Episode 7: Nothing Up My Sleeve, Part One

You are in a dark room. You aren’t alone. There are others there with you, seated at tables, much like yourself. There is a slight glow coming from the lamp in the center of your table, just enough to cast shadows, but not enough to chase them away.

A disembodied voice cries out: “Ladies and Gentlemen. Presenting. The Magic. Of. John. Wick!”

Suddenly, there is a spot light and a stage. A man steps on that stage. The audience’s reaction is mixed. Some boo him. Some cheer him. Some… wait and watch.

The man is wearing a t-shirt that declares Darkest of the Hillside Thickets: “Cthulhu Takes Parts of North America!”, khaki shorts and no shoes. His hair is tied in a braid that falls down to the middle of his back. On the ring finger of his left hand is a golden band. On the table beside him is a tall mug filled with root beer.

He looks out at you from a small pair of rimmed glasses and smiles.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announces. “Tonight, you and I are going to take a small journey. A journey into the land… of Magic!”

He waves his hands in the air… but nothing appears. No smoke. No fire. No nothing.

“No,” he says. “We’re not going to talk about prestidigitation or illusion. No card tricks. No coin tricks. We’re going to talk about something different. We’re going to talk about ‘real magic’.”

The crowd’s reaction is subtle. Some of them moan, some of them sit up in their chairs, waiting to hear more. Others just sit… and wait.

“But before I begin, I must make an announcement.” He pauses, letting the drama settle in.

“I don’t believe in magic. Not in modern magic, anyway. Not neo-pagan rituals, not angels, not miracles, not Hermetic thought or any of the hocus-pocus that’s been thrown around the neo-pagan crowd either. Not an ounce of it.”

He pauses. “On the other hand, I do believe in Santa Claus.” The audience chuckles. He continues. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

He steps across the stage, looking out at the crowd. “Tonight, I’d like to talk a little bit about magic and its role in our little sub-culture. I’d like to talk about how ‘magic’ began, how it changed, the people who changed it and how those changes found their way into gaming and how gaming changed magic yet again.

“Then, lastly, I’d like to show you what I’m going to do with magic. And I think we’ll all be the richer for it.”

He stops in the center of the stage.

“And if you’re ready… it’s time to begin.”

Think of magic in roleplaying games. What’s your first thought?

A spellbook, perhaps. Maybe its a vision of Gandalf? How about Merlin? Maybe it’s that fireball that your friend miscast that burned everyone in the party because you didn’t accommodate for the right spatial factors and the backlash was so bad you had to run back home because you forgot to bring a cleric?

And that’s where we begin.

Clerics and magic-users.

Ask any gamer the difference between a magic-user and a cleric, and you’ll get an answer that sounds something like this:

“Well, clerics are holy men. They get their spells from their god; they have to pray for them. Magic-users study their spells from books. Their spells are formulas that use components like a frog’s eye or a small red ruby.”

And that red ruby has to be at least 100 gp value.

That little distinction has a profound effect on the rest of gaming. Think of all the D&D clones that go by that distinction. Think of all the games that consider clerics “magic-users who pray for their spells”.

Clerics cast spells.

How much of a jump is it to call those spells “miracles”?

It’s a jump, isn’t it?

That’s kind of funny to these ears, because that’s exactly what all magic is.

It’s all miracles.

Think about this for a second:

The world’s first magic-users… were clerics.

Stone-age man didn’t read spells out of books. He didn’t have magical components and throw fireballs at his tribe’s enemies.

He was a shaman. He had secret knowledge that let him see things ordinary people couldn’t see. He could see omens and portents, read the stars and know what it meant when a black bird hopped across your path.

He knew how to cure illnesses. He knew how to banish evil spirits. He was a holy man.

For thousands of years, “magic” was religion. It was signals from the gods. It was recognizing an important event and telling the tribe of its significance. It was remembering that important event ten years later and telling the story to the village children so they would tell their children and they would tell their children and on and on and on.

What was magic to these people? Well, let me give you some examples.

Right now, as I type these words, I’ve got three magic items within reach: my ring, my cup and my t-shirt.

The t-shirt is magic because this shirt was with me when I danced to the music of The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets at Gen-Con ‘98. It rained that night. We weren’t certain if The Thickets were going to play or not. But I stood there in the rain with people like Greg Stolze and John Tynes and Peter Atkinson, and we waited.

We waited for The Thickets.

Sure enough, the clouds settled down and our boys came on the stage, dressed in their Cthulhu costumes: Three Bugs and a Gug.

Together, we all danced and moshed and bounced and screamed ‘till our lungs bled and our feet were turned to pudding and our legs were rubber. We gave The Thickets our love and they gave us theirs. There was something powerful that night; something… something… poetic. Something that can’t be explained with words. If you weren’t there, you just can’t understand the great bonding ritual that occurred that night.

It was Us and The Thickets.

And I have that shirt. The shirt I wore as I stood in the rain. The shirt I wore as I danced and screamed. My sweat is in this shirt. That night is in this shirt.

I’m wearing that shirt right now.

And it’s magic.

* * *

Just in front of me is a tall, pewter mug.

Let me tell you something about that mug.

When I was younger, I worked one of them Renaissance Faires.

Yeah. I was a Faire geek. (Just watch who you call black, Mr. Kettle.)

At the Faire, I had a job. I told stories. I also taught stories. That is, I had a storytelling workshop. It was also at that time that I earned my first dollar bill for telling stories. It was a great and terrible time for me. Lots of drama. Lots of romance. Lots of tragedy. All self-inflicted, of course, but that’s the way of Renaissance Faires. Lots of self-inflicted tragedy.

Anyway, I have this mug.

Everywhere I went, before I told a story, I’d take that mug off my belt and hold it out. “This here mug,” I’d say, “is my grandfather’s mug. You see, my grandfather was a bard and he knew every story in the world. And he kept those stories in here, in his mug.” I’d hold out the empty mug to the group. “And the only way to get to them is to fill up the mug… so they float to the top.”

I got a lot of drinks that way.

But not one of them was “free”. I traded each one for a story.

You have no idea how many stories that mug is carrying around. Stories I’d practiced a thousand times, stories I had to make up on the spot, stories I told on demand.

Strapped to that mug is a leather pouch. Inside that leather pouch are four very important things: the first dollar I ever earned for telling a story, the first dollar I ever earned for teaching other people stories and the first dollar I earned for writing a story. And at the beginning of every Faire, I’d put a sprig of rosemary in that pouch, so I wouldn’t forget how I earned them. “Rosemary is for remembering”, after all.

I’m drinking out of that mug right now.

And it’s magic.

* * *

Lastly, there’s my ring. The ring sitting on the ring finger of my left hand. The hand closest to my heart.

I earned that ring with another ring that I gave Jennifer on my birthday with the words, “This is the day of my re-birth. The day of new beginnings. And I don’t want to go another step without knowing that you’re coming with me.”

That’s what started a fifteen month ordeal the romantics like to call “marriage”.

Actually…

… before I get to that, let me tell about something else. Something else that’s got its own magic.

Oo. Boy. This one’s a doosey.

* * *

A slight interlude.

I just got done writing Way of Scorpion for AEG. In that book, a character named Yojiro meets with another character named Kachiko. Now, while many folks know who Bayushi Kachiko is, not a whole lot of folks know who Yojiro is.

He’s the character I used during the playtest of L5R RPG. So, in a way, he’s me. The authorial intrusion. The quiet joke. Richard Blake. Peter Frigate. Oh, never mind.

So, at the end of the story, Kachiko rewards Yojiro with a lock of her hair in the most erotic scene ever written for any Five Rings product. There’s no sex in the story. But there’s a lot of… suggestion.

That’s the set-up. What you need to know to proceed. Let’s do so.

* * *

So, anyway, I’m getting married.

Marcelo Figueora is running it. He asks me if I want a stripper at my bachelor party. I say, “No.” My bachelor party is about me and my friends. That’s it. Me and my friends. Having a stranger show up to my bachelor party didn’t feel right. This was a secret time for Us. No outsiders.

Little did I know what Marcelo had in mind.

He called a friend of mine. Told him his plan. He got together with my wife and made sure it was cool. Not only did my wife think it was cool, she even paid for my friend to fly in. This is why I tell everyone I meet that I have the coolest wife in the world. You’ll see why in a couple of moments.

So, it’s my bachelor party.

In the middle of the party, he takes me to a small room. Places me in the center in a chair. Tells me to hold tight…

… and Kachiko walks in.

She smiles. Wishes me well. Asks me if I love the girl I’m about to marry. I say “Yes.”

She says, “Too bad.”

And she gives me a lock of her hair.

That’s all I’m gonna say about that night.

Some things only remain sacred as long as they remain secret.

I still have that lock of hair.

And it’s magic.

* * *

Jennifer and I were married on New Year’s Eve. The ending of the old and the beginning of the new. Our wedding rings are simple gold bands with oak leaves and acorns. Go look up the symbolism for yourself.

The bands are two of a kind. Nothing else like them in the world.

This little ring means more to me than anything else in the world.

It’s a promise. A promise to love and cherish and honor. It has no beginning and it has no end. And it was put on my finger on New Year’s Eve. The ending of the old and the beginning of the new.

Lots of people ask me and Jenny how we always get along so well. We have different answers. Mine goes something like this:

“Because a marriage isn’t about bliss. It’s about giving up. Surrender. I’m not John anymore. I’m not my own person. Everything I do affects someone else now, in one way or another. And that someone else really isn’t a someone else, it’s really me. I’m not John. I’m John-and-Jennifer.”

That promise, that night, those words. All magic.

It’s right there, on the ring finger of the hand closest to my heart.

And it’s magic.

* * *

Magic.

For hundreds of thousands of years, that’s what magic meant to people. It was events and places and days. It had nothing to do with fireballs and portable holes and toe’s eyes and praying for spells. Nothing at all.

The question is: “How do you make a game system that reflects magic like that?”

It’s tough. But I think I have a way to do it. In fact, I think I can do it with ORKWORLD.

But first, we have to talk about something else. We have to talk about how the magic changed. How the nature of magic shifted from the power of sentiment to the mixing sediments. I hold one man responsible for this atrocity. One man alone.

And his name is Hermes Thrice Great.

But we’ll talk about him next week.

In the meantime, go read Alice Hoffman’s book Practical Magic. Forget the film. It’s cute, but it’s got a whole bunch of neo-pagan stuff in it that ain’t in Ms. Hoffman’s book.

So, go read the book. Keep in mind the things I’ve told you here. Think of all the little trinkets of events long ago that you hold on to, and whenever anyone asks you why, you’re not quite sure.

I’ll tell you why.

They’re magic.