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  1. - Top - End - #61
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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by veti View Post
    Lord of the Rings: Gandalf uses Pyrotechnics several times, he uses Knock (unsuccessfully) on the doors of Moria, and Hold Portal (equally futilely) inside it. In The Hobbit, he casts a Lightning Bolt at least once. However, no-one talks about "spells" as far as I can recall.
    In Gandalf's case, of course, it's unclear from the narrative how much of what he does is from his own intrinsic power, and how much comes from the fact he wears the Elven-ring Narya. The only other Istari we see in any detail is Saruman, and I don't think we ever see him use magic in the books (apart from the "blasting fire of Orthanc", which could easily be something like gunpowder).

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by veti View Post
    Lord of the Rings: Gandalf uses Pyrotechnics several times, he uses Knock (unsuccessfully) on the doors of Moria, and Hold Portal (equally futilely) inside it. In The Hobbit, he casts a Lightning Bolt at least once. However, no-one talks about "spells" as far as I can recall.
    I can recall a few:

    Quote Originally Posted by The Hobbit: An Unexpected Party
    The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
    While hammers fell like ringing bells....
    Quote Originally Posted by The Hobbit: Roast Mutton
    Then they... carried away the pots of gold, and buried them very secretly not far from the track by the river, putting a great many spells over them, just in case they ever had the chance to come back and recover them.
    The reader isn't given any details, though, so it's not clear what, if anything, is the difference between "spells" and the spontaneous sort of magic that Gandalf uses, other than that Dwarves apparently use the former but not the latter.

    As an aside:

    Quote Originally Posted by The Hobbit: Roast Mutton
    They... came on a big door of stone leading to a cave. But they could not open it, not though they all pushed while Gandalf tried various incantations.
    Gandalf is apparently really bad with doors.

  3. - Top - End - #63
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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Broken Crown View Post
    Gandalf is apparently really bad with doors.
    Not necessarily. If he didn't have problems with magically sealed doors there wouldn't be much point in the magic seals would there?
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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by TheThan View Post
    Well there four problems with extremely powerful, no cost magic:
    2. Why isn't everyone a scientist / IT engineer / rocket designer? Reasons are the same as for why not everyone is a wizard.

    3. Same regarding the scientist or engineers taking over the world. Because they spend time learning science / wizarding and not time spent taking over the world. The people who do spend time taking over the world (eg. Kings and politicians) end up taking over the world.

    4. It hasn't been invented yet or the requisite tools to do it haven't. Computers and gunpowder were always possible under the laws of physics and chemistry. Yet, we weren't twittering each other during the Stone Age.

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by jseah View Post
    3. Same regarding the scientist or engineers taking over the world. Because they spend time learning science / wizarding and not time spent taking over the world. The people who do spend time taking over the world (eg. Kings and politicians) end up taking over the world.
    Scientists and engineers are affected by certain logistical constraints, however. They have to buy tons of expensive equipment for comparatively little versatility to achieve the same effects as a wizard, who can annihilate a roomful people with nothing more than a pinch of bat poo.

    I don't think it's inaccurate to say that a wizard could make a good go of world domination, particularly when his studies makes him like unto a god.
    Last edited by Grinner; 2014-09-18 at 08:29 AM.

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Closet_Skeleton View Post
    Not necessarily. If he didn't have problems with magically sealed doors there wouldn't be much point in the magic seals would there?
    That sounds rather like saying, "If locksmiths could pick locks, there wouldn't be much point in having locks."

    I can imagine that in the case of "door magic", the advantage would lie with the maker of the door. Still, given that Gandalf has apparently gone to the trouble of learning many incantations for opening doors, he must have at least some expectation that they should occasionally work.

    Quote Originally Posted by grinner
    Scientists and engineers are affected by certain logistical constraints, however. They have to buy tons of expensive equipment for comparatively little versatility to achieve the same effects as a wizard, who can annihilate a roomful people with nothing more than a pinch of bat poo.

    I don't think it's inaccurate to say that a wizard could make a good go of world domination, particularly when his studies makes him like unto a god.
    It's not so much a question of ability as inclination, though. The scientists and engineers that I know are more interested in science and engineering than in ruling the world. I imagine that wizards would generally share the same mindset. Why would they want to be Emperor of the World, with all the responsibility and hassle that it entails, when all they really need is a well-appointed lab?

    (Also, it's not bat poo, but there are a lot of ways for a chemist to annihilate a roomful of people with stuff they can carry in their pockets. However, chemists who do this usually don't end up ruling anything.)

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by TheThan View Post
    If we take this into account, we end up with the Tippyverse. I don’t think many people want to play in Tippyverse.
    I feel Tippyverse is often unjustly vilified, because it's not actually that different from the default RPG setting outside the Cities. More to the point, settings akin to Tippyverse existed before Tippy came up with his version; it's not the concepts of Tippyverse that are novel, it's the details and the strictly rule-adherent design philosophy. Tippyverse isn't some bizarre antithesis to traditional fantasy, it's traditional fantasy with logical holes removed.

    To give an example: Finnish RPG Praedor. The world used to be one big megacity, ruled by wizards. There was no scarcity, people were immortal and travelling to other planes of existence was common place. Then reality folded on itself and only a tiny piece of land survived intact. Nearly all-powerfull Wizard Kings continued to reign in their great fortress cities, but one by one said cities fell to madness of their creators until only one remained.
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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Broken Crown View Post
    It's not so much a question of ability as inclination, though. The scientists and engineers that I know are more interested in science and engineering than in ruling the world. I imagine that wizards would generally share the same mindset. Why would they want to be Emperor of the World, with all the responsibility and hassle that it entails, when all they really need is a well-appointed lab?
    I think positions of power tend to attract people in search of power. Presently, science and technology aren't a direct path to power, and therefore they bear little interest to the ambitious. The ambitious tend to look more towards wealth and influence these days, but if it were a simple matter to reshape the world with a wave of the hands, I think they might reconsider their position.
    Last edited by Grinner; 2014-09-18 at 09:43 AM.

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    I guess it would depend, then, on the relative effort to reward of becoming a wizard, versus becoming someone who could keep a wizard on retainer.

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by TheThan View Post
    Well there four problems with extremely powerful, no cost magic:

    1: intra party balance, in a game, everyone should be able to contribute to the game and have fun. When the wizard is capable of solving every problem the party faces with no effort, other players can lose interest and get board. While I don’t think part balance has to be perfect, I don’t want to wizard taking over the game from the other players.
    You end up with a situation like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw

    2: why isn’t everyone a wizard?
    Seriously if magic is so easy, how come everyone hasn’t become a wizard? Why do we still have peasants toiling away in the fields when they could be learning how to cast create food and water?

    3: if something is keeping the masses from becoming wizards, then why haven’t the wizards taken control of the world? Seriously, why are there still a bunch kings and whatnot in power, shouldn’t wizards have taken control of the wolf?

    4: what happens to technological progress when magical items start flooding the world. Who needs a steam engine to move a heavy load when you can animate a golem to do the same work?

    If we take this into account, we end up with the Tippyverse. I don’t think many people want to play in Tippyverse.
    So they don't play in the Tippyverse. These are issues that very much fall into the 'Doctor Doctor, it hurts when I do this!' category. Like the good doctor, I think the sensible response is very often 'So don't do that.'

    I think fantasy of any sort is a matter of suspending one's disbelief. Sometimes, for certain sorts of fantasy, this requires suspending not just physical disbelief, but economic and social disbelief as well. There's nothing better or worse about this, it's just a different sort of fantasy which some people like and some people don't.

    Unfortunately a lot of nerd discourse over the last decade or so has advanced the strange position that a world in which Joe Bob can read a book and shoot fire out of his fingers is perfectly cool, but a world in which Joe Bob can read a book and shoot fire out of his fingers, but he hasn't used this ability to kickstart the industrial revolution is terrible, bad, and everything that is wrong with fantasy today. Usually this argument involves the phrase 'logically consistent' which in context makes about as much sense as going to a strip club then complaining that none of the dancers are wearing clothes. There's nothing more logically consistent about Joe Bob starting the industrial revolution than Joe Bob not starting the industrial revolution, because the entire premise is completely fallacious to begin with, and violating the laws of economics is, quite frankly, probably a lesser offense against reason than violating the laws of physics. The later can predict most relevant phenomena to a large number of decimal places, the former has trouble figuring out if the world economy is going to crash or not.

    If you don't like fantasy that requires the suspension of economic and social disbelief, read and play fantasy that doesn't require those things to be suspended. Requiring those things to be suspended however is only a problem in the sense that you, personally, don't like it. Which is fine, and a completely reasonable taste in fantasy to have. It's not everybody's though.
    Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
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    Down like a dog on the highway,
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    Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by warty goblin View Post
    If you don't like fantasy that requires the suspension of economic and social disbelief, read and play fantasy that doesn't require those things to be suspended. Requiring those things to be suspended however is only a problem in the sense that you, personally, don't like it. Which is fine, and a completely reasonable taste in fantasy to have. It's not everybody's though.
    My beef with suspension of disbelief is that it doesn't take much to explain it to lower the barrier. The Industrial Revolution was not easy. And even if you can shoot fire by waving your hands, it's still not going to be easy.

    Any prospective players seeking to start the Industrial Revolution need to remember that in the workshop pre-Magitech world, basic issues like "your 1 inch isn't the same as my 1 inch" crop up everywhere. And I don't think many magic systems will let you pop into existence a set of standard weights and length measures accurate to six demical places. After all, if a spell creates a weight of 1 kilogram, and your 1 kg isn't the same as his 1 kg, your and his spell won't work the same either! And no, you would be lucky to get a single decimal place accuracy out of human memory.

    You might not even be using a decimal system in which case you find a good clerk has an unacceptably high error rate of 1 in 100 for something as simple as basic multiplication, and calculus hasn't been invented. You might not even know how to calculate the area of a circle!

    Or that you, mighty wizard of fell knowledge, can't answer a simple question like "how much magic does it take to boil a pot of water" without first knowing how to measure the weight of the water, being able to measure temperature and being able to measure magic (this part is going to be the hard part). And only then will actually doing the experiment even begin to make sense. And does your wizard even know what heat even means? For all you know, physical sciences might still be at the Fire-Water-Earth-Air elemental stage and therefore your wizard doesn't even know that the question is important.

  12. - Top - End - #72
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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Broken Crown View Post
    That sounds rather like saying, "If locksmiths could pick locks, there wouldn't be much point in having locks."

    I can imagine that in the case of "door magic", the advantage would lie with the maker of the door. Still, given that Gandalf has apparently gone to the trouble of learning many incantations for opening doors, he must have at least some expectation that they should occasionally work.
    Imagine it more like a safecracker than a locksmith.

    Magical locks are proprietory and obscured designs which are at the very least unique to the school of magic of the person who created them if not down to the individual lock, so the person trying to undo the spell needs to try a lot of different potential approaches to cracking the lock based on whole different philosophies of lock design, it's not like a set of lockpicks working the tumblers of a lock, because that implies a common design of all locks (ie. has tumblers which can be moved by lockpicks).

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Not everyone can become a mage for the same reason not everyone can afford to spend all their time studying rather than working. If you can't eat by studying, 'farming or magic' isn't a choice. If you want to study you need patronage and if you receive patronage you generally have to work for someone else.

    Rulers have to actually spend some time ruling. They can't study magic if they're busy doing other stuff. Being king isn't just about being able to kill anyone who disagrees with you. Its not too hard to imagine that a mage might let other people deal with that stuff. They can be the powerful advisor and have all the practical power they want without being the head of state.

    Once you've learnt magic you can try and take over the world, but that happens all the time in fantasy. Usually some hero kills you first.

    Most settings that have a 'nobles can't be mages' rule have it as a law that's enforced, not just a coincidence. On the other hand there are plenty of fantasy novels that do have magic monarchies.

    Quote Originally Posted by Broken Crown View Post
    That sounds rather like saying, "If locksmiths could pick locks, there wouldn't be much point in having locks."
    The potential arms race between security and thievery would be a lot more extreme once magic is involved. Presumably a magic lock is more like a modern passcode locked door then a old fashioned mechanical lock.
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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Closet_Skeleton View Post
    Not everyone can become a mage for the same reason not everyone can afford to spend all their time studying rather than working. If you can't eat by studying, 'farming or magic' isn't a choice. If you want to study you need patronage and if you receive patronage you generally have to work for someone else.
    But Create Food and Water is a 1st-level spell!

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    It's usually pretty clear cut. Either:

    1. The mages use spesific spells or
    2. The workings of magic are unspesified and a mage can just do whatever is needed and can't do stuff that is not needed in the story.

    For example, Witcher books have plenty of magic and spells. I remember at one point (in the first book?) people got upset about something Geralt, the protagonist, did during his adventures and they started to throw stuff at him. What he did was to immediately set up a shield spell to deflect the impromptu projectiles. It's reasonable to expect Geralt's magic is limited to the magical Signs he knows.

    Many fairy tales and mythical stories opt for the latter option. Mages are there just for the sake of whimsy and/or mysterious...nes. There is simply no way to know what magic is capable of.

    When I think about, LotR is actually a hybrid of these models. I have a pretty good but rough idea about what the magic of people such as Gandalf, Saruman, Sauron, Galadriel, Elrond, etc. are capable of doing. It's not like it is (or ever could be) a detailed knowledge of what they can do but instead an instinctual insight... if that makes sense. The books itself hint to the limits and capabilities of the magic (or "magic") and you can connect some dots but it's not presented as exact science, like D&D-spells.
    Last edited by Raimun; 2014-09-18 at 12:37 PM.
    Signatures are so 90's.

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by jseah View Post
    It's more than just an internally consistent set of use cases. Usually, these sorts of systems start out with a few basic principles then adhere to them to generate all the various magic effects. Note that D&D is not a Sanderson's Law magic system.

    Sanderson's law magic tends to result in less supernatural magic (or what I like to call "woo woo" magic). Stories built on the principle give the sense that magic is understandable, that people can learn not just to use it but to actually grasp its basic principles.

    Additionally, Sanderson's Law magic systems find it easier to incorporate magic into everyday life and society. Questions like "how long does it take a fire spell to boil water" might not be important in the context of adventuring and combat, but when you're thinking about using magical fire to light your streets you need to be able to answer these things.
    Yeah, it's not really fair to limit it to consistent terminology, but I wanted to have Fun With Anagrams, so I went for it anyway. Really, I'd say the central conceit of Sanderson's Law magic systems is that they are inherently logical, which seems silly to me since regardless of how logical a magic system is, the principles on which it's based are still arbitrary inventions; it doesn't make any less sense for a fire spell to be unable to boil water than it does for the fire spell to exist in the first place. I don't really understanding being willing to accept that a wizard can make fire appear by saying the magic words but unwilling to accept that this fire won't burn the wizard's friends or spread beyond a certain radius no matter how flammable its surroundings, let alone being unwilling to accept the fire not using up oxygen in a confined space. I mean, really, none of those things are more ludicrous than the initial assumption. Really, there's no reason to assume the fire a guy created by talking funny should behave the same as the fire that arises in our world through natural causes, despite their superficial similarities. So, to me, Sanderson's law comes across as long-winded explanations which neither serve a meaningful narrative purpose nor ease suspension of disbelief.
    To piggy-back off the telekinesis example, saying that telekineses dumps some of the excess around the caster is fine and worth mentioning since it could be relevant later; six pages of psuedoscience about why it does that is just three or four minutes of my life I won't ever get back.

    Quote Originally Posted by TheThan View Post
    I’m not talking about the misuse of power; I’m talking about having that power to begin with.
    I think the real problem here is that this style of magic makes for dramatic tension and gives good reasons for heroes and villains alike to go MacGuffin-hunting in fiction, but often translates to tedious bookkeeping and boring fetch quests when translated to gaming.

    Quote Originally Posted by SiuiS View Post
    You will not find these people hand waving these costs as acceptable in order to learn another ritual.
    Or, even if they hand-wave the costs, the text doesn't. Some of the more unhinged mages in the Malazan books are pretty good examples of this.

    Quote Originally Posted by TheThan View Post
    Well there four problems with extremely powerful, no cost magic:

    1: intra party balance, in a game, everyone should be able to contribute to the game and have fun.
    I think this has less to do with the way magic works than the way the rest of the game works. AD&D magic worked in basically the same way as 3.5 magic, but intra-party balance was less of an issue because of a number of other mechanics.

  17. - Top - End - #77
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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Just thought of an example of "Wizards vs. the World", and that was in Dragonlance - actual D&D. The wizards could wreak terrible devastation...but they had to sleep, they had to re-learn their spells, etc. etc, and they were far fewer than the alliance of non-magic users who were after them. So they lost, outright.

    And that's assuming wizards are a unified lot. Discworlds Sourceror demonstrates that once some wizards start grabbing power, others start thinking "why not me?" and grab power also. Soon enough, you have wizard wars that result in terrain where crossing the street could turn you into a frog, or a dragon, or a layer cake. The wizards in Discworld explicitly use as little magic as possible because they've realized that doing so leads to Bad Things.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Zrak View Post
    Yeah, it's not really fair to limit it to consistent terminology, but I wanted to have Fun With Anagrams, so I went for it anyway. Really, I'd say the central conceit of Sanderson's Law magic systems is that they are inherently logical, which seems silly to me since regardless of how logical a magic system is, the principles on which it's based are still arbitrary inventions; it doesn't make any less sense for a fire spell to be unable to boil water than it does for the fire spell to exist in the first place. I don't really understanding being willing to accept that a wizard can make fire appear by saying the magic words but unwilling to accept that this fire won't burn the wizard's friends or spread beyond a certain radius no matter how flammable its surroundings, let alone being unwilling to accept the fire not using up oxygen in a confined space. I mean, really, none of those things are more ludicrous than the initial assumption. Really, there's no reason to assume the fire a guy created by talking funny should behave the same as the fire that arises in our world through natural causes, despite their superficial similarities. So, to me, Sanderson's law comes across as long-winded explanations which neither serve a meaningful narrative purpose nor ease suspension of disbelief.
    To piggy-back off the telekinesis example, saying that telekineses dumps some of the excess around the caster is fine and worth mentioning since it could be relevant later; six pages of psuedoscience about why it does that is just three or four minutes of my life I won't ever get back.
    Sanderson Law magic is not based upon having "six pages of psuedoscience" thrown at the reader for no reason. Explanation of how the magic works is important under Sanderson's Laws for the same reason that you admit that the note about the telekinesis example is worthwhile, because it helps the author use the magic to resolve conflicts in a satisfactory manner. In addition, the reader being able to get how the magic system shaped the world to where it is in the story is a meaningful narrative purpose and does help suspension of debelief, because they're not constantly wondering "Why do things work like that?", " Why did X do Y?", Or "Why didn't X do Y with their magic and solve the problem?". While a magic system can be devoid of any logical, fundemental laws, the fact that the author had to come up with the idea in the first place doesn't mean it can't be internally consistent.
    Thanks to Elrond for the Vash avatar.

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    I'm surprised every time people bring up real-world physics when discussing fantasy. In fictional settings, reality could break down along the lines in the 4 elements. Space could be full of air. The moon could be a flat hunk of cheese, or a hole in the black felt of space which light shines through. E may not equal mc^2. Temperature may be default neutral, and the presence of cold/hot molecules adjust temp up or down from there.

    All of those things could not be important to the story, but still true in the setting. And those are the sorts of things a wizard's studies might reveal to them. To ordinary people it doesn't matter, but to a magic user, some of that might be relevant for how to cast their spells.

    I usually don't think of (and don't particularly like) magic settings as being tech-neutral with regards to centuries. As in, if it's possible to do an industrial revolution now with the state of magic, it probably wasn't possible in the recent past. Techniques evolve, refine and develop over time. It's easily possible that a industrial revolution possible now just wasn't possible in the past.

    Some of the rules I mentioned before could also play a role in making magic industrialization either difficult or impossible. When settings do not have a high state of magic use and there's an explaination, it takes the form of a rule like this or a serious drawback to magic use. Why there hasn't been a magical revolution yet just isn't relevant to the plot usually, so it doesn't always have to have an explaination.

    Also, I'm pretty sure the point of the Tippyverse is that it's meant to prevent players who like to derail sandbox games from easily derailing the game world. If players like that aren't around, there's no need for it. If players like that do exist, then it's a perfect setting for them to get them to do what they should have been doing in the first place.

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    I'm continually surprised by folks thinking a lot about the truth of the setting at the level of air molecules. If the characters are having their big fancy magic-off and I'm thinking about what sort of babble I need to cook up to to reconcile that fireball with the Bernoulli effect instead of the drama and catharsis of the protagonist incinerating the hell out of that evil sorcerer, it may be time for me and the novel to part company since it's probably extremely boring.

    Maybe that's just me though.
    Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
    When they shot him down on the highway,
    Down like a dog on the highway,
    And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.


    Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    I got a bit more specific question: Aside from replicating the effects of modern machines and weapons, what does magic actually do?

    I think a well writen magician should not be just a "magic technician" who opens doors, transports loads, or shots down enemies as requested. People who are not just ordinary people with some handy skills. Because in RPGs, that is what they are, and their spells are designed accordingly.
    What does a mage do that can only be done by mages and not be accomplished by manual labor?
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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    I got a lot to respond to. But I’ll try to be brief as I’m supposed to be going out of town today.

    Magic vs science and engineering


    There is a difference between a wizard and a scientist/engineer. Science and engineering doesn’t immediately put food on the table; you have to get paid to use those skills, and the cost of engineering and science skyrockets quickly. Being a spellcaster however does immediately put food on the table, you don’t have to be paid to be able to cast create food or drink; looking at the spell a bit closer, it doesn’t even require material components, just verbal and somatic. You literally just wiggle your fingers and speak some gibberish and poof, dinner is served. It literally doesn’t cost you anything to use. So spend an hour a day preparing your magic and you literally don’t go hungry. A first level cleric can cast it at least once. Since it’s a cleric spell, you’re going to be devoting some time to worship anyway, so a time cost is not even there.

    The tippyverse

    I’m not trying to vilify the tippyverse, but in that setting, wizard [i]are[i/] in charge, it might not be a world ruled by a single all powerful wizard who mind rapes the opposition, but it certainly could be if the dm decides to give it a darker tint. It’s very easy to turn the Tippyverse on its head and make it something that’s not fun to play in.

    Politicians spend much of their time trying to make sure they (or their party) stay in charge (or trying to get in charge as the case may be). Wizards would probably be doing the same thing. So while they may not be crushing the opposition with their arcane might, they’re still going to be taking steps to ensure their power. That could me assassination control or running off of anyone that begins to get strong enough to threaten them. The Dm doesn’t even have to use metagame knowledge here; it’s easy to tell how strong a wizard is by the magic they use. A wizard that drops a cloudkill on a group of enemies is going to tip off another observing wizard (ahem scrying) as to the general power level of that wizard. He’s going to go “that’s a cloudkill spell, he’s gotten stronger than I thought!”

    Intra party balance


    A well built super hero team is a good analogy for a dnd adventuring party. The whole is greater than the sum of their parts.
    Take the fantastic four for example. Each character adds a certain ability to the team. No-one on the team is as strong as the Thing; no-one on the team can shoot fire like the human torch etc. each member of the team brings about a certain advantage to the team and they are stronger as a whole than they are independently.

    With adventurers it ought to be the same way; the fighter brings muscle to the party, the rogue brings stealth and so on. The problem is that the spell casters do all of that. They are almost a party unto themselves. They don’t need a rogue to be stealthy; they have spells like silence and invisibility. They don’t need a fighter to take hits/kill things they have summons for that. They don’t need a bard to charm people, they literally have spells like charm and dominate person for that.

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Reverent-One View Post
    Sanderson Law magic is not based upon having "six pages of psuedoscience" thrown at the reader for no reason. Explanation of how the magic works is important under Sanderson's Laws for the same reason that you admit that the note about the telekinesis example is worthwhile, because it helps the author use the magic to resolve conflicts in a satisfactory manner.
    I think you have misapprehended my position. Sanderson's contention is that "An author's ability to solve conflict satisfactorily with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic," while I am contending that making the reader aware that a magical effect exists before that effect is used to solve a conflict is not a waste of the reader's time. There is some overlap in our positions, but their valence is completely different; I am delineating explanations which aren't a waste of my time from explanations which are, while Sanderson is advocating explanation as almost purely positive. According to Sanderson's law, so long as the psuedoscience continues to provide new information about the magic system in an intelligible manner, it will make the author more able to solve conflict satisfactorily with magic. This is not the case; there are degrees of understanding that detract from the rest of the text without making magical conflict resolution any more satisfying.

    I would consider my reducto ad absurdum objection to be overly pedantic, as many of my objections to various "laws" of writing are, were it not for the fact that some authors, including Sanderson himself, seem to take the law to precisely that absurd extreme; I am, after all, far from alone in complaining about Sanderson's tendency to overexplain.

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    The reader has to think "I see what the character is doing here" instead of "and then conveniently he got what he wanted".
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    The reader has to think "I see what the character is doing here" instead of "and then conveniently he got what he wanted".
    Similarly, the reader has to think "I see what the character is doing here" instead of "OH MY GOD WHY ARE YOU EXPLAINING THIS I DON'T EVEN CARE." That's what I think Zrak is objecting to.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Math_Mage View Post
    Similarly, the reader has to think "I see what the character is doing here" instead of "OH MY GOD WHY ARE YOU EXPLAINING THIS I DON'T EVEN CARE." That's what I think Zrak is objecting to.
    Well, perhaps not six pages of pseudoscience. =P

    But a one page introduction about how magic works in general might be well worth it. Starting with whether mages need to talk to cast spells.

    It doesn't need to be in "magic textbook" form though, you could have a few introductory scenes or the beginning chapter showcase how magic works. The readers' suspension of disbelief is usually higher at the start than the chapter just before the climax.


    EDIT: I interpret Sanderson's Law like this: If you need an explanation at a specific page, that page is a bad time to have it.

    EDIT2: an addendum to the above is that you have to not be afraid to let your magic need explaining.
    Last edited by jseah; 2014-09-18 at 07:50 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    I got a bit more specific question: Aside from replicating the effects of modern machines and weapons, what does magic actually do?

    I think a well writen magician should not be just a "magic technician" who opens doors, transports loads, or shots down enemies as requested. People who are not just ordinary people with some handy skills. Because in RPGs, that is what they are, and their spells are designed accordingly.
    What does a mage do that can only be done by mages and not be accomplished by manual labor?
    Often magic is about prophecy and divination. Magicians conjure spirits and read the stars to gain information about the future, far away places and hidden things. They travel to spirit realms or interact with beings from those realms. A magician may be experimenting with the forces of life and death, creating new life or seeking immortality. They study and wield powers most people cannot comprehend or would be afraid to touch.

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    I got a bit more specific question: Aside from replicating the effects of modern machines and weapons, what does magic actually do?

    I think a well writen magician should not be just a "magic technician" who opens doors, transports loads, or shots down enemies as requested. People who are not just ordinary people with some handy skills. Because in RPGs, that is what they are, and their spells are designed accordingly.
    What does a mage do that can only be done by mages and not be accomplished by manual labor?
    In the universe that I'm currently running, Magic users are needed to maintain the Mana-powered technology.

    This universe is in the midst of "Mana-Powered Industrialization", where mages are needed to oversee and design the etching the sigil circuits, and work with both Engineers, Tinkers and Alchemists in order to design the production-line. Then they are needed to maintain the enchantments on the automatons.

    Mages don't need the technology themselves, but those who cannot use magic, including their patrons, are enamored with the convenience of the technology.

    The magic has had some... side effects to the environment; apparently mana-magic combining with the alchemic waste products hastens evolution to the beasts outside the city limits, and gives life to the bi-products.

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    Default Re: Magic spells outside RPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Zrak View Post
    Sanderson's contention is that "An author's ability to solve conflict satisfactorily with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic." ... Sanderson is advocating explanation as almost purely positive. According to Sanderson's law, so long as the psuedoscience continues to provide new information about the magic system in an intelligible manner, it will make the author more able to solve conflict satisfactorily with magic.
    Is that really what Sanderson is saying, though? There is a level of explanation which is sufficient to convey all the understanding that the reader needs, and in many cases, that level doesn't have to be very high. To take an example from Tolkien (I have read other fantasy authors, really!), it's enough to say, "wearing the magic ring makes you invisible." Invisibility easily solves some conflicts, is useful in many others, and is no use at all in some, and it's pretty clear to the reader which conflicts are which. More explanation wouldn't really be of any use, unless the author wanted to also provide the ring with more powers and/or limitations.

    I would consider my reducto ad absurdum objection to be overly pedantic, as many of my objections to various "laws" of writing are, were it not for the fact that some authors, including Sanderson himself, seem to take the law to precisely that absurd extreme; I am, after all, far from alone in complaining about Sanderson's tendency to overexplain.
    I've never read any of Sanderson's work, so I can't comment on that. Maybe that was what he was saying, after all.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Broken Crown View Post
    Is that really what Sanderson is saying, though? There is a level of explanation which is sufficient to convey all the understanding that the reader needs, and in many cases, that level doesn't have to be very high. To take an example from Tolkien (I have read other fantasy authors, really!), it's enough to say, "wearing the magic ring makes you invisible." Invisibility easily solves some conflicts, is useful in many others, and is no use at all in some, and it's pretty clear to the reader which conflicts are which. More explanation wouldn't really be of any use, unless the author wanted to also provide the ring with more powers and/or limitations.



    I've never read any of Sanderson's work, so I can't comment on that. Maybe that was what he was saying, after all.
    Well, he is quoting Sanderson's first law verbatim.

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