In Incoherence...

Vaxalon wrote: How would a ruleset put "magic" in magic and "spirituality" in religion?

I'm curious how that would happen.

There have been some great discussions on magic in the past... <does some quick searches>... My search-fu needs some work, I can't find the thread I was looking for.

Anyway, search around for "mysterious magic" or "myth AND magic" or "non-scientific magic" or "natural magic" and you should find some old threads that discuss this idea (indirectly at least if not directly).

TonyLB wrote: e.g.: A wizard wishes to create a vast snowstorm over the golden city of Gothilien. His first action is to cunningly craft a tiny replica of Gothilien. Then he buries it, bit by bit, in the shavings of ice transported painstakingly from the Gorash mountains....

I have this notion that you need to have the mechanics, but have them be so thoroughly obfuscated that the players only grip them on a subconscious level. Then they become proficient in gaming the magic system, and can recognize and create things that clearly fall into it, but have little or no ability to consciously describe why it is that they do what they do.

Of course, the notion of deliberately hiding your design intentions from your target audience is a whole ball of wax. But what the hey....

EDIT: I almost certainly need to put more thought into what question I am asking here, rather than just rambling on about ideas. I'm letting the community down.

Okay: Can a system that (on some level) simulates and rewards the observed anthropological patterns of magic evoke the uncanny feeling of the wondrous and magical? Will it necessarily do so if it follows those patterns? If not necessarily, will the patterns help and in what ways?

TonyLB wrote: If you produce a system that evokes the same mindset then it will produce results that consistently appeal to many people's sense of what is "magical".

TonyLB wrote: Can a system that (on some level) simulates and rewards the observed anthropological patterns of magic evoke the uncanny feeling of the wondrous and magical? Will it necessarily do so if it follows those patterns? If not necessarily, will the patterns help and in what ways?

John Kim's article wrote: Beyond game balance, though, there is the mere concept that energy does not need to be conserved. This is a very ingrained to scientific thinking, so deliberately breaking it by itself can give a system a less scientific feel. A good example (detailed in the next section) is interaction of the metaphysical and the physical.

Another part of the

John Kim's article wrote: The point of this article is not to say what magic should be.

TonyLB wrote: *snip*
For instance, Frazer proposes two fundamental laws: Similarity (e.g. making a doll-sized likeness of someone and sticking pins into it will hurt them) and Contagion (e.g. taking clippings of someone's hair and burning them can do harm to the person it was once connected to). If a system consistently encourages those sort of considerations, won't it increase people's sense of the magical?

Noon wrote:
I would suggest that the idea and sense of 'magic' is instinctual scientific impule in humans.

TonyLB wrote: Indeed, to most people who believe in magic, it is natural, part of the structure of the universe.

For instance, Frazer proposes two fundamental laws: Similarity (e.g. making a doll-sized likeness of someone and sticking pins into it will hurt them) and Contagion (e.g. taking clippings of someone's hair and burning them can do harm to the person it was once connected to). If a system consistently encourages those sort of considerations, won't it increase people's sense of the magical?

Vaxalon wrote:

Noon wrote:
I would suggest that the idea and sense of 'magic' is instinctual scientific impule in humans.

Actually, no, it's just the reverse. The magical mode of thinking is about as unscientific as it comes.

Vaxalon wrote:

Noon wrote:
I would suggest that the idea and sense of 'magic' is instinctual scientific impule in humans.

Actually, no, it's just the reverse. The magical mode of thinking is about as unscientific as it comes.

Callan's idea for randomising the results of magic has some legs too, but this sort of presupposes that there are no underlying rules for magic (unless the idea is to decide in play what the rules are, and slowly drop the random table?)

Noon wrote:
So paying tribute to the crocodiles in the anticipation of result X means a procedure hasn't been hypothesized, to get result X?

Noon wrote:
So paying tribute to the crocodiles in the anticipation of result X means a procedure hasn't been hypothesized, to get result X?

It is important to note that we, scientific people, "know" that talking to a crocodile won't make it refrain from eating you. A scientific experiment could easily refute this idea.

Someone who thinks magically would never think to DO such an experiment, and if it were explained to him, would be unlikely to put much weight on it.

Can I suggest that the place to design and look for a sense of magic, wonder and irrationality is in the whole game, not in its magic rules?

-Vincent

That's the point that I was working around to.

Basically, that as soon as you put "rules" on a magic system, you have, by definition, drained the magic out of it, and made it into a "system", which is by definition not a "magical" concept.

I wrote: Can I suggest that the place to design and look for a sense of magic, wonder and irrationality is in the whole game, not in its magic rules?

Fred wrote: That's the point that I was working around to.

Basically, that as soon as you put "rules" on a magic system, you have, by definition, drained the magic out of it, and made it into a "system", which is by definition not a "magical" concept.

lumpley wrote: You want playing the game to be magical.

{EDIT: Whoo! Major crossposting!}

I think Vincent's onto something. People who think magically don't think of "magic" as a separate thing from everything else -- it's more like an extension of the normal human spectrum of abilities and technical knowledge: Something like iron-working or sowing grain is inherently a magical activity and people would have trouble even making a distinction between the "mundane" aspect (firing up the forge, sowing the grain) and the magical (praying to the smith-deity, doing a rain dance).

(Caveat: This is my very limited understanding; I've not studied anthropology and am very open to correction/smackdowns) .

HeroQuest, which I'm currently reading, takes a stab at this with the idea that almost everyone has some kind of small "common magic" for use in their daily life, but the mechanics still feel pretty scientific and, well, mechanical to me.

You could have a system where players posited "laws of magic" which were then confirmed or discarded in play. I think the key might be to throw Occam's Razor out the window: The more complicated the explanation, the more extraneous elements (e.g. I don't just sow the grain, I have to pray and wear blue and refrain from meat during the sowing season), the more magical and the less mechanical the thought process involved.

What Vincent is getting at is a very important - though difficult - design principle. Games need to engage *the player*. If you want a magic system to feel magical, you need to develop a sense of magic in the player.

How do you do that? If I knew that...

The difficulty in constructing a magic system (or, following Vincent, a game more generally) that fosters a sense of wonder -- of coming face-to-face with the beautifully strange and mysteriously other, I think is meant -- is that strangeness and mystery are lost as familiarity develops: once you know the precise workings of the "mechanics," the magic is lost.

But, paradoxically, sheer randomness won't do, either: there has to be a method to the magic or its sheer arbitrariness will be off-putting as well, since it will preclude mastery, or the ability to know what one needs to do in order to produce a desired effect or outcome.

I agree with those who say that "magic" is not an add-on to a world that works the way we (i.e., 21st century Westerners) think it does; instead, it's an alternative model of how the world works in which the world is to some degree responsive to human desires or imaginings.

Here's my idea, inspired of all things by Michel Foucault's discussion of "resemblance" in The Order of Things

Up to the end of the sixteenth century, resemblance played a constructive role in the knowledge of Western culture. It was resemblance that...organized the play of symbols, made possible knowledge of things visible and invisible, and controlled the art of representing them. The universe was folded in upon itself: the earth echoing the sky, faces seeing themselves reflected in the stars, and plants holding within their stems the secrets that were of use to man.

This is cool (Umberto Ecco the RPG!). I think it may be missing one element: Magic is a way of thinking about everything, but it's not only thinking, it's also things you do -- little prayers, rituals, even casting the seed with your right hand always and never the left. So your merchant travelling to the Kingdom of Prester John needs not only to think out a justification for getting there, but also to do something that helps him do that. The nice thing about having four clearly defined but broadly applicable "laws of magic" (or 3, or 8, or whatever) is that the something you do can be any number of inventive and creative things.

Bill wrote: ...once you know the precise workings of the "mechanics," the magic is lost.

And, if I may elaborate on what Vincent said: when you make mechanics that provoke a certain pattern, the players can learn to use that pattern without ever consciously becoming aware of it.

If you're looking for a player sense of wonder and synergy, that's where you'll find it.

For instance, at Dreamation we discovered "In Dogs, lifelong relationships are most often created over the barrel of a gun". That's wondrous. It's also inherent in the rules. When you play the game you feel the rightness (for that system) of that principle, even if you could never consciously apply it.

Sydney wrote: This is cool (Umberto Ecco the RPG!). I think it may be missing one element: Magic is a way of thinking about everything, but it's not only thinking, it's also things you do -- little prayers, rituals, even casting the seed with your right hand always and never the left. So your merchant travelling to the Kingdom of Prester John needs not only to think out a justification for getting there, but also to do something that helps him do that. The nice thing about having four clearly defined but broadly applicable "laws of magic" (or 3, or 8, or whatever) is that the something you do can be any number of inventive and creative things.

Aaah, very nice. And the more of these little rituals you can incorporate, the better (which gets you into anti-Occam's Razo territory very fast because you're rewarded for complicating things). Maybe the GM or other players get to rate your ritual elements for effectiveness? E.g. "The dawn thing was okay, so +1 to your roll for that, but I really like the right-foot equals going-east bit, so +4 -- but expect to have some trouble if you have to figure the best foot to start on travelling north/south!"

Vincent wrote: If the game's about those four magical approaches, you make mechanics that provoke 'em, not mechanics that quantify 'em.

Tony wrote: And, if I may elaborate on what Vincent said: when you make mechanics that provoke a certain pattern, the players can learn to use that pattern without ever consciously becoming aware of it.

Vincent wrote: This isn't nothing; it's hard, real design work. But it's doable, surely.

I think that Fred's rejection of the "if-then" mindset is doing magical thought a disservice. There is a very significant tradition of "I perform X in order to derive Y result."

The difference lies in skepticism; the magical thinker doesn't trouble with "What if X and Y are unrelated?" That simply isn't permitted by his universal axioms.

The way I see it, the modern scientific mind assumes, "Stuff happens, and it is unrelated to other stuff unless I can rigorously prove otherwise."

The various magical minds say, "That is ridiculous."

Examine animism, Nobilis-style: "All events happen because of the free-willed actions of spiritual entities. Gross reality is just a visual representation of their interactions with one another; there are no unmotivated events. Every event is the result of some being's conscious choice, which may be strongly guided by its preferences and duties, but is never a foregone conclusion."

Granted that these spiritual entities have certain properties, this world is indistinguishable from the scientific world, but what if these spirits have different properties? If all these beings have non-obvious motives and desires, then suddenly, all these seemingly physical interactions have the opportunity to become social interactions.

Or you might look at the world through a ritual mindset; "An event has no lasting effect if it is not ritually acknowledged." This is what I use for the Underworld in a game I have run; you may enter a ghost's home and eat his food, but if you do not drop a pebble into the basket at his door, then you recieve no nourishment from the meal he serves you. You can get into countless battles there at no risk of life and limb, but even a simple argument becomes a contest of life and death if someone drops a gauntlet on the floor.

So I guess what I'm saying here is analogous to Bill's suggestion; a system built on scientific presumptions, regardless of its sorcerous trappings, is going to look like a scientific system. But you have to be very careful deciding what presumptions are scientific and what are not.

Sydney Freedberg wrote: Aaah, very nice. And the more of these little rituals you can incorporate, the better (which gets you into anti-Occam's Razo territory very fast because you're rewarded for complicating things). Maybe the GM or other players get to rate your ritual elements for effectiveness? E.g. "The dawn thing was okay, so +1 to your roll for that, but I really like the right-foot equals going-east bit, so +4 -- but expect to have some trouble if you have to figure the best foot to start on travelling north/south!"

Bill_White wrote: So I think I was saying that if a game is about "wonder"--which is where this conversation started--a way to provoke that might be via mechanics of resemblance: changing the common sense of cause-and-effect to the common sense of resemblance, and embedding that change in the mechanics of the game.

There have been a couple of passing mentions in this thread pointing to an aspect that I think has been generally overlooked. Someone said something about the religious dimensions, and in fact historically magic had if not always a religious generally a moral dimension.

In describing the Magical World View in the section The Moral Logic of the Enchanted World View of Magic, Fate, and History: The Changing Ethos of the Vikings, Rosalie H. Wax wrote: Very fine brief introductions to the moral logic of the enchanted world view are to be found in Gluckman's (1944) discussion of Evans-Pritchard's book on the Azande and in a recently published article by Winans and Edgerton (1964). Gluckman (p. 67) holds that "witchcraft works as a theory of causes" and that the theory is "reasonable and logical, even if it is not true," whereas, Winans and Edgerton (p. 745) assert that magic is "manifestly a negative sanction against violation of moral norms," and that is not only moral, but jural.

If one looks at magical causation as an integral part of a world view, one may carry these observations a step farther and assert that magical causality is moral in its very essence. "The universe is morally significant. It cares" (Redfield 1953:106). The man who becomes seriously ill or suffers great misfortune knows that he has offended or irritated some being, human or otherwise, who has used Power against him. Whether the offense is intentional or accidental does not matter--the results are the same. Conversely, the man whose children are hale, who is always prosperous, who escapes unscathed from storms and battles, has always managed to do all the "right" things and none of the "wrong." (Or should he offend some Being or Power and suffer no misfortune, it is because he is under the protection of a more powerful being.) Should such a man be visited by ill fortune, everyone knows that he has somehow fouled up his relationships with the Beings of Power. In fine, the essential principle of magical logic is that all blessing and all suffering have a cause.

From the American Heritage Dictionary:

wonder, noun:
1a. One that arouses awe, astonishment, surprise, or admiration; a marvel.
b. The emotion aroused by 1a.
2. An event inexplicable by the laws of nature; a miracle.
3. A feeling of puzzlement or doubt.

MJ,

It escapes my understanding how a consideration of moral factors would be conducive to wonder, if we are agreed that that is its definition. I wonder if you have some insight that I do not, or that your definition differs from mine? As always, I remain

Ever your faithful servant,

Shreyas

One thought I have is that it may be impossible to truly attain a sense of wonder, at least in a sustainable way. In one sense, I think a sense of wonder or awe arises out of an occurence that was not expected to be possible (which jives with the definition Shreyas posted). A problem might be that in a game, to achieve that unexpected result means that most of the time, the magic must fail (I would propose that the tribal shaman who does a rain dance does not really attain a sense of wonder from it - he expects it to work). But if magic fails most of the time, then it makes the magic just predictably bad.

I think D&D created a sense of wonder for me the first time through, because each supplement presented new magic items and spells, which did things not previously possible. But after all that wore off, magic became predictable, and even subsequent RPGs had a hard time, because of the expectations set by D&D.

If somehow you could find a way for players to specify the effect they wanted from their magic, such that they don't really expect it to work, but you are always able to say "yes!" then you might have something.

Hmm, a new RPG can create a sense of wonder though if the rules turn out to be really elegant. If each new situation, the rules produce results which you say "yes, that's what I think should happen!" then you can derrive a sense of wonder from that experience.

Frank

Do priests experience wonder?

This is an overlooked issue in this sort of discussion, I think. We talk about the "sense" of "wonder" but I fully expect this is highly variable in real contexts. Masybe you are 15, watching the eucharist in procession - maybe you get a sense of wonder, of awe. By contrast, you're a 50-year old bishop wafting the censor for the thousandth time, do you still that same degree of awe? I doubt it.

We tend to approach this "awe" as if it were a necessary property of the belief system, rather than if it is a property of what is essentially an art performance. And this, in my mind, ends up with a projection of this awe onto the experienced practictioner, who is thereby rendered senseless, incompetent, unimportant.

contracycle wrote: By contrast, you're a 50-year old bishop wafting the censor for the thousandth time, do you still that same degree of awe? I doubt it.
.

Shreyas Sampat wrote: It escapes my understanding how a consideration of moral factors would be conducive to wonder

M. J. Young wrote:

In describing the Magical World View in the section The Moral Logic of the Enchanted World View of Magic, Fate, and History: The Changing Ethos of the Vikings, Rosalie H. Wax wrote: "The universe is morally significant. It cares" (Redfield 1953:106).

Wax Ch. 4: The Ideal Typical Enchanted Point of View, from Magic, Fate, and History: The Changing Ethos of the Vikings, Published by Coronado Press, Box 32, Lawrence, Kansas 66044, Copyright (c) 1969, by Rosalie H. Wax.

ffilz wrote: One thought I have is that it may be impossible to truly attain a sense of wonder, at least in a sustainable way.

contracycle wrote: We talk about the "sense" of "wonder" but I fully expect this is highly variable in real contexts. Masybe you are 15, watching the eucharist in procession - maybe you get a sense of wonder, of awe.

Some of us never lose our sense of awe and wonder at the mundane miracles of life.

Shreyas Sampat wrote: MJ,

It escapes my understanding how a consideration of moral factors would be conducive to wonder, if we are agreed that that is its definition. I wonder if you have some insight that I do not, or that your definition differs from mine?

Gareth a.k.a. Contracycle wrote: By contrast, you're a 50-year old bishop wafting the censor for the thousandth time, do you still that same degree of awe? I doubt it.

M. J. Young wrote: Magic means that there's someone out there who is big enough to do what to you is impossible, and that that someone takes an interest in your situation, for better or worse. As Wax observes, the believer recognizes that good and bad things happen to you not by mere chance (the modern way of thinking) but because, in the mind of someone far more powerful than you, you deserve them.

For that matter, to say that if an entity transcends your limitations means that it is greater than you is frankly ridiculous. A ladybug can fly but I cannot! Am I to feel awe and wonderment if I can manipulate the ladybug's needs and desires so that its actions accomplish my goals?

If I am, shouldn't I be more impressed with myself than this lowly insect dupe?

Doctor Xero wrote:
Some of us never lose our sense of awe and wonder at the mundane miracles of life.

There's a difference between experiencing awe and wonder at the ruleset of a game, and experiencing awe at a game experience as a whole. One might attribute that awe to the ruleset, but it would be better aimed at the system as a whole.

Magic only ever works one way.

By magic.

Because it's magic.


Spirituality only ever works one way.

Some dude makes some stuff up then convinces other dudes he's right.


But like that's just my opinions ;-)

This discussion seems to be drifting from Wonder to Faith.

M.J., your quote from Wax talks about magic resulting from essentially social offences against Entities. Perhaps implicitly, violating social norms offends said Entities. In this way magic is moral, but reinforces the morality of the village. It cares, but cares only that the social mores are followed.

From here, though, discussion spun into a different form of caring: that of a benevolent Entity towards each individual.

DoctorXero wrote: Shreyas, how could a person not be filled with awe when, in the midst of the cold demands of survival and the material drudgery of daily life, he or she suddenly remembers once again that the universe cares -- even when a person's shortsighted fellow humans may fail to!

Garbanzo, I see the line you're drawing, but I don't know that this topic can be discussed on just one side of that line. So I'm fine with the discussing sprawling into religion, as long as the central focus remains on magic.

Hey Tony,

TonyLB wrote: I have this notion that you need to have the mechanics, but have them be so thoroughly obfuscated that the players only grip them on a subconscious level. Then they become proficient in gaming the magic system, and can recognize and create things that clearly fall into it, but have little or no ability to consciously describe why it is that they do what they do.

…

Okay: Can a system that (on some level) simulates and rewards the observed anthropological patterns of magic evoke the uncanny feeling of the wondrous and magical?

Jay, give me a concrete example of a way that you would design a system to do this.