Magic College
Jan. 27th, 2018 05:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have been playing with imaginary numbers and considering the social results again.
So, magic in Gurps, hours of study per spell learned, and the way extra magery makes you so much quicker.
Everyone they let in to magic college has magery 0. They can see magic and are technically a mage. Yaay.
But there's also people there studying up to 40% quicker (30 if you only have M3 in that universe, which was the assumption of my math.)
How do you schedule lessons so everyone can study?
At lower levels you'd have mixed Magery classes.
I did some maths and a M3 mage needs 17.5 days of 8 hour classes to learn a single spell. They are just that good. So to optimise use of teachers time, that's what you schedule. Do it across 28 days, four weeks of 5 days of lessons and some weekends and half days, and you leave enough time for M0 students to keep up. If they do the reading. For enough hours to round up to 12 hours a day studying. Every day.
So that means the most basic students, the ones who know there's an upper limit on what they'll ever be able to do, are having to study all the hours of all the days, while M3 gifted types can stroll it.
Resentment seems to naturally follow.
But on top of that there's all those hours the M3 can be pursuing their own studies. With a well stocked and varied library, they can start in on spells that need higher levels of Magery with no prerequisites, and they can learn up to one extra spell for every two spells the main curriculum studies.
So people who care about magic but just aren't as gifted are going to hate them quite a lot.
Magery adds to IQ for figuring out how good at a spell you are on the same amount of time studying.
M3 is going to be much more consistent and need to use less energy than the people they're studying alongside.
M0 is going to be so tired. So tired. While M3 stays fresh.
All of this is happening to the tune of a minimum 13 character points a year, more with the Intensive units to give them 1 point in Staff skill and 1 extra fatigue. There's a maximum of 3 fatigue an average person can gain but there's more chances to take the Intensive, because after all some people are not average, and there's always more Staff to study. So even the basic M0 has learned maybe 12 spells and can kick arse with a six foot stick.
Accumulating resentment in such a community seems... fraught.
And then there's the teensy problem where mages who want extra magery? Can pretty much have it. If they sign up with a demon.
... they'll be noticed, and they'll be signing up for a very specific career path, but if someone wants to volunteer to be a weapon of mass destruction, their country will not say no.
So a lot of people who start out M0 get tempted. But I reckon a higher proportion of the M1s take them up on it. They already have enough edge to give themselves expectations, but not enough to keep up with the golden M3s, so with power right there? M2s are more likely to be happy enough with their ability to cast almost all the spells that aren't postgrad or illegal. Like, M3s are still just right there, just almost in reach, so some will grab for it, but it's still not as bad as for M1s.
If I've done the math on resentment right.
... if I've done any of this math right. It is five in the morning and I've screwed it up by large percents before...
But say there's this college where you study magic, if you can. And there's the established courses with prerequisites for everyone to follow, scheduled so M0 can just about cope. So they'll cover M0 magic. But right from the start those who think they can do more will be trying to learn M1 starters out of book.
... some of them will be wrong, will end up shorting their main studies, will fail the unit and get sent back to do fatigue training and help power enchantments until the unit comes up again, or another prereq chain starts.
But the most obvious M1 spell to start with is Shield. Of the available colleges, Protection and Warning has this big stack of spells that need M1. And it's going to be cool to protect yourself with your mind.
But this is a bunch of undergrads teaching themselves out of books. So when it comes time to test if their Shields work...
... ouch.
I am reminded of student dueling societies.
They seem similarly unwise.
But then the Protection college becomes the realm of the self taught whizz slacking off from other classes, and what does that do to social perceptions of it?
The way the curriculum is arranged, always assuming class sizes large enough to make herding them through classes together really worth it, would have to depend on the magery requirements of spells. Also prereq chains, Enchant is a postgrad kind of a spell, very broad requirements.
An apprentice with a dedicated master can wander where their research interest wills, but a class has to do the same things at the same times in the same order.
That means teaching M0 spells to mixed ability classes.
And there's a lot of them, so you could fill the time.
But that might leave almost all higher level mageries to self teach out of book. Which is a very different flavor. Magic College would be for basics, magic libraries for being best.
Also 12 a year is enough to go deep into a particular college, or stay wide and shallow. At widest one could technically Enchant by year two. This is not done. And some mages are there on a two year course. Structure goes two, then three, then one, then indeterminate postgrad poking. One year Masters sort of thing is Enchantment. But what do the two then three years cover?
What spells do you teach an 18 year old with no interest in higher education?
What things do you need the most people to be able to do?
The healing and vitality arts are taught in a whole different way in different locations, so that's most of the benevolent functions elsewhere.
Communication, Movement, and Protection are defintely possibilities. The Knowledge college needs M1 early and often, but Sense Foes and Sense Danger are pretty widely teachable. Truthsayers have a lot of everyday use. And pre lightbulb coming home able to make light would be super handy.
But I keep coming back to military applications, which are many.
Still, whatever path they start them all down together, it matters what order they generally teach. Objective measures of difficulty are tricky, but social perception would change if a spell is often or usually for beginners.
Mages with lower IQ+M could need to redo a unit to get a spell reliable. They'd need more than one point in it. But if the course hours are optimised for the rare M3s then the course sequence isn't going to hang around double checking neither.
12, 12, 12, 13, 13, and something closer to 19 by the final year.
81 spells at least.
How many does one mage need?
And is M1 required after the first two years? There's still a plentiful list of M0 spells around, but otherwise the first such magery filter is for Enchantment, which needs M2. Having an M1 hurdle slightly before that seems more consistent. And allows some of them out of the realm of the self taught. But with no doubling up to waste effort? The teach yourself books must then have their conventional order too. While staying optional.
Tricky map.
Going to effect how mages see themselves, each other, and the kinds of magic they do. How long someone had to study and if they needed a teacher? A hierarchy gets built in.
And if some colleges are simply not taught there, but make excellent prerequisites? There's another complex hierarchy to bump into.
Is fun.
So, magic in Gurps, hours of study per spell learned, and the way extra magery makes you so much quicker.
Everyone they let in to magic college has magery 0. They can see magic and are technically a mage. Yaay.
But there's also people there studying up to 40% quicker (30 if you only have M3 in that universe, which was the assumption of my math.)
How do you schedule lessons so everyone can study?
At lower levels you'd have mixed Magery classes.
I did some maths and a M3 mage needs 17.5 days of 8 hour classes to learn a single spell. They are just that good. So to optimise use of teachers time, that's what you schedule. Do it across 28 days, four weeks of 5 days of lessons and some weekends and half days, and you leave enough time for M0 students to keep up. If they do the reading. For enough hours to round up to 12 hours a day studying. Every day.
So that means the most basic students, the ones who know there's an upper limit on what they'll ever be able to do, are having to study all the hours of all the days, while M3 gifted types can stroll it.
Resentment seems to naturally follow.
But on top of that there's all those hours the M3 can be pursuing their own studies. With a well stocked and varied library, they can start in on spells that need higher levels of Magery with no prerequisites, and they can learn up to one extra spell for every two spells the main curriculum studies.
So people who care about magic but just aren't as gifted are going to hate them quite a lot.
Magery adds to IQ for figuring out how good at a spell you are on the same amount of time studying.
M3 is going to be much more consistent and need to use less energy than the people they're studying alongside.
M0 is going to be so tired. So tired. While M3 stays fresh.
All of this is happening to the tune of a minimum 13 character points a year, more with the Intensive units to give them 1 point in Staff skill and 1 extra fatigue. There's a maximum of 3 fatigue an average person can gain but there's more chances to take the Intensive, because after all some people are not average, and there's always more Staff to study. So even the basic M0 has learned maybe 12 spells and can kick arse with a six foot stick.
Accumulating resentment in such a community seems... fraught.
And then there's the teensy problem where mages who want extra magery? Can pretty much have it. If they sign up with a demon.
... they'll be noticed, and they'll be signing up for a very specific career path, but if someone wants to volunteer to be a weapon of mass destruction, their country will not say no.
So a lot of people who start out M0 get tempted. But I reckon a higher proportion of the M1s take them up on it. They already have enough edge to give themselves expectations, but not enough to keep up with the golden M3s, so with power right there? M2s are more likely to be happy enough with their ability to cast almost all the spells that aren't postgrad or illegal. Like, M3s are still just right there, just almost in reach, so some will grab for it, but it's still not as bad as for M1s.
If I've done the math on resentment right.
... if I've done any of this math right. It is five in the morning and I've screwed it up by large percents before...
But say there's this college where you study magic, if you can. And there's the established courses with prerequisites for everyone to follow, scheduled so M0 can just about cope. So they'll cover M0 magic. But right from the start those who think they can do more will be trying to learn M1 starters out of book.
... some of them will be wrong, will end up shorting their main studies, will fail the unit and get sent back to do fatigue training and help power enchantments until the unit comes up again, or another prereq chain starts.
But the most obvious M1 spell to start with is Shield. Of the available colleges, Protection and Warning has this big stack of spells that need M1. And it's going to be cool to protect yourself with your mind.
But this is a bunch of undergrads teaching themselves out of books. So when it comes time to test if their Shields work...
... ouch.
I am reminded of student dueling societies.
They seem similarly unwise.
But then the Protection college becomes the realm of the self taught whizz slacking off from other classes, and what does that do to social perceptions of it?
The way the curriculum is arranged, always assuming class sizes large enough to make herding them through classes together really worth it, would have to depend on the magery requirements of spells. Also prereq chains, Enchant is a postgrad kind of a spell, very broad requirements.
An apprentice with a dedicated master can wander where their research interest wills, but a class has to do the same things at the same times in the same order.
That means teaching M0 spells to mixed ability classes.
And there's a lot of them, so you could fill the time.
But that might leave almost all higher level mageries to self teach out of book. Which is a very different flavor. Magic College would be for basics, magic libraries for being best.
Also 12 a year is enough to go deep into a particular college, or stay wide and shallow. At widest one could technically Enchant by year two. This is not done. And some mages are there on a two year course. Structure goes two, then three, then one, then indeterminate postgrad poking. One year Masters sort of thing is Enchantment. But what do the two then three years cover?
What spells do you teach an 18 year old with no interest in higher education?
What things do you need the most people to be able to do?
The healing and vitality arts are taught in a whole different way in different locations, so that's most of the benevolent functions elsewhere.
Communication, Movement, and Protection are defintely possibilities. The Knowledge college needs M1 early and often, but Sense Foes and Sense Danger are pretty widely teachable. Truthsayers have a lot of everyday use. And pre lightbulb coming home able to make light would be super handy.
But I keep coming back to military applications, which are many.
Still, whatever path they start them all down together, it matters what order they generally teach. Objective measures of difficulty are tricky, but social perception would change if a spell is often or usually for beginners.
Mages with lower IQ+M could need to redo a unit to get a spell reliable. They'd need more than one point in it. But if the course hours are optimised for the rare M3s then the course sequence isn't going to hang around double checking neither.
12, 12, 12, 13, 13, and something closer to 19 by the final year.
81 spells at least.
How many does one mage need?
And is M1 required after the first two years? There's still a plentiful list of M0 spells around, but otherwise the first such magery filter is for Enchantment, which needs M2. Having an M1 hurdle slightly before that seems more consistent. And allows some of them out of the realm of the self taught. But with no doubling up to waste effort? The teach yourself books must then have their conventional order too. While staying optional.
Tricky map.
Going to effect how mages see themselves, each other, and the kinds of magic they do. How long someone had to study and if they needed a teacher? A hierarchy gets built in.
And if some colleges are simply not taught there, but make excellent prerequisites? There's another complex hierarchy to bump into.
Is fun.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-27 07:45 am (UTC)That would change the math a lot.
Intensive training needs HT 12+ or you wash out.
So the first round will wash a bunch of them
who have to do fatigue training a slower way thereafter
but those who can do it can add 30% extra fatigue, so that's ... still only 3. And a half, but that don't count.
If it's another 4 hours a day? It's 14 CP a year. That's all 3 extra fatigue plus 2 Staff, or one Staff, one Fatigue, and an excuse to raise your actual HT.
... not an excellent one, but still.
How much is Staff or Fatigue would vary person to person, but a two year course maxes out at 29 CP, if you could train intensively continuously.
I'm not giving the academic an Intensive because that's too much power.
But in theory it could apply.
Intensive Training
Full-time study with expert teachers
and lavish training materials is the
most effective type of “normal” learning.
An expert teacher has Teaching
skill at 12 (or higher), plus a higher
level and more points in the skill
being taught than you do. Quadruple
all costs and tuition fees! Every hour
of intensive training counts as two
hours of learning. Intensive training
is rarely available outside the military,
where you have little control over the
skills taught or the scheduling of
courses. It can last for up to 16 hours
per day. You must have HT 12+ to
make it through such training without
“washing out” (the Fit advantage
does increase effective HT for this
purpose).
The Teacher's skills and hours would be a limit, you'd catch up.
I'm not sure it even applies to fatigue except it needs to so I guess I'll either have unusually hale teachers or not worry about the higher level. Or slow down the value of later training when it can't be intensive any more, that works.
But I'm not going to handwave Intensive magic school because wow too much power.
Also because most higher level mages put one point in and move on, so, not teachers for that, in this way.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-27 07:53 am (UTC)fitness needs upkeep