NOTE: I'd like my next Multiverse Magazine to have a strong focus on the Simulationism of the GNS Theory, and how to improve it for alterante dimensions.
Also, one of my players has gone a long way toward creating an Easy Psi World Creator....Thanks, Oak. Psi worlds are something we generally considered hard, and needed. Mentat or Edward pointed out they weren't hard, and Oak made the beginnings of a worldmaker.
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The movie Seeker was based on The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. Its an almost rural small town England with lower technology than an American would be used to. I think this is partially because the series of books has been out for a while, and because much of Europe lags a few years behind America.
The hero might have been the prototype for Harry Potter in some respects, or perhaps 'the Weasely boy' might be a better example as his parents are good and kind, and he is the seventh son of a seventh son (cue ominous music.)
He is something altogether different, and more majestic. He is the last of the Old Ones. These are born of human, but they are immortal, and can travel through time at will.
They are part of a struggle between an undefined, but goodly power called The Light which is Alliance, and an evil power called The Dark. Religions such as Christianity may have some minor bit of power, and are respected by the Old Ones as a partial representation of the truth.
There are in the book at least two major sources of power which are neither good nor evil. One, the Candles of Winter when used by the Dark hold England in a new Ice Age. The other is the Wild Hunt which is unstoppable by any champion of the Dark or the Light.
Certain of the Roads are Oldways, and Old Ones have more power on them. They also have a fortress which might be out of time.
There is also a lot of posturing in the nature of "You DARE to stand against the power of the Old Ones on a road they made?"
There is also Signs, and our Chosen One is the Signfinder. He will be able to just naturally find the Signs.
Lets see, there is also a waxing and waning of power with the Black Rider growing in power day by day.
And certain exhibitions of power really take it out of a person. In Magic the Gathering terms, the Heroine is 'tapped'. When the Lady totally unveils her power, she has to retreat from the world for a while.
Now, this is a lot of magic actually. And I don't want to cover it all. Nor do I wish to do a straight translation as that would infringe on copyright. But as an example on how to transform a book to a world, and as a chance to create an interesting world, let's have a go.
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World: Earth, Rural England.
Time: 1955 Anno Domini. England is still staggering after the war, and under the greater weights of 1)Suffering far more than America did. 2)A confidence crisis from the steady loss of Empire. 3)Stupid socialism, a Green and Pleasant Land still continues to stagger. But for all that, its a very nice place.
Deities: The Lords of Light (Alliance) and the Six Beasts Who Sit in Shadow and Gnaw at the Roots of Heaven (Anarch obviously). More surprisingly the reigning deity is Neutral. He wishes the world to keep running, and is willing to allow Good and Evil to war, but with restrictions. He is generally not named, although some call him the King of the Wheeling Stars.
Bias: Tech 10@5 (thats a guess, but I want pre-computer). Body Earth normal. Psi--The Sight is possible, so clairvoyance and precognition but without control is possible. (Its unfortunate the precog is so high on the bias chart. Precog tends to be one of the earlier level powers in most stories.) Magic is 15@10.
With 15@10 Magic, you could do anything. But the reigning deity wants this war limited, and held in the background. So, I'm thinking a base -40 sitmod to the use of any magic. If you're really devout, and pray hard, you might heal someone. But in general, you have to be someone really special to work most magic.
There are a fairly large number of magic items of humongous power. This universe is magical at a higher, more obvious level than most. Summer comes because someone rotated the miniature chariot of Phaeton into the top position on the Year Clock.
There are several dozen of these magics, and most are hidden, and/or have formidable guardians. But sometimes the Chaos Lords find one and subvert the 'natural' order which tends to bring out the Paladins of the Light to stop them.
These Paladins belong to a very old order. Once you enter this order of white magicians, you receive a number of tokens. These include a belt which gives immortality, and cannot be taken off without your consent. Merlin is one of their number, as is Horatius at the Bridge and Musashii Muramoto.
While this order is very formidable, most of its resources are fully engaged. So, while it could summon several dozen of the world's greatest warrior magicians to defeat a foe, it would do so by unprotecting several dozen of the Great Treasures.
While most of the mighty icons of power were created directly by the King, there were some that were created by the Lords of Light and by the Paladins. The Six Beasts and their followers, the Chaos Lords do not create. At best, they make poor counterfeits of the real thing. At worst, they simply don't create, and steal from the Light their items.
When the verser arrives, he can be given a Quest to undo some plot of the Chaos Lords. Or he can be hunted by the Chaos Lords as a vital part of some dark magic ('...one eye of newt, one unwilling sacrifice of a worldtraveller, one cup of bat guano...') in which case he will probably be the Key.
The Entrance Quest can be to stop the misuse of the Horn of Poseidon. The Chaos Lords are using it to attack the North Sea Oil Wells, and to stop the flow of relief ships to a drought-stricken African country where a village of good people live in the midst of evil people. If the good village dies, then one of the prophesied Champions of Light will not be born, and Chaos will spread across that section of Africa with genocide in its wake.
The Key Quest is for the Dark to get a worldwalker, and use his extradimensional qualities to open an extradimensional prison of some vastly evil beast....say Leviathan. Once, the Chaos Lords have Leviathan, any Lord riding on it will find himself with....+50 sitmod to Do Magic, and a humongous, and very hungry sea dragon able to eat an oil tanker. In other words, Bad News.
The Neutral deity uses Elementals to do its will in the world. These beings are immensely powerful, and usually given specific instructions like ('Empower the Horn of Poseidon, and obey whoever holds it. But if the holder speaks your name but once, and not the three times you are told to listen for, then you may do as you wish for the space of one hour.')
Eric
Also, there is no arcane magic.
Isn't the whole idea of arcane magic that it is immune to divine fiat?
I'd offer more input but I'm kinda witless at the moment so I have nothing useful to say.
I'm just wondering. I admit I know little about such things. How can any kind of magic be immune to God? I hope this isn't coming off as preaching, but that's just something I was wondering about. How can something be immune to God? Of course, it could be like this riddle. Supposedly 85% of kindergarten students figured it out, but only 17% of college students figured it out. I figured it out. Can you?
What is stronger than God?
More evil than Satan?
Poor people have it.
Rich people need it.
And if you eat it, you will die?
Any thoughts?
Arcane magic can be blocked. It is divine magic that cannot be blocked unless arcane magic is also blocked.
I've run across that riddle before, so I won't answer. I will say that I'm surprised at the college students, though.
Ah, but Scott, did you figure out the riddle when you first encountered it? I did. I just kept thinking about the first line, and it all fell into place. Just curious if you figured it out.
I did, as I recall. I can't be sure, because it was part of a riddle contest in a book I was reading, which means that the answers were part of the story also and closely followed the riddles themselves, but I was making a concentrated effort to solve the things before I got to the answers. And it seems to me like I got that one.
I can understand why children might be better at it, though. There's a way of thinking about it that makes the answer make very little sense, and I think that's the mode of thinking that adults prefer.
As something of an authority on the subject, I'm going to point out that Simulationism of GNS (or Creative Agenda/Big Model) theory is completely unlike Simulationism of GDS (or Three-fold or RGFA) theory. I think it is probably the latter that you mean; the two are related, but in a way that is probably not consistent with your use of the concept.I'd like my next Multiverse Magazine to have a strong focus on the Simulationism of the GNS Theory, and how to improve it for alterante dimensions.
The Three-fold model is about play styles, what a player does in a game to achieve his objectives. Simulationism is very much about character motivation and world accuracy; a game is a good game if it is as if you were there, because the objective is to create the experience of being there, of being that person in that situation. It is contrasted against Dramatism, which in the Threefold model is about expressing character and creating story by making the characters come to life on the stage in a way that brings about a good tale. Between the two there is Gamism, which is about playing a game, beating challenges and such.
Against this, the Big Model concept makes Creative Agenda, what is called GNS, a small part of a larger social contract model. Creative agenda defines why players play, in the sense of what it is that makes the game "fun" for them. None of these are intuitively obvious either from the names or from the transition from Threefold (which is the starting point for much of it). Narrativism, in Creative Agenda, is about creating stories by having characters interact with moral, ethical, or personal issues--things which matter not only to the characters but to the players as well. Gamism is about glory, about proving yourself against the game, showing off what you can do or what you will dare. In this context, simulationism is about seeking knowledge, about learning something about reality or about imaginary reality by interacting with it.
This marks as a simulationist the player whose character will leap off a cliff to escape because the player knows that the character cannot take enough damage in the fall to be fatal. It would not work that way in our reality, but it is about exploring how the alternate reality actually does work, not about making the alternate reality work like ours.
That's not to say that creating a world that works realistically as ours would isn't a good goal--it's just not necessarily the goal of GNS Simulationism.
This strikes me immediately as rather steep.I'm thinking a base -40 sitmod to the use of any magic.
Let's suppose that someone wants to teach himself to cast a 1@1 blessing; let's make it a neutral blessing and call it a neutral world. That gives it a +5 but gives the smallest penalties to the alliance and anarch powers for similar magic. Let's suppose our character is brilliant, a 2@10 BRA for magic, but he has no other magic skills. He does have a religion score--we'll say he's a top professional, 2@10. He has no teacher and no example to follow for this. We're looking at +15 for the world bias, +30 for his BRA, +5 for the world affiliation, and +15 for his religion score. That's a 65% chance. From it we are going to subtract the 1@1 bias of the target skill and the -40 penalty on all magic. What we get is a 14% chance that he can learn this skill.
O.K., that's not too bad; but how many people who do this will have 2@10 BRAs and 2@10 religion SALs? These 14 points vanish fast if there's nothing to support them.
What tends to happen in such worlds in which magic is penalized thus is that magic rituals become more complicated--because you can overcome a -40 penalty with four doublings against you. Increase the time, reduce the power, add a valuable material component which is destroyed.
I'm thinking there's a better way to achieve your objective; I'm not quite certain what it is, though, so I'm going to have to think on it.
Not exactly.Isn't the whole idea of arcane magic that it is immune to divine fiat?
Arcane magic is free from the bonuses and penalties of world affiliation, and depends on the abilities of the caster to tap it. However, it is possible for the powers that rule a universe to "power block" all arcane magic, and not possible to do the same with holy magic. It is against the rules to cut off worshippers from their gods. You can reduce the amount of help all gods can give to their worshippers, but you cannot target a specific god or group of gods.
You can, though, effectively "patch the leaks", preventing any access to the free power that constitutes arcane magic. That's a reasonable power block.
--M. J. Young
What is stronger than God?
More evil than Satan?
Poor people have it.
Rich people need it.
And if you eat it, you will die?
The answer is NOTHING.
Nothing is stronger than God
Nothing is more evil than Satan
Poor people have nothing (I know for a fact)
Rich people need nothing
And if you eat nothing, you will die.
I think the reason that kids get it and adults don't is because the answer is too obvious. Adults don't see the obviousness of the answer, where children do. Something like that. I must admit it kind of freaked me out at first. I took it to mean that there was something stronger than God, and more evil than Satan, and every poor person on the planet had it. That could get kind of scary, if you think about it.
The goal is to make a world based on the specific type of subgenre of modern fantasy of which Susan Cooper's fiction is an example.
In her world, any sort of magic seems possible. You can cause massive ice storms by using a magic object, and you can travel through time (possibly by using another magic object). I'm thinking 15@10 seems reasonable.
But, its a very technological world, and the number of magic users on the planet might be less than a hundred. But anyone who is a magician is likely fairly powerful.
And it seems as if you want to become a magician, you pretty much have to be inducted into it. This would be supported by the benefits of teacher and example.
I want a high gate that once you jump allows you to do most anything, but most people can't jump the gate.
The problem is, as MJ said, ritual casting. My magical ability right now isn't very much, but I can still overcome a -40 penalty by making a ritual spell take hours to cast and involve a sanctified space, a valuable component, or even asking my cousin (who has somewhat less magic than I have) to assist me, even if we have no example and are basically making it up as we go.
It's not that we disagree with the concept you're trying to express, it just seems like that's not the way to go about it mechanically speaking. Maybe there's a special requirement that you have to undergo some ritual in order to use magic at all. Maybe it's really more like a -150 penalty that's reduced to -40 or even 0 by going through some sort of long, complicated initiation and other mages are very conservative about who they give that initiation to. Maybe it's something else entirely, like a power block that there is a ritual to remove.
Let me make a suggestion or two that might achieve what you want.
- The indigs believe that you cannot learn to do magic without being taught by someone who knows how to do it. If you ask who taught the first magicians or priests, the answer will be that their secrets were taught to them by some god or other. Because the indigs believe this about magic, they cannot do magic but that they have learned it from such a practitioner.
- The indigs, and particularly the practitioners, further believe that only those with a high aptitude have the ability to learn magic. This could mean those with a high Best Relevant Attribute, or you could make it more interesting by having them hold the belief that one particular relevant attribute is the necessary one--perhaps intellect, but an-mag or intuition would work as well. Thus no teacher would attempt to teach a student who did not clearly exhibit the necessary aptitude. This means that the belief would never be challenged, and those who lack the necessary aptitude would themselves believe that magic is impossible for them. They would never try it, or if they did, they would be going through motions with the complete expectation of failure--and as we know, expectation is what controls magic, so they fail.
- There might also be a standing penalty against learning any new skills. This would be a distinct world rule, that the gods have decreed that you can do any magic you have done before easily enough, but if you wish to learn to do something you have never done you face a substantial penalty (your -40 seems appropriate here). That would drive wizards trying to create new magic to do two things:
- Check thoroughly as to whether anyone has ever done such a thing before that they can learn from a source, so they do not have to create new magic;
- Develop rather intensive rituals for new skills to overcome the penalties.
- You might also include a high level of disbelief in the indigs. There are probably charlatans who pretend to have power, and the indigs are accustomed to the idea that there are really very few real wizards out there so the guy threatening them at the moment probably is not one of these. That could give them a -10 bonus against all magic used against them (comparable to atheism/agnostic naturalism) if they do not know that the practitioner is genuine. They might also be skeptical of "proofs", particularly given your suggestion that this is a relatively high tech world, and thus any magic cast to prove the credentials of the wizard could be discounted as possibly pulled off by trickery instead of wizardry. Note in this that levitating a target is magic used against the individual, but casting a fireball is not--it is magic used to create fire, the fire then being used against the individual. A person who sees you create and throw a ball of fire at him might question how you managed to create it, but he is unlikely to doubt that it will burn him.
Does that cover all the bases?
--M. J. Young
I've not been pushing for my -40, instead it has been offered as a first go at the problem.
I like the initiation idea. This seems reasonable, although perhaps -80 to -40.
MJ's ideas seem like they could work. Although let me clarify that the indigs in general find the notion of magic higher than blessings and healings to be completely ludricrous. They don't believe in a 'few, real wizards' because there never were such in their view.
Now as to Simulationism, I would be interested in making the feel of another reality to be realistic. This would require small details, and greater structural elements. I am also interested in designing based from logical principles....one key logical principle is that 'every world speaks American and drives on four wheels on the right side of the road with an internal combustion engine' is ridiculous. I don't need to defend this point on the facts as its completely obvious. The only reasons to swerve from it are ease of use issues, but the ground of logic needs to be firmly stated first before one goes about making compromises to make something workable.
So when I said Simulationism, I meant to simulate the alternate reality in some aspects as realistically and interestingly as I may. That is the first of the two sets of terms you brought up. Perhaps I should just use a more commonplace term----Realistic despite the pitfallst that attach to it. On the other hand, looking for loopholes in the game system, and then exploiting them is not my idea of advancement in game design. It generally goes under another name--Munchkinism. Jumping off a fifty foot cliff is clever, and amusing, but it is perverting the game design unless the world is Toon or some Superhero story.
What simulationism requires is that the world be internally consistent.
You are correct that "realism" is a bad term; you probably are looking for internal consistency, plus something else--maybe plausibility given some set of assumptions. But jumping off a fifty foot cliff because you know your character will survive is not munchkinism necessarily. Rambo did it; it was done in several other movies in different contexts. To say, "I am far more likely to survive the fall and escape than I am to survive the fight to which I am being forced" is a quite reasonable decision, and if the rules of physics and physiology are such that you know you will survive the former but not necessarily the latter, it's the logical choice to make in that world.
You might be looking at a 2@23 bias--nothing is possible for the indigs above the curatives and blessings, but devices (all of which work as 1@ skills) will all function, and off-worlders can do anything, although with difficulty. If, however, you want your miracle workers to work the rare miracle, either you are going to have to drop some miracle-working devices into the mix or you are going to have to raise the bias to include them.
--M. J. Young
In D20, a tenth level character can face and fight a horde of monsters and win. Or he can jump off a tall cliff, and take less damage.
In a D20 world, that should not work.
Now in my (sadly lost in the back pages) Action Movie Verse where you have the potential for whole hosts of skills like "It was only a flesh wound." and "Woman can lift as much as Man if insulted by Man." and "Full Auto Precision Aiming" why yes a skill like "Drop and roll from ridiculous heights for Annoying Damage" might be reasonable.
Plausible against the assumption that 'not every universe is going to have English speakers who drive on the right side of the road and fire 9mm bullets out of their internal combustion engine cars.' This assumption I have to think is pretty plausible itself. The only real arguement against it is ease of use.
There is an unwarranted assumption here. The assumption is that a D20 world is supposed to work like our world.In D20, a tenth level character can face and fight a horde of monsters and win. Or he can jump off a tall cliff, and take less damage.
In a D20 world, that should not work.
Now, that may be an assumption made by a lot of the players, a lot of the referees, and even many of the designers--but it is not a very good assumption. Your example demonstrates this.
The popular saying in the business world at the moment is, The system you are using is perfectly designed for the results you are getting.
D20 is an inherently "unrealistic" high fantasy heroic adventure system. It does what it is supposed to do. The problem arises when people try to use the wrong tool for the job--trying to do reality genre worlds with a high fantasy heroic adventure mechanic set.
Of course, Wizards of the Coast has encouraged this misuse and misperception, because they sell more games that way. The fact is, they have designed a game that does one thing well, and then tried to hype that it does all things well. It does, if you want all things to play like high fantasy heroic adventure, or if you put the work into remodelling the game mechanic to eliminate a great deal of it.
However, when you say that a D20 world should not allow things which the D20 mechanic supports, you've got it wrong. It is not that this should not be possible in a D20 world; it is that this should not be a D20 world, because you don't want this to be possible in it.
The reason there are different game systems is because they support different kinds of play. That in itself was why in designing Multiverser we took the time to create the concept of interfacing--that your Multiverser character could verse into a D20 world, which would then mean that whatever was true in the D20 rules system would apply to him. This way you could drastically alter the "rules" to support heroic fantasy adventure, or dark nihilistic futurism, or four-color superhero, or whatever you want, by making that the structure of the current universe.
--M. J. Young