Magic: important to your enjoyment of rpgs ?

silva · Post by **silva** » Thu Jul 09, 2015 8:03 pm

Do you prefer your games with or without magic and why ?

I ask this because me and my group are not big fans of magic. We tolerate it in Shadowrun just because of the sci-fi elements the game presents, and we definitely don't like it in most straight fantasy wizards with long hats games. We always preferred our games gritty, and magic always felt a "kind of silly" thing for us.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Thu Jul 09, 2015 8:09 pm

Magic is as important as you want it to be.

I have no preference either way about the inclusion of magic.

EDIT: The presence or lack of magic has nothing to do with grittiness

Night Goat · Post by **Night Goat** » Thu Jul 09, 2015 8:10 pm

In books I like for magic to be rare and mysterious, but in games I think the more magic, the better. This is because magic opens up a lot of tactical possibilities that are more fun than hitting something with a sword every round.

Sakuya Izayoi · Post by **Sakuya Izayoi** » Thu Jul 09, 2015 9:07 pm

I love wizard hats and cool rituals and fancy-looking gibberish alchemical formulas and master sparks. Not even because I think the fluff behind it is oh-so-deep or whatever. It's just a cultural icon at this point that I have wholly embraced. Plus, when magic is established as a thing, you can have interesting characters defined by NOT doing it, like Rincewind and Conan.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Thu Jul 09, 2015 9:55 pm

First off, nobody gives a shit what you think, silva.

Second, the use of magic is determined by the kind of game you're playing. A lot of RPGs are genre fiction influenced or based, so there's a non-zero chance there will be magic by some name or another in it. If it's flavorful or workable, it works.

AcidBlades · Post by **AcidBlades** » Thu Jul 09, 2015 10:35 pm

I don't know why blood-rituals isn't gritty enough for you Silva. You really are an ungrateful bastard y'know? Not appreciating magic n' stuff.

Orca · Post by **Orca** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 3:12 am

Magic of some kind eases thru the questions like "why are four guys doing this and not twenty or a hundred?", "how do we get past these guys without killing them?" or "how do we fix these injuries without spending 6 months in rehab?". Sufficiently high tech can definitely be magic for these purposes.

I think magic's a net positive in most games, and the sort of grittiness which takes a player out of the game indefinitely is a definite negative in my book.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 10:13 pm

Being explicitly and unambiguously capable of doing cool and significant things is important. Frequently, the only way game designers can make that happen is "magic".

crasskris · Post by **crasskris** » Sat Jul 11, 2015 12:32 am

Define magic.

From summoning the elder ones to barter for favours, to shaping fire in any form you can tea-party with your MC, to activating a stored spell with more or less set effects, every interpretation of the term is possible, and each one serves several mechanical and narrative needs.

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Sat Jul 11, 2015 7:22 am

Methinks this is getting into some inevitable crisis, where Silva wishes to control the main flow of his games, while giving his players minor input on the variation. So, stuff like "magic" which can be less predictable or more dynamic in its capabilities ticks him off for it smashing his (even if well intention) railroaded DM fantasies.

I think its useful to point out, that almost any setting eventually starts resorting to "magic" at some point. Even Fallout has not-so/implied psychics among its midsts, doing big defining things with their capabilities. Torchbearer, LOTFP,WH40K, Deadlands, Gamma World, PARANOIA, and even GURPS (technically) all use Magic. So "grittiness" has very little to do with magic being silly, in fact it usually ADDS to your likely favorite games in question.

Regardless, pending the genre of the game, I would likely want "magic" of some kind. I don't like when Magic is an option side by side of other options, and is superior in both storytelling, and its rules (as they usually are in RPG's). If all the PC's have "Magic" or Phlebtonium, then fine, but I want my non-wizardy (aka Warrior type) characters to be valid members who contribute more than just Combat Numbers.

So Magic is good because it allows PC's to get away with cooler things, and also expands the number of characters people can play.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sat Jul 11, 2015 3:38 pm

Magic being... "silly" or "gritty" is merely an illusion. Even in D&D it's fairly gritty; with a "powerful wizard" only able to cast once per day before they have to run away, their great power in tactical combat coming at the cost of being useless except as crossbowyers.

Claiming that godlings (lvl 10+) are able to drop piles of spells multiple times per day is somehow "not gritty" is disingenous; that Thor-equivalent 'godling' can still run out, and is still totally killable with a sword. The notion also ignores the 50-90% mortality rate that level 1-5 adventurers have to deal with.

Shadowrun's magic isn't gritty because there are firearms involved; but rather because the use of magic has illogical restrictions (no cyborg parts), as well as "cost load" (even if not well balanced, the stress for casting system compares favorably to plain spell slots/points or randomly determining if you can cast a spell every time you try; in terms of feeling like a limited type of supernatural power).

Firearms can be just as silly (untracked/unlimited ammo; hollywood shootouts where plot armour is notable). Melee isn't far back either the stupid bullshit from the prequel SW films really lowered the bar for fight choreography in films (I'm ashamed to admit that The Princess Bride had more dangerous swordplay between Dread Pirate Roberts & Inigo Montoya than Phantom Menace did in its entirety).

What matters isn't necessarily the inclusion of magic in the engine at all; but rather how the magic will be fitted into the rest of the engine.

Personally, I see "magic" as the term that stupid players (or their superstitious characters) will use for scientific phenomena that they are ignorant of the details of. The methods and approaches that Frank is taking for "Doubt"; that is, the enacting of supernatural phenomena requires actions you barely believe should work; seems very much in line with the idea of "science we can't understand yet" to me.

silva · Post by **silva** » Sat Jul 11, 2015 3:53 pm

Aryxbez wrote:Methinks this is getting into some inevitable crisis, where Silva wishes to control the main flow of his games, while giving his players minor input on the variation. So, stuff like "magic" which can be less predictable or more dynamic in its capabilities ticks him off for it smashing his (even if well intention) railroaded DM fantasies.

Lol I spilled my drink.

And there is no such thing as "well intentioned railroads". Any railroad is ill-intended, and its GMs should seriously consider writing books instead of playing games. IMHO and all that.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun Jul 12, 2015 8:48 am

Multi-author fiction only works when the authors come to consensus about how their world works. There is no consensus about how the real world works, so the real world is not a good game setting. Magic is a better game mechanic than physics because people don't understand physics, but do understand magic.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 9:23 pm

Orion wrote:Multi-author fiction only works when the authors come to consensus about how their world works. There is no consensus about how the real world works, so the real world is not a good game setting. Magic is a better game mechanic than physics because people don't understand physics, but do understand magic.

Hear, hear!

Even in games that have no overt 'magic', it's next to impossible to represent real-world physics in game mechanics that are both practical and entertaining. So we use simple substitutes, which are more or less 'magical' in themselves, which is part of the reason why it's so easy to work nominal magic into the game.

I've had lots of fun with RPGs that had no magic, or science-fictional stuff, in them at all.

Smeelbo · Post by **Smeelbo** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 10:31 pm

Orion wrote:Multi-author fiction only works when the authors come to consensus about how their world works. There is no consensus about how the real world works, so the real world is not a good game setting. Magic is a better game mechanic than physics because people don't understand physics, but do understand magic.

I find that the exact opposite is true in practice. The more a setting is rooted in physics, the easier I find it to achieve consensus about what is and isn't possible or probable. In my experience, the only settings with a relatively easy consensus about what magic can and cannot do is Dungeons and Dragons and Shadowrun. The first because of four decades of experience, and the second because the designers actually thought about it in the first place, and set hard limits to avoid specific undesirable consequences.

When I invent a new science fiction setting, it is far easier to communicate with the players about the scope of technology, than a newly invented fantasy setting, and the scope of magic.

Magic only appears easier because of ignorance. Ignorance first about mathematics and physics (at least among less educated players), and ignorance in the second place, because most players are poor at reasoning, and ignore the logical consequences of their assertions.

Smeelbo Baggends

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 10:45 pm

Smeelbo wrote:Magic only appears easier because of ignorance. Ignorance first about mathematics and physics (at least among less educated players), and ignorance in the second place, because most players are poor at reasoning, and ignore the logical consequences of their assertions.

Well that stupid idea can fuck right the hell off.

Anyone with even a vague half remembered background in physics should be able to take pretty much any RPG rules set, spend less than five fucking minutes looking at the way it handles things like falling, missiles, and vehicle movement and flat out tell you "the world these rules describe has about zero to do with even the most basic real world physics".

Any person who thinks that they are "smarter" than others because they cannot suspend their disbelief when someone says "magic" but can suspend their disbelief when they play a game with "real world physics!" using an RPG rules set which is utterly divorced from that is a fucking IDIOT.

Smeelbo · Post by **Smeelbo** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 11:01 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:Well that stupid idea can fuck right the hell off.

Anyone with even a vague half remembered background in physics should be able to take pretty much any RPG rules set, spend less than five fucking minutes looking at the way it handles things like falling, missiles, and vehicle movement and flat out tell you "the world these rules describe has about zero to do with even the most basic real world physics".

Any person who thinks that they are "smarter" than others because they cannot suspend their disbelief when someone says "magic" but can suspend their disbelief when they play a game with "real world physics!" using an RPG rules set which is utterly divorced from that is a fucking IDIOT.

I'm[/u] not the fucking moron that conflates consequences of assumptions with suspension of disbelief. Of course no rules capture physics well, as your examples demonstrate, but at least I am not stupid enough to confuse the immediate consequences of following the game rules in a specific game situation with the consequence of that in the resulting game world. For example, any specific falling or vehicle rules will have weird consequences, which if followed ad absurdum would lead to totally different physics, and so different shapes for planets, different geology, building and vehicle designs. The rules are what we use now, to resolve this situation in front of us, not to determine how buildings should be built, or how flight is possible.

You're misapplying what the rules say. When they say that falling does 1d6 damage per 10' fallen, they only say how to resolve that specific situation as it comes up in play, not how the world behaves when we're not falling in-game.

Mistaking the rules of game play for the physics of the game world is a consequence of lazy and confused thinking.

Smeelbo

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 11:10 pm

At what scale does your wavefunction collapse? Do PCs fall differently from NPCs? Do PCs fall differently when the camera's on them than when they don't? Do PCs follow the rules of physics when falling, but then we pretend they're not actually dead?

When the rules say this dude can fall this far and have 0 chance of death from impacting the ground... that's a real thing. That's a part of the world. If that doesn't affect your barbarians' behavior, or your safety measures, or your architecture, at some point you're being incoherent.

And I'm fairly ok with that. My players don't look too closely at the relationship between tree height and fall damage, and that's fine.

But I'm not the one claiming to have a consensus based on a complete extrapolation of fundamental laws, oh, and also dice for some reason, apparently, and players telling me what their characters do as though they're some sort of supernatural entity puppeting a body rather than merely observing it go through its motions.

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 11:16 pm

What Smeelbo said. Rules exist to make gaming fun, not to serve as worlds physics.

Also, my preference for "realistic" gritty games is based purely on aesthetics. Just to make this clear.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 11:19 pm

silva wrote:What Smeelbo said.

Also, my preference for "realistic" gritty games is based purely on aesthetics. Just to make this clear.

Clear as mud.

Smeelbo · Post by **Smeelbo** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 12:45 am

But I'm not the one claiming to have a consensus based on a complete extrapolation of fundamental laws...

Neither am I.

What I am saying is that there is one world we all share, the real world, whose shape depends on the consequences of physics, regardless of the degree to which we understand those laws. So if five players sit down to play a game based on that real world, it is easier to arrive at some consistent consensus about what is and isn't plausible, because we have a shared experience of the same world.

In addition to that, we also have genre conventions, which also help set shared expectations.

To the extent that magic varies greatly from setting to setting, and is unmoored from a world we can all visit, it is harder to achieve consensus about what is and isn't possible or probable with magic.

I find in practice that I am able to sit down with six players I have never met before, enumerate some of the technology of a setting, and have a role playing session in that setting that reasonably meets reasonable expectations about what might happen, all in one session. Imagine instead that I am sitting down with six new players and introducing a new fantasy setting with magic. It is going to take a lot longer to communicate expectations about the imagined world, and there are going to be a lot more misunderstandings.

Dungeons and Dragons is one of the few settings with extensive shared expectations. But just look at the mess that is Ars Magica. How the heck is that stuff supposed to work?

At what scale does your wavefunction collapse? Do PCs fall differently from NPCs? Do PCs fall differently when the camera's on them than when they don't? Do PCs follow the rules of physics when falling, but then we pretend they're not actually dead?

You are conflating the rules of a game resolution mechanic for the physics of the constructed game world, not me. Your question shows that you do not understand what rules are used for when playing a role playing game.

Only a moron would claim that the rule structure of, for example, FATE as an action resolution mechanic determines how the game world behaves when in-game actions aren't being resolved.

A big problem with D&D is that magic replaces physics as the major shaper of the world, and D&D magic is largely a hodge podge, albeit one with a large shared history.

Smeelbo

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 3:48 am

I wrote this whole thing and don't know where it went and I'm disaatisfied with it so feel free to declare victory. Here it is in case you can pull something coherent out of it.

So your objection is that you and your players don't think of things in a result-oriented fashion? That you guys have a sufficient grasp of physics that it's easier to say "like the real world, but the planck constant is doubled" than "like the real world, but some people can make things glow at will"? Or are you claiming that it's just "like the real world, but with laser rifles", which has nothing to do with physics except that, since it explicitly ties into physics, being tech, which is an exploitation of physics, it slips in assumptions about physics that only make such things worse.

The reason that people find magic so useful for their counterfactuals is because it's pretty consistently results-based. You can be all "this thing glows" and that's sorta... it. Sure, that then allows you to do all sorts of rule-breaky things with physics because you get to choose which rules to follow at any given time but it's far more clear-cut than even a new technology much less new physics.

Re: rules, is your claim that I as a player don't get the agency of being able to act as though I know I can jump off a cliff with 0 chance of death? Or are you admitting that we all just pretend it makes sense and gloss over the inconsistencies - that we

Smeelbo wrote:ignore the logical consequences of [our] assertions.

I don't understand your fapping to "physics" without acknowledging that the mechanism that gives results is the rules that define the function of the world. Claiming that gravity works a certain way and has a certain value is making predictions about the results of dropping things and if you drop, e.g., yourself and take longer to fall than your claims predicted and don't end up as dead as your claims predicted, then... you're wrong about gravity. That's all there is. Barbarians the game world over aren't just walking around pretending to be alive and able to stab things. If the literal measurable observable effects aren't your "physics" then you need to just stop trying. Which means that yes, in FATE your chances of winning the big wrestling match are measurably affected by your gf troubles. That's literally how the world functions. We just have our characters happen to not notice that because it breaks genre, and we're metagaming. Are you really claiming that someone looking down a cliff, going "that's gonna hurt, but it won't kill me like the dudes chasing me will" and taking the jump is out of genre for D&D? That we should throw a much more directly observable connection in front of our characters and then ignore it because it's... good for the story to have people who can survive parachuteless skydives look down a 20' cliff and be all "better not, that looks indeterminately dangerous, guess I'd better fight the orc army."

I think somewhere in there my overall point is that even if the setting is lazy and says "like the real world but with laser rifles", everyone involved needs to know the actual rules of the system because those are what are going to inform effective in-play choices.

Unless you're claiming that PCs use the rules and everything else uses the fluff as interpreted by the GM with no critical examination, in which case at least you've told me where the wavefunction collapse is?

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 3:50 am

Yes Smeelbo actually is claiming that no one has differences of opinions on how the real world works or even on vague "genre conventions". But magic, wow, magic, it has no genre conventions and people cannot comprehend it.

They can however read Smeelbo's fucking mind about the insane things he is imagining are happening due to "real physics" in his "real physics worlds" that are NOT the same things happening right fucking in front of them due to the rules of the game they are actually playing.

And yes, he called people morons for thinking that a game world or character would behave in the way the rules of that game (YES, THE ONLY THING DESCRIBING THEM MEANINGFULLY) tells you they behave.

Instead they actually behave in the way Smeelbo thinks would be "realizmz". Because apparently, he has well nigh omniscient knowledge of how real physics does and would work in every situation AND plays with groups that have either mind reading powers or near total consensus on that well nigh omniscient knowledge.

And all that works totally fine until anyone EVER applies a fucking game rule, disagrees on a genre convention or corrects him on his almost certainly terrible physics knowledge, but that's apparently just someone elses' stupid "conflation" problem. Smeelbo exists in a different, better, dimension of existence to the rest of us.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 4:07 am

momothefiddler wrote:I'm disaatisfied with ...

Let me just contextualise the issues Smeelbo's insanity has.

Realizmz Physicz World
Player 1 : My character jumps the 50m chasm in a mighty leap.
Smeelbo : Fuck nohe doesn't that's not realizmz possible.
Player 1 : But I invested in game rule type abilities that specifically grant me the ability to jump that far and further and...
Smeelbo : Shut the fuck up are you some kind of MORON who thinks the game world follows the rules of the game instead of REALIZMZ rules? Fuck no. You can't jump the fucking 50m chasm. You fall in, then you fucking die because fuck the falling rules too. I know physixz and know they would result in your certain death at the bottom of this chasm I only just now pulled the realizmz depth of out of my realizmz ass, and thanks to your shared experience of the real world you should have fucking known all this AND you have no choice but to agree and accept it!

Magic World
Player 1 : My character jumps the 50m chasm in a mighty leap.
Smeelbo : Fuck no he doesn't that's not realizmz possible.
Player 1 : But I invested in game rule type abilities that specifically grant me the ability to jump that far and further and...
Smeelbo : Shut the fuck up are you some kind of MORON who thinks the game world follows the rules of the game instead of REALIZMZ rules?
Player 1 : Actually, magic exists. This may or may not be magic, and who knows how the mere existence of magic undermines your realizmz physix knowledge? There is no consensus! You have no choice but to... dun dun dun... FOLLOW THE RULES OF THE GAME!!!!
Smeelbo : NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! ANYTHING BUT THAT!!!!! MAGIC WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!!!!!

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 6:05 pm

silva wrote:Also, my preference for "realistic" gritty games is based purely on aesthetics. Just to make this clear.

Your favorite games are Shadowrun and Apocalypse World. Both of them are high-magic setting where spellcasters are the best characters.

The Gaming Den

Magic: important to your enjoyment of rpgs ?

Magic: important to your enjoyment of rpgs ?

The real world

Re: The real world

Re: The real world