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Post by zoomfarg on Apr 11, 2016 22:29:42 GMT -8
One of my favorite GURPS supplements is Thaumatology. I've spent quite a bit of time using it to develop a medieval fantasy setting (that I've been working on for an embarassingly long time without running).
Is anyone else using it? I'd love to hear what people are doing with it, like what they pick and choose to use for their setting, the systems they implement, etc.
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Magic_Octopus
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 11
Preferred Game Systems: GURPS, Earthdawn
Currently Running: Earthdawn 3rd Edition
Favorite Species of Monkey: Sunda slow loris
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Post by Magic_Octopus on Apr 12, 2016 1:13:10 GMT -8
It is one of the best RPG books I own. So far, I've only used it for the syntactic magic system when I ran GURPS Shadowrun. The player requested a more freeform system.
One of my long term goals is to create separate magic systems for mages and shamans in the Shadowrun world.
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Post by Kenigma23 on Apr 12, 2016 12:26:31 GMT -8
I used in mainly to enhance the existing system, which works well for my fantasy game. I'd like to use the full ritual use as an alternative to the "fast magic" of the standard system though. I think it would be good for a "low magic" game.
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Post by zoomfarg on Apr 12, 2016 17:23:58 GMT -8
It is one of the best RPG books I own. So far, I've only used it for the syntactic magic system when I ran GURPS Shadowrun. The player requested a more freeform system. One of my long term goals is to create separate magic systems for mages and shamans in the Shadowrun world. I'm not very familiar with Shadowrun, except for a super-basic word association vomit (Shadowrun--runner?--fantasy races back? -- magic and tech? -- giant ass corps? -- dragons? See?) Do you have any idea which system(s) you want to use for mages and shamans? I used in mainly to enhance the existing system, which works well for my fantasy game. I'd like to use the full ritual use as an alternative to the "fast magic" of the standard system though. I think it would be good for a "low magic" game. Do you mind sharing which enhancements you used? Which ritual? Like where spells are techniques of a core ritual/skill? Or the full fledged ritual/path magic system?
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Post by Kenigma23 on Apr 13, 2016 11:25:08 GMT -8
zoomfarg I don’t mind at all I’ve not used the ritual magic system as yet, my current low magic fantasy game has gone on temporary, maybe permanent, hiatus due to scheduling conflicts. My plan was to introduce magic slowly to the PCs. My intent was to make it up as I go, but was leaning toward ritual/path. I hadn’t fully developed it. For my high magic I’d have to dig them up (read: find them again) as the “high magic fantasy” game has been defunct for a while. I haven’t thrown anything away, but I don’t recall my method of organization… I think you’re more interested in the ritual stuff so this may not be of interest to you. In summary (and from memory) though… • I took the standard Magic system as a base, and used the elemental division of power that was in GURPS Grimoire (not sure that made it to Thaumatology). • I built my own method for handling spell points using HT, FP and Magery to drive a skill that acted as a sort of “spell pool” (I never liked how gems ended working in the late game) From Thaumatology I pulled things like • blood magic • bonuses or negatives for using your hands, words, movement to cast • funnel magic • the enhanced group magic • limited forms of ritual magic, like taking longer to cast the spell, drawing a circle, using specialized reagents, etc. That’s what I remember using, it has been a while though. My main goal was to make the mages less fireball cannons and deep/interesting/flawed beings that could conjure a lot of power if they were will to pay a price… or had A LOT of time to prepare.
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Post by zoomfarg on Apr 18, 2016 17:13:55 GMT -8
I've never tried using the bonuses/penalties for different motions/words (I don't have my book on me at the moment, but I think it's called something like variable ritual or something). Did you find that level of detail helped the game, or did you find it slowed gameplay? My fear is that every time a player has to cast, they would spend too long figuring out which hands and feet they were shaking. What was your experience? I super want to use it, it just looks kinda complicated for less experienced players. I'm hoping to keep magic accessible and intuitive to new players.
I'm actually pretty interested in all of it, though personally I'm in a syntactic realm magic headspace right now. Some of the magic systems for the fantasy game I'm planning us it.
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Post by Kenigma23 on Apr 27, 2016 11:32:16 GMT -8
Sorry I disappeared there, Houston was underwater for a while… I had to shoo away Kevin Costner…
I don’t recall where I cobbled it all together, I may have stolen some things from Grimoire and possibly from an issue of Pyramid or two. But I seem to recall the vast majority of my pulling was from the Thaumatology book.
Did it take more time? Yes and no. I’ve been playing GURPS since the late 80s so I’ve sort of internalized it all at this point. {the game is me I am the game} I made a list (cheat sheet) of how to put things together for the players (and so I could remember) and that seemed to help. I don’t recall it being bad unless a player did the whole “wait let me see how many bonuses I can get”
Feel free to ask me whatever you want and I’ll be happy to give my POV or method used, but I largely stuck to the “faster” magic and I think you’re aiming for the longer form. I have very little experience with that type of play style.
My goal was to take a long time making the character but when we played to try and keep it moving. This isn’t always easy in general and with GURPS it can be real challenge if you have a bunch of detail oriented folks… which I did at the time.
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Magic_Octopus
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 11
Preferred Game Systems: GURPS, Earthdawn
Currently Running: Earthdawn 3rd Edition
Favorite Species of Monkey: Sunda slow loris
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Post by Magic_Octopus on Apr 29, 2016 0:10:23 GMT -8
It is one of the best RPG books I own. So far, I've only used it for the syntactic magic system when I ran GURPS Shadowrun. The player requested a more freeform system. One of my long term goals is to create separate magic systems for mages and shamans in the Shadowrun world. I'm not very familiar with Shadowrun, except for a super-basic word association vomit (Shadowrun--runner?--fantasy races back? -- magic and tech? -- giant ass corps? -- dragons? See?) Do you have any idea which system(s) you want to use for mages and shamans? In Shadowrun, mages are your classic bookish wizards. They have libraries and base their magic on learning. Shamans have "totems" (powerful animal spirits) that give them power, and the shamans are nature oriented magicians. The shamans also adopt the personality and sometimes even the appearance of their totems (e.g. rat, dog, cat etc.) Mages can summon elementals while shamans work with localized nature spirits (for example, a house might have its own spirit). In my Shadowrun the syntactic magic system is a nice fit for mages. It is kind of an amalgamation of flexibility and predictability. I would make the elemental summoning just another magical working (spell), like it is in the default magic system. With shamans, the focus would be summoning nature spirits. Rather than casting spells, they would harness the power of spirits to create magical effects. I haven't thought this out yet, but it would probably work with the ritual path magic system. In the game I ran previously, when the shaman summoned a spirit there was a negotiation. The spirit wasn't automatically a slave for the summoner, but rather the shaman would have to communicate with the spirit in order to persuade it to give services. Now, the attitude of the spirit was generally positive towards the shaman, but I liked to keep things a bit unpredictable. I also liked to give the spirits some personality.
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