Firearms aren't as big a problem as you think. Firstly, old-type firearms weren't particularly reliable and even today a bow&arrow can hit and kill just as reliably as a bullet, but is more difficult to use. Secondly, natives often fought with firearms.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Regarding the firearm issue, I was talking about their impact on the medieval Europe-esque setting. Late 18th / early-to-mid 19th century firearms were a significant contributor to the obsolescence of cavalry as a fighting force, partly due to how well riflemen synergized with formations of pikemen.
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The most obvious solution is to place fantasy-Europe somewhere west of the US. That is, the expanding Americans stumble across some sort of "Lost Kingdom" kind of thing.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
... I don't quite get what you mean. Can you elaborate?
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Much as it happened in our world, I imagine: have some major power in the Old World discover a new and distant land, and thus send out expeditions to colonise it.
Perhaps the Old World power has mages who have discovered how to transport people across vast distances. Or perhaps they already had it, but only recently has scrying revealed new lands.
I would think that the important thing might be that the New World is sufficiently removed from the Old that it's hard for the latter to exert direct power over the former, and that news travels slowly and poorly between the two.
How far that is might depend on what means the characters have at their disposal.
I will note that, in a fantasy setting, the remove needn't be geographical: the "New World" could be in another plane of existence, or across the gulfs of space, or within a land folded within the familiar world, for example.
The simplest solution might be: "Magic".
If the Old World has enchanted plate armour, such a defence might stop bullets as well as blades; indeed, they might have warding-spells that specifically stop projectiles (originally intended for arrows), or that are more effective the faster the incoming hazard, thus stopping bullets more effectively than arrows or blades.
Conversely, magic might provide attacks that are as deadly as those of firearms, perhaps differing primarily in their balance of potency to "firing rate".
This, I would say, depends pretty heavily on the specific set and handling of classes in use by the work.
Again, this will depend significantly on what the extant classes already provide.
There are games in which a cowboy would have, I daresay, little to offer as there are already archers who can loose arrows at the rate of a firearm, do more damage with a single arrow than does a bullet, and more besides.
Conversely, there are games, I suspect, in which cowboys might have a lot to offer.
Off the top of my head, in a vacuum I might imagine that a "Cowboy" class might offer ranged offence with a high rate of fire (perhaps offset by periodic reloading), and the use of roping to trap enemies.
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Sep 30th 2022 at 9:41:29 PM
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That simple, huh? So it wouldn't be implausible to compress the two centuries of societal and political development that the American colonies had undergone before they started rebelling against their Old World overlords, while still maintaining general Medieval Stasis in said Old World?
How about this?
Just like how real-life European mythologies saw the Atlantic Ocean, the deep parts of the ocean between this setting's Old World and New World are rife with all manners of hazards, from unnaturally severe storms and sea monsters to pirates of all races that exploit their intimate knowledge of both the area in general and the aforementioned hazards to thrive. That way, most travel across this ocean would be limited to well-guarded convoys (which still have a substantial attrition rate, and occasionally even suffer calamitous losses despite their preparations), and the rest would be dependent on a combination of navigational skill, knowledge of the possible routes, what financial backing they could secure, and their luck to make the journey.
Then the American Revolution analogue would be soon followed by an unexpected but temporary surge in the hazardousness of travel across this ocean, which impede the Old World colonial powers' ability to exert the might of the fantasy world resources that their real-life analogues lacked, and thus substantially hindering or even delaying their retaliation against their rebellious colonies for long enough that by the time the ocean's conditions have turned favorable again, said colonies have grown strong enough to repel the forces that in the past would've been able to eventually crush them back into subservience.
I would prefer to make such a "universal" defense quite expensive and/or rare so as to avoid making firearms practically worthless.
Good point, though considering just how much power is behind a gunpowder-powered round, I'd expect such spells to offer less effective protection against them than arrows, unless they're of the "conceptual" kind and thus doesn't care how fast or strong a projectile is going (a la God Hand from Fate/stay night negating all damage from any attack whose rank is below A). Presumably such "conceptual" protection spells would be quite high-level and thus uncommonly used.
- That reminds me of the Holtzmann shields from Dune, whose effectiveness against projectiles have had the side effect of making melee weapons practical sidearms in the far-future science fantasy setting's wars.
- Wouldn't that have the same problem from earlier of rendering firearms pointless to begin with? They'd have to be considerably limited in availability to avoid that.
At the very least, magic allows you to save the mundane resources that you would've otherwise used to make and supply the firearm for use in other applications (e.g. iron used to make more swords and armor for ordinary soldiers, gunpowder used to make explosives for demolition or excavation work). The drawback to that is that it requires different resources to utilize its full potential, as well as specialized training.
There are no hard and fast rules, to be honest. I'm trying to make the setting closer to the realism end of the spectrum, so the character classes are technically just a representation of the characters' occupations and/or ways of life as well as the skillsets that they acquired from either, and they're not something that is necessarily acknowledged in-universe, but rather just for the benefit of the reader... except, perhaps, if there's an authority of some sort that has taken upon itself to coming up with a standardized system of classifying adventurers based on what they can do, in order to streamline the process of building adventurer parties, determining what a quest needs, etc.
FWIW, though, you can use popular RPG systems like D&D, Dragon Quest or Fire Emblem for reference. The way I imagine it, Classes are broad categories that give you a general idea of what role the character could play in a party; e.g. the "Fighter" class covers all forms of melee combat specialties, from the disciplined man-at-arms who relies on a combination of armaments and skill to carry him through battle, to the tribal barbarian who eschews self-preservation and possibly even armor in favor of berserker rampages and seemingly inhuman toughnesss, each of which can be classified as their own subclass.
From what I can tell, even at bare minimum, a proper cowboy character class (that is, one that fits the namesake real-life career) would combine dexterous skill with handguns and rifles, animal handling and taming skills (with lassoing skills as a by-product of this), and all sorts of mundane skills that are necessary or helpful to survive in the Wild West, be it for when the cowboy gets into a brawl at the bar (guns are usually overkill in such situations, so good old fisticuffs are the norm), against outlaws and hostile natives, or to brave the many dangers of the wilderness. Depending on the background, you can add stuff like Bard-style musical talent (something that was considerably appreciated in the American frontier) or gambling expertise, though probably as acquired skills rather than (sub)classes in their own right.
All this seems to make a Cowboy class a mix of Gunslinger, Ranger and Rogue per the Fantasy Character Classes page, with elements of Bard, Beastmaster and Monk. Does that seem right?
Edited by MarqFJA on Oct 1st 2022 at 2:24:54 PM
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Fantasy Medieval Stasis can last for millennia in some works, if I'm not much mistaken, so having a few centuries of it doesn't seem implausible to my mind.
Yup, that seems workable to me, indeed. ^_^
It occurs to me that such a revolution might, for one thing at least, result in a greater number of dispossessed people, some of whom might go on to bolster the numbers of the pirates.
And of course you could throw in some means of enhancing the other hazards, too—perhaps warfare, being an unnatural violence of a grand scale, metaphysically causes an increase in the number of violent supernatural creatures in the oceans; or perhaps the fighting disrupted leylines that causes an imbalance in the seas to similar effect; or some such thing.
Firearms would still have some worth in rate-of-fire, it seems to me: where an archer would be stuck pinging too-slowly away at such defence, a gun-fighter might be able to rapidly wear through the magic.
Alternatively, perhaps the magic only takes on large, relatively-smooth bits of metal, allowing it to only be applied to breastplates. This then allows for some potential targets for ranged attackers.
That would be another way to balance guns against a universal defence: they might be less-affected by it.
Hah, I did think of those when writing that, as I recall! However, I was also thinking of the "arrowcatch" artefact that's developed during the course of The Wise Man's Fear. (If I recall which book correctly.)
As noted above, there are ways around it. For example, to be more effective, the ward might use up more energy—perhaps exponentially more—and thus wear out more quickly.
Have you considered a "classless" system—one in which characters can learn various skills regardless of class, limited only by their stats?
I mean, again, it's going to depend on the specific system—the Fantasy Character Classes page is, I daresay, not universal. Different systems will have different selections and mixes, and so on. (In a system that has a "ranger", I could see myself making the "cowboy" a sub-class thereof.)
Personally, I'd likely drop the "bardic" element—cowboys may have appreciated musical ability, but I daresay that so too did many who lived similar lives. I'm not sure that cowboys are renowned as exceptionally skilled at it as a general rule, however.
Otherwise, I do think that the inclusion of "beastmaster" and "ranger" elements is a good idea, as well as the pugilistic elements of a "monk" class.
I still argue for rate-of-fire being part of the class: one of the advantages of a pistol, I would say, is that you can fire at a pretty decent rate, especially compare to an archer.
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Oct 1st 2022 at 10:01:47 AM
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It's kind of hard to give good advice if we don't really know how magic works in this world.
An undervalued aspect of firearms (and the main reason firearms ever took off) is that they are much, much easier to use than any other weapon. Longbows were famously powerful and atrociously difficult to use, requiring essentially a lifetime of training. Skills with spears required extensive drilling, strong morale and cohesion to keep the fight going (fatality rates weren't that high during a fight: battles ended because the enemy broke and ran away, not because they died).
By comparison, guns took fairly little practice to operate and their terrible aim could be substituted with mass. 100 peasants with a gun required a fraction of the resources of 10 knights. Even if their aim was garbage, enough people shooting would eventually hit something. Even if said knights could not be hurt by said guns due to their thick armor (seriously, plate armor was virtually invincible), your vastly bigger armies could be in lots more places. Kill a knight and your enemy loses decades of investment. Kill a gunner and the next one walks up.
How does magic slot into this? well, presumably it's not too easy to use if you want to have literally anything other than mages. In fact, you sort of run into the same issue here: magic is presumably not easy and requires a lot of resources and training, while a man with a gun is easily produced. If magic requires signs, rituals or incantations then you could probably shoot them before they're ready. On the flipside, mages would likely evoke something more like WW 1, where the immense destructiveness of modern firepower completely altered the landscape of war (and also literally the landscape). A cowboy in the open would be shot from kilometers away by a magic fireball.
The only way you could really avoid a brief and immensely revolutionary period of "just shoot the wizard before he finishes talking" is if magic were either limited to begin with and so the magic kingdoms rely on good old firepower themselves, or magic could also become something that is wielded with easy-to-learn spells and so can compete with guns. (as an example, Witchers wield magic like mages in the setting, but do so with much weaker and convenient spells that can be cast on the fly).
But overall it seems like a huge challenge to take two things that would be hugely influental and radically change the face of the world (guns and magic) and then try to justify medieval stasis with this. Like... does you setting *need* centuries of exactly the same techlevel? can't it be set in a brief window of a century or so where things are fairly normal before someone figures out a magic gun?
Some Technology Marches On is possible. To take a more low fantasy equivalent, Septimus Heap has had knights killed in the past (several centuries) by arrows but in the present they use firearms. Firearms are not automatically effective against magic - there are tricks to stop bullets and tricks to make the bullets do the work anyway. However, that isn't a combat-oriented setting, so a poor analogue for what we are discussing here I think.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
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One thing that I'll add is that magic can—depending as you say on the magic system in question—potentially be done beforehand or in the background.
It may perhaps aid a fight not only on the battlefield, but in things like the empowering of arms and armour; or hexing an expected battlefield; or scrying out the enemy; and so on and so forth.
Or, indeed, in the conjuring of a "magic gun" by which to directly compete with mundane guns.
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Yeah, just as someone who is an expert in magical spells for remote manipulation of metals could render firearms not only useless but potentially deadly to their own users, bullets can be crafted from special materials that have Anti-Magic properties, allowing them to be significantly less impeded by magical defenses on the low end and to punch straight through them like they're not even there on the high end (you could make the effectiveness reliant on how much of this special material is in the bullet, so that the best bullets are too expensive to be widely produced).
Yeah, I just want to make sure that I can come up with a sufficiently believable handwave for said stasis. It's a useful trope, but I personally prefer to at least provide a half-assed explanation in passing for it that doesn't rely on a Deus ex Machina or the like (e.g. the gods bluntly intervene to enforce their preferred status quo), than to simply leave everything to the reader's willingness to suspend belief.
That is a very good observation!
I'll keep these suggestions in mind.
Yeah, you're right. Although military archers had the potential to fire 10-15 arrows a minute, which eclipsed the firing rates of single-shot rifles (about 3-5 rounds per minute), any given archer had a very limited supply of about 30 arrows (and good quality ones aren't easy to make IINM), so they had to make every shot count. Repeating firearms could easily match that firing rate since they hold multiple bullets (in magazines for rifles and cylinders for revolvers), and you could carry a lot more spare ammo on your person than an archer can carry arrows, as well as reload the gun faster since you'd be replacing the magazine and — once top-break and swing-out revolvers were invented — using a speedloader or moon clip note . That, combined with how far easier it was to mass-produce both the guns and their ammo as well as train people in their use, should give firearms enough advantage versus bows and arrows to keep them competitive.
Of course, that logically should lead to sufficiently powerful governments to impose control over access to firearms, for the same reasons that such control had been and continues to be exerted in real life.
Aah, just like how certain materials' physical properties are affected positively or negatively by the shape that said material is given, e.g. coiling an electric wire allows the magnetic fields generated by each turn of the wire to produce a stronger field at the point(s) where the fields superpose each other. So make the spell have a very low tolerance for the enchanted armor plate's curvature; there may be a way to compensate for it, but it's not easy/cheap, so it's only practical to use on, say, chest and back plates. That would leave the wearer vulnerable to those gun wielders with sufficient marksmanship to hit the body parts with unenchanted armor.
Cursory googling seems to confirm that.
If I was making an actual RPG, I might have considered that. I probably should've mentioned that this is for writing an Role-Playing Game 'Verse story. And again, the RPG terms and mechanics would mostly if not entirely be for the reader's benefit.
That being said, I do look for inspiration to systems that hybridize classes and skills, as well as those that treat classes more flexibly and realistically.note
Honestly, I could see it being a hybrid primary class in its own right, combining elements of the ranger and rogue classes to form its own archetype; compare how the D&D Paladin class is a hybrid of the Fighter and Cleric classes but with its own idiosyncracies (thus making it different from simply multiclassing as a Fighter and Cleric).
Yeah, in hindsight, that was grasping for straws just to include the "singing cowboy" character type in some way.
Fair point. I do plan on making at least a framework to use as a baseline for what magic systems I may use in my writings, but I can at least tell you this: I despise Vancian Magic as typically implemented in RPGs like D&D. Just to give one of my major peeves: Why the fuck would a mage be limited to a handful of spell "slots" to cast on any given day, regardless of whether the spell is a tiny ball of light to provide a simple flashlight's worth of illumination or a gigantic fireball that can wipe out a hundred or so heavily armored soldiers?
Yes, it may make sense to treat spells like you do a gun's ammunition and the mage as the "gun" firing them, but I personally have a much better analogy: A man with a sling throwing rocks. He could choose to sling only small stones, dealing relatively small amounts of damage at a fast rate of fire for however much stamina his muscles can offer. Alternatively, he could throw the biggest rocks that he could muster the strength to throw at a useful distance (assume he has superhuman strength if needed), but it takes him considerably longer time to "wind" up his throw, and such throws also consume his stamina way faster; in fact, slinging the biggest rock that his his impressive strength allows him to usefully sling would actually leave him too exhausted for quite a while to sling all but the smallest of stones, and even then his performance would be highly diminished.
That is to say, just as not all spells are created equal in their effectiveness at a given task, they are also not created equal at how much they demand from the mage, be it in terms of energy consumed or the "capacity" to "store" them for prompt use.
Yes, I do very much prefer the Mana Meter way of doing magic, why do you ask? 
Isn't this the norm in fantasy RPGs, though? In D&D, for example, it takes a lot of (in-universe) time and effort to reach Fantastic Nuke levels of magical power, last time I checked, and the non-mage classes reach similar levels of demigodly effectiveness in their own ways. That such power is reached at a seemingly low level of 20 or the like just makes it a deceptively low number that is more an artifact of the history of how D&D developed and whom it caters to than anything else.
Edited by MarqFJA on Oct 1st 2022 at 3:20:09 PM
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They call me.... Prophet
> Just to give one of my major peeves: Why the fuck would a mage be limited to a handful of spell "slots" to cast on any given day, regardless of whether the spell is a tiny ball of light to provide a simple flashlight's worth of illumination or a gigantic fireball that can wipe out a hundred or so heavily armored soldiers?
I am very much a magic utilitarian: rules of magic can be crafted to produce the results you want. Vancian magic in D&D very much exists to force you to make choices. Not just deliberate choices in terms of what spells you pack (meaning careful preparation and spreading your choices is valuable) but also so it can throw interesting scenarios at you that you can't just "oh well i have one of 5000 spells available to me, let's use plot-resolvido". A complicated spell system with tons of subspells and things like scrolls would be completely pointless if they also had mana. In terms of logic it can be all sorts of things, but there's nothing that says creating a ball of fire, a light, or opening a lock are different levels of taxing in terms of magic. The way i see it, D&D operates on the logic that all magic by definition is taxing and spell slots are just a way to represent that.
Mana works best when you have a limited repertoire of spells, and do want to allow a big burst of spells but not constantly. Mana is very easy to implement in games, but difficult to use in other mediums like TV or books.
>Isn't this the norm in fantasy RP Gs, though?
It depends. Low-level fireballs in D&D-derivatives would easily wipe out large numbers of gunslingers. Even a "decent" level 10 mage usually has access to vast area-of-effect abilities that could kill dozens in a fraction of a second.
Not to mention that sometimes it comes with cast times or deliberate casting actions, whereas guns are pretty much always straight auto-attacks.
Regarding Vancian magic, speaking for myself, I've generally found it more palatable in books (e.g. the original Jack Vance Dying Earth books) than in games. (Or at least computer games—I don't have enough experience with tabletop RPGing to have much opinion there, although I could see it working in that environment, I think.)
In literature, you can describe how "holding" a spell for ready casting requires that it take up space in the mind, and that one can only stuff so many spells into one's head at once. (This is indeed exactly what Jack Vance describes, as I recall.)
And this can make for some tension, I feel: the reader knows what spells the mage has—and knows when they're close to running out.
In a relatively free-form computer RPG, however, I've personally just found it to be a pain to have to guess at what the next dungeon would throw at me, and thus what spells I might want. I've therefore tended to much prefer non-Vancian approaches to magic, be they mana-based, cooldown-based (or both, as in Dragon Age: Origins), or I suppose something else.
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Oct 2nd 2022 at 12:35:02 PM
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>In a relatively free-form computer RPG, however, I've personally just found it to be a pain to have to guess at what the next dungeon would throw at me, and thus what spells I might want.
TBH though... that's the point of the system. Spells are like equipment, and so you could chose to pick utility spells to get through the exploration easier, or offensive spells for more damage, or CC for easier control. Or you could pick a scroll-reading class with the right inventory of scrolls. Without such a system, the magic would have to be much simpler because you could just open every lock, light up every room, dispel everything etc constantly.
Whether you like it or not is a separate thing of course, but the overall system is fine even in a computer game. Mostly, i've had issues with games not really communicating this very well (e.g in Pathfinder Kingmaker where anti-blur feats and spells are way more necessary than you'd expect, since the whole lore around Fey is that they're rare and yet they're easily a fifth of what you actually fight).
Except that it's not just "utility or offence or buffing", or even one's choice of class. It's: "Am I going to be up against enemies weak to fire? To ice? Do any of them have spell resistance? Should I be taking dispels?" And so on and so forth.
That is, I feel less like I'm choosing equipment that determines my capabilities (such as in choosing party composition), and more like I'm required to either be prescient, or to play the game once and then come back with the resulting foreknowledge.
Now, this occurs in a tabletop game too, I imagine—but there I suspect that it works a little better: ill-fitting choices become part of the narrative, and there's space for creative workarounds.
Sure, you may have chosen a full complement of fire-based spells for a dungeon that turns out to be populated by hostile fire elementals—but you could use your spells to try to convince them that you're kin, or to burn wooden supports to collapse rocks onto some of them, and so on—options that are seldom available in computer RPGs, save where explicitly designed in.
I won't gainsay those that like the system in computer RPGs. But I do think that there's a difference incurred in such RPGs that makes Vancian Magic more likely to become a source of frustration than it is in the context of either tabletop RPGs (I imagine, at least) or literature.
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Oct 3rd 2022 at 10:41:51 AM
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Sorry for the long absence from this thread. Real life got in the way for a while, and then I forgot about this topic until now.
~devak: A major problem that I have with the typical forms of Vancian magic — and probably the crux of my opposition to it — is that the system is about imposing restrictions upon magic that only really make sense from a Doylist perspective. As you pointed out, the primary motive behind them is gameplay-oriented; any in-universe justification is just an afterthought, and all the ones that I have come across just raised more questions that they couldn't satisfy.
Regarding "oh well i have one of 5000 spells available to me, let's use plot-resolvido" cases, that assumes that the mage can remember that particular spell out of those other thousands that they've learned. Do you think the most decorated of scientists memorize all the equations, formulas, chemical compositions, etc. that they've learned in their life or work(ed) with? Not everyone is born with eidetic memory.
Except that many settings treat magic as utilizing/manipulating energy, even if — in the case of role-playing games — that fact isn't reflected in the gameplay aspect via a Mana Meter or some analogue. Logic dictates that a spell that causes a greater version of a smaller spell's effect should require more energy, and we know that there is only so much energy that you can pack into a "container" before that container is filled. Logically speaking, even if we somehow can justify using a "slot-based" system for preparing spell, Fireball-That-Could-Incinerate-a-Whole-Elephant should occupy far more slots than Tiny-Candlelight-on-Fingertip, and yet most Vancian magic systems insist on treating all spells as if they all require the same "storage space".
Put another way, I find it both ironic and frustrating that many of the arguments in favor of Vancian systems cherry-pick analogies from real life that support them, when it's just as easy to see that said analogies are critically flawed, or find other analogies from the same that contradict Vancian systems and instead support more flexible approaches.
Example: The "wizard is a gun, and spells are ammunition". This seemingly foolproof argument ignores the fact that real-life guns are purpose-built to fire specific kinds of ammunition (even within the same type of gunnote ), whereas even Vancian mages are typically depicted using such varied spells that it would be like having a gun that can be anything from a pistol to a tank gun or even a ballistic missile launcher.
Yeah, that's probably why a lot of fantasy settings where mages are a common sight among adventurers have their basic combat spells be not so powerful that they would practically instant-kill or at least mortally wound the average magically-unprotected adventurer they were cast upon, but only deal significant damage that's often proportional to how much effort/time it took to cast the spell.
A fire spell that only needs the caster to point at the target and yell "BURN"? It will just knock them down and them leave with just first degree burns and mild, relatively brief disorientation.
A fire spell that takes over 5 minutes to charge, during which the caster has to recite a lengthy incantation? Yeah, that one might be powerful enough to be thrown at three dozen heavily-armed soldiers and leave nothing but charred corpses covered in ash and molten metal.
That's a good way to balance magic vs. guns: even if magic can be far more potent, the spells that are capable of such potency take a long enough time that the gunslinger can just shoot the mage dead... but that assumes that the gunslinger isn't distracted by something else, like being locked in hand-to-hand combat with one of the mage's combat-oriented comrades. And God forbid if the mage had the sense to hide and start preparing the spell, only stepping out when it's more or less ready to be cast.
But not all equipment is created equal. A tailored suit of leather is far lighter and easier to move in than a suit of plate armor.
If that is indeed how he described it, then it's even more proof in my eyes that he didn't think the analogy through. Holding a simple spell for ready casting shouldn't take up as much space within one's mind as holding a much more complex/larger spell; it would be like if holding an entire house of cards aloft on your hand (assuming that said house of cards is small enough to fit in said hand) is as easy as holding a single card in the same hand.
Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 16th 2022 at 2:52:01 PM
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> Logically speaking, even if we somehow can justify using a "slot-based" system for preparing spell, Fireball-That-Could-Incinerate-a-Whole-Elephant should occupy far more slots than Tiny-Candlelight-on-Fingertip, and yet most Vancian magic systems insist on treating all spells as if they all require the same "storage space".
Is this actually true? The D&D systems and related systems tend to divide spellslots into tiers, with higher-level magics requiring higher-level slots. Higher level slots become available on levelling up. So as far as i'm concerned, this is in fact taken into account.
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The ones I know of personally certainly followed the "all spells are created equal in storage needs" approach. The Final Fantasy games (at least FF7 and FF8) and Goblin Slayer (which is very obviously inspired by D&D) are what I can name off the top of my head.
Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 17th 2022 at 9:42:37 PM
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I don't think that either of these points necessarily holds: they make sense in physics, but may not apply in magic.
For example, the energy required for a spell might be based not on the scale of the spell, but on the complexity of it (which doesn't necessarily correlate with power); or on the phase of the moon; or on how important the spell is to the spellcaster; or on the power of the spirit being called upon to enact it; or something else besides, depending on the underlying mechanics of the thing.
And as to "containers", again, it may be that in magic, the "container" is infinite, but that the number of containers is finite.
In any case, even if the amount of energy required is greater, that doesn't necessarily mean that the spell requires more "space".
Few analogies are perfect, or correlate on all aspects, I feel.
The point here, I think, is less that "wizards relate to spells exactly as guns relate to bullets", but simply to say that "wizards store and release discrete, fixed-'size' 'packages' of spell-work, in the same way that guns store and release discrete, fixed-size bullets".
I mean, in Vance's writing there's no analogy there: mages literally stuff spells into their brains in order to later cast them, and can only hold so many at once.
But more to the point, bear in mind that, at least as far as I've read, Vance's, er, Vancian magic didn't see anywhere near as broad a use by viewpoint characters as in games and suchlike that followed. There's thus little good opportunity in his writing to expound on the details.
Indeed, the exactitudes are never specified that I'm aware of; we only see it done a few times that I recall—a number of Vance's protagonists encounter magicians, but are not magicians themselves—and then the narration dwells less on the details of the matter than on what that particular magician is able to do in that particular situation.
The elaborate systems found in games build upon this, adding their own specifics, I believe.
Especially as—in the versions of D&D that I've seen, at least—high-level spell-slots tend to be less numerous than low-level ones, implying that mages can "hold" fewer high-level spells than low-level spells.
Now, the slots don't interfere with each other—but that just implies that high-level spells occupy a different "space" than do low-level spells.
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Nov 17th 2022 at 10:13:40 PM
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Like reflections in the glass!
Honelsy, a slot based system would actually fare very well in getting a wild west style fantasy...but not by using memory for the slots.
To clarify, supposed gun bullets are enchanted to have magical effects in the shot. Firing the gun would therefore be analogous to casting the spell and since the enchantments are preloaded into the bullet it would address some of the verisimilitude issues with such systems.
Edited by MorningStar1337 on Nov 17th 2022 at 4:58:42 AM
I dislike Vancian magic as well, for being too mechanical. I once created a magic system that allowed the character to spontaneously create any spell effect consist with their personal belief system, limited by the energy cost to cast or sustain it (potential targets had varying degrees of protection from spells as well). It was a ritual based system, so by design firearms were usually faster and more practical (I was trying to encourage the "Spell Gunslinger" archetype). You could bind a spell to an enchanted item and carry it around with you for faster deployment, but that had other limitations.
That's interesting—does it have to be mechanical? As far as I know, Vancian Magic only really specifies how spells are stored—not how they're made in the first place, or even necessarily how they're released.
One could, theoretically, have a Vancian system in which spells take days of eldritch incantation to cast, a process in which the artistry of the chant determines the power of the spell—and in which such spells are nevertheless stored in a limited space within one's mind.
(For the sake of clarity, my stance is that I dislike Vancian Magic for gameplay purposes—I don't like being required to guess at what I'll want in the next dungeon, etc. I don't mind it for other purposes, such as literary.)
I like the sound of the magic system that you describe!
If I may ask, was it intended for use in static or interactive works? And if the latter, how did you determine spell-power, specifically?
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Nov 30th 2022 at 6:48:28 PM
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Fantasy writer turned Filmmaker.
This isn't some silver bullet, but I hope it helps:
Consider looking at how other European nations colonialism'd in their own respective empires. I'm thinking Spain and Portugual in the 1400s-1500s, and in particular Russia in the 1700s. The feudal domains that cropped up during The Crusades cover the "medieval" and "desert" parts of this Venn diagram. There's a lot of parallels out there — and also plenty of differences that are Very Important To Pay Attention To since every example dealt with the local indigenous populations in different ways.
Also make sure to find parallels from other places besides European cultures. The Mongol Empire fits right in your "medieval" timeframe (Medieval Europe was positively terrified that the Mongols would reach them) and horses were Kind Of Their Thing.
Also-also, make sure to research the indigenous cultures that got steamrolled by America's westward expansion. Some of them are still alive today. They deserve your respect and curiosity too.
Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.
One thing worth considering: A characteristic trait of a feudalism-inspired setting is that its society is heavily influenced by the lack of state capacity. If your setting has firearms but still not enough state capacity, weapon usage and tactics would change but much of the societal structure would stay the same.
Also, you don't need magic to disallow the existence of firearms. Gunpowder has components which don't have to exist in a given setting, let alone in sufficient quantities. See A Song of Ice and Fire where even a volcanic island appears to be conspicuously lacking in sulfur, an important component of firearms.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I've been trying to come up with ways to have a Standard Fantasy Setting with a Fantasy Americana as an exotic locale from which Wild West-type characters come to the medieval Europe analogue and fight alongside its local warriors, rogues, mages etc. However, I've been running into several important issues.
The first few issues are rather general setting-related:
These next issues concern the Fantasy Character Classes aspect:
Edited by MarqFJA on Sep 29th 2022 at 12:11:25 PM
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