On Sunday, May 11, 2003, at 06:41 PM, Alex Ferguson wrote:
> On Sun, May 11, 2003 at 03:34:17PM -0400, Dave Camoirano wrote:
> > Well, not exactly. Common magic charms come from spirits in the
> mundane
> > plane. For example, if there's a grove of trees nearby inhabited by
> > those little nature spirits like the ones in 'Princess Mononoke', one
> of
> > them can be bound into a charm and it would be a common magic charm
> > since the spirit originated in the mundane plane. If there's a divine
> > rock on your tula and it can grant a feat, it's a common magic feat
> > since the magic originated on the mundane plane.
>
> I'm not convinced. This would seem to imply that such a rock is more
> magically accessible to the local "common-concentrated" person (whoever
> that might be in the Heortling context, if anyone), than it is to a
> theism-concentrated but otherwise magically generalist godi -- the
> archetypal Hantrafali, say. After all, many of the most sacred sites
> of lots of religions (co-)exist in the material plane; doesn't imply
> to me that (say) Kero Fin or Pairing Stone are sources of common magic
> rather than theistic.
What makes something like Kero Fin different from "that rock" is that going to Kero Fin *is* going to the god plane. Yes, many sacred sites co-exist. That's why they're *not* sources of common magic. But that rock *is* more magically accessible to a "common-concentrated" person because it's a being in the mundane world, *not* a spot that overlaps. In KoDP, there was a shrine you could build for a "rock" deity (the name escapes me at the moment). I would say he was a source of common magic in HQ rules.
> > The Seven Mothers have their origins in the mundane plane (I don't
> know
> > if this is the official view but was my rationale when I first read
> that
> > it was a CM religion.) I'm guessing that as a collective, they provide
> > the common magic based on what they did before ascending.
>
> Hrm. Still sounds a little artificial to me, I have to say. Is that
> magic then _not_ available to initiates, devotees, shamans, and
> sorceresses of the individual Mother cults, due to their being "non-
> common"?
At the very least, it is definitely accessible to members of the individual cults since someone who concentrates in theist magic can use common magic feats. Most cults frown on this but it's still *possible*. I doubt Yanafal Tarnils would frown on initiates using the feats he provides the Seven Mothers CM religion, though.
> > Ok, you got me there. There was less of a division between spirit and
> > divine way back in RQ days. Heck, the gods *provided* spirit magic!
>
> Indeed. Like I said, I'd be the last one to want to argue from a
> position
> that RQ[n] made perfect "simulationist" sense, even if that were the
> primary objective. Having the Heortling gods give out most of their
> initiate-accessible magic via 'intermediary spirits' does indeed seem
> unlikely, RQ-rules driven, and perhaps bordering on the mildly bonkers.
> _However_, it'd be not unreasonable to assume that much non-cult magic
> was indeed of animist origin, given that the Heortlings do have the odd
> (in more ways than one) shaman kicking around.
Well, I have to disagree here. I think that RQ used spirit magic for common magic because "we" didn't know any better. RQ2 didn't have sorcery because it wasn't needed for the focus of that game. Spirit magic didn't change to something separate from common magic in RQ3 because RQ3 was so similar to RQ2 and didn't really *need* to (IMO). I'd be willing to bet that if Greg & Co. were designing RQ then with what they know now, it would have been, well, HQ.
Camo
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