Encyclopedia Arcane: Star Magic

[Glacialis]

At the end of Star Magic, Shannon Kalvar had some comments about the development process and difficulties translating the concept to d20. I was wondering if Shannon's got any further thoughts on the issue? I'm going to try to implement star magic in a setting (Midnight by FFG) where spellcasters use a spell point system and have access to healing, two things that were said to be difficult to work around with the standard D&D magic system.

From what I can tell off of pen-paper.net, Shannon's still with Mongoose, but I'm not sure how to get in touch! Star Magic came out in 2002, and I'm hopeful there's some ideas to convert it to 3.5, or enhance it further.

 

[toothill man]

one of my favourite books and use the system lots even using it modified in conan for eastern magicans.

 

[morandir62]

I loved the work, but while I can hold that constellations may have power no matter the actual position they are (or should be) connected to stars visible at a single time point. I overlooked reusing stars for simplicity’s interest.
I mapped out the constellations in conjunction with their seasonal stars and had difficulty adjudicating:

The Cloud: Two Stars separated by a whole season

The Compass: A star for every season

The Crown: A star for every season

The Hunter: A star for every season

The Trumpet: A star for every season

I Fixed the Cloud by making it like the Milky Way spanning from Spring to Autumn between its two fixed stars.

I fixed the Compass by making it like the Big Dipper always visible. This moved four stars to always Ascendant. (Oaths, Revelation, Freedom and Concealment.)

I fixed the Hunter and the Crown by making the Summer star always visible. (Compassion.)

I cannot justify the Trumpet, as I would have to make one of two stars always visible. While the Summer star (Fire) would seem benign it would become available in Winter as a Horizon or Ascendant star. I would not want to consider the impact on the Autumn star (Hate) as always visible. I am more inclined to replace (Fire) with (Frost) making it a Winter constellation

There are ten Star Signs people were born under and the system break down only allows for four seasons and four cusps. There is also an overlap on the star signs for the Fan, Hunter, Scroll, Steed, and Sword. I removed Fan and Steed and changed Sign of the Scroll to Sign of the Twins allowing the intuitive knowledge as a twin soul. Favor of the Stars is made Sign of the Cloud.

I assume that these stars are all in one hemisphere. I took the same stars and renamed the constellations for the other.

I would like to know if there were any charts provided, by Shannon Kalvar, when this was developed or if they were just arbitrarily thrown together? I would also like to know if you plan any updates for this product perhaps a web bonus with more Stars and Constellations for the other hemisphere or perhaps dividing it up in twelve standard months and adding for more Star Signs? How about comets and wandering stars i.e. planets?

In ancient times there were 48 constellations a good web site for ideas can be found at:

http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/const.html