Stuff about wizard families
From RPGwiki
One other idea. Since magic is going to have been around for some time and is included in education why isn't everyone a wizard? How do people like the idea of wizarding families? That only certain gene lines can rearrange the universe at a whim? I can see them as rich powerful extended families that always try and control their younger members, particularly in terms of their education (no, you can't be a physicist, you'll be an invoker like your father), jobs (we paid for your training as an invoker, now you'll repay that by going to work for your uncle in his security company) and especially their love lives (no, you can't marry that druid, we've arranged a lovely match for you with this girl from the Stormhold family, you should produce an excellent combination of fire and lightning magic...). In this scenario the wizard class would represent someone from the wizarding families, while the sorceror would be someone who has a wizard ancestor who defied the family, went and married who he wanted and then the wizard gene pops up in his descendants without the education the families offer. This is actually tied in to the history of magic stuff Andy is writing, since it would be the wizarding families who would most influence, be affected by and probably enforce the restrictions on magic.
For a good idea on where I'm coming from with this, read Pandora's Star by Peter F Hamilton and see how the Halgarth family operates. That was kind of the genesis of this idea.--Alex 14:31, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
The only problem I have with the wizard families is that it all sounds a little feudal, and this is supposed to be a modern setting. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying they soundn't be there, but I don't think they should be prominent any more. If you look at the modern world, most big business are PLC's. Familiy run busineses tend to be much smaller.
It makes sense that much of the wizard families power would have been disolved in the modern world - they wield considerable power, enough to be threatening to kings and governments. Look at the Knight Templers to see where that gets you!
Certain wizard families may have been destroyed, if that suits our whim, but that is not the only way to undermine their power. The easiest way is to break their monopoly on magic by creating alternative bodies of learning. Thus the Fourth World may contain magical universities that were originally set up by royalty to counter balance the Wizard families. Back by government wealth, they grow in size and power until the families were dwarfed. They probably still exist in the modern world, but they look a bit archaic and old fasioned. Unless they went underground and tuned into a magical mafia, which is an interesting idea Andy 12:39, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
Lets get the ball rolling with a big idea. Does our new game world have to be spherical?
It's always easy to just go with something normal when creating a world but if we want to make this world distinct from other run of the mill fantasy worlds then why not go crazy and create a world that's a Niven ring? It would give us much more space to play with than a regular world and allow for unusual scenarios when we get to gaming in it.
Let the protests begin...--Alex 13:22, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Crikey, if we go for a Niven ring then we're going for an ultra-hi-tech setting, no? Unless the ring was built long ago by persons unknown. Ed 14:35, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
The original idea that my brother and I thought of involved a world at 20th/21st century level technology, which would make unusual shaped worlds seem a little odd.
If at all possible, I would like to keep the number of fantastic, world spanning asumptions to a minimum. Too many of them and I find that my ability to believe in the setting vanishes. The existence of a real world level of technology doesn't count in this respect - because it actually can exist!
We've already got one asumption - magic exists. From there certain other things become exceptable - people that use, things that are magic and so on. Saying the world is a wierd shape is a second assumption, unless it somehow ties in with the first. That might be the case if magic exists because of the shape of the world, if say the planet was in the shape of somethig like the eldar sign!
To be honest, unless you have some major reason for wanting to set the champaign on a doughnut, biscuit or inside a gobstopper then the standard roundish blob will do. Andy 15:26, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
I was thinking if it was in the past a fantasy world then we could have it created by the gods. In fact I was thinking of maybe having a world that is made of the same stuff as ours (molten core, mantle, crust, etc.) but which happens to be in the shape of a Niven ring, with inner planets of a more normal shape blocking the sun to create night and day.
Or we could go for a slightly saner option of a normal sphere...
Of course I mentioned divine creation which brings up another topic for this page. Magic, both wizardly and divine. Are we going to have it still around in our more hi-tech society or will science have eliminated the need for it. I'd be inclined towards the more interesting 'side by side' option as if its just fantasy races in a hi-tech society it might as well be a sci-fi game. I'd prefer a kind of 'use magic or science as appropriate' attitude where priestly magic is used in hospitals, but computers are used to keep track of patient records because there isn't a spell for that. Universities offer both magic and science courses and so on. I like the sound of such a world. Anybody else like or dislike that?--Alex 15:41, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Sure, seamless intergration of the two seems the way to go. It is imperitive that we avoid any similarity to He-Man.
So if that is agreed upon, and he are going for the standard issue spherical planet, then I think we have enough to start. If any further issues come up, we can discuse them here.
Hmmm, I've had an interesting idea for a bit of religious conflict with in the setting. Actually, it still leaves a lot of stuff open, but that is how it should be at this point. Perhaps I will start there. Andy 12:26, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
P.S. Are we going to come up with a proper name for this place, or shall we stick with the Fourth World and come up with an in game reason later? Andy 12:29, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Now there is a challenge, I'm going to have to see how many He-Man references I can slip in without you noticing...
But yes, integrated magic & technology seems the best way to go. And on the subject of integration what is everyone’s stance on races: Tolkien style (different races = different countries) or Discworld style (integrated multi-racial society)..?
I vote for multi-racial (maybe with some regional bias) but I'm interested in what everyone else’s thoughts are.
Oh and yeah, as we've got this Forth World tag I think we should run with it. It could be something as simple and inconsequential as it being the forth world in the solar system, or as integral to the setting history as it being the forth world that the gods created. Actually I like that one. It conjures up thoughts about what happened to the other three worlds, and their inhabitants... Craig 22:48, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't see why both types of society can't exist - the world is a big place. Just look at the real world and the way different people mix. India is very mixed, Europe less so.
Ok then, we will stick with the Fourth World and worry about it later. Incidently, shall we try to keep the discriptions 'system neutral' - ergo no references to specific spells, classes or other things unqiue to one game system. Or shall we just decide on a system now and use that? Andy 09:50, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
OK. Quick thing on the Fourth World name. I just gave it that name because I figured we have Krynn, Earth (Dark Age) and Mars (RAM) then this would be our fourth game world. (It also has a comics fan reference that probably only Craig got, but hey ho. I do these things just to amuse me sometimes...) I also thought it could refer to being the fourth world in the system. But I quite like Craig's three previous worlds idea. Indeed I could connect it to an idea I had. Wheels have begun turning...
As for integration I would be interested in having a few non-integrated places hanging around. Both Taladas and Dark Ages play with integrated societies quite a bit, so it would be nice to have some 'old-school' racial empires to play with as a contrast.
As for game system I would say of the two easy options of D&D or D20 Modern it would be easier to go with D&D. While D20 Modern does have some rules for magic and monsters it's more in a Buffy-style occasional monster, rather than full-scale orc societies. Going with D&D and simply swiping modern skills, weapon proficiencies and the nice simple money system sounds like a good plan to me.--Alex 20:15, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
Ok then, D&D. At least I can mention spells and schools of magic by name this way. I've never played D20 modern, so I can't say if it is any good. Andy 14:30, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Yep, D&D gets my vote (and by that I assume you mean what I call AD&D 3.5 ed, rather than 1970s D&D). Ed 13:28, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
As I said, if we go with D&D then all we have to do is a little twiddling to get things right. Skills would involve a little twiddling, removing some of the less appropriate skills and adding stuff like Computer Use and so on. May I suggest that Craig takes the first swing on this area, since he happens to own Mutants & Masterminds, the D20 superhero game that nabbed its skill list from D20 Modern. He could work out which of the new skills should be class skills and which should be cross-class.
Weapons is a fairly easy one since again all we have to do is just nab wholesale the D20 Modern/Mutants & Masterminds proficiency groups. As long as each class has a proportional number of groups it should balance out.
Money in D20 modern was just handled by a Wealth characteristic, that simplified the whole complex world of modern banking (loans, overdrafts, multiple accounts and whatever) to a D20+Wealth roll against a Cost DC of what they wanted to buy. I highly reccomend we go with this system. (I have enough trouble working out when things go in and out of my real bank account, let alone a fictional one as well...)
One other idea. Since magic is going to have been around for some time and is included in education why isn't everyone a wizard? How do people like the idea of wizarding families? That only certain gene lines can rearrange the universe at a whim? I can see them as rich powerful extended families that always try and control their younger members, particularly in terms of their education (no, you can't be a physicist, you'll be an invoker like your father), jobs (we paid for your training as an invoker, now you'll repay that by going to work for your uncle in his security company) and especially their love lives (no, you can't marry that druid, we've arranged a lovely match for you with this girl from the Stormhold family, you should produce an excellent combination of fire and lightning magic...). In this scenario the wizard class would represent someone from the wizarding families, while the sorceror would be someone who has a wizard ancestor who defied the family, went and married who he wanted and then the wizard gene pops up in his descendants without the education the families offer. This is actually tied in to the history of magic stuff Andy is writing, since it would be the wizarding families who would most influence, be affected by and probably enforce the restrictions on magic.
For a good idea on where I'm coming from with this, read Pandora's Star by Peter F Hamilton and see how the Halgarth family operates. That was kind of the genesis of this idea.--Alex 14:31, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
In my wizard family piece I just put up I seem to have kicked off the geography of the planet with the suggestion that there is one massive (I was thinking the size of Europe and Asia) continent in the southern hemisphere. If we want to put our history anywhere I think we may need to start thinking about either geography, or possibly the creation of the world. Hmm, are we going to have a long pre-history to this planet or is creationism actually going to be science fact on this world?
Intelligent Design as science fact. Now that is fantasy!--Alex 11:09, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
The only problem I have with the wizard families is that it all sounds a little feudal, and this is supposed to be a modern setting. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying they soundn't be there, but I don't think they should be prominent any more. If you look at the modern world, most big business are PLC's. Familiy run busineses tend to be much smaller.
It makes sense that much of the wizard families power would have been disolved in the modern world - they wield considerable power, enough to be threatening to kings and governments. Look at the Knight Templers to see where that gets you!
Certain wizard families may have been destroyed, if that suits our whim, but that is not the only way to undermine their power. The easiest way is to break their monopoly on magic by creating alternative bodies of learning. Thus the Fourth World may contain magical universities that were originally set up by royalty to counter balance the Wizard families. Back by government wealth, they grow in size and power until the families were dwarfed. They probably still exist in the modern world, but they look a bit archaic and old fasioned. Unless they went underground and tuned into a magical mafia, which is an interesting idea
I've got no problems with their being a southen continent. Sounds big enough for plenty of variation.
As for evolution/creationalism, that relates to an idea I had for religious conflict. My idea was that dieties can be split into two broad gods - ancient and new. The ancient gods relate to all the usual things that are found within a pantheon, such as the sun, moon and so on. The younger gods appeared recently, and rule over modern phenomenon, such as the internet, or large scale urbanisation.
The conflict comes about because the old gods have always had a creationalist theory associated with them. Trouble is, the scientific evidence doesn't back them up. Now, no-one can deny that the gods exist when they commune with their priests regularly and perform miracles on a regular basis... but what if they have been lying? And why?
The new gods only fuel the fires, simply by existing. If gods can be born from nothing, who says it hasn't happened before? Well, the old gods say it, and they have always support mortals with their power. Evolution and the new gods are both heresy.
Any of that interesting? In any event, I'll try to have a look at the D20 modern rules at some point. Andy 12:39, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
Should have said this before, there is actually quite a simple reason why everyone isn't a wizard. Science is part of the national curriculum, but not everyone is a scientist. Being a wizard requires a decent intelligence score and a fair bit of dedication, and not everyone has both. Besides, the job market wouldn't support 100% wizards anyway. Sometime you need a welder instead, or an accountant. Mastering magic takes time, and might not pay very well unless you are very good at it. Andy 09:58, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Sorry to keep putting ideas forward piecemeal, but I've had another thought. What if rather than wizard families, they were Sorcerer families. Going a step further, what if sorcerery evolved before wizardly magic. That came into existence at about the same time as modern methods of scientific thought and inquiry, so about 400 years ago.
So, the sorcerer families were first, and became powerful. People in charge did not like that and looked for ways to bring them into line. Baring the odd witch hunt, the easiest way to do this was to break their monopoly on arcane magic - hence the creation of wizardly universities. The universities become more powerful, and the sorcerer families suffer.
However, this pattern might not have held true over the whole world. If the sorcerer families became power full enough they may have established themselves as ruling classes in certain parts of the world and so retained more powerful.
Of course if wizardy/science came together, keeping out one would tend to keep out the other as well, resulting in sorcerer run countries being rather backwards these days. I wonder if any of these sorcerer families went the way of the Russian Tsars?
This idea might need something of a rewrite of both The Rise of the Wizard Families and Magic into the modern age pages, but it could be worth it. Andy 15:20, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
"Familiy run busineses tend to be much smaller."
Tell that to the Murdochs and the Turners...
The reason I don't see the wizard families being destroyed is that they (by and large) don't do politics. They are keen on stability, and don't do anything to help people who are out to threaten the status quo. But equally important they don't go out of their way to fireball them either. If something threatens them they won't hold back, but tend towards subtle methods of destruction (divination and a 20% share in a media corporation can do wonders for an opponent's reputation). As I suggested they saw instituting magic controls as the best way to avoid being seen as a threat and strung up. Self-regulation as a survival technique.
The description I gave of them is feudal, mainly because I was describing the origins. The modern wizard family would be organised on a far more corporate/business model. Imagine the Murdoch family with magic and you get a fairly good idea of the kind of thing I'm imagining, where one patriarch oversees the family business with his children in charge of key subdivisions, brothers, nephews and nieces after that in charge of smaller companies within the business and other management looking to try and marry into the family as a way of advancement.
I saw sorcerors as coming first too, which is why I put the rise of wizards as coming about 400 years ago. But that is why I think this idea works. Before the wizard families you have families of sorcerors/proto-wizards operating as a kind of 'magic for hire' which creates a chaotic situation. The rise of controlled wizard families creates the basis for a less medieval/more Renaissance style civilisation.
As for the 'set up a rival university' idea, that only works if anyone can become a magician. If it runs in bloodlines then that idea is out.
Besides, I put this happening on one continent to make it easy to ignore it if you want to. Things could have happened differently elsewhere.--Alex 20:30, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Actually Newscorp, the company that Murdoch is associated with, is a JSC, just like I said most large businesses are. Murdoch is the largest share holder, but he doesn't own the whole company. Shares in the company are floated on the stock market and can be purchased by the general public. He may have maneuvered his relatives into positions of power, and they might also hold shares, but its still not a family run business. If Murdoch and all his relatives died tomorrow, Newscorp would still exist as a separate entity and might well survive them for years if the remaining managers were smart enough. This is in contrast to a real "family run business", which are Partnerships, Ltd's or Sole proprieties. If the family dies in on of these, so does the business.
Saying it's all on one continent doesn't work - if magic use is genetic it will effect the whole world. Wizard families will exist everywhere, in one form or another, whether they are called that or thought of as a socially cast.
I don't mind sorcerer families - it has always been implied that sorcery is runs in the blood - but I'm not happy with all arcane spell casters being related. Bear in mind that Bards and arcane using prestige class are/would have been part of the families too.
We decided to integrate magic into the world smoothly with technology. Putting all the arcane spell casters into an Ivory Tower and labeling them as special doesn't seem a good way to do that. The way I was writing the magic page, I was suggesting that most factories might have a single wizard on hand, the same way as they might have an engineer. To do that, these wizard families would have to be huge, with thousands of members in even a country the size of the U.k. Andy 13:58, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I think we have hit the difference between where I was coming from and where you were coming from. I was looking at magic still being a rarity, as it is presented in many fantasy worlds, of being something that only about one in ten thousand can muster, and that even when multiplied by modern population levels would still only provide about a couple of hundred in a city like London. You're talking about ten thousand plus in a city the size of London.--Alex 12:22, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I think that sounds like a fair assesment. So which is it to be? I think the best way would be to ask the other wiki users who are interested in constructing this world. That way we get a consensus. Andy 14:11, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Now I see where you're coming from I think I can see how to switch my ideas to fit that. The wizard families of the Southern continent would have been those sorceror families who wanted to switch their children from improvising magic to learning it in a disciplined way; giving up raw power (more spells per level) for a more focussed path that improves quicker (hitting the higher spell levels quicker). Over the years their way got copied more and more and many other people and institutes began to produce wizards, and they themselves branched out into other areas so they will have shares in many other companies. But as they got their first, and because they were the first to hit the top spell levels they are still seen as the premier quality spell providers. You might go to any university during the last months of the academic year and get a fresh-faced wizard ready to work in your factory, but if you need a star pupil with real talent you go to one of the first families.
To misquote Sir Humphrey in 'Yes Prime Minister', "They are the wizards Harrods would sell you."
That fit in with your ideas better?--Alex 11:58, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I can see something like that working. Are we ditching the genetic wizard idea then, and saying it runs in the family the same way being a plumber might? The First Families aren't intrinsically better, but they have all the right connections and can start training their children younger, which gives them the edge. Having the right family name can increase a graduates starting salary by a few grand. Andy 15:56, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
- Well you could say that it does run in the family in that intelligent, well educated parents tend to have intelligent, well educated children (nature or nurture? you decide!), but I quite like the idea that there is something intrinsically wizardy that you need otherwise it will never work for you. Connected to that is the other idea that certain families are experts at a certain type of magic, so if you need a transmuter and can pay any amount then you go to a family that has transmuting magic in the blood. But if magic use is a genetic quirk and certain magical families have gotten very rich then the explanation for all the sorcerors and non-family wizards would simply be that for the past thousand years rich wizards have been doing what rich people of all types have always done, and (ahem) put it about a bit. So a child of two people both possessing a recessive magic gene that didn't activate in them would still have a chance of unexpected magical talent and either become a wizard (if they can afford university) or a sorceror (if they can't).
- Hmm, that might split the sorceror community in two. Those who come out of poor neighbourhoods, who chose the sorceror path because there was no other choice, who would have been wizards if they'd had the choice, and those from any background who choose the path because it's seen as being more rebellious ("Stuff the books! I wanna burn things!") and the 'cool' way to have magic.--Alex 18:22, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
That will do. Andy 12:04, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
