Also, no, there's really not a problem with positing conceptual, abstract blocks as fundamental, reductionist principles. Hell, the real world does that - what do you think a group is? An inner product? The world is fundamentally built on math. Creation makes that a little more literal than usual, and uses different fundamental buidling blocks. The result is probably alien without a lot of work, but ... well, honestly, look at the universe of Creation and tell me it's not fundamentally alien.
Because it's kind of my point. When you use magic-style abstractions as reductionist principles, you get a sort of magi-science. The least gods in everything of Ex2 are a good example.
Incidentally, groups and inner products aren't the kinds of abstraction that you see in magic. Mostly because intuitively, they don't make sense to people. People do not think in set theory unless they've been specifically trained to.
The room here is far bigger than it should be. As far as the eye can see, Keris traces bookshelves. The room gleams everywhere. She can hear countless glass books, sitting in their shelves, sand-dust coating them. There is no roof on this impossible room - and above her, the burning stars of the Malfean sky gleam. She knows that each star is a demon who burns, and that Orabilis was the one who threw them up there.
She can hear the demons screaming faintly, high above her, and her heart goes out to them.
Keris's personal hatreds can override her compassion, and even Calesco can agree that Kasseni was a horrible woman (though she'd have preferred it if Keris had just killed her). And Kasseni is dead. All that's left on the bracelet is a psychic imprint aware enough to whimper; it's not the same as being stuck in the sky burning in agony for hundreds of years.
That said, yes, it is still a mite hypocritical. Keris does that sometimes.
Because it's kind of my point. When you use magic-style abstractions as reductionist principles, you get a sort of magi-science. The least gods in everything of Ex2 are a good example.
Incidentally, groups and inner products aren't the kinds of abstraction that you see in magic. Mostly because intuitively, they don't make sense to people. People do not think in set theory unless they've been specifically trained to.
This is a pretty arbitrary distinction unless you're talking about aesthetics.
I definitely agree that fantasy and sci-fi have the sort of divide you're talking about. But magic and science? Not at all. Certainly, it's true that science doesn't have to make sense to humans - but neither does magic, if well written. If you don't see things like groups in magic, then imo that's because nobody's bothered to actually take magic seriously in worldbuilding yet.
I'm writing a custom setting in my free time that does exactly that - and oh hell yes it's alien, but it's very definitely magical and the study of that magic is very definitely science.
And honestly, you'd be surprised how much you can change about the universe, and still get humans out of it. Humans are a really really really really emergent effect; it's like a story, you can write it on paper or bits or sound waves or whatever the hell else, it's such a high-level concept that it doesn't matter.
Does magic working in strange ways that evade casual understanding really deny that sentiment that this Kukla guy put forth?
Forgive me if I'm just not engaging with it on that level, but it just seems weird to assume that by making those truths not super obvious and well-understood, that it somehow means there's an opposition to the idea that understanding is not the death of wonder.
Like, part of it is a genre thing, I get the sense, for why they took it in a different direction. But I don't think it necessarily contradicts the point of view that the magic is, like the real science, more complicated than it first appears? It doesn't have to suggest it defies all understanding, just that it defies easy understanding.
Or is it the notion that one has to have some special trait to access certain kinds of magic that makes it a problem, so the problem originates with the combined notion that a Thaumaturge/a Sorcerer are a one in a million kind of person?
That you would spread lies and slander about this beautiful poem that I just happened to find in a sziromkeruby tree really hurts me, it's written to perfection.
I have a question on the loyalties of demons. Specifically, if a given Infernal were to summon a demon to aid him/her, then later went rogue, would it be possible to convince said demon (with reasoning short of social charms) to join them? I imagine most first-circles would need to have their indoctrination and fear of retribution reassured, but would it be possible to convince a second-circle to abandon the cause? A third? We know that Gramalkin left Mardukth, but I don't think there's much detail on what was involved in that.
Another thought: IIRC Earthscorpion was against the idea of adopting other creatures into an Infernal's soul pantheon. What about other souls, either of Yozis or other Infernals? It's the same sort of creature and it could be a way to save an aspect of a dying ally, or maybe steal some secret? Or maybe both parties could be consenting and trade souls as a sort of meta-negotiation, representing an exchange of thought by a literal adoption of an idea.
Stop thinking of science as some kind of set thing (or set of things).
Science is an approach to the world. It is studying how things work; that's actually the definition of the word.
A sorcerer who delves deep into the workings of elemental energies to better understand them is doing science.
If people have determined that doing X when Y causes magic to happen, they have done science.
If there are codified spells, someone used science to codify them.
If you determine that things fall down, you have done science.
Stop thinking of science as some kind of set thing (or set of things).
Science is an approach to the world. It is studying how things work; that's actually the definition of the word.
A sorcerer who delves deep into the workings of elemental energies to better understand them is doing science.
If people have determined that doing X when Y causes magic to happen, they have done science.
If there are codified spells, someone used science to codify them.
If you determine that things fall down, you have done science.
I...not necessarily? Most science works via the scientific method, and more than that, there are large categories of knowledge in the real world and investigation that have nothing to do with science.
You will be delighted to hear that Keris's po (and Id background) will also be getting a Kerisgame extra soon (though not quite as soon as Beasts of Krisity), entitled Trust Your Instincts.
This is a pretty arbitrary distinction unless you're talking about aesthetics.
I definitely agree that fantasy and sci-fi have the sort of divide you're talking about. But magic and science? Not at all. Certainly, it's true that science doesn't have to make sense to humans - but neither does magic, if well written. If you don't see things like groups in magic, then imo that's because nobody's bothered to actually take magic seriously in worldbuilding yet.
I'm writing a custom setting in my free time that does exactly that - and oh hell yes it's alien, but it's very definitely magical and the study of that magic is very definitely science.
It's a mistake to say that math-less magic is not being taken seriously, though. I guarantee you, Tolkien took his worldbuilding quite seriously. And so did many many authors who approach magic in a way you don't. Including the current Exalted guys, actually; say what you will about their writing, they obviously care.
When I say magic and science have this divide, I mean magic and science in the real world and magic and science as people intuitively understand them. There are plenty of magical traditions out there, and all the ones I've seen fail to work because they substitute the intuitively understandable for the reality of the world.
Both Exalted and Lord of the Rings do a much better job than most settings at "thinking through" their magic systems, and you can tell by how alien their cosmologies are. Sure, the bits that humans interact with aren't that weird, but the overall world? Exalted has the play of least gods and the weirdness of the infinite Poles; LotR has the world running on music and the half-flat, half-round world.
You will be delighted to hear that Keris's po (and Id background) will also be getting a Kerisgame extra soon (though not quite as soon as Beasts of Krisity), entitled Trust Your Instincts.
...odd thought. With the way Keris has her inner Pantheon set up...is it possible to summon her Po? I mean I can't see much use of it unless you just wanted lots of people killed and lots of stuff stolen, but is it technically possible?
...odd thought. With the way Keris has her inner Pantheon set up...is it possible to summon her Po? I mean I can't see much use of it unless you just wanted lots of people killed and lots of stuff stolen, but is it technically possible?
When I say magic and science have this divide, I mean magic and science in the real world and magic and science as people intuitively understand them. There are plenty of magical traditions out there, and all the ones I've seen fail to work because they substitute the intuitively understandable for the reality of the world.
Magic doesn't exist in the real world. Nobody in the world intuitively understands magic, because it doesn't exist.
Frankly, you boiling down all the various mythological traditions of all the cultures on the planet to some sort of 'mystical mumbo-jumbo' (used in the original way the words are meant, ie heavily racist and dismissively) does a disservice to all our ancestors and the believers and people alive right now.
The new age woo movement with its homeopathic cures and magnetic quantum healing crystals is not the sum total of the various mythological phenomena we would call 'magic' today. There were Greek mystery cults (some of which were devoted to fucking math, where do you think the Pythagorean Theorem came from), alchemists, priests, shamans, wise women and men, folk remedies and lore, religious cults, exorcisms, various forms of prophecy from astrology to necromancy, Feng Shui, divine healing and so many more traditions and ideas of how magic 'worked' that I could list them for the next five weeks and still not be done.
Some of those traditions used ineffable causes, but others have very hard and fast rules and very mathematical rules. Like, look at this:
Do you have the gall to say that the people who came up with this didn't create a complex, engineering-like system for their 'magic'? If so, I call bullshit.
Just because you prefer handwavey messes in your 'intuitive' magical systems does not mean the people who came up with actual mythologies based around these concepts did not want repeatable, understandable phenomena.
By saying that we can't have that in Exalted's system you are cutting the ability to draw inspiration from a huge percentage of the collective mythology of mankind from being used in games. How about no, to that? How about you let us have our actual understandable phenomena and you can just ignore it and use 'intuition' whenever you want. It's a hell of a lot harder for me to create a coherent magic system with rules up on the fly than for you to 'intuit' a solution, after all.
Oh god. Another debate about the nature of magic. Eugh.
Look, can I ask something? What, precisely, is the definition of the word magic that everyone is using? Because from what I've seen, you're all using different definitions.
There wasn't. If you list most of the famous scientists from pre-enlightenment or the enlightenment itself you will find most of them spent as much time working on things that are considered magic now as the things they are famous for and they didn't see any distinction at the time.
If it worked and produced results across the centuries we label it science if it didn't it got labeled magic. Chemistry is basically re-branded alchemy to distance itself from the stupider things they tried to do in their early days such as philosophers stones and immortality.
For me magic always seems more wonderous if there is enough explanation for what it does and it's limits that I can make predictions about it. If magic is imcomprehensable there is nothing but GM fiat to judge it's actions and that prevents all kinds of stories where understanding rules could allow magic to drive plots. It also means that it can be interacted with far more often by the people in the world. Gandalf almost never does anything because when he does it is a dues ex machina as we have no idea what he can do so he can do whatever. Tolkien understood this and kept him in reserve to deal with similarly scaled threats and away from the core problem of getting the ring into the volcano. In mistborn however the magic of the setting has clear rules for what it does and what the cost is so interesting interactions between those rules can be used to solve problems and drive the plot. Which means the protagonist got to play with the magic and apply it to solve problems in fun ways.
2e exalted seemed to get this as it made it clear that there was an internally consistent system under the hood even if it only gave glimpses of those rules leaving room for GMs to fill many of the blanks.
Now I agree with the makers of 3e on the issue that the sci-fi aesthetic that worked its way into exalted is a bad idea but destroying the ability to understand the setting IC isn't a good way to resolve it. Instead just make the high ends of magic get a more fantasy aesthetic.
My point, though, is that you seem to be defining magic as 'Process that uses physical laws disproved in real life to achieve a result', whereas Sanctaphrax appears to be using the similar-but-subtly-different definition of 'Process that contradicts the laws of reality to achieve a result', and you're talking past each other as a result and ADASDGASDAFHCSAHCNSDIK...
Oh god. Another debate about the nature of magic. Eugh.
Look, can I ask something? What, precisely, is the definition of the word magic that everyone is using? Because from what I've seen, you're all using different definitions.
