#13: I'm Not Superstitious

[Ra'Dorcha]

A wonderful article about magic. Many people tend to just think magic is magic. And it is certainly true that in many games you can't shake a stick without hiting someone who is either a magic user or is wearing something magical.

Magic should be something rare and powerful, thus those who really want it will work for it, and other people can laugh at them if they fail. Also once someone has magic they really should not wave it about as often as people do in some games. Magic should always look difficult (even if it is something that a character find simple). It helps impress the plebs much more. If you just gesture dismissivly and someone disappears not half as impressive as putting on a bit of show before hand.

I look forward to many more games from Skotos, just to see how they can play with concepts like magic. There are so many more than what you listed, and so much fun that can be had with the concept.

[Arian]

All too often, magic in fantasy RPGs becomes a substitute for technology. Instead of machine guns, we have magic missiles; instead of bazookas, fireballs. If you need to talk to someone who's in another city, you go down to the local mage's shop and get the mystical equivalent of a telegram or a phone call. To treat magic in this way robs it of its... magicalness. It's no longer a source of wonder – it's like a light switch, something you just use without even thinking about it. Mages aren't feared just for being mages; they might be feared for the destruction they can cause, but no more than you'd fear someone who carries around a bazooka.

I think one of the reasons why most RPG have gone this way is that most players (and game masters) find it too tedious to try to go out and gather everything one would need to get the ingredients or prerequisties needed to perform magic. For example, I'm pretty sure in most D&D games it's just assumed that you have the necessary physical components needed to cast a spell, or you can take a feat that would render actually having to go out and getting the physical components unnecessary.

I also think that often times, the creators of a lot of roleplaying game systems wants to find a link between our world and their made-up world. And to a lot of people science today is a lot like magic. We know it's out there, and we understand a bit about the processes behind it, but a lot of the stuff we just don't understand, or even know.

This is a far cry from older fantasy sources and the myths and legends they were based on – in them, magic and magicians were both rare. That rarity by itself made them more mysterious and wonderful – in the sense of "full of wonder", that is, since many of them were not nice to be around at all.

Well, I would disagree with that statement a bit. I don't think that the magic nor the magicians were rare. I think it is really more about the number of characters in the story or legend, than rather or not magic was rare. There were just simply fewer characters period. Magic was put in it was needed move the plot along.

But I do agree that there seems to be a more mysterious element to the older sources and legends, and I think that's because unlike today, they didn't bother to explain how it was done. In a sense, magic really needs a sort of a religious element for it to have a mysterious and "full of wonder" quality. As the Bible didn't go into detail about how Jesus actually transformed water into wine or turned five loaves and two fishes into enough food to feed hundreds of people, you don't find text explaining how the Lady of the Lake made Excalibur magical or what did Calypso do to transform Ulysees' men into pigs. We're too curious, wanting to know every little detail about a certain process. And we're bothered to no end if we can't figure out a process or if something doesn't add up. We can not merely accept something as is, we must find out why.

I have the Ars Magica series, and I find them very good. I would particularly recommend the book, Ordo Nobilis: Mythic Europe's Nobility. For the games we play here, particularly Marrach, it goes into a pretty good detail of how the nobility might view magic, as well as a general overall view of concepts such as Chirvalry, how to properly run a sword tournament, and of course, De Amore.

For those that like movies, I would recommend the movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy., which above all things, I think shows how native tribes were reverent to everything and didn't think twice about not finding out where did that Coke bottle come from.