Rarity of Magic?

[assault]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Hm. So basically, they wanted a "compromise" class between fighter and mage, and somehow decided that that class would be defined as the "religious" class.

 

Why so? Gygax certainly knew Jack Vance's stories; why not a "rogue" class patterned after some of Vance's characters who could fight, cast spells, or resort to talk and trickery to get out of a situation?

 

Tunnels and Trolls, the second RPG to be published, had a "rogue" class that was something along the the lines you suggested.

 

I don't know why clerics (kind of) filled that niche in DnD. If I was forced to guess I would look at the game's wargaming roots. It's still not an obvious connection, but in a game where PCs are rulers of baronies and so on, it almost makes sense that religious characters would possess both spiritual (magical) and temporal (fighter-like) attributes. Wizards, of course, were stereotyped as being more inclined to seclude themselves in their towers and so on.

 

All nonsense of course, but those early style games would have been a hoot to play.

 

I wonder if it would be possible to recapture their spirit...

[Kristopher]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Well if you go back to the source, the old D&D rogues had scroll use abilities at higher levels. So they could do spell-casting. We won't even talk about the original Bard.

 

I think a big part of it is that in those days they were literally creating the genre from scratch. I don't think they did a perfect job, but what they did create was more than good enough to create the hobby. You have to give them that. It had never been done before. They did it.

 

Every game system since then has their example (and those that followed) to draw on. They had nothing. Sure the ideas may seem clunky now, but they were a logical and workable transition from what had gone before.

 

Wargames.

 

Problem is, we're still stuck with d20, and with a lot of the strange features of D&D being thought of as axioms for gaming, 30 years later.

 

Player A: "I'm going to play a priest."

GM: "Cool. What weapons should I look up for you?"

PA: "I need a mace or staff, right?"

GM: "No...why?"

PA: "I'm playing a priest."

GM: "Oh...um...right...no, you aren't limited to blunt weapons."

PA: "But I'm playing a priest."

GM: "**sigh**"

Player B: "Hey, I need a dagger, but don't bother looking up armor for me, I want to play a mage."

GM: "**deeper sigh**"

[Markdoc]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Although I'm reminded of' date=' of all things, what I've been told about African "witch" beliefs - that "witchcraft" (as the various African language words are usually translated) is always inherently harmful, and can never be of benefit even to the witch. [/quote']

 

Not in the Africa I work in - many African cultures differentiate between "good witches" and "bad witches". The Good Witch is often the first place many villagers turn for help. In rural Ethiopia, some church Deacons are also witches (Good witches, by definition - a sort of cleric if you will) who dispense fortune-telling, magical cures, identify proptious dates and offer protection from evil magic.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Why so? Gygax certainly knew Jack Vance's stories; why not a "rogue" class patterned after some of Vance's characters who could fight' date=' cast spells, or resort to talk and trickery to get out of a situation?[/quote']

 

That would be the AD&D Thief, who could use swords (albeit not very well) and magic items - albeit with a good chance of messing up (Cugel, anyone?).

 

They simply didn't do a very good job of it. This is one area where version 3.0/3.5 is much superior.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Hm. So basically' date=' they wanted a "compromise" class between fighter and mage, and somehow decided that that class would be defined as the "religious" class. [/quote']

 

Actually the cleric originally started as a "holy warrior" type - primarily a fighter, who could also cast "miracles". Think about their original spells - healing, creating loaves and fishes, errr, food and drink, etc. In the original game "Cleric" and "Evil Priest" (who kind of snuck in from Conan or somewhere) actually had slightly different spell lists, with the nasty spells (specifically the infamous Finger of Death) only in the "Evil priest" list.

 

With the later supplements "Cleric" mutated into cleric, druid, paladin - and then added Hospitaller, Templar, Sacred Exorcist, Holy Liberator, etc etc, but the basic "holy warrior" concept is stil there.

 

cheers, Mark

[Vestnik]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

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.

 

Changing technology rather alters the equation a lot. Tribal societies at a Stone Age level of technology can spend centuries raiding each other in a constant state of low-level warfare in which maybe 2-3 people get killed a year. Change the spears into AK-47s and grenade launchers and you get destruction of whole villages.

 

Relatedly, places like Chechnya have clan-based societies with a code of revenge killing. If someone from Clan A kills someone from Clan B, Clan B has the right, nay, the obligation, to kill the guy or be entitled to some form of compensation (so many sheep or whatever). This is manageable when you're dealing with the occasional death by musket. If a squad fires a rocket launcher into a gathering of another, revenge just got a whole lot bloodier. Because you likely can't identify the precise perpetrator, and take it out on the whole clan.

[Markdoc]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Relatedly' date=' places like Chechnya have clan-based societies with a code of revenge killing. If someone from Clan A kills someone from Clan B, Clan B has the right, nay, the obligation, to kill the guy or be entitled to some form of compensation (so many sheep or whatever). This is manageable when you're dealing with the occasional death by musket. If a squad fires a rocket launcher into a gathering of another, revenge just got a whole lot bloodier. Because you likely can't identify the precise perpetrator, and take it out on the whole clan.[/quote']

 

Add to that, population pressure. In 1900, the population of all of Africa was about 70 million. Today, nearly 100 million live in just the Horn of Africa alone. In Sudan, there are roughly as many people as the entire population of Africa north of the Sahara 100 years ago. Mix increasing pressure for resources with a tribal system and with improved weaponry, and you have a fine recipe for mass bloodshed (a la Darfur). The tribal differences which sparked the massacres there have existed for generations - but without competition for resources, it'd still be individuals taking pot-shots at each other, not "slaughter everyone, take verything that can suport life and burn their village to the ground".

 

The population gains have not been quite as dramatic in other places, but the same effect is in operation. On television, I recently heard the same complaint from Afghanistan - a tribal leader saying they didn't want to sell opium, but with 2000 people in a village that used to hold 500 when he was a boy, they couldn't live on what the valley would grow: they needed money to bring food from other places. That money - and the same need - presumably afflicts the people in the next valley, and in a culture where the appropriate birthday present for a 12 or 13 year old boy is an AK47, and a death demands retaliation, well...

 

cheers, Mark

[Vestnik]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Add to that, population pressure. In 1900, the population of all of Africa was about 70 million. Today, nearly 100 million live in just the Horn of Africa alone. In Sudan, there are roughly as many people as the entire population of Africa north of the Sahara 100 years ago. Mix increasing pressure for resources with a tribal system and with improved weaponry, and you have a fine recipe for mass bloodshed (a la Darfur). The tribal differences which sparked the massacres there have existed for generations - but without competition for resources, it'd still be individuals taking pot-shots at each other, not "slaughter everyone, take verything that can suport life and burn their village to the ground".

 

The population gains have not been quite as dramatic in other places, but the same effect is in operation. On television, I recently heard the same complaint from Afghanistan - a tribal leader saying they didn't want to sell opium, but with 2000 people in a village that used to hold 500 when he was a boy, they couldn't live on what the valley would grow: they needed money to bring food from other places. That money - and the same need - presumably afflicts the people in the next valley, and in a culture where the appropriate birthday present for a 12 or 13 year old boy is an AK47, and a death demands retaliation, well...

 

cheers, Mark

 

Yeah, it's very much generated by a traditional lifestyle incompatible with new conditions. After Chechnya got de facto independence in 1996, the Chechen kinship groups immediately fell to fighting each other (specifically over access to financial flows) and raiding surrounding territories for livestock. Now, they've been doing that for hundreds of years, but then they were using swords and muskets. Whereas interwar Chechnya was filled to overflow with heavy ordnance. Sort of like if Apaches (the tribe, not the helicopter) had rocket launchers and machine-guns. (You also had the Islamist money coming in from abroad, and that radicalized the situation further.)

[Lucius]

What is Magic?

 

Psionics is magic' date=' with different terminology and a polish on the rationalizations. It doesn't violate the laws of physics any less, but it is more in tune with the source material for Sci Fi settings.[/quote']

 

So part of what I was trying to get at is - why is it that "magic" in fantasy can be religiously problematic, but if we call similar effects "The Force" or "mental mutations" it's not percieved the same way?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary thinks I still haven't really expressed myself well....

[Lucius]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Not in the Africa I work in - many African cultures differentiate between "good witches" and "bad witches". The Good Witch is often the first place many villagers turn for help. In rural Ethiopia, some church Deacons are also witches (Good witches, by definition - a sort of cleric if you will) who dispense fortune-telling, magical cures, identify proptious dates and offer protection from evil magic.

 

cheers, Mark

 

 

Do they actually use the same word in their own language for what you term “good witch” and “bad witch?”

 

Sort of like if Apaches (the tribe, not the helicopter) had rocket launchers and machine-guns

 

Or if Apaches had apaches…

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary ponders Apaches with tomahawks….

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Well, problems crop up for more than one reason. Divine magic has all the issues already hashed out in this thread. For a sci-fi game, active gods are even more problematic, and not just because of those reasons that exist for fantasy. But psi powers (based on the idea that they're another step in human evolution) can be accepted without too much suspending of disbelief.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

The palindromedary ponders Apaches with tomahawks….

 

Is that Native Americans with cruise missiles, or helicopters with stone hatchets?

[Lucius]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Is that Native Americans with cruise missiles' date=' or helicopters with stone hatchets?[/quote']

 

I was thinking the former, although the latter is even weirder.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary tries to imagine what use a hatchet is on a helicopter

[Markdoc]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Do they actually use the same word in their own language for what you term “good witch” and “bad witch?”.

 

I had to ask my PhD student The answer is confusing - apparently there are several word for witches, some of which mean specifically bad, some of which mean specifically good and some of which you could apply in either case.

[Cantriped]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

The initial meaning if I remember correctly was in the middle east, where it basicly meant well poisoner (basicly a mass murderer if you consider what happens when the well is poisoned out there). but I could be confusing the term with anouther I was told about as well, I'm not entirely sure.

[Lucius]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

I had to ask my PhD student The answer is confusing - apparently there are several word for witches' date=' some of which mean specifically bad, some of which mean specifically good and some of which you could apply in either case.[/quote']

 

That explains the confusion. When my sources (professors and texts) said “witch” they were referring to a specific kind of imaginary evil person that would usually be referred to with its own term – even though there may be more general terms for what we might call “magic” or “magicians” that could apply as well.

 

Naturally, there would also be less malefic people who could be called “witch” in English, depending on how you like using the word “witch.” Personally I usually try not to use that word at all. It’s worse than the “I” word.

 

The initial meaning if I remember correctly was in the middle east' date=' where it basicly meant well poisoner (basicly a mass murderer if you consider what happens when the well is poisoned out there). but I could be confusing the term with anouther I was told about as well, I'm not entirely sure.[/quote']

 

You’re thinking of the fact that there is a Hebrew phrase that in the King James version of the Bible was translated as “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” You are correct, the original word would be better translated as “poisoner” and someone who poisons wells in that context would be regarded as about as low as someone can get.

 

That is NOT of course the origin of the English word “witch” – it’s simply a case of something that got mistranslated into the English word “witch” when a better translation would have been “poisoner.”

 

The word “witch” derives from the Anglo Saxon. I think the forms were wicca/wicce/wiccae for male, female, and plural witches, respectively, but I could be mistaken. As for what it actually MEANT…..

 

Keep in mind, not everyone will agree with everything I say, but I’m going to give in to the pedantic impulse.

 

It probably originally meant an individual with one or more specializations in such fields as divination, herblore, healing, midwifery, and sundry dweomers. It was a kind of trade or “craft” – thus we still have the word “witchcraft.”

 

What word the Anglo Saxons used for the kind of imaginary scapegoat person the Anthropologists are talking about when THEY use the word “witch” I don’t know, but they probably had one. In any case, somewhere along the way – and I won’t bore you with a discussion of how it came to pass – the word “witch” picked up THAT meaning, and that’s when even a pedant like me gets a headache.

 

Because during the middle rages, the word “witchcraft” came to be used by the Christian Establishment to mean “Everything we disapprove of.” Now, if you imagine all the things a medieval monk for example would disapprove of, you can see that covers a LOT of territory. All kinds of people and things, real and imaginary, got the “witch” label – everyone from midwives to archers. Yes, archers – read the Malleus Maleficarum some time. Why? Well, before the development of pole arms and, more importantly, effective tactics for using pole arms, the long bow and the cross bow were among the few weapons with which peasants could hope to threaten armored and mounted knights. Think of Robin Hood and William Tell. A man with a bow is a potential revolution – and thus regarded with deep suspicion. “He’s got a bow? He’s probably another devil worshipper!!” But I mention archers just to show how the word “witch” came to mean, well, practically anything and everything. It didn’t stick to archers, but it stuck to a lot of other things.

 

And that’s the problem, because all modern usage of the word “witch” really goes back only to the middle ®ages. So today we have all kind of people running around using the word “witch” to refer to themselves or to others, and they could be using it under any of a couple dozen different meanings. If someone says “I’m a witch!” or “He’s a witch!” they haven’t told you anything at all, until you know what they mean by the word “witch.” They probably don’t mean they use a bow, but you never know. Maybe they’re a terrorist confessing to poisoning the reservoir. Whatever they’re talking about, our medieval monk probably wouldn’t like it, but that doesn’t tell you much. There’s not much he DID like. Although he’d probably like the terrorist better than he would like me.

 

So now you know why I don’t like the term. It means so much that it’s close to meaningless.

 

By the way, I have a bone to pick with Steve Long. In both Fantasy Hero, and the Fantasy Hero Grimoire, he incorrectly states that a male witch is called a “warlock.”

Not hardly. A male witch is a witch. There hasn’t been a gender-distinct term since wicca/wicce in Anglo Saxon. The word “warlock” - from a term meaning “perjuror” or “oathbreaker” I believe – came into use fairly late (17th century I think) and was used by witch hunters to refer, not to any male witch, but specifically to the high priest of a coven. I’m sure the gradual confusion came about because witches were so often visualized as female, that it came to sound awkward or strange to refer to a male by that term.

 

Heck, I could refer to myself as a witch by at least one perfectly valid definition – I’ve undergone initiation into a Wiccan coven. But that’s another story.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary dryly observes that if he thinks about it, there are probably several definitions under which Lucius could call himself a witch. And we DON’T want to imagine our monk’s reaction to a palindromedary.

[Cantriped]

Re: Rarity of Magic?

 

Thats what I meant, the oldest mean of the word I knew. of course by modern standards using it for poisoner is innacurate at best, but there are lots of words that have been butchered in the last two centuries. My mother is still pissed about Bards, the celtic/anglo saxon useage of the title had very little to do with the wandering minstral stareo type portrayed in that other system. Warlock too is one misused.

But now days it's kinda pointless to argue what the word used to mean, modern useage is what 99% of the population goes by, so for all intents and purposes thats what the word means now.

Anyway. back to Magic talk!

 

On the one hand I like the conception behind settings like Ebberon and the Iron Kingdoms that merge magic and technology to varing degrees, but on the other I generally don't want magic to lose it's magic