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Below is some discussion on religion in Midnight that I'm reposting from the Midnight prep thread (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=14098).  My player Lucy doesn't want to go into that other thread to avoid spoilers, but I'm sure she'd like to see and contribute to this discussion.  

So here goes - my apologies for not having thought of this sooner and now having to repost a bunch of stuff here;  also apologies for somewhat arbitrarily starting in the middle of things.  

Quote from: Bryan_TJust to comment on a couple of the topics you raised.

From what you said, going to the veil = a heroquest.  Even in Glorantha most quests are done to re-play the deeds of heroes of more historical perspective (although they were often repeating the deeds of demi-gods or gods).  The "hero plane" where most heroquests take place is basically trapped history, which in many ways sounds muck like the slivers caught in the veil.

The key points of a heroquest is that you are leaving the here and now and going into an eternal past, that without some sort of story to guide you, you don't know where you will end up, and that you can gain power, in various forms, for doing so.  It sounds like the first two are definately the case with the veil fragments.  I don't know about the third aspect, bringing back new power, and how that matches your view of the veil.

Quote from: Mike Holmes

Quote from: StalkingBlueI haven't a clear answer for the metaphysics question yet, not one that's easy to relate to the Gloranthan model anyway.  

Well, it's not really neccessary to parallel the Gloranthan model precisely. All that's really neccessary is to come up with a cosmology that you want to work with. Then you can kinda pick and choose how magic works based on that.

QuoteSo if there's any kind of Shadow otherworld in my game, it's going to be in the Mirrors.

OK, but is this the only available otherworld? I mean, this sounds like the homeworld of the Astiraxes and such, but is it also where the dead go? Is it also where the spirits are that shamans deal with? Or are there other otherworlds that are not blocked off by the Veil.

QuoteThere's also the inaccessible gods' otherworld, however this isn't too relevant to our game.

Cool. What I'd do is just have it in the back of your mind that theism is possible if somebody does pierce the Veil somehow, but currently it's not possible.

QuoteWe called PCs crossing over into those other-time-places "going into the Veil".

Sounds to me like this is definitely otherworld itself. Possibly part of the Shadow Otherworld from what you've said, but possibly an otherworld of it's own. Which way do you see it? I'm imagining a sort of purgatory where the souls await the opening of the Veil so that they can go to the otherworlds beyond. Think there might be some potential in that?

QuoteNow obviously I could say that the Veil also contains slivers of various otherworlds seeping through from the far side or cut off and trapped in the Veil barrier.  

Nah. Again, I'm not suggesting that you find ways to include other Gloranthan worlds or magic types. Just that you find the otherworlds that you want to deal with.

QuoteThe amount of learning involved for the three of us seems a bit offputting to me, that's why I've been edging around the question.  

Well, again, just decide on what otherworlds you have, and then we can implement them. The only study you'll have to do is in knowing how it works for your own game. Which can be kept pretty simple if you want.

Quote from: StalkingBlue

Quote from: Bryan_TFrom what you said, going to the veil = a heroquest.

Yes. I was staggered when I first read about heroquests - here was a game that did stuff like I'd started doing with my veil scenarios, only about thirteem million times better!  

QuoteThe key points of a heroquest is that you are leaving the here and now and going into an eternal past, that without some sort of story to guide you, you don't know where you will end up, and that you can gain power, in various forms, for doing so.  

That's all fine by me for veil stuff.  In play up to now we've had a distinct lack of story guidance and little tangible power brought back, but that can change.  In the past the PCs were always agreeing to do veil stuff for the elves who told them virtually nothing;  the elves presumably knew a bit more than they were letting on, but not enough to want to take the risks of going themselves.  ("This veil has been extensively tested on humans." ;) )

Quote from: StalkingBlue

Quote from: Mike HolmesAll that's really neccessary is to come up with a cosmology that you want to work with. Then you can kinda pick and choose how magic works based on that.

Here's what I have for magic and cosmology:  

The dead go nowhere. That's right.  The Veil is keeping them.  They linger. That's why the world suffers from so many Fell and angry ghosts. (Midnight canon, so far.)  

Otherworldly beings and otherworldly magic also go nowhere. They are trapped by the Veil just like souls are.  If Izrador's side keeps leeching magic from the land with Mirrors and killing or controlling otherworldly beings for long enough, all magic except Izrador's magic will die out.  
As Izrador's magic relies on the leeching Mirrors, that means that in effect Izradian magic will also die out after a time, unless the Veil is burst when he rises.  

I see the original Veil as some kind of transparent bubble. The souls of the dead can get to the inner surface of the bubble but no further.  There's a huge backlog of souls, it builds and builds. Some get reincarnated (but population is dwindling), some stay trapped in their bodies (Fell) or near their homes or place of death (ghosts). This ever thickening smog of souls is where veilquests take place.

Non-Izradian magic is available from magical energy and otherworldly creatures trapped in this world since Izrador's fall - this magic is diminished by Mirrors.  Izradian magic is available through serving Izrador as legate - this magic is enhanced by Mirrors.  

Legates choose Izradian magic from the Nine Books of Shadow.  The "books" are basically affinities and the feats in them are fairly powerful, but Legates can't improvise.

I wanted the Legate side of magic to be powerful yet lifeless, to suit the concept of a mostly-dead god.  They have "resurrection" magic but it causes the victim of it to rise as Fell (sentient undead).  If they win this war and manage to "revive" Izrador he'd be in a dead body btw.  A Fell god, ick.  :)

Other magic can come in either of two forms: Common magic, which people can just pick up from what's floating around in the land and/or in their family, no religious implications.  Or "channeler's books", which again are affinities that have less powerful feats than Izradian books but allow for improvisation and development.  You learn these books from a mentor, either a channeler or an otherworldly being. What with being taught, developed further, misremembered, lost, pieced together from half-lost fragments etc., no two channeler books are exactly alike.  

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QuoteWe called PCs crossing over into those other-time-places "going into the Veil".

Sounds to me like this is definitely otherworld itself. Possibly part of the Shadow Otherworld from what you've said, but possibly an otherworld of it's own. Which way do you see it?

Yup, definitely an otherworld of its own. I'm thinking it's the "soul smog" I described above. Call that a purgatory if you like, have to ask rush-hour commuters next time I see some... ;)

Oh, and the magic trapped in the physical world is also trying to escape and go home but can't, so it adds its own properties to the soul smog and all this mixed toegther starts to grow into slivers of otherworld.  (Possibly those are even nuclei of new otherworlds, if the Veil is ever broken.  Which would allow mortal heroes to ascend and become deities.  Cool?)

The "soul smog" also explains why I want to have several layers to the otherworld for the Dornish Crown heroquest.  Again, it's also to keep my options open, I might very well decide on the spur of the moment to ignore all the layers but one if it feels right.  But more importantly I want this place to be a huge, crowded, angry, broken mess.  Like rush hour. :) And a bit like the world will be if Izrador wins:  full of angry dead people.

Quote from: Mike Holmes

Quote from: StalkingBlueThe dead go nowhere. That's right.  The Veil is keeping them.  They linger. That's why the world suffers from so many Fell and angry ghosts.

OK, so we've got this veil otherworld, and it's the heroquesting otherworld. So magic does not come from it (other than one can go there and get magic from the associated stuck otherworld beings and such). This matches well HQ, actually, because the heroquesting plane there is defined as a collision of all of the other otherworlds. So you find everything there, but like Bryan said, stuck, and therefore not able to provide magic.

Non-Izradian magic is available from magical energy and otherworldly creatures trapped in this world since Izrador's fall - this magic is diminished by Mirrors.  Izradian magic is available through serving Izrador as legate - this magic is enhanced by Mirrors.  

QuoteLegates choose Izradian magic from the Nine Books of Shadow.  The "books" are basically affinities and the feats in them are fairly powerful, but Legates can't improvise.

So they get magic from the Shadow otherworld, right? You haven't answered my question on that: there is a Shadow otherworld, right? Where the Astiraxes are from and such? And this is where the bad guys get their power.

Here's a more important question, apparently there are all sorts of spirits in the Shadow world, or so Scott implies. Can people be shamans as he implies? That is are there animist traditions that draw on the powers of the spirits of the Shadow otherworld? Or are you just chucking that for your game?

QuoteOther magic can come in either of two forms: Common magic, which people can just pick up from what's floating around in the land and/or in their family, no religious implications.

Well...in Glorantha, common magic comes ultimately from the otherworld beings that reside in the mundane world. There are religious implications, just not strong ones. That is, one can get the magic without even knowing much about the religion where it comes from. But that doesn't mean that there aren't such religions. You could choose to ignore this for your game, but consider keeping them. I mean, do you have dryads, nymphs, and such in the game? These are simply nature spirits that inhabit the mundane world. If people get magic from them, then cool, no? This would be charms. You also have said you have "angels" and yes, these are daimones, from which you get common magic feats. If you want something even less sentient and more "just magic" there are essences, which are unintelligent, from which you get common magic spells.

And, yes, there are basic magics that come directly from the mundane world alone, these are called talents. So why not keep the full array?

QuoteOr "channeler's books", which again are affinities that have less powerful feats than Izradian books but allow for improvisation and development.  You learn these books from a mentor, either a channeler or an otherworldly being. What with being taught, developed further, misremembered, lost, pieced together from half-lost fragments etc., no two channeler books are exactly alike.  

Sounds like theism, but where does the power come from? That is, channeling usually refers to bringing the power in from a diety or somesuch. But there are no other dieties, right? So what do these books represent? Are they, perhaps, tapping into some sort of leftover resonance of the gods? If, in fact, it's just a matter of daimones living in the mundane world, then you've just described common magic feats again.

QuoteOh, and the magic trapped in the physical world is also trying to escape and go home but can't, so it adds its own properties to the soul smog and all this mixed toegther starts to grow into slivers of otherworld.  

Ehh. Will you ever really explore this? If not, I wouldn't worry about it.

Quote from: StalkingBlue

Quote from: Mike Holmes

QuoteLegates choose Izradian magic from the Nine Books of Shadow.  The "books" are basically affinities and the feats in them are fairly powerful, but Legates can't improvise.

So they get magic from the Shadow otherworld, right? You haven't answered my question on that: there is a Shadow otherworld, right? Where the Astiraxes are from and such? And this is where the bad guys get their power.

I don't think of it as an otherworld, at least not a complete one and certainly not one that people could travel to. Izradian magic comes from the Mirrors, which take their magical leech-and-dispense qualities from Izrador's own body/blood (which is lying rotting somewhere near the north pole in the physical world).  Astiraxes - hm. Not sure, I don't have a clear imagethey could be some kind of spinoff of Mirrors, or they could be created by feeding godsflesh to animals that are then killed in a nasty ritual, "harvesting" the animal's soul to become an incorporeal demon. Sorry, I don't have a better answer yet. It has to start with some kind of image or idea for me, I can't do the abstract bits first and fill in colour later.

QuoteHere's a more important question, apparently there are all sorts of spirits in the Shadow world, or so Scott implies. Can people be shamans as he implies? That is are there animist traditions that draw on the powers of the spirits of the Shadow otherworld? Or are you just chucking that for your game?

I don't remember reading about a Shadow otherworld in Scott's conversion, but if there was one then he created it.  All "spirits" in the Midnight books are present in the physical world.  And the creatures referred to as "spirits" in Midnight aren't necessarily animist spirits. Only a few "spirits" are described in any detail, and at least some of those sound much more like daimones to me.  

And I don't currently see the benefit of including animism in my game to be honest. I don't really want to rule it out for the future, but neither of my two players is very interested in how magic works.  Katrin took one common magic ability and Apari's player took a Swamp magic affinity that he doesn't really sound happy with, so we might swap that for a common magic ability as well to free up ability slots for him.  Which means that almost all magic they are going to be confronted with is NPC magic - and for that, two extra magic systems?  I think I'll just leave it at my two theism-like variations for channeler/Izradian magic.  

Maybe I'm overlooking something important here though. I haven't seen any magic other than theism in play (in Ian's game), and just from reading the rules I can begin to understand how the mechanics work, but I don't get enthusiastic about them.  (Normal for me, again. Game mechanics don't tend to leap off the page and come to life for me. I have to see them in play, especially complex stuff like magic.)

QuoteWell...in Glorantha, common magic comes ultimately from the otherworld beings that reside in the mundane world. There are religious implications, just not strong ones. That is, one can get the magic without even knowing much about the religion where it comes from. But that doesn't mean that there aren't such religions. You could choose to ignore this for your game, but consider keeping them.

Ok, I'm not forbidding it. Just not using it right now. So perhaps the magic people get "just so" out of nowhere really comes from beings that they may know nothing about, that's fine by me. I like it because it opens up possibilities for plot stuff.  If your pain-relief magic ability is really due to a pain-leeching daimon, say, then that daimon might be up to something at some point, or might get in trouble (which screws with your magic), or might learn cool new stuff that boosts your magic in unexpected (sometimes nice but sometimes embarrassing or nasty) ways.

Although that said, I suspect I have more material than I need for this game, so I'll deal with that as and when it becomes relevant.

QuoteI mean, do you have dryads, nymphs, and such in the game?

I haven't used any. They could exist, sure, but I'm keeping the number of "weird" creatures low for colour reasons. I think the "angel" may have been the first one, encountered after, what? eight months? of play.

QuoteThese are simply nature spirits that inhabit the mundane world. If people get magic from them, then cool, no? This would be charms. You also have said you have "angels" and yes, these are daimones, from which you get common magic feats. If you want something even less sentient and more "just magic" there are essences, which are unintelligent, from which you get common magic spells.

And, yes, there are basic magics that come directly from the mundane world alone, these are called talents. So why not keep the full array?

Why do I have to have three different types of creatures that give me magic abilities with different names? What am I overlooking here?  

In Glorantha it makes sense because it ties in with the the three magic systems. But if I'm using only one streamlined system?

Quote

QuoteOr "channeler's books"...

Sounds like theism, but where does the power come from? That is, channeling usually refers to bringing the power in from a diety or somesuch. But there are no other dieties, right? So what do these books represent? Are they, perhaps, tapping into some sort of leftover resonance of the gods? If, in fact, it's just a matter of daimones living in the mundane world, then you've just described common magic feats again.

I think it's a mix. People use anything, both leftover resonance, i.e. the magic that the Mirrors leech from the land, and what "spirits" (in the general, Midnight sense) contribute;  and they are mostly ignorant about what they are doing.  To my mind this is the reason why magic is much less powerful than it used to be:  people are out of synch with religion.  The only religion they can perceive clearly (whether they are in it or against it) is Izrador's church.  It's a pretty bleak world, a world with no (or almost no) religion - but that's what Midnight is to me.

And in the end, do I even have to decide this for the game? If we're not interested in exploring in detail how magic works?

Quote from: Mike HolmesI take back all the stuff I said about magic. Midnight is predicated on the Middle Earth paradigm, and, interestingly, that's very, very non-magical in many ways. More importantly, magic signifies belief in HQ, and the only belief characters have in Middle Earth, and apparently in Midnight, is in their homes and in their people. You've actually stuck to that very well, the only substantial magic item the good guys have that you've mentioned so far being a crown (heck, we're not even sure that's magic), and that's just a symbol of the homeland again.

I am still curious - do the people of Midnight have any sort of belief system at all? I mean, without the flashy effects of the magic in RPGs we have religions and beliefs. What's happened to those in this world? Or is it just not discussed?

QuoteI don't think of it as an otherworld, at least not a complete one and certainly not one that people could travel to. Izradian magic comes from the Mirrors, which take their magical leech-and-dispense qualities from Izrador's own body/blood (which is lying rotting somewhere near the north pole in the physical world).

Well, that sounds like an otherworld to me. Otherworlds aren't places just for traveling to, they're where magic comes from. I mean, Izrador's blood doesn't actually flow all over the planet physically, right? So it gets to the mirrors by...some other place, right? In fact, mirrors are classic portals to otherworlds. Also, don't the dead go there at least part of the time?

I think you've described an otherworld whether you like it or not. But it doesn't require you to do anything about it, really. I mean it just gives us a parallel explanation for where the magic comes from that matches the HQ metaphysics.

Why bother finding the matches? Well you look for further fun implications. For example, maybe one can go to the world of shadow. Perhaps the Night Kings get around this way at times, using the mirrors to travel quickly by entering one, and exiting at another in what seems in our world to be the same instant. Maybe this is how they get their abilities, essentially going on heroquests into Izrador's blood to gain powers from him.

Not saying you have to do any of this, just that often when you do this sort of exercise, you find ways of doing things in interesting mechanical ways that explain some of your game world better than you thought it could be explained.

QuoteAstiraxes - hm. Not sure, I don't have a clear imagethey could be some kind of spinoff of Mirrors, or they could be created by feeding godsflesh to animals that are then killed in a nasty ritual, "harvesting" the animal's soul to become an incorporeal demon.

Are these from the Midnight text, or not? Did Scott make them up perhaps? I was imagining with how he mentioned them that they would be something well written up in the canon.

QuoteI don't remember reading about a Shadow otherworld in Scott's conversion, but if there was one then he created it.

Then he must have created it. So there's nothing canon called "Shadow" or "the Shadow" or anything? Hmm. Could just be Scott doing the logic I did above and extrapolating the shadow otherworld from the description of how Izrador works.

QuoteAll "spirits" in the Midnight books are present in the physical world.

That alone doesn't tell us anything. But you're correct that the term spirit doesn't neccessarily imply anything in particular here, either. The real question is how they interact with folks, and what their "belief" system is about.

QuoteOnly a few "spirits" are described in any detail, and at least some of those sound much more like daimones to me.

How so? Are they all servants of Izrador?

QuoteAnd I don't currently see the benefit of including animism in my game to be honest. I don't really want to rule it out for the future, but neither of my two players is very interested in how magic works.

Well, part of Hero Quest is the idea that characters change in their beliefs sometimes, and that sometimes leads to new magic. They might be more interested if they saw better how it works. But, again, given the Middle Earthiness of the game, It's probably not a huge deal to have all of these options.  

QuoteI think I'll just leave it at my two theism-like variations for channeler/Izradian magic.

I quite agree there. Again, I was thinking of player options. They meet some NPC Shaman, and he shows them some spirits, and they become interested...can be a fun source of bangs.

QuoteMaybe I'm overlooking something important here though. I haven't seen any magic other than theism in play (in Ian's game), and just from reading the rules I can begin to understand how the mechanics work, but I don't get enthusiastic about them.

Well, I think the trappings of animism and wizardry are interesting. Part of it is about who you have to know to get magic. If you treat it as just something you ger from...nowhere I guess...then it's not well linked into the setting. The HQ magic systems tell you something about the magic you're using, gives it context.

QuoteAlthough that said, I suspect I have more material than I need for this game, so I'll deal with that as and when it becomes relevant.

Well, I was trying to work through it with you because you have characters with magic already. I thought that perhaps we could find some of the bangier stuff from how magic works to leverage in with the other stuff. The more you play, the less you can go back and say that the magic was part of somthing larger all along, and it just never got noticed in any way.i

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QuoteI mean, do you have dryads, nymphs, and such in the game?

I haven't used any. They could exist, sure, but I'm keeping the number of "weird" creatures low for colour reasons. I think the "angel" may have been the first one, encountered after, what? eight months? of play.

I was asking more about from the canon. Does Midnight have these beings? If so, they strongly imply animism exists (or, rather, that either it does or that they're being defined in a less interesting way than they could be). Which has other ramifications if it's true.

All easily avoidable by not having such beings come into play, however.

QuoteWhy do I have to have three different types of creatures that give me magic abilities with different names? What am I overlooking here?  

In Glorantha it makes sense because it ties in with the the three magic systems. But if I'm using only one streamlined system?

Well that's like saying why do I have to have three different sorts of vehicle when they just take me from point A to B. I mean a pickup truck, a sportscar, and a family van all accomplish getting you from A to B, but they're pretty different. In Hero Quest these things have mechanical importance. For example, charms are "always on" and provide their augments whether or not you have time to use the magic. With a spell, you need to have an object (talisman) to cast it with, and some time. Feats just need time. Then there's concentrating on one of the sorts. Etc.

You can just ignore all of that, but I, at least, think it's interesting stuff. In any case, I don't think you "need" any of it, just that I wonder if the setting implies any of this fun stuff.

Quote...fireballs, invisibility and teleport spells ...

Are those things canonical to Midnight? Those kinds of spells, that is? Who uses them, if so? Why would you get rid of them? Or are they somehow antithetical to Midnight canon?

Quote from: StalkingBlue

Quote from: Mike HolmesMidnight is predicated on the Middle Earth paradigm, and, interestingly, that's very, very non-magical in many ways. More importantly, magic signifies belief in HQ, and the only belief characters have in Middle Earth, and apparently in Midnight, is in their homes and in their people.  

That's exactly it, yes.  Expressed much more clearly than I could have.  Sometimes I just have a hunch of what I want things to be like and can't articulate why.  

QuoteI am still curious - do the people of Midnight have any sort of belief system at all? I mean, without the flashy effects of the magic in RPGs we have religions and beliefs. What's happened to those in this world? Or is it just not discussed?

You mean in Midnight canon?  It's not discussed in the way we are discussing it here, but there are references.  

I see two conflicting views in the Midnight material.  On the one hand the Midnight designers have cut all the D&D gods other than Izrador off from the world, and make sure they stress despair and hopelessness on every page.  If there is any sort of belief system that pervades the setting material, it is that the gods are lost and all hope is lost because nothing can stand against Izrador.  You can join Izrador – or nothing.  

Yet there are "Religion" sections in the book.  It looks almost as if the designers wanted to create a completely bleak and hopeless world, but couldn't quite manage to bring their cultures to life without giving them spiritual traditions.  Here are some examples.  

Dorns believe that their departed ancestors "have power over the affairs of the living" and demand honourable behaviour from them (MN 143).  Despite the ghost problems Dorns still cremate their dead in rings of standing stones – dangerous, haunted places these days, where you don't want to go after nightfall or even linger too long over a funeral.  

The southern humans, Sarcosans, still believe in the Riding Host, a vast pantheon believed to be the stars.  They believe that after death a Sarcosan will be judged either worthy or unworthy to join the Riding Host, depending on their deeds in life.  As I read the text, the Riding Host never promised or granted benefits in life, so its being cut off from the world doesn't make a noticeable difference.  (MN 158) (Strangely enough the elves appear to have established that the souls of the dead go nowhere, which is why there are so many Fell and angry ghosts around. But this isn't mentioned in the Sarcosan religion writeup.)
Sarcosans also make for the most numerous and most powerful following of Izrador.  Both human Night Kings and apparently most puppet lords, even in Dornish lands, are Sarcosans.  Strange again.  They are the people with the strongest religious affiliation and yet the people who succumbed to the Shadow most easily?

Gnomes and many human riverfolk "pay religious homage" to a vast entity, "the Watcher of the River" (MN 177).  Halflings make offerings to local nature spirits (MN 171).  

The elves worship "both named and anonymous spirits" (MN 115).  Heepa-Heepa, small and weak entities, look after children, there's Zulion the Trickster, Xione the Mistress of the Frozen Wood, and others.  There's mention of a shrine to Xione in Fury.  Jungle elves use a lot of ritual in their daily lives, such as stirring water with a stick before drinking to drive out evil spirits.  (Hm, I should remind Apari's player of this, he never went for these things in the past but with the new style he might like to include it in his play.)
Besides, there is a temple to the Lost Gods hidden away in Erethor, where old traditions are kept;  and more recently there is the "Cult of the Witch" – elves who believe the High Queen Aradiel to be one of the Lost Gods.  

Dwarves believe the Lost Gods are lost for good and irrelevant.  Some, but not all, dwarves believe in mountain spirits.  Father Sun and Mother Moon figure prominently in Dwarven mythology.  (MN 185)

QuoteI mean, Izrador's blood doesn't actually flow all over the planet physically, right? So it gets to the mirrors by...some other place, right? In fact, mirrors are classic portals to otherworlds. Also, don't the dead go there at least part of the time?

If that qualifies for an otherworld, fine by me.  If the dead go there I've missed that bit though.  I don't think they do.  

QuoteNot saying you have to do any of this, just that often when you do this sort of exercise, you find ways of doing things in interesting mechanical ways that explain some of your game world better than you thought it could be explained.

Fine by me – as long as I can keep it simple.  Interesting mechanics and explanations are great as long as I can bring them across without too much rules baggage.  

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QuoteAstiraxes ...

Are these from the Midnight text, or not? Did Scott make them up perhaps? I was imagining with how he mentioned them that they would be something well written up in the canon.

Astiraxes are part of canon, fully statted D&D monsters and all.  They were created by Izrador a century or so ago, to track down and kill spellcasters.  They are "naturally invisible and incorporeal spirits" classified as "Magical Beasts" (MN 229), which fight by possessing animals.  How or from what they are created isn't described.  

QuoteSo there's nothing canon called "Shadow" or "the Shadow" or anything? Hmm. Could just be Scott doing the logic I did above and extrapolating the shadow otherworld from the description of how Izrador works.

That's how I think it must be.  "The Shadow" is the parallel to Tolkien's "Enemy".  It's a personified reference to Izrador's side.  

QuoteAll "spirits" in the Midnight books are present in the physical world.But you're correct that the term spirit doesn't neccessarily imply anything in particular here, either. The real question is how they interact with folks, and what their "belief" system is about.

Ah right, now I'm getting a clearer idea of why this kind of thinking wasn't getting me anywhere.  The text bits on religion don't really talk about spirits, lost gods, ancestors or stars interacting with people.  What they describe is people's beliefs and rituals, but not actual interaction.  

QuoteWell, part of Hero Quest is the idea that characters change in their beliefs sometimes, and that sometimes leads to new magic. They might be more interested if they saw better how it works. But, again, given the Middle Earthiness of the game, It's probably not a huge deal to have all of these options.  

Actually I suspect that it might detract from the focus of the game as it has developed.  It's been very much about taking personal strength from things in the world – your home, your family, your honour, your ancestors, your bond to someone you've fought side by side with.  I'd much prefer religion and magic to remain subtle and non-intrusive for the most part, to be honest.  Again it's more of a hunch than something I can explain very well, it feels as if varied mechanics for religions would be baggage in this case.  

That's not speaking generally, mind you.  It took me a while to realise this, but I can see how having all three systems in a setting can lend itself to very cool options and themes.  Only tacking them onto my game that has been going elsewhere for a year doesn't feel like the right way to go.  

QuotePart of it is about who you have to know to get magic. If you treat it as just something you ger from...nowhere I guess...then it's not well linked into the setting. The HQ magic systems tell you something about the magic you're using, gives it context.

In Midnight you get only arcane magic, which in D&D comes from either studying very hard or from having some unexplained innate gift – "from nowhere I guess" is a very precise and rather frustrating description of it.  Now what do I want to change about that at this stage in the game?  

Midnight has no magic communities.  That's a lack you may argue, but I like it for this setting and for echoing Tolkien.  You can have a home, a family, a heroband (or three) - but you cannot have a church unless you're on the side of the Shadow.  

Midnight as written also doesn't really have entities that grant magic, although some bits of description of spirits may be hints of this - for instance gnomes believe that their boats sail more safely when they make offerings to the Watcher of the River.  I'm thinking magic could actually be granted by "spirits" without people necessarily knowing about it.  You believe you've learnt that "Rally the Clan" from your grandmother or "Swamp" magic from your mentor channeler, while in reality the gestures and words you use for them mimic an old, forgotten ritual of worship.  Something like that would work for me, and it leaves some options open without necessarily leading into three different magic rulesets.  

We have had magic in the game before (like every D&D game it was dominated by magic), but magic never had any religious connotation.  So if it starts having one now, I'd like it to be subtle and possible to be overlooked unless you look closely.  

QuoteI thought that perhaps we could find some of the bangier stuff from how magic works to leverage in with the other stuff. The more you play, the less you can go back and say that the magic was part of somthing larger all along, and it just never got noticed in any way.

My simplified magic and religion system doesn't have much bang potential in it as such, that's true – no conflicts or contradictions inherent in it.  

QuoteI was asking more about from the canon. Does Midnight have these beings? If so, they strongly imply animism exists (or, rather, that either it does or that they're being defined in a less interesting way than they could be). Which has other ramifications if it's true.

Technically speaking Midnight can have all the monsters that are in the D&D Monster Manual.  That includes dryads, nymphs, elementals, devils, demons and angels, giants, as well as all the D&D-specific monsters that have no root in mythology.  And yes, that's defining them in a not-very-interesting way, that is inherent in D&D.  Of the Midnight spirits-specific spirits, some classify as Outsiders (incorporeal beings from other planes) and others as Fey (native corporeal or incorporeal spirits).  

Minions of Shadow added some touches;  most have a weird gothic horror feel that I can't really work with for my purposes, but a few work with in mythology, which is great for a olkienesque feel.  For example unicorns have turned into evil black Splinter Steeds, with splintered horns (this happened when the Veil sundered the world from the gods, 9,000 years ago).  

And if you're looking for daimones of other gods than Izrador, they can be present, too.  According to canon many "outsiders" (otherworldly beings) were trapped on Aryth at the Sundering.  

I think you can make arguments for each of the three otherworlds to have some relevance in Midnight if you choose to.  That's not my point.  My point is that I want to streamline it all, to avoid having to learn and teach all those rules and to avoid diluting and distracting from the feel of our game as it has developed in the past (despite the hindrances from D&D).  
Perhaps D&D has made me more wary of system intrusion than I need to be, but perhaps I have a valid point here.  What you said about Midnight and Middle Earth being devoid of religion rings very tue to me.  

QuoteIn Hero Quest these things have mechanical importance. For example, charms are "always on" and provide their augments whether or not you have time to use the magic. With a spell, you need to have an object (talisman) to cast it with, and some time. Feats just need time. Then there's concentrating on one of the sorts. Etc.

You can just ignore all of that, but I, at least, think it's interesting stuff. In any case, I don't think you "need" any of it, just that I wonder if the setting implies any of this fun stuff.

Interesting, granted.  Interesting enough for me to take the trouble to add it to my current game?  I don't think so.  Don't get me wrong, if there's a cool opportunity for a religious/cultural conflict that will be great.  But I would prefer not to have rules complications for religions.  As you said so well, Midnight/Middle Earth has a focus on believing in and taking strength from home and people, rather than from outside spiritual entities, and I don't want to dilute that.  

QuoteAre those things canonical to Midnight? Those kinds of spells, that is? Who uses them, if so? Why would you get rid of them? Or are they somehow antithetical to Midnight canon?

My pet peeve about Midnight.  The setting so shouldn't have been written for D&D.  Oh well, it's a good enough decision commercially.  But it really doesn't do anything for the feel.  I haven't seen any magic in the HQ book that I'd have a problem with for Midnight, but D&D spells (again, this mindless wargaming collection) just don't work for me here.  

Fireballs and invisibility and teleport are all on the D&D spell list and are a wargamer's bread and butter.  Teleport doesn't work in Midnight because you'd have to be able to go through other planes to teleport (first disappointment for Apari's player when we were still playing D&D), but the other spells are available.  

Mass-destruction spells like fireballs (channeler) or flame strikes (legate) in everyone's hands are the wrong kind of magic if I want any sort of a Tolkien feel.  Besides when I'm playing Midnight in D&D, I run into big-time balance problems with those spells.  To resist fireballs or flame strikes, I need divine magic (unavailable to PCs) and lots of magic items (unavailable to most everyone).  
I ended up reducing fireball and flame strike to spells that target an individual creature per casting, rather than incinerate everything within a 40' radius.  This effectively eliminated both spells from our game.  Apari's player wouldn't use fireballs anymore because they were now "iffy" (note that he considers Gandalf's magic "wussy").  And I still couldn't have legates use flame strikes on the PCs because with the lack of protective magic those spells were far too deadly, albeit now only for one PC at a time rather than for the entire party.  

Invisibility was and still is available in my game, but I'm using the "difficult magic" rule in HQ.  This made the player decide he didn't want the spell anymore (nor in fact any HQ magic) because it was no longer automatic.  

Quote from: Mike Holmes

Quote from: StalkingBlueYet there are "Religion" sections in the book.  It looks almost as if the designers wanted to create a completely bleak and hopeless world, but couldn't quite manage to bring their cultures to life without giving them spiritual traditions.

Well, see, I agree with them, really. That is, if things are as bleak as you say, then people have to believe in something, or they're going to either all join Izrador (I mean why not if he's all there is?) or they're going to just slit their wrists. They have to have something to live for. If they truely believe that the only supernatural force in the world is Izrador, then I think that they couldn't resist him.

QuoteDorns believe that their departed ancestors "have power over the affairs of the living" and demand honourable behaviour from them (MN 143).  Despite the ghost problems Dorns still cremate their dead in rings of standing stones – dangerous, haunted places these days, where you don't want to go after nightfall or even linger too long over a funeral.  

Classic ancestor animism. I mean classic. Katrin is a Dorn, right? I don't see why she shouldn't have her 5 tradition charms for being a spiritist.

QuoteThe southern humans, Sarcosans, still believe in the Riding Host, a vast pantheon believed to be the stars.  They believe that after death a Sarcosan will be judged either worthy or unworthy to join the Riding Host, depending on their deeds in life.  As I read the text, the Riding Host never promised or granted benefits in life, so its being cut off from the world doesn't make a noticeable difference.  

Right. So even if it doesn't give magic, it's still the religion part of their homeland keyword.

(MN 158) (Strangely enough the elves appear to have established that the souls of the dead go nowhere, which is why there are so many Fell and angry ghosts around. But this isn't mentioned in the Sarcosan religion writeup.)

QuoteSarcosans also make for the most numerous and most powerful following of Izrador.  Both human Night Kings and apparently most puppet lords, even in Dornish lands, are Sarcosans.  Strange again.  They are the people with the strongest religious affiliation and yet the people who succumbed to the Shadow most easily?

Well, perhaps the appearance of very manifest supernatural powers is convincing to such a people?

QuoteGnomes and many human riverfolk "pay religious homage" to a vast entity, "the Watcher of the River" (MN 177).  Halflings make offerings to local nature spirits (MN 171).  

The elves worship "both named and anonymous spirits" (MN 115).

I see where Doyce got his need for a spirit world. This is all animism, or, at least, common magic from spirits.  

QuoteBesides, there is a temple to the Lost Gods hidden away in Erethor, where old traditions are kept;

Again, a religion keyword addition, if not one that allows magic keywords.

Quoteand more recently there is the "Cult of the Witch" – elves who believe the High Queen Aradiel to be one of the Lost Gods.  

Sounds like either a full theist cult, or at least a Hero Cult.

QuoteDwarves believe the Lost Gods are lost for good and irrelevant.

Even that's a belief.

QuoteSome, but not all, dwarves believe in mountain spirits.  Father Sun and Mother Moon figure prominently in Dwarven mythology.

Dwarvern animism. Cool.

QuoteFine by me – as long as I can keep it simple.  Interesting mechanics and explanations are great as long as I can bring them across without too much rules baggage.  

I think that the rules are either minimal or non-existant. For instance one rule is that getting to any otherworld is a 10W3 resistance. Since you're going to have one otherworld, you'll need this rule. The other rules are only important if one of the characters really wants to have magic of the sort implied. If not, then there's nothing to worry about at all. If, say, a player wants their character to be a animist, it's really very simple. They just get a few "fetishes" which are magic abilities like any other, with an additional ability to "release" the fetish and add it's entire ability rating to one of yours (which is way powerful).

I mean, it's just not a lot of rules. Learning it from the book can be interesting, but just ask me, and I'll work through it with you. That is, again, if it ends up getting used at all.

The reason that I think it's interesting to work this stuff out is not so you get to use the rules in question, but because it gives you a view into what your character's cosmological outlook is like. I mean, what does the character think happens when they die, for instance? This can tend to really have some formative qualities as far as personality. And it, again, links the character to the setting.

Think of it this way. The Native American tribes were pretty much animist in outlook, despite not having the flashy effects of magic from this fantasy world. It's important to understand this belief system to get what they were (and are in some cases) really about. Without knowing a character's belief system it's hard to understand them. I mean, it seems to me that Katrin's honor is not just to satisfy her father, but to satisfy his and her ancestors as well, who they probably feel are looking down on them.

The important rules here, is the religion keyword. They should have a skill ability that represents how well they know the myths of their ancestors, for instance. And relationships to Spirit-Talkers who help them speak with the dead, so they know what to do. Etc.

QuoteAstiraxes are part of canon, fully statted D&D monsters and all.  They were created by Izrador a century or so ago, to track down and kill spellcasters.  They are "naturally invisible and incorporeal spirits" classified as "Magical Beasts" (MN 229), which fight by possessing animals.  How or from what they are created isn't described.

There's not one word in all of HQ about how or from what spirits are created.  That's irellevant for the most part. All you need to know is that they're spirits, and that they can be bound into charms and fetishes, or even become spirit allies to help people who are devout about worshipping the spirits.  

Quote

QuoteAll "spirits" in the Midnight books are present in the physical world.But you're correct that the term spirit doesn't neccessarily imply anything in particular here, either. The real question is how they interact with folks, and what their "belief" system is about.

Ah right, now I'm getting a clearer idea of why this kind of thinking wasn't getting me anywhere.  The text bits on religion don't really talk about spirits, lost gods, ancestors or stars interacting with people.  What they describe is people's beliefs and rituals, but not actual interaction.  

Right. What HQ does is to give a simple framework to all of that.

QuoteActually I suspect that it might detract from the focus of the game as it has developed.  It's been very much about taking personal strength from things in the world – your home, your family, your honour, your ancestors, your bond to someone you've fought side by side with.

Did I hear ancestors? Mechanically that's simply animism. I mean, how cool would it be for Katrin to have the spirit of her great-grandfather bound up in her sword or something? And drawing on his strength to help her defeat foes. Heck, with a big enough fetish, she could have defeated whasisname if she'd released the spirit.

QuoteI'd much prefer religion and magic to remain subtle and non-intrusive for the most part, to be honest.  Again it's more of a hunch than something I can explain very well, it feels as if varied mechanics for religions would be baggage in this case.

Well, from what it sounds like, it's all animism at this point. If you really want to make it simple, then just say it's all common magic charms. That is, the player takes an ability like "Hit Like Grampa" and that augments any attack they make. It's really not much different than what you have, except that now we know where the magic is coming from.

Because, again, if you don't want to mess with fetishes, devotees, and orderlies, that's fine. The very basic common magic rules work great. And they're very, very simple.

QuoteIn Midnight you get only arcane magic, which in D&D comes from either studying very hard...

OK, what do you study? Books? Where do they come from? Who has them? Or do you have a mentor?

Quoteor from having some unexplained innate gift

These, again, are natural magic. So they're in the system already. There's also talents which are similar, but which characters have to discover, and which most people can discover if taught. These often do have little religions based around them.

QuoteMidnight has no magic communities.

It has communities. It has people who worship these beings. It has magic communities. In HQ it's not about Guilds or something. You learn magic from the dude in the tower, or as an acolyte to a priest, or from the shaman. And these are the people who lead the "communities" which are, in effect your people. You don't need separate communities.

QuoteMidnight as written also doesn't really have entities that grant magic, although some bits of description of spirits may be hints of this - for instance gnomes believe that their boats sail more safely when they make offerings to the Watcher of the River.

This is a river daimone, then. Note that the name doesn't matter. What matters is that the being either covers you personally just like a human would, or it gives you the ability to do it yourself. In the case of a daimone, it teaches you the "Cross Waters Safely Feat" when you give it the offering. Note that the character doesn't think of it this way. All he knows is that when he crosses he drops some of his bread in, and he makes it more often than he used to before he knew this little trick.

QuoteI'm thinking magic could actually be granted by "spirits" without people necessarily knowing about it.  You believe you've learnt that "Rally the Clan" from your grandmother or "Swamp" magic from your mentor channeler, while in reality the gestures and words you use for them mimic an old, forgotten ritual of worship.  

That's precisely how it works. Note that you don't have to learn the Cross Waters Safely Feat from the Daimone itself - you can learn from anyone. The reason it works, however, is because of the Daimone. It actually comes up under your boat and guides you across. In common magic, the being actually is there, helping you out.

Passively. This is important. In the end all common magic is really subtle, because it's all augments. You don't use the Cross Water Safely Feat 17 rating, you get a +2 to your "Rowing" ability. Yeah, the hull may glow as it helps you out, but it's not a big thing, and if you don't Row, you don't go.

QuoteWe have had magic in the game before (like every D&D game it was dominated by magic), but magic never had any religious connotation.  So if it starts having one now, I'd like it to be subtle and possible to be overlooked unless you look closely.

I see what you're saying. And while, again, I agree that you can do without the religious connotations, I think you're missing an opportunity to explore what's actually canon about the religion, and what HQ explores really well. Again, in terms of who in your community you learned the stuff from and such, and what the rituals look like to some extent.

QuoteTechnically speaking Midnight can have all the monsters that are in the D&D Monster Manual.  That includes dryads, nymphs, elementals, devils, demons and angels, giants, as well as all the D&D-specific monsters that have no root in mythology.  And yes, that's defining them in a not-very-interesting way, that is inherent in D&D.

See, this is precisely why I use HQ and not D&D. It's not the narrativism resolution system, I can get that from a number of places. It's how the system nails characters to the setting. And that means the magic that they use in addition to everything else. There's no "you just got magic from somewhere" that you see in other games.

QuoteOf the Midnight spirits-specific spirits, some classify as Outsiders (incorporeal beings from other planes) and others as Fey (native corporeal or incorporeal spirits).  

This is classic. Fey are mundane world spirits, and Outsiders are spirit world spirits.

QuoteAnd if you're looking for daimones of other gods than Izrador, they can be present, too.  According to canon many "outsiders" (otherworldly beings) were trapped on Aryth at the Sundering.  

Again this seems to imply common magic only.

QuoteI think you can make arguments for each of the three otherworlds to have some relevance in Midnight if you choose to.

You're completely missing what I'm trying to do here. I'm not trying to mangle the interpretation of Midnight in order to get the three otherworlds in somehow. In fact if one or more don't exist, no biggie. I'm trying to look at Midnight, and define what does exist in the terms that HQ would.

See, this is my argument for why to use HQ for conversions of most fantasy worlds. They all already fit the HQ conventions in some ways. HQ just "finds" and brings these things out where the older systems, not the settings, failed to bring out these elements.

What I'm saying is that I think that from what I'm reading that the designers did want animism in the world, but just didn't have any good rules in D&D for it.

QuotePerhaps D&D has made me more wary of system intrusion than I need to be, but perhaps I have a valid point here.

Well, only if your argument is that the rules don't really match Midnight, or really are irrelevant to playing in it effectively. Which I almost buy when compared to Tolkien. But the more that I hear about all of the spirits, the more I feel that perhaps animism, at least, is warranted.

Actually, I agree that they're using "spirit" broadly, and what I really think is that all three sorts of beings exist in the mundane world. Meaning, again, that common magic would best display this sort of thing. Note that what makes a being what it is, is the way in which you commune with it. If you do ecstatic worship (dancing around fires, or taking substances) to get it to play, it's an animist being. If you Sacrifice to it, it's a theist being. If you venerate it throught the chain of veneration, or just study it, it's a wizardry being.

QuoteMy pet peeve about Midnight.  The setting so shouldn't have been written for D&D.  Oh well, it's a good enough decision commercially.  But it really doesn't do anything for the feel.  I haven't seen any magic in the HQ book that I'd have a problem with for Midnight, but D&D spells (again, this mindless wargaming collection) just don't work for me here.

Who gets fireballs in Midnight? I mean, I take it you can take the wizard class? And they are the ones that learn the magic with much studying? This is HQ wizardry (perhaps unsurprisingly). And, yes, you can make it fit midnight without allowing the fireballs, by determining what books and spells each school (or mentor) has.  

QuoteMass-destruction spells like fireballs (channeler) or flame strikes (legate) in everyone's hands are the wrong kind of magic if I want any sort of a Tolkien feel.

Hmmm. Gandalf does it. Yup. Chasing off some wargs. I personally feel that it's how D&D handles fireballs that's the problem than the fireballs themselves. Try it using HQ and you'll see what I mean.

QuoteBesides when I'm playing Midnight in D&D, I run into big-time balance problems with those spells.  To resist fireballs or flame strikes, I need divine magic (unavailable to PCs) and lots of magic items (unavailable to most everyone).

Not a problem in HQ.

QuoteInvisibility was and still is available in my game, but I'm using the "difficult magic" rule in HQ.  This made the player decide he didn't want the spell anymore (nor in fact any HQ magic) because it was no longer automatic.  

He just needs time to adjust to how the system works, and then he'll want it back. :-)


Mike

Quote from: KingOfFarPointIt sounds as if magic is rare but a big deal when it happens. In glorantha and hence vanilla HQ magic is ubiquitous. You have a lot of choices for how to model this difference. Your choices are all about how often magic crops up, whether there is any 'little' magic and the flavour you want to impart to it.


First off: you dont have to use all or any of the types of magic in HQ. The system will not break if you take any one of them or all of them out. Not only will it not break it wont be any the worse for it. They are in there because Glorantha needs them not because the rules do.


Second: magic is not religion. Mike is spot on in saying that the 'good' guys must have strong beliefs or they would have folded. Your quotes mention those beliefs explicitly. There is nothing wrong with having religion keywords that dont have magic abilities; they would still have abilities for beliefs, relationships, lore, etc.  They would still have a list of optional traits.

In HQ it does not really matter much what categorising label you choose to put on an ability, so such things as beliefs, relationships, lore, etc are all very useable in play. And in fact they are more interesting than 'spells'. For example augmenting against the desire to flee from wraiths by reciting the names of your fathers (ie using Revere Ancestors) and reminding each other that wraiths can destroy the body but not the soul (ie using What Our Ancestors Taught Us) reveal more about the setting and the characters than we would get if they cast 'Bravery' or something.


Third: If you want to model magic as being something only supernatural beings and artifacts can do (ie not PCs) there is another option. You can make the things that can do it npcs and use the rules for followers, allies, etc.

If by definition they are all greater powers than the pcs then dont allow them as followers (npcs that do what the players want most of the time). This way the PCs can use their relationships as abilities to draw these powers attention to the mortal world and convince them to act.

Items like magic swords or other kit can be handled as followers or allies depending on how powerful and how much autonomy you think they should have. If its like LotR then followers would probably be right as they dont get personalities and dont tend to rebel. There is however a gap in the rules in that there is no explanation of how to make a known npc with known abilities into a follower, this issue does not exist with allies for whom this is expected. Hardly a big issue though.


Fourth: its not necessary to establish how or if the 'good' guy's magic works in order to use it in the game. You can make magic simply a set of prayers that never have any observable physical manifestations. It then remains unclear if there is an outside agency subtley at work or if its simply the psycology of belief.

If you do this you can choose to use the theistic structure of vague Affinities and more specific Feats if you want organised areas of power for the being(s) being prayed to. Or just as reasonably you can describe how they are beleived to interact with the world and have all interaction come off whatever abilities seem relevant in the circumstances.


Lastly: you might also take a look at the heroforming rules that allow powerful entities to inhabit a vessel for a time. There may be stuff related to that that is useful for making magic  rare but powerful.


As far as Otherworlds go... If its LotR-like then they are unreachable and uncontactable right? So forget about them. No explanation is needed.


Cheers

Quote from: Mike HolmesI think Nick's saying some of the things that I'm trying to say, better than I did. I do have a slight disagreement, however.

"Bravery" as a spell is, indeed not all that interesting unless you know where it comes from. That is, if it is indeed from an ancestor animism religion, then we know that Bravery is calling on the bravery of your ancestors, and it does have meaning. Much like the examples that you gave, Nick.

That said, common magic is what I think we're looking at here, and it's considered so...small?...that you're not required in HQ to have any relationships to represent how you got it or anything.

Here's what I'd consider a good rule of thumb. If the magic is just something that everyone in the community might have, it's just a part of being a member of that community, and the community relationships apply. If, however, the magic is more unique than that, then I definitely recommend expanding into more full-blown descriptions of where it comes from. For example, if you're converting a D&D wizard with lots of spells, then I'd definitely define it using the wizardry rules and all that it entails.

As far as the common magic divides, you can probably leave these undefined. That said, for very few rules, I think it's pretty fun stuff. Very basically here are the advantages and disadvantages of each type:

Charms: Always on (no time to cast), charms can be stolen or damaged, spirits sometimes balk
Spells: Never balk, have to take time to cast, talisman can be stolen or damaged.
Feats: Don't need anything to cast, takes time to perform.

These are basically all things to make contests from or given context to magic to make using magic more interesting. For example, ambushed suddenly? Then there'll be a limit on how many spells and feats you can use to augment (or you'll have to take unrelated actions in an extended contest), but not for charms. If you've got a lot of time, you can use as many feats and spells as you like to augment. Have somebody steal a talisman to give the character a goal. Have a charm refuse to do something antithetical to it's nature (a Protect Nature charm being used to protect an animal that's been destroying the local wildlife). Etc, etc.


Basically I think little stuff like this is worth learning for the fun that the color provides. I guess I've been playing with it for so long now that I personally would be loathe not to use this stuff in any world with magic that it could represent. Basically I'm done with magic being generic, and now require that it have some sort of actual in-game rationale behind it now.

Mike

That completes the quotes from the other thread.  


------


Now on with the discussion.  

Quote from: Mike HolmesThat is, if things are as bleak as you say, then people have to believe in something, or they're going to either all join Izrador (I mean why not if he's all there is?) or they're going to just slit their wrists. They have to have something to live for. If they truely believe that the only supernatural force in the world is Izrador, then I think that they couldn't resist him.

That's pretty much what is happening according to canon - hardly anyone has the strength to resist, or even help to resisters.  It's also the way we've played it in the past, for both PCs and NPCs.  

I'm liking your thoughts on this more and more though. I'll see what my players think.  Lucy might want to comment here (I hope...), and I may have a chance to talk briefly to Apari's player tomorrow.  

QuoteI mean, it's just not a lot of rules. Learning it from the book can be interesting, but just ask me, and I'll work through it with you.

That would be fantastic, thanks.

QuoteI mean, it seems to me that Katrin's honor is not just to satisfy her father, but to satisfy his and her ancestors as well, who they probably feel are looking down on them.

Cool.  I like the idea of it being animism really (maybe common magic spirits, but still).  Lucy?  What do you think?

Quote

QuoteThe text bits on religion don't really talk about spirits, lost gods, ancestors or stars interacting with people.  What they describe is people's beliefs and rituals, but not actual interaction.  

Right. What HQ does is to give a simple framework to all of that.

Simple?  Really?  I'm tempted to believe you now. (I wasn't after I don't know how many readings of the magic chapters in the book. I'm astonishingly dense in picking up rules from the rulebook, for a trained lawyer...)

QuoteDid I hear ancestors? Mechanically that's simply animism. I mean, how cool would it be for Katrin to have the spirit of her great-grandfather bound up in her sword or something? And drawing on his strength to help her defeat foes. Heck, with a big enough fetish, she could have defeated whasisname if she'd released the spirit.

Ok ok.  How could I possibly resist that? :)

QuoteWell, from what it sounds like, it's all animism at this point. If you really want to make it simple, then just say it's all common magic charms. That is, the player takes an ability like "Hit Like Grampa" and that augments any attack they make. It's really not much different than what you have, except that now we know where the magic is coming from.

Because, again, if you don't want to mess with fetishes, devotees, and orderlies, that's fine. The very basic common magic rules work great. And they're very, very simple.

This sounds very, very tempting to me actually. It's the simple starting point I wanted all the time, and it gives us options to branch out if anyone gets invested in religious stuff or in relationships to spirits.

Quote

QuoteIn Midnight you get only arcane magic, which in D&D comes from either studying very hard...

OK, what do you study? Books? Where do they come from? Who has them? Or do you have a mentor?

Midnight mages are channelers. According to canon they can learn magic from books, from mentors, from magic scrolls (one-use magic items) or by trial and error, or a mix of any or all of those methods.  Which is kind of what I meant by saying that there are no communities because you don't even need a mentor. Not in canon, that is.  

QuoteYou learn magic from the dude in the tower, or as an acolyte to a priest, or from the shaman. And these are the people who lead the "communities" which are, in effect your people. You don't need separate communities.

Works for me.  

QuoteIn the case of a daimone, it teaches you the "Cross Waters Safely Feat" when you give it the offering. Note that the character doesn't think of it this way. All he knows is that when he crosses he drops some of his bread in, and he makes it more often than he used to before he knew this little trick.

That's what I was thinking. Except I wasn't planning on having all of charms, feats and whatnot in the game.  But I'll see what my players say.  Damn, I should have split this off way earlier, stupid not to have thought of it.

Quote...magic never had any religious connotation.  So if it starts having one now, I'd like it to be subtle and possible to be overlooked unless you look closely.

I see what you're saying. And while, again, I agree that you can do without the religious connotations, I think you're missing an opportunity to explore what's actually canon about the religion, and what HQ explores really well. Again, in terms of who in your community you learned the stuff from and such, and what the rituals look like to some extent. [/quote]

No disagreement here.  

QuoteSee, this is precisely why I use HQ and not D&D. It's not the narrativism resolution system, I can get that from a number of places. It's how the system nails characters to the setting. And that means the magic that they use in addition to everything else. There's no "you just got magic from somewhere" that you see in other games.

True - and our game isn't currently benefiting from that.  

QuoteWhat I'm saying is that I think that from what I'm reading that the designers did want animism in the world, but just didn't have any good rules in D&D for it.

That's great then.  I was looking for a starting point with common magic plus one magic system that might go beyond it possibly.  I was thinking theism but animism is as good and yes you're right, it fits MN much better.  

Quote

QuotePerhaps D&D has made me more wary of system intrusion than I need to be, but perhaps I have a valid point here.

Well, only if your argument is that the rules don't really match Midnight, or really are irrelevant to playing in it effectively. Which I almost buy when compared to Tolkien. But the more that I hear about all of the spirits, the more I feel that perhaps animism, at least, is warranted.

Warranted or not, I'm slowly succumbing to the charm of the HQ magic system.  

QuoteNote that what makes a being what it is, is the way in which you commune with it. If you do ecstatic worship (dancing around fires, or taking substances) to get it to play, it's an animist being. If you Sacrifice to it, it's a theist being. If you venerate it throught the chain of veneration, or just study it, it's a wizardry being.

QuoteWho gets fireballs in Midnight? I mean, I take it you can take the wizard class? And they are the ones that learn the magic with much studying? This is HQ wizardry (perhaps unsurprisingly). And, yes, you can make it fit midnight without allowing the fireballs, by determining what books and spells each school (or mentor) has.

No wizards in Midnight.  There are channelers instead, who study and/or experiment and have access to basically all the spells on the D&D spell list (not only wizard spells).  

QuoteI personally feel that it's how D&D handles fireballs that's the problem than the fireballs themselves. Try it using HQ and you'll see what I mean.

Of course. Ratings for magic abilities, the various possible levels of victory/defeat and penalties for increasing numbers of targets would make for a huge change.

Great post, thanks Nick.  

Quote from: KingOfFarPointIt sounds as if magic is rare but a big deal when it happens.

Not exactly.  In Midnight D&D, heroic paths mean that all PCs have minor magic abilities, most of which work in the background like common abilities.  Glowing magic would be a bit jarring as color in my game, but that is easy to drop.  

QuoteFirst off: you dont have to use all or any of the types of magic in HQ. The system will not break if you take any one of them or all of them out. Not only will it not break it wont be any the worse for it. They are in there because Glorantha needs them not because the rules do.

They also model the three types of religions that we know in the real world, so there's huge potential in having them in a game world:  it's so easy to load up on meaningful religious conflicts if you do have them.   That's the reason why Mike's posts got me wondering whether my initial decision to have a simplified form of theism only was so good after all.  

QuoteSecond: magic is not religion. Mike is spot on in saying that the 'good' guys must have strong beliefs or they would have folded. Your quotes mention those beliefs explicitly. There is nothing wrong with having religion keywords that dont have magic abilities; they would still have abilities for beliefs, relationships, lore, etc.  They would still have a list of optional traits.

That would so convince me if I were a player in this game.  Ok, you're convincing me.

Quote from: Mike HolmesHere's what I'd consider a good rule of thumb. If the magic is just something that everyone in the community might have, it's just a part of being a member of that community, and the community relationships apply.

If, however, the magic is more unique than that, then I definitely recommend expanding into more full-blown descriptions of where it comes from.

That's what I was doing basically, although I truncated theism by not having the worshipper/initiate/devotee bits. And I was using it exclusively, no wizardry or animism.  After what you've been posting I'd be more than happy to exchange theism for animism if that appeals to my players.  

I'd likely keep legates with their non-improvisable "affinities" in any case because I think I got the feel that I want for those fellows.    

QuoteAs far as the common magic divides, you can probably leave these undefined. That said, for very few rules, I think it's pretty fun stuff. Very basically here are the advantages and disadvantages of each type:

Charms: Always on (no time to cast), charms can be stolen or damaged, spirits sometimes balk
Spells: Never balk, have to take time to cast, talisman can be stolen or damaged.
Feats: Don't need anything to cast, takes time to perform.

Again it's up to my players really.  If they are happy learning these additional little rules, that would be fine by me. All by myself, I'm still more than sufficiently challenged trying to keep track of just the main rules during a session, which made for much of my reluctance I guess.  

QuoteThen there'll be a limit on how many spells and feats you can use to augment (or you'll have to take unrelated actions in an extended contest), but not for charms. If you've got a lot of time, you can use as many feats and spells as you like to augment.

Isn't there a limit of three on augmenting with feats and spells unless you are using a ritual? And is there no limit on the number of augments from charms at all?

QuoteHave somebody steal a talisman to give the character a goal. Have a charm refuse to do something antithetical to it's nature (a Protect Nature charm being used to protect an animal that's been destroying the local wildlife).

I was so sick and tired of characters' ridiculous degree of item dependency in D&D that I wouldn't have liked these suggestions at all when we were just converting over.  After three sessions of HQ I'm beginning to see how those things can be very fun.  

QuoteBasically I think little stuff like this is worth learning for the fun that the color provides. I guess I've been playing with it for so long now that I personally would be loathe not to use this stuff in any world with magic that it could represent. Basically I'm done with magic being generic, and now require that it have some sort of actual in-game rationale behind it now.

You're getting me there, too, if slowly.  Thanks for taking all that effort. I hadn't even realised how long and involved this discussion already was until I split this thread off today.

So are you asking if I want Katrin to believe in the spirits of her ancestors? Yup, I think she already does. Should that be on her character sheet? Probably. Should she have some kind of religious-magic abilities related to it? Yes, please!

I got the HQ book quite recently, and was really, really drawn to animism as a possible religious path for Katrin as I read it. I'd like to think that the Dornish Ancestor Spirits are real entities with which Katrin could have some kind of relationship, the way that the elves have relationships with the tree-spirits in Erethor. Katrin was originally conceived as a "paladin type" character, which as far as I'm concerned is a religious archetype. She's always had faith in her vaules, but it would be great from my point of view for her to have some kind of religious faith also, it would make for a really strong bond to her culture.

It seems to me that there's lots of animism built into the Midnight setting as it's written anyway (but what with it being a D&D setting, it didn't really work well). There are spirits everywhere - earth-bound spirits, yes, but spirits all the same. And I love that all the ideas about the Veil are so neatly and prettily handled in HQ.

Yes, I love all these ideas!

OK, several big points.

First, next time you want to split a thread, talk to Ron Edwards, the admin, and ask him to do it. He could have saved you a ton of effort, and it would have looked prettier. It was an excellent idea to split, there's just a function in the software that makes it easier.

Second, actually, I'm hedging on my assessment of "everything is animism!" When I see the world "Spirit" I jump at animism. Especially ancestor animism which I'm really fond of. Thing is that if we ignore the term Spirit as being generic, and not really saying anything about the beings it refers to, it really means just "otherworld being." As such, they could be any of the three sorts.

Again, given the description of the one river spirit, that sounds more like a theism being. I'm avoiding using the Glorantha specific term here. Let's call it a theist spirit, using the HQ term to separate them, and the Midnight term for otherworld being. So the question is whether or not the ancestors of the Dorns are actually animist spirits or theist spirits (I'm pretty sure they're not wizardry spirits).

The question comes down to how the Dorns worship them. Is it about ecstatic worship of some sort? Or is it about sacrificing things to them? Also, from the magic POV, do the Dorns have charms and fetishes that carry parts of their ancestors in them, or do the ancestors teach them how to do things that they did in the past as a form of magic? That is, with animism, you get a part of the spirit in an object, and then it helps you directly: charms and fetishes. With Theism the magic is that you re-enact the ancestor spirit, and that becomes a magically empowering act: a feat.

At this point I'm going to guess that the theism model is actually more correct here. But that's really knowing very little about the Dorns and their religion at this point. At some point you both may just have to decide on what you want to do with it.

As for what that would make Katrin, again, if these spirits are only known wandering the mundane world, then it's common magic. That would mean that thought they might believe that there are ancestors watching, there is no magical effect (though they might have "Feels Watched By Ancestors" as part of the religion keyword or something that spurs them on). In the case of it being common magic, then if it's animist it's Common Magic Charms that go into the CM religion keyword. In addition you can make up a religion keyword as well if you like. It's not required however.

Here are the animist options:
Spiritist - she's not really any more invested in the religion than anyone else, and all she gets is five tradition charms to augment.
Practitioner - in addition to the tradition charms, she'd get some fetishes. These hold entire spirits, and are potentially very, very powerful when "released." She also might have a Spirit Ally at this point, probably an ancestor who follows her around.
Shaman - I'm thinking not. But if so, she'd get a spirit guide who could lead her through wherever it is that spirits spend their time when they're not in this world. Which is a question we still need to answer.

For theism:
Communal worshipper - She worships the ancestors with everyone else. The only magic she'd get is the ability to call on the gods which would normally be a 10W6 difficulty. Probably much higher in this world. I'm thinking that an act that actually gets the gods to appear would be at least as hard as a monotheist miracle (10W9) if not more like 10W12. Basically it's one of the goals of the whole world, so it's gotta be up there. Something to work towards.
Initiate - this normally gives affinities. In this case, the gods are not available to give them, however. So the best that's probably available would he affinities from Hero Cults. At this point the character might get a "Divine Companion", again an ancestor who hangs around.
Devotee - this adds feats to the affinites. And makes a Divine Companion more likely.

Those are the basic options. More later.

Mike

Quote from: randomlingI'd like to think that the Dornish Ancestor Spirits are real entities with which Katrin could have some kind of relationship, the way that the elves have relationships with the tree-spirits in Erethor.

The same kind of relationship? How do you think?  The Wood Whisper is an entity of its own, it's not an ancestor cult.  Elves sensing the Whisper don't even relate to individual spirits (although it may seem like a collection of "voices"), they sense the whole.  It's like an immense guardian that covers all of Erethor.  Dorns on the other hand relate to their specific ancestors, people in their family and clan history.  Mike's suggestion of a "Feels Watched by Ancestors" ability would work with Dorns, but wouldn't mean much for elves I think.  

Quote from: Mike HolmesFirst, next time you want to split a thread, talk to Ron Edwards, the admin, and ask him to do it. He could have saved you a ton of effort, and it would have looked prettier. It was an excellent idea to split, there's just a function in the software that makes it easier.

I know about the split function, only it wouldn't have done what I needed.  I wasn't copying posts mindlessly, I was cutting our religious discussion out of posts that also contained bangs and whatnot - which was the whole point of splitting.  Sorry I couldn't make it look pretty.

QuoteThe question comes down to how the Dorns worship them. Is it about ecstatic worship of some sort? Or is it about sacrificing things to them? Also, from the magic POV, do the Dorns have charms and fetishes that carry parts of their ancestors in them, or do the ancestors teach them how to do things that they did in the past as a form of magic? That is, with animism, you get a part of the spirit in an object, and then it helps you directly: charms and fetishes. With Theism the magic is that you re-enact the ancestor spirit, and that becomes a magically empowering act: a feat.

I don't really see Dorns with either ecstatic worship or with fetishes.  Hero cults and re-enactment on the other hand sound exactly right to me - I have no problem envisaging that kind of ritual take place right in Roland's hall. In fact that duel between Olec and Katrin felt to me much as if it was echoing some eternal heroic fight.  Lucy?  What do you think?

Ok, I now realise I've allowed myself to be dragged off track here. Let me try to refocus on what I want to achieve.  

--

Mike, Nick, you say that without believing in anything, people in Aryth would not be able to resist the Shadow.  I agree.

If you go on to conclude that this means non-Izrador religions are widespread and fervently followed, I disagree. Emphatically.  

For one thing, the whole thematic point of Midnight is that people have lost their religions and are defenceless (religiously) against Izrador.  That's why most people have lost hope and aren't resisting, merely hanging on to life.  That's why the Shadow is able to control the world, even with their god in a severely handicapped state.  That's why it's so difficult and so special to be a resistance fighter in this world. To most people resistance fighters aren't shining paragons and heroes.  They are desperados, madmen, terrorists. That is canon by the way, but it's also one of the things I really, really buy into in this setting;  and it's not just me eager to push through a personal vision here I think.  It's what our play has been about.  

How to hold out against hope?  What to sacrifice to alleviate the suffering of others when you can't be sure that there is a reward, or a tomorrow? If there's no outside entity to tell you what to do, what is left?  Can there be moral values, can there be compassion, can there be a drive to do right that comes only out of yourself, out of your ties to your immediate world (family), and often out of the agony of even these ties having been cruelly cut?  Will you say, Where there's life there's hope?  Or will you keep fighting just because? Because you've got nothing left to lose? Because killing something relieves your pain for moments at a time?  Our most thematically charged and intense moments in this game have been about questions like that.  Oh yes, in D&D.  The theme grew on us like that.

Do we abandon our mission to go after the legate to help this struggling village hide the corpses of the orcs we have killed in the middle of their street?  Or do we focus on the mission and leave these people to be tortured and executed when the next patrol comes through?  They wouldn't help us after all, instead they grow wheat to make bread for orc troops.  That's just one example (nothing to do with my prep, it simply played out like that);  there are more.  

I'm not saying we shouldn't have religion of any sort in this game, I'm not saying that religion should be devoid of any trappings of magic. I am saying I need one of our most powerful themes respected:  the theme of being thrown back on your own devices, the theme of finding strength in yourself.  

---

Lucy, I want you to look at context a bit here.  Do you agree with what I'm saying about theme?  

I feel that your previous character Jez was classic really.  She fought feverishly, as if she was looking for her pain to end if only she could kill enough of the enemy - and then suddenly she turns around full circle and speaks up for the collaborating villagers who need her help.  And then again, with no religion (none that I'm aware of anyway), no surviving family, nothing in the world left but the little band of crazy guerrilla she's joined, she faces down the legate who has captured her and hangs on knowing that if she can keep the legate occupied with her long enough, there might be time for her friend to escape.  Why was she doing this? Loyalty to a sister-in-arms?  Hate of the Shadow?  Sheer stubbornness?  Love?  Maybe any combination of those or something else entirely. My point is, it made her human in a very, very powerful way.  With that character, giving her a strong religion would almost feel like a cop-out.

Now Katrin is someone different obviously.  She takes a lot of support from believing in honour, Dornish traditions, her family, for example.  Maybe she also has a religion, you tell me - if you want we'll work on something for her. But let's not cheapen beliefs in Midnight by tacking on religions all over the place simply because the HQ book has shiny rules in it.  (And I'm liking those rules by now, I can tell you.  But I do think the humanity-in-itself theme that we've developed is worth defending.)

Ancestors didn't get any points on Katrin's sheet, and you decided to give up the Guardian heroic path when we converted (this would have given Katrin magic and a supernaturally-aided feel - as "paladin" as you get in Midnight).  She's a highly honour-bound person obviously - you gave her a very high rating in Honourable, it's almost her highest rating.  But does it have anything to do with religion, or is it upbringing perhaps, or a value highly personal to Katrin, or something else entirely?  

All this can can change obviously if you feel that she needs a different focus or added outside moral support in a religious belief.  Characers can always grow and evolve, and there's a lot of cool stuff we could explore if you'd like to go down that route.  Just be aware that it will be a change to the character as you've played her up to now.

For a religion for Katrin, look at what we have established Dorns are.  Not only who Dorns are compared to Sarcosans, or elves or orcs.  Look also at Dorns in detail, what her father is like, look at Tam, at Roland and Olec.  Try to get a feel for how religious they'd likely be.  Not very?  That's my guess anyway.  (Reifels may actually be a different matter, and it's not making his life any easier.)

How would Katrin fit in there?  Or does she?  Judging by what we've played up to now, I'd say she fits in.  Of course that can change if you want that, but that also will mean something.  She'll be unusual in a different way from before.  How would religious beliefs figure in Katrin's daily life, do you think?  Does she pray, does she make offerings (secretly perhaps?), does she go into trances?  More importantly: how much of her moral beliefs, her understanding of honour, her will to fight do you want to be based on her religion?  Or is religion of marginal importance to her?  (I suspect not, you wouldn't be this enthusiastic about it if it were.) See how the whole characer begins to shift when you introduce religion to it?  Lots of things to consider - or maybe you already have answered them for yourself, I don't know.  All I'm saying is that context is important.  Katrin's own personality that you've established in play;  the people around her;  other cultures, and the overall Midnight theme.

Hm. This is slightly thorny. I agree with all you're saying about theme. And Jez had no religion, no family, no hope of any kind except that which she found in herself and her friendship with Zana. She was all about self-reliance, from start to finish.

How about Katrin, though? Katrin was created as a contrast to that. She has allies, family, a position, and a people (scattered and fragmented as they are) to draw on, all things that Jez lacked. I feel that she also draws strength from thousands of years of Dornish history. Among her love of her family and honouring of her House, she also has Reveres Ancestors in her Dorn keyword. It's at the same rating as the keyword (2W) but it's there on her character sheet, all right. It might not be religious as such, but perhaps it's proto-religious. I'm not entirely sure. I see her as occasionally whispering a prayer to her ancestors to protect her before battle, which is where the reverence comes in, but I'm not sure I see her devoting an hour a day to it or anything like that.

The strength in yourself theme is something that I want to hold onto too, though. I think that if you stripped everything away from Katrin - as perhaps we will, at some point - she would still have awesome personal strength. I'm sorry, this is all very nebulous at the moment, but maybe suddenly deciding that Katrin's been religious all her life isn't what I'm driving at here? Maybe this is something that we should develop and explore in play, rather than suddenly drop into the game from a great height? It would be a cool and interesting thing to introduce, Katrin discovering some kind of personal relationship with her ancestors.

I don't want to suddenly and for no apparent reason make big changes to Katrin - I like her very much as she is - but these are themes I'd like to explore. Maybe that proto-religious reverence for her ancestors might at some point develop into something more concrete and powerful (emotionally and thematically powerful, I mean) in play?

Kerstin, do you see the listed religions in the canon material as a mistake? Should they have not included them? Do they militate against the theme that you're looking for?

Or is it that the belief systems in question are "broken" that creates the despair for the people of this setting?

Think of it this way, if you never had a religion or belief system at all, and then access to such things was taken away, then things would be no different before than after. But you didn't say that it was about people who had no beliefs and who then continue to live in a world which is essentially no different than that with the exception of Izrador. No, it's a hopeless world because they have beliefs but Izrador has cut them off from that which they believe in. Do I have that right?

This is, BTW, very different in this particular detail than Tolkien's stuff. His characters have beliefs, but they're just never brought into question in any way. When the characters need strength, they harken back to their homelands. But it sounds like the homes of the people of Midnight have already been sullied by Izrador encroaching. The canon, at least, is saying that all that they have to hang on to is their old broken beliefs.

What represents this best, IMO, is not ignoring the religion, but putting it in play in such a way that reflects the loss. Again, what I'm thinking is that is sounds like Izrador has cut off the otherworlds from which "specialized magic" comes, leaving only magic that comes from the mundane world. In fact I hear reinforcement of this idea over and over.

So, again, what I'd do is to allow characters to take religion keywords of these specialized magic religions. Heck, I'd even allow them to take the magic keywords, too, but only allow them to have the mundane skills associated - no magic abilities from them. So there might be some whacko out there who claims to be a devotee of some long lost god, following all of the rituals and ways of said god. It just doesn't get them any magic. In fact, this pantomime failing seems perfect to highlight the loss of the gods in the setting.

But for the most part, I think that you'll just have communal worshippers and the like. People who have been taught the basics of the religion, but who realize the futility of trying to delve into it's depths since it no longer gives any magical benefit. Realize that in the HQ model, this level of worship is the "not very" level that you describe. To some extent religion is an inescapable part of a culture. I mean, not to have the "Know Myths" part of the religion at the very least that links the culture part of the keyword to the religious portion is like saying that there might be an American who doesn't know who Jesus is. You might not know the details of his life, but you know he's the one that the Christians worship. If you were brought up in a Christian household, even a very lax one that only participates on Easter, then you have the religion keyword at the communal worshipper level.

Then all of the magic that they can get would be pretty similar to what you have now really. Just use the common magic rules for all magic, representing that all magic comes from the mundane world. Very simply this means that anyone who uses magic gets a rating with the Common Magic Keyword (usually starts at 17), and starts with 5 abilities listed under it.

Now, these abilities can (and I'd argue should) be listed as being one of the standard types: Charms, Feats, Spells, Talents or Natural.

And you can stop there if the player is satisfied at that point. The designations of what sort of magic these things are does say something about where they come from, but that doesn't have to be worked out any more than that, unless people want to do so. If they are interested in where they come from, what you can do at this point is to work up the common magic religion keywords from which the common magic in question comes.

Let's do an example. Let's assume that the Dorn religion was a lot like that of the Heortlings (they sound a lot alike to me the more that I hear about them). That means that the religion keyword would look something like:

Dorn Ancestor Pantheon
Abilities: Boast, Know Lineage, Myths of the Ancestors (this last one should probably actually be part of the cultural part of the homeland keyword - everyone should have heard the stories)
Virtues: Stoic
Relationships: Worship Ancestor Pantheon, to Priest, to Temple
Magic: Diving Intervention 10W12
Other Side: The halls of the ancestors (unavailable due to the veil)

Sample Organizations
Standard List of Gods who were the first Dorns (no magic available, because they're cut off by the Veil).

Despite the lack of magic, you might want to allow an Initiate or devotee to have the "Soul Vision" ability, which would allow them to see theist magic at work (basically it's like "detect magic" but more specific and fun).

Anyhow, I think that a religion keyword like this is very, very important, because it tells you how the character got the value system they have, and something about what that value system is about. Homeland alone is about customs and language and the skills that everyone knows there. It's the religion that tells you where the character's belief system comes from. Again, using the example of Christianity above, each American is taught the Judeo-Christian value set (which doesn't mean that they neccessarily follow it, just that they know what it is). The magic is just fun detail tacked on top, without it you still have the necessary core for what the characters believe.


Then a character might take several common magic feats like the following to represent that magic that you say is still in the canon. Note that I don't have to say where they come from, really, other than to say what kind of magic they are (feats in the example, though you can mix them up if you like):

Stand Bravely Feat
Do Hard Work Willingly Feat
Leap Chasm Feat
Track Enemy Feat
Ignore Pain Feat

Then, if they really wanted to get into it, they could say that these feats come from the "My Ancestors" common magic religion, which is about finding those souls of their ancestors that still wander this world, and gaining what insight one can from them. The keyword could look like:

My Ancestors
Abilities: Find Lost Souls
Virtues: Honors Ancestors
Relationships: Worship Ancestors
Magic: Stand Bravely Feat, Do Hard Work Willingly Feat, Leap Chasm Feat, Track Enemy Feat, Ignore Pain Feat, Drink to the Ancestors Feat, Find Grave Feat, Hear the Dead Feat

So you see where the character was merely taking the magic from the keyword without taking the religion above? That's totally kosher with Common Magic Religions. You don't have to take the keyword if you don't want to - maybe you learned the magic from your father or aunt. But it's there to explain where the magic comes from in case people want to know what the abilities are all about.

In this case (assuming that you went with something like this), this is what the description of the religion might look like:

Most Dorns spend time honoring the souls of their ancestors. Some believe that with the closing of the veil, that their ancestors are unable to pass through to the Halls of the ancestors, and thus they all roam the world in some state waiting to pass. Others believe that some of the souls wait at the veil itself for it to one day fall so they can move on. But whatever the case, many souls do stay on Ayrth. Some Dorns know how to sacrifice to these lost souls and thus gain the abilty to emulate some of the great feats of the past. These abilities are taught to anyone who cares to know about them, but some few people actually organize their efforts and seek these souls to worship them by finding out about them and honoring their names, and to find new feats to emulate these honored individuals.

Anyhow, the point here is that you get the magic that I think you're looking for, and in addition, you get the sense that there's this larger religion that's no longer properly functioning. Yes you can get magic from your ancestors, but only because something is wrong with how things are supposed to work (the My Ancestor thing may have existed before the closing of the Veil, for the odd soul who didn't make it across, but is now more prominent because of the closing).

So if somebody wants to play with the My Ancestor thing, you can have them find souls of ancestors of which they were previously unaware, and have them exhort the characters to find a way to pierce the veil so they can get home. The character can ask about what the ancestor did when alive, and he can show them how if they sacrifice to him they can emulate these feats. Maybe Aunt Jeera healed somebody with her tears once, so the character can learn the Healing Tears Feat.

So does this give you an example of what I'm talking about? I think that rather than interfering with the theme of self-sufficiency, it adds to it. That is, yeah, the character can go to his ancestors and get this little magic from them (note that it's likely that a character won't be able to concetrate their magic with these, so they'll almost always be augments only), but it only serves to remind them that they've been cut off from the great god ancestors, and that really all they have is the beings around them. If you really want to emphasize how bad things are, have them find some ancestors who have been tainted by Izrador's might (AKA your standard undead). Useless for worshipping and dangerous, their best bet is to destroy the incarnation any way they can, and hope that the soul moves on to the veil to wait.

And, again, this all assumes that the player wants to get involved with this. They can have the common magic, and not take the religion. In fact you don't even have to work up the religion if you don't want to, so this is very much what you have already, allowing players to take magic that has no particular explanation of where it comes from. The idea here is just to allow for the possibility, so that the players know that the magic isn't just "from nowhere" that if they looked into it, they'd find the source of it eventually (in fact they probably do know what it is, even if it's not been established for the players).

So you wouldn't have to make any big changes to Katrin, perhaps only adding the religion keyword, and deciding that her abilities were feats or talents or some mix of things. So that there's a feeling that behind the magic somewhere is a real connection to the setting. Then, at a later date, should you want to delve into where her abilites come from, you can create any CM religions that might exist (or just the beings in question - some CM just has no religion associated with it at all, but just comes from some being).

Note that the above are just examples, certainly not to be taken verbatim without reworking I'm sure that knowing the setting material better than I, that you could do a better job with them. I'm just trying to give you an idea of what's involved here.

Mike

Quote from: Mike HolmesThink of it this way, if you never had a religion or belief system at all, and then access to such things was taken away, then things would be no different before than after. But you didn't say that it was about people who had no beliefs and who then continue to live in a world which is essentially no different than that with the exception of Izrador. No, it's a hopeless world because they have beliefs but Izrador has cut them off from that which they believe in. Do I have that right?

Not really, no. There's two steps to it:  

Step 1:  9,000 years ago Izrador fell and Aryth (the planet) was sundered from its god.  That's the point at which people would have despaired over broken belief systems.  

Step 2:  99 years ago, Izrador's armies overran human lands and gained control of them.  

If we were playing 9,000 years ago, your argument about broken religions and people's beliefs being characterised by that loss would be strong, very strong. But we aren't.  We are playing several ages of the world later.  Twice over the intervening millennia, Izrador tried to conquer the world, twice he was been beaten by fighting alliances of humans, elves and dwarves.  The third time round (99 years ago) he managed to undermine the resistance (some of the Night Kings are the greatest heros of the Third Age), and won.  

This defeat of the people of the free world isn't about the loss of gods; that happened 9,000 years ago. People were doing ok without gods.  It is about the loss of unity, about hope and about betrayal.

That's canon.    

And yeah, I do think the Midnight material is inconsistent here. Most of the homeland descriptions have religious bits in them (the ones I quoted from) - but they are just sitting there and don't really have impact on other parts of the material.  



More later.  Deadline looming.

Having read through this thread, it sounds to me like:

- for most humans on the "good" side there is no specialized magic key word.  Although a selection of common magic might be appropriate.

- There probably are animism specialized magic key words.  Certain groups know how to get along with the spirits of the world well enough that they can get spirits into charms, maybe into fetishes.  This sounds like it might be the case with some of the elves, maybe some others.  Note that the abilities of the charm or fetish are basically whatever the spirit does, so just because this magic is available doesn't mean that it is useful enough to most people to make them bother.

Of course, what makes things interesting is when you bring things into conflict :)  I don't know what the canon is on this, but what if something like the "old" religion and its beliefs persist, viewing itself as the pure, untainted way.  The spirits of the dead are sent off, and if they are stuck at the veil well, we still did the right thing.  Then some newer group worships these ancestor spirits, in ecstatic rites, and is able to contact and bind some of them.  To the old-style purists this would be a horrible heresy, enslaving your ancestor who should be in the halls of the dead?  What next, you'll bind him into a corpse to make a Fell?  Just an idea....

Another idea, related to the "how far would you stoop to fight evil" theme.  If you look at the sections in HQ about landscape spirits, you'll see how people can worship them and use them like a guardian--or make charms of of them, weakening them.  Now it sounds like maybe the mirrors suck all the magic out of the land, probably including weakening spirits of the land?  So are you willing to pillage the spirits of the land for magic, when they will end up drained by the mirrors anyway?

Sorry that these are probably off the topic that you were thinking of, but they popped to mind reading all of this in one shot.

--Bryan

I disagree with you, Kerstin, but it's your game so do what you think is best. I'm done trying to change your mind.

Bryan, I think that some of what's labeled as Spirits might be animist spirits, but I think that they might be other things as well, as I've said. That is, they're using it as a generic term for otherworld being. Look more at how the religions work to see if they're really animist or some other type.

Mike

Thanks for commenting, Bryan.  If I develop a better idea of magic in Midnight, I will certainly want conflict in it as well.  Mike is right about the "spirits" I think. If it's the form of worship that defines the type of otherworldly being, then many Midnight "spirits" aren't (although some are).  


Mike, very sorry if I'm being boneheaded here. I highly appreciate your input on this (I think I've said so already), I've learnt a lot from this discussion about what makes HQ religion cool, and I agree with you on many aspects.  Still, at this point I can't follow you where you're going with the religion examples you wrote up, not sure how to pin that down.  I very much agree with you in not wanting to go through another loop of our discussion, which has turned weirdly circular.  So I'm now going through the HQ book step by step again to see where (if anywhere) our disagreement starts and I'll report on what I find out.  

As always, as and when I come up with more thoughts your comments will be more than welcome.  Though of course I'll understand if you feel that you've done enough here.  In any case even if we haven't reached a workable solution yet, your advice in this thread generally has been fantastic for me, and even where we couldn't agree it has helped me think more clearly about what I might possibly want, or not want, from Midnight metaphysics.  So thanks.

Quote from: StalkingBlueMike, very sorry if I'm being boneheaded here.

Not at all, just different viewpoints.

Actually it's been commented that the material on how magic works actually does go too far in some ways by others than yourself. And in a way I agree. My POV is simply that it's good inspiriation for how to think about religion in play, not that you have to use any of it verbatim.

So I'm sure that what you're doing will continue to work.

Mike

Hi Kerstin:
Sorry to hop in late here. I know you're not too keen on my conversion for Midnight-HQ and I respect that. But I highly recommend you take a second look at the religions in that document. Other than Peers, which I created as sort of a religious interface between Legates and the common populace, 90% of what is in there is straight from either the Midnight corebook or Against the Shadow. I didn't add for the sake of adding and, where I did, I made notes of the additions. Mike and Lael were major motivators on this end.

Canon is a funny thing to bring into these sort of conversion things. Everyone's canon is different, primarily because everyone tends to focus on the bits of a setting that interest them and then either forget or file away the rest.

That said. I didn't invent a SpiritWorld for Midnight. There is already one there. IIRC, it's in the Corebook but the best I remember of it off the top of my head is that it's where the Astiraxes live in their visible form. Remember they only pop in and out every now and again in Aryth.

There are also spirits that reside in this Spirit World, as on Aryth, trapped by Izrador drawing the Veil.

Now, here's where I'm not sure if I get the utility of the Spirit World right according to canon or add in my own logical extensions of the existence of this Spirit World. To my thinking, in Midnight, when someone dies one of three things happen: 1) they rise again as Fell, 2) their spirit is trapped on the material plane as a ghost or whatnot, 3) they go to the Spirit World. There really aren't any other options afforded by the setting.

I've always thought, and this is quite possibly just my own interpretation of the material, that the "SpiritWorld" was where Izrador lived in proper form. Bodiless, of course. But it was where he was most powerful and that the mirrors existed as gates or linkages between Aryth and his consciousness. Now whether the Legates and Orcs are trying to raise Izrador in bodily form or just keep him where he is to bide the time and further their own agendas I'll leave up to whoever wants to answer. But I've felt that Izrador feeds through these mirrors and also, by his presence, off the souls of the dead in the Spirit World. Now that part is 100% my interpretation but there is some corroboration in the text for that line of thinking (the fact that magic is tougher and tougher to cast within certain proximities of the mirrors for instance).

Now, if there is a spirit world and there are "spirits" (which the corebook mentions in a number of areas), then Animism is possible. In fact, it's all over the Midnight-HQ conversion, including a number of example spirits with abilities taken straight from the text of the corebook (or a close approximation thereof).

In Midnight-HQ, the Dorns' religion (Ancestor Worship) is misapplied. They *should* be using Animism to deal with the *spirits* of their elders. Instead, according to the conversion, they're treating it as a form of Theism. They're worshipping the spirits of their elders. The conversion keeps in mind that there are no gods left on Aryth, just Izrador. So the worship of anything in the conversion is considered misapplied.

Now, that may not be how you want to treat it in your game, which is fine. But I don't think it would hurt to consider it as an option or to glean it for material. I don't see a good reason to reinvent the Heepa-Heepa spirits in the conversion just to do it. Like I said, most everything in there is straight from either the corebook or Against the Shadows. Just take it. Twist it to your needs, add in any bits from the later supplements and have fun.

Another question that Mike posed that I tried to offer a non-canonical answer to was introducing Peers into the world of Midnight. Just like Mike, I questioned why anyone would want to worship Izrador. Brute force and fear only goes so far in my book. So I came up with Peers, which is, again, 100% non-canon. The conversion says as much. In fact, almost every point where I deviated from the text of the two early publications I've noted it in the conversion, as well as made it optional for inclusion.

Peers are the liturgists of Midnight. They lead the masses in prayers and supplications to Izrador, who answers them when he wants to. Peers are a notch on the stepladder to Legatedom for most and, as such, can be as evil and ambitious or as good-hearted and well-intentioned as you like. Peers would be like village priests or friars. Legates are more like Bishops, Deacons and Archbishops in this arrangement. Admittedly, this might not be something you want to consider including but it certainly gives the general populace a reason (and means) to worship Izrador. After all, their old gods certainly aren't going to answer their prayers. And who else is going to ensure good crops this season?

Again, I apologize for stepping into this discussion late. I hope you've found my input helpful.

Scott

Hiya Scott - first, thanks for commenting.

Quote from: ScriptyI know you're not too keen on my conversion for Midnight-HQ and I respect that.

Not keen?  That's not entirely accurate.  I couldn't have begun converting my own game if I hadn't had your document showing me some possible ways to go, and providing lots of nifty ideas to borrow.  I owe you for that.  

But what with my reading of Midnight canon differing from yours on a number of issues, and with what we've established about the settings and the cultures in it in almost a year of play, I needed material that looked different from yours in many details.  But that is a matter of YMWV, not a matter of not being keen.  

An example: as much as I love your take on Dorns as a broken culture (makes me think of Native Americans in the late 19th century or so), we have established other facts about Dorns in our Midnight, mostly through two PCs. The Dorns we have now are cool, too - but different.  Scattered, landless, many of them migrant orcmen, yes. Culturally broken, no. By now we even have two types of subculture in the game - urban and "wild".  

If I'd known about HQ before I ever started selling a possible MN game to my players, your conversion would likely have had a much greater impact on our game. (That's as true for the Fury of Shadow supplement btw.)

QuoteBut I highly recommend you take a second look at the religions in that document.

Been doing that. Work has caught up with me again lately, so I'm not making as much progress as I'd like, but I'm currently rereading both your doc and the HQ religion chapters and trying to order my thoughts.  It has struck me that if I want to consider religion in more depth for Midnight, the first thing I'll have to work out is how the dominant religion works:  Izrador's Church.

I like your take of it being misapplied Wizardry, so if I move away from my simplified approach towards more religions, that's likely what I'll do.  I also kind of like the idea of having Peers, but I wouldn't want to give them access to specialised magic. Again, that's more to do with the tone of my game than with whether it's canon or not. Specialised magic, if any, should remain extremely rare in my game.

QuoteCanon is a funny thing to bring into these sort of conversion things. Everyone's canon is different, primarily because everyone tends to focus on the bits of a setting that interest them and then either forget or file away the rest.

And also extrapolate from incomplete references.  Midnight especially lends itself to that sort of thing because it's written in a style that evokes rather than state hard facts or build a coherent system.  Which is one of its great strengths IMO (although I always get scolded for this attitude over on Todd's forums): it evokes themes and gives you a chance to charge the game with those themes that appeal to you and ignore or fade out the rest.

Now to take this thought one step further, exactly what is or isn't canon doesn't concern me too much at this point. I'm not writing a conversion that I'm hoping will appear to large numbers of people, I'm merely struggling to convert over one specific, thematically charged game.  So what I am concerned with at this point in time is whether (and if so, how) I can find a way to work HQ religion stuff into our game without detracting from what we have already built.  I've tried to explain in earlier posts what I think that is - people fighting Izrador being thrown back on themselves and their own resources.  Hoping against hope (we have that), perhaps also believing against belief (we haven't had that yet).

QuoteThat said. I didn't invent a SpiritWorld for Midnight. There is already one there. IIRC, it's in the Corebook but the best I remember of it off the top of my head is that it's where the Astiraxes live in their visible form. Remember they only pop in and out every now and again in Aryth.

Really? I don't think I've come across that. Just saying. Again, whether it's canon or not doesn't concern me much. If it looks like it fits into our game I'll consider it, although I quite like the idea of Astiraxes tagging along with their legates all the time (which is what's been happening in our game up to now, as far as anyone knows).  

QuoteI've always thought, and this is quite possibly just my own interpretation of the material, that the "SpiritWorld" was where Izrador lived in proper form.

Interesting. So where do channelers get their magic from? Is it specialised magic even, do you think? If it is, it would have to come from an otherworld, wouldn't it?  Now if the one otherworld on Aryth has Izrador in his most powerful form in it, it makes me wonder how channelers are going to get magic from there, and why it's even necessary to hunt them down with Astiraxes in the mortal world.  It seems to me it would be easier to kill them off, or taint them, when they are on the other side.  

QuoteNow, if there is a spirit world and there are "spirits" (which the corebook mentions in a number of areas), then Animism is possible. In fact, it's all over the Midnight-HQ conversion, including a number of example spirits with abilities taken straight from the text of the corebook (or a close approximation thereof).

Daimones, actually. The type of worship mentioned most frequently is offerings, not ecstatic dancing/drinking/drumming or such like.

QuoteAnother question that Mike posed that I tried to offer a non-canonical answer to was introducing Peers into the world of Midnight. Just like Mike, I questioned why anyone would want to worship Izrador. Brute force and fear only goes so far in my book.

Oh, I have a non-magical explanation for that. Church and temporal power aren't exactly distinct in Midnight. There is law of a kind, but it's skewed.  If you want legal protection of any kind, you have to be a worshipper (or at least pretend to be) and have to turn up to weekly worship.

For example, murder and theft are crimes that are punished heavily.  But killling or stealing from someone who's not a member of the congregation doesn't count. If you want to travel, you better had dispensation and a good idea of who to report to when you arrive at your destination, so you can temporarily worship in the local church.

QuoteLegates are more like Bishops, Deacons and Archbishops in this arrangement. Admittedly, this might not be something you want to consider including but it certainly gives the general populace a reason (and means) to worship Izrador. After all, their old gods certainly aren't going to answer their prayers. And who else is going to ensure good crops this season?

That, too. Always assuming Izrador's servants can actually bless crops. Unlikely in my case unfortunately, because in my game Shadow magic is the antithesis to life. What they can do is assure that only part of your harvest is taken away, that you may hope for compensation when orcs trample your fields (again...), and that you can trade your produce lawfully for other goods and services in a Church-regulated market.

That said, I still like a low-level clergy. And coming to think, perhaps there could be common magic "growth" spells that help pump up a harvest... they'd likely have unnatural-looking effects though. Plants shooting up, wheat too heavy on the grain, insects falling dead, lack of flavour and scent... Like modern agriculture, in fact.  Hey, I'm beginning to like that.

I'll try to post something more coherent in the next few days, I have notes on Izrador's Church sprawling all over the place. At this point I haven't a clue whether any of it will see play though. At least one of my players, whose PC grew up in Baden's Bluff, doesn't seem thrilled by the notion that her character might have attended Izrador's weekly service in her youth.

Quote from: StalkingBlueNot keen?  That's not entirely accurate.  I couldn't have begun converting my own game if I hadn't had your document showing me some possible ways to go, and providing lots of nifty ideas to borrow.  I owe you for that.

Oh, my bad then. For some reason, I had thought that you'd looked over the Midnight-HQ doc and didn't like it. That was why my last post was more along the lines of "glean it for spirit stats and ideas".

Quote from: StalkingBlueI like your take of it being misapplied Wizardry, so if I move away from my simplified approach towards more religions, that's likely what I'll do.  I also kind of like the idea of having Peers, but I wouldn't want to give them access to specialised magic. Again, that's more to do with the tone of my game than with whether it's canon or not. Specialised magic, if any, should remain extremely rare in my game.

Actually, the worship of Izrador isn't misapplied if using the rules for Monotheism in the Wizardry chapter. I always thought it was kind of confusing myself -- Monotheism, Orderlies, Adepts. But it works for the cosmology of Glorantha. In Midnight-HQ, Peers use Monotheism and Legates use Wizardry, for the most part. Some Legates are more like Orderlies, depending upon their faction. Others use Animism.

Personally, one of the pitfalls of my creating Midnight-HQ was that I was a bit unfamiliar with the system. It was all bells and whistles for me. I had run two or three mini-campaigns with it and read it backwards and forwards a few times. That said, I wanted to use Animism, Wizardry, Theism, you name it.

Now, I don't think that was necessarily the way to go. While there are some aspects of defining the religions in Midnight-HQ (such as the use of Animism for the Jungle Elves) that I felt enhanced the setting, there are a number of instances where I feel I went a bit overboard too.

If I were to do the same conversion over again, it would likely be much more simplified. And that is due, in no small part, to my experience in Mike's Shadow World game. Mike's Shadow World conversion is much more straightforward than my Midnight conversion and, I think, more effective because of that. There are still some things I really like about Midnight-HQ, but I have enough distance now to see that there's a lot there that probably isn't (and wasn't) necessary.

Quote from: StalkingBlueMidnight especially lends itself to that sort of thing because it's written in a style that evokes rather than state hard facts or build a coherent system.  Which is one of its great strengths IMO (although I always get scolded for this attitude over on Todd's forums): it evokes themes and gives you a chance to charge the game with those themes that appeal to you and ignore or fade out the rest.

I totally agree. That's one of the things I love about Midnight too. The "canonical" stuff is really pretty cut-and-dry. But everything's pretty optional too. I'd never scold you for taking that kind of position. In fact, I built Midnight-HQ, initially, as a document for personal use. It was only when I started sending it to people that I had to worry about "canon" or what was (or wasn't) in the books.

Quote from: StalkingBlueInteresting. So where do channelers get their magic from? Is it specialised magic even, do you think? If it is, it would have to come from an otherworld, wouldn't it?  Now if the one otherworld on Aryth has Izrador in his most powerful form in it, it makes me wonder how channelers are going to get magic from there, and why it's even necessary to hunt them down with Astiraxes in the mortal world.  It seems to me it would be easier to kill them off, or taint them, when they are on the other side.

In my thinking, Channelers (and really all magically based abilities) are derived from the following:
working with spirits that exist either on the material plane or in the Spirit World, from artifacts left on Aryth (this includes magical items and spellbooks) and from their own personal reserves (this accounts for Channelers who've learned to focus their life-energies). I've also reasoned that there must be some sort of residual energy left in Aryth itself. This is where I think characters get their heroic paths from.

Since the Veil has split Aryth from the Divine, my thinking is that Aryth (in an attempt to balance the situation) is "creating" its own avatars, so to speak, by imbuing certain "champions" with special abilities or powers. In a sense, Aryth is enacting its own myths on the material plane. Sort of a metaphysical-balance-of-nature-thing.

It's my interpretation that the only other-world that exists on Aryth is the spirit-plane I spoke of. And that's pretty much where spirits go to be tormented by Astiraxes and eventually gobbled up by Izrador himself. (Gives a good reason for spirits to work extra-special hard to stay on the material plane as Fell, eh?)

Trying to connect all forms of magic with an Otherworld is not the way I wanted to go with Midnight-HQ. I found it difficult to make a hybrid of Glorantha and Aryth because, according to the cosmology of Glorantha, nothing world work on Aryth except limited forms of Animism and the worship of Izrador. Everything else would have lost its magical power because the connection with their Otherworlds was severed. How, exactly, a theistic or monotheistic entity would have accomplished a severing of the Animistic, Theistic and (gosh, can't remember the term) Wizardisitic (ha!) spheres and how that would affect magic as a whole (as well as that entity) is an interesting metaphysical discussion best settled by more knowledgeable Gloranthites than myself.

So, I didn't try to reconcile the two cosmologies. I just pulled out what I thought would work for Aryth. In retrospect, I think I even pulled out too much.

Quote from: StalkingBlueThat, too. Always assuming Izrador's servants can actually bless crops. Unlikely in my case unfortunately, because in my game Shadow magic is the antithesis to life. What they can do is assure that only part of your harvest is taken away, that you may hope for compensation when orcs trample your fields (again...), and that you can trade your produce lawfully for other goods and services in a Church-regulated market.

I really like your splitting up the citizenry around the worship of Izrador. That's a really neat take on it. If you don't mind, I'll likely swipe that should I ever get a chance to run a Midnight game again.

Another way to think about Shadow Magic, though, is that it can (or does) actually "bless" a crop. But what effect would that have on the crop? Maybe corn grows with the blessing of a Legate or Peer but the ears are blood-red, instead of white or yellow. Maybe tomatoes ripen to a deep shade of black and taste bitter now. That's how I was looking at it. You're right. It's still Shadow Magic. It's still evil magic. But I never thought that meant it couldn't be used by the worshippers to affect certain necessary results. Besides, I thought that the presence of really warped food supplies (things like calves being born with two heads or beanstalks growing with poisonous thorns on them) fit the mood of something being horribly wrong with Aryth.

Quote from: StalkingBlueThat said, I still like a low-level clergy. And coming to think, perhaps there could be common magic "growth" spells that help pump up a harvest... they'd likely have unnatural-looking effects though. Plants shooting up, wheat too heavy on the grain, insects falling dead, lack of flavour and scent... Like modern agriculture, in fact.  Hey, I'm beginning to like that.

Ah. If only I'd read a couple sentences further... :) I think you've got the idea. I recommend looking a little deeper into the Monotheism rules, though. Liturgists, AFAIK, don't really use their magical abilities as active magic in the sense that Theists do. Liturgists gather congregations to give everyone in the congregation a bonus towards some task. They can also curse other groups or even specific members but I don't think it translates into fireballs raining down on the targets or anything. Based on the results of the contest, the targets get the same kind of bonus or penalty (+10%, +1, -10%, -1, -50%) as with any other kind of magic. But the scope of the magic limits how it is applied. Therefore, even though, IIRC, it technically works like a concentrated magic (other than the Liturgist needing worshippers present), the results are much more bonus/penalty oriented, which can be interpreted any number of ways by the devious GM. (i.e. black boils on the skin of a cursed person, an unnerving frequency of astiraxes finding the target, a married couple acting like zombies after their ceremony or maybe a stillborn or horribly deformed or irredeemably evil first child) ...you get the idea.

Again, I hope this helps. I'm envious that you're getting to play Midnight with the HQ rules. I've been sort of "out-of-the-group" since relocating last year. Due to time constraints, life upheavels and general geographic limitations, I haven't had the opportunity or chance to even consider running anything, much less be closely involved with something as fun as we're discussing, although I'm hoping that might change soon.

Thanks for the discussion.

Scott

Quote from: StalkingBlueLucy, I want you to look at context a bit here.  Do you agree with what I'm saying about theme?  

I feel that your previous character Jez was classic really.  She fought feverishly, as if she was looking for her pain to end if only she could kill enough of the enemy - and then suddenly she turns around full circle and speaks up for the collaborating villagers who need her help.  And then again, with no religion (none that I'm aware of anyway), no surviving family, nothing in the world left but the little band of crazy guerrilla she's joined, she faces down the legate who has captured her and hangs on knowing that if she can keep the legate occupied with her long enough, there might be time for her friend to escape.  Why was she doing this? Loyalty to a sister-in-arms?  Hate of the Shadow?  Sheer stubbornness?  Love?  Maybe any combination of those or something else entirely. My point is, it made her human in a very, very powerful way.  With that character, giving her a strong religion would almost feel like a cop-out.

The Zana-Jez bond was awesomely powerful I felt, really visceral.  I think that's something very Tolkienesque about your Midnight campaign - that there is nothing stronger than the power of Friendship.  Friendship is a huge central theme in Lord of the Rings, it's what gives Frodo & Sam the power to endure and win through.  Maybe in Midnight it's all that's worth fighting for, the band of brothers (sisters, in this case).  :)  I definitely thought the most powerful moments of the campaign centred on the relations between the PCs.   I'm not sure how Heroquest can model this, since it seemed to be an emergent property of the D&D game, unsupported by the rules.  Unselfish acts on behalf of one's friends could reasonably be granted big bonuses I think under a "Friend" attribute - and the Shadow is friendless.  :)

Quote from: StalkingBlueBut I do think the humanity-in-itself theme that we've developed is worth defending.

The value of humanity-in-itself, when all else has been stripped away, is a very central theme of your Midnight game I think.  It feels a profoundly atheist and Humanist message; not exactly Nietzschean - there isn't the contempt for the Herd, just a sadness that most people are too weak to oppose the Shadow, and a lot of compassion (from Lucy's PCs, anyway!) :)

I think there's a problem with using Heroquest for Midnight religion in that it's developed for a gameworld emphasising very very different themes, a very spiritual, pagan message.  In Heroquest-Glorantha, humans reach out to become one with the cosmos, in Midnight humans are cut off from the cosmos and ground down to a tiny defiant nub of vitality holding out against the encroaching dark.

Quote from: S'monI think there's a problem with using Heroquest for Midnight religion in that it's developed for a gameworld emphasising very very different themes, a very spiritual, pagan message.  In Heroquest-Glorantha, humans reach out to become one with the cosmos, in Midnight humans are cut off from the cosmos and ground down to a tiny defiant nub of vitality holding out against the encroaching dark.

Sorry to interrupt. I don't intend to interject. But I just wanted to add something to clarify your point, at least from my view.

I don't think it's so much that HeroQuest's system is the "problem" with using HeroQuest to play Midnight so much as it is the clash between the cosmology (and underlying philosophy) of Glorantha and the cosmology of Midnight.

As I mentioned earlier, the only area where the two cosmologies are connected are in the realms of Animism and Monotheism (and even then only barely). Trying to reconcile the cosmology of Glorantha with what's going on in Midnight is a dead-end, in my opinion. In fact, I tried to do that a bit too much in my own conversion even though I was consciously trying to avoid it at the same time.

A lot of Glorantha has to be dropped from the system, IMO, to make HeroQuest work with Midnight. In fact, if I were to do it all over again (and I may), I'd likely kill off the distinction between concentrated and unconcentrated magic (which Mike has demonstrated to be an effective strategy in his Shadow World campaign) and I'd probably pare the styles of magic down to just Theism and Animism-as-Magical-Followers or something of that nature.

I would also probably add in a basic "setting ability" such as Corruption like I did with Entropy in my Dark Sun-HQ conversion. What better way to capture the "mood" of a setting in HeroQuest than to quantify it?

But I don't think this speaks of the HeroQuest system being incompatible for Midnight. Just Glorantha being incompatible with Midnight. Which makes a lot of sense.

Scott

Quote from: ScriptySorry to interrupt.

You weren't interrupting anything.  Simon is no longer a player in my game and hasn't been for a while - not in fact since we converted to HeroQuest.

The Church of Izrador

Izrador's religion is monotheistic even though in reality Izrador is one of the gods in a pantheon.  This means that all Church worship is misapplied.  

According to Church doctrine, Izrador will rise again to His full glory once all pagan magic and belief is extinguished on Aryth.  This is why the Shadow armies are fighting their bloody war of extermination against elves and other fey.  This is why Legates (Izrador's elite priests) and their Astirax companions (incorporeal horrors from beyond the Black Mirrors) hunt down and destroy channelers and people who use non-Izradian magic.  

The Izradian Church is near ubiquitous in civilised lands.  Every settlement of importance in Erenland has at least one church with a Black Mirror in it.  Only the empty plains in the south, the Sea of Pelluria and of course the great elven forest in the west remain largely free of Izrador's Mirrors.  

The Church controls trade, travel, and legal affairs.  If you wish to trade in the marketplace or file an accusation against your only son's murderer, you had better be a worshipper of good standing with your local church.  If you need to travel, a dispensation from your local church and a list of churches to register with en route will help prove that you are legitimate and not a pagan outlaw or a hunted heretic.  

The Church can also provide help in more direct ways.  Crops and animals force-grown with Church blessings grow to huge proportions.  They are strangely flavourless compared to fruit growing in the wild or game hunted, insects trying to feed off them fall dead, and monstrosities such as two-headed calves are not uncommon.  Yet – the orc armies need feeding, the Church needs its tithe and then you need to feed and clothe a family.  

Then there's the undeath problem.  Many people's essences these days are stuck in their bodies when they die, forcing them to rise as Fell with an insane hunger for sentient flesh.  The Church captures Fell, to destroy or to use for its own purposes, possibly as grisly recruits in its war against the elves.  

And finally people who go willingly to be sacrificed over a Mirror on one of the Holy Days, or to appease a roiling angry Mirror, are assured that they will never rise as ghosts or Fell.  



Abilities:  Dutiful Worker, Recognise Church Authority, Worship Izrador  
Virtues:  Accept Lot in Life, Obedient
Magic:  tbc
Relationships:  tbc
Other side: The House of Roiling Shadow, beyond the Mirrors.  (false demesne)

---

Here's where I'm a bit stumped.  In the published material for Midnight, Legates are both the priests and leaders of the religion and the most powerful spellcasters.  I'm not sure how to put that into Wizardry terms.  I'm under the impression, and Scott seems to be saying in one of his posts above, that under Wizardry rules you have liturgists as religious leaders on the one hand, and Adepts (and orderlies?) as the people who are really powerful mages on the other.  Am I wrong?


(Edit:  included description of the "other side".)

Hi Scott - yeah, I meant that the underlying cosmologies are so different it can cause problems in translation.  I think the bare-bones mechanics of Heroquest can potentially work great with Midnight, but any discussion of an area like religion in Midnight with reference to Heroquest rules inevitably raises a potential culture-clash.

Quote from: StalkingBlueHere's where I'm a bit stumped.  In the published material for Midnight, Legates are both the priests and leaders of the religion and the most powerful spellcasters.  I'm not sure how to put that into Wizardry terms.  I'm under the impression, and Scott seems to be saying in one of his posts above, that under Wizardry rules you have liturgists as religious leaders on the one hand, and Adepts (and orderlies?) as the people who are really powerful mages on the other.  Am I wrong?

From my understanding, Monotheism and Wizardry are linked by the Gloranthan sphere or otherworld with which they are associated. That's why there both in that one section. In Glorantha (again from my understanding, which may be flawed) there isn't necessarily a connection between Liturgists and Adepts, such that any religion necessarily has both or that an exclusivity between the two doesn't exist.

That's why I split up the Legates' duties. I reasoned that Peers could act as Liturgists, doing the grunt work of keeping people in line with the Laws of Izrador and gave Legates the role of being the Administrative, Martial and Occult ministers of the religion. If a Peer distinguished himself, then he was shipped off to Theros Obsidia to undergo training in Legatedom. So, there's a shift in the career path of a Legate (to my thinking) from being a low-level peon-believer-prostelytizer to (whoops!) going to see the Big Bad in T.O. and out pops a Legate (spellcaster).

What happens in Theros Obsidia to catalyze this transformation is anybody's guess.

I do like the way you determined that Monotheistic worship of Izrador is misapplied. Theoretically, if Legates are Adepts of Izrador, their magical abilities would count as misapplied as well. But, then again, I haven't convinced myself, yet, that reconciling Glorantha's otherworlds and spheres of magic with Midnight's religion is a really effective approach. I'd recommend having the religions work as best suits the results you're going for in your game. Trying to back engineer them into Glorantha's cosmology is really unimportant if you're getting the results you want.

I wish I understood that when I first tried the conversion. It would be about 40 pages shorter (I think).

Scott

Wow, lots to cover here. Listen up, because I don't think I can do this twice.

First, I disagree with a lot of what's being said.

QuoteTrying to reconcile the cosmology of Glorantha with what's going on in Midnight is a dead-end, in my opinion.

I don't think anyone is trying to do that. I'm certainly not. I've said this before, and I'll say it again, I don't think that the HQ magic system is specifically Gloranthan.

Think of it this way, are warriors specifically Gloranthan? No, actually, they're specifically Earth-an. Animism, Theism, and Wizardry are all from Earth, not Glorantha specifically. Put another way, all RPGs include elements of the real world so that it's something that we can relate to. The three magic forms aren't Smench, Albarqtuan, and Vazenicalism. They're things that we can all relate to from Earth. The Greeks were theists, Native Americans were animists, and Europe followed the wizardry model.

To stop for just a moment, I don't know why you see the need to make monotheism something different than wizardry, Scott. I think it confuses the issue, really, and doesn't add anything. I mean, I'd agree with you if you wanted to call the entire thing monotheism instead of wizardry. But that's just a term. In point of fact, the idea is that most schools of wizardry follow the church - that is, you have to be a member to get in. So they are, largely, monotheists too. What causes the problem, in theory, is that the one god doesn't monitor his magic, and therefore the link seems tentative. But the magic comes from the same otherworld, however, which is the key point. For example, there's no reason that a character couldn't be both a liturgist and an Adept. Because they both agree on where the magic comes from. Sorcerers just take advantage of the fact that god won't stop them if they take his powers (and may therefore believe that there is no One God).

Anyhow, this all fits, very much, the pattern of religions that we know from Earth.

Now, a problem occurs to some extent, because Gygax used Jack Vance's work as his model for how magic works (or, at least claimed after the fact that Vance was the inspiration for the "fire and forget" magic system). Bear with me a moment. The point here is that Vance's work, and Gygax's D&D divorced magic from religion. This is a very rare thing in myth, literature, or how people think about magic. But at this key point in history for RPGs, magic became something secular, like the psionics from Vance's work.

Subsequently magic systems of most other RPGs followed suit. You had your religious magic, and you had your secular magic. Clerics and Magic Users. Now, I really don't have to go farther than D&D, because Midnight is a D&D setting. But I could go on to explain how this has become pandemic in other RPGs with magic.

The big problem with this model is that it necessarily "technologies" magic. People for ages have talked about how "unmagical" magic is in RPGs. There have been dozens of threads about it, and people kept missing, and missing, and missing on why it was that magic felt incorrect. "It's too predictable!" was a common cry. "It doesn't feel mystical in any way!" What they're all pointing out is that it doesn't feel supernatural. Because for a person to use magic like is described, sans any belief system about the supernatural, they have to see it as a technology. Period. No matter how unreliable or weird you make magic, it says nothing about cosmology at all unless you make it linked to the supernatural in some way. I mean otherwise you could claim that electricity was magic. If you don't see electricity as magical, then you have to see magic sans a backing belief system as non-magical, too. A phenomenon to be explained.

As soon as you slap on a belief system, however, explaining about things like the beings from which magic comes, and the potential for an afterlife, and having to supplicate said beings to get the magic, etc, well, it becomes magical again. No matter how otherwise "technological" it sounds. This is why fireballs are OK in HQ - it's not just something that you get from nowhere, it's a small part of a sun god, or the essence of God's fire.


I've said before, that one has a basic choice when doing a conversion of a fantasy system to HQ. One can convert the original system and setting to HQ, or one can just convert the setting. Now what does that mean? Well, I actually have never believed Gygax's "Jack Vance" dodge. I think it happened like this:

1. They made chainmail. This includes rules for "Evil High Priests" and "Wizards" (IIRC - you'll have to forgive me I'm trying to remember a rule system I last saw about a quarter of a century ago), and in it, they're given so many spells that they can cast each battle. I think that you may even have to pay points to buy the spells for the unit.
2. D&D is created from chainmail. We can't have wizards casting magic all day long, because Gandalf didn't (Middle Earth being the real influence after all - Chainmail was all about playing the Battle of Five Armies), and it would be unbalancing if they could. So they kept the rule from Chainmail on how to limit the power of spell casters. Besides, it's tactically interesting.
3. Gygax makes Blue Book D&D, and AD&D, and people say to him, "Gee, Gary, that doesn't seem Gandalf-like at all that you remember and forget spells." Gary replies, "No, but it's like Jack Vance!"

Do you see what I'm getting at here? The fire and forget magic of D&D, and it's secular nature, are a result of wanting to have two different types of spellcaster, and needing rules to limit them. They have nothing to do with an in-game cosmology. This is only reinforced by the fact that (ironically like the game Sorcerer) D&D is actually sorta setting independent. It was not created with one setting in mind, but with any setting with Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, Hobbits, I mean Halflings...wait, this is Middle Earth with the serial numbers filed off. So we have to make up different landmasses with different names, because the Tolkien folks have already sued us for using their IP with Hobbits (interestingly Orcs are not copyrightable because there was a creature with that name from folklore - thanks John).

So it's not meant specifically for any setting. The material in D&D is made somewhat generic so that it can be transported to whatever map the DM decides to use. Including, potentially Gygax's Greyhawk, but anywhere you want.

The closest we get to a cosmology is that there are gods, and they are the source of where priests get their magic. Druids...we're not really sure, they're probably just priests of nature gods. But definitely not animists in the Earth sense.

So, what do we have? Well, one sort of magic that has a supernatural association with it, and another that doesn't. Well, wait; if wizards (excuse me, Magic Users) are based on Gandalf, then that explains it. Gandalf isn't religious! Right? He just gets his abilities from...nowhere. Right?

Well, if you don't know who Mithrandir is, then you might buy into that. Turns out that Gandalf is more Angel or demigod than human. In fact, there's no evidence that humans can do much if any magic at all in Middle Earth. Only supernatural beings, or those touched by the West (read heaven), can do it. It's so very much based on a belief system. Has to be to feel magical.

Now, I'll admit that you can read all the way through the Hobbit, and LotR, and not see the religion angle. And Gandalf's magic still seems magical. But, know what? That's because we're not playing Gandalf in an RPG. You don't know where his magic comes from, it's a mystery. Magical. As soon as you actually play Gandalf as not having a supernatural belief system - which obviously Tolkien would laugh at since he's a daimone in effect to Tolkien - you note how there's a lack of explanation of where the magic comes from. Since you don't know what Gandalf did know in LotR, even though we didn't see it, you note the gap. And magic begins to sorta suck.

I oughta know, I've played mostly wizards my whole gaming career, and never could figure out what was wrong with all of those systems that I came across. I love building spells in Hero System, but they always felt like, you guessed it, superpowers. Just giving the power the "incantation" and "gestures" limitation didn't make it any more magic seeming than it does when Goku uses a Level 5 Kamehaeha blast in Dragon Ball Z.

Hell, less magical than that.

Well, so we're left with a choice. Do we reproduce Gygax's mechanical mistake from D&D that's been replicated many times since, and has found it's way into Midnight, too? Or do we see that HQ is the fix for this mistake made all those many years ago? And change the magic not to Gloranthan magic, but to Earth magic? Which we can all grok, and which seems, well, magical.

I played a ton of Middle Earth RPG back in the day. Let me tell you, if there's one way to suck all of the magic out of Middle Earth, it's to use MERP to play it. As a D&D "fix," not even originally it's own system, it's as close to what you can compare actual play of Middle Earth with D&D to (unless you actually ran a game of D&D in Middle Earth which I've heard people have tried, and which is universally reported as a nightmare from what I've heard). And it just doesn't do it. Because the system is not designed to hit on the cosmological background no matter how subtle it is in ME. You just can't "be" in Middle Earth, and not know that your character has some belief system based on living there.

Put another way, the best and only reason, IMO, to play Midnight, or any other fantasy heartbreaker, using HQ, is to fix the error of non-magical magic. Because the defining feature of all fantasy RPGs is the magic. Otherwise we could just play a historical game about living in Italy in the tenth century or something. The magic has to be good, or it doesn't feel like fantasy. For two decades, I had no solution to this problem.

Now I do, and it's called HQ.

So what I suggest to people is that they do not attempt to make their world into an extension of Glorantha. I suggest that they look at what the setting should be, but is not because of the associated system for which the setting was designed, and then find out how HQ fits that model. Because from what I've seen it always does.

With Midnight, I see the elves as an obvious animist culture being portrayed poorly as such, because there are no rules for animism! The authors, not having a system that allows for animism ala HQ, instead try to shoehorn what they want to be an animism culture into the "Magic User" and "Cleric" boxes. "How do we take our setting non-specific system, and make this culture work with it?" Before the process is done you have something that looks as much like animism as an egg looks sunnyside up when cooked with a 500-pound bomb.

So we can look at the fragments of that egg, and try to figure out how to get HQ to emulate it. To which we'll say, "Nope, too different." Or we can look for the original intent of the setting, and get out sunnyside up eggs back again.

This is not to say that one actually has to use animism, theism and wizardry, actually. Despite all that I've said, it's not my point. Some people would point out that the structures of these are somewhat specific, and I have to admit that even I have a lot of trouble with them from time to time.

But HQ doesn't actually force you to use these things in any way. In fact, we know that there are at least two other forms of magic that exist in Glorantha (mysticism, and Lunar Magic). What the rules tell you is that there are potentially many systems, and these are just three of them. Meaning that it's up to you to create more.

Well, what's the use of that if you have to make your own stuff up? Well, as it happens, I think that the three presented models actually do cover most fantasy magic well. But the point is that you search for the fit you need to make it what it needs to be. Including altering the system and such.

What makes HQ superior, then? Well, because the one thing you don't want to throw out, when changing any of he magic systems, isn't actually part of the magic system at all. It's the source of the magic. Which are the religions of the setting, which should be read "belief systems." Because even Glorantha allows for atheism and magic - they're called Sorcerers. What's really important is that the magic relates to the themes of the setting. And the religion (again, read belief) keywords are what nail characters to the setting.

Why does Gandalf not cast magic all day long? Because he can't? I don't think so. I think that in the context of LotR, that he's worried about his mission being compromised by Sauron detecting it, and that showy magic would cause that. But what's at the heart of it, then? Why does he have this mission? Why does he care? Because he's got this "Loves Peoples of Middle Earth" relationship at a very high level. Why? Because it's part of his "religion" keyword. So why is magic magical "being" Gandalf? Because of what he believes.

There's nothing that remotely makes Midnight any different from any fantasy setting in this regard.

Sorry if this rambled somewhat, but it's simply not an easy point to make.

Mike

Quote from: Mike HolmesI mean otherwise you could claim that electricity was magic. If you don't see electricity as magical, then you have to see magic sans a backing belief system as non-magical, too. A phenomenon to be explained.

Yup - in my D&D campaign I use exactly this - magic is electricity, to be precise it's part of the electromagnetic flux along with electricity & magnetism.  So it's generated by the planet's magnetic core, stronger in areas of strong magnetic fields (lodestone, the Underdark), is changable, waxes and wanes over time - and is fundamentally a scientific, not spiritual, phenomena.  This works ok in a sci-fantasy way, it's highly compatible w the Vancian & Gygaxian approach, but I wouldn't recommend it for Midnight of course.  :)

Hi Mike -

I see where you're coming from and I think we're basically in agreement. This is essentially a restatement of my earlier point with the bit about "not needing to reconcile Gloranthan magic with Midnight".

Quote from: Mike HolmesSo what I suggest to people is that they do not attempt to make their world into an extension of Glorantha.

Here's a bit from the post right above yours that expands a bit on the "dead-end" quote:

Quote from: ScriptyI haven't convinced myself, yet, that reconciling Glorantha's otherworlds and spheres of magic with Midnight's religion is a really effective approach. I'd recommend having the religions work as best suits the results you're going for in your game. Trying to back engineer them into Glorantha's cosmology is really unimportant if you're getting the results you want.

In substance, we're saying the same thing from where I'm sitting. As I understand it, you're advising that we use the HQ system to make magic work the way we want it to in our setting. I see no disagreement here.

Thanks for clearing up the bit on Monotheists and Adepts in Glorantha. Admittedly, as you well know, I'm not as familiar with Glorantha as many of the individuals on the forum but I don't claim to be an expert on Glorantha either.

I was under the impression, however, that some schools of Adepts don't necessarily have to be associated with a form of Monotheistic worship and also that some forms of Monotheistic worship, in Glorantha, don't necessarily have corresponding schools of Adepts working with them.

Again, as I stated in my earlier post, I could be dead wrong. If so, I accept that. It's just an impression I came away with from reading the corebook.

Your argument is well-stated and I 100% agree with your major points. But magic in Midnight is very different from magic in D&D (except, of course, for the Legates who function as Clerics). And magic in Midnight is different too from magic in Tolkein.

Despite the many nods to the LotR series, Midnight's magic has very little in common with Middle Earth. If anything, I'd say magic in Midnight, at least as far as arcane magic goes, has more in common with the computer rpgs, Everquest or Diablo, than D&D. It's not fire and forget. Spellcasters cast spells and then lose points off their constitution, after they run out of their meager supply of Spell Points. It's a spell point system, not a Vancian-Gygax system.

I can't fault you for this. And I don't. I just wanted to clarify on the details of your post. Your primary argument remains sound and unchallenged. As I stated, I see us in agreement on all except the most minor of details.

One minor detail, as far as Midnight's setting and my thinking goes, isn't how to correct Gygax's magic system but rather how to best represent the essence of Midnight's magical (and religious) setting elements with  the HeroQuest system. That's the reason, as I'm sure you remember, that my Midnight-HQ conversion provided two optional "Spell Drain" systems for Channelers.

The catch, and this returns to my earlier posts, is when one tries to pull the magic whole-hog out of Glorantha and plug it into the Midnight setting. As we've seen in both my conversion and earlier posts to this thread, bringing magic from Glorantha to Midnight necessarily begs the question of the existence of Otherworlds.

But Midnight doesn't have Otherworlds, except for a briefly mentioned and vague "Spirit Plane" or "Spirit World". This leads Kerstin to ponder about the other "Otherworlds" and how they exist (or don't) in Midnight and what effect that has.

And this is exactly what I mean by "reconcil[ing] the cosmology of Glorantha with what's going on in Midnight", which was related to her statements on the topic, not yours.

And I think attempts at reconciliation of this sort are a fruitless exercise.

The feel of Glorantha doesn't equate to the feel of Midnight. The crunchy bits of the magic chapters of HeroQuest are not dependent upon Gloranthan cosmology. Therefore, introducing the magical cosmology of Glorantha with its dependency on Otherworlds and whatnot isn't necessary in Midnight. In fact, I think it clouds the ultimate goal, which I also stated earlier:

Quote from: ScriptyI'd recommend having the religions work as best suits the results you're going for in your game. Trying to back engineer them into Glorantha's cosmology is really unimportant if you're getting the results you want.

Now, as far as some of your other suggestions as they pertain to Midnight, I also agree in the broader sense but am unsure of their application to Midnight.

Using a conversion to HeroQuest to "fix" the magic in Midnight necessitates a change in a major setting element of Midnight, one that may fundamentally change other related setting elements in unpredictable ways. I think a group should be on board with a setting shift like this.

I also remember the discussions I had with both you and Lael about my early drafts of Midnight-HQ in which I pressed my own creative agenda too strongly, in essence attempting to "fix" to the setting on my own. The caveat is that such a fundamental change is not always welcome.

Remember my attempts to "fix" the Wildlander by associating them with the protection of some magical item, place or person? It's only an option now but, man, did it raise some hackles when it wasn't.

I agree with you that Gygax's magical system breaks down into just another boring form of proto-technology. It's practically a truism. The Midnight setting doesn't have that as much, but it is still there with the Legates.

I'd positively love to see magic similar to that in the Conan RPG or in Kenneth Hite's GURPS Cabal supplement make its way into Midnight. That would be awesome, in my opinion. But making a judgement on the setting like that is not something I think a reasonable GM should make on their own without consulting with the play group beforehand.

That said, I think that the mechanics of HeroQuest can be used to great effect in Midnight. Hence, in my own conversion, I make liberal use (some would say abuse) of Animism for the Jungle Elves and Sea Elves, Tapping/Sorcery/Wizardry for Channelers, misapplied Theism for the Dorn and Wizardry/Monotheism for the Legates and Liturgists of Izrador.

Again, I believe, in hindsight, that my own conversion is tainted (for lack of a better term) by my not being able to put down the uber-kewl cosmology of Glorantha but I think I did follow my own advice below at heart.

Take the parts of the HQ magic system that work for what you're going for, that achieve the desired effect that you want in your game. Use them fearlessly, shamelessly and with hedonistic abandon. Figure out an explanation later. The explanation is the least important aspect of what is trying to be achieved. Cosmology-schmozmology.

Which is pretty much what I think you're saying. Would you agree?

Scott

Quote from: Mike HolmesAnimism, Theism, and Wizardry are all from Earth, not Glorantha specifically.

Absolutely. Although I realised that only when I saw you talk about how religion and magic are two different (yet related) things in HQ.  

QuoteI've said before, that one has a basic choice when doing a conversion of a fantasy system to HQ. One can convert the original system and setting to HQ, or one can just convert the setting.

In my case, it's a conversion of the setting only.  And very much not a conversion of any parts of the system.  Just to be clear.  

QuoteWell, if you don't know who Mithrandir is, then you might buy into that. Turns out that Gandalf is more Angel or demigod than human. In fact, there's no evidence that humans can do much if any magic at all in Middle Earth. Only supernatural beings, or those touched by the West (read heaven), can do it. It's so very much based on a belief system. Has to be to feel magical.

When I took the step from reading the MN material (with many allusions to Tolkien) to prepping for actual game sessions, I hated how intrusive and wrong the magic system felt. It so didn't mesh with my vision.  
Yeah, that's another dimension of my previous resistance against letting "too much" magic into Midnight once we'd converted over to HQ. Turns out this dimension isn't about the frequency of magic as such, it's about the approach - technology vs religion.  Cool.  

QuoteAs soon as you actually play Gandalf as not having a supernatural belief system - which obviously Tolkien would laugh at since he's a daimone in effect to Tolkien - you note how there's a lack of explanation of where the magic comes from. Since you don't know what Gandalf did know in LotR, even though we didn't see it, you note the gap.

It's not explicit, but even in LotR there's mention of supernatural stuff going on. When Gandalf returns (in white), he tells of his death-and-beyond experience (naked beneath stars) and of how he was sent back from there to finish his job in Middle Earth.
Besides, all of LotR is about beliefs and about what you are willing to sacrifice for them.

Which I find very interesting because to Tolkien, what counted in Middle Earth were the languages he created.  He designed the entire mythology of the Silmarillion around the languages, and then apparently wrote LotR mostly as an excuse to have his nifty languages "spoken" in it.
Now those languages are cool, no doubt about it.  Yet what gives his stories such lasting power are the mythology and underlying belief systems.

QuoteOr do we see that HQ is the fix for this mistake made all those many years ago? And change the magic not to Gloranthan magic, but to Earth magic? Which we can all grok, and which seems, well, magical.

I'm with you now. I didn't get that about HQ magic in our earlier discussion because I hadn't seen the religions angle really, but when I reread the HQ book looking at the religions by themselves (ignoring the magic that comes with them), I realised what you meant by that.  

QuotePut another way, the best and only reason, IMO, to play Midnight, or any other fantasy heartbreaker, using HQ, is to fix the error of non-magical magic.

It was certainly the strongest reason for me.  Not the only one (I was also getting sick and tired of the incoherences between an evolving narr style and a gamist system), but by far the strongest one. I had to get away from the technology - although I didn't quite understand what it was I was trying to avoid, or fix.

QuoteSo what I suggest to people is that they do not attempt to make their world into an extension of Glorantha. I suggest that they look at what the setting should be, but is not because of the associated system for which the setting was designed, and then find out how HQ fits that model. Because from what I've seen it always does.

That would be wonderful.  - Btw, I showed my players what I'd posted yesterday about Izrador's Church, and they both liked it, and liked the idea of having religious beliefs (or doubts or nonbeliefs, whichever) for their characters.  I've also worked out with Lucy what she thinks she wants to do with Katrin, religion-wise. It's not a paladin concept so much as a Dornish messiah.  Which of course is very cool in Midnight.

QuoteThis is not to say that one actually has to use animism, theism and wizardry, actually.
...
What the rules tell you is that there are potentially many systems, and these are just three of them. Meaning that it's up to you to create more.

I don't feel I'd need extra systems for Midnight. The ones HQ has cover a lot of ground and as you say, they reflect human religious beliefs very well. So if I can get HQ rules, or a part of them, to work with the vision of Midnight we have in our group, I'll stick with them.  

QuoteIt's the source of the magic. Which are the religions of the setting, which should be read "belief systems." Because even Glorantha allows for atheism and magic - they're called Sorcerers.

There's also a no-god cult and a god-forgot cult around, I noticed a couple of days ago.  

QuoteWhat's really important is that the magic relates to the themes of the setting. And the religion (again, read belief) keywords are what nail characters to the setting.

Yes, I very much agree with that. So if we can find beliefs for Dorns and Jungle Elves that nail them to the setting in a way that's consistent with our vision, and perhaps even brings it out better, that would be fantastic.

Quote from: ScriptyIn substance, we're saying the same thing from where I'm sitting. As I understand it, you're advising that we use the HQ system to make magic work the way we want it to in our setting. I see no disagreement here.

Well, there's no disagreement, because I'm trying to show how making HQ work for something like Midnight, is not making it like Glorantha. But where I disagree with you guys is that you see Midnight as not having certain systems, and so you think that you shouldn't use the HQ stuff. What I'm saying is that the HQ cognates seem to be missing, only because of the association of Midnight to HQ, so you need to look a bit closer, IMO, and you'll find that much or all of the HQ stuff really is there.

Now, we'll all have our own take on what the intent of the game really is, or what'll play best. But my point is that it's a mistake to look at the Midnight setting (or any fantasy setting) without first removing the D&D filter that's over it. It's like when I started to do the Shadow World conversion, and I started to try to do conversions on things like Power Points from Rolemaster. Assuming that this was somehow intrinsic to the setting. Well, it's simply not. The game works much better if you just throw out that convention entirely and move on. Am I being "unfaithful" to the setting? Well, in a way, yes, intentionally so. But that process starts first with the choice to use an alternate system.  I just think that when converting one should use the entire new system, and leave the "side-effects" that the old system had on the setting aside when doing so.

QuoteI was under the impression, however, that some schools of Adepts don't necessarily have to be associated with a form of Monotheistic worship and also that some forms of Monotheistic worship, in Glorantha, don't necessarily have corresponding schools of Adepts working with them.

True, but that's, as I said, an effect of how the One God works. That is, the churches would say that those schools of Sorcerers who do not align with the church are stealing God's magic. The Sorcerers either don't care that they are, or don't believe in God, and see the churches (and the associated schools) as simply being naieve in kowtowing to God.

In any case, there are schools that are associated with churches. And all of these entities believe correctly that they're all doing the magic the same, getting it from the same place. The only question is whether you say thank you to God for it or not (through the veneation chain).

Put it this way, I think that one could even theoretically be a "sorcerer liturgist" meaning that they obtained the same "blessings" from the scriptures that the liturgists do without thanking God for them. Basically, the sorcerer would be turning the scripture into a Grimoire is all. Since the magic comes from the essence world, it doesn't matter really if you worship the One God or not to get it. He just doesn't care (or at least show's that he cares). I suspect that the Atheist Sorcerer would even tell you that if you that any appeals to God that are heard (that somehow manage to beat the 10W9 resistance) are actually just accidental channeling of powerful essence. The advantages of venerating saints are, to them, just accidents of the essence world - that is, it just so happens that saying the name of the saint causes the effects that it does.

See what I'm getting at? You can't have a "theist sorcerer" because the diety in question will just not let you use his powers. Just not the case with the One God.

So most adepts are monotheists. In fact, there are no listed sorcery schools in the book, they're all wizardry schools, meaning that they all require their members to worship the One God. All of them.

QuoteYour argument is well-stated and I 100% agree with your major points. But magic in Midnight is very different from magic in D&D (except, of course, for the Legates who function as Clerics). And magic in Midnight is different too from magic in Tolkein.

I get that. But is the magic in midnight different from magic? Is it technological? If not, then I strongly believe that some of what's in HQ must apply.

QuoteIt's a spell point system, not a Vancian-Gygax system.

Sure, but does it feel magical? Sounds just as technological to me as the Gygax method. Just as Spell Points in GURPS and Rolemaster have always felt technological to me.

QuoteThat's the reason, as I'm sure you remember, that my Midnight-HQ conversion provided two optional "Spell Drain" systems for Channelers.

Yep. That's Tap from HQ. Which has not been well enumerated yet, but which has been implied.

QuoteThe catch, and this returns to my earlier posts, is when one tries to pull the magic whole-hog out of Glorantha and plug it into the Midnight setting.

Why must it be binary? This is what I was trying to say above! It's not ever Glorantha. If you use the whole HQ system, it still has nothing to do with Glorantha, it has to do with magic as we think of it here as real people on Earth. You make this error no less than five times in your post.

QuoteBut Midnight doesn't have Otherworlds, except for a briefly mentioned and vague "Spirit Plane" or "Spirit World". This leads Kerstin to ponder about the other "Otherworlds" and how they exist (or don't) in Midnight and what effect that has.

...

And I think attempts at reconciliation of this sort are a fruitless exercise.

Here's where I disagree. Because you don't do such a reconciliation. What you do is look at the "real" Midnight, and compare it to how magic "really" works. That is, how it has to be stated to be thematically magical.

QuoteUsing a conversion to HeroQuest to "fix" the magic in Midnight necessitates a change in a major setting element of Midnight, one that may fundamentally change other related setting elements in unpredictable ways.

Possibly. I think that it's no less "invasive" than using HQ instead of D&D in the first place, however.

QuoteI also remember the discussions I had with both you and Lael about my early drafts of Midnight-HQ in which I pressed my own creative agenda too strongly, in essence attempting to "fix" to the setting on my own. The caveat is that such a fundamental change is not always welcome.

I've come to these conclusions since we worked on this. Which is to say that I might today give completely different advice than I did previously. Again, I've come to understand that things like spell points and trying to match other such system conventiones are not only unneccessary in making a conversion, but that they make the converesion less effective.

QuoteRemember my attempts to "fix" the Wildlander by associating them with the protection of some magical item, place or person? It's only an option now but, man, did it raise some hackles when it wasn't.

See, in this case, you're adding something that's not HQ. I'm hardly suggesting doing that, in fact quite the opposite.

QuoteI'd positively love to see magic similar to that in the Conan RPG or in Kenneth Hite's GURPS Cabal supplement make its way into Midnight. That would be awesome, in my opinion. But making a judgement on the setting like that is not something I think a reasonable GM should make on their own without consulting with the play group beforehand.

But it's OK to change the system? Either you check about all changes, or you don't. Either way it works just fine.

QuoteAgain, I believe, in hindsight, that my own conversion is tainted (for lack of a better term) by my not being able to put down the uber-kewl cosmology of Glorantha but I think I did follow my own advice below at heart.

I think you did mostly the right thing. Actually what I think is that you really didn't do enough in terms of going in the right direction with this stuff. That is, I think the problems of the conversion are that you're still trying to keep too many of the D&Disms in. Which aren't embedded in the setting AFAICT.

QuoteThe explanation is the least important aspect of what is trying to be achieved. Cosmology-schmozmology.

Completely incorrect, IMO. Sans cosmology, I think you might as well go back to playing D&D. That was my whole point - I must have made it very badly. What makes magic magical, is knowing the supernatural reasoning behind it. Without that, you have the technological magic of D&D.

From a really radical POV, again, I think that if you simply took Midnight as a setting and thought of it as part of Glorantha, for purposes of making the conversion, and completely disregarded everything about how magic is supposed to work there (which I feel is all tainted by D&D) and used the "Gloranthan Cosmology" instead, that you'd do better than any half-hearted conversion.

But I don't think that this is neccessary, because HQ allows a lot of leeway. That is, it can convert to handle whatever variations that one does find in the actual intended setting materials. So I say adjust the HQ model. But start with it as the base model. That is, magic comes from the otherworlds, or from supernatural "beings" in the mundane world. Which happen to include "Essences" which aren't really intelligent, but "just magic." That covers everything. Even D&D magic which is from nowhere, could be converted to be said to be from "essence" in the mundane world. Which is how almost every Fantasy world is described almost to the word. That is, HQ even has an explanation for where magic that otherwise seems to come from nowhere comes from. It just makes it magical by explaining where the magic comes from in a coherent way and allowing for mechanics to affect it.

But even most D&D magic has more theoretical background as to where it comes from. The Midnight magics, different as they may be from D&D, sound no different to me in this regard. They are meant to be magical, and so fit the overall HQ model well, and most, I think, can be made to fit one of the specific HQ models as well.

All this ranting said, I agree that you can probably get away with not using the HQ model for magic in a game, or adjusting it somewhat radically in terms of, say, ignoring otherworlds. But I think that this is just failing to use a godsend tool in favor of allowing the setting to stay messed up due to the effects of the previous system.

Mike

Following up the post above with another right away...and a much shorter one...

I'm glad that I've finally said this in a way that made sense to you. :-)

Basically it all comes down to linking the belief system to the magic. If all that means is that you have some knowledge ability of the "Right Way" to act, that when you act that way gets you magic, you're good. This is represented by the "Piety" abilities. Note that for Sorcerers, these are just knowing how the person who wrote their books did magic - not neccessarily moral codes. Even more interesting, we don't even actually have to know what these codes are - just having the ability on the character sheet is enough.

So the minimum HQ magic system, to me, would be to have a Piety stat linked to simply stated magic abilities. Uh, something like:

Skills:
Know Things Ways

Magic:
Throw Big Ball of Fire

In fact, it gets easier than that, because you have relationships to family and such in the homeland keyword, which imply moral code transmission, and from them you can get "common magic" which are simply abilities. What's the rationale for them? You learn them from the people that you meet each day. There, that's the bare miniumum.

Beyond that, all magic systems are just there for color to make them seem in some ways more like the sorts of magic that we're used to. Even common magic is required to correspond to one of these types just so we know how it operates from a simple mecanical perspective.

Sans this, all magic is just another ability on the character sheet. And no more magical than "Strong" is.

Mike

Quote from: ScriptyDespite the many nods to the LotR series, Midnight's magic has very little in common with Middle Earth. If anything, I'd say magic in Midnight, at least as far as arcane magic goes, has more in common with the computer rpgs, Everquest or Diablo, than D&D.

Which isn't any less technological than pure D&D.  

QuoteAs we've seen in both my conversion and earlier posts to this thread, bringing magic from Glorantha to Midnight necessarily begs the question of the existence of Otherworlds.

But Midnight doesn't have Otherworlds, except for a briefly mentioned and vague "Spirit Plane" or "Spirit World". This leads Kerstin to ponder about the other "Otherworlds" and how they exist (or don't) in Midnight and what effect that has.

That's not my problem. I'd already introduced strange "otherworldly" places in play long before we converted, and it would be perfectly possible and not at all inconsistent to give those places a religious meaning in addition.

What I was shying away from was how ubiquitous magic looked in the HQ rules. In my experience with fantasy games, the only way to keep a halfway "magical" feel for magic was to keep magic out of the picture as much as possible.  Now even very rare magic would still be "technology" to borrow Mike's term, but at least it wouldn't be happening all over the place and spoiling the fantasy-ish feel - a feel that is precariously maintained by the fact that you know magic is "somewhere around the corner" but doesn't really happen on camera.

That's a workaround.  A crutch.  Mike has it right.  

QuoteTherefore, introducing the magical cosmology of Glorantha with its dependency on Otherworlds and whatnot isn't necessary in Midnight.

I'd say the opposite, even arguing from the book. There are otherworlds in Midnight, only they are (mostly?) cut off from the physical world.

PCs (and possibly certain NPCs) get heroic paths, which are basically a bagful of common magic tricks.

"Real" speallcasting, Magecraft, is something else entirely. It's dangerous and punished horribly if detected.  Heck, they have a special breed of demons (Astiraxes) specifically to hunt down and exterminate Magecrafters!  If that doesn't mean there's at least two types of magic, common and special, I don't know what does.

QuoteI'd recommend having the religions work as best suits the results you're going for in your game. Trying to back engineer them into Glorantha's cosmology is really unimportant if you're getting the results you want.

Yeah I agree with that - only the cosmology in the HQ goes far beyond Glorantha because it reflects underlying structures of human religious beliefs. I don't want Glorantha in Aryth. I do want something that I and my players can understand and relate to;  and if the HQ religions structure help achieve that, then I'll use it, or modify it where necessary.  

Coming around full circle?  Maybe, yes.  I still want to achieve the same things with my conversion as before. But I'm beginning to see how the stuff in the HQ book could work in my favour, instead of against me.  

QuoteUsing a conversion to HeroQuest to "fix" the magic in Midnight necessitates a change in a major setting element of Midnight, one that may fundamentally change other related setting elements in unpredictable ways. I think a group should be on board with a setting shift like this.

I've got my players' backing now, as I mentioned in my post to Mike above. (Yibbie.) I'll have to negotiate details with them obviously and we'll only really see what works well when we actually play with it;  but I'm beginning to see faintly where I'm going, which is encouraging. If that makes any sense. :)

QuoteI agree with you that Gygax's magical system breaks down into just another boring form of proto-technology. It's practically a truism. The Midnight setting doesn't have that as much, but it is still there with the Legates.

I have to say what really spoiled any chance of a "magical" feel in our D&D times wasn't the legates.  They are few and far between.  What did it for us was having a channeler PC in the group - and the dependence on healing magic (part of the D&D hitpoint system).  

QuoteI'd positively love to see magic similar to that in the Conan RPG or in Kenneth Hite's GURPS Cabal supplement make its way into Midnight.

You'd choose Conan d20 magic over Gloranthan magic for Midnight?  Really?  :)  
If that's your thing, it may be worth checking out www.againsttheshadow.org again (did they ever manage to put your conversion online btw?). I vaguely remember seeing threads about Conan corruption and similar stuff in Midnight on those boards.

QuoteFigure out an explanation later. The explanation is the least important aspect of what is trying to be achieved.

No no no! On the contrary.  If I don't get to an explanation soon it'll be too late, because too many fragmented and inconsistent things will have happened in play.  
(Worst thing that can happen is that magic stays "technology", so it wouldn't be an absolute disaster. But I'd like more.  :) )

Until very recently I was shying away from explaining magic in Midnight.  Heck, I was shying away from having magic because even after converting over to HQ it still felt like technology.  Which was because (I now have to agree with Mike) because I just didn't understand the function of religion in HQ.  

I've had a big paradigm shift there.  And now I look back at our Midnight campaign and see what?  A game that's been cheerfully ignoring all issues of religion.  Which is a tad strange for a setting competely dominated by the fact that an evil god has fallen into it...  If there ever was a religious war, this one is it.  

An explanation for our god-less-ness of course is that when played with D&D, Midnight won't bring out religious themes. We brought out some other cool themes instead (which worked more easily within the gamist structures of D&D), which I don't want to cut off now - but I don't think that is going to happen if I stay sensitive to them as I work on the conversion.


Edit:  Cross-posted with Mike's two posts above.

Hi Mike:
Thanks for clearing up that bit on Wizards, Sorcerers and Monotheism in Glorantha.

Quote from: Mike Holmes

Quote from: Scripty
But magic in Midnight is very different from magic in D&D (except, of course, for the Legates who function as Clerics). And magic in Midnight is different too from magic in Tolkein.

I get that. But is the magic in midnight different from magic? Is it technological? If not, then I strongly believe that some of what's in HQ must apply.

I don't think that the magic in Midnight is Technological. There is a degree of randomness to it that is missing from a typical Spell Points system. It's not a system where you cast Magic Missile and off it goes, IIRC.

And I never said that aspects of Gloranthan magic/cosmology did not apply. It's quite clear, I think, from both the Midnight-HQ conversion and my earlier statements that I believe strongly that Animism applies to Midnight.

Quote from: Mike Holmes

Quote from: ScriptyThe catch, and this returns to my earlier posts, is when one tries to pull the magic whole-hog out of Glorantha and plug it into the Midnight setting.

Why must it be binary? This is what I was trying to say above! It's not ever Glorantha. If you use the whole HQ system, it still has nothing to do with Glorantha, it has to do with magic as we think of it here as real people on Earth. You make this error no less than five times in your post.

I'm sorry, Mike. I don't see where I've proposed that it's an either/or situation. My whole point, which I've stated repeatedly, is: "Use what works. Don't sweat the rest." And I don't want to really get into what magic is for "real people on Earth" but Glorantha isn't necessarily a model for it. It works as an exemplary model for magic as it appears in most fantasy novels and games. But it isn't necessarily a good model for, say, Hermetic Traditions, Chaos Magic or Hoodoo. Not all magical traditions "in the real world" pull their "power" from an "otherworld", although some certainly do.

That said. I don't see the error you're talking about. Perhaps, you're building a straw man out of my statements here. I haven't set up a binary argument here. I've simply said I don't think worrying about having the spheres of Glorantha line up with the magical traditions in a conversion is necessary to the enjoyment of a game. Both you and Kerstin have adamantly disagreed with me on this topic, which means the thought exercise must be of value to some HQ narrators. More power to them. I just don't find it to be all that necessary.

Quote from: Mike HolmesI think you did mostly the right thing. Actually what I think is that you really didn't do enough in terms of going in the right direction with this stuff. That is, I think the problems of the conversion are that you're still trying to keep too many of the D&Disms in. Which aren't embedded in the setting AFAICT.

Actually, I didn't keep all that many D&Disms in the Midnight conversion. I did introduce a mechanic for Spell Drain. But that wasn't to keep the D&D feel of Midnight. It was to to keep the thematic element of Channelers needing to pull their magic out of their own energies, and at times life energies, to cast magic. This, in itself, isn't D&D at all. Nor is it technological, at least in the conversion. It's very random and casting any spell can have any number of effects on the caster. That's quite a contrast with fire-and-forget.

Quote from: Mike HolmesCompletely incorrect, IMO. Sans cosmology, I think you might as well go back to playing D&D. That was my whole point - I must have made it very badly. What makes magic magical, is knowing the supernatural reasoning behind it. Without that, you have the technological magic of D&D.

Ah! Here's where we're butting heads! I don't think it's necessary to know "where" magic comes from to have something be magical. Like in Star Wars. The first trilogy, I loved the Force. It was awesome. Where did it come from? Who knew? It was just some quasi-mystical energy out there that you could train yourself to use. Cool! In the second trilogy, we learn that Force powers come from midichlorians. And that you can measure a person's power by the presence of and how many midichlorians one has in one's blood.

For me, knowing about midichlorians made the Force a technology. I don't have to know where magic comes from for it to "work" for me. I don't mind the mystery. Hence, I see no problem with just having Channeler magic work without having to have an Essence plane to pull it from. It just works. If we need an explanation, we can supply one later. A lot like Ron's approach to building a Sword & Sorcery setting. Get what you need to get the thing off the ground and then worry about the rest later.

I can see, from Kerstin's later post, that she's already past this point. She's already brought Otherworlds into the picture. Well, that's cool too. I just don't think it's necessary to figure out how the three Otherworlds of Glorantha fit into a setting before attempting a conversion. Just do the conversion! If Wizardry works for the setting, well, use it! I don't think it matters if the setting has an Essence plane. That can be worked out later, to my thinking.

Quote from: Mike HolmesThat is, magic comes from the otherworlds, or from supernatural "beings" in the mundane world. Which happen to include "Essences" which aren't really intelligent, but "just magic." That covers everything.

Hrm. It doesn't cover magic that is powered by one's own life energies, which is a vital part of the Midnight setting. Sure, that can be hatcheted out. I'm cool with that. But I think a fundamental change of that nature to the setting should be discussed with the play-group. And, yes, I would discuss changing the system with the play-group as well.

But it is a fundamental element of Midnight that isn't covered in the "Magic from the Otherworld" scenario. HeroQuest's cosmology is pretty robust. And I think it does cover a great deal in terms of fantasy magic. But I don't think it's a Swiss Army knife and I don't think it has to be.

And I don't think that I'm "completely incorrect", "allowing the setting to stay messed up" or falling prey to "binary" thinking because of this.

I think you sum it up best:

Quote from: Mike HolmesBeyond that, all magic systems are just there for color to make them seem in some ways more like the sorts of magic that we're used to.

As regards magic in RPGs, I think they are just "color". And I don't think that adopting a cosmology is necessary for them to add presence, meaning, impact or mood to a game. Do the demons in Ron's Sorcerer game have to come from Hell or some Lower Plane for them to be "demonic"? Do we really have to know anything about them other than what they're like, what they want and what they can do?

I don't propose to convert you, Mike. But I do think my opinion is valid and just as "correct" as yours, although it seems that my suggestions are less necessary to Kerstin's conversion as she's already passed a point where they can really add much value.

Scott

Hi Kerstin,
I'm posting a response and then taking a break for the rest of the day. I seem to have ruffled some feathers somehow but I did want to continue our discussion briefly.

As I think I made clear in my post above, I believe you're too far along to take much of my advice to heart. Your statements that you already have some Otherworlds going and all pretty much nails down the path you'll be taking. And I'm not saying that's the wrong path. I'm just saying that I don't think it's a necessary path. I don't see it as the "One True Way". Honestly, I don't see anything as a "One True Way" in gaming or in life. So I'm not here to preach, prostelytize or convert. Just here to share, discuss, assist and, yes, learn.

Quote from: Kerstin

Quote from: ScriptyTherefore, introducing the magical cosmology of Glorantha with its dependency on Otherworlds and whatnot isn't necessary in Midnight.

I'd say the opposite, even arguing from the book. There are otherworlds in Midnight, only they are (mostly?) cut off from the physical world.

PCs (and possibly certain NPCs) get heroic paths, which are basically a bagful of common magic tricks.

"Real" speallcasting, Magecraft, is something else entirely. It's dangerous and punished horribly if detected. Heck, they have a special breed of demons (Astiraxes) specifically to hunt down and exterminate Magecrafters! If that doesn't mean there's at least two types of magic, common and special, I don't know what does.

There are Otherworlds mentioned in the book and some degree of support for the existence of Otherworlds similar to the Theist and Animist Otherworlds in HeroQuest. That I don't deny. The Theist Otherworld is, according to the corebook, entirely cut-off from the Material Plane. I don't see the connection between specialized and common magic that necessitates that all three Otherworlds be present in the Midnight setting. It's fine if you want them to be, in your conversion. I take no issues with that. But I just fail to see the connection.

Quote from: Kerstin
Yeah I agree with that - only the cosmology in the HQ goes far beyond Glorantha because it reflects underlying structures of human religious beliefs. I don't want Glorantha in Aryth. I do want something that I and my players can understand and relate to; and if the HQ religions structure help achieve that, then I'll use it, or modify it where necessary.

I'd like to point out that this is pretty much what I've been saying all along. A results-based approach is really your best friend, in my opinion, as opposed to a cosmologically-based approach. Wanna see my cyberpunk conversion where I tried to reconcile the three Gloranthan Otherworlds to a futuristic, Blade-Runnerish setting?

Heheh. I wouldn't think so. It was a mess. It all added up but it added nothing to the setting. I'm not talking from theory here. I'm talking from experience. Do what works. Don't sweat the rest. If you need, or want, an Essence plane in Midnight, make one. But just because the Izradian Church operates according to the rules for Monotheism doesn't make an Essence Plane necessary, in my opinion.

Quote from: Kerstin
You'd choose Conan d20 magic over Gloranthan magic for Midnight? Really? :)
If that's your thing, it may be worth checking out www.againsttheshadow.org again (did they ever manage to put your conversion online btw?). I vaguely remember seeing threads about Conan corruption and similar stuff in Midnight on those boards.

Possibly. The feel of the magic in Conan d20 and the Hermetic system in GURPS Cabal are highly agreeable to me. I just think the Corruption factor in Conan fits well with Izrador. And the Hermetic system in GURPS Cabal is probably the closest thing to "real" magic in an RPG.

Againsttheshadow has not put my conversion online, as far as I know. :(

Quote from: Kerstin
I've had a big paradigm shift there. And now I look back at our Midnight campaign and see what? A game that's been cheerfully ignoring all issues of religion. Which is a tad strange for a setting competely dominated by the fact that an evil god has fallen into it... If there ever was a religious war, this one is it.

An explanation for our god-less-ness of course is that when played with D&D, Midnight won't bring out religious themes. We brought out some other cool themes instead (which worked more easily within the gamist structures of D&D), which I don't want to cut off now - but I don't think that is going to happen if I stay sensitive to them as I work on the conversion.

Wow! Get on it then! Religion is a central fixture of Midnight. How you choose to present that element is up to you. I don't think that any system necessitates its presence in the game, though. We had plenty of religious elements in my Midnight D20 campaign. I made the switch primarily because I wanted players of a higher power level (which I thought HeroQuest handled better) and I wanted the system to address relationships and beliefs in a quantitative matter, precisely because religion and belief was so prominent in the campaign.

That said. I'm not saying you're wrong or engaged in bad-fun or anything like that. I'm presenting options and giving an alternate point of view. If everyone had already been saying what I've said, I wouldn't have bothered entering the discussion.

Best of luck,

Scott

P.S. Aren't paradigm shifts fun? :)

My last post to this thread (and responses to it that I seem to remember...) have been lost.  I can't retype it all, but two brief points to Scripty:  

1. You ruffled no feathers here, at least not mine.  Your input was and is welcome. I may disagree with some of your points but that's ok, those points help me define my position more clearly, so you're helping in any case.  I hope you'll keep reading and commenting.  

2. Yes. Paradigm shifts are wonderful.  This one especially so.  :-)

Below are my current notes on one particularly nasty feature of Izrador's Church:  Mirrors.  Once again I'm indebted to Mike Holmes, for suggesting the process of seeding new Mirrors (very cool) and the use of guardian rules.  

As always, comments more than welcome.  

Caveat:  While the Mirrors themselves are canon, many of the details below, especially the Master Mirror and  Izrador's dead body, the seeding of Mirrors and Mirrors in transit are additions.  I seem to remember that the appearance of Mirrors is described differently in different placed in canon material:  either a black pool or an upright, polished metal mirror in the place where the congregation's worship takes place.  I'm including both below;  but I haven't been able to find mention of the pool version in recent rereadings of the MN books I own, which may mean I borrowed that idea from somewhere else.  In which case, many thanks to its creator.  


Mirrors

Mirrors are the guardian beings of Izrador's Church congregations.  A Mirror consists of a body of utterly black, ice cold liquid, kept in a bowl of black lead in a lightless place in or underneath each Temple.  The main hall of each Temple has a standing mirror of black lead, a representation of the actual Mirror.  Many pious households make a point of keeping a smaller black-lead mirror in a place of honour in their homes.  

The first Mirrors were created from drops of the black liquid roiling in the chest cavity of Izrador's rotting body, the Master Mirror.  It is believed that when pagan resistance is finally overcome, the Master Mirror will expand to engulf all of Aryth and Izrador will rise bodily again, to rule a people united in the One Faith.  

To this day, new Mirrors are seeded by siphoning off part of the liquid from an existing Mirror, carrying it to its new location and installing it in its new bowl with appropriate rituals and sacrifices.  The blood of sentient beings sacrificed over a Mirror accelerates the Mirror's growth, especially in the early stages.  

At times a Mirror will grow agitated and roil with increasing violence.  Often this can be explained by the Mirror having been contaminated in some way.  Unless pacified by the proper rituals, an agitated Mirror may Blast, destroying life in its range in an uncontrolled explosion of Shadow magic.  

Destruction of a Mirror also causes a Blast, followed by a Backblast of equally uncontrolled non-Shadow magic that causes hallucinations in living things in its range.  
One known way of destroying a Mirror is by throwing in a crystal known as an Earthlight.  Earthlights are rare and highly illegal to possess.  They are variously believed to be the frozen tears of a divine being, shed at seeing Aryth about to be sundered from its otherworlds, or crystals containing dormant otherworldly creatures left behind to aid the people of Aryth in their last defence, or the tears of Aryth itself at its hopeless plight.  


Method:  Manifestation

Form:  Utterly black, ice cold liquid.  Kept in sealed containers while in transit, otherwise in wide bowl of black lead.  

Communication:  A roiling in all surfaces of blackened lead within the Mirror's range.  When the Temple itself comes under attack, a gut-freezing shriek.  

Functions:  As a result of their common origin, all Mirrors share the following general functions.  Local differences may exist.  
Awareness:  Sense Fey, Sense Pagan Magic, Recognise Temple Intruder
Blessing: Endure Hunger, Fight Pagan, Shadow Fanaticism
Defence: Defend Church Member, Defend Temple, Defend Legate  
Overshadow Pagan Magic:  Non-Shadow magic used within a Mirror's range is subject to a penalty from the Mirror's appropriate rating.*  
Blast:  Uncontrolled, deadly Shadow magic unleashed from a Mirror when contaminated or destroyed.  When destroyed, the Blast is followed by a Back-blast of hallucinogenous non-Shadow magic of equal strength.  

[*Unsure how my own rule works... The Overshadow Pagan Magic function should make using magic harder in a Mirror's range.  Contests inside a Mirror's range are subject to a penalty from the Mirror's rating as per usual rules;  so far, so clear.  But what happens when a character uses, say, his CM Pass Unnoticed Feat before crossing into the range of the Mirror?  Under canon rules, non-Shadow magic effects may discontinue each time they cross a range threshold into a closer range.  In HQ I can see two constellations:
(1) The intent is to go into the Mirror's range.  In this case I apply the Mirror penalty in the contest for using the magical ability in the first place.  
(2) The character didn't intend to cross the threshold, but is subsequently forced into that direction or is surprised by a Mirror's range spreading over his position.  In which case ... what happens?  New contest? If so, is it a second use of the character's same magical ability, modified by the Mirror penalty?  Or does the Mirror use its rating actively, resisted by the character's magical ability?  Or what?]


Ratings:

Mirrors grow in power over time.  Ignoring the permanent effect of sacrifices and the varying community bonus from the congregation (see below), Mirrors tend to reach the following thresholds at the following ages.  

Mirror in transit: usually 13**
Pale Mirror:  new - 13***
Red Mirror:  1yr - 20w
Black Mirror:  10yrs - 20w2
Grand Mirror:  100yrs   - 20w3
Master Mirror:  currently ??? [tbc]

**Mirrors in transit are usually carried in sealed containers of limited size because it has been found that prolonged proximity to the liquid destroys the carrier's mind and causes unpredictable reactions from the carrier.  

***Drawing off liquid for seeding a new Mirror weakens an existing Mirror, e.g. a 20w2 Mirror will fall to 3w2 when one container-full (13) is drawn off.  As a result new Mirrors will usually be seeded from just a single container, although in some cases liquid from several containers (from one or more Mirrors) has been combined to provide a more powerful Mirror from the outset.  Note that in practice as a result of the sacrifices made at initiating a new Temple, a newly seeded Mirror will normally start at a higher rating than 13.  

Bonus from sacrifices, permanent: Sentient sacrifices boost a Mirror's rating, at diminishing returns.  Use community support bonus table, HQ 91, for total of sacrifices made to a Mirror over time.  

Community bonus, variable:  Varies with the members of the Mirror's Temple congregation.  Use community support bonus table.