousers while they talk, drink cofee, take chat together and trade goods. Ammo and weapons are readily available in shops. The same is true today in tribal Afghanistan and Pakistan. Darra in Pakistan is the most famous of the "weapon towns" with over 100 weapons shops selling not just handguns, submachine guns, grenade launchers and assault rifles, but also light squad weapons and from time to time battalion level weapons such as light howitzers and heavy mortars. If you want an extra special present for a young man's 13th birthday, it's the place to go. It's even become a tourist attraction (if a dangerous one) and they'll sell to *anyone* with the money.

 

Owning a firearm is an essential rite of passage for young men in these regions and guns are a part of life. Iraq was more urbanised, but still has had a culture where weapons were part of everyday life - and today that's truer than ever, as people buy weapons for protection. As you can see here, owning an assault rifle is niether illegal or unusual in Iraq.

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2005/n02112005_2005021102.html

The US authorities permit 1 assault rifle plus handguns for all adults, per household and the British instructor of the police forces in Basra mentions that they always assume any male suspect is armed because essentially all of them are. This article also makes thepoint that virtually every household contains one or more firearms.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/22/wirq122.xml, while a Britsih soldier in Basra in the immediate aftermathofthe war made the point that prior to the war, firearms were widely (and legally) held by private citizens. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2931131.stm

 

Now we are kind of getting off the point here (if you want to continue this particular discussion, we can take it to NGD) but it is worth thinking about the consequences in a fantasy world. If firearm levels of power could be wielded by ordinary citizens, then anarchy would threaten (or at least a lot of violent crime) unless the culture specifically prevented it (that probably means the economy and government is robust), or the government had better magical firepower enablingthem to suppress that activity (I actually have both situations in different parts of my game world).

 

cheers, Mark

[Manic Typist]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Markdoc- as an aside, what are some titles that you would recommend (for these Icelandic sagas)? I'm always looking for something good to read.

[Markdoc]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Markdoc- as an aside' date=' what are some titles that you would recommend (for these Icelandic sagas)? I'm always looking for something good to read.[/quote']

 

The sagas are family histories from Iceland collected in the 12th century, although they were traditional and are older than that. They cover the end of the viking era, but although based on real people (Grettir's skull is on display in a church in Iceland - though of course maybe it's not actually his...) have a lot of fantasy elements (trolls, undead, spells, witches, uber-competent warriors, etc). Most of them revolve around a murder or murders and then getting revenge.

 

There's two ways to tackle them - there are modern versions of the sagas (for example Hrolf Kraki's Saga or Hauk's saga both of which have been retold by Poul Anderson). We also mentioned the Poul Andersen story "The broken sword" which is a completely original story, but contains elements from various sagas and which definately gives the flavour. These might be a good place to start.

 

Or you have original material, which has the advantage you can get it for free off the net, but the disadvantage that many of the translations are a bit stiff in style.

 

My favourites are:

Grettir's saga (about a strong and bad tempered warrior who gets in trouble with the king of Norway)

Egil's saga (about another roving warrior who gets in trouble with the king of Norway)

Laxdæla Saga (one of my special favourites, about a family feud - it was made into a nice movie)

Njal's saga (Njal is one of the few nice guys to get his own saga. Though he ends up being burnt alive in his own house, his friends get revenge)

 

but there are at least 46 other Icelandic sagas, plus a bunch of fragmentary norwegian/danish/swedish ones, some german ones and even an Irish one (Kormac's saga)

 

The versions at Project Gutenburg http://www.gutenberg.org/ are not too bad, but if you try a couple and like them I would recommend the Penguin classics versions which are reasonably readable, accurate translations with a lot of historical notes (good stuff for gamers!). You can get them from Amazon. Most of my own copies are Penguins.

 

cheers, Mark

[Kristopher]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

My problem with religious magic in rpgs is that it essentially removes the hard-questions that make religion a meaningful part of the human experience' date=' and a driving cultural power. All the questions are answered because they have to be for the magic to have a premise. Its just clicking the right buttons to download programs from the great server in the sky. Who cares?[/quote']

 

My standard take on that is that for most "religious" casters it's not a download from the gods, but rather the caster's belief, that enables the magic, as opposed to formulae and/or will/ego.

[Vondy]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

My standard take on that is that for most "religious" casters it's not a download from the gods' date=' but rather the caster's belief, that enables the magic, as opposed to formulae and/or will/ego.[/quote']

 

It depends on the rpg. Most of them take explicit positions on the existance and nature of divinity. And even your proposed explanation amounts to an explicit answer.

[Vondy]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

My standard take on that is that for most "religious" casters it's not a download from the gods' date=' but rather the caster's belief, that enables the magic, as opposed to formulae and/or will/ego.[/quote']

 

It depends on the rpg. Most of them take explicit positions on the existance and nature of divinity. And even your proposed explanation amounts to an explicit answer on the nature of miracles and belief, and cosmology, for that matter.

[Kristopher]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

It depends on the rpg. Most of them take explicit positions on the existance and nature of divinity.

 

So it's not just the religious magic in the RPG's setting (which I agree can often seem like downloading a spell from a server in they sky, a feeling enhanced by the mechanical aspect of any RPG), it's the nature of religion as based on established fact, and not on faith, in many RPGs that leads to your dislike?

 

It depends on the setting, I suppose, as to which is appropriate. In a Greek mythological setting, where mortals, gods, demigods, and monsters interact on a fairly regular basis, it's hard to have religion based solely on faith.

 

And even your proposed explanation amounts to an explicit answer.

 

Does it?

 

If it's strictly fueled by belief, then strong and sincere belief in something that's entirely untrue could still fuel the believer's magic.

[Vondy]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

So it's not just the religious magic in the RPG's setting (which I agree can often seem like downloading a spell from a server in they sky' date=' a feeling enhanced by the mechanical aspect of any RPG), it's the nature of religion as based on established fact, and not on faith, in many RPGs that leads to your dislike? [/quote']

 

Thats a good part of it. I also find rpg religons shallow and slapped on in most cases.

 

It depends on the setting' date=' I suppose, as to which is appropriate. In a Greek mythological setting, where mortals, gods, demigods, and monsters interact on a fairly regular basis, it's hard to have religion based solely on faith. [/quote']

 

It seemed to work for the ancient greeks - who believed in all of those things as articles of faith. If you want to run a "the mythology is true" game then its appropriate, of course, to have it all be established fact, but in those cases it ceases to be religion and becomes ritual science.

 

And this comes back to what I said originally: its a question of personal taste. I don't enjoy reading that kind of fantasy - and as a result, I don't particuliarly enjoy playing in that kind of game.

 

 

 

Does it?

 

If it's strictly fueled by belief, then strong and sincere belief in something that's entirely untrue could still fuel the believer's magic.

 

Which was my point in relation to role playing games where absolute factual conclusions must be drawn at design time in relation to how magic and miracles work. Its very hard to avoid decisions that don't kill religion as we understand it. Your proposal, for instance, carries an implicit cosmological assumption: that the source of miracles is belief, and not the thing believed in.

 

Again, its just a matter of taste - and its one of the reason I dropped the fantasy genre, both as a reader and a gamer, a long time ago.

[Lucius]

Miracles

 

I have this story from my parents.

 

They were driving in two different cars going down one of those trails that winds around a mountain, where you have enough room to drive a car (if you're careful) and a sheer cliff up on one side and a sheer cliff down on the other. Yes they had a reason to be at the top of that mountain and a reason for being in seperate cars, but it's not relevant to this story. Most of the way it was actually wide enough for two cars. But at a narrow point, my mother suddenly ran into another two cars coming UP the mountain, and at a pretty reckless speed. She swerved out, then back. My father, a little farther back, swung the other way, scraping the cliff, leaving just enough room for the morons to get past him - the trail was wider there. But he saw what my mother did.

 

He went back up the mountain later with a tape measure. At that point, the trail was just one foot wider than the car my mother was driving.

 

So when she swerved, there was literally nothing solid under her car. Everything my mother thought to be true about how the universe worked said the car could not possibly do anything but fall. Yet she swerved back onto solid ground when there was nothing but air under her tires.

 

She changed in later life (perhaps partly as a result of a few odd experiences like this) but at that time my mother was not at all religious. So her reaction was not "Oh God" but "Oh Shit." To her and my father, it was not a miracle, but a mystery.

 

But if she HAD been religious? If she had believed in Anyone to pray to, she would certainly have prayed. And she would have interpreted what happenned as the answer to that prayer. It WOULD have been a "miracle."

 

This is one reason I am dubious of religious claims to miracles. My reaction is, sure, maybe it even happenned that way. But every other religion claims miracles too, and as far as I'm concerned, maybe they're ALL true. But they don't PROVE anything. They certainly don't prove the objective truth of any given faith and all its doctrinal points.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary looks at Lucius expectantly

[Kristopher]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Thats a good part of it. I also find rpg religons shallow and slapped on in most cases.

 

Unfortunately true. Makes me think of D&D, with the generic "priest", "paladin", and "druid" classes that existed in a sort of vacuum when it came to the details of their faiths.

 

It seemed to work for the ancient greeks - who believed in all of those things as articles of faith. If you want to run a "the mythology is true" game then its appropriate, of course, to have it all be established fact, but in those cases it ceases to be religion and becomes ritual science.

 

If faith (or mystery) as opposed to knowledge is a defining aspect of religion, then yes.

 

And this comes back to what I said originally: its a question of personal taste. I don't enjoy reading that kind of fantasy - and as a result, I don't particuliarly enjoy playing in that kind of game.

 

Understandable.

 

Which was my point in relation to role playing games where absolute factual conclusions must be drawn at design time in relation to how magic and miracles work. Its very hard to avoid decisions that don't kill religion as we understand it. Your proposal, for instance, carries an implicit cosmological assumption: that the source of miracles is belief, and not the thing believed in.

 

OK. I was thinking of what was going on for the characters within the setting, instead of design considerations. For the characters in the game, they don't know what really powers those miracles and spells that the priests and prophets are wielding. From their prespective, it could be the gods, which is what the true believers think, or it could be the belief itself. My only point was that within a setting, the existence of magic wielded by "the faithful" doesn't definately prove the existence of the enitities that the priests say are the source.

 

As for design considerations, yes, you're probably right, but I'm not sure how it could be avoided.

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

"Quickly dispatched" - kind of makes my point' date=' doesn't it.[/quote']

I don't see how. If bad guys are quickly dispatched, only the good guys are left. If potential bad guy know they'll be quickly dispatched, they're likely to behave themselves.

 

This, sadly, is a mixture of dreams, misinformation and wishful thinking. ....As for the others, alas, you are very, very far from the truth.

Granted that the general availably of firepower (be it guns or spells) does not give the whole picture. Values are also of extreme importance. I was writing under the assumption that the great majority of Iraqi citizens want to live their lives in peace, make a living, put food on the table, etc. If this majority is well armed, then the small minority that would rather make war against a perceived enemy - even at the cost of their own lives - than live in peace and prosperity, cannot possibly succeed. If this is not the prevailing attitude in Iraq, well then that's very sad. I know that it was the case in the old west, and in the medieval Europe upon which most fantasy is based. Most peasants want to live, work, and feed their families. They don't want to go to war.

[Cantriped]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

I blame the lack of Swords mostly...

 

K3 - The comdic relief since 1987 (just don't tell him that, he thinks this is a romance story...)