From: Colin Watson (watson@computing-science.aberdeen.ac.uk)
Date: Fri 08 Oct 1993 - 18:31:51 EET
Seems my email problem fixed itself. The Dailys came flooding into my mail spool last night...
I agree with this too. Its easy to make the mistake of thinking a character
doesn't know something because the player is unaware of it. Detailed handouts
help to avoid this. (My only problem is when the players know more than I
do about what's going on ie. when *I* haven't read the handouts fully myself.
This has caught me out a few times:-)
Personally I'd rather see more handouts and fewer gross stats in scenarios.
I like this idea for getting around the problem of POW gains when you learn spells. But it still means that big spirits get huge as fast as ever.
>I am also tempted to ignore the POW = movement rule on the spirit plane
Me too. I think, if anything, movement should be based on INT. (POW-only spirits wouldn't move around - they are the landscape).
I agree that slow magics are more Gloranthan (and more atmospheric in general) but do they suit RQ? Some of the grossest abuses of the game system can come from Ritual & Long Duration magics (which are the closest thing to slow magics at the moment). RQ is, after all, geared towards Adventurers going on Adventures; not brooding magicians spending months preparing immense spells. I'd *like* to see slow magicks, but you'd have to be careful to mainatain game balance in implementing the rules. Like I said before, the greatest tool which RQ-munchkins have at their disposal is *time*. If the "disadvantage" of a spell is only that it takes *time* to prepare/cast, then a munchkin would happily write off that game-time to gain the advantage. And I fear that those Published NPCs, whom we all know and love, would get grosser still.
>I'd like to pursue my theory of gradual transition:
[...stuff about time gradually fading as the God Plane is approached via SP...]
Y'know, initially I hated the idea of a gradual transition from Time to No-Time. I thought: "either yer within Time, or yer not; there's no half-way". But I'm almost beginning to change my mind...
I considered Time on a graph:
Normal Time flows Up the way. ^ Objective ("Real") Time
God Time flows across the way. |
Usually they are completely |
separate temporal dimensions. |
--------+-------> Subjective ("God") Time
|
(I think I might have seen a similar graph elsewhere,
but I can't remember... anyone recognise it?)
If, somehow, you can make your personal time-track sway from the normal
(vertical) time, towards the horizontal then, in effect, Objective time
slows down for you and God-Time starts to exist for you.
When your time-track reaches horizontal, Objective time stops and you're
fully in God Time. You can reach any point in God Time from any point
in Objective time (and, maybe, vice versa).
Does this make sense to anyone?
My only problem is that you might approach an "event horizon" (as in a
black hole) which would mean that observers in Objective time would
never see you reach God Time (until the end of (Real) Time) and that
when you returned you might find that the universe had ended already...
Still, after knotting my brain with this concept, I'm happier with your
gradual-transition idea.
(But I think the principle should apply to the MP as well as the SP).
>Since the God Planes are outside of Time's influence, I'd suggest that the
>subjective time passes a lot faster than objective (material plane) time.
I'm confused again. Does this mean that you're younger or older when you return?
>>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.
>
>Try Illusion spell effects: a temporal reality is created, complete
>with appearance, size etc. The deity maintains the reality inside its
>realm. On the usual heroquest the reality is created by the ritual
>spell. The absence of time makes maintaining temporal effdects easy, of
>course...
Not convinced. I don't think even illusiory substance can exist on the spirit world. (Almost as if the Spirit Plane lacks the third spacial dimension which allows volume/mass to exist.) If you cast a substance illusion on the SP then I think it would either fail or it would pop out in another plane (either MP or GP). Any temporary "reality" created in such a way would no longer be part of the Spirit World.
>>'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.)
>Well, I am a chemist - Inorganic and Organic is mostly a matter of
>definition, and may well be transformed from one to the other. (There
>was the famous transformatiion of ammonium carbonate into urea (sp?)
>which proved that no "spark of life" was needed to produce organic
>matter from inorganic matter.) For the same reason I think your
>comparison is apt, because enough of substance not-yet-spirit may form
>a real spirit, especially if enhanced from some source or the other,
>like worship, or runic ties. Think of Rune Metals.
Well said. If we can define the "not-yet-spirit" part we should be closer to understanding the fundemental nature of Gloranthan magic... heh, heh. ...
>>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.
>
>I disagree. Chaos keeps leaking in, and keeps annihilating magic.
>Tapping (creatures or myths) diminishes magical potential permanently.
>There must be some continuous source of magic within Time.
I've mentioned this before but I'll say again: as far as Tapping is concerned I consider Characteristics and Magic (MPs) to be unified - two forms of the same thing. This is why magic can be used to create (or restore) characteristics and also why MPs can be derived from characteristics (via Tap). But I'd say that a *lot* of magic is required to create permanent characteristics. (I think the Tap spell is inefficient, ie. a lot of the potential MPs bleeds off into the spirit plane: the amount yielded to the caster is only a fraction of what the characteristic is really worth). I don't think Tap destroys anything - it just changes the form.
Also, when any spell is cast, the MPs used are not destroyed IMO. The process of spell casting is one of *transferral* of magical energy: the MPs which power the spell are converted into some other form (and for temporal spells, when the duration ends, they flow back to the spirit plane where they can be recovered over time by any creature with POW). This is my Unified Theory of Magick. :-)
And I don't see that Chaos really destroys any more magic than it creates. But maybe I'm Illuminated. ):^>
And I guess it's even more significant if he waits for someone else to drop
the rock, and then claims the credit himself. ):^)
___
CW.
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