Faith + Magic = Reality

I have too many things on the go... but this will I hope be quick. Then I can get back to writing about 'Labyrinth' or something.

Reading a book at the moment, called 'Coldfire Pt.1: Black Sun Rising' by Celia Friedman. I'm rather enjoying it. It contains what I think is a great idea. The action takes place on a planet where a magical force, called 'fae', sort of sloshes about in tides and streams... in some ways, it's a bit like weather. It means that some places are both easier to cast spells in, and magically more fraught, because with great power comes, well, greater chances for things to go wrong. Magical tsunami sweep the continents, vortices of magical currents swirl around and earthquakes of thaumaturgical energy batter settlements and the brains of the magically-susceptible.

It also affects the local flora and fauna. First, there can be an interaction between fear and fae, which means monsters are literally born of people's imaginations. Fears manifest themselves physically. Imagine a creepy grinning skeletal figure with a paralysing touch, and a ghoul could actually appear behind you.

Then, it can affect evolution. What is believed becomes real so if people think that geese are fish that grow into birds from barnacles (as was believed in Medieval Europe for instance), then, I guess, that's what starts to happen. Over time creatures come to evolve to be the way people imagine they are.

I like the idea that belief shapes the world around us. It seems like it could work well in game terms, for at least two reasons. The first is, suddenly, all those weird monsters in the Monster Manual and Fiend Folio and the pages of White Dwarf make a particular kind of sense. That monster over there with the legs of a giant moth and a trunk and the body of a hyena seems improbable... doesn't matter, someone imagined it in a fever-dream. Who cares if dragons can't fly? If people believe they can fly, then they can. It is, if I can coin the term, a very Pratchettian way of looking at things. Faith + Magic = Reality. This I think has some relationship to what Jens is talking about over at 'The Disoriented Ranger' here, where he talks about how people in different societies pattern reality, and how stories emerge (also of course something Pratchett talked about a lot). Obviously, Dwarves and Trolls and Dragons aren't real for us... and aren't real for us, even 1500 years ago. But they were real for the people who believed the stories about them in Northern Europe during Volkswanderung, the period Jens is exploring in Lost Songs of the Nebelungs. Our lack of belief doesn't change the nature of the world they inhabited.

The second way it works is, it gives you a great excuse to make things suddenly weird, which is sometimes good. I don't think it's fair to do it all the time: if everything is weird, then nothing is is weird, it's all just confusing and I guess quickly stops being fun... the players lose all agency because if there's no apprehensible (spellcheck doesn't like that one) logic then there's no basis for decision making and nothing has meaning. But, perhaps, the weird builds up (in a measurable way) until it breaks through into reality and changes things. I'd love to work on mechanisms for this. Instead of Wandering Monsters, a sort of Magical Mishap table. Of course, if the PCs' fears can create monsters, maybe this is the best justification for a Wandering Monster turning up (see above). 

But, and this is one place I'm having problems with the application of this concept, if the Wandering Monster has actually been created from a PC's fear, it should probably be something that the PC fears... and that might require either knowing in advance what the PCs are scared of (in which case someone I'm sure will claim to be scared of being captured by the very attractive clerics of a sex-god/dess, or maybe suddenly finding huge amounts of money... again, Pratchett talks about this... the 'unexpected money Goblin' or something), or alternatively, it means listening very hard to what the players are saying and incorporating that into the game - so when they go "I hope we don't run into any trolls down here", the next thing they encounter should be trolls. But my feeling is it's difficult to pattern a wandering monster table on the basis of 'whatever the PCs said 2 minutes ago'.

I guess most of us who use wandering monsters have some sort of system like 'roll 1-2 on a d6 every 2 turns, more (frequently, or just a bigger number) if the party is being noisy/careless with lights/setting fire to things/leaving food lying around etc. Instead, this would be more like applying Magical Mishaps if the party did something ritually 'wrong', or if they were tired or distracted, if they had misread the flows of magic... I remember The Angry GM describing the use of wandering monster dice that are stacked up in front of the players so they'd know how noisy they were being or how much time they were taking (in this post here). Perhaps the 'fae detection' could be similar - a kind of 'charge' that builds up depending on the players' actions.

The ability to use magic (possibly even including 'safe' magic like potions or weapons) would maybe require something like a saving throw to be successful. This could be augmented by such things as an accurate map of the magical currents, or maybe something analogous to a miner's canary or Universal Indicator Paper - something that detected fae energy to help with knowing safe levels and places. All of this may require extra systems to check or it could be as simple as a Save. But the effects of (conceptually at least) 'failing' the Save?

I shall be considering this more, no doubt.