>From: Light Castle <light_castle_at_...>
>OK. One: You are arguing that narrator interpretation of the world and the
>social contract of expectations among players is paramount.
>No argument from me on that.
No, you're missing my point. I assume that those things are all in place, or you can't have a good game. But they don't substitute for good rules. It's just that sometimes the examples are the rules.
Take for instance abilities. By your argument the only thing that makes creating your own abilities work is the good will of the players. But it's more than that. Having all of the examples of what makes a suitable ability empowers players to select appropriate abilities. In fact, it's remarkable to me how little problem one runs into with this in HQ. And it's all because the keyword/ability association creates such a coherent idea of what an ability should be like in the mind of the player that the problem of breadth rarely comes up.
Now, with common magic, I think that once the players have read through the lists of what's common magic, they are similarly informed about what's appropriate. In point of fact, I've never had anyone try to take "Wield Lightning" as common magic or the like because they understand implicitly that it wouldn't fit.
>In the intro on p29 it says it is basic magic that many people know. On
>page 104 it discusses it being a mix of the other types. Nowhere does it
>say anything about it being less powerful.
Except for the plentiful examples. You keep ignoring their existence to make your point, or cherry-picking examples that do make your point. There are exceptions, sure, but overall the nature of common magic seems to come through to everyone that I've seen come into contact with it.
>>That includes things like taking CM abilities that are out of range.
>Again, narrator fiat and social contract. Which I'm fine with.
No, there's a rule. Yes it requires judgment, but it gives guidlines. These guidelines are no more "wishy-washy" than the rules for when to institute a contest, when to use improv mods, when to give bonuses, or how to apply contest consequences.
This is part of what makes an RPG an RPG. Sans GM judgment, you could play a CRPG instead. All RPGs have this feature.
Fiat is when the rules say, "Well, we're not sure, so do whatever you think will work." Very different from, "Apply this sort of judgment in this sort of situation using these several paragrahs of criteria."
>That's the actual prohibition against using common magic for major magical
>healing. If you can argue your common magic comes from a powerful
>Otherworld Entity, no reason to not allow it.
Trees don't always need to be watered to survive, so therefore you should never water a tree. Even if I assume your reading is correct, you've made a logical error here. There are other compelling reasons in this case why to not allow it.
>Of course. It's the pompous magic rule. But if the idea is for common magic
>to be thought of as humble (rather than "accessible to everyone") then
>writing common magic in a way that allows it to be interpreted as powerful
>doesn't help the narrator who is trying to decide how powerful common magic
>is supposed to be.
Well, the descriptions of some of the abilities are brief. But, again, it's context that you're ignoring. What are the other abilities like? And maybe this is an exception. Play it by ear. Either way, this doesn't constitute a compelling reason why one must concentrate in common magic.
[Snip stuff addressed in the Active/Passive post]
>I certainly agree. But people were saying that Common Magic is all things
>like "plant crop", "fix dinner", and other small helping things.
No, not "all," nobody said that. Tends to be. Is generally. And, again, not "weaker" just "homier." File Papers may not seem powerful, but it's not very homey, either. And very powerful in the hands of the right guy in the Imperial beauracracy.
>So I can completely understand (Yikes, I can't remember who started this
>conversation!)'s thought that a concentrated common magic person is the
>best bet "power wise". (Now, as you and I both agree, HQ does a wonderful
>job of making that a non-question, since you can always
initiate contests in other ways.)
Sooo....why are we even talking about this. If there's no power balance worry, and no selection balance problem.... I mean with all of this talk about how they're the same, how can CM be more potent. Especially when you can't buy the group purchases like you can with specialized magic?
>My point is that there is nothing in the rules other than implication by
>way of the nature of Glorantha that says that a common magic spell "Resist
>Seduction" is more or less powerful than an Otherworld Feat/Charm/Spell
>called "Resist Seduction".
No, certainly. But you're making my point again. You have the burden to prove that CM is more attractive to specialize in.
How about this - if you specialize in an otherworld, you can keep all of your common magic. I mean, if you really want to twink out a character, you just make your devotee have all CM feats, and he gets to use them all actively, I think. In any case, he gets to retain them. Concentrating in CM doesn't allow a character to retain any specialized magic, I don't think.
>Add in that Common Magic religion in the case of Teshnos is a weird mix
>written that way because there are no workable mysticism rules and the
>"obvious" nature of common magic being weaker is harder to justify.
I don't think that's correct. That is, I think Teshnos is written the way it is intentionally. Further, I think that if you read back to the threads on it, that you'll find it has some certain limits of it's own.
Anyhow, I think that the book did its due dilligence in trying to portray just what sorts of magic you find in common magic, and that people not limiting CM to that paradigm are probably ignoring it (willfully or accidentally). What CM certainly doesn't need is more rules making it complicated just to mechanically distinguish it somehow.
In fact, there are folks, you know, who think that all of the rules for differentiating magic types are all overblown and that Hero Wars was actually better on that score just by having them all be abilities like any other.
Mike
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