Laws of Magic in Legend

[alex_greene]

Legend, like many roleplaying games, does not take into account any kind of laws of magic. Like laws of physics, these are practical principles which have been observed in workings.

These laws can be found here, but the titles are listed below.

The Laws of Magic are not legislative laws but, like those of physics or of musical harmony, are practical observations that have been accumulating over the course of thousands of years, with remarkable similarity in almost every known human culture. Those of you who prefer to remain skeptical as to the reality of psychic phenomena and the systems of magic developed to control them will at least find these Laws an interesting and detailed guide to what psychologists and anthropologists so patronizingly refer to as “magical thinking.”

Those of you who play magicians as characters will find these Laws a remarkably concise guide to the ways in which most magicians, at least on this world, believe magic to work. Most of the technical motivations of magic-using characters, before, during and after using magic, will be based on these laws.-- Authentic Thaumaturgy

The Law of Knowledge
Keywords: “Knowledge is power.”

The Law of Self-Knowledge
Keywords: “Know thyself.”

The Law of Cause & Effect
Keywords: “Control every variable and you control every change — lotsa luck!”

The Law of Synchronicity
Keywords: “Coincidence is seldom mere.”

The Law of Association
Keywords: “Commonality controls.”

The Law of Similarity
Keywords: “Look-alikes are alike.”

The Law of Contagion
Keywords: “Magic is contagious.”

The Law of Positive Attraction
Keywords: “That which is sent, returns.”

The Law of Negative Attraction
Keywords: “Opposites attract.”

The Law of Names
Keywords: “What’s in a name? — Everything!”

The Law of Words of Power
Keywords: “A word to the wise is sufficient.”

The Law of Personification
Keywords: “Anything can be a person.”

The Law of Invocation
Keywords: “Beings within…”

The Law of Evocation
Keywords: “…Beings without.”

The Law of Identification
Keywords: “You can become another.”

The Law of Infinite Data
Keywords: “There’s always something new.”

The Law of Finite Senses
Keywords: “Nobody can see everything,” or “Just cause it’s invisible don’t mean it ain’t there.”

The Law of Personal Universes
Keywords: “You live in your cosmos and I’ll live in mine.”

The Law of Infinite Universes
Keywords: “All things are possible, though some are more probable than others.”

The Law of Pragmatism
Keywords: “If it works, it’s true.”

The Law of True Falsehoods
Keywords: “If it’s a paradox it’s probably true.”

The Law of Synthesis
Keywords: “Synthesis reconciles.”

The Law of Polarity
Keywords: “Everything contains its opposite.”

The Law of Dynamic Balance
Keywords: “Dance to the music.”

The Law of Perversity
Keywords: These can only be, “If anything can go wrong, it will.”

The Law of Unity
Keywords: “All is One.”

The article continues underneath:-

Table 6.1: Effects of the Laws of Magic on PoSS (Possibilities of Spell Success)

1: For every usage of a Law of Magic (except those listed below) in the casting of a spell, add 5% to the PoSS. If the same Law is used more than once, add the appropriate percentage for each usage.

2: For every usage of the Law of Similarity: add 3-8%, depending upon the degree of similarity involved.

Example: attempting to cast a spell on a gnome. Having a crude drawing of a dwarf (another type of small humanoid) is barely worth 3%. Having a coffeetable Book of Gnomes is worth 5%. Having a realistic painting of the gnome in question is worth 8%. If photographs are possible in the game universe involved, one might push the bonus up to 10% for having a photo of the gnome.

3: For every usage of the Law of Contagion: add 5-12%, depending upon the degree of contagion involved.

Example: attempting to heal a damaged comrade from a distance. Having shaken hands with her several times is barely worth 5%. Having an item of her clothing or weapons is worth 7%. Having a lock of her hair is worth 10%. Having kissed her a lot recently, or having had more intense contact, may well be worth 15-25% — depending on just how friendly you got!. Being able to touch the target of a spell during the casting period will usually add 8-10%.

4: For every usage of the Law of Names: add 5% for using the target’s “public name,” add 10% for using the target’s “childhood name” or adult “pet name,” add 15% for using the target’s “secret name,” and add 30% for using the target’s “true name.” Target beings will usually know their own names in the first three categories, but only a supernatural entity is liable to know their own or someone else’s “true name.” Note: an Invocation or Evocation bonus cancels out any connected Names bonus.

5: For every usage of the Law of Invocation or the Law of Evocation: add 1-15%, depending on one’s own Piety; 1% for low Piety, 5% for average Piety, 10% for high Piety, 15% for highest Piety. Some referees may prefer to use the character’s “State of Grace” for this. Note: this bonus is only to the PoSS, not to MPs.

6: For every usage of the Law of Perversity: add 15% if and only if [magical negation / protection] is one of one’s Talents. Otherwise, subtract 15% or “crock” the results of the spell. If the referee or the player determines that a given magician is suffering a “streak of bad luck,” expect the Law of Perversity (at referee’s option) to start making things even worse.

This was written a good few decades back (first printing 1979), yet it seems remarkably useful for Legend. It felt like a good time to bring up the subject. What do you think?

 

[strega]

These 'Laws' were much used in 1st and 2nd edition Chivalry and Sorcery and are actually derived form much earlier works.

 

[alex_greene]

In Legend terms, perhaps the application of these laws could increase the casting time by 1 CA per law applied; in addition to the bonus to casting, they could also apply the bonus to Sorcery Manipulation too. Every little helps ...

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

Not every culture would agree on this list of laws... they are very Ancient Greek in tone (actually most are Ancient Greek).

 

[Prime_Evil]

The list is derived from the scheme given in Authentic Thaumaturgy by Isaac Bonewits. For those who are not familiar with his work, Bonewits was a significant figure in the US neopagan movement from the early 1970s onwards until his death in 2010. Bonewits is probably best known for his book Real Magic (first published in 1972), which attempted to develop a clear conceptual framework for different categories of magical practice. A kindle version of Real Magic is available from Amazon. He wrote Authentic Thaumaturgy for Chaosium in 1978 in an attempt to apply his conceptual scheme to roleplaying games. A revised version was released by Steve Jackson Games in the late 1990's and is still available in PDF format from e23 - http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG30-3004.

The book is well worth a read, even though the new rule systems that he provides in the book are very clunky by today's standards. It's obviously a product of early RPG design, but is very interesting as a historical document from the early days of the hobby. And some of the content is very original, reflecting Bonewit's familiarity with real-life occult communities. Bonewit's laws of magic borrow from Frazer's Golden Bough (e.g. the Law of Similarity and the Law of Contagion), as well as concepts floating around in the pagan community of the 1970s - you can hear echoes of Oberon Zell and Harold Moss in particular. There are also elements drawn form older strands of the Western Mystery Tradition, in particular the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismagistus and other hermetic texts.

 

[alex_greene]

It just adds authenticity to sorcery practices if, when casting, a sorcerer whips out a sheet of flash paper with a magic square of Venus on it and ignites it, or a witch plays with the fith-fath of her victim before smiting him with the Common Magic spell Skybolt, and so on.

A character who improvises some sort of physical representation of his target, attempting to generate an arcane connection, should be rewarded. Magic should feel like magic, not The X-Men.

 

[Prime_Evil]

It just adds authenticity to sorcery practices if, when casting, a sorcerer whips out a sheet of flash paper with a magic square of Venus on it and ignites it, or a witch plays with the fith-fath of her victim before smiting him with the Common Magic spell Skybolt, and so on.

A character who improvises some sort of physical representation of his target, attempting to generate an arcane connection, should be rewarded. Magic should feel like magic, not The X-Men.

So you don't agree with Robert A. Heinlein's view that 'one man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering'? :lol:

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

Personally I'm not interested in Neo-Paganism as I generally prefer a more historically "rooted" background (although I realise that Neo-Paganism from the 1970's has now become "historical"... how time flies!!!).

Anyway, I recommend as a good translated source for the general reader looking for authentic magical context (it touches on "laws of magic"):

'Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Collection of Ancient Texts' by Georg Luck

Hope that's of interest.

 

[Prime_Evil]

Personally I'm not interested in Neo-Paganism as I generally prefer a more historically "rooted" background (although I realise that Neo-Paganism from the 1970's has now become "historical"... how time flies!!!).

Anyway, I recommend as a good translated source for the general reader looking for authentic magical context (it touches on "laws of magic"):

'Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Collection of Ancient Texts' by Georg Luck

Hope that's of interest.

I've got a copy of that book.

And as for the question of being historically "rooted", it's worth noting that all modern books on ancient religious and magical practices involve some degree of interpretation of the primary sources and archaeological evidence. Unless you are reading the primary sources in the original language, the material is going to pass through one or more layers of interpretation - this is a problem inherent in the use of literary sources for historical purposes. And the problems of interpretation inherent in archaeological evidence are even more acute. And don't forget that today's dominant historical theory can become tomorrow's discarded paradigm - for example, it's amazing how many fantasy authors bought into Margaret Murray's Witch Cult theory until it lost academic respectability in the mid-1970's. But while it was still respectable in academic circles, it influenced authors as diverse as H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Rosemary Sutcliff, Henry Treece, Margaret St Clair, Andre Norton, et al. So ideas discarded by sober history can still become grist for interesting fantasy. There's certainly a lot of sloppy scholarship and pseudo-scholarship in the neo-pagan community (avoid anything published by Llewellyn like the plague!), but there are also authors producing well-researched work.

(Fair disclosure: I'm a recovering agnostic with an honors degree in early medieval history who has been involved in the Pagan community in the past, but whose tastes runs towards Pagan reconstructionism rather than some of the fluffy nonsense that's out there. I like my belief systems to be grounded in solid research and the parts that are modern inventions to be clearly labelled as such.)

 

[alex_greene]

I'd say that the nature of magic, at least in roleplaying games, should defy the Procrustean efforts of real world scholars to fit them into the same framework of Greco-Roman "magicus" which has tainted bad fantasy stories all the way up to Harry Potter.

It should take more than reciting dreadful cod-Latin words and waving a bit of a stick around in a decent fantasy story to generate the desired effect. Isaac Bonewits had it right when he wrote about separating the effect (say, an increase in body temperature to the point of immolation), the target (the intended person whose body temperature is being raised) and the goal (the target is eliminated from combat).

Lyndon Hardy wrote a trilogy of science fiction novels: Master of the Five Magics, Secret of the Sixth Magic and Riddle of the Seven Realms. In those novels, he created a solid metaphysical framework for magic, based on just seven laws - and established a metamagical principle that there could only ever be just seven laws.

These laws of magic may have been codified in the 1970s, but they are pretty much meant to be a universal system - whether a Shinto priest is evoking a kami to manifest and bless a crop, a houngan is invoking a loa to ride her like a horse, a vitki is projecting his soul outward in the form of a seagull, a lycanthrope drawn down the Moon to unleash the wolf that is her soul, or a scholarly mage inscribes a magic circle on the ground lined with the secret names of a demon drawn from a grimoire, they are creating conditions favourable to a specific outcome, and through the magician's Will (Magic Points in game terms) conspires to alter the probability of that outcome happening in the magician's favour.

I think that was what Isaac was trying to show, through his laws above, what the magicians of the world were trying to achieve - also, that magic does not depend on a Judeochristian or Greco-Roman framework, because the same principles applied to the magic of Shinto, Tantric, shamanic, Australian Aboriginal and other cultures, none of whom had ever been visited by the Romans.

 

[locarno24]

So you don't agree with Robert A. Heinlein's view that 'one man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering'?

This doesn't stop it - 'magic as science' means it should have rules. Following those rules - and knowing what they are - means it should be more likely to work.

Plus it leads to more roleplay. If someone is pointedly thinking "how am I going to cast X to make it most likely to work", then they'll describe it (in the hope of a bonus) and it may even lead to actual plans/quests/etc - the classic "get hold of a lock of person X's hair secretly before we go in to stomp them down publicly". Equally, it rewards quick thinking - the Law of Peversity is one I'd try and invoke if countering a spell - don't try and dispell it completely, that's hard and longwinded; make it go just wrong enough not to have a useful effect.

It makes a difference from the 'X-men' syndrome of 'point and click' magic energy beams.

 

[rust]

I have to admit that I very much prefer "unlawful", unpredictable
magic. My favourite magic system is animistic, where the shaman
does not work the magic himself, but has to ask and convince a
suitable spirit (ancestor, animal, nature ...) to help him in return
for some promise or reward, and the spirit then decides what form
the magic takes. Since the various spirits are individuals with very
different, but not well defined abilities, all the shaman can know
and expect is that something will happen, and that from a spirit's
point of view it is considered helpful.

For example, when the shaman asks for help for his starving tribe,
the result can be a whale beached on the coast, a small herd of
reindeer driven towards the tribe's camp by a pack of wolves, a
couple of dead geese falling from the sky, or whatever else fits in-
to the situation.

 

[alex_greene]

However achieved, even though the effect may take an unexpected form, it still falls into one or more of the above laws - the call to the spirit (evocation or invocation), use of sympathetic ties to provide an environment attractive for the spirit's manifestation (law of sympathy and contagion), use of the spirit's name or a sacred word (law of true names, law of words of power) ...

 

[Prime_Evil]

in the tradition established by Runequest, I believe that there is room for multiple mutually-exclusive interpretations of what magic is and how it works. A realm controlled by sorcerers in which rationalism is valued might formulate discrete "laws" of magic, whereas a theocratic state might find this approach blasphemous because magic is "obviously" a gift from the Gods. And a shaman might regard magic as the workngs of invisible spirits whose motivations are inscrutable. The trick is to allow these worldviews to coexist and to avoid preferencing one over the others.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

PrimeEvil, I agree with you in principle, but I think Alex also brings up a good point. Even though the three philosophies that you mentioned would result in three different ways to cast a spell, in the details there should be some common elements between all three versions of the spell.

Say for example, you want to cast a "light fire" spell to start a bunch of kindling on fire.

A Sorcerer would reach into his belt pouch, remove a pinch of ash from last night's fire and cast his spell.

A Divine spell caster would reach into his pouch, remove a ruby and ask his god to light the fire.

A Blood Magician would prick his finger and spill a drop of his blood onto a piece of coal that he carried.

VERY different spells; but at their heart, all three used "laws of magic". The Sorcerer and Blood magician used the Law of Contagion (what was on fire can cause other things to be on fire); while the Divine spell caster used the Law of Similarity (it looks like fire, so it can create fire).

A runecaster would use the Fire Rune (Law of Similarity). Using the other laws, different versions of the same spell could be created.

In my (still being developed) magical system, the basic laws are the law of Similarity and the law of Contagion. All other laws come from these two. ANY magic spell being cast by any magic user must use one of these two laws. Coming up with a way to use both laws creates a more complex spell that is more powerful or more likely to be cast.

More laws added means a more complex spell (more components or longer to cast), but makes the spell easier to cast (less MP) or more powerful. Those bonuses are decided by the player and GM together depending on the specifics involved.

Although I have to admit, I am working on NOT separating Divine spells and Sorcery Spells. They are two ways of doing the same thing. Also, in my setting, Divine magic and Spirit magic are the same thing but on different scales. Gods are simply VERY powerful spirits.