What Magic Is

[Marco]

I think it's simply a matter of knowledge gradient. Players can always get creative. I've run games where spells *needed* to be used in unusual ways in order to succeed (i.e. you have to have dig spells and pass-wall and whatever to complete the dungeon).

This is essentially a version of the puzzle game.

Yes, magic can be harder to pin down than an cross bow--however the signature railroading experience: the NPC WHO MUST BE DEALT WITH (Bobby G, on this board) can just as easily be threatened as charmed--and usually just as effectively.

And consider this, it's reasonable for a crime-lord or an important castle to defend itself from common low-level spells. In a world with charm, bank-tellers might not have anit-charm devices (but they would have charm-detectors)--but the manager would.

If you can't make a vault that's immune to magic you've got to have an economic system that isn't vulnerable to being raided.

So, no, I don't think magic, per-se is extra empowerment. I think it's harder to second-guess than many other RPG artifacts but I don't think thats so much specific to a magical nature as much as simpling being outside most people's real life experience.

-Marco

[Walt Freitag]

I think of magic (and psionics, superpowers, super-technology, etc.) as ways to allow players to do things that everyone (that is, players and GMs alike) want them to be able to do, but that ordinary causality won't permit them to do.

When I'm GMing, I want players to be able to hear the frightening secret instructions that the head villain is giving to his chief operative. The players want that too. And I don't want the villain or the thug to look stupid in the process, so they're not going to have their conversation in a loud voice in the middle of the marketplace. It's going to be in a secret and well-secured area. But fortunately, the player-characters have powers of invisibility, or perhaps the skillz and warez to hack into the villain's ultra-secure communications link.

Of course, if invisibility or hacking ability is commonplace in the setting, then the villain is going to look stupid breifing the operative even in the inner dungeon chamber or over the "secure" com-link. So, invisibility or hackig ability is represented as rare. Rare enough that it's plausible for the villain not to expect it -- at least, not at the level of capability that the player-characters have.

But this isn't really special to magic (superpowers, etc.) alone. The same logic applies to "mundane" abilities, including combat. Have you ever wondered why, in a setting where there are seventh-level knights around, anyone would bother to employ fifth-level thugs or bodyguards? Superior combat skills gives the players the ability to do something everyone wants them to be able to do -- beat those thugs or bodyguard -- but such skills are depicted as rare, to keep it plausible that the player-characters would be confronted with such enemies in the first place.

- Walt

[Jonathan Walton]

So, no, I don't think magic, per-se is extra empowerment. I think it's harder to second-guess than many other RPG artifacts but I don't think thats so much specific to a magical nature as much as simpling being outside most people's real life experience.

Sorry, Marco, I don't buy it.  Magic is as outside most people's real life experience as swordfighting, riding horses, gunfights, and other standards of roleplaying.  That doesn't make it stranger to think about.

But a prime characteristic of magic in most (if not all) roleplaying is that it's less concerned with causality and more interpretive.  Early magic systems tried to counteract this with things like "Magic Missile," which act just like normal, physical things and have super-limited scope.  The way to keep magic from giving power back to the players is to construct long lists of spells, each with a very limited use.  Look at D&D or any Palladium game.  Bo-ring!  Only the really high level spells open up those "dangerous, game-altering" interpretive powers.

But the more interpretive power in the magic system, the more the players can determine just what a spell will do, the more they are empowered to change the world around them to match their desires.  Again, compare D&D or Palladium to Ars Magica or Mage and then go a step further to Nobilis and another step further to Universalis.  These are all "magic systems" under various names.

A lot of people seem hung up on the restricts that are built into many magic systems that keep magic users from inbalancing the game.  Yes, the GM might be given final say over whether magic works.  Yes, the magic user might be made more vulnerable to injury or death.  Yes, magic might be made to be unstable or inaccurate or dangerous.  That's irrelevant to what I'm talking about.  Those are all simply reactionary decisions that try to keep magic from undermining the assumed structure that every game is assumed to have.

However, progressive designers that aren't concerned about game balance or reserving all power for the GM don't need to cripple the natural ability of interpretive powers (be they magical, technological, miraculous, whatever) to give the players more control over the game.

[damion]

I think the types of powers we are discussing give power because they essentially define and alternate system of causality. Basicly our reality provides one system (most games don't have specify how gravity works), and whatever the game specifies beyond that(tech/magic/superpowers,ect) forms another, less specified system. Due to being less specified, it's more open to interpretation, so players using it have more room to select multiple meanings. This can happen also if the players attempt a mundane action outside the GM's experiance, but it's more common with magic type things. Thus the defence against this is to try to specify things really specificly, but it's still more interpretable, which is why systems like Ars Magica attempt to give some underlying principals of magic so that definition can be resolved.

[Marco]

You don't buy it? Look at it this way: in a car chase I can argue with you about "what would really happen." With a History Spell? Dose it show you a video? Tell you a story? invest you with memories? There's no way to know what'd "really happen" since anything you postulate immediately sets the answer as axiomatic.*

You seem to be arguing that the true essence of magic itself is in some way empowering--and that it's constrained by AD&D and what have you (for the record, I don't find that boring--I find it intriguingly ... 'gamist' making for cool tactical situations).

But hell, I agree that "magick" is as empowering as a concept as one's likely to find. But so is uber-martial arts--look at wire-fu (at that level it's a lot like magic--but it gets very murky). And so is high-technology.

-Marco
* I *have* been in a "high speed" chase. I've been down behind a support column with a loaded assault rfile pointed at a person (with intent to kill if they didn't get the hell out of the zone I was defending). I've ridden horses. I've fenced. I mean, no I haven't been in a gun-fight--but I come a lot closer to that than I do to casting Wall of Stone.

[Jonathan Walton]

* I *have* been in a "high speed" chase. I've been down behind a support column with a loaded assault rfile pointed at a person (with intent to kill if they didn't get the hell out of the zone I was defending). I've ridden horses. I've fenced. I mean, no I haven't been in a gun-fight--but I come a lot closer to that than I do to casting Wall of Stone.

Think about where most people get their ideas about what high speed chases and gun battles are like.  Not from actual experience, but from media: books, movies, video games.  Where do you get your ideas about magic or super-technology or super-fu from?  Media.  In my mind, killing someone with a gun is as alien an experience as shooting a fireball from my hand.  It's not the strangeness that makes the difference.  How do you decide what'd "really happen"?  You'd look to Tolkien or Peter Jackson or the Brothers Grimm.

And my definition of "magic," for purposes of this thread, includes high-tchnology and crazy wire-fu.  I said that already.

[mjk]

I think that magic is a game designer or author empowering tool.

[Jonathan Walton]

I think many people are looking at the title of this thread and thinking that it gives them free reign to post their own opinion of what they think magic is.  Let me make it very clear that those kinds of post are OFF-TOPIC to this thread.  I apologize for not saying that earlier.  Start another thread if you want to look at magic in the abstract.

The topic of the thread is the discussion or refutation (since many people disagree) with my definition of seemingly-magical abilities (inclusing super tech, super powers, etc.) as things that necessarily empower the players with more control over the shared imagined space, relative to the GM.

PLEASE let's stick to that topic, so this doesn't degenerate into speculation and people talking past each other.

[Marco]

In my mind, killing someone with a gun is as alien an experience as shooting a fireball from my hand.  

Well, good for you (and I mean that--I've never even shot at any one and I came close enough that I was damn glad I didn't)--but I think assuming that's true for everyone is unfortunately mistaken. And what informs us about sword-fights or wire-fu or high technology is, in traditional RPG's, the game rules--not the media--so in that sense I think it's even less empowering than something "real" where you can argue that "it oughta be this way despite the rule."

If I, as the GM, tell you Wall of Rock must be vertical and suspended between two anchor points that support its weight, how can you really argue--you can say the rules don't specify--but I can say they're vague and interperted by the "spirit" of them ("it's a barrier, you can't materialize it in air and drop it on people")--and then where are we? In a traditional game: it's the GM/Ref's call and the player has darn little basis on which to refute.

If I tell you that you can't possibly hit a guy at 200 yards with an assaut rifle because the maximum range is listed at 150--and you show me the US Army training standards (out to 300 yards with a standard weapon and that's not even for competion standards) then I, as the GM, have to make a decision to preserve versimilitude over the rules or stick to an "unrealistic" in-text standard.

As I said, don't get me wrong--magic can be super empowering--but I think the fact that you see AD&D as "dull" and Universalis as "magic" is where the disconnect is coming in.

If you define "magic" as "that which empowers players in an way that is not verifable to reality" then yeah: you've built empowerment into the definition.

But is magic really more "empowering" than just "powerful?" I don't necessairly see that--or rather, I don't see that as a primary element of it.

-Marco

[Walt Freitag]

There is a particular way that some magic and other analogous powers can (in some systems) be more empowering than equivalent "mundane" alternatives. To wit, the magic version exempts the player from having to exhibit real-world skills to produce a certain in-game effect, which might not be the case otherwise.

PLAYER: I try to convince the bartender to help us find a hiding place.

GM: Okay, but what do you say to him?

PLAYER: Um, 'Hail, brother, we are fellow Zilchians in need of aid...'

GM: He scowls even more, and you realize that he's an Arcadian, whose ancestors were persecuted by Zilchians for five generations.

PLAYER: 'I mean, we need help to hide from the Zilchians who are chasing us...'

GM: Now he just looks confused.

PLAYER: Hell, I'm supposed to have a high Charisma, can't I just roll this or something?

GM: I suppose I have to allow that, but too bad, I was hoping this would be a role playing game...

This crap is avoided by:

PLAYER: I cast "Fast Friendship" on the bartender.

- Walt

[Jonathan Walton]

Hmm, Walt has a point.

After all, it's probably possible to move a mountain just with normal actions, assuming you're an inventive player who knows how to use the resources given.  But in "Nobilis," you just throw down some AMPs and narrate yourself picking the mountain up and setting it down somewhere else.

So is magic then also a "shorthand" for mundane actions?  I'd agree.

[mjk]

Ok, I'll elaborate.

"Magic" in the meaning it seems to be used in this read is a game designer empowerment tool. It gives the game designer the ability to redefine what is possible within the game without having to take into account realism, verisimilitude, common sense, or anything else he wants to ignore.

Since this MAY extend the abilities of PCs, "magic" MAY be a character empowerment tool. This is usually the case but it depends entirely on the designer.

But is "magic" a player empowerment tool? No, it is not. "Magic" only exists in-game except for the the game designer who makes the magic system. This sounds ridiculous and overly pedantic, but since "magic" is not real, it has no ability to affect the players in any way, including empowerment.

The game designer MAY empower the players by giving them power to define parts of the game, and he MAY use the magic system for this purpose, but it is not the "magic" that empowers the player, it is the game system.

So Jonathon, my answer to your question, based on my short definition of what "magic" is, is NO.

Since "magic" is entirely defined by the game designer, it has no properties, attributes, or consequences beyond what he gives it. No necessary consequences of any kind can exist.

Since "magic" is only defined in-game context, it has no properties, attributes, or consequences in real world. The relationship between the GM and players can not be affected by "magic", or by the presence of "magic" within the game.

Still, I do think that since the "magic" systems are not limited by verisimilitude, most player empowerment to redefine the reality in a game that otherwise is fully GM controlled happens thru the "magic" system.

[mjk]

There is a particular way that some magic and other analogous powers can (in some systems) be more empowering than equivalent "mundane" alternatives. To wit, the magic version exempts the player from having to exhibit real-world skills to produce a certain in-game effect, which might not be the case otherwise.
- Walt

My point: It is not the "magic" that empowers the players, it is the fact that "magic" systems are not limited by verysimilitude.

[Marco]

This crap is avoided by:

PLAYER: I cast "Fast Friendship" on the bartender.

- Walt

No doubt--but I think the issue there is the existence of the actual crap itself--and not the lack or existence of magic (Another of those things that're immune to jedi mind tricks! Come on, we just stumbled into a random repair shop!)

There's no doubt that magic *can* throw the GM a curve-ball--but I don't think that's innate to magic per-se but simply to rules clarity and volume that's often associated with magic systems. And it still seems an even split between the GM-as-Ref making the call with damn few sign-posts and the players getting off an unexpected spell effect.

-Marco

[mjk]

Yes, "magic" does not NECESSARILY empower players in relation to the GM (Jonathon's question), but it USUALLY does since the GM can't draw on real world experience to support his decisions in cases where game system lacks precision. Charm spells are a common example of this.