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The "I'd Play This If..." Thread

Started by Hibou, December 05, 2013, 08:49:42 AM

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Polycarp

QuoteKeep magic rare enough that mundanes are suspicious or scared of it and may even try to harm casters in some places, because supernatural things are Evil.

I've certainly seen that approach mentioned before, but I'm not sure I've been in a game where it was well implemented.  It requires behavior by the GM and the players that is not necessarily easy to sustain.  NPCs have to be willing to spurn the aid of an adventuring party that is too "supernatural," the GM has to be willing to threaten and enforce real penalties for supernatural flamboyance (as in, there is actually a credible threat of character death by witch hunt), and players need to have their characters spurn or at least be uncomfortable with magic users in their own party in a way that's not just token dismay at 1st level followed by acceptance.  Players in particular will find this difficult because it's sub-optimal behavior; they are encouraged by the nature of the game to cooperate and accept the help of the PC wizard rather than screaming bloody murder over a magic missile or abstaining from magic that will demonstrably increase their effectiveness, mechanically speaking.  There's an incredible disincentive to have your fighter turn down offers of magical aid from the party wizard through a substantial part of the campaign, and even committed roleplayers are going to be pressed towards "character growth" that undermines the magic-averse theme of the setting.
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Steerpike

Well, I think it's certainly possible for the *party* to be OK with supernatural powers while the rest of the world is not - perhaps they believe that the party's mage/wizard is being unfairly persecuted.

LordVreeg

i once used the deryni population/ideal in a d20 came...some wonderful periods of persecution and cycles of control
VerkonenVreeg, The Nice.Celtricia, World of Factions

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Polycarp

Quote from: SteerpikeWell, I think it's certainly possible for the *party* to be OK with supernatural powers while the rest of the world is not - perhaps they believe that the party's mage/wizard is being unfairly persecuted.

Sure, that's possible, though less plausible in the usual "you all meet in a tavern" sort of blind start.  I have no problem with the party being tolerant, that's not really the issue - the issue is that the players will often be pushed into tolerance, most typically after a token personal crisis that lasts no longer than the first adventure, because they have powerful OOC reasons to not rock the boat.  It is, in my experience, a pointless exercise, as it's either a farce (moments of hesitation before acceptance for the good of the game) or it results in party civil war.  It's a bit like putting a LG paladin and a CE demonologist in the same party.  It tends to play out in either of two ways: either the players will OOC agree to get along and skate over the obvious IC issue, or they will roleplay to the hilt and kill each other.

Party civil war is obviously a problem.  The farcical OOC truce is not necessarily a problem, though it sort of flies in the face of setting verisimilitude if the party that just met each other last week is now practically the realms' foremost Magicians' Rights Organization in a land where mage-burning is right up there with stick-and-hoop as a national pastime.

It's possible your roleplaying experiences have just been with much, much better roleplayers than mine have been.  I'm speaking here, by the way, about pre-CBG games; I haven't played a game here on the CBG where magic animosity was really played up like that.  I'd like to try some day, as we have a lot of very creative people here and it could conceivably be done well, but my main point here is that it's difficult to actually pull off in such a way that it meaningfully changes game balance.  It takes committed players to make it seem not either farcical or suicidal, and it takes a committed GM to make caster players feel genuinely persecuted and in constant danger.  That is the kind of thing that defines a campaign, much like it would if your party included a wanted criminal (or several!).  But if all it amounts to is that you're not allowed to cast spells when neutral NPCs are around, well, that's not really oppression, just mild inconvenience.  The pretense that magic animosity will actually be a limitation on the power of casting classes necessitates that you go further than that; in many campaigns, encounters happen largely in remote locations inhabited only by enemies, and a prohibition on casting in town won't do anything to actually affect game balance in much of the campaign.
The Clockwork Jungle (wiki | thread)
"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." - Marcus Aurelius

Steerpike

Quote from: PolycarpThe pretense that magic animosity will actually be a limitation on the power of casting classes necessitates that you go further than that; in many campaigns, encounters happen largely in remote locations inhabited only by enemies, and a prohibition on casting in town won't do anything to actually affect game balance in much of the campaign.

This is very true - it's more of an inconvenience, and it can obviously play more of a role in town/city adventures.