Magic as a D&D Edition Setting

[DSMatticus]

...Why the fuck are you even working on this if you don't buy the colour philosophy at least as a game construct???

This is a puzzling question. I know you don't think the entirety of MtG's interest is how blue people feel about the world compared to red people in a vague, non-specific way that is completely distinct from any of the game's blue or red factions or the settings they exist in, because that would be dumb. Yet that's the only thing you could believe that would lead you to seriously ask that question.

As for the point in general, the cards he's citing are completely in line with what people expect out of their MtG cards today. Here's an ability from Scars of Mirrodin: "Battle cry (Whenever this creature attacks, each other attacking creature gets +1/+0 until end of turn.)" That's fairly (not perfectly, I have to admit) similar to the abilities of the lieutenants Frank pointed out, and guess what? Half of the creatures with that ability are white, and the other half are red. Unfortunately, the flavor texts don't line up as nicely in this case, because the white ones are variations of 'for great justice' and the red ones are dumb jokes. But as far as the flavor text angle goes, Frank covered that with the Stromkirk captain. If organized martial defense of society doesn't say white, what the fuck does?

So the cards he used are in line with today's cards mechanically, and they're in line with today's cards flavor-wise. And that means your point is fucking nothing; you're just asking him to make the exact same argument with cards from the past five years because reasons. Better idea: stop bitching until you see a card that looks atypical or like a poor representation of its chosen color (because there certainly are outliers you could cherry-pick to reach crazy conclusions, both recent and old). Then you can bitch, and we can talk about whether that card really belongs in the given color. Like we did this time, and it turns out those cards are completely ordinary representations of red and white (which was completely obvious from the start, so fuck you for this giant waste of the time).

[Username17]

...Why the fuck are you even working on this if you don't buy the colour philosophy at least as a game construct???

Why would you set a game in D&D if you didn't think the Great Wheel was a coherent moral philosophy? The setting can be cool even if the presented alignment system is pants-on-head retarded. For fuck's sake, the color pie presents "Amorality" as a value of Black. Despite the fact that that's inherently stupid.

Let's not sugar coat this stuff: those Rosewater "color interviews" are actually really terrible. They only work as comedy, not as philosophy. Fortunately, they are not actually part of the game or the setting. They are internet articles that Rosewater wrote because he has a quota and sometimes he just fills it up with navel gazing horse shit.

Basically, two characters of the same colour are no more guaranteed to want to work together than any other two characters. Although in some worlds, being certain colours means you are almost certainly from certain factions, which will predispose characters to have the same value system.

It doesn't even have to mean that. I mean yes, there are some settings where all or nearly all of the associated cards from a color represent one nation or group. That's become less frequent, but they certainly exist. The thing is that M:tG already shat the bed as far as that sort of continuity goes to an even greater extent than Comic Books. It's not just that you can be from the Earth 2 version of Yavimava, you can be from the alternate reality future Yavimaya where it was taken over by vampires and hellwasps and then liberated by yetis.

Here's a bit from the wiki that is just too ridiculous to not share:

Within the storyline fans, there are many questions regarding the exact nature of her experiences with Teferi, Serra, and Yawgmoth.
[*] In Teferi's case, in the Time Spiral novel, he told Freyalise he had never met Karona, and when doing so, she saw him as a god of white mana, which isn't Teferi's main domain.
[*] In Yawgmoth's case, in the Planar Chaos novel, Lord Windgrace told Karn he had made sure the Yawgmoth was truly dead after the Phyrexian Invasion, and therefore he couldn't be alive to meet Karona.
[*] In the Homelands comic, Serra wasted away, having chosen death over life without her beloved Feroz.

Most fans agree that these contradictions are either explained by her precarious state of mind, that she actually created these hallucinations herself, or that Karona met with alternate reality versions of these various characters.

Yeah, you can seriously meet with alternate reality time displaced people who are a different color. It is stone cold canon that continuity is for suckers.



So if you want to be a member of the Defenders of Order, and you have a different idea of what their philosophy is supposed to be than the MC - that's no fucking problem. You're just from an alternate reality where the Defenders of Order value different stuff and hamburgers eat people. It's not even that they pulled a Nu52, they are straight up Crisis on Infinite Earthsing this shit.

i like the preparation mechanic for artificers, but how exactly would the mechanic for wizards work?

I'm honestly not sure. You'll want some kind of Drain caster, because people like Drain casting. You'll want some kind of Rage Meter for the same reason. But you'll want someone to be a card-based WoF caster, because it's Magic based and people fucking well expect to draw cards and cast spells out of them. Probably you're looking at some kind of Crusader-like mechanic where the character draws some cards each turn and casts spells out of that. Probably they'd have a minimum deck size and a maximum amount of mana they could spend putting cards into it.

-Username17

[Prak]

The difference between an "organized martial society" and a white society is that white is full of pacifists. Yes this is oxymoronic when their main tribe is soldiers, but they see combat as a last resort. They are defensive, and would rather prevent you from ever doing damage or bring you to their side than actually fight you. Ankh Morpork of Discworld I'd white, they don't have a standing army, they call in debt.

I'm honestly perplexed why someone would give a shit about the concept of making a D&D setting based on Dominia if they think color philosophy is as big a piece of shit as Frank seems to. In fact, it seems like Frank is advocating making the colour alignments as vague and meaningless as the difference between Law and Chaos in standard D&D.

[Username17]

In fact, it seems like Frank is advocating making the colour alignments as vague and meaningless as the difference between Law and Chaos in standard D&D.

Dude, they are Law and Chaos in standard D&D. Red is literally "Chaos", which is why it has Anarchists and Tyrants. Because both the all-powerful ruler and the non-existent ruler are "Chaos". Meanwhile, over in White Town, White is "Order". Which is why both independent hermit farmers and oppressive empires are "Order". The entire gamut of possible states of the state from "none" to "all encompassing" are White. Except for the fact that they are Red.

Have I mentioned that Greed is Black, while Merchants and Prosperity are Blue, and acquiring Gold is White? Or that stealing is Red, while theft is Blue, and taking things that belong to other people is Black?

It's turtles all the way down. Giant Frog, Giant Frog, Giant Frog. There is not now and never has been a coherent moral philosophy for any of the colors.

And that's OK. The Cabal is Black and they have some sort of Cobra Command philosophy where they get money to acquire power and they get power to acquire money. But the Nim are also Black and don't give a fuck about power or wealth, they just ravage the countryside because they like doing that. And Lim-Dûl is just your standard Lich who wants to take over the world by killing all the weak and raising them as immortal zombies - he's Black too. There's no common philosophy there, fuck the Nim don't even really have a philosophy - they are just mutant cyborg zombies who try to kill you for no reason.

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

The best use of color philosophy I've seen was in a fanfic of all things, which was based around the idea that channeling colored mana had direct and sometimes harmful effects on your personality.

Channeling Red makes you passionate, impulsive, and prone to destructive outbursts of raw power.

Channeling Blue makes you colder and more logical.

Channeling Black makes you more ruthless and amoral in pursuit of your goals.

Channeling White makes you more concerned with doing the right thing for the greater good, with the greater good usually consisting of peace and order.

Channeling Green, I really don't know.


The end result was the it didn't really matter for most people because they didn't channel much mana, but monocolor Planeswalkers tended to be batshit insane.

So while Ghandi under that system is heavily White or Monowhite, so is Hitler.

[zugschef]

Channeling Blue makes you colder and more logical.

Channeling Black makes you more ruthless and amoral in pursuit of your goals.

ehm...

[DSMatticus]

Those aren't the same.

Colder means lacking emotion in this case - i.e. Spock. Ruthless means without mercy or restraint. You cannot beat someone angrily and coldly. You can beat someone angrily and ruthlessly.

Logical means having proper reasoning. Amoral means without regards to morals. Being logical doesn't describe what your values are or should be (you can place value on any set of morals that is consistent with itself and still be logical - reasoning is a matter of facts, not shoulds and oughts). Being amoral does describe what your values are - you explicitly do not value the same set of morals your logical blue counterpart values.

[Username17]

Amorality is a pretty fucked stance to begin with. After all, if you are amorally pursuing goals, then you do actually have a moral structure. There are still things you value, or you wouldn't have any fucking goals. You can only be amoral in reference to an established and accepted morality which you are rejecting or indifferent to. You can't have an amoral philosophy in abstract, nor can you have amorality be the dominant social construct.

If Black is defined as "amoral pursuit of goals", then you can't have Black societies. At all. Because the moment you have accepted goals that you are pursuing, that is a moral right. You're basically defining your color philosophy as teenage rebellion at that point, which works only until they win - at which point they become "the man" and their goals become the new morals that you're supposed to ignore in furtherance of your own goals. Or something.

Fundamentally, "rebellion" can never be a philosophical goal. That's a process for achieving other goals.

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

Amorality is a pretty fucked stance to begin with. After all, if you are amorally pursuing goals, then you do actually have a moral structure. There are still things you value, or you wouldn't have any fucking goals. You can only be amoral in reference to an established and accepted morality which you are rejecting or indifferent to. You can't have an amoral philosophy in abstract, nor can you have amorality be the dominant social construct.

If Black is defined as "amoral pursuit of goals", then you can't have Black societies. At all. Because the moment you have accepted goals that you are pursuing, that is a moral right. You're basically defining your color philosophy as teenage rebellion at that point, which works only until they win - at which point they become "the man" and their goals become the new morals that you're supposed to ignore in furtherance of your own goals. Or something.

Fundamentally, "rebellion" can never be a philosophical goal. That's a process for achieving other goals.

-Username17

When we speak of Amorality in this sense we mean Jack Bauer murdering federal witnesses to maintain his cover so that he can stop the bomb and shit. It doesn't mean having no belief system so much as throwing all conventional taboos under a bus and crossing every line necessary. It might be for the greater good or purely one's on self-aggrandizement.

[deaddmwalking]

From the outsider perspective, I don't see the benefit of nailing down 'color philosophy' in any major detail. Players will bring that to their character.

Having an outline of some of the 'common' beliefs among a group of a color is fine - but it would almost by definition end up being as ambiguous as Mialee and her 'chaos' axis and the monk's 'law' access - they value the same damn things in basically the same way!

Black characters are likely to be more sanguine about unnecessary murder (maybe even considering it a hobby) but you could still be a 'defender' and be black - it wouldn't necessarily make you white. Further, the 'faction' model allows for similar abilties across the color lines - since that seems reflected across M:tG's entire history (even if it tends to be slightly more rigidly defined today), that definitely seems like an ideal to include in the design goal.

[Username17]

When we speak of Amorality in this sense we mean Jack Bauer murdering federal witnesses to maintain his cover so that he can stop the bomb and shit. It doesn't mean having no belief system so much as throwing all conventional taboos under a bus and crossing every line necessary. It might be for the greater good or purely one's on self-aggrandizement.

That's great, but you see how that only works in the context of having a conventionally agreed upon convention of what is right and wrong behavior for Jack Bauer to be ignoring, right? You can only ruthlessly ignore lesser taboos in the pursuit of higher goals if you have lesser taboos to ignore.

This makes the existence of societies that are amoral collectively an impossibility. If society in general disdains lesser taboos, then there simply aren't any lesser taboos, and then you can't break any of them in pursuit of your higher goals. If you are in too much of a hurry to take off your shoes before going into a house, that only counts as amoral behavior if there is a societal moral commandment against having your shoes on inside. If society as a whole doens't give a fuck, then no fucks will be given.

The only way you can ever have an amoral society is if society has a vast array of taboos that people routinely ignore. Like Utah or something. But you'd have a super hard time getting people to buy into the presentation of Urborg as "everyone condemns homosexuality and then secretly downloads lots of gay porn".

-Username17

[Almaz]

Colors definitely tend to add some timbre to one's tyranny, tho'. You are incredibly more likely to have your oppressive army be made up of firebenders if your faction is Red. This does not mean that firebenders are only Red ever, or that oppressive armies are always Red, either, but that if you have an oppressive army of firebenders? Prooobably Red.

Colors aren't hard and fast rules, though, and they certainly aren't coherent philosophies. They're more like descriptive flairs.

[Whipstitch]

I'm honestly perplexed why someone would give a shit about the concept of making a D&D setting based on Dominia if they think color philosophy is as big a piece of shit as Frank seems to. In fact, it seems like Frank is advocating making the colour alignments as vague and meaningless as the difference between Law and Chaos in standard D&D.

I'm perplexed that you're perplexed; I've been playing the game off and on since sixth grade and I don't remember a time when I felt that the color philosophies were anything more coherent than high school cliques.

I mean, let's break it down here:

Red: The jocks. They tackle eachother for the rush.

Blue: The Nerds. They like to feel smart and stuff.

Green: Hippies. They like organic foods and having family from Portland.

Black: Goths. Nobody understands what they want but apparently there is a dress code.

White: Preps. The path of least resistance and school bake sales.

Are they distinguishable from one another? Sure. Does any of that represent any sort of real, consistent philosophy? Ahahahahaaha, god no.

[Prak]

I'm not saying they're particularly deep, but if you're just going to disregard them, then what is the point? Most fantasy worlds have merfolk, wizards, goblins, barbarians, elves, druids, soldiers, humans, zombies and necromancers. A lot of fantasy worlds involve plane hopping. If you're disregarding colour philosophy, then what makes the game based on magic?

[virgil]

Magic disregards its own colour philosophy, so I don't see how that's supposed to matter. The goal is to use names, referable canon, magic structure...

[Sigil]

I think that it might be possible to make the concept of color-wheel morality more sensible in a fleshed out RPG than it is in the card game.

Here is an attempt: Each color of mana allows those who utilize it to perform specific types of actions. These actions, in and of themselves, aren't moral, immoral, good, evil, or whatever. However, because each form of mana can accomplish certain kinds of actions, they tend to be used by people trying to accomplish certain kinds of goals. Therefore the people of the MTG universe tend to conflate the actual source of power with the actions of those who use it.

Societies in MTG tend to be mostly composed of people who utilize a single color of mana, the reason for this is two fold. Firstly, each race has a mild natural inclination to one color of mana or another. Secondly, the actions that are idealized by a given society will most readily be able to be performed using a specific color of mana, so social pressure causes most people to study a given form of magic. There will still be outliers in any given society.

Mechanically, you could ascribe a few iconic traits/domains to each color of mana, probably three. These traits domains synergize with one another, but can be exclusive of one another if taken to extremes. This allows for a variety of moralities and social structures within a given society. It is also not set in stone, a society of a given color can easily value the traits of another color (usually a neighboring one).

Finally, the whole color wheel is in actuality just a layman's construct. The colors do not in actuality 'neighbor' or 'oppose' one another in any metaphysical sense, they are simply discrete sources of power.

Heres an example of some traits you could assign to them, its pretty much bullshit I came up with in ten minutes, and isn't finished, and I'm not the most knowledgeable about MTG. Point is, each trait should be somewhat different from each other trait, and traits within a color should be able to be exclusive of one another or not depending on the situation.

Color	Traits
White	Protection, Order
Blue	Knowledge, Logic, Subterfuge
Black	Death, Decay
Red	Destruction, Force, Freedom
Green	Growth, Nature, Healing

[Username17]

I'm not saying they're particularly deep, but if you're just going to disregard them, then what is the point?

just like everyone else who has bothered responding to you, I am puzzled that you think this is even a question worth asking. You could be a Benalish Lancer or a Prodigal Pyromancer, you could slay a Shivan Dragon or a Lhurgoyf, you could save Lat-Nam or Fyndhorn. All of those are cool things that could appeal to someone, and have absolutely fuck-all to do with fapping about to junior highschool philosophizing about what the colors really mean (dude).

For fuck's sake, they had 15 years to come up with what Black means philosophically, and the best Rosewater could come up with in three damn articles was "socialism is for squares". That is crap. That is the kind of lame apologetics that improves the game in no way.

I think that it might be possible to make the concept of color-wheel morality more sensible in a fleshed out RPG than it is in the card game.

Sure it's possible. It's trivially easy. Pick five slightly orthogonal goals and assign one of them arbitrarily to each color. Done. You have a better moral color wheel than Magic ever came up with for the cards or novels. But that would still be a bad thing to do.

Because while you could announce that from this point forward, Red Valued Freedom, that would be wholly incompatible with the various Red Tyrants, or the Red Slaves (either the Dwarvish Slaves or the Goblin Slaves). But some people want to use something based on Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs or the Enslaved Dwarf in their game. Because using the cards that inspire you to imagine adventures and role playing opportunities is the whole damn point, while simulating a sophomoronic five axial ethical wheel is not. So if you find yourself cutting out real source material to fit in some bullshit alignment system in edgewise you're missing the fucking point.

The fact is that not only are the various versions of the presented color wheel ethical philosophies stupid and inconsistent, but no matter how much you improve it, it isn't likely to get much less stupid and it damn sure isn't going to be universally consistent with all the printed cards. And that's a problem, because you'd better have a damn good reason for making any particular card be unrepresentable in the game. And "because it didn't fit with an arbitrary alignment format I came up with while taking a shit" doesn't count.

-Username17

[John Magnum]

Are there seriously Magic players who think that The Most Important Aspect of Magic is the fucking moral philosophies vaguely attached to the colors? Or is this just Prak being baffling?

[Whipstitch]

So if you find yourself cutting out real source material to fit in some bullshit alignment system in edgewise you're missing the fucking point.
-Username17

This, a thousand times this. The MTG designers do have a loose set of characterizations they like to work with, but paradoxically the more tightly you define the color wheel the less like MTG you end up getting because it's seriously a kitchen sinks franchise in which the devs are free to riff on the contradictions that have cropped up over the years. Therefore, if you want to reliably reproduce something that passes the MTG sniff test you absolutely have to take inspiration from the output rather than obsess about the process.

[Sigil]

So if you find yourself cutting out real source material to fit in some bullshit alignment system in edgewise you're missing the fucking point.
-Username17

I agree, that's why the example I gave was still very loose and had a baked-in reason for why even it wouldn't be true all the time. Essentially you describe the color-alignment-wheel in such a way that the power source (mana) is fairly well described (hopefully, by your game mechanics) but the moral and ethical associations people have with that power source are determined by the uses people put it to.

Red mana is good for destroying things, creating fire, and applying brute force. Therefore, red mana is used by people who want to destroy things (anarchists, chain-breakers, etc), apply lots of force (tyrannical military regimes), and create fires (anarchists again, metal-forgers). Because people use it for those things, and because societies that utilize it for those reasons perpetuate its use, it becomes associated with those things. A 'red' society can exemplify one (probably), all (sometimes), or none (occasionally) of these things. This does not preclude the Fireseekers of Zul'atha from using smoke magic to conceal themselves during espianage runs (usually a blue gimmick).

[zugschef]

A 'red' society can exemplify [...] or none (occasionally) of these things.

so you agree, that this entire approach is basically pointless.

[Sigil]

A 'red' society can exemplify [...] or none (occasionally) of these things.

so you agree, that this entire approach is basically pointless.

No, the approach is a way describing the colors so that the players can accept that societies of a given color do not always behave stereotypically, while still allowing the GM to have Team Red (much in the same way that in D&D we can have Team Chaos, except that in D&D chaos is actually supposed to have a hard definition. Ha!)

[Prak]

Are there seriously Magic players who think that The Most Important Aspect of Magic is the fucking moral philosophies vaguely attached to the colors? Or is this just Prak being baffling?

I wouldn't call it the most important, but I do think that it is part of the identity of Magic, and that if you're going to ignore it while making a D&D variant based on Magic then all you're really doing is creating a setting- writing up geopgraphy, saying who lives where, and writing stat blocks or spells which just happen to have card names at the top.

[Whipstitch]

In no way do I see what you are saying as anything remotely approximating a problem.

[...You Lost Me]

I think an MtG game should seriously talk about alignments and associate different words to each color, because people actually do want to read about that sort of thing (I am one of those people). The key to this approach is that the alignment system isn't mechanically enforced, so that way you can let people talk about what the colors represent and still write up dwarf slaves without making it look like you're trampling over one approach or the other.

It would also make excellent filler and it'll quell the hoard of people that just want to roleplay.