the big three you never see

[contracycle]

My main point was that the reason fantasy is dominant in rpgs is that fantasy is a live wire to the soul. Role-

Hmm, I'm not sure I buy that; most magicians do pretty mundane stuff.  It's usually all very prosaic, really - ability lists and sometimes a certain resource-management component.  There are exceptions, of course, but relatively few I think.

[Mike Holmes]

On 2001-11-30 05:26, contracycle wrote:
Hmm, I'm not sure I buy that; most magicians do pretty mundane stuff.  It's usually all very prosaic, really - ability lists and sometimes a certain resource-management component.  There are exceptions, of course, but relatively few I think.

In Xanth they do magic in Mundania they do the mundane. Sure, mechanically they may work the same in a game, but from an imagination POV there's nothing more magical than, well, magic.

At least it works for me; goes straight to my soul. I always play a spellflinger if I can. :smile:

Mike

[James V. West]

Yeah, what Mike said. Basically it boils down to what roles have the least amount of reality-baggage. Wizards, warriors, and thieves for example have much less baggage than judges, lawyers, and doctors. College professors have less baggage than lawyers or doctors because we perceive them as less structured and more likely to be eccentric thus we can inject our own fantasies into them a little easier.

You know, I think I'll just start a new thread on this subject since it's only peripherally related to the original topic. Anyone interested in discussing it?

James V. West

[Jack Spencer Jr]

OK, to keep this thread on track, let's look at Blake's post since at least one other person thought he did a decent job breaking legal proceedure down and since he used to be a trial attorney, he's probably got more knowledge than most of us ever will.  The quotes are his.

...Set each scene to correspond with the parts of the trial you wanted to cover, and it doesn't get too technical.  Basically, you'd skip voir dire (the most important part of the trial IMO) unless you absolutely wanted to deal with specific jurors to weight the drama a bit further.  You'd probably want to drop opening arguments also, since opening argument does nothing more than outline what you're going to talk about -- you're not allowed to openly advocate anything at that point.

This depends on how you do it, I suppose.  I know nothing of real trial proceedure and what you can and can't do.  Most of what I've got is based on movies & TV.

Two movies made a point on jury selection (I assume that's what voir dire is based on context clues) A Time To Kill and The Rainmaker made use of that part of the process.  (Unless I'm misreading what voir dire is)

I suppose this would work like combat and how much you abstracted and how much you glossed over.

All RPG combat is an abstraction, no exceptions unless the player fight wearing read armor with real weapons, real wounds and real death.

But the abstraction is such that it mirrors the reality closely but with varying levels of detail.  Not all RPG combat requires miniatures, battle maps, flanking rules, etc.  S o too would various trial RPGs not include all of the elements of a real trial nor will they reflect them accurately, look at the weapons' damage dice in D&D.

So some game might include opening statements and voir dire because a case is built slowly from the ground up and some might find playing this important. Others will not as skip to key witnesses, as suggested.  It varies by the game and the people playing it.

Traits could be general: Technical Knowledge and Persuasion, or you could break it down to a more granular set of Examination, Argument, Evidence, [subject] Knowledge (e.g., Criminal Law, Appellate Procedure, etc.), Ethics, and the like.  Alternatively, you could take a Hero Wars approach and have skills like Flimflam Jury, Good Ol' Country Lawyering, Dramatic Pause, Accuse, Badger, Poker Face, Pettifoggery (with a nod to Pelgrane Press), Make Lame Argument Sound Plausible, Gregory Peck Impression, Make Nice with Cops, False Sincerity, Generate Paperwork, and Plausible Denial.

I can't help but think that traits will be more usefull outside of the courtroom than in it, but that's just me.

Don't worry about legal accuracy; most TV and movie trials drive me nuts.  I sit there muttering, "Object-object-object!" or "WTF? Mistrial!"  (For what it's worth, The Practice seems to be the exception.  For a great example of abysmal legal ethics, watch Ally McBeal.)

That and, never having watch Ally McBeal, I got the impression that the fact she works in a law firm is besides the point.  The commercials sold it more as a show about a professional single woman in the 90's with goofy sight gags.


Anyhow, the real problem with a good coutroom drama is that they tend to require (?) a helping of deus ex machina.  The trial is going this way and then suddenly Our Hero realizes exactly how to undermine the opposition's case, does so and wins.

Or such is what I've seen, which includes:

Perry Mason (tv series)
A Time To Kill (film)
The Rainmaker (film)
Reversal of Fortunes (film)
Phildelphia (film)

And a few others (we could pile up a seletion of source materials, if you like.)
Practically speaking, you can go out right now and grab a writer's book on medical thrillers or legal mysteries or police procedure.  There are a ton of great genre-specific sourcebooks in that market.

Best,

Blake

[ This Message was edited by: Blake Hutchins on 2001-11-26 15:21 ]
[/quote]

[Blake Hutchins]

Hey pblock,

Yes, voir dire is jury selection.  Sorry about the jargon.

A lawyer-based campaign would certainly have to have non-courtroom elements, with actual court appearance forming the core "combat/contest" element, much as an ER surgery would in a medical drama.  You'd have stuff happening outside the legal battle, but when you do step into the courtroom, the group should know how to simulate or selectively dramatize the trial/hearing experience so it advances the story, maintains the players' suspension of disbelief, and doesn't bog down in the minutiae that exist in the real world.  Most trials range from half a day in the most cut-and-dried minor misdemeanor cases to weeks or months in high-profile murder cases.  Another thing you'd have to consider is how much time typically passes prior to trial.  Even in the rural area I practiced in, we commonly had three to six months between the time a trial date was set and the occurrence of the actual trial -- in out of custody cases, at least.  On TV, trials come up awfully fast.  There are ways, I think, to get a law-based game going with verisimilitude without being a lawyer or worrying about wholesale accuracy, but you have to know enough of how the legal system works in real life in order to fuel the illusion.

Plus, the characters themselves -- assuming the characters are attorneys -- should have their own lives and stories outside their profession.  A constant string of courtroom confrontations strikes me as tantamount to a dungeon crawl with suits and briefcases and arcane paperwork.

Frankly, the prospect of a real world legal RP doesn't interest me much, as I'm too jaded to want to play what I used to do for a living.  I have too much mundane knowledge for me to enjoy it.  However, a game where the characters are attorneys who represent the supernatural (see the comic Wolff & Byrd for a hilarious example), magistrates in a Bleak House kind of fog-shrouded fantasy world -- maybe with an Inquisition Court complete with legal procedures governing torture -- or legal operatives representing a shady conspiracy in a cyberpunk political thriller... that stuff might get my blood moving.

Best,

Blake

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Hey, Blake

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Hey, Blake

[contracycle]

from an imagination POV there's nothing more magical than, well, magic.

I think magician-as-mobile-artillery-cum-gadgetboy is much more common; relatively few games give you any magical meet to deal with.  Exceptions I can think of are mage an nobilis, which give you some context to be imaginative about rather than handwaving it as "yeah, its uh magic, yaknow, it just works, like, theres spirits and stuff".

[Mike Holmes]

On 2001-12-03 05:30, contracycle wrote:
I think magician-as-mobile-artillery-cum-gadgetboy is much more common; relatively few games give you any magical meet to deal with.  Exceptions I can think of are mage an nobilis, which give you some context to be imaginative about rather than handwaving it as "yeah, its uh magic, yaknow, it just works, like, theres spirits and stuff".

Well, that's just a question of taste. Which I have none of. I can't do fireballs in RL, therefore they're very magical to me. No matter how poorly defined or described. I fill in the details wth my imagination. Just the idea that I am a mage and that I do some handwaving, and that there's spirits and stuff, is a good enough place to start. For me.

Not to say that some systems don't do a better job than others. My standards are just very low. :smile: Anyhow, as it pertains to the thread, fantasy is to me, and I think many others, an engrossing Premise even when done relatively poorly. Obviously it isn't so much for you.

Got my tickets for Dec 19th already. I'm going because I want to see what it looks like when Gandalf works up a fire spell. Sweet...

Mike

[Jack Spencer Jr]

On 2001-12-03 11:57, Mike Holmes wrote:

Well, that's just a question of taste.

Well, maybe, maybe not.

Argueably magic in many RPGs is anything but magical.  I mean, in D&D magical swords no longer have names nor are they special anymore unless they have a high enough "+" which is one of the pitfalls of making a usable system for magic.

Oddly enough, getting back on topic, medicine and the law are somewhat "magical" to the layman since they don't completely understand it.  Perhaps a well-done RPG can take some of the mystery off of this.

[Mike Holmes]

Jack, you make the oddest posts.

On 2001-12-03 18:28, pblock wrote:

On 2001-12-03 11:57, Mike Holmes wrote:

Well, that's just a question of taste.

Well, maybe, maybe not.

Argueably magic in many RPGs is anything but magical.  I mean, in D&D magical swords no longer have names nor are they special anymore unless they have a high enough "+" which is one of the pitfalls of making a usable system for magic.

Huh?

Sure magic swords are a dime-a-doxen in D&D. I have played the game some. But it's plus one, man. That's sooo cool. I can get under that standard. I can even go lower than that. I remember my first +5 Rolemaster Sword. Not even magical, just made of steel. That was pretty cool to me. Taste is taste, no maybe about it. Arguably.

And how does having plus one swords pertain to making usable magic systems??? Never mind. You'll probably never believe that I (and others I beleieve) actually find that sort of thing engaging. I must be in some sort of denial. Can anyone recommend a therapist?

Oddly enough, getting back on topic, medicine and the law are somewhat "magical" to the layman since they don't completely understand it.  Perhaps a well-done RPG can take some of the mystery off of this.

You seem to be arguing that magic is a good thing that is destroyed by accounting. Then you find that there is magic in the mundane art of lawyering. And then you want to strip it away. Confused. Rather.

Wait, I got it. Magic is not engaging because it isn't done well. Lawyering is sorta magical. Therefore to make it engaging one should remove the magic.

How could I have missed it?

Mike

[Jack Spencer Jr]

you know, I'm not sure what I was getting at either.  Let me try again and heap more dirt on myself (that's not dirt!)

I'm sort of argee with a sentiment John Wick put in one of his GDJ over on GO.  I think they're free to view, but I forget the episode number.

Basically, that magic, real magic, magical magic doesn't work like it does in an RPG.  The +1 swords and memorizing spells and magic points and all of that breaks magic down into a usable format for a game, but it drains it of much of the wonder.

Some games attempt to bring that back, like Everyway which gives the characters a Boon as a reward for completing a quest.  One posibility would be a magic sword, which IMO (when done right) is better than finding a +1 sword in the chest.  more dramatic and more magical.  If you see what I'm talking about.  I guess I was responding to your comment on RPG magic being magical, which is a stupid discussion and it's probably best dropped.

In either case, the "magicalnicity" of RPG magic systems aside, they are usable and practical (some of them) which is important.

The subject of this thread: law, medicine, politics; is as un fathomable to the laymen as magic.  a system much like an RPG magic system to make Law practice, etc. usable and practial is a way to go.

If that doesn't make sense, then I don't know what I was trying to say and am best ignored.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I think Jack is dead on the money, that is to say, correct.

Replace "real magic" in his post (which is a potentially confounding term) and simply interject "theme and meaning," and you're all set.

Magic in this sense is a synonym for "especially significant," or "tapped into what matters." Think of what used to be meant by the term "noble," specifically without any good implied one way or another - a person who simply breathes a larger air, was born to more power, and whose actions are simply more significant than others'.

Regardless of any particular reaction I may have to that concept as a 20th-century-born type of modern guy, the FEELING involved is what's going on in most fantasy magic.

(Special important note: The Dying Earth is justly famous for its deconstructive take on this meaning of magic, which is why it arguably was the WORST template imaginable for the foundational magic system for fantasy role-playing. One of those historical little twists of fate, or plagiarism, as the case may be.) (Other note: and in its proper context, Dying Earth magic is a wonderful hoot, so don't read my special important note wrongly, dammit.)

A few role-playing games have tried to get at this approach to magic, but most of them have wavered between a "bazooka" approach and a Drama-driven approach that tends to lack teeth.

On the Sorcerer site, there's a very dense thread in the Archives about magic systems; I'll stop by there and fetch the link back as a correction.
Got'em! http://www.sorcerer-rpg.com/brochure.php/list20.html">Here and continued http://www.sorcerer-rpg.com/brochure.php/list88.html">here.

Now take this to the modern day - doctors and lawyers are among those who seem to wield more power in realms which, to most of us, are mysterious, arbitrary, and significant. I think Jack's insight is very important for those who would consider a role-playing system of the "ordinary."

Best,
Ron

[ This Message was edited by: Ron Edwards on 2001-12-04 19:22 ]

[Marco]

A few thoughts about magic.

1. When we designed JAGS our first conclusion was that to make magic both mysterious and useable we'd have to do something ... weird (and all our ideas turned out to be unsatisfactory to us). They were:

a) A system of building your own spells on the fly. It got complex. It got long. It was plenty mysterious (since no one could figure out how it worked). It *did* create a sense of the character weilding great power (or at least varied power).

b) The idea that there would be secret mage rules and only mages would read them, leaving the fighters and thieves (in fantasy) mystified was ... unworkable--but it would put most of the players in the position of not knowing how magic works (like when you watch a lawyer or doctor work and aren't one).

--
We decided what we wanted most for the GENERIC magic system. We built it with High-Fantasy (like from D&D or computer games) in mind:

1. We wanted magic to have the possibility of flash-bang/battlefield grade/wargame-style spells.

2. We wanted mages to play with resource management (one or two 'capital spells' per battle, then falling back to lesser spells). We settled on spell points while.

3. We wanted a good mix of horiffic spells ("Fill Intestines with Scorpions") and basic spells ("Star Bolt"). So we created colleges and some had horiffic spells and some didn't. We didn't interlink colleges like GURPS did (we didn't like GURPS's magic prerequisites much).

4. We made sure to include skills in magic. Our success in that result was not great. Each college has a skill that lets you do certain things (without actual magic spells).

5. For "standard Fantasy" we wanted there to be things for both fighters and mages to do (i.e. magic should not eclipse sword-play). We also made sure that there were counter-measures to magical theivery and that magic didn't make "thief types" unnecessary.

We created about 300 spells. The results were ... okay. For a dungeon-crawling/basic fantasy they're pretty colorful (IMO) and balanced (did some work there) and there are enough to make many varried characters.

We're working on alternate magic systems with more 'wonder.' I think a 'Hisenbergian' principal where the more a mage knows about how his spell is going to work the less powerful it is would be good.

We're looking at some 'conceptual' ideas where the user has 'power' in certain realms ("Life MAgic") and balances it with cosmic-feedback, and the like.

The best definition of 'black magic' vs. 'white magic' I've ever heard is that black magic damages the user in some way (that works for demon driven magic or just bad-karma magic). I'd like to work that in.

-Marco

[Mike Holmes]

On 2001-12-04 19:16, Ron Edwards wrote:
Replace "real magic" in his post (which is a potentially confounding term) and simply interject "theme and meaning," and you're all set.

Thanks Ron, for a second there I thought that magic was a real world phenomenon, and somebody had forgotten to tell me.

I think that I'll take a stab here and guess that Jack really meant "magic the way I like it". Which is to say that he feels that most magic system don't have a feel that he appreciates. To which I say, to each his own.

Magic in this sense is a synonym for "especially significant," or "tapped into what matters." Think of what used to be meant by the term "noble," specifically without any good implied one way or another - a person who simply breathes a larger air, was born to more power, and whose actions are simply more significant than others'.

Regardless of any particular reaction I may have to that concept as a 20th-century-born type of modern guy, the FEELING involved is what's going on in most fantasy magic.

I'll try one more time. Sure, some systems have a feel that'll appeal more to some than others. But lots of people seem to like D&D. And I think that the fantasy element has a lot to do with it. This is why people moving on to other systems often have a hankering to continue to do fantasy. It's not the system, it's the Premise that's attractive, here. Can it be done better. Of course. D&D magic is relatively terrible. It's just better than no magic at all. At least to some.

I know that doesn't include y'all. You don't like it. OK.

(Special important note: The Dying Earth is justly famous for its deconstructive take on this meaning of magic, which is why it arguably was the WORST template imaginable for the foundational magic system for fantasy role-playing. One of those historical little twists of fate, or plagiarism, as the case may be.) (Other note: and in its proper context, Dying Earth magic is a wonderful hoot, so don't read my special important note wrongly, dammit.)

If you don't mind me saying so...huh? Is magic a fun part of the DE premise, or not?

A few role-playing games have tried to get at this approach to magic, but most of them have wavered between a "bazooka" approach and a Drama-driven approach that tends to lack teeth.

So, it can't be done better? Or just never has been?

Now take this to the modern day - doctors and lawyers are among those who seem to wield more power in realms which, to most of us, are mysterious, arbitrary, and significant. I think Jack's insight is very important for those who would consider a role-playing system of the "ordinary."

Are you arguing that these professions are fun to play because they are "magical"? If so then, magic is a good thing, no? Or is the magic of the abstraction of a lawyers abilities somehow more compelling naturally than than that of a wizards abilities?

I'm very tempted to capitulate in a fit of "I don't get it".

For the record, in case anyone thinks that I'm against the whole Lawyer, Doctor, Politician Premises, see earlier in the thread where I encouraged their creation. I think that they would be engaging to some, certainly.

I just like magic a lot.

Mike