Quote from: TJS on August 02, 2021, 11:40:41 PM
I think the point is taken - not knowing how something works doesn't make it magic.  Nor does it really make something feel like magic.

Feels like magic seems like such a millennial conceit.

Maybe this type of magic would work better in a story game which does not use mechanics, just the player or gm describing the cool things that their magic does.

Quote from: Shasarak on August 03, 2021, 12:08:05 AM

Quote from: TJS on August 02, 2021, 11:40:41 PM
I think the point is taken - not knowing how something works doesn't make it magic.  Nor does it really make something feel like magic.

Feels like magic seems like such a millennial conceit.

Oh how boring!

I'm not sure why this topic is confusing to anyone.

"Magic" as a phenomenon is precisely just that: a phenomenon. In secondary worlds (and I suppose in reality if you believe in it) that phenomenon is whatever that exists outside of what is explainable relative to the capacity of the witness to it.

The capacity to explain it, and more to the point - to harness it and use it with predictable results - is the "methodology" where cultures will interact with those phenomenon.

The rules of the "what" and the "how" is precisely up to the designer to emphasize in gameplay (or in reality - one would assume its based on the efficacy of the effect you're trying to pull... or at least convince people of the effect).

If the phenomenon of magic exists - and it can be perceived, manipulated, and expanded upon, then the method could be literally anything that the game requires to be meaningful in play. It could be Witchdoctors that have learned they can talk to spirits after imbibing certain herbs via specific methods that allow them to coax the spirits to produce effects in the real world. It could be that their perceptions of their own practices are colored only by their cognitive biases about how the world works, and it might be something else. But for the purposes of their culture, it need never go further.

Meanwhile a magician that practices a more Hermetic and systemic approach, might take those same herbs and tidbit of a method, and process the experience that it opens their mind to the ephemera of a parallel reality where the forces the Witchdoctor perceives as "spirits" are non-sentient coalescent energies that a psychically active, and it's the intent of the Witchdoctor that moves those energies into action, whose byproducts produce those effects. The Hermetic magician might identify those energies as byproducts of higher-powers (beings) that are ambient in this parallel dimension, and they know their Divine Formulae that can harness that energy to produce similar, or more refined effects?

Take it to the next level. A rogue scientist produces a helmet that produces via some standard process used in a non-standard way - electromagnets that force the brain to go into a state where the psychoactive nature of these energies becomes available to him via his Mad Science. There might be *specifics* denied to each and any of these other three methods, but the underlying phenomenon remains the same.

The KEY here is what is the nested higher-truth . It *MAY* not matter. Just like savages living in the jungle don't give a flying shit about Cryptocurrency prices, they do care about whether their ailing cousin has bad spirits around around him for doing some dastardly shit. And thus he uses his methodology to interact with these spirits to give his fuck-up cousin some good luck. The Hermetic Mage might believe these energies come from higher/lower beings and through the use of their more systemic approach of Divine Mathematics and force of will, focus those energies to/away from the bad cousin with possibly other options because of their mere belief/understanding of the larger picture (which MAY not be true), but because they believe it that much more, it may open up other possibilities the Witchdoctor may not even *care* to know because other concerns (taboos, etc. that could have developed as a cultural artifact in their practices). The Scientist with a Psychohelmet may not believe in *any* of the spiritual side of the phenomenon, and simply treat it as a brute-force wholesale manipulation of "strange energies" that create distortions in probability fields with increasing/decreasing predictable results.

The largest point being that you as a designer might know that ALL of these things are true. Because "REALITY" is Objective only to Lesser Entities. The implication being that Greater Entities literally define "REALITY", *Subjectively*. The nested truth about Magic becomes that Gods are so powerful their subjectivity is our OBJECTIVE reality. This means everyone gets a piece of it wrong. Their methodologies - be it shamanism, animism, Hermetic Magic, Ancestor Worship, Weird Science - are all flawed. But they work to the degree that you as the designer allow them.

This means your systems for the game should reflect that in play. Now this was just a simple example. The point being that if you understand the metaphysics of what "magic" is relative to whatever you want to say is "not magic", then it's a simple matter of defining the "hows" and "ways" people have access to it. Then you have to delineate the cultural repercussions of those dynamics both as a practitioner and how it impacts the world.

D&D has for a long time done a shitty job of this. Now it's worse than ever, mainly because as its presented there is little depth to it, and the assumptions are the system = the game. They don't care much for setting-depth at least as much as in older editions. I highly recommend people give the 1e Greybox Forgotten Realms a good read. It still is head and shoulders over most modern fantasy settings - even those doing the D&D fantasy schtick.

In terms of ruining "fantasy" - ehh... Very few authors were ever "great" at wheedling out the metaphysics of magic to my tastes. For gaming purposes "magic" needs to be fun and should be measured by the conceits of what the setting demands. Nothing more.

If you make a serious setting where Magic is a big deal, then your setting should reflect that along with the reality of what it means to wield that knowledge. And it has to be fun, cool and/or scary/awe inspiring if it's a big deal. I always thought Eberron made magic feel like a Wal-Mart sale *because* of the system mechanics. I never believed in the world they presented because the mechanics of 3.x D&D were atrocious for supporting those conceits.

Just my coppers.

Gygax based D&D on Modernist fantasy - Vance, Moorcock, Howard, Lovecraft et al - so I'd say 'scientific' 'inauthentic' magic is very Old School. 

Greg Stafford was about the first RPG author to get away from this trope with Runequest's more authentic-feeling approach.

Quote from: S'mon on August 03, 2021, 07:05:40 AMGreg Stafford was about the first RPG author to get away from this trope with Runequest's more authentic-feeling approach.

Greg Stafford also made his game world entirely unrealistic. It was a flat earth model, literally a lozenge-shaped landmass floating in an endless sea. Most fantasy campaigns are set on planets orbiting suns with their own moons. The same details you'd find in a sci-fi setting. By making the world not a realistic planet, it allowed Glorantha to feel more magical and strange (at least at first).

Quote from: tenbones on August 03, 2021, 01:48:21 AM
I'm not sure why this topic is confusing to anyone.

.....

Just my coppers.

Good post, and I agree for the most part. What I will add that is at this point there is not shortage of mechanics to realize how one view how magic ought to be. Random spell effect, mana fuels spells, spells are memorized, spells have no theoretical upper limit. Spell take a long time to cast. Spells are subtle in their effects. Spells are loud, noisy and spectaculars.

Lots of dials and lots of way to twist them. And lots of way to represent these ideas using the mechanics of a game.

The foundation in my mind is to visualize what you want and describe it as if you were there witnessing magic happen.

Then take that and decide how that influences how the inhabitants behave. Which will form the culture that surrounds the use and knowledge of magic. And that will give you what you need in order to roleplay what happens when your magic is involved.

Unlike combat which often have to grounded in something specific (life or a work/genre of fiction) magic can be completely made up. The main failure being if how you roleplay the NPCs and present the setting doesn't make sense given what you describe about magic. Note this is not the same as logical. Also it may vary between individuals and groups.

So that my silver penny (1d) worth.

From a practical perspective, I think that the mix of magic, role playing, and game mechanics has a lot of compromises.  In that context, the key to me is that if you want magic to seem as magical as it can within those limits, then it needs multiple factors underlying it--some of which will always be unknowable to the characters. 

This allows the characters to have somewhat reproducible magic based on the factors they do understand or partially understand.  Then there are other aspects that the players may get eventually (applying science, or more accurately logic) but are outside the purview of the characters.  Ideally, there are a handful of setting factors or twists to factors that the players are never told by the GM and are extremely difficult to discover from the limited interaction that the players have with the world.  Or barring that, some random rolls in the equation for how it sometimes doesn't work no matter how well you do it.

Even in Vancian magic, there is this division.  The Dying Earth is in a decline in multiple ways, with the wizards' reliable magic happening by following standard formulas that are a meager shell of what was in the far past.  It's almost a cargo cult, as the wizards have indulged themselves so much and squabbled so much that they've gotten lazy about learning the theories.  That is, in D&D it is not so much that spells are reliable that is the problem as it is that nearly all the magic is done with spells.

Brandon Sanderson has done a lot of thinking and writing on this topic that is worth reading.  Here's a link to the best-known essay on the topic:  https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/ 

I'll adopt his terms of "hard" (scientific) magic and "soft" (unscientific) magic for my comments.  I'll say first off that I enjoy both, though they provide different types of experiences.  Hard magic definitely  has a lot to recommend for it in an RPG.  To make sound tactical decisions in a game one needs to have rules to understand how abilities work, and rules ==> hard magic.  Soft magic has awe, wonder, mystery, and historical authenticity going for it, which are all good.  Soft magic is great in books but much harder to pull off in games.  I made a run at it my current game, where one of the several methods of magic is shamanism.  The ability to find, summon, and communicate with spirits is defined in the hard magic method, and spirits each have a lot of well defined abilities, which is also hard.  But the spirits are NPCs, and anything the shaman wants to do must be negotiated, which moves it to the softer side.  Yes, Grizzt the fires spirit is able to burn down that door for you, but you forgot to bring incense and he's irritated that you summoned him in a rainstorm and are wearing blue, so he might refuse entirely or he might demand a lot of mana to get the job done.  As you learn about the spirits you have access to, things get easier.

I think Sanderson Essay amounts to two things

1) Think about what you are doing with magic and be consistent with that idea.
2) Don't rely on Deus ex Machina. Which just good all around good advice.

His distinction on Hard and Soft magic reflect his personal bias. It also up, down, strange, charmed, because it about the subjective experience of what fun and interesting.

Fantasy Magic is made up. Have fun and don't sweat the details. Your enemy is tedium and boredom. Focus on what fun and interesting for you and your group.

Unless you are doing a historical or contemporary setting. In those cases you have references that you can use as a starting point.

What more useful are answer to questions like "If I want my system of magic to be X, what are my option both descriptively and for mechanics." For example one wants an unpredictable system of magic I recommend getting a copy of the DCC RPG. I would also look to how open ended die rolls are implemented in different system. Also come up with a list of what likely to work with magic, what somewhat likely, and was is down right rare but known to happen. Then see which system of open ended rolls work best that reflect the feel of unpredictability, you want to go for.

Or what can I do an existing well established system of magic like D&D magic that doesn't utterly break compatibility, forces you to rewrite every spell, or spins off into its own thing.

And so on.

Quote from: tenbones on August 03, 2021, 01:48:21 AM
I'm not sure why this topic is confusing to anyone.

If they were not confused before....

I like to use historical conceptions of magic as reference points since they just feel more magical compared to modern magic systems that people just made up to seem cool rather than because they believed it to be real.

That is, I take inspiration from people who believe(d) magic was real as opposed to those who knowingly wrote fiction.

Alchemy, for example, is just as much spirituality and philosophy as it is proto-chemistry. The goal of alchemy isn't just to purify lead into gold, but to purify the soul.

This is difficult to make exciting in modern, which is why fantasy writers treat magic as superpowers.

Quote from: jhkim on August 02, 2021, 07:07:17 PM
Hi, SonTodoGato. I wrote an old essay on this a while ago that digs into a bunch of points. It's here.

https://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/magic/antiscience.html

There's a huge difference between historical magic like soothsaying and spirit quests; and the flashy spells of 20th century fantasy fiction. Either can work fine in a game, but they're mutually exclusive. I've had some fun games with historical-like magic, but I've also had many fun games emulating modern fantasy fiction.

I loved your article. Nice to know the person who wrote it. I agree with many points of it, and think people would learn a lot from it

My point of view is; some mysteries are better left unsolved. And that includes the master as well. Don't bother finding a rationale or a system that's fair; magic may follow a series of patters or rules, yes, but allow an occasional exception if you feel like. How do genies fulfill wishes? Who knows. How do lucky charms give you good fortune? They just do. Don't bother explaining it to your players, they don't care. And don't bother explaining it to yourself; you don't need to. Let their imaginations fill the gaps and draw the lines.

Also: Why can't you just have both? A wizard can read the runes but also cast a fireball, levitate or hurl lightning bolts around. Why not? Just different types of spells. If you keep it rare and mysterious, I don't see how that would break immersion.

Quote from: Shasarak on August 03, 2021, 05:14:17 PM

Quote from: tenbones on August 03, 2021, 01:48:21 AM
I'm not sure why this topic is confusing to anyone.

If they were not confused before....

There's a reason everyone doesn't run around casting spells.

My own system's arcane magic falls very much under the "sufficiently advanced technology" paradigm.

There is "something" called the Arcane Web that permeates the world and arcane magic is produced from it (i.e. the energy/matter comes from the Web) by a combination of what is basically a programming language (called Arcanos) and specially created inputs (called implements). Wizard spell books are similarly written using special materials that link them to the Arcane Web and each spell having a "password" that, if used, will cast the spell in the book (regardless of where the book itself is located in the world) with the wizard only needing to supply certain variables (ex. Vector, distance and intensity for a fireball spell) to complete it.

Gadgeteering builds specific formulas into specific devices so it's more press button and aim, but the fundamental process of triggering an action from the Arcane Web is otherwise the same.

Arcane in this case means "poorly understood" as the Arcane Web has existed in the world for thousands of years and through the utter collapse of at least three near-global empires and subsequent dark ages during that time (including the current dark age of the main setting).

There's also Astral magic where an individual makes a pact with an astral entity (typically a god) after which the entity (or one of its servitors) will perform the supernatural effect stipulated in the pact.

Then you have Primal magic, which seems to granted to individuals at random (except in hindsight when it is clear that only someone with their gifts in the place happened to be could have acted to bring about a good end) and provides each one specific supernatural gifts (more akin to powers than spells) they end up needing to accomplish some good end.

The last two types of magic in my setting are Diabolism and Necromancy; both of which are essentially possession by a supernatural entity (initially being able to tap into the entity's power but ultimately becoming just a vessel for the entity... which is why those two paths are NPC-only by default).

Five pages of this and nobody used this meme?!