Ygg Changes Ahead?

[Christoffer Lernö]

Well, only for the better I hope. I've been looking for ways to make the magic and skill system come together. I've also had problems with the abilities for items and locations, but now all of these things seem like they're fated to be woven together.

I've also been thinking on how to make the character's abilities more legendary. I admit I'm kind of locked in a Lord of the Rings-realism kind of thing. You know humans being, well pretty human despite all the fantastic stuff going on.

...which is incredibly boring. Look at how people wet their pants with Exalted, just because you finally freed characters from having to mediocre. Willows Torchbearer is along this line.

However, both Exalted and Torchbearer takes the same route: heroes have magical abilities from elsewhere. (Oh forgot to mention Earthdawn with the same thing)

I don't really want to cheat like that. I want humans to be very human, but still be mythic. I've been thinking a lot about how to get that. (Incidentally, the heroes in Tolkien is still larger than life, but not in an immediate, overpowering sort of way)

It seems like it too should work with the skills, magic system and items in one great happy family.

What's my plan?

This is all joined together by something like their legend, or let us call it the strength of their Myth. This is incidentally all linked up with their Weird as well.
Basically think of it as their Otherworldiness.

This is something anyone picks up, but how does that keep humans magically good at stuff without being magical? I'm not sure yet, not really sure about any implementations of this whole thing, but if things turn out right, the whole world will kind of be based on this "myth-speak".

Magical abilities comes from the Myth of the items and of the places. However, this is not to be thought of something abstract, but a very real, reality generating force. Basically were Myth gathers (I have no good terminology yet bear with me while I stretch and bend this word in ways it was never intended to), the magic springs into being. I'll even have a good cosmology which supports this, so it won't be as ad hoc as it sounds.

Basically everything is alive, and more so when they become Myth. Your weapons have souls, the stones, the hills, everything. Things spring into being by themselves, born out of the power of Myth. Darkness breeds darkness, light breeds light.

I think you'll find yourself leveling up your sword and discovering that the old Ghost Woods has grown more dark and menacing since you played in it's shadow as a young toddler. And darkness has bred there. Darkness that calls to darkness.

Is this still Ygg you might ask? Yes I'd say. Very much so. I'm starting to find ways to implement what I wanted from the start.

And this is, incidentally, not a weird version of fantasy. I still think of it as being your "standard fantasy", just what's standard NOW :) In a sense, think D&D meets HeroWars (although I don't know HW so well so take that with a large grain of salt). If you've followed Ygg you should know that's what I've been aiming for for quite a while now. Anyway, just wanted to mail a little something.

[ADGBoss]

Sounds interesting, cannot wait to see where you go with this.

One thing... Spontaneous Myths.  IS spontaneous mean... 1d ay mundane and 1 day magical? Or is a sense of Myth which accumulates and when X Myth accumulates on a person or an item or a place, boom! in a split second its Mythical / Magical?

For instance, a hill which has been a dumping ground of a Giant's victims for a hundred cycles suddenly becomes a Haunted Mound which may lash out uncontrollably at ANY creature who comes near it.

SMH

ADGBoss

[Christoffer Lernö]

Hmm I think it works like that in HW too or? It's a gradual thing anyway.

First just an eerie feeling to the place, then strange plants starts to grow and trees grow old tangled and twisted, then slowly but surely something more deadly awakens in that old groove.

Its about the extent of it's magic growing slowly but surely.

(An interesting sidenote: You can never stop the growth of a place's myth.. unless unless it is conquered and overcome by it's nemesis - a place of darkness by the heroes of light and vice versa, not that I mean that light/darkness is that clearcut in Ygg, but you get the point)

[Walt Freitag]

Hey Christoffer,

Thanks for the update.

Probably no more than a coincidence (and a minor one at that), but I've used the animistic "everything is alive" principle in some of my own campaign worlds. In Everness, for example, nature spirits (such as water nymphs, elementals and the like), individual human souls, and human gods are all instances of the same phenomenon at different scales. The god or spirit is called the strata. Strata of sufficiently important (or just large) things can mainfest as creatures or objects, or an already living person or creature or object can become the manifestation of a strata by association with the thing. A hero (or his shield) might become the strata of the city he (or it) protects, and a god-emperor, while not quite being a true god, would be close to it by virtue of being the strata of the empire he rules.

The "power of myth" sounds pretty close to the way I adjudicate the power of the strata. The only difference might be what justifies the power. I didn't make the power of strata directly dependent on the attention or awareness of humans (in contrast to the conventional "gods gain power through their worshippers" concept), but the intrinsic importance of the thing itself. For example, if large populations are waging war, then the strata of war will be something very powerful, whether anyone worships it or not. The power ultimately comes from an entity called the Vortex, which is its own strata and whose interaction with another entity called the Void creates the material universe.

I bring all this up to show that power derived from the consensus of the in-game-world populace has a somewhat different feel to it than power derived from an abstract universal source. The first form follows in-game-world causal laws, in however consensual a manner. The second form is closer (and perhaps just over the line) to being a de facto metagame form of power. In Ygg will the "power of myth" derive from the beliefs or will of the beings inside the game world, or will it derive from something more universal and abstract, such as the power of a player-character's destiny, that ties it more closely to the metagame?

Is this still Ygg you might ask? Yes I'd say. Very much so. I'm starting to find ways to implement what I wanted from the start.

I'm glad you stated that. It's a critically important point.

- Walt

[Christoffer Lernö]

Maybe I should state that the Myth I think of is neither "man made" or "external" (the two approaches you suggest) as neither personally satisfies me. The correlation between this "Myth" and the strength of its Wyrd is about as good as I can explain it right now (the HW+AD&D comparison wasn't meant to focus on HW's mythological background with gods coming into existence through the belief of people)

I'm still trying to solidify it. I'll give you the full story when it's clear to me what the full story it ;)