Okay, I promise I'll stop opening threads.  Thanks for everybody's patience in answering my many and assorted questions.

My inquisitive player dreams of his Zu magician as being able to one day cross over into Three-Corners magic and possibly others.

I immediately told him:
A) This is mechanically possible
B) This is up to the group as a whole
C) I think this is a bad idea.

I'd like to know what other players/GMs/authors have to say about this idea.

I'd keep the two systems seperate, but I don't see any reason why it's impossible, or a bad idea, out of turn. The Zu system and the Three-Corner Magic system are predicated on different Abilities and Secrets, for instance, and I wouldn't let one stand in for the other.

That said, Zu came to Maldor at one point, and odds are there were Three Corner Magicians who knew some Zu words. Where's the harm? I don't see any reason you can't use the Secret of Zu, or indeed any Zu syllable, to beef up your magical Ability checks. Bonus dice and other quirks are all easily enough understood, though it's up to you whether you want to let someone use two discrete effects at once (my instinct is "No", but hey, it's your game).

This character will have his work cut out for him, though, taking Advances to increase Zu, the Three-Corner Magic Abilities, and Secrets for both systems. What I explicitly *wouldn't* allow, and what you might be suggesting by the use of the words "cross over", is some sort of "Hey, I know a lot of Zu nouns, and my Zu score is 5, doesn't that mean I should have a de-facto Creation Ability of 5 (or even 1) by now?" scenario. As long as he's willing to pay for both systems, go for it, but I'd think just translating one into the other is a mistake.

It's ultimately no different than an Ammenite character, or a Qek walozi, picking up some Zu. I think it'd work fine.

xjermx wrote:
My inquisitive player dreams of his Zu magician as being able to one day cross over into Three-Corners magic and possibly others. ... I think this is a bad idea.

Why do you think it would be a bad idea?

Huh, I find it weird to even consider disallowing this (how you'd disallow it by the rules, by the way? I see no way to do it without overstepping your GM powers). At least in our games the themes of cultural conflict and reconsiliation are always high. It's always a big step when a character wants to initiate in another culture's secrets. A master in his own field, apprenticing to another in hope of power? Takes a certain kind of character, and makes for a good story!

Note that threecorner and zu don't have a lot of mechanical synergy between them per se, so a character won't be particularly more powerful simply by dabbling in both. I see no problem. The only potential problem is if you as the GM insist on some kind of universal theory of magic like in D&D, and start creating secrets that create synergy without rhyme or reason. I can imagine how the combination could become very powerful if you, say, allowed a player to use threecorner secrets to increase the scope of zu. The right way to handle it is to remember that the two systems are mechanically separate, and any bridges built between them should be a matter of great emphasis in the fiction. All the characters should be running like headless chickens when somebody discovers some genuine connection between those cultural magics.

That being said, don't confuse the mechanical separateness with practical application. I can well imagine, and have witnessed, some pretty interesting combinations between the magic systems. The different magics do different things well, and something that is trivial for one is nigh-on impossible for the other. That's what makes the cultural magics interesting, they operate on different paradigms, and it's up to the practitioner to find possible synergies.

Eero answered that much better than even I could have. I say go for it, and as the Story Guide, definitely bring up the points where the two don't match up in their world-view and use that. I ran a game with Qek, Ammenite, and Zaru magics and the three of those had some serious differences that resulted in a great game.