World Build October Part 7

Its World-Build-Tober: 

Sunday the 7th - World-build-tober

"Draw (or describe) the decorations used for a holiday"

The Coyn World has a very large number of humans from a large variety of times, as the time of the Cataclyzm was not fixed to a specific time point, more of a blurred seven dimensional mess.

As a result, many earth customs from many times and place ended up being part of human culture in the Coyn. You can find Holly wreaths, kissing under mistletoe, pumpkins on all Hallows Eve (though they tend to talk).

But whats interesting to us mere magicless mortals on earth is the decorations done by non humans.

 Imagine if you will, Humans use plants, berries, inks, gemstones to create decorations, yet to some cultures, some races are made of plants, berries, inks or gemstones.. Imagine if they used humans and or human parts to decorate their houses.. urgh.

Luckily, its more common to use magical illusions to decorate, its easier to 'put up' and 'take down'. Some small hedge wizards might manufacture trinkets that create the illusions for people who have little to no access to magic.

Typically, symbols of the holiday, steamers of light or colour, maybe sounds or even a taste in the air, are the most common... that said..

There is a small cult, that celebrates the seventh day of the eleventh month with a strange set of decorations made of paper (with permissions of the dryads, its bark shavings, not wood). They decorate their main hall with furniture, covered with this paper, some represent goods, such as bags of wheat or a small sheep, but some, go a step further, including meat sausage to be eaten in a bread log, cold snow with coloured sugar. people of the cult, travel to each others homes, and purchase the items from one another, decorating the next house with those goods. All sending them off with the greeting "Come again".

Veterans Day in your world

After seeing so many of the 11/11/11:11 posts, I was reminded of an old TV-show that had rigged up a trap to go off and shoot anyone trying to access a treasure chest. It was such a moment in my childhood that I never forgot, So I was going to write about that..

But then I saw a photo-shoot of returned, healed veterans, missing arms, legs, both, faces from burns.. and for a moment I thought.. no-one in a fantasy world would be coming back like that, they'd either die.. or get miracle cures / limited wish back to full health.. but I asked myself again..

What would happen to veterans in our fantasy worlds

Our lives are affected by events around us, what we see, how other people explain what they see, and the cumulative effect it has upon us.

So When roleplay characters have events around them, their lives will be affected as much.. yet I get the feeling that maybe some GMs forget to add that to their games and worlds.

How Often have you had NPCs in taverns talk about the last great war, how it affected them, what they did, their stories. More interestingly, how did the non-worldly events change things. Magic can be both napalm and airstrikes, tactical strikes and reconnaissance, so would a medieval war be like we think of a medieval war? or would it be more on par with WWI & II, even some of the skirmishes being played out now.

What of Healing? If a cleric or three exist on the battlefield, wouldn't they be the no.1 target for all strikes? Mass heals, miracle cures, Resurrection for the top brass or greatest heroes? Surely the local kings would be half decent warriors, and would go into battle daily, with the knowledge that no matter what, they'll be alive again the next day.

I don't know about many systems, but my Clerics gain XP for healing, based on the wound and how much healing took place. After a week of constant, regular healing, plus surgery, they'd gain a level or maybe two, sure the diminishing returns would take out some of the smaller HP heals, but any mid level Cleric/Priest with a minor in healing, is going to get more than half a dozen levels from just being on call.. 

and if they were running M.A.S.H. I'd have some epic level doctors by the end of the campaign.

What of the wounded? the dying? ok guys, rush them all into this 10x10m room, and I'll mass heal everyone to stop bleeding and close severe wounds.. then the junior clerics can take over and do some extra healing on the severely wounded, and within a few days the entire platoon would be back on their feet, right as rain.

Only the dead would be the limiter, so get those clerics in some arrow resistant armour, out on the battlefield, and heal them before they die, not much, just enough to survive the trip back to hospital.

Wars would go on for much longer. Soldiers would gain enough XP to level up, by the end of a campaign, you'd have an army of 3rd or 4th levels.. that's a scary thought.. maybe that's why they go fighting, for massive XP boosts.

Sieges might be the same, except a few mages that summon up food would counter the main problem, and the sight buff spells would take care of sappers and other tricks from the enemy..

Again Mages, they could do all the fighting, summon up creatures, back him up with a cleric to cover the possible backlash and damage.. (Magic the Gathering?)

begs the Question.. why hire, train and pay an army, if a few mages and clerics would do.

Would War even exist in such a fantasy world? could it still exist? The enemy declares war on your kingdom, so you send over an assassin, kills the opposition king, then maybe a bard, disguised using voice and illusion spells, pretends he's king for a bit, strikes up a treaty, then retires, to allow his 'friend' (you) to rule his lands too.

But the question in the beginning is, if wars are changed, people arn't coming back missing parts, burnt faces, and the greater populace doesn't see this, how will they be affected.. how will they think about wars.. just some crazy game played by kings? go off, have a good fight, don't get killed and you'll be right? return all levelled up? ready to be a hero?

Doesn't feel ok to talk about it in such glib terms, but I think that's the survival mechanism kicking in, so would a medieval person feel the same way about it, not having yearly reminders?

Worldbuilding your Magic

Magic In Relation to World Building

One thing I think we all forget when worldbuilding, is how things started, how things exist, how they work with each other. Magic is a fairly big upset to anything and everything. If magic existed from the start, can anyone, in all logical conclusion, say that their world would look anything like Medieval Europe?

Now sure, There were charlatans that claimed that magic existed, and used it to profit, or make a living. Soothsayers, Fortune Tellers, Witch Doctors. For the most part, they used perception tricks, fakery and general human power of belief to cause things to happen.

In that, we had witch burnings, and the inquisition. So imagine if those things were actually real?

A lot of recent discussion n the topic caused me to create this thread and jot down notes in it..

yeah, looks like a random search on google images

Here's what I came up with.

The Early Caveman had Shamans. [Why isn't it Shamen?]Usually a herbalist, soothsayer, most likely predicting events based on his age, experience with things.. The Cave Shaman was the Ancient version of Google. Now imagine if said Shaman had actual powers, not just perceived powers based on wisdom.

Soothsayers predicting weather more accurately with fish bones, means decreased deaths in storms, possibly more predictable travel across oceans.. smaller boats with a weather shamans are now hundreds of years in advance of our history. The Vikings would have become more efficient raiders 200+ years earlier.

Tribes were ruled by Brawn (assumed), would now magic become a more dominant trait? just that one path alone.. ignore all else, and nerds become rulers of society pre-iron-age, God-Kings are not just called God-kings, they are most likely bred together with witches to ensure magic in the royal blood.

Though Magic + Brains becomes the eventual power, the Brawn still has the upper hand in the first few years, would bullies become victims in the later years? would the alpha males be eradicated in favour of the Beta-mages. There was an article recently about a group of monkeys who lost their alpha males to poisoning, and within a generation, the tribe was peaceful, had little to no abuse, females were treated as equals. Would society mature and become utopia without the brutal power hungry alpha?

Assume that Brawn remains equally Dominant, or that Alpha Mages (Brawn + Magic) become leaders,. would now early society break far more into the Elite and the Slaves? The Elite breed with Mages Only to maintain the power, quashing all independent magical bloodlines.

The concept of the Advisor in many societies now becomes the mage, far more real than fictional variants, his/her spells are used to determine visitors/diplomats are being truthful, whole militant situations fall apart when the mage can force the diplomat to reveal all secrets.

On the subject of Wars, would you really arm hundreds of men to fight battles when you can send out a couple of sorcerers and their private guards? Imagine a Game of Civ without armies, because your opponent could just cast flame strike, now instead you need to just hire your own mage, and maybe an assassin+mage to take out his mage.

A lot of writers would probably want to 'balance' the magic, costs to cast, to ensure that the 'world' remains closer to their medieval history + magic vision. Things like, magic costs the user, the ability to procreate, or magic users are one in a million..They have their own work-arounds..

So, given that your brother is a mage, you're likely to be a mage, the council, asks you to not be a mage.. but instead marry a woman who is also asked not to be a mage. because genetically, you're both likely to have double-mage children.

If Magic Users are one in a million, then being the king who has a mage, now becomes supremely important, but careful that the mage doesn't want to be king himself.

When I talk of Wars and Advisors and Diplomats and such, I'm thinking Medieval in my head, but I really should be thinking ancient Greek or earlier.. because of my first few posts about magic coming in much earlier with cavemen, wouldn't it be safe to assume that this culture of magical Advisor to the King, or God-King exists far earlier than Knights on Horseback..moreso because there are more than a few thousand articles on the ideas that Technological advances in warfare came about because of warfare. They invented ways to get around what the enemy had invented, and in turn the enemy invented ways to thwart the new inventions.

Speculation that a "spell slinger" would make Armoured Knight obsolete as what Guns did in our History, should be taken back quite a few steps, where spell slinger comes in pre-Mesopotamia. Would anyone bother to make leather armour if a fireball is going to annihilate you anyway?

In my own world, I saw gunpowder being a very big danger to mages, an invention that gives non-mages the ability to take down a mage, as fast, if not faster than the mage can cast a protective spell, and being mages, they decided that it should not be invented. They dedicated a cult of magic users who learn several specific spells, such as Dimension Door, Scry, Mind-wipe and the like, so if (and when) Gunpowder is invented, they turn up, and erase the idea from the inventor, and destroy the laboratory. Of course a secret cult has developed it in secret, and have begun their development of the Gun, which makes a great back-drop for a campaign that I run.

There are so many possible ways that magic would interrupt, cause, hinder, help, change history, it makes little sense to try and make a medieval+magic fantasy trope.. and yet, if you go too far off from the trope, a lot of readers will not grasp what you're doing and you limit your audience..

I'm looking to put together a massive multi-player game of Civilization, which will explore this concept further, I'm not 100% sure of my approach, and how it will come about.. but stay tuned.  

Original Stats: The Mage

When we first started looking at putting together the Mage in our system, we had 3 players who tried magic, Mattius the Thaumaturge, was an experimenter, he had no real spells, just things he picked up along the way, Reym the Elven Mage/Fighter, who had some augmentation for combat, and finally Sutekh, the sprite, who had a range of natural abilities, but not specific magics.

Remember, this was back in 2nd Edition Rules, The Amalgamation of all systems had begun, but magic was far down the list.. so in order to make a playable game, I just hobbled together the spell lists, averaged out some spells and levels to match something clean, and ended up with a hodgepodge of mismatched rules that made little to no real sense..

which is magic, when you think about it.

Magic is either science or its Not

My First big problem was that I was reading far too much Science Fiction at the time, Issac Asimovs stories of Azazel the 'Demon' using high level technology to create the effects, which seemed like magic. 

In '96 I went to a community college to get a degree on Computer Science and was learning about databases.. one thing I put together was a structure of 'cause & effect' for spells.

Then at the Same College I met some teachers, who put me onto some Professors at University, who were very keen to discuss how magic could work under the laws of Thermodynamics, Electromagnetism and Looking into Spirituality and how it could be represented in a magical system.

Now, while I have remade the rules of Combat several times, Archery several times, Stealth several times, Magic remained the same system for many many years..

Here's how it worked then, and still does for Version 3..

All spells, based on their school, had a difficulty level to study, A Study requirement, an Imperfection level to cast spells. The Caster would roll for cast spell, if passed, they had an imperfection chance %, but if failed, this value was increased by the spell difficulty x The failure result.

Back then, Magic worked on a number of d8s  x the spell level. so 1st level spells could fail up to 8 pts (if you had no score) and the highest 16th level spells, could theoretically fail by 128pts. We were experimenting with varied dice pools at the time.. my colleague was trying to make a 3d8 version of the whole system, arguing if 2 dice gave a good bell curve, 3 dice would be better.

Again though, Maybe because the magic was so broken, or so difficult to learn a spell, or the number of players I had was so limited, I needed a group to play some mages..

So the OS team were born.. 5 Mages, down on their luck, driven out of town after town for some shocking trickster attempts, vowed to return to vent their revenge, sought out some powerful magics and blew themselves to smithereens when the imperfection failed far too much. But in that time, I did manage to clean up the magic rules from v2 to v3.

v3.5 is another story for another day..