Spirit magic

[Bevan]

I have a definite preference for magic in roleplaying games revolving around the summoning and mastery of various spirits (demons, ghosts, angels, etc.) as seen in games such as Sorcerer, In Nomine, and Children of Fire. It serves as the core for the magic system for Spiritus Mundi, the game I'm currently writing.

It seems to me that the advantages of such a magic system are as follows:

1. Authenticity. Most real-world magic beliefs and traditions (practical Kabbalah, shamanism, Hermetica, demolatry, etc.) focus on spirit mastery, as do many classic fiction (Elric, Charwoman's Shadow, Worm Ouroboros, and even the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe). Therefore, it is appealing for those people who wish a more "real-world" or "classical" feel to the magic in their games.

2. Customizability. Spirit magic is highly customizable and individualistic. The spirits a magician conjures up and his relationship to them varies greatly from magician to magician.

3. Interaction. The spirits must be summoned and commanded or bargained with, and thus the character is forced to interact with magic on a more personal and intense level than simply shooting a fireball. The magic becomes part of the roleplaying experience as opposed to simply being a tool.

4. Grandeur. Magic becomes something with grandeur and importance, not to be taken lightly. It requires quick wits and talent, otherwise the magician will be outwitted by the forces he summons. Whenever magic is used, the character takes a chance, and thus magic will be looked at with awe and trepidation. It maintains a feeling of wonder and mystery.

The potential pitfalls for a spirit magic system appear to be the following:

1. Spirit creation. Each time the magic is used, a spirit must be created and delt with. This can be frustrating for the Game Master, particularly if the game does not have a list of generic spirits he can use in a pinch. Furthermore, they require him to play new NPCs on the fly, potentially in situations where extra NPCs serve as unwanted distractions.

2. Complexity. Spirit magic requires more focus and complexity for the player than many other magic systems (the spirits need to be contacted, summoned, delt with, sent on their mission, etc.), and  so many players may find it too much of an effort to bother with.

3. Min/maxing. Depending upon how much control the player gets when choosing what spirits he summons, a cunning enough player could create a spirit min/maxed enough (with the right selection of powers) to dominate the game, whereas he could not with more carefully laid-out spells.

Can anyone think of any other advantages or pitfalls to spirit magic, or ways of getting around the various pitfalls?

[Mark Thomas]

I've recently completed a campaign run that integrated some spirit magic rules into a brutally hacked version of AD&D.

One of the key issues I faced in developing the system was building the campaign world elements that supported the concept. This campaign was well suited to the basic idea as spirits are entwined with every aspect of the world, but it's still quite a bit of work to categorize and quantify the spirit aspects of the world.

You should also consider how spirit magic will interact with any divine magic system you include. Are divine spell casters using spirit magic or something else?

I ended up with something like this (bearing in mind this was based on AD&D):

Traditional spell casters - use ancient formula to control spirits without actually knowing they are controlling spirits.

Divine spell casters - use magic of divine origins and may occasionally interact with spirits as agents of the gods (in this world spirits are all decended in one form or another from a god/goddess who gave them life).

Spirit casters - invoke spirits directly either through ritual or through constructs that bind a spirit to a device.

[Mike Holmes]

Heh, inspired by Hero Quest at all, Mark? Your system sounds a lot like it. Bevan, if you have a chance to check out HQ, I think it has the best rules for Spirits outside of Sorcerer. Better for some kinds of fantasy, possibly.

Mike

[Bevan]

I'm familiar with Hero Wars, which I believe was the precursor to Hero Quest. I didn't look at the magic system too closely, but it did seem pretty impressive. Evocative (which is the first thing I look for in a magic system: I want it to feel impressive). However, I think a little too high fantasy for my game. Spiritus Mundi is modern horror with subtle magic. The roleplaying games it is the most similar to are probably Sorcerer and Unknown Armies.

There is no separate divine magic in the game, its only a matter of perspective. Certain magicians have religious overtones to their rituals, worshipping the spirits they summon and offering up sacrifices, but the actual magic is the same thing. Two different ways of looking at the world, but with the same results and ultimately the same rule mechanics.

The spirit magic supports the campaign's concepts, I think. It's based pretty heavily on real-world magic beliefs, and has the spirit world surrounding the physical world. "Natural magic" is magic that is based around the laws of sympathetic magic and work within the physical world (sticking pins in dolls, creating potions, etc.). Natural magic is comparatively minor stuff, and true power comes from manipulating the "super-nature" or spirit world, which is about summoning and binding spirits.

[Mark Thomas]

Heh, inspired by Hero Quest at all, Mark? Your system sounds a lot like it. Bevan, if you have a chance to check out HQ, I think it has the best rules for Spirits outside of Sorcerer. Better for some kinds of fantasy, possibly.

Mike

Actually no, I've never seen Hero Quest. Of course now I'll have to find it...

[gabby2600]

Interesting I quite like this idea.

Thw ay round any kind of pitfall and problems is to give the spirits personaities. Yep for every good point you give a spirit you ahve to give it a bad one. Yep your spirit may be able to breath fire balls from it;s nose, but when faced witha group of 5 of more people it runs and hides, as it has issues.

Or the spirit takes tasks at base value, and finds the quickest possible solutiuons (the old Djinn idea).  so you want to be the richest man in the world, you canb e but the cost is everyone is hounding you and begging you for cash, the economy becomes devalued and your riches become worthless. the economy eventually colapsed and a new currency is brought in so your aspoor as you were before.

Also at the end of the day summoning will be quite easy, and simpler it getting the spirit to do the job is the hard part, banishing can be made easy to. Conditional banishing and time delay are the best methods.

A good way to do it is have a list of Advantages and Disavantages, give each on a point value and you have to balance out your points to 0. then your spirit is created. All you have to do is make a roll balence out the points and their you have a spirit to command,. Complete with personality and issues. The success of the roll could even be used to determine the max advantages, so a success of 5 points would be 5 points of advantages and 5 point ofdisadvantages. this would make it a little faster and smoother. And much more interesting and unpredictable, like many other forms of spirit magic, your bound the the capabilities and problems of that spirit.




I

[roleplyr4ever]

personally, I dont like this idea. Some of the more securly based, open minded religions such as wicca would never use spirits for deeds. Yes they may call on one to help. but not to get what you want and dispose of it. Me being a Witch(yes I am a guy), I would never play a game with magick rules like this. No offense, but if you could have like a Shaman Magick that dealt with spirits, and a Witch Magick section and rules, that I think would help EVERYONE like the game more. Just a quick helpful hints

[greyorm]

This isn't the place for religious discussion, especially about what "this religion" does or does not do. There are a number of Wiccans on this board, and of them, I will disagree with you as to what "we" would do in any given situation as well as whether or not seperating magic into categories of "Shamanic" and "Witch" would make for a more playable game.

In fact, I very much like the idea presented by Bevan, it definitely hearkens back to the practice of Qabbalh and similar ceremonial traditions, and especially traditional midieval magical practices, which involved the summoning and commanding of many different spirits (to the near exclusion of all else).

In response to Point One of the disadvantages of such a system, I would say the best route is to go with a list of available, already-created spirits from which the summoner can choose. This is definitely the traditional and most realistic method (rather, that which reflects real practices most strongly), and it solves the problem.

As to Point Three, I don't necessarily see this as a pitfall, because, ultimately, game balance is a red herring. That is, there are more important things to worry about, unless you are running a highly Gamist system easily prone to abuse -- in which case the play expectations along with their associated rules are what need to be modified, not engagment in a "balancing" of the rules.

However, if Point Three is still an issue, then my answer to Point One applies here as well: spirits would be constructed prior to the game session, and thus anything over-the-top weeded out or fixed in some fashion (whether that be a reduction in the spirit's effectiveness, or an increase in the difficulty or power required to summon it).

I'd like to hear more about how magic works, mechanically, in Spiritus Mundi, if Bevan would do us the honor?

[matthijs]

Hi!

In my game "Draug", based on Norwegian folklore and history of the early 1800s, I have a section on Lapp shamanism. It's based mostly on non-Lapp sources, so whether it's an accurate representation of what actually went on is doubtful, but it works for game purposes.

In the literature I've read, there's several different categories of spirits (nature spirits, spirits of the dead, spirits of other noaider [shamans]). The spirits of the dead are _not_ individualized; they're all strong and evil, and will drive a weak-willed man insane if he tries to control them. Nature spirits (gadzer) are inherited from the noaide's mentor, and seem to have more individual traits. Other noaides' spirits are only encountered when one's travelling through the spirit world; they can't be controlled, only fought.

So wrt your points, Bevan:

1. Spirits (gadzer) in "Draug" need only be designed when the noaide character is created. Spirits of the dead are always the same, more or less. None of them actually interact very much with the character; the spirits of the dead are more like a pack of wolves. Control them and feed them, or they'll eat you instead.

2. Much of this complexity can be handled off-stage. In "Draug", a noaide has a trait called "Spirit following", which measures the total strength of his spirits. The level of the trait hardly ever changes. Summoning etc is so rare that it would be a separate adventure. Spirit combat is a simple matter of opposed rolls between two noaides' "Spirit following".

3. In "Draug", players can't control what spirits the character summons. If they can in you game, well, can't you just make it harder to summon the more powerful ones? (And they're more likely to want to devour the summoner's soul if the character fails...)

- Matthijs

[Daniel Solis]

Just to throw in another method of spirit magic:

I'm blending Australian aboriginal concepts of Dreamtime and voudoun spiritual posession ceremonies for Gears n' Spears spirit magic.

I agree with the previous suggestion that having prepared spirits suited to different tasks would be preferable to on-the-spot spirit creation. Of course you can provide methods for creating spirits, but it would probably be best to leave that to downtime.

If you're concerned with powergaming, which I also agree isn't really such an important issue unless you have a heavily gamist game, you can work it so that characters have different traits which represent spiritual affinity. The summoner sends out a call for spiritual assistance, but the summoner's specific combination of affinities may result in another spirit coming to his dubious aid.

For example, a bloody warlord summoner suddenly requires the assistance of a spirit of healing and mercy to prepare his armies for tomorrow's ruthless ransacking of an innocent village. Of course, the spirit of mercy isn't going to be so inclined to assist the warlord, but perhaps a spiritual pact with the physical world requires that some spirit come to his assistance. So she sends the spirit of war in her stead to help as he sees fit.

[Bevan]

In response to Roleplyr, the game isn't meant to emulate every kind of magic belief or appeal to everyone. I have a scholarly interest in the Hermetic-Kabbalah style of ceremonial magic and in Shamanism, and so I'm interested in creating a magic system that reflects that as opposed to, say, Wicca. Furthermore, I'm adapting the idea of games such as Children of Fire and Unknown Armies were magic may not be evil, but it is still bizzare, and directs you towards strange behavior and stranger philosophies. The guy pounding nails into a person's footprint to curse him or plunging naked into a frigid arctic stream to gain a vision of God is not a normal personal, and would be considered insane by most people. The magicians of Spiritus Mundi are not securely-based, but are at best highly eccentric and more often completely insane.

[Bevan]

Here's a basic rundown of the magic system. There are four magic arts, which are learned as skills (though require a little more character points). Within this arts are various rituals that must be discovered separately, so for example, one of the Spirit Mastery rituals is Exorcise Ghost and another is Summon Salamander (a fire elemental). If you know a ritual, you can perform it even without knowing the art (though it is extremely difficult), but you cannot perform a ritual that you do not know, even if you have a lot of points in the art in question.

Each ritual takes a long time to do (often many hours) and requires that various correspondences be built up between you, your target, and the effect of the spell. For example, if you wish to send a demon to kill someone, you could drop three drops of your blood and three drops of your victim's blood into a bowl, mix it with ashes, and sprinkle it in a circle. Then you place a photo of your victim in the center and slice with a knife shaped like the demon you wish to summon.

The magic arts are as follows:

Alchemy: The creation of various elixirs that can temporarily enhance strength, cause someone to fall in love, turn lead into gold, or even grant immortality.

Divination: Granting knowledge of the past, present, and future. Examples including spying on someone using a crystal ball, foretelling the future with astrology, tarot, or something else, or dreaming of past events that you have not experienced.

Spirit Mastery: the highest, most powerful, and most dangerous art. This includes the summoning, commanding, and banishing of spirits. It also allows you to gaze into the spirit world, send out your astral form, or even physical enter the unseen world. Spirits can do things far beyond the other magic arts, but they are difficult to deal with and control.

Sympathy: This is sympathetic magic, and is divided into Homoeopathic magic and Contagious Magic. Homoeopathic Magic follows the Law of Similarity, which states that two things that look like each other are each other on a certain level. The stereotypical example of Homoeopathic Magic is the voodoo doll, which when harmed affects the person that it resembles. Another example are tribal peoples doing rituals dressed up as animals to grant success int the hunt. Contagious Magic follows the Law of Connection, and states that if two things were together, they remain together. Examples include sensing somebody's location by touching a discarded lock of hair or harming somebody by pounding nails into his footprint.

Sympathetic magic is very subtle, and usually not obviously magic. For example, someone recovering from an illness may be due to his body producing antibodies, or it may be from the sorcerer who sucked out the person's sickness and placed it on an effigy. Likewise, a person trips and falls down the stairs. That might be an accident, or it might be from the sorcerer who cursed his reflection.

Magicians in Spiritus Mundi are often strange individuals who devote a lot of their time to the collection of strange pharaphrenlia to do their rituals. They carve strange runes on themselves, make pacts with strange runes, and cover their rooms with sigils to hold back the forces of their enemies. And they never, ever leave behind anything that would give other people control over them (most magicians learn how to cut their own hair or never cut it at all).

[Bevan]

It is true that I've already figured out my own answer to the problems of spirit magic that I mentioned, I just wanted to think about what everyone else thought.

1. The game would include a wide variety of pregenerated spirits: elements, various demons and angels, average ghosts, etc. Furthermore, each ritual only summons a particular kind of spirit (in the case of elementals or ghosts) or a very particular spirit (such as for powerful demons), so that the narrator already has a good idea of what the characters can call him, and can respond accordingly with the pregenerated spirits.

2. Most of the summoning happens off-stage, so as Mattjis pointed out, this would remove it from the center-stage as much. Magic is one of the important parts of the game, and I think that most players would be forced to either love it or leave it. Either play the game and deal with all the weird spirit madness or play something else. Which isn't really a problem with the game actually. I mainly just posted this problem to see how people reacted to all the potential issues I thought of for spirit magic.

3. The game is narrativist, so min/maxing shouldn't be a big issue. Also, considering how much spirits can and do screw you up (like in Sorcerer), it would be very difficult to get the better of them. The Narrator has a lot of tools to bring down a magician who is power gaming his way to victory.

[HOT]

Hi I've lurked a bit here and thought it was time I shared my thoughts with the community. I have a few thoughts on the subject of "realistic" spirit magic. This is sort of an animistic approach.

1: "Taboos" and "Rituals". The tribe (that the mage/shaman is surely a part of) must follow a code for not angering the spirits of the ancestors. The code is divided between "taboos" or forbidden acts and "rituals" or acts of servitude. By rituals I don't mean only complex rites but every ACTION you take to please the gods (taboos is by their very nature inaction). Shamans often have even stricter taboos and rituals than the ordinary tribal members (e.g. celibacy, fasting etc). It is a shamans place to learn the tribes rituals and taboos and bring them on to the next generation so that people don't forget and anger the spirits.

2. The spiritual journey. This is where the shaman gets visions from the spirits often in form of a totem beast. This is a wonderful opportunity for roleplaying, if you have the opportunity of solo-playing or if the other players don't mind to play the spirits the shaman meets on his way. The shaman can learn if it's time to move on (shamanistic tribes are most often nomadic), or if a person offends the gods. New taboos and rituals can also be learnt here.

3. Often the shaman can imbue a person with a spirit, giving him superhuman strength or speed or other insights.. This is done with the spirits blessing, otherwise the wrath of the spirits are upon the tribe. This magic is often sympatethic, using fur from animals or other implements to give the person the ability needed (eg using a bear's hide for strength or stamina or a serpents fang to grant immunity from poison).

I would like to see a roleplaying game based on these principles. I guess the campaign would have to be centered on a tribe or such. I haven't yet an idea for the system, but i guess I could use the skill system from Ars Magica for simplicitys sake, the magic system I don't know yet.

[M. J. Young]

Can anyone think of any other advantages or pitfalls to spirit magic, or ways of getting around the various pitfalls?

Here's a problem for you.

It would seem that the only magic covered is the ability to summon the spirits.

How do the spirits do whatever it is they do?

There's a sense in which a summoned spirit is another character in the game (you've noted this); thus whatever it does is subject to the game rules. However, what is it able to do? Can it shift between corporeal and incorporeal states? Does it need to do so? That is, if it can be incorporeal, it is impervious to physical weapons, but it can't very well carry an object in that form; or can it move an object and still be impervious to weapons? How does it do this? Can one spirit oppose another? How are contests between spirits resolved? If the game uses a simple conflict resolution mechanism, what advantage has a spirit over a mortal if the mortal tries to hinder the spirit?

I find that most of what the summoned spirit does is itself the exercise of magic power, but that in summoning systems there aren't any rules to cover how this magic is used. The result is that the actions of the spirits are managed rather freeform, with the referee deciding how he wants it to come out, but the game creates the illusion that the system is driving this.

In the end, you need a secondary magic system to control what the spirits can do and what is required for them to do it. That's not to say that a summoning system is a bad idea; it's just to point out that you've got this other aspect to the game that you still have to address when you've got such a system in place.

--M. J. Young