Image Credit: FreeImages.com / salssa

Magic features in a lot of different RPGs, but very few of them answer this simple, fundamental question – what is it, and how can it be used to achieve the many and various effects that are attributed to it within whatever game you happen to be playing?

Work on the ATGMs question on spell components got me to thinking about the subject again a while back, as happens from time to time. There are no really satisfactory answers – just bits and pieces that are on such uncertain ground that you have to run across it very quickly, lest it swallow you whole.

Well, I’m an experienced GM, and a veteran writer on the subject of RPGs; if anyone is going to be capable of playing tour guide through the different options, I should be able to manage it.

My usual starting point for this sort of research-driven article is usually Wikipedia, but I suspect that it will have a hard time separating out superstitions and religious issues that matter in the real world study of the subject but only get in the way of an RPG understanding. So, instead, I’m cracking out various rule-books.

Image Credit: FreeImages.com / bert8k
Color manipulation & additional textures by Mike

Physics Incognito, Pseudo-Physics, Paraphysics, Metaphysics, Not-really-physics, Mumbo-Jumbo

These six approaches form a continuity into which different solutions can be classified. You might disagree with the order in which they are placed; I’ll get to that in a moment. First, let’s examine and define each for anyone unfamiliar with the terms and the way that I employ them within this context.

Physics Incognito

“Any sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic.” So said Arthur C. Clarke in his third law, and it’s a fun place to start. The most difficult category, this assumes that magic is “sufficiently advanced science”, i.e. science that isn’t understood by observers and which cannot be learned from first principles and simple observation.

This requires Magic to obey certain physical principles (which may be inadequately defined, or not defined at all) but which nevertheless limit what can be done with it. It is usually created by applying the principles of real-world physics to the manifestations of magic in a game reality, such as thermodynamics and thermodynamic inefficiencies.

This answer can be the starting point for endless debates of great entertainment value but little real merit. More often, writers employ this basis of “Magic” to make it palatable to a hard-science crowd. Look for this sort of “Magic” in any science-fiction series or roleplaying game, from Star Trek to Stargate. Babylon-5 occasionally steps into this domain as well, for example in the Season-5 episode “Day Of The Dead” (a personal favorite from that season) though it steers clear of the entire subject much of the time.

Pseudo-Physics

Pseudo-physics attempts to mimic a veneer of Physics Incognito without ever going beyond the use of poorly-defined and self-referential buzzwords to actually “explain” the principles behind magic, just as many science fiction shows use technobabble to “explain” the workings of technology. Because it attempts to appear rational, this can sometimes be mistaken for Physics Incognito.

It can be a lot of fun coming up with a pseudo-physics to ‘explain’ magic, but the more detail you invest in it, the more likely you are to trip over the two big bugbears of this approach: consistency and internal contradiction. The most common cause of both is misremembering some principle that has been embedded in the pseudo-physics and then forgotten; the easiest solution is to introduce the concepts one at a time without expanding on the physics beyond that point until the current understanding is mastered. The problem is that this approach is frequently at odds with experienced mages of greater power; this can be accommodated but only if the solution is deliberately embedded into the game society/campaign concept & plan.

Paraphysics

In the early 80s, when I started playing, a lot people went in for the notion that “Magic” in D&D was a type of psionic phenomenon, or was to be explained in those terms. Some GMs even modified the rules systems to better reflect this notion. Some also discarded the Vancian system that was the basis of D&D magic in favor of something less rigid, often involving Spell Points of some sort or another.

Fundamentally, if you accept the validity of these phenomena, then this category stands somewhere between physics incognito and pseudo-physics; if you don’t, then this is where it belongs. No sitting on the fence on this one.

Complicating the whole situation have been a succession of Psionics Handbooks; the fundamental assumption is, therefore, that magic is something that exists separate to the phenomena described. This leaves the GM with three options:

• Rule the psionics handbook out of bounds, and determine that this paraphysics is the undiscovered truth about magic;
• Scrap the spells in the players handbook and replace them (and any related game mechanics) with the contents of the psionics handbook; or,
• Rule that magic and psionics (if the latter exists in the game world) are completely separate and unrelated, and therefore, that you have to choose a different answer to the question, “what is magic?”

Metaphysics

A metaphysics abandons all congruence between reality and fantasy worlds and introduces some concept (which may be dressed up in pseudo-scientific language, but is more probably dressed up in some sort of spiritual terminology) to explain the phenomena. The prime example is The Force from Star Wars – but this is a Force with a little more flexibility, able to manipulate all sorts of energies in very complex and sophisticated ways. The key is in the consistency with which this ‘explanation’ is used to describe the underpinnings that the game mechanics are simulating; the GM will usually need to come up with “laws of magic” to explain how magic works, and then examine both the game mechanics and every spell description for contradictions.

An early attempt at this sort of thing in the prior campaign that eventually became the Zenith-3 campaign held that magic was a parity swap between the area of the game universe affected by the spell and a parallel dimension that was identical in every respect save that whatever the spell effects were supposed to be had just occurred there of natural (but undetermined) causes. A Lightning Bolt simple exchanged the path that the lightning bolt was to follow with that of a parallel world in which an entirely natural lightning bolt happened to be following that line. Result, so far as an observer in the game world was concerned: a lightning bolt erupted from the appropriate spot in thin air and traveled along the appropriate line to strike the target. So far as a hypothetical observer in the source universe was concerned: a lightning bolt traveling along the indicated path vanished without apparent explanation.

Where this explanation fell apart, in-game, was that I did not have natural phenomena simply vanishing from the game world. It violated reasonable plausibility that no-one would ever cast a spell in which the game world was also the source world. If you don’t make that mistake, you should be fine.

I had rather more success with the concept in Shards Of Reality, in which the universe wasn’t created by the Gods, who were created by the power of mortal belief infusing raw arcane power with the belief that they had done so embedded within their memories and in which all magic was an illusion of some level of believability. Mundane illusions could fool mortals (with a save, most of the time); Fey Illusions could fool all living creatures, even those immune or resistant to illusions (with a save, in the latter case, and a more difficult save some of the time if not, except when actually drawn into the plane of reality inhabited by the Fey); and Magic drew on particles of this raw arcane power to construct illusions so real that the universe itself believed them, and made it so (this was an environment in which everything – including rivers, mountains, trees, etc – possessed some level of sentience and personality). The Creator of the universe had done so out of loneliness, wanting someone to provide company and companionship, and had used part of his own essence to do so; but his first creations (I forget what I called them) were jealous children who turned on him and ripped him to pieces. With his dying breath, the creator infused everything else he created with tiny fragments of himself – every blade of grass, every tree and lifeform – with his own potential to create reality. Slowly, as the magic in the immediate world was consumed, it became unreliable and began to fail. The goal of the campaign was for a PC to use his own body and mind as a template to recreate the creator, and then to face the choice of a world completely without magic or committing the ultimate evil all over again to restore magic to the world. But the players never got that far, and were only touching the fringes of these concepts when the campaign folded.

Not-really-physics

This explanation posits that some ancient natural philosophy (“everything is made up of four elements”) held a grain of truth, and those who know how to manipulate these lost principles of reality can achieve effects that the unenlightened would regard as miraculous. Ars Magica adopts this basic approach, for example. I have also seen games in which Zoanastricism is correct, but only in a sense; and worlds in which Cthulhu-physics can be used to override the natural order of things in our world (a Call Of Cthulhu campaign, quite obviously). I’ve seen games in which Devils and/or Demons replaced Cthuloid reality for this purpose, explaining why Mages and Clerics are usually at loggerheads; this is a concept in which magic is a weapon of the enemy that has been usurped by mortals for their own purposes, and which may slowly corrupt the caster – which is why high-level mages frequently seek to become Liches and Demi-liches. In their own minds, that decision is entirely logical, sensible, and reasonable.

Mumbo-Jumbo

The final category is Mumbo-Jumbo, in which all pretense of consistency is thrown out the window and its place is taken by buzzwords without definition but that sound impressive. In essence, the art of spellcasting has outstripped the understanding of those who do it; methods and spells are learned by rote and most variations fail, or ‘collapse’ into a default state. New spells can only be created by trial-and-error, discovering a new stable configuration of the pseudo-energies. In the meantime, because they don’t understand how it works, romanticized and incomplete speculations with as many exceptions as there are holes in a colander make up what is laughingly called “magical theory”. In essence, this holds the game mechanics to be paramount, and the explanation? “Well, there is one, but no-one knows what it is, yet”.

This employs a social model based on the understanding of reality in Western Europe prior to the Reformation – that of the so-called Dark Ages, though that term is currently out of favor with many historians, in which religious speculation was contrived to explain everything.

What’s your poison?

Every game system that I’m aware of either makes no explanation at all (most of them), or implies one of the above, or – very rarely – actually describes one of them in some level of detail as an explanation for how magic works. In reality, most of them are compatible with most game systems, and it’s up to you to select the one that best fits the rest of your gaming world.

But there can be consequences, both good and bad.

Image Credit: Photo by FreeImages.com / Katerina Štepánková;
Color & Image manipulation by Mike

The Consequences

The impacts tend to cluster around four main themes: Characters, Manifestations (i.e. Spells), Adventures, and Campaigns. Permeating all of these is the increased credibility that comes from being able to give an answer (possibly devoid of meaning) to the fundamental question posed by this article, “What is magic?”.

Character-level consequences

If you define what magic is, you define how the mage fits into the game universe. In most games where the question isn’t answered, the default position tends to orient around the defining characteristic of the mage, his INT score, leading him to be cast in the role of the scientist – but often it’s a slightly ‘mad’ scientist from the 1950s, creating monsters and pursuing experiments in the nature of reality without regard to the morality that might be involved. The contrast is always between the Mage (smart but unwise) and the Cleric (wise but not necessarily smart). Changing the definition of the mage, by changing the (lack of) definition of magic also changes this essential dynamic, aligning the character archetypes across a different conflict.

Obviously, some of the choices have greater influence over this aspect of the characters than others. Some will retain the existing conflict modes but sharpen them, for example the demonic/devilish spawning of magic posited in the “Not-Really-Physics” line.

But it goes beyond that, or it should – a campaign is a jigsaw puzzle, and changing the shape of one piece necessarily changes the shape of all the pieces that surround it. Now, sure, you can stop there – but what a waste that would be; so instead of leaving the outer edges of that collection of pieces unchanged, link another change through logical consequence to the first, and change the shape of the entire jigsaw, one piece at a time – sometimes just a little, sometimes a lot.

Changing what magic is might change what Elves are, or what Dwarves are, or both, and that might change what Fighters are, and that changes what Paladins are, and that changes what Clerics are, and that changes what Demons and Devils and Gods are, and…

Provided that there is an internal logic that is clear and strong in back of these changes, even if that logic (and the causal factor, the definition of magic), those reading the campaign background will absorb the presence of that internal logic without even realizing it. You can tell that there is a reason why things are the way they are, that nothing has been included by chance. There’s a pattern there, it’s just not being spelled out.

There is an inherent pleasure in taking a “noisy” situation and making sense of it, and that’s the central appeal of most mystery stories and police procedurals. Defining magic gives a GM the capacity to layer that appeal on top of everything else that he has going on in his campaign.

But there is a downside: you really need a player to step up and become the focal point of this aspect of the campaign by playing a mage. And not every player will agree to do so if the class has been extensively redefined. “Gee, I wanted to play a Mage, but this isn’t what I had in mind. Maybe I’ll play a rogue instead…” …because what it comes down to is replacing an iconic game element with a home-brewed house-ruled version.

This actually places a much stronger demand on the player’s skills at the table than playing an ordinary mage straight out of the rulebook. There are hundreds of web pages and discussion threads on how to play a ‘real’ mage – and none at all on how to play your revised version. You need either an experienced player of substantial creativity and imagination, or need to make yourself available as a substitute for all that collective reference material in the case of a less-experienced player. It’s a roleplaying challenge, and you need it to be undertaken by someone who will bring their A-game, or who is prepared to invest the effort to make up for it if they don’t have the requisite depth of experience.

That being said, there is an advantage to a relative novice taking on the role, insofar as they have less learned expertise to discard. The role of an Elf in the original Fumanor was taken by a player of more than twenty years D&D experience as a GM; he claimed to be looking forward to stretching his concept of what an “Elf” was, and for a while was genuinely enthusiastic about it. (I don’t remember what the character’s class was, and in any event it was subordinate to his racial profile within the campaign). But as the campaign progressed and more information was revealed about the changes to Elves, he had increasing difficulty translating them into actual play; all too often he would adopt a ‘traditional’ elven reaction to events that was completely contrary to what should have been his social and cultural experience, and in the end he left the campaign because he simply couldn’t get a grasp on the changes and how they impacted his character.

Manifestation- (i.e Spell-) Level Consequences

I’ve touched on this a couple of times in the earlier discussion. Spell descriptions and details may not match the metagame implications of the answer you have selected. That means that they need to be rewritten to accurately reflect the underlying ‘mechanism’ by which spells affect the game world. Not only does that impact on what characters can do – introducing the same consequences discussed above – but it also potentially rewrites magic items, many of which base their effects on the magic system in most games, and can certainly altar the game balance between mages and ‘mechanics’ armed with such arcane tools.

It introduces dichotomies between how the “same” spell is handled for different classes, unless it changes the spell for everyone, and that can impact other classes in undesired ways.

These consequences are not to underestimated.

Adventure Implications

So, what’s the return on all these difficulties and headaches? Because if verisimilitude and a challenge to roleplay are all there is, the price is too high.

The real benefits commence with the potential for adventures based around the (re-?)definition of magic – exploring and discovering the underlying concepts, finding ways to overcome new tactics used against the party, exploring the changed social dynamics that result, and seeing how these all fit into a larger-than-life game world. If you change magic, what impact does that have on creatures that are based on magic, at least in part, like Liches and Elementals and Djinn and… well, you get the idea. Old, familiar encounters suddenly pose new and unexpected challenges.

Of course, you can underplay the whole thing, but that seems a total waste of effort. A lot depends on how much else you have going on in the campaign – if this is a relatively ‘minor’ change, it might be better underplayed, and used simply to add color to these other changes. That’s what I did in the Fumanor campaign – which left the changes free to manifest in new plotlines in subsequent sequel campaigns.

Campaign Implications

Finally, if most of your adventures are impacted by the changes, one way or another, that adds up to a campaign-level influence. Essentially, by defining what magic is and how it works at a metagame level, you are creating a point of distinctiveness about the campaign, a unique identity that defines your game as being just a little different to anyone else’s.

No GM really likes the notion of their campaign being so vanilla that they are considered an interchangeable part.

What’s more, this is a toe-in-the-water in terms of game design. If you have the slightest interest in ever being part of the creative team behind a new version of D&D, or a new computer game, or a new RPG, or a new comic book, or a movie or TV show, this can be a great learning experience; it’s broad enough to give you serious room to explore and develop your creative ‘chops’, but is limited enough to be relatively manageable. And if it’s a quality result, if it works in the context of the game and the adventures you run, the credibility you gain as a creator and as a GM far outweighs the gains in any single campaign.

Opening your mind to new possibilities is always painful, but it is also frequently exhilarating, fascinating, terrifying, and a spur to creativity. It gets your adrenalin pumping behind the game screen, and imparts a sense of mastery of your game.

So, don’t ask why?, ask Why Not? and then answer the question for yourself, for your next campaign: What is magic?