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beccaelizabethApril Fools is The Worst
so I hid and slept
which made it a pretty okay day
Also I read about greek and roman gods and underworlds
which is Not Simple
not least because I can't remember which are the good sources and keep ending up on poorly translated neopagan pages with no sources, poorly translated tourist pages, or wiki.
I was looking because GURPS spells include Plane Shift but it is a different spell for each plane. So if Janus, god of doors, is handing out Gate college spells, how many spells are there? One for Earth, Underworld and Heavens? Or one for each sphere of the heavens and river or region of the underworld? How many is that anyway? And if he's gatekeeper to the gods and theoretically can get you in to visit gods, who all is in there?
As it turns out the answers to this are even messier than for straight up greek gods, because the romans never met a religion thy didn't like well enough to make room for. Janus could plausibly be the gatekeeper for EVERYone. Even gods the Romans might not have heard of, since meeting new gods and keeping them had established procedures.
This is what happens when centuries of multi author Stuff happens. It's worse than trying to figure out Marvel or DC. ... well there's fewer missing episodes with Marvel or DC.
And if it's religion as religion you've got one big messy set of arguments, but you don't actually need to resolve them, not so they work the same way for everyone.
If you're figuring out RPG rules you need a neat and tidy systematised version.
One with actual tangible benefits to each and every part, and borders to what things can do, and consistent answers.
I can just make stuff up, but the game balance thereof is... tricky.
Also, Dante got in there and got awesome layers of pop culture over a christianised version of all this, so while there are roman sources for heavenly spheres and underworld rivers and all that, they've been used as parts of hell, which wasn't to original purpose. And I've readNiven's Inferno too. So there's all sorts of sources rattling around.
And if we're talking game rules and magic we either need elemental planes or to rejig some of the background on a whole bunch of spells, which isn't that hard, but is a Thing.
It's way more baked in to Pathfinder. Their spells assume elemental planes, shadow as a plane, and the astral plane too. Also that good and evil are objectively measureable things connected to positive and negative energy, and negative energy animates undead so it isn't just an absence of positive energy, and it's all... complex.
But you need a few answers as soon as Gate is a thing.
Same like you need to make decisions on pantheons as soon as clerical magic is a thing.
I'm pondering this partly because I was making a GURPS me again and considering which spells to pursue, either 10 or 60 of them depending if a 150 or 200 point character. 10 makes me a beginner who can find out this planes stuff later, but 60 means I have enough spells to learn Gates if such a thing is possible, and being me I'd try.
But also partly because my What If Rich daydream about inheriting a wizarding Name turned into a bit of a clerical vs wizard magic, like cleric inherits a wizard family Name generates plot immediately. Wandless magic with no prerequisite chains is all very well if that's widely known, but in this day and age with all magic being secret, christians apparently only getting invisible spells like blessings, and pagan religions going a bit quiet? Could be some culture shock. And wizards and priests would have such different baseline assumptions about magical beings and ghosts etc.
Except so far the plot is your basic 'walk in and show off and be awesome' which is not in fact plot.
... I'm reading a Harry Potter longfic at the moment but keep stalling and I think I just said why. They aren't doing the complex politics they think they are, they're just walking in and being right about everything and aha gotcha. Somehow. Ugh.
Politics is figuring out how to make sure everyone gets what they need. Everyone everyone, not just your side, else you're storing up trouble when the left out people still need things and have no route you approve of to get them.
Adding magic makes for new needs and new methods, but doesn't change that basic problem.
So I'm still reading because it's after the war trying to find a place for Slytherins, but I'm stalling a lot because it's mostly like it's saying Slytherins are people too and suffer too and something something leave them alone? I mean everyone suffers, the difference between good and evil acts is how they respond to that suffering, by trying to make things better or worse for everyone. They did some bads, trying to figure out how to move on has to know which bits were bad. And the fic knows ans says laws is laws and should be applied to everyone if they're applied to anyone, but this seems to involve letting everyone off the hook because we don't want Harry going to prison, and I feel law is likely more nuanced than that. So it has good stuff but I want chewier good stuff.
So I should rite it.
But then I tangent off into reading about the... half dozen different degrees I'd need to do it well. Am not a lawyer or a politician or, in this case, a Roman priest or classicist, so how do I play one on tv?
Research.
... until I've learned a bunch of stuff and tangented onto an entirely different pot bunny, if history is anything to judge by...
If I try and learn all the systems to worldbuil a big complex systemic inequality and its solutions, field too large cannot research enough.
So I should pick one thing, one with a bunch of cases under different systems that I could then look up, and bolt on some magic, and see what the worldbuild does to one specific narrow thing.
... still dont know how and will end up on wiki, but it's an idea.
... I could start with a specific greek tragedy and see what tore their world apart and how that would go now. I know how to do the lit part of that research. wold b a place to start and a reason to reread the relevant texts.
Mostly though because it started as What If Rich and a secret bit of What If Owned Pretty People, I'd need to reverse engineer a system that gave excuses for some form of slavery, because magic.
But on the bounce it could be about for profit prisons or something. Something real in the here now. And felon disenfranchisement, if being convicted meant losing your Name and Vote in wizard council. Or a bunch of other crime and justice stuff, jut with a magic twist that makes it a personal problem in your personal house, instead of a distant thing.
Find out what systemic problem in the real you want the story to shout about and you've got a place to start on what kind of cases and laws you'd need to look up.
I feel like I should pick British stuff but I feel like I know more about America just because more of the internet shouts about it.
If I stuck with what I know it'd end up being about disability and carers and the way disabled people living with someone have to prove right away what their financial relationship is. And needing care plans and support workers and stuff. Only with magic and magical beings.
Like, someone moving into your house means they either agree to become responsible for you or let you languish in lack. Plenty of room for magic in that idea.
Also the whole workfare requirements as modern slavery bit, and how community service does and does not differ.
Nothing specific grabs me though.
So I'm back to pondering the nature of Planes in a 'verse where Janus is teaching you the keys.
But if I'm using GURPS then the obvious question is how the multiverse fits in. Its still Gate spells to move to other universes as well as other planes in your own verse, but GM fiat if you can use them. And how does the distance concept mesh with any of this?
Erebus and Aether as planes, or realms of gods.
Or Shadow and Light?
Or what if they're directions? Heavens and Underworlds and Earth as directional components describing a location of a specific other world? Like Seanan McGuire's world compass, only hers are Nonsense and Logic, Wicked and Virtue. I dislike the correlation of wicked with underworld and virtue with stars, it seems very christian, there was room in death realms for all sorts. And world compasses can't be simple. Seanan has also Rhyme, Linearity, Whimsy and Wild, and the paired directions Vitus and Mortis, for if they're to do with dead.
Shadow and Light as directions don't correlate to good and evil, more like how much power is around. or dead and alive. or... something.
And too much of anything, ANYthing, makes it impossible to survive as a human person. Like heat and cold, sunlight and darkess, wet and dry. Human people mostly exist at the middle point in these scales cause that's where we're looking from, where we can live.
I'm not a fan of systems of good vs evil where there is a virtue and its opposite, I like more the graphs where there's a virtue and two failure modes of excess and scarcity. Like courage existing in the sweet spot between cowardice and rashness. The middle way. Like the good evil order chaos of the Renshai books, not the Pathfinder alignements, where good is selflessness and evil is selfishness and both have failure modes and neutrality tries to balance.
To set that up in the worldbuilding takes a specific attitude to planes.
Could mix with mana levels as well. Like, if there were underworlds with no mana you coldn't magic your way out of them. You could cleric your way out, because prayer. The sanctity level would be just fine. But the mana level of the heavenly spheres could be higher, making it easier to do magic from there, effecting here, making beings that live there seem... higher.
hmm, not convinced.
too many systems means making them interlock.
it's a chewy problem with as many solutions as stories.
But I'm always drawn to the highly ordered ones, where there's precision, like 9 spheres or 9 circles or one Earth with four elements and four something else realms around it.
And that says something about law and chaos in a world that just seems too neat.
but if fits in a rule book.
will keep thinking.
so I hid and slept
which made it a pretty okay day
Also I read about greek and roman gods and underworlds
which is Not Simple
not least because I can't remember which are the good sources and keep ending up on poorly translated neopagan pages with no sources, poorly translated tourist pages, or wiki.
I was looking because GURPS spells include Plane Shift but it is a different spell for each plane. So if Janus, god of doors, is handing out Gate college spells, how many spells are there? One for Earth, Underworld and Heavens? Or one for each sphere of the heavens and river or region of the underworld? How many is that anyway? And if he's gatekeeper to the gods and theoretically can get you in to visit gods, who all is in there?
As it turns out the answers to this are even messier than for straight up greek gods, because the romans never met a religion thy didn't like well enough to make room for. Janus could plausibly be the gatekeeper for EVERYone. Even gods the Romans might not have heard of, since meeting new gods and keeping them had established procedures.
This is what happens when centuries of multi author Stuff happens. It's worse than trying to figure out Marvel or DC. ... well there's fewer missing episodes with Marvel or DC.
And if it's religion as religion you've got one big messy set of arguments, but you don't actually need to resolve them, not so they work the same way for everyone.
If you're figuring out RPG rules you need a neat and tidy systematised version.
One with actual tangible benefits to each and every part, and borders to what things can do, and consistent answers.
I can just make stuff up, but the game balance thereof is... tricky.
Also, Dante got in there and got awesome layers of pop culture over a christianised version of all this, so while there are roman sources for heavenly spheres and underworld rivers and all that, they've been used as parts of hell, which wasn't to original purpose. And I've readNiven's Inferno too. So there's all sorts of sources rattling around.
And if we're talking game rules and magic we either need elemental planes or to rejig some of the background on a whole bunch of spells, which isn't that hard, but is a Thing.
It's way more baked in to Pathfinder. Their spells assume elemental planes, shadow as a plane, and the astral plane too. Also that good and evil are objectively measureable things connected to positive and negative energy, and negative energy animates undead so it isn't just an absence of positive energy, and it's all... complex.
But you need a few answers as soon as Gate is a thing.
Same like you need to make decisions on pantheons as soon as clerical magic is a thing.
I'm pondering this partly because I was making a GURPS me again and considering which spells to pursue, either 10 or 60 of them depending if a 150 or 200 point character. 10 makes me a beginner who can find out this planes stuff later, but 60 means I have enough spells to learn Gates if such a thing is possible, and being me I'd try.
But also partly because my What If Rich daydream about inheriting a wizarding Name turned into a bit of a clerical vs wizard magic, like cleric inherits a wizard family Name generates plot immediately. Wandless magic with no prerequisite chains is all very well if that's widely known, but in this day and age with all magic being secret, christians apparently only getting invisible spells like blessings, and pagan religions going a bit quiet? Could be some culture shock. And wizards and priests would have such different baseline assumptions about magical beings and ghosts etc.
Except so far the plot is your basic 'walk in and show off and be awesome' which is not in fact plot.
... I'm reading a Harry Potter longfic at the moment but keep stalling and I think I just said why. They aren't doing the complex politics they think they are, they're just walking in and being right about everything and aha gotcha. Somehow. Ugh.
Politics is figuring out how to make sure everyone gets what they need. Everyone everyone, not just your side, else you're storing up trouble when the left out people still need things and have no route you approve of to get them.
Adding magic makes for new needs and new methods, but doesn't change that basic problem.
So I'm still reading because it's after the war trying to find a place for Slytherins, but I'm stalling a lot because it's mostly like it's saying Slytherins are people too and suffer too and something something leave them alone? I mean everyone suffers, the difference between good and evil acts is how they respond to that suffering, by trying to make things better or worse for everyone. They did some bads, trying to figure out how to move on has to know which bits were bad. And the fic knows ans says laws is laws and should be applied to everyone if they're applied to anyone, but this seems to involve letting everyone off the hook because we don't want Harry going to prison, and I feel law is likely more nuanced than that. So it has good stuff but I want chewier good stuff.
So I should rite it.
But then I tangent off into reading about the... half dozen different degrees I'd need to do it well. Am not a lawyer or a politician or, in this case, a Roman priest or classicist, so how do I play one on tv?
Research.
... until I've learned a bunch of stuff and tangented onto an entirely different pot bunny, if history is anything to judge by...
If I try and learn all the systems to worldbuil a big complex systemic inequality and its solutions, field too large cannot research enough.
So I should pick one thing, one with a bunch of cases under different systems that I could then look up, and bolt on some magic, and see what the worldbuild does to one specific narrow thing.
... still dont know how and will end up on wiki, but it's an idea.
... I could start with a specific greek tragedy and see what tore their world apart and how that would go now. I know how to do the lit part of that research. wold b a place to start and a reason to reread the relevant texts.
Mostly though because it started as What If Rich and a secret bit of What If Owned Pretty People, I'd need to reverse engineer a system that gave excuses for some form of slavery, because magic.
But on the bounce it could be about for profit prisons or something. Something real in the here now. And felon disenfranchisement, if being convicted meant losing your Name and Vote in wizard council. Or a bunch of other crime and justice stuff, jut with a magic twist that makes it a personal problem in your personal house, instead of a distant thing.
Find out what systemic problem in the real you want the story to shout about and you've got a place to start on what kind of cases and laws you'd need to look up.
I feel like I should pick British stuff but I feel like I know more about America just because more of the internet shouts about it.
If I stuck with what I know it'd end up being about disability and carers and the way disabled people living with someone have to prove right away what their financial relationship is. And needing care plans and support workers and stuff. Only with magic and magical beings.
Like, someone moving into your house means they either agree to become responsible for you or let you languish in lack. Plenty of room for magic in that idea.
Also the whole workfare requirements as modern slavery bit, and how community service does and does not differ.
Nothing specific grabs me though.
So I'm back to pondering the nature of Planes in a 'verse where Janus is teaching you the keys.
But if I'm using GURPS then the obvious question is how the multiverse fits in. Its still Gate spells to move to other universes as well as other planes in your own verse, but GM fiat if you can use them. And how does the distance concept mesh with any of this?
Erebus and Aether as planes, or realms of gods.
Or Shadow and Light?
Or what if they're directions? Heavens and Underworlds and Earth as directional components describing a location of a specific other world? Like Seanan McGuire's world compass, only hers are Nonsense and Logic, Wicked and Virtue. I dislike the correlation of wicked with underworld and virtue with stars, it seems very christian, there was room in death realms for all sorts. And world compasses can't be simple. Seanan has also Rhyme, Linearity, Whimsy and Wild, and the paired directions Vitus and Mortis, for if they're to do with dead.
Shadow and Light as directions don't correlate to good and evil, more like how much power is around. or dead and alive. or... something.
And too much of anything, ANYthing, makes it impossible to survive as a human person. Like heat and cold, sunlight and darkess, wet and dry. Human people mostly exist at the middle point in these scales cause that's where we're looking from, where we can live.
I'm not a fan of systems of good vs evil where there is a virtue and its opposite, I like more the graphs where there's a virtue and two failure modes of excess and scarcity. Like courage existing in the sweet spot between cowardice and rashness. The middle way. Like the good evil order chaos of the Renshai books, not the Pathfinder alignements, where good is selflessness and evil is selfishness and both have failure modes and neutrality tries to balance.
To set that up in the worldbuilding takes a specific attitude to planes.
Could mix with mana levels as well. Like, if there were underworlds with no mana you coldn't magic your way out of them. You could cleric your way out, because prayer. The sanctity level would be just fine. But the mana level of the heavenly spheres could be higher, making it easier to do magic from there, effecting here, making beings that live there seem... higher.
hmm, not convinced.
too many systems means making them interlock.
it's a chewy problem with as many solutions as stories.
But I'm always drawn to the highly ordered ones, where there's precision, like 9 spheres or 9 circles or one Earth with four elements and four something else realms around it.
And that says something about law and chaos in a world that just seems too neat.
but if fits in a rule book.
will keep thinking.