Old deleted Spell Categories and Realms

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Latest revision as of 13:41, 20 January 2011

The purpose of this article is to tell about some of the really old, long-deleted concepts from Sagatafl's magic system, in the hope of making the existing Spell Realms easier to understand.

The two deleted Categories

Sagatafl's magic system, back in the trly old days, was intended to handle all magic as Spells (except magic items), so there's be Mage/Arcane/Wizard magic that gave access to some Realms, and Clerical/Divine/Priestly magic that gave access to some Realms overlapping with the first ones.

There were also plans to have a third, fourth and fifth type of spell magic, distinct from Mage and Cleric magic, such as Shamanic magic and Bardic magic, and one more type that The Designer has long forgotten. All this would be based on Realms, with most types giving access to most Realms, so the types differed mainly in how they were learned and how SEPs were calculated.

There were the current four Categores, although it is possible that the Grey Magic Category was split into two smaller ones; The Designer does not remember. Otherwise these Categories contained the same 24 Realms as today, or almost the same and close to 24 (again, it happened long ago and all this stuff was quickly deemed un-good and deleted, and thus forgotten about).

Besides the four current Categories, there were two more, the White Category that was accessible to Divine spell magic only (in turn, they were probably intended to not have access to the Black Category, or at least not to all its Realms, with Curse Magic being the most obvious possible exception), and a sixth Category whose name The Designer no longer remembers clearly. Probably Universal, maybe Special.

White Magic dealt with all the magic effects one would expect a Cleric or other type of wielder of Divine magic to be able to reproduce, and revealed a strong design inheritance from Quest FRP v2.1. Eventually, however, it was decided that Divine magic should never be in the form of Spells, but should instead be handled as Powers, as inborn abilities that had a fuctional shape that was much different from the functional shape of Spells.

Sagatafl being able to reproduce this kind of magic, the "Clerical" type, was always a strong priority, however.

The sixth Category, however, was always something that was just there for those who needed it, but was not intended to be developped much, since the kinds of Realms it contained, and the kinds of Spells that these Realms themselves contained, were ones that The Designer found entirely unsuitable to his Ärth historical fantasey setting, and furthermore also deemed to be generally undesirable in any fantasy setting, as their presence would heavily impact the world in ways that were de-medievalizing and modernizing.

The expected (using the word "planned" would be misleading) contents of the Realms of this sixth Category were very much an inheritance from Quest FRP v2.1, and were never in any real sense of the word present in the Ärth setting. The Designer is therefore unashamed of his ability to remember the details.

The deleted White Category

This section talks, as much as possible (limited by The Designer's recollection) about the long-ago-deleted White Category.

Awareness of the once-presence of a White Catgory may also help some understand why two of the still extant Categoryes are called the Black Category and the Grey Category. Where is the White Category, some might ask? Well, here it was, but it was deemed to be profoundly un-good, and was swiftly removed, development in that direction ceasin compleely.

The Aid Realm

The Aid Realm, of the Divine-only White Category, is for protective Spells of various kinds, and is very much an inheritance from Quest FRP v2.1, where most, if not all, Clerical religions offered a more-or-less-tailored Discipline of protective Spells, including Spells to ward against or turn away various types of supernatural entities, including Undead.

The Blessing Realm

The Aid Realm, of the Divine-only White Category, is basically the buff Realm. Many sorts of Spells for buffing of one self and one's allies, and very much an inheritance from Quest FRP v2.1. Like with Aid, most Clerical religions offered a more-or-less-tailored Discipline of buffing Spells.

The Cleric Divination Realm

This is where it get slightly more interesting, because Grey Magic also gets access to a Divination Realm. Almost certainly the intent was that the White/Clerical Divination Realm should be more powerful in general, and also provide some effects entirely missing in Grey Divination, such as the ability to detect, discern and perhaps even analyze morals, religious stance, sect adherence, and being in a state of grace, excommunication or apostasy.

It may be worth noting that Quest FRP v2.1 had one Discipline for Clerical Divination and another for Mage Divination, and although they were a bit different in terms of what Spells they contained, they were equally easy to learn, and most likely roughly equally powerful.

The Major Healing Realm

This is even more important, in an explanatory sense, because The Designer still remmbers vividly that originally the Green Category Realm was called Minor Healing, and the White Realm was called Major Healing.

Minor Healing was alwas intended as it is now, with subtle and weak effects, while Major Healing was meant to be able to reproduce the miracolous instant-healing effects seen in other systems, including very much Quest FRP v2.1. Anything Minor Healing could do, Major Healing could do better.

Quest FRP v2.1 did not, notably, offer much ability to Mages to heal others, although there were some self-healing ability in Self-Shapings, and may have been some potential for using medium-level spells from other Mage Disciplines to reproduce the effect of low-level Clerical Healing spells, and likewise using high-level spells from other Mage Disciplines to reproduce the effects of medium-level Clerical Healing spells.

The deleted Universal Category

This section talks, as much as possible (limited by The Designer's recollection) about the long-ago-deleted sixth Category, whose name may have been the Universal Category, or may have been something else.

The Dimensional Realm

This was to do with extradimensional spaces, containers and rooms that had more volume on the inside than on the outside. Teleportation may also have been present here, or it may have had its own Realm. This kind of magic always bothered The Designer, and offended him greatly, because its emergent effects when magic is widely learnable would inavoidably modernize and de-medievalize any setting, and so there was never any real work done in this area. The Realm was meant as a placeholder into which others could put Spells as needed.

In Quest FRP v2.1, there is a Mage Discipline that large parts of this hypothetical Realm were inherited from, but The Designer cannot clearly remember the name of the Discipline (although the effect of Teleportation was in the Light/Dark Mage Discipline, and was called something else although it was clear from the text, and also confirmed on the QuestRPG mailing list, that teleportation was what the designers intended).

The Time Realm

This was a Realm having to do with time travel. Maybe it as combined with teleportation, and so possibly it was this Realm that was called Universal, and the Category itself was called something else. This also did not interest The Designer in the least, and so was a placeholder Realm, that others could design Spells for if they so desired.

Other Realms that may once have been planned

Teleportation has already been mentioned. Another possibility is transmutation of matter, which would then be an inheritance of the Mage Discipline of Shapings (not to be confused with the age Discipline of Self-Shaping). There probably were vague plans for a Realm to make room for something like that.

Likewise, something to do with force, possible, in he form of visible force phenomena analogous to Tenser's Floating Disc from D&D, and maybe force fields (visible or invisible - The Designer does not remember).

It must be emphasized, strongly, that this Category, and the Realms it contained, never interested The Designer at all, as anything he'd ever want to see in any kind of medieval or otherwise low-tech fantasy setting, as their presence as magics that were learnable to a large minority of the setting's population would have profoundly undesirable emergent effects, and in many cases even if they were emergently rare (by virtue of not being learnable, in the style of Sagatafl's Powers), some of them would still bother him to a large degree, due to enabling consistent and effortless bypassing of problems (e.g. the ability to see into the past, let alone the future!), or simply because the effects were very alien to a medieval or other low-tech mentality.

Please note

The sixth Category was never in any sense any kind of priority for The Designer. He merely wanted to create th infrastructure, of a Category divided into Realms, so that other Sagatafl world builders could design the kinds of Spells they desired for their settings, according to their extremely different preferences and priorities.

The Designer is therefor in no way apologizing, for anything whatsoever that has to do with this sixth Category.

Mini-FAQ

omitted for now. A few Q's may be added eventually.

The world

Let's just say briefly that the world impact of learnable sixth Category Spells would be extreme, and likewise the widespread use of Major Healing (and if learnable it would become widespread), and that keeping Divine effects rare is something The Designer thinks is a very good idea.

Design Notes

This whole article is one long Design Note, or perhaps anti-Design Note is a better word?

It should be stated clearly, though, that Quest FRP v2.1 has had a profound influence on Sagatafl's magic system, and that it contains many good ideas, along with the bad ones that have been emphasized above.

Quick mini-glossary

Quest FRP is a freeware RPG system that has been available on the World Wide Web in various editions since at least 1997. v2.0, the first The Designer encountered, was actually shareware (the designers asked to have a check snailmailed to them), but v2.1 was released as freeware. After that the editions became muddled and - frankly - incompetently published, via a badly managed (and/or badly programmed) CMS system (v2.1 and earlyer were released as documents, in PDF, RTF, HTML and possible one or two additional file formats). Quest FRP v2.1 and GURPS are the two main memetic ancestors of Sagatafl.

A Cleric Discipline is a classification of spell lists in Quest FRP v2.1, each containing from 8 to 10 spells learnable sequentially, with learning speed influenced by the Faith attribute and some other attributes. Anyone could learn Cleric Disciplines, but member of the Cleric character class received a learning speed bonus. Quest FRP v2.1 and earlier dealt with real-world religions, and apart from some generally accessible Clerical Disciplines, each religion would offer some more-or-less-tailored Disciplines of its own, sometimes doing a good job of reflecting the mythology and hagiography of that religion, and in other cases not really trying. Mage Discipline is another classification of spell lists in Quest FRP v2.1, each usually containing 10 spells learnable sequentially, with learning speed influenced by the Magic Talent attribute and some other attributes, learnable by anyone but with members of the Mage character class receiving a learning speed bonus.

See also

Memetic ancestor
Sagatafl and QuestFRP