[OSSR]Masters of the Art

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Occluded Sun
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Post by Occluded Sun »

Trill wrote:To them both are just tools you can try and abandon when they're not useful any more.
Except that the entire point resides in the definition of 'usefulness' being applied. If you're interested in actually dealing with reality, the crystal-waving and astrological charts aren't useful at all.
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Post by Occluded Sun »

Ascension is an absolutely terrible in-game goal. With greater Enlightenment, you gain greater power over reality - because you increasingly recognize that 'reality' is just a dream you're having. And all that 'power' is just influence over an arbitrary experience you're personally creating. Having more power as a goal - which let's be honest, it's what 99+% of gamers are looking for in their game experience - ultimately blocks the acquisition of Enlightenment, because it's incompatible with waking up from the dream and giving up all that illusory power.

Becoming totally Enlightened is abandoning the illusion you're creating and confronting the reality - in other words, quitting the game. So it's diametrically opposed from what we're trying to do in playing in the first place.
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Re: [OSSR]Masters of the Art

Post by Prak »

Ancient History wrote:Let that one sink in for a minute, because it's a major theme of this book. The designers of Mage do not want you to walk around throwing fireballs, turning bankers into sheep, summoning hookers and dragons, muttering arcane incantations, or waving magic swords and staffs about. Trying to act like a regular D&D wizard in Shadowrun will get you some odd looks, because this is the 21st century and all that Tolkien shit isn't necessary; trying to act like a regular D&D wizard in Mage will have Paradox prison-fuck you like you insulted someone's mother and commented on the suppleness of your colon in the same breath.
Now I kind of want to play a Correspondence Mage who doesn't actually have any dots in Correspondence, just a shit ton of money, and is good enough at acting that when he tells other mages that money and his cell phone are his foci, they believe him.
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Re: [OSSR]Masters of the Art

Post by Mask_De_H »

Prak wrote:
Ancient History wrote:Let that one sink in for a minute, because it's a major theme of this book. The designers of Mage do not want you to walk around throwing fireballs, turning bankers into sheep, summoning hookers and dragons, muttering arcane incantations, or waving magic swords and staffs about. Trying to act like a regular D&D wizard in Shadowrun will get you some odd looks, because this is the 21st century and all that Tolkien shit isn't necessary; trying to act like a regular D&D wizard in Mage will have Paradox prison-fuck you like you insulted someone's mother and commented on the suppleness of your colon in the same breath.
Now I kind of want to play a Correspondence Mage who doesn't actually have any dots in Correspondence, just a shit ton of money, and is good enough at acting that when he tells other mages that money and his cell phone are his foci, they believe him.
So a Syndicate character? :tongue:

I was thinking about what Frank and AH were saying about multiple paradigms, and wondering how it would work. Would it be like Longes said DA:M works, where you have a couple of tags that justify the magic shit you do within a specific framework? Would it be more like Asymmetric Threat, where there are specific groupings tied to the skill list, and your paradigm determined which skills you used or bonus powers you got? Or would it be like RISUS, where you bullshit your way into doing things with tags that comprise the actions you can do, period?
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Post by Ancient History »

If you wanted to do it properly, you need to establish both the common framework for the different traditions, as well as their hard limits. For example, let's look at Shadowrun's two classic traditions, Shaman and Hermetic.

They use the same skills (Sorcery, Enchanting, Conjuring, Astral Perception when that's a skill, etc.), and can accomplish many of the same feats (astral projection, spellcasting, make foci, summon and dismiss spirits). So all the mechanics for that are largely the same. Where they largely differ is that shamans have totems (mentor spirits in later editions), and they summon different spirits, and they can create some different enchanted items. On the fundamental level, several of the tools that the traditions use (Hermetic library vs. shamanic lodge; lodge vs. magic circle) are also different, and there are some fiddly bits (totem adept vs. elementalist), but by and large, the two groups are mechanically equivalent, and use most of the same rules, but there are differences in the details which present real options in play. So they give the flavor of two different traditions, but mechanically they're almost identical.

Then you have physical adepts (later just adepts). They don't interact with Hermetic and shamanic traditions in the same way. While they still depend on a Magic rating, they use that rating to buy set powers which are expressed in a point cost. They don't use the regular magical skills and they don't have "standard" magician abilities like casting spells or summoning spirits; neither can Hermetic or shamanic magicians buy adept powers. So while there's still a mechanical baseline (adepts and magicians are both Awakened characters, use the Magic attribute and initiation, and interact with the same underlying metaphysics as far as the astral plane et al.), this is closer to an actual discrete tradition from the other two.

Now, later on, physical adepts got additional options - physical magicians, the Magical Power adept power that let them buy up Magical skills, Limited Astral Projection metamagic, etc. - and this is an added complication to the character options, but one that works as an exploration of the interaction of the adept tradition with the magician tradition(s).

So that's one way to handle it. Another way to handle it is something like D&D 3.0 style theurgists - where you have distinct class-based sets of magical effects (sometimes based on different attributes). This is similar to the Mage/Shaman split in Shadowrun, except you have an overarching Arcane/Divine split which is then further subdivided into Sorcerer/Wizard/Bard and Cleric/Paladin/Ranger etc. (or even going to Monk and Barbarian if you count ki and rage as magical effect subsystems). Gish/theurgist classes work by crossing over two different "traditions" - in the simplest case, it lets you advance in both, in more complicated cases, you've got multiple powersets that can overlap and interact with each other.

For example: You can have a character that "dips" in multiple little "traditions," some of which support each other, and some of which don't. You can be a Soulknife/Sorcerer that throws fire on your Mindblade, and you can be a Soulknife/Sorcerer with feats that put Essentia into that Mindblade, etc. Many of these "traditions" are distinct, if often underdeveloped, subsystems; and from a minmax standpoint they might not be the best idea to "dip" into many of them, because you have finite slots/character options per level - but if you want to be a Psionic Monk/Soulknife/Paladin with Essentia feats, Ki feats, Subpsionics, and Divine feats, you can totally do that. The interactions are fun, even if the pool of effects for any given system is limited.

And if these various systems were integrated into the setting from the beginning, there's an interesting nuance that can happen with different places having knowledge of different systems and how they interact. Having Soulmeld-users and Psionics-users in the same setting is interesting, but it gets more interesting when you have discrete rules for how those systems interact - like Essentia feats the give psi points, or psi powers that disband soulmelds, stuff like that.

Now, D&D 3.x never fully developed this to any degree; it preferred to push out half-developed systems and then maybe toss out some web supplement with a couple interaction powers and a half-assed prestige class. It was the edition(s) of rulesbloat, and they pumped out so much material that it was impossible to balance it all and impossible to work out a unified setting, much less trace all the interactions and potential interactions.

...and that brings us to GURPS, which does the same thing but was a little less formulaic about it. GURPS has a lot of different magic systems, because it has a lot of different settings. And those magic systems all run on GURPS, but they work a little differently - sometimes a lot differently. Path magic and spell magic and psi powers are all distinct subsystems/traditions; GURPS doesn't really push interactions that much, but they don't forbid them either. GURPS is probably the best exemplar of "there's a lot of ways to throw a fireball," and any and all of them might be valid according to the person throwing the fireball.
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Post by DrPraetor »

The various BRP system games (Runequest and it's derivatives) had this is in spades - and I should finish my Stormbringer review. Most of these systems interacted with the godawful underlying mechanics, although Call of Cthulhu less so.

In all of these systems, you had magic points, which you both spent, and tested against; you had a 50% chance of making your save, -5% per spell point below your opponent.

Runequest had shamanic magic - shamanic magic was learned from spirits (I think you had to beat them up on SP vs SP to make them teach you the spells), had force ratings (total ratings couldn't exceed your Int) and cost SP to use equal to the force rating of the spell, but it always worked and didn't otherwise interact with the awful BRP system. So the spell baldesharp cast at rating X added +X to your damage.

Runequest had divine magic - which cost POW attribute (maximum magic points) to learn, and went away when you cast it, unless you were a Priest in which case it became Vancian and you could pray for re-use. Non-Priests did not use this kind of magic in play.

Finally, Runequest had Sorcery. Sorcery was like Spirit magic except you:
[*] Learned it from books.
[*] Could cast it at whatever rating you wanted, but...
[*] Had a % score in each spell you had to pass, as well as some skill rolls to make as well if you wanted to do various things (including, I think, cast at force > 1? Again, I can't be bothered to look this up.)

So Runequest had multiple, truly distinct magic systems, which was good, but it was also a garbage fire, which was bad.

Call of Cthulhu spells had neither %s nor ratings but mostly cost you SAN, which the time limit on retiring your character, so people cast them seldom except as plot points. This more or less worked with the source material so people are surprisingly happy with it.

Stormbringer had % ratings to summon things which you then had to beat at MP vs MP to bind. I should finish my review, but this would work as a 5th tradition in BRP.

-----

I think where all of this breaks down is when on tradition wants to be will-workers, who alter reality itself with their will. Will-workers can do other things with their will but it's very difficult to make line-editing the setting work-well as a mechanic on it's own, let alone having it play nice with someone who does alchemy or summons demons or whatever the hell they do.
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Post by Ancient History »

BRP had more magic systems than that, but they generally weren't expected to interact.
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