House Rules for Magic Logic

by Sergio Bruno Fedi de Oro

Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 20:15:07 -0500 From: Sergio Bruno Fedi de Oro To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: [MAGIC] Magic Logic

Here is the Magic Logic for those who were interested: (It is very, very, very long, so you were warned)

First of all I assume these things:

The game world is like our real world, so normal physics still apply. Spirits REALLY exists, but their influence in our world is extremely limited (but they HAVE influence, see below).

Note: I don't believe in spirits, it's just their existence could explain many things.

There exists a "paralel world", another plane if you want, in which resides a strange substance. It may be inhabited by another kind of spirits, or just our "real" world spirits, whatever you want. This strange "matter" or energy or whatever is called Mana. This substance has the capability of letting spirits modify our world, it allows them to influence us (or just the matter) physically, really. Mana is affected by gravity (see below in the campaign notes). I haven't decided yet, how is it affected (if affected at all) by electromagnetism and the strong and weak subatomic forces. Spirits are still ethereal, although they may use Mana to create some kind of body (of light, of wind, etc.) so they can be perceived or just to exert another kind of influence. This substance is supposed to exist in our real world, although it quantities are extremely low. A special note: spirits, by the use of Mana could only modify processes of up to atomic kind, (i.e. they can't influence sub-atomic particles/phenomenoms), it is still extremely difficult to influence atomic phenomena though.

This is when it comes into play the classical Third World Wide War, a great amount of energy in some kind of form: atomic bombs, antimatter, or something else, or the combination of these, created a rift between the two planes and so Mana started to spread over our world (it is invisible to our sight, it maybe visible to some kind of instruments if you want), it merged with the matter of our world, allowing spirits to alter/modify/influence matter in that state.

Note: the basic idea here is to allow a process that can only be produced by a high-tech civilization to make possible this rift between the planes, I'll explain later why this is better (it allows more balance, and make reasonable/more believable/possible the existence of a tech based civilization, a magic based one and a mixed one) Once this have happened, your civilization could have survived entirely, partially, or could have "resurrected", that's up to your campaign.

The effects of this merging are the following: (Note that almost ANY rationale behind a world could be explained via this model, if you don't see how, please, send me a mail and i'll show you, I'd tried with many different worlds just to convince myself if it worked and it did very well!! I couldn't believe it!!.)

Spirits of many kind begin to "form" (i.e. materialize, exert influence, etc.), WHAT spirits are formed depends on your imagination, your campaign and the level of complexity you want to have in your world. Remember that these spirits existed, they just didn't affected us noticeably. If you want you can introduce spirits that didn't existed explaining that they came from the Mana plane (those could be the Demons, or they could be the twisted souls (spirits) of mortal men, or both or whatever). Thus it could form the spirit of the elements, of the God(s) of the world, of the trees, of our fantasies, of our nightmares, of the sleep (which would be used in the spells Sleep), of Christmas, etc, etc, etc. The list could be endless.

Another thing: now, that there exists spirits, the mutations of the world could arise in number, because the spirit of the being "wanted" to mutate, that could explain not only the many different races/creatures that exist in a typical fantasy world but some of some mutations made nowdays that seem to happen because of a change in their environment!!

Humans have a spirit, called soul, this is how spell users modify their surroundings (i.e. make magic), thus this could be the rationale behind the different realms:

Channeling: a greater spirit, which is in good terms with the human one gives some of it power, or do it himself, or enhance the human one, to change the surroundings. This kind of magic would be very "purpose oriented" so spell lists should be "thematic". In this way you could explain, for example, Life Mastery, that have spells dealing with the body and the soul, which are apparently non mixable. The reason is that they intend to do the same, to preserve (at lower levels) and to give life. Of course, some list could be nearly impossible to explain this way, but there are few of them, so they could be changed and make the realm more consistent with the theory behind it.

Essence: Our spirit inluence ANOTHER SPIRIT, for example the fire spirit, the "sleep" spirit, etc. In this influence, our spirit forces the other to do things we want him to. Thus as you raise in levels, you are able to dominate more powerful spirits. The reason that this realm is so powerful could be that, though you may control another spirits, these spirits are less "inteligent" they can be easily dominated by a dexterous mage, having EMPATHY with the spirit, knowing what they want and "convincing", duping, seduce, compelling it, could make his own will extended (i.e. do what he want).

Mentalism: Our spirit directly modifies the surroundings, it exerts control over matter directly, it can also affect other spirits, although the mentalism user specializes in controling matter and "smarter" spirits, things that are quite difficult, that's why this realm have less power.

>From these two last explanations there seems to be a contradiction: An essence user "specializes" in spirit-controlling, and a mentalism specializes in matter-controlling.

But that could be explained with the hypotesis of "less smarter" spirits. Maybe essence users have found a better way to change their surroundings, indirectly, (i.e. make another one change it). But the mentalism-way could be a more natural way of thinking, "I want to change that, so I do it", it depends on the phylosophy of the magic-user.

Note: This is just one of the weak points of this "theory". Besides, it's a very cool thing to think that essence and mentalism work, in fact, in an opposite way than "we" have thought of, that sort of things happened to our science in the real world (i.e. things that are anti-intuitive).

Something about illusions: Illusionists modify their surroundings really. For example, when they create the visual illusion of a thing, they "recall" part of that thing, the part that makes it look just like it is. That way you could explain how an Illusionist is "conscious" of EVERY aspect of the image been created. The illusion-art skill someone mentioned could still be useful, it would be used to summon "more completely" a "visual" spirit.

How the spirits work:

A spirit could be anything that you could imagine to have some kind of feeling(s), being, etc. There exists a spirit phenomena, the "spirit junction", this "Law" states that several spirits may join and make a more powerful spirit, a qualitative jump. From this new spirit could "spring" anothers.

Example: Humans are made by several spirits (it is a higher being, a high conscious one), the spirit of love, hate, eagerness, lazyness, envy, honor, admiration, joy, sadness, etc. (Dwarves could have also the spirit of earth :-) But from this spirit, there could have "sprung" others: the spirit of a hand, from a finger, etc.

These greater spirits could be made by parts of other spirits, thus are the spirits of the gods (if they aren't themselves spirits), or the spirit of the planet, the union of bits of the spirits of the biengs that inhabit that planet (a higher level planet is one that have more beings :-)

When a spirit "combats"/controls another, he (he?) can "specialize" in what that spirit is affecting (see campaign notes)

Another thing, spirits DO have volume, the different spirits have different sizes, from here we follow to the final topic:

How magic works (have anyone readed/reached this far, sane?):

We have the following:

     
   - Spirits can modify matter/energy through the Mana.
   - Spirits have different sizes thus the amount of Mana they can affect.
   - There is a "Mana concentration" given a location.
     So the more Mana that is present AND the more powerful the spirit is, 
     the greater the effects will be.
     But there's something else: spirits must be "conscious" on what they
     are affecting, spirits must "see", (e.g. have similar sizes) thus, to
     affect a spirit of much lesser size will be much more difficult, and
     to control a greater spirit will be harder because it is more powerful.
     That's why it's so difficult to affect an atomic process.
     That way we could also explain those areas that are "rich" in Magic, 
     they are rich in Mana (maybe there's a rift near/there, or they are
     simply "clouds" of Mana)

Some weak points/questions I couldn't fill/answer yet:

     Were are spirits from/made?
     Can Spirits be created? Maybe by other more powerful spirits?
     Why does metal/organic material inhibit magic?
     How do you create a rift? 
     How does the different planes work?
     How is affected the Mana by other phenomena?
     What are the side-effects (if any) on the matter "wet" with Mana?
     How does a spirit controls another?
     Etc, etc, etc, etc...

Well, any theory have it's weakness :-)

Campaign notes:

As Mana begun to spread over the world, strange things begun to happen, strange phenomena, some dead people raised (their spirits wanted to be here/complete a task, etc), some "wishes" became done/true. The shamans of the primitive tribes, the clerics, those who were more close to the feelings, begun to have more control over the world, i.e. their predictions were true more frecuently, they could heal people just like they said and so on.

That's how magic begun to surge, as a trial and error "science" or an art.

That was the Arcane realm, with more wide effect spells, but less powerful and more easy to use and learn to use. (as an option from Companion II, I think). This is quite against the rules, as we see, Arcane lists are much more powerful than the "common" ones. Well, this theory have more explaining power than the one that exists in RM (if there is one), so we could afford the sacrifice of those powerful Arcane lists.

(Besides it doesn't make much sense to have a more powerful realm, and the majority of spell users be from "lesser" realms, why not to specialize in the Arcane realm?; eventually the lists would become easier to use, just a comment with few arguments that could be used to erase the Arcane lists)

But we can still have those so precious lists (if you like them), as noted above, spirits can specialize on what they control and thus achieve more powerful effects, so an Arcane list would be, in fact, a "high-tech" list. With the especialization you could explain why is magic separated in different realms and professions (eventually this could lead to more specialized professions, to gain more power, but in a more restricted area), to achieve more powerful effects.

In my campaign there is a "magic evolution", such as science in our days, so mages are being more and more specialized as time goes by (something that could last centuries), and thus, there are different Eras, where the magic "tech-level" goes from some mages intuitively manipulating magical effects, to an every-day every-man usage of the magic.

I've also added that as time goes by, and the Mana permeates more of the world matter and the beings in it, it makes the body more resistant to physical damage, and that's why Demons tend to be Large and Super Large, because they are quite full of Mana.

I've made this things to explain why my world became, later, a world like the DragonQuest system shows, a RPG I used in my early days, were it is harder to kill someone, and the demons can cast even in contact with metal. Thus in a high magic level civilization you could have most of the people with super-heroes-like powers because of the high Mana concentration.

Notar que parte del aumento de poder experimentado por los seres fue dado por el hecho de que ya no necesitaban esp¡ritus guardianes que los protegiesen de la radiaci¢n residual de la guerra termonuclear. Sin embargo, estos esp¡ritus ya estaban linkeados a los seres y ten¡an que seguir cumpliendo su funci¢n protectora, cambiando as¡ el aspecto que proteg¡an. Empezaron a proteger otros aspectos, como ser la resistencia contra la magia, la resistencia al da¤o f¡sico, mental y contra otras adversidades.

I also added a "saturation" point, so there couldn't be NATURALLY high concentrations of Mana.

I also made that a planar rift could only be made by a high-tech process because a if a magic-civ. could, then they would eventually conquer all the world, I mean the Universe.

Thus I left the chance of a meeting between a high-tech civ. where the magic interacts consistently.

And you have these consecuences that make playable a high-tech and magic mixed campaign:

   - Magic is bounded to the planet   (although in that same world, you can
     travel along the Mana Plane, a feat with the same difficulties as our
     space travel (a deadly environment, etc.) to other places of the 
     Universe where there are another rifts, so that would be the way that
     the Magic civ. expands in first place!)   so you can't reach space
     easily, and remember that there isn't Mana in outer space, so you can't
     use spells there.
   - A planet could get a RR versus an attack that wanted to destroy it, or
     it could even defend itself!
   - A magic civ. could be conquered in a planet, but it could still make
     "command" attacks by "appearing"/gating into the planet thanks to the
     Mana that is still there.
   - I could even imagine a mixed civ.(tech-magic) that would have incredible
     "Mana cannons" that would be used to "wet" a planet or a space sector
     so to spread further, or simply travel there and cause a rift.

There are many ideas that could spring from this theory, and there are many effects that I didn't explained because this mail could have got larger ( Largeeerrr!?!?!?!?!? )

If you have any comments/doubts mail me.

If you found another weak point in the theory let me know, also if you have found the solution for other pre-existent. :-)

If you want to explain things with this theory but you don't know how, mail me, I've been working on it for a very long time, perhaps I could help you.

Thanks for reading it. And sorry for the unreadability.

My e-mail address:

sfedi@dc.uba.ar

PD: (NO!!! Not again!!!)
With this theory you could also explain those things that happen in your worlds at your own volition and you could explain why you have those super-natural skills (Adr.Moves) or effects when you have a very high roll.


Back to the House of Rules.