Ars Magica

[Omegonthesane]

What would be genuinely interesting is to come up with a magic system dabbling in alteration and transfiguration that would operate between these two extremes - between Ars Magica's utterly open natured and hence unworkable basis, and 3rd edition's extremely codified way of proscribing possibilities. Both give you a range of what features things can and cannot have, both avoid contradiction, but neither is particularly amenable to accomodate players wanting to creatively engage in a make-believe world and altering things in it in novel ways.

I dunno. 3.5's explicit set of restrictions act as "shit to work around", stimulating creativity rather than stifling it. People get creative when faced with a challenge, rather than when faced with a blank page.

[mean_liar]

ArM players can get pretty damn creative coming up with spell formulae that minimize spell magnitude.

Thanks for the writeup, Windjammer. I think that mirrors the intuitive understanding of what Muto should be doing, but bringing that to bear with numbers and mechanics is always subjective.

[momothefiddler]

Windjammer: so the second- or third- (not sure which one) most category includes things like tattoos? Color gets changed, it doesn't change back, and (potentially, since I'm not sure about "nothing in the natural world has) it's certainly not common for things to have images of mermaids on their shoulders.
The temporal argument also leads to the claim (barring my misunderstanding, naturally) that the natural color of all apples is, in fact, brown, since that is the color they eventually get to (and then they stop being apples).

[Windjammer]

Windjammer: so the second- or third- (not sure which one) most category includes things like tattoos? Color gets changed, it doesn't change back, and (potentially, since I'm not sure about "nothing in the natural world has) it's certainly not common for things to have images of mermaids on their shoulders.
The temporal argument also leads to the claim (barring my misunderstanding, naturally) that the natural color of all apples is, in fact, brown, since that is the color they eventually get to (and then they stop being apples).

The irrevocability of a property change was merely a necessary, not a sufficient condition for a property's being natural. The criterion's sole purpose is to get rid of a certain class of property changes that are clearly too weak to count as relevant. Obviously there is a large class of alteration in properties that do not affect a thing's natural properties, such as permanent removal of a limb for instance in case the limb's organism is unable to regrow the limb.

Interestingly enough, a creature such as man will remain essentially bipedal even if he or she permanently loses a leg. That, however, is a problem for the Aristotelian framework which then requires theoretic ad-hoccing, and called for the introduction of another distinction - of potential and actual properties.
For instance, a very young infant will not display traits of rational behaviour in the full sense of rationality, but is meant to count as essentially rational by virtue of its belonging to the natural kind of man/human. The way to get around that is to say that the same specimen will eventually display the character traits if it undergoes natural development, even if it does not display them currently. If, then, late in life there's a severe brain damage, the same specimen will still count as essentially rational since, throughout its career, it is taken to have access to rational behaviour by virtue of the natural condition of its organism. That, however, already looks circular, since we now invoke the notion of an organism's "natural development" to define which of the properties it will or might have count as "natural".

I mention that because supplementory to the irrevocability of a change helping to qualify the range (extension) of natural properties, I also mentioned the other necessary condition of the organism's ability to sustain or maintain its having a certain property. The apple's being brown towards the end of its life cycle is hardly a property the apple sustains. Much rather it's an alteration it is no longer able to ward off. But as before, introducing the additional constraint, of the organism's maintaining a property, begins to look circular. It clearly suffices to get rid of undesirables - such as spraying a person with an irremovable colour - but stands in need of non-circular definition.

[Windjammer]

What would be genuinely interesting is to come up with a magic system dabbling in alteration and transfiguration that would operate between these two extremes - between Ars Magica's utterly open natured and hence unworkable basis, and 3rd edition's extremely codified way of proscribing possibilities. Both give you a range of what features things can and cannot have, both avoid contradiction, but neither is particularly amenable to accomodate players wanting to creatively engage in a make-believe world and altering things in it in novel ways.

I dunno. 3.5's explicit set of restrictions act as "shit to work around", stimulating creativity rather than stifling it. People get creative when faced with a challenge, rather than when faced with a blank page.

ArM players can get pretty damn creative coming up with spell formulae that minimize spell magnitude.

I would disagree with both follow ups. If I play D&D 3, I have a set of clearly prescribed options at my disposal, give or take some prior communication with the DM as to which entries in the monster manuals are legit for which polymorph spell.* It´s like a "drop down" menu in a MS Office program. The only creativity that ensues has nothing to do with designing those options, but with my decisions on how and when to deploy them. That is a very creative outlet, but not the one I was after - sc. "altering things in novel ways".

Ars Magica on the other and doesn´t seem to me to fall into that category either, for the simple reason that a lot of the creative effort on the player´s side seems to be that you have to negotiate the structural constraints on what types of property alteration are legit and which are not. Because the system doesn´t already impose clear enough constraints, you end up not so much negotiating concrete cases but the theoretic background. And there I would agree with Frank's diagnosis that, absent that framework's being already codified in the ruleset, as a player you then either add such a framework to the houserules (so they effectively become part of the ruleset, which eradicates the system's alleged spontaneity) or you have to renegotiate these theoretic, structural parameters anew every time a player wants to use the relevant portion of the spontaneous magic system. That´s highly creative, in the sense of a player negotiating what ruleset is actually in play, but not creative in the sense of a PC imagining and implementing changes in the game world.

*Some variants of 3e simply cut down the "middle man" here by correlating polymorph or alter self spells/spell abilities with MM entries, such as Monte Cook's Book of Experimental Might and some versions (?) of Pathfinder, if I recall correctly material from the Alpha playtests (I have not followed the later versions of the ruleset on that point). You could argue, however, that precisely because 3e does not cut out the middleman there's room for creative freedom.

[momothefiddler]

I mention that because supplementory to the irrevocability of a change helping to qualify the range (extension) of natural properties, I also mentioned the other necessary condition of the organism's ability to sustain or maintain its having a certain property. The apple's being brown towards the end of its life cycle is hardly a property the apple sustains.

Hang on, are you saying your (proposed) aristotelian belief set acknowledges bacteria as an external force? That seems a bit...

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It feels like the only thing happening here is the arbitrary selection of a trait as natural and subsequent contortion to explain why. While I will accept sets of universal laws that don't match my universe, I'm not too pleased with ones that don't match themselves (the last entry in your hierarchy).

For instance, I'm not sure if human infants gaining rationality is considered to happen through external interaction or not, so we have two options.

If it is an externally influenced change:

• An infant starts out one way (irrational), experiences an outside force, changes to become another way (rational), but eventually goes back to the initial state (irrational)
• A shin starts out one way (unbruised), experiences an outside force, changes to become another way (bruised), but eventually goes back to the initial state (unbruised)

And this proves that the natural state of humans is rational, while the natural state of shins is unbruised?

If it's not:

• An infant starts out one way (irrational), but left alone and given time changes to another way (rational)
• An apple starts out one way (green, or red, or yellow...), but left alone and given time changes to another way (brown)

And this proves that the natural state of humans is rational, while the natural state of apples is green (or red or yellow...)?

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There is a consistent thread, I think, wherein (as long as you carefully choose "when something ceases to be" vs "when something changes into something else") "natural" can be "that state which is most frequently (i.e. for the most time and among the most members) found among things of this type" - most apples spend most of their existence not brown, most humans spend most of their existence rational, most shins spend most of their existence unbruised (or at least the bruises change places generally)...
But this leads to the idea that if everyone got pictures of cows tattooed on their left thighs, any newborns would either have or eventually develop a matching one. Which, actually, I'm fine with. But you should mention that in your setting cosmology because it's not how this universe works (barring "mysterious ways" arguments where social pressure causes them to get a cow tattoo).

---

Feel free to tell me to gtfo the thread if I'm impeding constructive conversation. Could be I'm the only person here who doesn't get it.

[Windjammer]

It feels like the only thing happening here is the arbitrary selection of a trait as natural and subsequent contortion to explain why.

I alread mentioned that there's a tendency in ancient and contemporary metaphysics to introduce ever more ad-hoccing the deeper you get in. So I'd agree with your verdict here, and also say that to preface the next follow up (i.e more ad-hoccing to come):

For instance, I'm not sure if human infants gaining rationality is considered to happen through external interaction or not, so we have two options.

If it is an externally influenced change:

• An infant starts out one way (irrational), experiences an outside force, changes to become another way (rational), but eventually goes back to the initial state (irrational)
• A shin starts out one way (unbruised), experiences an outside force, changes to become another way (bruised), but eventually goes back to the initial state (unbruised)

And this proves that the natural state of humans is rational, while the natural state of shins is unbruised?

I don't know where Aristotle sits on the divide between those who think intelligence is socially acquired or not. However, there are portions in the Nic. Ethics which clearly say that habituation is required for agents to acquire certain character traits. The idea of habituation is that external forces can activate dormant character traits, whereas in another setting or context the same dormant trait can go unactivated. Some dormant characteristics (what Aristotle calls second order potentialities, hexeis) are essential, others are not. So again, any distinction introduced here will not specifically help us to delineate the essential/non-essential divide, but is simply used for some ad-hoccing. In the current example the idea would be that the colour a shin takes on when bruised or an apple when beginning to decay is not in the respective thing's nature, because displaying that property does not activate a dormant essential property - sc. the hue. (This explanation is circular but is still meant to help to explain something about the theory.) It seems, however, that both cases are of properties that are (a) natural, i.e. natural for things to have (as opposed to totally unnatural hues, like an apple turning bright neon yellow or my shin acquiring a radiating green hue), (b) at least in part conditional on dormant or dispositional features of the things that have them. It is only because my skin and flesh is naturally constituted a certain way that, given certain physical impact, it will then turn purple. It won't have the natural disposition to display bright green when bruised.

Can you see where the complication sets in? We are no longer saying that the categorical (colour) property of being purple is a natural property of my shin. But my shin's dispositional property to temporarily acquire that hue is a natural response to certain events (brought about by external forces) may still be a natural property. So, in case that dispositional property (like the disposition to mature into a certain physical shape upon adulthood) is part of my natural make-up. Again, this is entirely circular, but singles out an important metaphysical distinction - categorical vs.dispositional - we have to introduce to answer some of your counterexamples.

So let's move on to your core question - what factors can we appeal to, with all this ad-hoccing in place, to explain when dispositions to behave in certain ways are "natural" and when they are not? You suggest that (observed) regularity in behaviour may help to explain that. The answer to that suggestion is - it's unclear regularity is anything more than an indicator of naturalness, and an unreliable one. So regularity can't be what defines a properties being natural. To explain why, let me turn to the part where you offer the suggestion:

There is a consistent thread, I think, wherein (as long as you carefully choose "when something ceases to be" vs "when something changes into something else") "natural" can be "that state which is most frequently (i.e. for the most time and among the most members) found among things of this type" - most apples spend most of their existence not brown, most humans spend most of their existence rational, most shins spend most of their existence unbruised (or at least the bruises change places generally)...
But this leads to the idea that if everyone got pictures of cows tattooed on their left thighs, any newborns would either have or eventually develop a matching one. Which, actually, I'm fine with. But you should mention that in your setting cosmology because it's not how this universe works (barring "mysterious ways" arguments where social pressure causes them to get a cow tattoo).

This would come closer to a Humean account of natural laws, which grounds necessity in patterns of recurrent behaviour. Hume thought that laws of nature don't really exist, or at least we can't really know about them. What we call natural laws are nothing but social conventions based on regular patterns we happen to observe in our experience. For instance, there is no gravity, but we are used to seeing things fall down, so we begin to attribute "has a tendency to fall to the ground" to either a force in nature (Newton) or to the falling thing itself and its nature (Aristotle). Observe that Hume here gives you a(n outline of a) theory of what a property´s being natural or essential consists in, but his theory or explanation is highly anti-Aristotelian. Ironically, this would suffice to fill the theoretic gap of Ars Magica, in that it (cursorily) specifies when a property counts as natural. As you rightly observe, the theory is open to counter arguments, such as regularities that we don´t think are based on underlying forces of nature but really are nothing more than cases of spontaneous coordinated behaviour at a massive scale.

Feel free to tell me to gtfo the thread if I'm impeding constructive conversation. Could be I'm the only person here who doesn't get it.

Certainly not. To repeat, this is not my area of expertise, I just read about the material years ago and am trying to bring those partial memories to bear on what I think is a highly legitimate question, raised by Frank, about the conceptual underpinnings (or lack thereof) in Ars Magica. One entirely legitimate response to my cursory attempts to bring in Aristotelian metaphysics is to say - these attempts, and what they are part of, are so fucked up, we should discard them. That would be a valuable insight into how not to move ahead with Ars Magica. The reference to Hume already tells you that a broadly Aristotelian framework is hardly the only alterantive at our disposal, or one with particularly broad appeal in the current philosophical landscape.

[Username17]

Nah, apples actually turn brown and mushy because of the same process that turns them crisp and delicious. It's just a progress of ripening which is accelerated by ethylene. The whole thing where "one bad apple spoils the bunch" is true, because brown apples outgas ethylene and signal the other apples that they should ripen faster. This turns them from green to red and then from red to brown. As far as the plant is concerned, the brown state is the end goal, since that's when the seeds fall out.

Life cycles is in fact a really big problem for Aristotelian philosophy. Things naturally have different demonstrable traits at different stages of their lives, which makes assigning any of those traits as "essential" difficult in the extreme.

-Username17

[momothefiddler]

...I think somewhere I assumed you were claiming the system you were describing was usable for a game (i.e. allowed the players to predict to some degree the results of their actions before declaring them). If not, I don't think we disagree? So... there we go.

Uhh, rewind...

Thank you for your insights on Aristotelian cosmology. I like understanding what people think (/thought) even if I can't find it sufficiently coherent to play a game with.

[Windjammer]

Nah, apples actually turn brown and mushy because of the same process that turns them crisp and delicious. It's just a progress of ripening which is accelerated by ethylene. The whole thing where "one bad apple spoils the bunch" is true, because brown apples outgas ethylene and signal the other apples that they should ripen faster. This turns them from green to red and then from red to brown. As far as the plant is concerned, the brown state is the end goal, since that's when the seeds fall out.

Life cycles is in fact a really big problem for Aristotelian philosophy. Things naturally have different demonstrable traits at different stages of their lives, which makes assigning any of those traits as "essential" difficult in the extreme.

-Username17

The Aristotelian framework clearly allows to differentiate natural properties from essential ones, and moreover has more than one sense of what a property´s being essential consists in. This doesn't make it easy to fold it into a coherent whole, but saying the framework fails to deliver answers on what naturalness or essentiality consists in is a bit too quick, and also seems to ignore Aristotle´s distinction of dispositional vs. categorical explained a moment ago.
1. I already mentioned above that on the definition in the Categories, wherey a property is "essential" if and only if its bearer can't ever lose that property, then a lot of "natural" properties are out. This is a strong modal sense of essentiality. It´s not the strongest one, however:
2. In the Metaphysics and Post.Analytics, Aristotle suggests that a thing's properties are essential when and only when they are co-constitutive of a thing's definition. This excludes not only quite a few candidate properties that on 1. would be (such as being unified or having being), it certainly includes any property a thing naturally has but that will not suffice to definitionally set it apart from other things of the same genus.
3. In De Anima and Physics Aristotle allows for what he calls "necessary accidents" or "natural coincident properties", i.e. a range of properties that is natural for given organisms to display as a result of their natural constitution. As accidents or coincidental properties such properties are however neither necessary (1.) or definitory (2.) of their bearers. This is exactly why some of an organism´s property can be natural while not essential. I´m here only repeating the very point you make, obviously.

So two things in response to your post:
A. I'd agree that the majority of my thinking currently veers towards 3. when more properly speaking it should have firmly stayed within constraints 1. and 2.
B. What exactly does Ars Magica require? The rules text you quoted seem to me to equivocate all key terms (incl "essential" and "natural" and "natures"), so I don´t even know if it´s after essential or (just) natural porperties that the respective type of magic is after. If a lot of Aristotelian metaphysics is ad-hoccing, so (it appears to me) is Ars Magica. You either begin with a very narrow notion of "essential" and then say properties are natural if and only if they are essential. Or you begin with a very expansive notion of "natural", ignore 1. and 2., and simply say that this is what defines "essence" or "essential" in your relevant sense. The only reason we worry about which of these two things is right, is the issue of which would make for a more interesting magic system. My initial suggestion was that a system could deploy all these senses of natural and/or essential, but deploy them in a staggered way. Initially you can only alter organism´s natural properties in a very weak sense, and only those peripheral to the core essence of their being. As your magic grows in power, you can begin to interfere with organisms´s natures and essences in ever stronger and more severe ways, and you end up with messing with the very properties that define those things in a very strong way. As a final game breaker, you are allowed to alter thing's properties that they cannot fail to have on pain of ceasing to exist as such, so your "transmutation" powers basically begin to define things out of existence.

Edit. Corrected one typo above (included has to be excluded). And - will stop now discussing details of only marginal relevance to settling the dispute on Ars Magica. Those few left (if there ever were any) interested in the literature will find a very servicable overview here. Some contemporary positions (such as essential minimalism or essential maximalism) are un-gameable, but others may prove productive.

[virgil]

As a necromancer, I raise more than the dead, I raise questions. Mostly rhetorical in this case, but feel free to answer them. What's the deal with combat?

Once you incorporate the various books, you eventually learn the rough guideline of where combat stats reside. Mundane beasts are a common guideline, and outside of specific powers, even magical creatures tend to be roughly equivalent. Veteran warriors sit roughly in the range of +9 for Attack/Defense, and specialized or high quality combatants err closer to the +15 range. Going below this means you're acutely vulnerable, and going above means you are going to be quite intimidating.

On the one hand, individual combatants absolutely have the potential to go off the RNG against another particular foe, especially if you get Soak up there. On the other, the rules absolutely favor formation fighting in a scary way; as every point of Leadership translates to both a +3 to Attack or Defense, but an additional combatant getting the bonus. Typical commanders have Leadership 5, which means they and five tiny men are at +15; which will crush any single target they choose to fight. Group combat only adds to Attack or Defense that round, which makes groupVgroup combat like a bloody form of RPS; if both choose Defense, only high-end crits can hurt each other. If both choose Attack, the one with higher initiative wins in that round. If one chooses Attack and the other Defense, then it's like they didn't get a leadership bonus at all.

The reason this is being discussed at all is because I cooked up stats for a black rat, per the rules of Mystery Cults, which ended up very close to the numbers for the Mouse in the Realms of Magic book. Individually, it seems to work appropriately and probably better handles combat stats below humans better than D&D does. But I then realized that if one of the rats was a pack leader with Leadership 5 (rats), half a dozen rodents could surprise eviscerate a war horse in six seconds. Well, technically they'd inflict half a dozen Medium wounds, but the beast isn't stopping the following coup-de-grace with a -18 to everything.

[Heaven's Thunder Hammer]

Combat has been a mess in every edition and either outright failed or suffered from weird edge cases making no sense - i.e. in 4th edition a naked man with a sword would easily kill a man in full chainmal with a sword.

When I ran 5th edition for two years, I just avoided actual combat as much as possible. My PCs were wizards, and they would just roll damage vs an NPC/monster's soak after successfully casting a spell.

[Username17]

Ars Magica has a really small RNG and numeric inputs all over the fucking place. There's pretty much no way to make combat be anything other than a hot mess. Most Ars Magica fans engage in little or no battlefield stuff. They might tell you it's because they are Real Roleplayers, but mostly it's a tacit acknowledgment that the combat rules do not deliver.

-Username17

[Heaven's Thunder Hammer]

Ars Magica has a really small RNG and numeric inputs all over the fucking place. There's pretty much no way to make combat be anything other than a hot mess. Most Ars Magica fans engage in little or no battlefield stuff. They might tell you it's because they are Real Roleplayers, but mostly it's a tacit acknowledgment that the combat rules do not deliver.

-Username17

Frank, I think you're right. As well, I've seen on the Ars Magica boards it's there's also more of a "combat is super fucking dangerous, don't do it" as well... Characters can die very fast from a bad roll, healing times are very long, and there isn't easy healing magical healing without vis, which is also the currency you use to buy things for your covenant from other wizards. My PCs preferred to be able to bribe other magi with vis for political purposes than waste it on healing a grog from a combat.

[Daniel]

Ars Magica has a very diverse range of combatants.
You tend to have fights like: a wizard, a platoon of soldiers, an angel and a magic housecat taking on Baba Yaga and a faerie knight riding a dragon. This in a game that is most of the time not about combat. There is a limit to what you can do, unless you don't mind doubling the size of the rules to cover something that just does not come up a lot of the time.

[Chamomile]

Every time this comes up I'm reminded how much I want a non-shit Ars Magica system.

[Daniel]

Chamomile
The problem is that some of the stuff that needs to be there to make it Ars Magica, is also stuff that is very hard on rules design, if your aiming for what this place would consider good.

When I play Ars, I always stress that the laws of nature in the setting are those of Greek philosophers, filtered through the prism of medieval theologians.

To me that means:
-Nasty smells cause illness.
-Leprosy is a Divine punishment.
-you can create mice by grabbing a bunch of sheets, balling them up, dumping them in an empty room and waiting for a couple of weeks.
-Heavier objects fall faster, but not so much faster that it impacts the rules.
-you can create bees by killing a cow and leaving it in the fields to rot.

In this place, the same idea means demanding a rigorous rules emulation of Aristotelian physics in its entirety. And that will never work.

[virgil]

Pfft, no. The game remains Ars Magica if miasma theory, spontaneous generation, and Aristotelian gravity are just as bullcrap as they are in real life. I hold the firm stance that the game is better if you assume direct magical intervention is necessary for any breaks from the physical laws; where bees come out of a rotting cow only if a wizard did it or there is a queen bee with a Might score.

What makes Ars Magica is playing wizards in medieval Europe. One could argue the logistics & troupe elements are necessary as well, but that's debatable for some.

The game is not improved by combat being bad. Angels, magic cats, soldiers, & wizards certainly sound like things that come as par for the course. So claims that conflict between disparate entities don't come up often is incredible self-delusion.

[Daniel]

Virgil
My stance on this issue is a lot firmer than your stance. And longer as well, it is also much thicker.

[virgil]

But is it in a barrel of its peers?

[Daniel]

If you just want to play wizards in medieval Europe.

AD&D 2nd, Rolemaster, Runequest, Vampire the Dark Ages and GURPS all have very nice sourcebooks for doing just that. Ars Magica is for playing Ars Magica.

[virgil]

Ars Magica is for playing Ars Magica.

The first rule of Tautology Club...

I assure you, the game doesn't stop being Ars Magica because bees don't pour out of cow corpses.

[Chamomile]

When I play Ars, I always stress that the laws of nature in the setting are those of Greek philosophers, filtered through the prism of medieval theologians.

And therefore runs into a brick wall as soon as anyone who is actually familiar with the work of medieval-era philosophy gets involved. I am in that category. These guys weren't just wrong from the perspective of people with microscopes and hadron colliders. There were holes in their philosophies evident even to contemporary philosophers, and the actual solution to those problems weren't found until after the medieval era. If you want to ground a setting in the science of a bygone era, you need to be at least up to the 19th century before you hit things that are so wrong they will cause immediately obvious differences in how the world works. I don't mean immediately obvious as in "spontaneous generation," I mean immediately obvious as in "grappling hooks cease functioning and plucked chickens are indistinguishable from human beings."

If Ars Magica has never actually kept its promises about Aristotelian physics, and if it is to even exist it cannot keep those promises, so the first step in cleaning up the game is obviously to junk that premise.

[Daniel]

But is it in a barrel of its peers?

Thankfully a lady plays in my current Ars Magica group, so I have an excuse for not breaking out the extended gay porn metaphors at this point.

On a more serious note, the people I've played with over the years have complained my Ars Magica sensibilities can be to Disney, but they have always liked the medieval physics and the Christian theology.

[Daniel]

Chamomile

I don't want to ground the game in medieval physics. I want the illusion of having grounded the game in medieval physics.