It has changed a lot. In fantasy, the better known agent of this change is Michael Moorcock, particularly with the Elric saga. It was willingly made as anti-Tolkien and anti-Conan as possible. And what it changed the most, is the fantasy world itself. It has its own “logic”....
Err, I know this is a thread about magic in D&D not literary criticism, but I think you are misrepresenting Michael Moorcock's intention with Elric. While he was most definately writing in a style very different to Tolkien, Elric was never supposed to be "anit Conan". Elric was concieved as being a counterpoint or inversion of Conan, as someone of effete background who chose to embrace barbarism as an escape from the parts of himself he was not able to face.
Also, while I agree with a lot of what you are saying with regards to internal consistancy, and while I am a HUGE fane of MM, I think that you are misrepresenting his writing. Mike has talked about how much he hates "world building" and a lot of what appears to be consistancy is actually extensive ret-conning. Characters dont have endless quivers, but MM has openly stated that he does these things purely for story reasons, not because he cares that quivers only hold n arrows. Rakhir runs out of arrows to advance the plot, not because of mechanics. If Mike doesn't want "low ammo" to be a story point, the quiver will indeed be bottomless.
It has changed a lot. In fantasy, the better known agent of this change is Michael Moorcock, particularly with the Elric saga. It was willingly made as anti-Tolkien and anti-Conan as possible. And what it changed the most, is the fantasy world itself. It has its own “logic”....
Err, I know this is a thread about magic in D&D not literary criticism, but I think you are misrepresenting Michael Moorcock's intention with Elric. While he was most definately writing in a style very different to Tolkien, Elric was never supposed to be "anit Conan". Elric was concieved as being a counterpoint or inversion of Conan, as someone of effete background who chose to embrace barbarism as an escape from the parts of himself he was not able to face.
Also, while I agree with a lot of what you are saying with regards to internal consistancy, and while I am a HUGE fane of MM, I think that you are misrepresenting his writing. Mike has talked about how much he hates "world building" and a lot of what appears to be consistancy is actually extensive ret-conning. Characters dont have endless quivers, but MM has openly stated that he does these things purely for story reasons, not because he cares that quivers only hold n arrows. Rakhir runs out of arrows to advance the plot, not because of mechanics. If Mike doesn't want "low ammo" to be a story point, the quiver will indeed be bottomless.
I was sure about the the anti-Tolkien part, but I read somewhere that Elric cycle was also anti-Conan and it was also the case of the wikipedia page, so I added it, myself more focused on Elric being weak in many more ways than Conan (who has a hairy chest !), but my target was the awful Tolkien book, as you saw it, lol
I'm not Moorcock or Conan purist enough to go very deep in conversations about them, but these old books I read were so above anything Tolkien wrote that sometimes all this exclusive devotion I see in alot of medias for Tolkien work upsets me.
Moorcock is a true writer, his stories are not a pile of dei ex machina like Tolkien, who wrote fascinating History-Geography books with colorful but flat characters to navigate within the museum. Tolkien did an amazing geek work on his world, but his creations weren't good material for stories, just like Superman is not a good material for stories. You have to make stories about everything around him to make good Superman stories, but Superman itself worth nothing with its inability to evolve and for being a big walking deus ex-machina by himself.
The difference between D&D and some other systems is that's it's meant to be kind of setting generic. Yes it's fantasy, but you can really throw it into whatever fantasy backdrop you want, and most of them have some sort of explaination for magic. It's the same if you go look at BESM, Unisystem, Savage Worlds, or any other setting generic system. Magic is magic, and they let the setting fill in the gaps.
D&D however, isn't as generic as BESM or Savage Worlds (I am not acquainted with Unisystem). It can't be easily thrown into mythic fantasy (Ala Exalted) or romantic fantasy... the system either does not focus on those things, or is explicitely against it. There may be sub rules that drastically change the core assumptions, but at center, it is a bland (but not generic) Low-Mid Magic, Low Tech, Fantasy. When the Magic system has a degree of flexibility (those alternate casting modules) that may change... however, the fire and forget is very nitche. The Class system also makes it nitchie. Don't even get me started on race.
Excuse me, you were trying to say something about races ?
"They are making it clear that when modern design and common sense come into conflict with tradition, tradition wins." - thecasualoblivion "Vancian isn't broken, you just have to set your game to the wizard's clock!" - Oxybe "In many ways, making a new edition of D&D is alot like trying to sell a car to the Amish." - Dwarfslayer "Encounters are the heart of the AD&D game" - PHB AD&D 2nd edition. "you shouldn't even bother trying to become like me." - Gary Gygax (Elfcrusher confirmed)
"Feel free to claim I said anything you like. How's someone going to call you out on it? Are they going to be all like, 'I know all of the things that Gary said, and that's not one of them?'" - Gary Gygax
Excuse me, you were trying to say something about races ?
Worshipful maintenance of the Tolkien Four (Human, Elf, Dwarf, Hob- er Halfling) is nitche. Racial alignment is further nitching. Not only are there elves, but they are of a specific social/ethical paradigm. Mind you, one can house rule that away, however it is a step against published system. Where we get the real meat is the stat bonuses and racial features that are only useful in a very limited number of classes. Are your Dwarves not tough, heavy armour wearing, axe swingers? Too bad. Re-write the race. Are you Dwarves good at anything other than Fighter or Cleric? Ditto. Now, if they actually end up offering guidlines for making your own races/sub races, then it's salvagable, but as matters stand, the railroad is pretty clear.
Now, on a broader scope, the implicit support for race-based violence (yes I am reading too much into this), growing from the idea of racial alignment, and all the baggage that comes from the idea that the overwelhming majority of an entire species is Evil, is actually pretty narrowing. Not ever genre supports genetic morality. Some do, some don't. However, when something is included as a default conciet, especially if anything later grows off that idea, it becomes more labourous to use as ageneral system.
Now, swinging in the other direction, still in race, however,if someone wanted a setting where race was Definitive, that is not supported at all. Personally, I prefer there to be a variable emphasis on race... thus one might play a DWARVEN fighter (a Dwarf, who happens to have some additional combat training) a Dwarven Fighter (A trained combatant from a Dwarven tradition of arms) or a dwarven FIGHTER (A Fighter who happens to be short and bearded, possibly with a fondness for axes or hammers, ect...). As matters stand, I am only seeing options for Capital Class, lower case race. Class defines you, race offers some bonuses (which may or may not be useful, depending) at first level and ceases to matter there after.
When I read about how happy they are with races and that they are mostly done, it horrifies me. While I do like the Race > Sub-race system, and some of the ideas seem good... they seem far from finished to me.
Also, random and arbitrary Elven immunity to Ghoul paralysis is random and arbitrary. With things like that, so miniscule and so utterly nonsensical, hard coded in, it will always be nitch.
I have an answer for you, it may even be the truth.
D&D gives you a system to handle magic within the general rules.
And I like that it doesn't specify exaclty what magic is and how it works under the curtain of the rules. Because that is left then to each DM's imagination while he creates his own campaign.
Even in the official D&D campaigns we have differences. In Dragonlance all magic comes from the gods, and even arcane casters have a deity to which they pray. In Dark Sun there are no gods, but clerics can tap into the elemental forces and draw magic from them, while templars have their spells granted from their dragon-kings, which have their own elaborate story and explanation for being what they are. In Planescape magic is a thing of the planes, and where you are in the multi-verse even affects how some spells behave. And so on...
Remember that the D&D Core Books are a set of rules and suggestions. It is not a "setting" for you to play in. (once they used the Greyhawk setting as standard, yes, but we're well past that)
The Core Books are made for you to grasp the general rules of a system and then create your own world. Or else use one of their official setting to play in.
Therefore you can also freely change magic rules, or any rules, to your taste. Developers have even always encouraged the brewing of house-rules.
A problem do exist with players and DMs who like to play with everything "by the book." This is not D&D's intention and it will most likely make your game weird, whether that involves magic or not.
Monks, for instance, are there in the Core Books as a suggestion as to how an orental-based class should be. They should not be put into the game alongside knights in an occidental-based medieval campaign. Just as you shouldn't put Katana and Shuriken in your game unless it's oriental flavoured. That mix just doesn't work.
I, for instance have always discarded D&D's "friend of nature" view of Druids, for a more historical representation of the celtic priest, which in high-fantasy to me translated into a class more akin to wizards and sorcerers, instead of a melee/caster hybrid with numerous polymorphs.
The Core Books are a set of rules and guidelines for playing D&D. You should not use everything that lies in their pages without discretion, simply because they are there.
D&D gives you a system to handle magic within the general rules.
And I like that it doesn't specify exaclty what magic is and how it works under the curtain of the rules. Because that is left then to each DM's imagination while he creates his own campaign.
That Amnesia as the power flows through your mind from whence you stored it after resting up... is a huge in your face not out of the way banner saying oooh loooky me I am a game with level based slots which has no game world story really that makes sense (and one patterned a bit poorly after an incredibly small fragment of fiction.)
Defining a word like magic is like defining words like power or energy. Why would you want to do that? What magic is may differ from world to world and setting to setting, like it should be! In my opinion, power sources and origin isn`t important if you don`t want them to be! Explaining mysticism and dumbing down the viewer might ruin the experience, like in american remakes of foreign horror movies where they treat the viewer like little childeren who are not able to grasp abstract concepts! Do you need to know more than divine magic is from the gods, primal magic is from the spirits and arcane magic is a mystic power that comes from many different sources..
But D&D tags divine, arcane, or primal as if they are defined aspect of magic, as a global concept.
Divine, we can deduce that gods impact this magic, but how ? Are they creating it or channeling it ?
Arcane : ???! This is the most inconsistent one. In some settings, arcane magic is… divine ! Same source but something happens. Gods choose to (alter ?) the (form, nature ?) of magic in Dragonlance, or they create an artefact, which is dangerous choice because the control of it can be taken away, called the Weave in FR.
"Primal is from spirits" just asks for another question : What are spirits in D&D ? Ghosts ? Feys ? Elementals ? Gods ?
Primal magic is a totally redundant concept based on faith and nature. And some shamanic cultures are still handled by divine magic, like the Norse one, which wasn't a religion, unlike druidic culture for which it is attested that they revered gods. And Druids are tagged primal. Divine or psychic powers (with another tag than psionics) can perfectly handle shamanism or animism, Primal just increase the inconsistency.
What everyone should know is why D&D has a global word for magic. What we see is divine interventions and arcane powers. Some other people use Ki powers, other psychic powers, all being their own kind of miracles. Why would someone creates and use the word "magic" and tags divine and arcane powers with it ?
The minimum logic would be that the word defining a global concept is only used with a plural form, magics. The singular form would be only used when refering to either divine or Arcane. In D&D, there's no evidence of a primordial state of magic that could justify the word magic as a singular word defining two concepts when the users themselves consider themselves as using totally different sources of power.
It's not an impossible task to bring consistency and keep some mysteries about the supernaturals aspects of D&D. I never say that everything had to be explained, I said that D&D would gain a lot by being consistent, and should stop throwing concepts, from classes to monsters, in every directions, hoping that overabundance of isolated things will distract the minds from the calamitous general tapestry.
More than minimum world building would be so nice.
"They are making it clear that when modern design and common sense come into conflict with tradition, tradition wins." - thecasualoblivion "Vancian isn't broken, you just have to set your game to the wizard's clock!" - Oxybe "In many ways, making a new edition of D&D is alot like trying to sell a car to the Amish." - Dwarfslayer "Encounters are the heart of the AD&D game" - PHB AD&D 2nd edition. "you shouldn't even bother trying to become like me." - Gary Gygax (Elfcrusher confirmed)
"Feel free to claim I said anything you like. How's someone going to call you out on it? Are they going to be all like, 'I know all of the things that Gary said, and that's not one of them?'" - Gary Gygax
The minimum logic would be that the word defining a global concept is only used with a plural form, magics. The singular form would be only used when refering to either divine or Arcane. In D&D, there's no evidence of a primordial state of magic that could justify the word magic as a singular word defining two concepts when the users themselves consider themselves as using totally different sources of power.
Well, if there was a generalized origin story of the multiverse, then it can easily include some mention of this early form of magic. 4e had a story based around Primordials creating the "world" and then the gods and then the creatures of the "world" and then of a war that eventually resulted in the Astral Sea, the Elemental Chaos, the Feywild, and the Shadowfell (or some variation there-of, maybe the Primordials created all of that before the war instead of it coming into existence during). You could include the fracturing of this early "magic" into the diverse set of magics that exists "today" as part of that story.
However, I do agree that the general idea that there is a "wizard" with access to so much variety of magic is not good for the game. Enforced specialization is a better approach since it allows for more diversity amoung spell casters. Also, there doesn't really seem to be much explanation for why only divine magic heals considering that basically everything else can come from either "divine" sources or "arcane" sources, including a lot of life force related things (like Liches).
The 4th edition power sources were an interesting step toward consistency, but fracturation of primordial magic still means that magic (singular) does not exist anywhere, and as everything was magic in 4th edition, nothing encourage to unify all these very different manifestation of supernatural under the particular term of "magic", except as a synonym of supernatural or thaumaturgy.
I'd like specialisation to be the only way to practice magic for spellcasters, too.
The idea of magic (singular) being a legendary goal for wizards, the primordial magic linking any existing forms of magic, would be far more interesting as a source of collaborations and animosities among wizards than questing for the "discovery" of 10th level spells. Even if the rules doesn't support the idea.
And the "proof" of magic (singular) could be sorcerers, able to generate effects that should be restricted to arcane, divine, or any another declination of magic.
And I think the easier way to handle healing and necromancy is to simply create a death force opposed to life force. Life force must be the only thing in D&D that doesn't have its opposite. There were positive and negative planes, each of them unable to support life (incoherent ?) and there was the necrotic damage type, but undeath has always remained an isolated anomaly. Undeath is not an absence of life force, so something replaces it. And death force would have the side effect of being a perfect themed tool for necromancers.
"They are making it clear that when modern design and common sense come into conflict with tradition, tradition wins." - thecasualoblivion "Vancian isn't broken, you just have to set your game to the wizard's clock!" - Oxybe "In many ways, making a new edition of D&D is alot like trying to sell a car to the Amish." - Dwarfslayer "Encounters are the heart of the AD&D game" - PHB AD&D 2nd edition. "you shouldn't even bother trying to become like me." - Gary Gygax (Elfcrusher confirmed)
"Feel free to claim I said anything you like. How's someone going to call you out on it? Are they going to be all like, 'I know all of the things that Gary said, and that's not one of them?'" - Gary Gygax
I would like the core to be as generic as can be! Individual settings can define as much as they like and let the story be in the foreground! I love that Dark Sun, for example, just don`t have divine powers because it makes sense in the setting! And why does it need to have a logic, cant it be mystical, do the characters have to understand those vast powers and how it works? I like the mystery! I also, as a dm, like to be able to make up my own logic and reasoning in my own campaign. In the next iteration, I would like to see origin, cosmology and power sources as suggestions and not assumptions, at least in the core, in the defined campaign setting it`s fun to have all of that!
