From: Colin Watson (watson@computing-science.aberdeen.ac.uk)
Date: Mon 04 Oct 1993 - 19:33:02 EET
Lots of interesting stuff from the weekend to comment on: [I'm recovering from a bout of 'Flu from Hell so my judgement is probably impaired (more than the usual, that is).]
GOD PLANE/SPIRIT PLANE
(*Please* someone correct me if I'm wrong, but...)
I thought the major distinction between the GP and the SP was that the GP
existed outwith Time. The God Plane is where the Gods live; its where
you go on HeroQuests; its where lots of weirdo effects happen because of
the absence of (objective) Time.
I would have thought that there must be a major threshold between the
SP and the GP (or the Mundane Plane & GP for that matter) which is *difficult*
to cross - the place where Time ceases. I don't buy the idea that a Shaman
can enter the God Plane via the Spirit Plane any easier than a normal
corporeal person can enter the God Plane from the Mundane Plane. To me
there is a huge qualitative difference between the God Plane and the Spirit
Plane. (The Outer Spirit Plane is just an area of the SP where Big Spirits
hang out. It's not the God Plane. Nowhere near. *Maybe* Big Spirits can
become Gods if they accept the binding conditions of the Compromise and
transcend into the God Plane. Maybe.).
Also, I'm of the opinion that the God Plane has Substance which the SP
lacks. Real combat works on the God Plane because the participants have
substance - it's meaningless on the Spirit Plane because everything there
is ethereal (lacking SIZ=substance). Ok, spirits on the SP can have
Appearance: the SP doesn't have to be gray and featurless, but neither will
it have all the features of the Mundane Plane.
Or have I been reading too much of the HeroQuest rules?
Greg:
>why SHOULDN'T rocks and streams have spirits, as all good animist believe?
I have problems considering spirits of inanimate objects. For starters they
are not "alive" - if you break them into pieces what happens
to the spirit? Does it divide among the pieces? Does it stay with one
piece? Imagine if a mountain is broken into boulders, and the boulders
into pebbles. Does each pebble have a spirit?
Streams are even more complicated, because they are not distinct objects -
rather they are concepts: Is the stream defined as the water within it, or
by the path it takes?
Living things, on the other hand, are easy to discern as separate, discrete, contiguous entities. In fact, I'd say that the definition of a Living Thing is
something which has a Spirit.
I'm happy to have spirits *associated* with certain non-living things:
water Nymphs for example. But a Nymph is not the spirit *of* a stream
in the same way that a cat spirit is the spirit *of* a cat. The relationship
of Nymph to stream is merely a symbiotic association IMHO.
So, some natural features will have spirits associated with them, but this
is not the case in general. I wouldn't say that there's a spirit for every
drop of water or grain of sand.
Anyway, the important thing is the Appearance of the spirit - what will it
look like in the spirit world? For some reason nymphs don't appear as
streams or ponds, they appear as attractive young women. I can't think of
any good spiritualogical reason for this...
'Course, you could say that everything on the Mundane Plane has an underlying
Magical Structure. The magical structure of the Living is a Spirit. The
magical structure of the Non-living is something less than a spirit but still
magical in some way. (I'd draw a real-world analogy with Organic and Inorganic
chemistry; but I ain't no chemist.) Perhaps this magical structure is visible
on the Spirit Plane... who knows?
Hell, if you want rocks'n'streams on the Spirit Plane then go ahead.
For me its just a bit Mundane.
>Frog Woman is the mother of frogs. So, they don't act like frogs except in
>as much as they act exactly like she does. The frogs aren't supporting the
>deity as much as *being* the deity.
Curiously, when we discussed this very point within our RQ group, we came to
the conclusion that spirits attached to the mundane plane don't exist on
the spirit plane.
The point arose when a PC shaman wanted to attack a spirit which was bound
(into an object) by discorporating & using spirit combat. (Typical PC-ish
sorta thing :-).
The GM ruled that the spirit wasn't on the spirit plane (it was bound to
the mundane plane) so the shaman couldn't attack (unless he cast Visibility).
From this we also inferred that spirits of the living didn't exist on
the spirit plane. Makes sense, otherwise your spirit could get summoned
at any time...
>And another point - what determines size on the spirit plane ? Can POW be
>correlated with SIZ ?
I'd say there is no SIZ in the spirit plane, only APParent size. Things
look as big as they would be on the mundane plane; but they are insubstantial.
Joerg: (Still not convinced about POW deterioration...)
Your suggestion about stopping POW-gains for "dead" spirits seems very
reasonable. It certainly prevents old spirits from getting huge. Adopting this
approach, I wouldn't even let dominant-possessors get a POW gain otherwise
shamanic ghosts could become virtually immortal (by possessing a new body
when they die).
I still have a slight problem concerning the ever-increasing number of spirits. If spirits don't deteriorate, then the population of spirits must be constantly increasing. Does Heaven ever get full up? I still prefer the idea that spirits are dissolved and recycled. I postulate that the total magical energy in the universe is constant, not increasing.
Something I wondered about:
A religion's doctrine may state that the spirits of devout followers go
to meet with their God in the afterlife; but this don't necessarily make it so.
Priests may have cast-iron proof that their god exists; but do they have
any proof of what happens in the afterlife? Maybe there's room for Faith here.
This God stuff is altogether too complicated. Lets move on to simpler, more clearly-defined rules for magic. Yes, I'm talkin' Sorcery:
Kirsten K. Niemann (Protective Circle):
Yes, the published description of Protective Circle is nonsense. I wonder
how this howler wasn't picked up in the last errata. I guess it ranks
alongside the statement that "ritual magic cannot be multispelled" (Create
Familiar anyone?:-).
Radius=intensity seems fair to me. I'd add the option that the radius can
be smaller than the intensity if desired. I agree that the circle can't be
bigger than the object that it's cast upon (gods help any GM who rules
otherwise). If you're going to make the inscription of the circle separate
from the casting of the spell, then I'd add a note about how long it takes
to scribe the circle (say DEX SR + 2 SR per m radius).
You listed a cloak as an example of the kind of object it might be cast on:
I assume this means a sorcerer can pre-cast a long duration Protective Circle
on his cloak and, when the moment arrives, he can roll his cloak out on the
ground and stand inside it. I'm not sure if this is desirable. Maybe it
should be restricted to inflexible, horizontal surfaces?
What about the belt-&-braces approach: the sorcerer has a personal Spell
Resistance up, and then steps inside his protective circle of Spell Resistance.
Does he get to resist incoming spells thrice (once with the circle; with his
personal spell; and with his MP vs MP) ? I'd say yes...
___
CW.
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