I'm considering buying Lion & Dragon to do some Game of Thrones-style RPGing.  I do not want much magic, if any, in my game.  What does the description on the product itself mean here? "Completely revamped magic system is based on actual grimoire-magic as the medieval magicians really envisioned it."

I do not want REAL spells and such in my product.  I don't need/want occult witchcraft-esque stuff in my house.

Can this game do a politically driven brutal setting similar to A Song of Ice & Fire justice?

Haven't played Lion and Dragon, but I do have the book. It has both cleric and wizard (called "magister" in this game), as well as "Cymri" (kind of a bard/spellsword) as classes. The cleric magic is pretty typical for D&D (bless, heal, turn undead etc.) There's just a lot less of it. The wizard magic is heavily based on demonology, so instead of casting spells yourself, it looks like you have to summon a demon and make it cast them for you. They can make magic items and do alchemy as well.

Kind of two questions there:

If you're asking about whether the magic in the book includes real-world occultism a la Aleister Crowley, then the answer is pretty much no.  The spell section isn't full of ritual instructions or magical formulae or anything like that. There's a few occult signs in the illustrations, but I read it that the real-world occult stuff is more for flavor than anything else. It's a bit hard to phrase what I'm trying to say here, but my read of the book is "this is stuff medieval people believed you could do", not "this is real magic and here's how to do it".

As far as can it run a political intrigue game? It probably could, but it wouldn't be my choice. You could cut the magic out, but you'd be invalidating half the classes. It also doesn't have much of a skill system. For my money, if you're doing a low-magic, low-combat game, you absolutely need a skill system. Otherwise, your characters aren't going to be differentiating themselves by anything other than their attribute scores.

I know there's an official Song of Ice and Fire RPG out there, but I don't know anything about it. Based on what you're describing, my approach would be to strip the magic out of something like WFRP, Warlock! or Cthulhu Dark Ages. Those are already games that assume that a large majority of PCs will not be magic users, so their character building systems don't rely on it.

Lion and Dragon clerics have abilities of Blessing (stat buffs, purify food, make holy water), Divine Inspiration (area effect skill boost buff), Holy Light (you radiate sunlight), Holy Weapon (stat buff to gear), Lay Hands (instant healing), Sanctuary (create a zone of non-violence), Turn Undead, Divine Intervention (complex way to bend the laws of physics, but cost is a mission from your god is added to the story). 

Wizards are about summoning demons who can do oddly specific things for the wizard like calming sea storms or making a court legal jury rule a given way.  Their other powers are also odd ball rituals with highly unusual components like copper plates made of seven pieces filled with salt and water, poured onto an infected wound to cure the infection.  There are too many to list here, but just know it's more like a crackpot's cookbook of stuff instead of magic phrases and inner strength that shoot power and light from your hand.  The difference is this crackpot stuff works. 

Wizards can also create magic wands and talismans.  Things like water breathing talisman, communicate with the recently deceased (3 questions max).  Potion making like draught of courage or cake of friendship

True Alchemy like creating Greek Fire or using a severed head to create a talking Brazen Head that's like a magic 8-ball you can ask simple questions (this one is very illegal/unethical).

Quote from: Batjon on November 21, 2022, 05:34:31 AMI do not want REAL spells and such in my product.  I don't need/want occult witchcraft-esque stuff in my house.

Can this game do a politically driven brutal setting similar to A Song of Ice & Fire justice?

I would say so. If you don't want to use the magic system presented in the book, it can be completely ignored without impacting the rest of the game.

For what it's worth, the book itself makes absolutely no description of how to conduct the rituals which draw upon the entities in question, and the names themselves do not, I think, present any particular spiritual danger; even if they were drawn from authentic mediaeval grimoires, I sincerely doubt the authors of those grimoires had any more accurate insight into the demonic than anyone today. People made stuff up to sound authoritative in the 1500s too. I understand not wanting to play a magic system based on conjuring spirits, but I don't think simply having it in a book in the house is anything you need to worry about.