What IS magic, really?

[JigokuBosatsu]

My only comment, since I don't have the time to fully address this, is that in either RL or fantasy, if the hypokeimenon can be addressed in a meaningful way, then a human agent can potentially act upon it in ways that surpass normal understanding of reality.

[Sashi]

A scientific explanation can be given for magic .... but satisfactory explanations which can be given for magic based on rather arbitrary pagan rituals such as in D&D are harder.

Once you can scientifically explain something it ceases to become magic. A classic example of this is the enormous pushback against the Curies' discovery that radioactivity involved elements becoming other elements and the Curies were accused of trying to legitimize alchemy.

As it is, these days anyone can turn lead into gold with proper application of a particle accelerator. You have to be incredibly lucky ad knock off exactly 3 protons and 7 neutrons, but you can do it. And anyone can do it just by putting enough brute force and money into building particle accelerators and sifting through bombarded lead ingots. There's no point because gold produced this way costs in the millions of dollars a gram, but it's doable.

There's an entire subset of philisophical wankery that tries to define "science", and so it's kind of bullshit to define "magic" as "not science". But I think that's the best way to do it.

Science follows discernible and consistent laws that can be figured out and taught to other people. Anyone can do science given enough time and energy.

Magic doesn't follow consistent laws and muggles will never have magic. Even the most rigid Wizarding School is just a method of helping people with natural magic ability learn to use it. Muggles can sometimes look like they're doing magic, when all they're really doing is complicated "pretty please" rituals.

[MfA]

IMO in D&D anyone with intelligence higher than 4 and who manages to adventure without dying can learn how to cast a wizard spell. Of course if you view character development as following pre-destined paths your opinion might differ.

[Sashi]

That's the D&D definition of magic, which boils down to "whatever spells do" and is a complete dead end.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Once you can scientifically explain something it ceases to become magic. A classic example of this is the enormous pushback against the Curies' discovery that radioactivity involved elements becoming other elements and the Curies were accused of trying to legitimize alchemy.

As it is, these days anyone can turn lead into gold with proper application of a particle accelerator. You have to be incredibly lucky ad knock off exactly 3 protons and 7 neutrons, but you can do it. And anyone can do it just by putting enough brute force and money into building particle accelerators and sifting through bombarded lead ingots. There's no point because gold produced this way costs in the millions of dollars a gram, but it's doable.

There's an entire subset of philisophical wankery that tries to define "science", and so it's kind of bullshit to define "magic" as "not science". But I think that's the best way to do it.

Science follows discernible and consistent laws that can be figured out and taught to other people. Anyone can do science given enough time and energy.

Magic doesn't follow consistent laws and muggles will never have magic. Even the most rigid Wizarding School is just a method of helping people with natural magic ability learn to use it. Muggles can sometimes look like they're doing magic, when all they're really doing is complicated "pretty please" rituals.

So something very much like magic but which could, with sufficient education, be practiced by anyone wouldn't be magic? I don't think it would be useful to say (hypothetically) 'because anyone could be apprenticed and gain a wizard level, wizards don't use magic'. It might be reasonable to say that they use a science, but it's still magic from the perspective of the real world.

[Sashi]

So something very much like magic but which could, with sufficient education, be practiced by anyone wouldn't be magic?

Yes, I'm saying exactly that. I think the best analogy to the real world is artistic ability. Anyone can go to art school and learn perspective, color theory, and anatomy. But art school doesn't actually teach people to be successful artists or even to produce art. Art school runs people through rituals that teach essential skills and mental preparedness so that people with artistic talent can actually produce art. The fact that I know the laws of perspective, a skeletal drawing shortcut that reduces my chances of violating anatomical proportions, and have performed the "still life (graphite)" ritual a few times doesn't mean I'm an artist (specifically, it means I've had a lot of hobbies).

I don't think it would be useful to say (hypothetically) 'because anyone could be apprenticed and gain a wizard level, wizards don't use magic'. It might be reasonable to say that they use a science, but it's still magic from the perspective of the real world.

The problem with the habit of calling magic something that violates the laws of the "real" world is that it has no meaning in the world where the people are actually using magic. The fact that D&D lets any PC who wants to take a level in Wizard or Sorcerer doesn't mean that magic is a "science", it means that we're playing a game and don't want to force players to roll on a chart and see if they've got outsiders or dragons in their bloodline to power innate sorcerous talent, or make faith checks to see if Bahamut favors them enough to let them multiclass to cleric. The game just assumes heroes are special enough to be able to do all of that.

If literally anyone can cast fireball by mixing some bat guano with some sulfur and saying a series of magic words, then that's not "magic" because it's a worked out set of physical laws, it's not the set of physical laws that you or I are familiar with, but Aristotle wasn't familiar with subatomic physics or even the concept of molecules and that doesn't make organic synthesis and particle physics magic.

Conversely, Aristotle definitely admired the artistry in paintings of his time, yet people hadn't even discovered perspective. This is because "art" is a kind of magic that takes specific craftsmen with special abilities to produce (and I'll be fucked sideways before I get into an argument about the definition of "art").

If people can fly like in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy ("throw yourself at the ground and miss") then the "fly" spell can seriously be taught to anyone by just by teaching people how to miss, then the "law" of gravity has to be changed to account for this new discovery, but otherwise "people can fly" is a fundamental law of the universe and has to be accounted for scientifically. But if flight is solely the domain of super special artisans who posses the intrinsic talent to violate the laws of the universe, then that's magic.

The fact is that in our fiction we don't like to think about this and so we literally just don't discuss it. It's the same kind of handwaving that we do in the X-men comics where all the super powers are the result of "mutations", and we should be able to dissect Cyclops' eyes to find the "eye lasers" structures or stick Professor X in an fMRI to figure out how his telepathy works (and it's actually established canon that Xavier knows how his telepathy works at least well enough to create a telepathic computer) but we don't do that, even though examining Kitty Pryde's ability to walk through walls or Nightcrawler's teleportation ability would increase our knowledge about the nature of the fundamental forces that govern our world in immeasurable ways. We want to talk about the League of Mutants and the Sentinels and allegories to racism and Utopian colonies, so we just pretend that scientifically explaining Jean Grey's telekinesis wouldn't be the greatest breakthrough in the history of man.

[CatharzGodfoot]

So something very much like magic but which could, with sufficient education, be practiced by anyone wouldn't be magic?

Yes, I'm saying exactly that. I think the best analogy to the real world is artistic ability. Anyone can go to art school and learn perspective, color theory, and anatomy. But art school doesn't actually teach people to be successful artists or even to produce art. Art school runs people through rituals that teach essential skills and mental preparedness so that people with artistic talent can actually produce art. The fact that I know the laws of perspective, a skeletal drawing shortcut that reduces my chances of violating anatomical proportions, and have performed the "still life (graphite)" ritual a few times doesn't mean I'm an artist (specifically, it means I've had a lot of hobbies).

I don't think it would be useful to say (hypothetically) 'because anyone could be apprenticed and gain a wizard level, wizards don't use magic'. It might be reasonable to say that they use a science, but it's still magic from the perspective of the real world.

The problem with the habit of calling magic something that violates the laws of the "real" world is that it has no meaning in the world where the people are actually using magic. The fact that D&D lets any PC who wants to take a level in Wizard or Sorcerer doesn't mean that magic is a "science", it means that we're playing a game and don't want to force players to roll on a chart and see if they've got outsiders or dragons in their bloodline to power innate sorcerous talent, or make faith checks to see if Bahamut favors them enough to let them multiclass to cleric. The game just assumes heroes are special enough to be able to do all of that.

If literally anyone can cast fireball by mixing some bat guano with some sulfur and saying a series of magic words, then that's not "magic" because it's a worked out set of physical laws, it's not the set of physical laws that you or I are familiar with, but Aristotle wasn't familiar with subatomic physics or even the concept of molecules and that doesn't make organic synthesis and particle physics magic.

Conversely, Aristotle definitely admired the artistry in paintings of his time, yet people hadn't even discovered perspective. This is because "art" is a kind of magic that takes specific craftsmen with special abilities to produce (and I'll be fucked sideways before I get into an argument about the definition of "art").

"Art" is just an extremely nebulous concept. The nebulousness of the word art doesn't make the rules governing certain types of art any less scientific, whether it be scales in music, proportion in architecture, or perspective in painting.

I'm an artist simply because I say I am, and "art" is poorly defined enough that I can just do that. I'm not a successful artist, but that's irrelevant.

If people can fly like in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy ("throw yourself at the ground and miss") then the "fly" spell can seriously be taught to anyone by just by teaching people how to miss, then the "law" of gravity has to be changed to account for this new discovery, but otherwise "people can fly" is a fundamental law of the universe and has to be accounted for scientifically. But if flight is solely the domain of super special artisans who posses the intrinsic talent to violate the laws of the universe, then that's magic.

The fact is that in our fiction we don't like to think about this and so we literally just don't discuss it. It's the same kind of handwaving that we do in the X-men comics where all the super powers are the result of "mutations", and we should be able to dissect Cyclops' eyes to find the "eye lasers" structures or stick Professor X in an fMRI to figure out how his telepathy works (and it's actually established canon that Xavier knows how his telepathy works at least well enough to create a telepathic computer) but we don't do that, even though examining Kitty Pryde's ability to walk through walls or Nightcrawler's teleportation ability would increase our knowledge about the nature of the fundamental forces that govern our world in immeasurable ways. We want to talk about the League of Mutants and the Sentinels and allegories to racism and Utopian colonies, so we just pretend that scientifically explaining Jean Grey's telekinesis wouldn't be the greatest breakthrough in the history of man.

"Laws of the universe" is just a metaphor. They aren't actually laws. You can't follow them or break them; they're a description of what is possible. If you were to phase through a wall, that wouldn't be a violation of the laws of the universe, even if we couldn't explain it and nobody else could do it. It would simply mean that out understanding of the universe was incomplete. Since it is a physical phenomenon, it would be subject to scientific inquiry even if you managed it because your daddy fucked a dragon. It would be 'the science of people with draconic ancestors phasing through walls'.

In a magical world the laws of the universe are simply different.

[Sashi]

In a magical world the laws of the universe are simply different.

So how does that work?

"the laws of the universe" are science. Again, I don't want to get into wankery over the definition of "art" or "science" because it starts to turn painful (once you start dealing with people trying to define "science" so that astrology is "not science" rather than "disproved science" you might as well drive nails through your dick for all progress you'll make) but the absolute basic definition of science depends on reproducibility: if someone publishes a discovery, then literally anyone can do it with enough time and money.
It's incredibly easy to photocopy the Mona Lisa, or make a 3D scan of the statue of David. But it's almost impossible to create the next Mona Lisa or statue of David just like it takes a rare talent to be able to cast time stop (and an even rarer talent to figure out how to do it in the first place).

It's the difference between an architect and a building contractor: the architect wins the contract by coming up with a design that's aesthetically pleasing (whatever that means), and the contractor wins the contract by submitting a bid that costs less. I've been to buildings designed by contractors (hell, I've lived in them) and I can tell you there's a significant difference between those and the once designed by architects.

[CatharzGodfoot]

The physical rules governing the creation of the Mona Lisa are well understood. They're so well understood that painting something approximating the Mona Lisa is something that can be done by anyone with the right instruction and the right tools (which, again, are easily reproduced). The painting that you get almost certainly won't be as artful, but it will be figurative art. It's probably even possible to create an algorithm that anyone with a high degree of coordination, good spatial awareness, and enough time and money can follow to paint something that only an expert could tell from the real Mona Lisa.

This is analogous to the difference between Isaac Newton and a high school student. Once you have the Mona Lisa or a calculus book, it's fairly easy to copy the work of the masters. The difference between the high school student and the master is in the genius required to come up with the original art, whether it be a painting or a scientific theory.

So when somebody casts time stop, you can study it. And they can cast it again, and another lab can study it. And a scientific theory of time stop can be developed. This is really necessary to having a functioning game, because otherwise you can't possibly know what is going to happen when you try to cast a spell, and it's just the DM's narrative.

[Sashi]

The physical rules governing the creation of the Mona Lisa are well understood. They're so well understood that painting something approximating the Mona Lisa is something that can be done by anyone with the right instruction and the right tools (which, again, are easily reproduced).

But it's not going to be the Mona Lisa, is it? It's going to be a copy of the Mona Lisa. That's why I said that art is the "best" analogy, not a "perfect" one. It's easy to say "paint me a reproduction of a painting that makes you sad". But there's a reason a Picasso is a Picasso and some of Van Gogh's paintings of sunflowers fill me with abject despair despite being, you know, still life's of sunflowers, and that's because these people had an actual magical artistic talent to do these things.

The painting that you get almost certainly won't be as artful

You've just conceded my point. why won't it be as artful? There's a dude who has made a small fortune selling hand painted reproductions of famous works of art. Why do the people who buy his work buy it instead of ultra-high-quality prints? Why do people buy his reproductions instead of his original works? It really boils down to a discussion of human psychology and the definition of "art". And, again, these are such nebulous things that I'm more willing to eat thumbtacks than get into a debate that tries to nail such concepts down.

It's probably even possible to create an algorithm that anyone with a high degree of coordination, good spatial awareness, and enough time and money can follow to paint something that only an expert could tell from the real Mona Lisa.

Reproducing the Mona Lisa is so easy robots can, and literally do, make copies of it thousands of times every second. What's hard is to say "Make a painting that makes me feel like I do when I look at the Mona Lisa". But that's literally what the party wizard is doing every time he casts fireball. He's taking the lessons he's learned about using sulphur to channel the element of fire and bat guano to contain his spell effect into a spherical shape, but he's also literally spanking the universe into creating a ball of fire in a way that violates every law that universe functions by, the same way Picasso managed to make paintings that violently ignored all the rules of perspective yet still made sense as paintings.

This is analogous to the difference between Isaac Newton and a high school student. Once you have the Mona Lisa or a calculus book, it's fairly easy to copy the work of the masters. The difference between the high school student and the master is in the genius required to come up with the original art, whether it be a painting or a scientific theory.

Again, you illustrate my point. The "magic" isn't in solving an integral, the "magic" is in managing to create the concept of calculus in the first place. If Newton hadn't been more interested in being a celibate alchemist than showing off his creation of the calculus, he totally could have convinced natural philosophers of the era that he was a fucking wizard by solving mathematical problems that are literally impossible to do with pure algebra. That doesn't mean that my TI-89 taking a derivative makes it a wizard.

So when somebody casts time stop, you can study it. And they can cast it again, and another lab can study it. And a scientific theory of time stop can be developed. This is really necessary to having a functioning game, because otherwise you can't possibly know what is going to happen when you try to cast a spell, and it's just the DM's narrative.

That doesn't even make sense, because "the game" involves an incredibly diverse array of magical abilities. Even just restricting yourself to the Vancian system, you've got Wizards who cast spells through "study" of "magical principles", Clerics who cast spells because god touched their dick and allow them to cast spells, and Druids who cast spells because they have such a hardon for nature that they can make a dead piece of wood sprout spines.

You're exactly right that the player needs to have a reasonable assumption of what will happen when they have their character cast Time Stop, Fireball, Manipulate Entropy, Arcane Bolts, or whatever other "magic" effect the player is trying to create, but that has literally nothing to do with the way magic actually works in the world the PC inhabits. The player can just say "I cast invisibility" and know that it will work perfectly because the Vancian system makes spells more point-and-shoot than the simplest Kodak. But the character can be casting invisibility with the knowledge that if he fucks up the target could cease to be, and he's walking the razor's edge every time he casts a spell. And the Cleric isn't actually "casting spells" as much as saying "Oh holy Pelor who touches my dick and so must love me very much, please help us out" at which point Pelor comes down and gives the Barbarian +4 strength. In some magic systems, the player is supposed to be risking blowing up the world or exploding his brain every time he conjures a magical effect, but there's not even a mechanical way for the player to accomplish such a thing, not even through the most critical of critical botches.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Magic need not be subject to the basic principles of science; that 1) the universe follows certain laws and 2) through our observation and reason we can achieve a more complete understanding of those laws. Hell, in Lovecraft, science isn't subject to those principles.

Indeed, most things we have a full understanding of cease to feel like magic.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I think I get it, Sashi. Magic is anything that you personally don't understand.

---

Angel, if magic doesn't follow certain laws then you're playing magic tea party. Magic as an unknowable force of 'lol randum' is fine for a story, but it just doesn't work for an RPG.

Even with Sashi's example of invisibility, you can clearly gain an understanding of the laws governing it. For example, people have learned that when they screw up casting invisibility the target often ceases to exist. So when they get really mad at someone, they cast detect invisible and then try to screw up casting invisibility on the enemy.

If you couldn't gain that understanding, then casting invisibility wouldn't be a matter of successfully keeping people from snapping out of existence. It would be a matter of trying to cast invisibility and then something unknowable happening.

[Sashi]

99% of all fiction and RPG's define "magic" as "stuff that violates the laws of the universe that you and I live in". And that's fine because we just get on with the story and nobody in the book gets into debates about the nature of magic.

But this entire thread is about wanking over the nature of magic.

You can define "magic" as "stuff that violates the laws of OUR universe" but you can't define it as "stuff that violates the laws of its own universe" because "The laws of the universe" are defined through observation of the physical world, so if the physical world includes being able to shoot jets of flame from your fingertips as a teachable, reproducible, testable phenomenon, then the laws of the universe must include "flames shooting from fingers" and scientists will investigate and track down and explain how those flames are created. And they won't just shrug their shoulders and write "magic".

If you showe a pair of walkie-talkies to a primitive, then the walkie-talkies will be "magic" to them because they aren't aware of the existence of radio waves. But you could sit them down in a classroom and eventually teach them not only what radio waves are but how to build their own walkie-talkie. This is because a two-way radio is science. But if Joe the Psychic read your thoughts and then injected his own thoughts into your head as a special ability that only he had, and we couldn't dissect his brain to find the "telepathy" gland he grew, or scan Joe and figure out what "telepathy waves" are, then Joe the Psychic is magic. If we could scan for telepathy waves and then build a telepathy machine that let anyone do what Joe the Telepath does, then Joe the Telepath is science.

So if literally anyone can sit down in a "wizard school" and be taught what magic is and how to use it to fly, turn invisible, and create fireballs, then "wizardry" is science just like "large hadron collider" is science, and it's not about manipulating or violating the laws of the universe, because the laws of the universe include "people can fly".

Therefore magic can't be something that's learned or taught, or that can be studied under reproducible experiments or relied upon because if it does it's science and not magic.

Where you're making an error is you're trying to define "magic" based on how the player interacts with the game rules for magic. You're exactly right that the player needs to know what effects his spells are going to create when he chooses to use them or the game devolves into magic tea party. And he needs to know that when he comes to the table and says "My character is a wizard" the DM isn't going to make him roll on some tables to see if he's got enough magical ability to make it through Wizarding School. Pre 3rd edition D&D actually had this with random ability scores + minimum ability score requirements to be a wizard, and Traveler had the chance of your character dieing at character creation. But 3rd edition doesn't do that because they abandoned "realism" in favor of "not fucking over players" and that's because "Player interaction with rules of the RPG" is not the same thing as "Character interaction with the laws of the Universe".

[CatharzGodfoot]

So, Sashi, what do you propose to call it when a wizard uses the reliable, known methods of memorization of special patterns, special words, a few gestures, and some dust to cause a huge explosion 400 feet away?

What about when a sorcerer uses the known capabilities of her so-called (but apparently not actually) magical bloodline combined with her force of personality to teleport?

And why is it useful to avoid referring to this as "magic" when what you call "magic" doesn't even exist in the game?

And while you're thinking of all that, consider that real world magic is often unreproducible by non-magicians, simply because magicians jealously guard their magic tricks -- not because their magic tricks are unexplainable by science.

[Sashi]

So, Sashi, what do you propose to call it when a wizard uses the reliable, known methods of memorization of special patterns, special words, a few gestures, and some dust to cause a huge explosion 400 feet away?

In game rules? I call it "this would really suck if the player had to roll for a percentile chance of failing and setting himself on fire" (which is why ASF is a shit way of keeping wizards wearing robes)

In game setting terms? I call it "The wizard meditates on special patterns; goes through ritualized words and gestures; and manipulates material components that allow him to channel his unique magical powers to spank the universe into calling forth a ball of fire out of nothing"

And why is it useful to avoid referring to this as "magic" when what you call "magic" doesn't even exist in the game?

How do you not understanding this? Just because the game rules allow for any PC to take a level in wizard doesn't have any impact on how magic must be to keep it from being science. And your saying that the player checking off one of his spell slots and saying "I teleport" is the same as the character using his force of personality to convince the universe to rip holes in itself is just you saying "I have no concept of the separation between fantasy and reality, plus, I don't know what logic is."

And while you're thinking of all that, consider that real world magic is often unreproducible by non-magicians, simply because magicians jealously guard their magic tricks -- not because their magic tricks are unexplainable by science.

How are you this stupid?. Just because you don't know how the magician instantly sent his assistant from one side of the stage to the other doesn't mean that "twins" is a magic power. The fact that David Copperfield calls himself a "magician" is because of a decision by himself and the audience to suspend disbelief. Because nobody wants to go see a "professional manipulation of your perceptions" show.

[CatharzGodfoot]

So, Sashi, what do you propose to call it when a wizard uses the reliable, known methods of memorization of special patterns, special words, a few gestures, and some dust to cause a huge explosion 400 feet away?

In game rules? I call it "this would really suck if the player had to roll for a percentile chance of failing and setting himself on fire" (which is why ASF is a shit way of keeping wizards wearing robes)

In game setting terms? I call it "The wizard meditates on special patterns; goes through ritualized words and gestures; and manipulates material components that allow him to channel his unique magical powers to spank the universe into calling forth a ball of fire out of nothing"

It must be interesting having to deal with the fact that the poor wizard is then stuck never being able to reproduce that feat. And that nobody else in the game can replicate his unique magical powers.

And why is it useful to avoid referring to this as "magic" when what you call "magic" doesn't even exist in the game?

How do you not understanding this? Just because the game rules allow for any PC to take a level in wizard doesn't have any impact on how magic must be to keep it from being science. And your saying that the player checking off one of his spell slots and saying "I teleport" is the same as the character using his force of personality to convince the universe to rip holes in itself is just you saying "I have no concept of the separation between fantasy and reality, plus, I don't know what logic is."

No, this is you saying that you want magic in a rople playing game to be something that, logically, it can never be.

And while you're thinking of all that, consider that real world magic is often unreproducible by non-magicians, simply because magicians jealously guard their magic tricks -- not because their magic tricks are unexplainable by science.

How are you this stupid?. Just because you don't know how the magician instantly sent his assistant from one side of the stage to the other doesn't mean that "twins" is a magic power. The fact that David Copperfield calls himself a "magician" is because of a decision by himself and the audience to suspend disbelief. Because nobody wants to go see a "professional manipulation of your perceptions" show.

That's what magic is in the real world. Manipulating peoples' perceptions by doing stuff that, while understandable, isn't understood.

[Sashi]

It must be interesting having to deal with the fact that the poor wizard is then stuck never being able to reproduce that feat. And that nobody else in the game can replicate his unique magical powers.

Nothing about what I just said prevents the wizard from casting fireball and then casting fireball again. You are fundamentally misunderstanding the meaning of "reproducibility" in a scientific setting. If you can study how the wizard channels "magical energy" into violating conservation of energy into creating a ball of fire and figure out where "magical energy" comes from and tap your toaster into it and get "magic toast", but that's really science.

And the fact is that that's not how magic works in D&D. A wizard scribes a scroll of fireball, he doesn't build a little fireball box. And the wizard can't just stop by the Kinkos and run off a dozen fireball scrolls. Each scroll is a uniquely crafted artifact that is a result of his personal ability to manipulate the universe in magical ways and freeze it so he can come back later and channel that into completing the process. If he crafts a potion of invisibility it's not like making aspirin tablets that release a special chemical into the drinkers body and alter his biochemistry to make him invisible, he's literally setting a magic mousetrap that the fighter triggers by drinking it.

No, this is you saying that you want magic in a rople playing game to be something that, logically, it can never be.

You're saying that "magic" is "science that we don't know how it works", but that doesn't make any sense because science doesn't care if we know how it works, it's always science. If the wizard is following set protocols to make a fireball, and he knows how those protocols work, and they work in exactly the same way, and anyone who wanted to cast fireball could just by studying those protocols, then he's not a magician, he's a scientist with secrets. The blue laser diode in a Blu-Ray player is made using a secret and difficult process that the manufacturer hasn't patented because then they'd have to tell people how they did it. This doesn't make my PS3 a magic golem.

That's what magic is in the real world. Manipulating peoples' perceptions by doing stuff that, while understandable, isn't understood.

And in D&D land where people are practicing actual magic calling David Copperfield a "magician" is diluting the term with lies, he's an Expert with skill focus in Bluff and Slight of Hand. He's not casting "my assistant is actually twins" or "collapsible birdcage" spells, he's just using gimmicks and distractions to make you think he's doing impossible things while the wizard uses his magical powers to molest reality.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Sashi, I don't see any argument why scientific principles can't be applied to magic. All I see is the tautological argument that scientific principles can't be applied to the understanding of magic, because it's magic.


It is possible in an RPG to define the word "magic" as "that which cannot be understood", but that isn't a useful definition for most games.

[Darth Rabbitt]

The one thing that worries me about trying to define magic is this.

Not to say that it can't be done right.

As for me...

If asked in my (D&D) games (I don't really get the chance to play anything else, though I've played GURPS once or twice), I just state that it is simply forcing your will on the universe in some way or another (wizards learn how to do this by studying the secrets of the universe, clerics get it by receiving power from their god/philosophy/giant frog/etc., and yada yada yada.)

[Sashi]

In fiction we tend to define "magic" as "stuff that violates the laws of OUR universe" and that works FINE because WE are imagining the world.

But it's also a completely impossible way for the actual people in the RPG world to think about magic that way. Because if you have observed a person flying through sheer force of will then "people can fly through sheer force of will" is by necessity a law of the universe. "Magic breaks the laws of the universe" is literally a nonsense definition from the view of people who are living in that universe.

So you can have Magic as an "alternate" set of rules that "competes" with "science". This doesn't work, at all. It's easy to say that the dude throwing fireballs makes technology go on the fritz, and that areas with lots of technology make it harder to throw fireballs, and that works for RPGs that just have arbitrary lists of what is "technology" and "magic". But fundamentally it makes no sense because it requires that people work of a different third system that's independent from the other two, or else standing near a computer would make the "magic" processes that keep your body working fritz out.

Magic as learnable rules. This works, but then magic isn't "magic", it's just "science with another name and lots of secrets". Like if you had particle physicists and then astrophysicists who are just assholes who act like looking through a telescope is a mystic power ("Look at my ability to see things that are far away! Nobody else has the ability to see things as far away as I can! I am king of the universe through my ability to see things that are far away!")

Magic as special ability. Like in Mage: The Ascension, where Mage's are "awakened" and have an "Avatar rating" that measures how much control they have over collective reality. But then Werewolves practice a form of magic that treats the world as a "real world" but their wolfieness and connection to the moon mother lets them do things other people can't. And the Vampires use their mystical Vampyness to cast Vampire Magic. This is basically the previous version except that the Mage manipulating reality to stop bullets isn't just an asshole keeping secrets, there's a literal "awakening" process or magical bloodline, or transformation that lets people use magic. Not everyone can do and it's impossible to teach someone how to be awakened, or channel the wolf mother, or refine magical energy out of the blood of the living, so these people actually are the big swinging dicks.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Magic doesn't have to be usable by everyone to be within the realm of scientific inquiry. Birds have certain special qualities that allows them to fly, and you don't. Does that make it beyond understanding?

You can totally still wank to the specialness of certain characters without defining magic as stupid.

[Sashi]

This thread is about "what is magic?" My point is that the one thing magic cannot be is something that "violates the laws of the universe" because any universe in which people can do the "magic" things a wizard or sorcerer can do includes in it's laws that people can do that because laws are written through observation of physical phenomena, not definitions of what physical phenomena can occur.

If you had never seen nor heard of a bird before, and then saw a bird flying, would that bird flying be "magic"? Until the moment you see the bird, a law of your universe is "animals can't fly". Does the bird flying "violate the laws of the universe" or does it require that you alter the laws of your universe to include "some animals can fly"?

So if you're a scientist trying to put together the laws of the universe, and you see a person shoot flames from their fingers, is that "magic" because it violates the laws of the universe, or do the laws of the universe now include "people can shoot flames from their fingers?

It has to be the latter. Because the laws of the universe are defined by observation.

So if you want a Wizard with a wand of fire to be something fundamentally different from a gnome with a flamethrower (specifically you want it to be "magic") you have to define magic somehow. And if you want that definition to be consistent in the world the magic exists in you can't use "it violates the laws of the universe".

[CatharzGodfoot]

This thread is about "what is magic?" My point is that the one thing magic cannot be is something that "violates the laws of the universe" because any universe in which people can do the "magic" things a wizard or sorcerer can do includes in it's laws that people can do that because laws are written through observation of physical phenomena, not definitions of what physical phenomena can occur.

If you had never seen nor heard of a bird before, and then saw a bird flying, would that bird flying be "magic"? Until the moment you see the bird, a law of your universe is "animals can't fly". Does the bird flying "violate the laws of the universe" or does it require that you alter the laws of your universe to include "some animals can fly"?

So if you're a scientist trying to put together the laws of the universe, and you see a person shoot flames from their fingers, is that "magic" because it violates the laws of the universe, or do the laws of the universe now include "people can shoot flames from their fingers?

It has to be the latter. Because the laws of the universe are defined by observation.

So if you want a Wizard with a wand of fire to be something fundamentally different from a gnome with a flamethrower (specifically you want it to be "magic") you have to define magic somehow. And if you want that definition to be consistent in the world the magic exists in you can't use "it violates the laws of the universe".

I'm glad to see that we've finally come to agree.

[Sashi]

Fuck you.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Fuck you.

What, was your previous post sarcastic or something?