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Jun. 5th, 2015 03:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethGURPS is always so fiddly I end up tripping over bits of it and feeling foolish.
I've had these books for years, usually since they were published, and I still wouldn't say I know how to... anything, in GURPS.
Because fiddly.
I've been reading GURPS Horror. System in there for Fright Checks as cumulative and leading to sanity problems. It says something about how the system isn't meant to represent real mental illness because that would be offensive, it's just trying to imitate Gothic Horror. Well if gothic horror is offensive about mental illness (usually yes) then that's still offensive. A bit. But as a game mechanism to make sure no one gets out unscathed it is a bit useful.
There's also systems of black magic and corruption, as well as spirit magic in GURPS Thaumatology, where you can make deals to gain power from spirits malign and otherwise but you'll end up with your personality twisted and probably get your soul dragged away at the end of it. It mentions doing the same thing with angels once, but mostly ignores that possibility. The mechanics should work the same way though, if you let divine power through you then you'll end up with Disads that suit the spirits that want to be good, like Honesty and Truthfulness and Self Sacrificing. Having different systems for divine magic, demons, and shamanic spirits, makes them out to be different in kind as well as in alignment, and there's no real call for that.
Like in the 3e GURPS Spirits you can model any god you please as a different size spirit, though the points you get for something with millions of worshippers gets kind of ridiculous to even try to get a character sheet on. There's no need to think that one dude's god is using a different system, they've just got a lot more bums on seats.
In Nomine has a lot of systems for different spirits, but they mostly concentrate on the Angelic and Demonic. They all represent a particular idea though, and you have to act in accordance with that idea. Which is the basic idea for any spirits. You want to make a pact with a god of war then you're going to have to talk fast to use that power for healing (or possibly you could heal injuries but not disease?), you want to hang with nature spirits and you're going to end up very Poison Ivy about trees, you want to get along with a god of charity and you're going to end up living in poverty. Same diff, game wise.
So calling what happens 'corruption' is kind of a problem if you then say you can use the same ish thing for Angel aligned powers. I mean, if you use angels like most Horror does, where they're just big bullies with swords, that still works, but if they're meant to be all sweetness and compassion if you pick a sweet compassionate Power to work for then you end up being Corrupted into... sweetness?
Order corruption would make you stuck on routines and hidebound and so forth. Chaos corruption would end up distractable and unable to pay attention for long. Good wouldn't call it corruption but would influence followers to be more generous and less able to, for instance, save up or eat when anyone else is hungry.
Some of the spells require humongous energy investments, like Resurrection or Wraith. You can't do Resurrection as Slow and Sure Enchantment even if you can talk fast enough to persuade a GM it applies unless you've got like 300 or 150 or 75 Mages around, because every full day after the death is a -1 penalty on skill and you need an effective skill of 15 to cast ritually so for every day after death you would need 16, 17, 18 etc skill just to have a go at it. You could divide the energy cost by mage days, but you'd not get 300 of them around who know how to do it. But Wraith as a Slow and Sure cast 8 hours a day would take 3 years to get you your Wraith creating and controlling magic item. Rings for the ring wraiths. So it takes 1000 fatigue, but that just means you need a really, really long and uninterrupted time to actually cast it. But the good news is every 8 hour day of attempting to cast it counts as 2 hours towards learning another point in it, so by the end of your 1000 points you've gone up a point, or very nearly two since Magery 3 is required.
But it also means you spend 1000 days preparing for a single roll. Fail it and you need another 1000 days to try again. Wow would that be boring.
Probably you want apprentices around to share the load and speed things up. But there's so many spells in the Necromancy college that just let you take what you want - youth, IQ, skills - so I don't see how necromancers could trust each other at all when they're all just walking and very useful spare parts to each other.
Plus they'd make very good Wraiths.
Perhaps Necromancy is one of those arts they learn out of books...
I've had these books for years, usually since they were published, and I still wouldn't say I know how to... anything, in GURPS.
Because fiddly.
I've been reading GURPS Horror. System in there for Fright Checks as cumulative and leading to sanity problems. It says something about how the system isn't meant to represent real mental illness because that would be offensive, it's just trying to imitate Gothic Horror. Well if gothic horror is offensive about mental illness (usually yes) then that's still offensive. A bit. But as a game mechanism to make sure no one gets out unscathed it is a bit useful.
There's also systems of black magic and corruption, as well as spirit magic in GURPS Thaumatology, where you can make deals to gain power from spirits malign and otherwise but you'll end up with your personality twisted and probably get your soul dragged away at the end of it. It mentions doing the same thing with angels once, but mostly ignores that possibility. The mechanics should work the same way though, if you let divine power through you then you'll end up with Disads that suit the spirits that want to be good, like Honesty and Truthfulness and Self Sacrificing. Having different systems for divine magic, demons, and shamanic spirits, makes them out to be different in kind as well as in alignment, and there's no real call for that.
Like in the 3e GURPS Spirits you can model any god you please as a different size spirit, though the points you get for something with millions of worshippers gets kind of ridiculous to even try to get a character sheet on. There's no need to think that one dude's god is using a different system, they've just got a lot more bums on seats.
In Nomine has a lot of systems for different spirits, but they mostly concentrate on the Angelic and Demonic. They all represent a particular idea though, and you have to act in accordance with that idea. Which is the basic idea for any spirits. You want to make a pact with a god of war then you're going to have to talk fast to use that power for healing (or possibly you could heal injuries but not disease?), you want to hang with nature spirits and you're going to end up very Poison Ivy about trees, you want to get along with a god of charity and you're going to end up living in poverty. Same diff, game wise.
So calling what happens 'corruption' is kind of a problem if you then say you can use the same ish thing for Angel aligned powers. I mean, if you use angels like most Horror does, where they're just big bullies with swords, that still works, but if they're meant to be all sweetness and compassion if you pick a sweet compassionate Power to work for then you end up being Corrupted into... sweetness?
Order corruption would make you stuck on routines and hidebound and so forth. Chaos corruption would end up distractable and unable to pay attention for long. Good wouldn't call it corruption but would influence followers to be more generous and less able to, for instance, save up or eat when anyone else is hungry.
Some of the spells require humongous energy investments, like Resurrection or Wraith. You can't do Resurrection as Slow and Sure Enchantment even if you can talk fast enough to persuade a GM it applies unless you've got like 300 or 150 or 75 Mages around, because every full day after the death is a -1 penalty on skill and you need an effective skill of 15 to cast ritually so for every day after death you would need 16, 17, 18 etc skill just to have a go at it. You could divide the energy cost by mage days, but you'd not get 300 of them around who know how to do it. But Wraith as a Slow and Sure cast 8 hours a day would take 3 years to get you your Wraith creating and controlling magic item. Rings for the ring wraiths. So it takes 1000 fatigue, but that just means you need a really, really long and uninterrupted time to actually cast it. But the good news is every 8 hour day of attempting to cast it counts as 2 hours towards learning another point in it, so by the end of your 1000 points you've gone up a point, or very nearly two since Magery 3 is required.
But it also means you spend 1000 days preparing for a single roll. Fail it and you need another 1000 days to try again. Wow would that be boring.
Probably you want apprentices around to share the load and speed things up. But there's so many spells in the Necromancy college that just let you take what you want - youth, IQ, skills - so I don't see how necromancers could trust each other at all when they're all just walking and very useful spare parts to each other.
Plus they'd make very good Wraiths.
Perhaps Necromancy is one of those arts they learn out of books...
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Date: 2015-06-05 04:12 pm (UTC)Maybe he's just great in the sack. Or he has three apprentices, and has promised that one of them--the best one, of course--will inherit his spells/wealth/whatever; the other two become targets.
History has no shortage of examples of powerful people who need (1) willing, actively cooperative, somewhat-powerful assistants who (2) won't stab them in the back/run away at the first opportunity. Adding "no end of creepifyin'" to the situation will dissuade some volunteers but draw others.
Of course, history also has no shortage of examples of willing, actively-cooperative, somewhat-powerful assistants who killed/deposed their masters and took over. This is, I suppose, how one gets rid of That Horrible Necromancer Who Is A Blight On The Kingdom... you keep sending him volunteer apprentices until one of them manages to catch him in a moment of weakness. It's a long-term plan--it may take 5-10 years for that moment to occur--but if he's been terrorizing the land for generations, that's not too long to wait.
OTOH, taking the failed-traitor apprentices and raising them as zombies should provide a strong deterrent to future would-be assassins.