I... guess? I mean, in the real world magic has multiple meanings, but in the context of a fantasy setting, while The exact aesthetics and rules might vary from world to world, magic typically means something to the effect of "supernatural powers/phenomena that defy conventional physics.
General Exalted Thread
- Location
- Ottawa
That's not so!
My name comes from the Edge Chronicles. It's a fantasy series with no magic. But it's oozing with phenomena that defy conventional physics. To the people in the setting, certain giant rocks becoming lighter than air when their temperature drops is just how the world works. Scientists, not wizards, study that stuff.
Or let's look at RPGs. This is an RPG thread, after all.
D&D monsters can do all kinds of crazy impossible stuff without using magic; a dragon's flight and fire/whatever breath work just fine in an anti-magic field, as does its blatant disregard for the square-cube law. And then there's psionics, which is like magic except explicitly not magic.
Shadowrun has magic, but it also has Resonance, which is a supernatural power set that's different from and in fact incompatible with magic.
TORG has magic and divine power as separate concepts; a world can have weak magic but strong divine presence, or vice versa. The other ways in which worlds differ also defy conventional physics massively (there are worlds where you can't invent anything more complicated than a bow) but that doesn't seem to be magic either.
Nobilis features divine beings with enormous miraculous powers, who make an absolute mockery of our understanding of physics. In fact, the game posits that miracles are the real rules of the world, and that physics as we know it is more or less fake. Nobilis also has sorcery, which is a very different and much less impressive set of abilities.
And then there's DFRPG. DFRPG players sometimes refer to all supernatural stuff as magic and sometimes reserve the term for spellcasting. Can't remember whether the books take a consistent stance.
Any way you slice it, there's not one widely-agreed-upon definition.
My name comes from the Edge Chronicles. It's a fantasy series with no magic. But it's oozing with phenomena that defy conventional physics. To the people in the setting, certain giant rocks becoming lighter than air when their temperature drops is just how the world works. Scientists, not wizards, study that stuff.
Or let's look at RPGs. This is an RPG thread, after all.
D&D monsters can do all kinds of crazy impossible stuff without using magic; a dragon's flight and fire/whatever breath work just fine in an anti-magic field, as does its blatant disregard for the square-cube law. And then there's psionics, which is like magic except explicitly not magic.
Shadowrun has magic, but it also has Resonance, which is a supernatural power set that's different from and in fact incompatible with magic.
TORG has magic and divine power as separate concepts; a world can have weak magic but strong divine presence, or vice versa. The other ways in which worlds differ also defy conventional physics massively (there are worlds where you can't invent anything more complicated than a bow) but that doesn't seem to be magic either.
Nobilis features divine beings with enormous miraculous powers, who make an absolute mockery of our understanding of physics. In fact, the game posits that miracles are the real rules of the world, and that physics as we know it is more or less fake. Nobilis also has sorcery, which is a very different and much less impressive set of abilities.
And then there's DFRPG. DFRPG players sometimes refer to all supernatural stuff as magic and sometimes reserve the term for spellcasting. Can't remember whether the books take a consistent stance.
Any way you slice it, there's not one widely-agreed-upon definition.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
God, I have such fond memories of that series... until they decided to burn down the setting and turn it into a grimdark hellscape where all the interesting characters and places they'd come up with were either dead, decaying, or both.
- Location
- Ottawa
It's not a grimdark hellscape. In many ways, the world has gotten much better. In others it's gotten worse, but I'd say the changes are overall positive.
Even if you think the costs of urbanisation and industrialisation outweighed the benefits, I'd argue that the changes still represent the series' strongest point: that the Edge is a living world. The first three trilogies cover what, a century? And then there's a centuries-long timeskip. It's only natural for there to be dramatic changes over that kind of timespan, and I think the Edge Chronicles does an amazing job of making those changes happen while keeping the Edge the Edge.
Even if you think the costs of urbanisation and industrialisation outweighed the benefits, I'd argue that the changes still represent the series' strongest point: that the Edge is a living world. The first three trilogies cover what, a century? And then there's a centuries-long timeskip. It's only natural for there to be dramatic changes over that kind of timespan, and I think the Edge Chronicles does an amazing job of making those changes happen while keeping the Edge the Edge.
Salty
Shadow Cabal Assumptor Supreme
- Location
- Sun, Moon, Talia
- Pronouns
- I/Me
But to actually make useful definitions for Exalted, here's a start.
2e Thaumaturgy and its understanding of the world, it's makeup, and the manipulation thereof is folk magic; a mixture of art, science, charisma, and sheer bloodymindedness. Think of it as supernatural physics and you're not too far off IMO.
Charms and Sorcery? Well, that's something different.
The Sorcerer bends reality into a pattern by skill and sheer force of will, then unleashes it in the form of a Spell. Each act of Sorcery is a miracle, an imposition, where the will and the world meet and the world yields. A Spell? A familiar pattern, repeatable by any who knows it and yet subtly different in every single result. A Working? The capacity to change reality in some way on a permanent basis. Yourself? Your retainers? The land around you? All within scope, all within reach. This permanence is proof that you put in the work, and shaped a future from the raw stuff of the present.
On the other hand, there's Charms. Charms are unique not in their capabilities or even in the sense of being only in one character's repertoire at any given time, but for the fact that they just break the rules. They are each crystallizations of skill and will and power, but what makes them special is that they get to go beyond the realm of what is possible by merely rolling dice. When a Solar draws a flaming Daiklave from his anima or a Sidereal summons her favorite blade from the space between heaven and earth in the time between heartbeats, that's not just the application of supernatural physics, and it's not a great contest of will and power against reality. Charms are just what Exalts do. Charms just...work.
2e Thaumaturgy and its understanding of the world, it's makeup, and the manipulation thereof is folk magic; a mixture of art, science, charisma, and sheer bloodymindedness. Think of it as supernatural physics and you're not too far off IMO.
Charms and Sorcery? Well, that's something different.
The Sorcerer bends reality into a pattern by skill and sheer force of will, then unleashes it in the form of a Spell. Each act of Sorcery is a miracle, an imposition, where the will and the world meet and the world yields. A Spell? A familiar pattern, repeatable by any who knows it and yet subtly different in every single result. A Working? The capacity to change reality in some way on a permanent basis. Yourself? Your retainers? The land around you? All within scope, all within reach. This permanence is proof that you put in the work, and shaped a future from the raw stuff of the present.
On the other hand, there's Charms. Charms are unique not in their capabilities or even in the sense of being only in one character's repertoire at any given time, but for the fact that they just break the rules. They are each crystallizations of skill and will and power, but what makes them special is that they get to go beyond the realm of what is possible by merely rolling dice. When a Solar draws a flaming Daiklave from his anima or a Sidereal summons her favorite blade from the space between heaven and earth in the time between heartbeats, that's not just the application of supernatural physics, and it's not a great contest of will and power against reality. Charms are just what Exalts do. Charms just...work.
- Location
- Earth Prime
One of the most vitriolic boards I've ever been on is the Onyx Path forum. It was worse than the old White Wolf ones, and those got pretty heated.
SV is nowhere near as bad, in this thread or others I frequent. Admittedly, I try to stay out of the political ones; I know from experience that those get heated and that I will wind up being on the minority side often enough that I wind up in violation of rules just trying to keep up (e.g., spaghetti posting). At least we mostly keep politics separated from Exalted, here.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
I remember this:
Ending of one book: Hey, things are fucked up, but the world is saved and now the main character has an epic quest to start fixing what's left!
The entire next book: Nah, let's just skip like 50 years ahead! Everything's an insane shithole dystopia, all the magic rocks are dead - really, everything that was cool is dead, dying, or has had all joy and life surgically extracted, so just enjoy the fascist quisling New Sanctaphrax!
Also here's a bunch of evil birdwoman cultists who yank the eyeballs out of debtors and leave their slowly dying husks nailed up along major thoroughfares, they own the setting now!
But hey, here's the main character, maybe he can fix this - psych! He can't fix shit, he's a shriveled old dude now! We kill him off within three chapters of reentering the plot!
Fuck you, reader! FuCk YOu!!!
mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
- Location
- Ottawa
It's funny; when I picked my name I figured the series was moderately unpopular. I was the only person I knew who liked it. But online, whenever they come up, it turns out that a bunch of people have read it.
The world did go through a rough patch there. But it got better.
The world did go through a rough patch there. But it got better.
Yeah, different strokes and all that. Again, I mostly just putter around the discord
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
My investment was in Twig and his adventures, and to a lesser degree the world of Edge that he inhabited. More than anything, I appreciated the mixture of harshness and hope in the ending of the previous book.
Having the following book then strangle every last one of those things to death before my 12-year-old eyes rather decisively killed any desire to come back.
At least in Shannara, they finish telling the story before shifting the time period.
Earlier this year I wrote a long, rambling essay on the subject of the average Creationborn's view of magic, and the primary thing to remember is that it is all about perceptions. In many ways, although the means are certainly magical as we see them and magical by the way the world treats them, the people of Creation still see magic the way we do too, as some grandiose and ineffable, mysterious cosmic force commanded by otherworldly beings to make things Not Work Quite Right. Which means when the potter or the tinsmith is whispering a little something to make the stoking fire flare its embers more brightly, obviously that's not magic at all, but a well-guarded trick of the trade. The tinsmith is not an otherworldly being, the tin is not standing up and bending itself to shape, and making a set of dining spoons is not working any mysterious forces most people would care much to speculate on. What is seen as "Magic" is the dangerous and unpredictable, when the lit spark from flint and tinder leaps up and goes fluttering away on butterfly wings rather than burning hotter than usual. After all, it is the nature of fire to burn, not to fly.
Because the thing is, most people of Creation don't actively think about living in a magical world the way we see it, or about approaching their lifestyle as something contingent on regularly dealing with mystical things. They're not working a demonic rite with green flame and screaming candles when they read a horoscope or take some time to tell the bees about local happenings, and equally so don't consider the typical application of Thaumaturgy to be magic, or science, or anything but How This Gets Done. And it certainly does until something from outside their grasp comes and makes it Not Work As It Should, creating that ineffable Magic by simple matter of shattering their narrow viewpoint on the world around them. For a tribe of deep-sea dwellers, the diplomatic envoy swimming among them without drowning like the rest is not working magic by their sight, no matter his technical geegaws and ugly diving suit, but conforming to how life is down there even if it makes him something of a curiosity in the attempt.
Scholars of Thaumaturgy are not quite mad scientists in labcoats running double-blind experiments on the underpinnings of reality, but closer to classical philosophers and Renaissance intellectuals attempting to cage the world inside an all-encompassing theory of absolutes using public lectures and ideological treatises rather advancing practical usage of the Arts, which is probably why it is called The Arts to begin with.
Because the thing is, most people of Creation don't actively think about living in a magical world the way we see it, or about approaching their lifestyle as something contingent on regularly dealing with mystical things. They're not working a demonic rite with green flame and screaming candles when they read a horoscope or take some time to tell the bees about local happenings, and equally so don't consider the typical application of Thaumaturgy to be magic, or science, or anything but How This Gets Done. And it certainly does until something from outside their grasp comes and makes it Not Work As It Should, creating that ineffable Magic by simple matter of shattering their narrow viewpoint on the world around them. For a tribe of deep-sea dwellers, the diplomatic envoy swimming among them without drowning like the rest is not working magic by their sight, no matter his technical geegaws and ugly diving suit, but conforming to how life is down there even if it makes him something of a curiosity in the attempt.
Scholars of Thaumaturgy are not quite mad scientists in labcoats running double-blind experiments on the underpinnings of reality, but closer to classical philosophers and Renaissance intellectuals attempting to cage the world inside an all-encompassing theory of absolutes using public lectures and ideological treatises rather advancing practical usage of the Arts, which is probably why it is called The Arts to begin with.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Upshot; historically, 'magic' has just been a word used to refer to other culture's superstitions and rituals, while our own are luck or something else innocuous.
If you asked me to speculate wildly, I'd guess (probably wrongly) it started with Christian efforts to suborn and subsume the religions of other cultures in order to convert people. "Your gods and spirits are devils, your druids are tricksters, your songs and shrines are profane, and your customs are 'magic', something murky and mysterious, to be mistrusted and shunned... Now, let me tell you about these good, wholesome angels, saints, hymns, chapels and miracles!"
- Location
- Washington, USA
Yeah, sounds like we agree on enough of the underlying concepts to be able to work together.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Nah, the Greeks and Romans were doing it too, happily integrating Egyptian, Jewish, Greek and Babylonian practices into one greater whole, while Jews were busy trying to define Jesus as a magician and wrote of the magical prowess and sciences of Solomon.
- Location
- Earth Prime
It's also worth noting that the term "magus" (or plural, "magi") was a word for "man of learning" and had an implication that he knew hidden lore or deep secrets, much the way we sort-of view modern-day Ph.D.s in bleeding-edge research fields. Yes, there was more mysticism about it than there is today, at least overtly, but our sci-fi and pop-sci is often no less mystical in its inaccuracies in describing little-known systems and models. Today, we "know" that it is the device, not the scientist, which performs the miraculous "cool thing." In the past, it was unclear whether it was the device or the mage, partially because a lot of the things that learned men could do involved just knowing physics of things like leverage, or chemistry, or how to treat a wound.
Many Guilds also wrapped themselves in mystery, with trade secrets they'd protect rather violently if necessary, and their "secret arts" were no less "magical" to the common man than were the mysterious devices and potions of the isolated scholar in a tower.
The only real difference is that our modern attitude towards things-we-do-not-understand is that anybody theoretically COULD understand them, if they were smart enough and studied. We don't deliberately make it seem mystical, like a power of the researcher or technologist; we just treat them as brilliant and more learned. We DO mystify, but we do it more subtly, treating it as something that will soon be in everybody's hands even if they only vaguely know some Science Words to explain how the magic box transfers our voices and faces hundreds of miles to our loved ones on birthdays, or how the captured fire of the gods of Ohtwo elevates the metal artifact into the sky, where it will hang forever without falling.
Yes, most of us are actually learned enough to do the math behind rocket equations, but most of those who are also would likely make major mistakes without some deeper study.
Modern magic is pop-science. And, of course, we still have our superstitions; we're just more self-aware about how they're mostly placebos. (Nobody in a gaming thread can seriously claim they've never seen anybody engage in rituals with their dice. Like replacing ones that are "acting up" after a number of bad rolls in a row.)
Many Guilds also wrapped themselves in mystery, with trade secrets they'd protect rather violently if necessary, and their "secret arts" were no less "magical" to the common man than were the mysterious devices and potions of the isolated scholar in a tower.
The only real difference is that our modern attitude towards things-we-do-not-understand is that anybody theoretically COULD understand them, if they were smart enough and studied. We don't deliberately make it seem mystical, like a power of the researcher or technologist; we just treat them as brilliant and more learned. We DO mystify, but we do it more subtly, treating it as something that will soon be in everybody's hands even if they only vaguely know some Science Words to explain how the magic box transfers our voices and faces hundreds of miles to our loved ones on birthdays, or how the captured fire of the gods of Ohtwo elevates the metal artifact into the sky, where it will hang forever without falling.
Yes, most of us are actually learned enough to do the math behind rocket equations, but most of those who are also would likely make major mistakes without some deeper study.
Modern magic is pop-science. And, of course, we still have our superstitions; we're just more self-aware about how they're mostly placebos. (Nobody in a gaming thread can seriously claim they've never seen anybody engage in rituals with their dice. Like replacing ones that are "acting up" after a number of bad rolls in a row.)
- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
It's like porn: I'll know when I see it.
I can! All my games are online because I don't have any real life friends! HA! Take that Mr Spartypants!
...oh.
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- Location
- Earth Prime
Ah, and you've never cursed the dice bot?I can! All my games are online because I don't have any real life friends! HA! Take that Mr Spartypants!
...oh.
And just because we're online doesn't mean we're not real! I eat, have a job, sleep, and physically ambulate on lower pedal appendages, like all humans. We do human things, as humans do, because we're real humans, and not AIs haunting the wires of the internet. >_> <_<
Okay so funny story about this. I was playing Dnd 5e and we were facing the final boss of that particular questline, a Werewolf. Now, we were all low level and didn't have access to silvered weapons, so this would be a tough fight as we were all mostly martials with only myself and the cleric being the casters (I was the Wizard).Ah, and you've never cursed the dice bot?
It was then that I noticed that the werewolf didn't actually have any ranged attacks, so being the utility caster of the group, I decided to cast Levitate on the werewolf and suspend him in mid air, completely helpless. The GM howled in rage, and we spent the next few rounds plinking him with Cantrips, crossbow bolts and the like until the GM lost patience and had us roll five rounds worth of damage all at once.
We killed it, naturally, but also found out that the dice bot had a habit of rolling 1s and 6s at an excessively high frequency compared to other numbers, so we ended up swapping it out for a different one.
So the moral of the story is just because I didn't take any attack spells doesn't mean I can't functionally oneshot your final boss.
Uh huh, a likely story!
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I think that we have completely lost track of the conversation.
This started out as; "Hey, would this count as Magic as far as something like D&D's Dispel Magic and Anti-Magic Field are concerned?"
- Location
- United States
So in previous editions, Countermagic was sufficient to negate thaumaturgy. Does that include potions made via alchemy? Will my countermagic ruin people's deodorant, since it's made via thaumaturgy in 2e? Will countermagic ruin magical materials made via the alchemy procedures that allow it to be refined?
- Location
- Earth Prime
In Exalted, that particular line tends to be drawn based on one of two criteria:
1) Does it use motes of essence? Many things target based on that.
2) Does it fall into the particular category the "dispel" (or other) effect belongs to or says it targets? Sorcerous Countermagic (for example) counters Sorcery, Necromancy, and Thaumaturgy, specifically. It doesn't do anything to other "magical" effects like Charms and Artifact attunement and Hearthstones and Manses.
I think that the results of alchemical processes wouldn't be affected, because it's the process to create them that's magical rather than the results of the process.
- Location
- Singapore
Urm... I think the thaumaturgy is just the process. It'll spoil a brewing batch... but the dyes and deodorant itself is unaffected.
Wards and talismans would get smashed though.
Edit: goddamned sidereals