Magic system - Klog 3

[pmurray]

Sorry for the late post, but I only just joned the forum.

In klog 3, does an x mean that the school of magic does have an element or that it does not have it?

Naughtymancy - in particular, croakamancy - would be about life. But it's got a blank there. Seems to imply that X means "does not have". Croakamancy would have to be about "life". "Motion" and "matter" is physics (Hocus Pocus).

But OTOH, stageamancy (smoke and mirrors) would have no elements at all - just smoke and mirrors. But it's got three blanks, and clevermancy has three Xes, which is what you'd expect (you gottta be clever to do clevermancy).

Hippiemancy, too, seems to imply that Xes mean "does have". Hippiemancy has no motion - you just sit there being a hippie.

So, if Xes means "does have", why does croakamancy not involve the life element at all? Why does the "life" element result in "findamancy"? Where is the healing school of magic? Life, motion & Fate? No - that's "Thinkamancy", which makes little sense. Maybe it's "Flower Power" - Life, Matter, & Erf. I would have prefererred Life, Matter & Fate - but that's "Signamancy", which I have no idea what it's supposed to be.

Bleh.

Motion alone is "spookism". I would have called it "flingamancy".

You'd think that Life alone, Matter alone, and motion alone would result in "Lifeammancy", "Stuffamancy", and "Flingamancy". Well ... maybe "fling" is more matter + motion. But that's naughtymancy, which comprises shocking, croaking, and deleting.

Double Bleh. I'll stop here.

[Scientivore]

Parson gave us a very important clue about how to interpret that. "What he told me sounds a lot like that crap about the four basic elements that people believed for centuries just because Aristotle said it." When the text tells us that we shouldn't take it too seriously...well, here you can see some of the mental gymnastics that I performed before finally accepting it.

I disagree with your interpretation of Croakamancy, though. The whole point of it is that they're not really alive. So, it makes perfect sense to me that Croakamancy deals with Matter in Motion without Life.

The alignments actually seem to be pretty useful. It's a good rule of thumb that Erf magic works on the world context (such as teleporting a message), Fate magic works on essential natures (such as uncroaking a warlord) and Numbers magic works on amounts (such as creating the visual image of a gwiffon).

[chionophile]

Who marks something by leaving it blank? Occam's Razor, man.