TROS magic system and spells

[Ben]

the question regarding the use of glamour is this, is there a difference as far as the object of the spell is concerned between the illussion of light and light itself?  if there is what is it?

In this particular case(the 'glowing' staff), just as far as the object is concerned, I would say not. The effect would be the same, the staff would be lit up. However, does the illustionary light illuminate the room?(which is of course the whole point). Under the assumption that glamour is mental trickery, it would seem to me that the staff would only appear to shine and not actually illuminate anything since the light is all in the witness's head and the knowledge of the room's contents are not. I don't see a way to use Glamour in this case without the use of Vision, in which case, there is no point to useing Glamour. Unless Glamour can give someone knowledge they didn't have; which would make Vision useless.

[arxhon]

Why not summon up a small glowing spirit of some sort that surrounds the end of your staff? It is forced to stay there by application of conquer once the spirit is conjured.

in Game terms: Summon (spirit) 1, Conquer (control) 1, CT 2 for each, if you set the duration for 1 hour.

chances are, my spell requirements are buggered up a bit, since i'm not all on the up and up with sorcery yet, but the idea is there.

[Fallen_Icarus]

I had this same issue in a previous thread about Glamour as a physical force.

I agree that Glamour "light" cannot light up a room, break things or have any real effect on the real world.  Glamour as "Fairy Magic" sounds very interesting, Jake, but if the vaugery is that powerful there would be no use for the other vaugeries.  Glamour does it all.

Movement, as you've mentioned Brian, can perform all the spells you would ever need but the knowledge to do so would be non-existant.  One could ignore that fact but that grates.

[Fallen_Icarus]

Maybe the best way to get around this is to use the more complicated method of producing the desired effect (I.E. Movement/Vision/Sculpture) as opposed to using Glamour, and keep the latter for actual illusion spells.  Then allow that sorcerers, while able to manipulate the forces of the world have no true understanding of them.  Edison hadn't the foggiest notion of what we now know of as photons and their properties, even though he did a bang up job of making the light bulb.  Likewise sorcerers needn't have intimate knowledge of the science behind their sorcery.  If any ambitous mage did decide to take on the science end of their skill, he/she would have a huge advantage.  However, sorcerers are VERY rare, and a good portion of those are the Fey who don't give a magicly enhanced crap about science (in my game any way), and most of the rest are Gifted, who are either hunted by the inquisition outside of Gelure, or getting ready for war inside.  I guess this is just me trying to keep the system (which I love) intact, and still justify its use.

EVH

[Bob Richter]

Glamour isn't exactly illusion, though that's a big part of it. Glamour is "Fairy magic." You could burn down a whole building with it, and the building would really burn, but the next day the building would be there. You could make a sword out of glamour and "kill" a guy with it, but the next day (or after the duration of the spell) he'd be okay (if a little traumatized). I'd say what glamour really does is affect the senses (this is consistent with the vagary levels). Light falls into that category, IMO.

And remember--I, too, am an interpereter (not the creator) of the Magic system.

Jake

I am remembering that, and that's why I'm still sitting here arguing with you. :)

I'd say what glamour does is fool the senses (illusion.) So I could make you think the room was lit, but how useful that illusory illumination actually was would depend on my ability (and willingness) to envision the room AS IT ACTUALLY WAS, thus the vision component.

My staff could appear to light the room, but I would still bump into the table I thought wasn't there because I still couldn't actually see it.

[Jake Norwood]

You guys are a bunch of damn nitpickers.

Glamour makes light. End of story. Gee-frickin' whiz.

Jake

[Shadeling]

::applause::

You know in one of my games I was running, there were torches that had Glamour flame on them to make light. It tripped the players out when the fire wasn't put out in water. Finally they realized what it was.

[Mike Holmes]

Jake,

If I illusorily fly with Glamor to a castle and talk with someone there, what happens after the spell fades just after the conversation ends? Where am I then? Do I remember what happened? Do I remember the conversation? Was the conversation with a real person? Is the information that was imparted by the person I talked to real, as in the information that they would have imparted had I actually been able to travel there?

If the information from the person in this spell is not true, then how can the information delivered by the light of the glamor spell be true?

Or is light an exception?

Mike

[Shadeling]

Why is this still such a big issue! Gee whiz! Aren't illusions at their core plays of light and shadow? Also look at the Interactivity aspect of Glamour. It allows others to manipulate or experience an illusion. I think if you make the illusion of a fire, or ball of light, you are perfectly within the rights of Glamour.

[Lance D. Allen]

I make an illusion of flame. It looks like flame in every aspect, because it is a successful illusion. If it does not shed light like flame, it certainly doesn't look the way flame does, now would it?

As for Mike's question..

You never actually went to the castle, or had the conversation. However, it seems to you like you did, and it seems to them like you did. So, in essence, you did have the conversation. I would, however, make a vision component necessary.. Not to see what the illusion would have seen, but to allow the illusion to go out of your field of view.

It's magic, people. You're allowing the fact that scientific terms were used in certain circumstances to make you think that it has to abide by logic and physics. It doesn't. MOST ESPECIALLY faerie magic. Yes, it might seem incredibly powerful that you can light a room, or cause someone to burn and die (or seem to), or fly up and see someone in a castle (so long as the illusion doesn't leave your field of view) with a single vagary but as Jake says, it's Faerie magic. The very name means, in the most literal, dictionary sense, magic It doesn't mean illusion, that's simply what we assume because that is what the stories generally make it out to be.

Faerie Glamour allows things as a faerie changeling to be raised as a human child until the parents discover it, then when the faerie is thrown into the fireplace, it disappears and the child is returned unharmed. Faerie Glamour allows for whole hills to seem to disappear during the day, and people can walk where the hill was that night, and never see it. If you discount these tales, then you discount the entire basis of Fae, and you might as well not allow the Fey in your games..

Or worse yet, stick with DnD-style elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings.

[Ashren Va'Hale]

if teh illusion of flame does everything flame does then.....


AH Hell, I agree with jake on this one, and its pointles sto argue this, do what you want in your games and let this thread die in peace.

[Lance D. Allen]

if teh illusion of flame does everything flame does then.....

.....then it can burn you, if I put in the tactile aspects. It'll feel like you're actually on fire, the wounds will appear, and you might be horribly marred afterward, even up to years.. If I so decide to maintain the spell that long.

Anyone want a donkey-head? Mess with Puck, and you just might get one.

[Mike Holmes]

The problem with your response Lance, is that it doesn't use logic at all. See, in order to ba able to apply the rule in play, one has to be able to know what something can do, and what it can't. Your description only obfuscates a useful answer. You'd say that it can do whatever Fae magic should be able to do. Well, if I've never read anything on the subject how can I use that criteria. In point of fact, the book does have a description and it uses specific terms. From which we have to inerperet the effects.

As for the science comment that's way out of line. Which one of us is arguing science? In fact it's our faction that's claiming that the science angle can't make sense. To be really clear on my position, I personally feel that any system that tries to come up with in-game effects based on any sort of in-game logic where something like magic powers is concerned is doomed to failure. I don't even believe that it should be attempted. I mean it's fun to have rationales and all, and I wouldn't do without them. But in the end, I've always felt that the only way to effectively simulate these things is to have certain rules that pertain to the game-mechanical effects, and use those to describe the effects in game terms, and then attach whatever narration I want to the in-game effect.

But it's exaclty the point that looking at it in this sort of dispassionate, "Will it work in play" way, the mechanic as written is problematic. You saying, "just do it like I say" is not going to fix that. Logic must be applied.

So, let's look at cases. By your description above the only way that I should be able to get the information in question from the man is if I have a Vision vagary going as well. Well, how is the torchlight situation any different? The conversation and the perception of the room are both sensory information. If the conversation that would be returned would be of false information concocted by the glamor (and I would agree that this is what would happen in the case of no Vision being used), then the informatiojn returned by the light of the glamor should be similarly false. That is, without the caster or spell "knowing" that there is a door on the other side of the dark room, there's no particular reason that the light returned from the glamor should show that door.

This then shows the fallacy of the idea that it would look wrong. We're not saying that you can't use glamor to create the illusion of a lit room. You just can't use it to create an actual lit room. Even if you have Vision, then I'd say that Glamor woudn't make actual light, but would simply provide an illusion of the lit room in an accurate fashion (assuming that's what the caster wants).

This is just as powerful as you intend for it to be, Lance, and seems to fit your description perfectly.

In any case, it seems a good split in terms of game effects to keep actual perception and illusion in separate vagaries. OTOH, I can understand if they were to overlap in some ways, and the power were defined as such. But it doesn't seem to me to be that way. Nowhere does it say that the light emitted or reflected by glamor has the specifically excepted property of being real. If it did, I'd be right there with you. But from my reading, and an application of logic, I would be forced to rule that glamor does not create real light.

Mike

[Jake Norwood]

And I say that Glamour does create light, because if not Glamour, then what? Vision...I can see that, sight is a sense, and glamour effects the senses. For example, glamour can make me see a dragon when there is none, and when that dragon breathes flame I see the room around me lit up. I think it's insane to require that Vision be added into the spell so that the fire looks real. Fairy lights and dazzling effects--this is obviously glamour, guys. There's way too much of a pedantic thing going on in here.

Jake

[Lance D. Allen]

Logically, magic shouldn't work at all.

Therefore, if we assume the given that magic does work, logic goes out the window when examining the system. Logic comes up with possible solutions, whereas magic makes the impossible happen. If magic such as this truly existed, chances are the world would have been destroyed long before the current. Logically. If some exceedingly unlikely event is possible (say, a 1-in-a-million chance) then it probably will happen, eventually. Once in a million years, perhaps. World's been destroyed already. Now we make new characters, and hope it doesn't happen to the next incarnation of Weyrth.

I have read up on Faerie, partially due to your own influence, Mike, when talking about the background of my own game. The resources are there, and so not knowing is really no excuse.

Also, you've twisted my example. The vision component to my illusory flight spell was only because the illusion (me, flying about) went behind a wall. The illusion itself went out of my field of view. If I use a glamour light spell in ANOTHER room, then I'll use vision there.. But not when the glamour is right there in front of me. As far as precedent goes, the only time I've noticed Vision being added to an existing spell is when magic is being worked where the caster couldn't see it, or when the magic involved seeing another location, or on an entirely different level.

It seems to me that this entire debate is because of bad phrasing. Firstly, calling it simply illusion. While the word, by it's dictionary definition, is quite apt, it has connotations that it cannot have real effects. Secondly, mentioning the Vision 3 option. It should have been explained that this was required to get the proper level of detail, not to be able to light a room. Thirdly, less a matter of phrasing, it should not have been listed under Mental... but really, where else to put it? It seems innocuous enough, until the examinations begin. From everything I've seen, it was intended to be as faerie glamour from legend, but it's been twisted.

Let's see about some other exceptions, if things are defined too rigidly.. Let's see.. Illusory fire cannot cause illusory pain, because that would require a Conquer component, a la the Pain spell. So it seems that the tactile component of glamour is entirely null and void. Matter of fact, how am I to directly deceive the mind at all without conquer? Hell, it seems now that glamour is entirely useless. I'll just use conquer to make people see/feel/hear what I want them to. Seems to me that glamour spells are Mental only by courtesy, or else it's an entirely useless vagary. Either what it makes appear are actually, physically visible, or it's useless. The Fey aren't looking quite so good a racial packet, now are they?

Enough. Run Glamour as you wish in your games. I'll make you a bet right here and now that if your interpretations remain as strict as they are now, it will be the least often used vagary, and for good reason. I, for one, will run it as intended.