CCC game - now Magic and genre discussion

[KathTheDragon]

Someone might as well submit a dragon

I'm working on something not quite unlike dragons.

[Torco]

Someone might as well submit a dragon

I'm working on something not quite unlike dragons.

quod erat demostrandum xD
so what good would that be if fire they pat were to... I don't know... sort of taper into smoke near other species ? toothless cosmetic magic is worse magic, if you ask me... <though no magic is even better! >

[KathTheDragon]

These ones won't breathe fire. They don't fly either, and could probably be summed up as scaley spaient seals. Kinda.

[Pressed Bunson]

I'm working on something not quite unlike dragons.

so what good would that be if fire they pat were to... I don't know... sort of taper into smoke near other species ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_beetle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpheidae

[Torco]

acid-spewing komodos sounds p cool

[CatDoom]

Zompist's suggestion is interesting, but I have some misgivings about the idea of magic not working in a racially integrated society.

What if magic is tied to race, and therefore something you can't teach to members of another race, but otherwise it functions consistently? We could limit the scope of magical power, so that each race has something more akin to a small collection of magical "talents" that don't necessarily give them any more of an advantage over other races than would, say, great physical strength or superior visual acuity, but do make them potentially useful to other races that don't have the same abilities.

That way, magic in the setting could potentially be a force contributing racial harmony, rather than xenophobia and isolation. The orthohumans might think the frog people are kind of disgusting, but those water diviners are really handy to have around!

[ol bofosh]

That way, magic in the setting could potentially be a force contributing racial harmony, rather than xenophobia and isolation. The orthohumans might think the frog people are kind of disgusting, but those water diviners are really handy to have around!

I think the magic abilities that are appearing are working more or less like that, each one with their own speciality that can contribute something to others (yay, water diviners!). It'll be like X-Men where each mutant (or race in this case) offer something different.

I'm not sure if there's any need for the "powers are weakened/neutralised around high concentrations of other species", since there's nothing drastically competitive (possibly shapeshifting). I'll go through it again and see what we have so far.

Edit:
amphibimorphs, nightpeople and batti have fairly innofensive abilities (nightpeople may have "more natural ability" than magic). Kuson could be fairly innoffensive, depending on what they can do (everyone's got moderate magic, only some have more). Ksinesir shapeshifting/melting into shadow could be unfair, but some species have better senses of smell and hearing, which could compensate vision. Golems might get some powerful magic through their "engineering", but it has similar limits to our use of technology (whatever devices they use might be used by others).

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

Zompist's suggestion is interesting, but I have some misgivings about the idea of magic not working in a racially integrated society.

What if magic is tied to race, and therefore something you can't teach to members of another race, but otherwise it functions consistently? We could limit the scope of magical power, so that each race has something more akin to a small collection of magical "talents" that don't necessarily give them any more of an advantage over other races than would, say, great physical strength or superior visual acuity, but do make them potentially useful to other races that don't have the same abilities.

That way, magic in the setting could potentially be a force contributing racial harmony, rather than xenophobia and isolation. The orthohumans might think the frog people are kind of disgusting, but those water diviners are really handy to have around!

There will still be racism, what if the other races simply veiw them as something only useful for water divining, they wouldn't consider them as equals or people, they might even enslave them. Maybe the ambimorphs are trickster that decieve the others will false locations, maybe the other races might believe to be this and mistrust them.

It might be too human to say there will always be discrimination for as long as there are flaws.

[CatDoom]

I didn't say there wouldn't still be discrimination or slavery or any of the other unpleasant things that are facts of life in the real world. But if having other races around makes your magic not work, there would be a strong motivation not only to discriminate against other species, but to work to eradicate them entirely. Considering that magic is likely to play a big role in the development of religion, other races might be seen as literal demons opposing the will of God/gods/the spirits/natural law/what have you.

[Salmoneus]

This focus on competitive edges and balancing strikes me as odd: its not like we're playing civilization; some species are going to become extinct <or marginalized> and one or two will become dominant, were those not the parameters of the game? since what species wins and which ones lose is going to be determined by people voting on which ones they prefer it doesn't matter how strongly magical, or how strongly anything they are: voting's our source of balance.

Also, when people keep to their own kind and don't mix up with other races, magic happens. but when different kids mix then the magic is gone. Mages can only operate, thus, in racially pure environments =/
Why not just have magic, if we have magic? there's nothing wrong with different kinds using magic in conflicts with each other, way I see it, plus magic is not the only ability these guys are going to differ: If I get around to it I'm submitting 3,5 metre-tall hominids, whom even without magic would be pretty scary people. Someone might as well submit a dragon: I think that the choice of how much magic and what kind of magic should be more about the kind of setting do we want, as opposed to making sure no species uses their magic to dominate the entire world: after all, one species using their magic to dominate the entire world is a perfectly valid choice, isn't it [considering that we seem to be not bent towards godlike magic anyway] ? I mean I don't fancy the notion of a world dominated by magic, but I certainly prefer it to one where magic is just cosmetic.

This part of Torco's post is quite correct.

[Torco]

I'm not sure if there's any need for the "powers are weakened/neutralised around high concentrations of other species", since there's nothing drastically competitive (possibly shapeshifting). I'll go through it again and see what we have so far.

so if someone wrote in, say, squid able to mind-control other sentient races through drug-secreting tentacles... there'd be a need for it ?

[zompist]

Torco is right that the actual competition is provided by voting. In part this is a game, and that's the mechanism for advancing the game and the story.

At the same time, it's supposed to be a conworld, which is a form of collaborative storytelling. And in such things, like improv or tabletop D&D, it tends to go best when players don't have an arbitrary, non-story advantage.

So, if the treants can throw acorns, and the goblins can throw nuclear fireballs, well, in roleplaying terms, that's godmodding. Overwhelming force very quickly becomes a boring story-- that's why superheroes may start by fighting muggers, but end up fighting supervillains.*

Plus, once we get to the empire stage and there's an actual vote between the treants and the goblins to see which one becomes the empire, maybe the treants win. At that point their creators should cooperate with a story on how that happened. The nuclear fireballs would make this more challenging (though perhaps not impossible).

I'm not married to the idea of magic being linked to species; it's just a way to avoid godmodding, which is against the spirit of the game.

* And yes, I know there are exceptions. But they require pretty advanced narrative skills. (However, it can be interesting to have a character, or in this case a species, that's less capable than everyone else. You can certainly try that if you want.)

[Lyhoko Leaci]

But do any of the species so far even have godmodding powers? At least from what I've seen the abilities are pretty basic (stuff to keep their bodies warm+breathing help; the ability to find water and possibly predict the weather; limited travel to or through another world; some form of shapeshifting or hiding in the shadows; more hiding; limited divination)

Depending on just how much control over these powers they have some might be a bit problematic, but there's nothing that I can see that would cause a group to be able to just completely take over. (The only really powerful thing I can see would be the golems, but their powers are more granted by technology/magitech, and need to be created first, the golems themselves don't seem to have any significant powers on their own other than the fact that they are golems.)

I think we should just wait until the species selection is done and voted on, and then decide then whether there should be any added limitations to anyone's magic for fairness.

[ol bofosh]

I think since this is a collborative project, godmodding isn't really an option. If one person or their creation starts dominating everthing then the whole collaborative thing has gone out the window, and we'll be witnesses to someone's solipsitic fantasy, not collaborators. That's seems quite a deterant to me.

I don't know how the rest of this will work, but the voting seems to be a good mechanism to keep this balanced.

[zompist]

Lyhoko speaks words of wisdom. I don't think anyone's pulled out the nuclear fireballs, so we don't really need to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

[Torco]

I think since this is a collborative project, godmodding isn't really an option. If one person or their creation starts dominating everthing then the whole collaborative thing has gone out the window, and we'll be witnesses to someone's solipsitic fantasy, not collaborators. That's seems quite a deterant to me.

I don't know how the rest of this will work, but the voting seems to be a good mechanism to keep this balanced.

I disagree: again, this is not a game of Civ: if bofoshsapients happen to become the dominant species of the world, then we can all make bofoshsapient cultures. and if zomp's culture becomes dominant, we all can still make subcultures, or political factions, or terrorist splinter empires, or ideologies within that culture. and so on and so on. I hope this doesn't become a wholly parcelated thing.

[ol bofosh]

I think since this is a collborative project, godmodding isn't really an option. If one person or their creation starts dominating everthing then the whole collaborative thing has gone out the window, and we'll be witnesses to someone's solipsitic fantasy, not collaborators. That's seems quite a deterant to me.

I don't know how the rest of this will work, but the voting seems to be a good mechanism to keep this balanced.

I disagree: again, this is not a game of Civ: if bofoshsapients happen to become the dominant species of the world, then we can all make bofoshsapient cultures. and if zomp's culture becomes dominant, we all can still make subcultures, or political factions, or terrorist splinter empires, or ideologies within that culture. and so on and so on. I hope this doesn't become a wholly parcelated thing.

That was the detail I missed out. Again, the voting is a good system for this.

[Salmoneus]

Not sure where's best to put this, so I'll try here.

Out of curiosity, I compared electoral methods on the Continent competition.

Using the Borda Count, I got the ranking: Lyra, Torco, Ars Lande, Salmoneus, CatDoom, Matrix, Qiqqit, Lyhoko
Whereas if we'd stuck with the original system of simple plurality, we'd have had: Lyra, Torco, CatDoom, then De Graut Bur, Ars Lande, Matrix and Salmoneus all tied together, with ObsequiousNewt in eight.

Lyra and Torco had a lead so big that every reasonable method I tried gave those two in first and second, but after that there can be some variation. As you can see, under SP CatDoom would move up a bit, but the big changes are DGB and Newt replacing Qiqqit and Lyhoko. Plus a result with a great big tie in the middle.

Another thing I tried was a blanket approval vote, taking presence on a ballot as approval. That gave the same top four as Borda, but put Qiqqit and HandsomeRob tied in fifth place, and a three-way tie of CatDoom, Lyhoko and Matrix following them.

That's a noticeable improvement for Qiqqit, and a massive one for Rob, who didn't appear in the top eight on either Borda or SP. CatDoom meanwhile plumits from third on SP to only just hanging on on approval.

Then I tried an average ranking system. Here, I took not voting as "disapprove", voting someone third, fourth or fifth as 'neutral', and voting someone first or second as "approve". I gave disapproval a 0, neutral a 1 and approve a 2, and then took the average score for each candidate.
You'd think this would give a similar result to the yes/no approval vote, but actually it gave: the same top four as Borda/Approval; but then Lyhoko and Qiqqit tied; and HandsomeRob, CatDoom and Matrix all tied. In other words, Lyhoko and Handsome Rob swap places.

Finally, I did a fairly basic STV (Droop, Gregory, passing winning candidates in reallocation). As expected, Lyra and Torco passed quota instantly. Ars Lande followed in third, but Matrix beat me to fourth, with me in fifth (although I was only 0.05 of a vote away from third place, darnit...), and then Lyhoko, CatDoom and Qiqqit. STV isn't really reliable in terms of ranked results, but I also did an STV with only four winners, and it matched the top four in the eight-winner round, with me in fifth narrowly missing out (and excluding/reallocating the votes of those four for a second four-winner round it matched the order of the next four too).

So, the votes were too clear to change the winner and runner up. But other people changed their places a lot more:
Ars was third, except that he'd be tied for fourth-to-seventh under SP.
CatDoom was third under SP, but fifth under Borda, and fighting for a top eight place in all the others.
Lyhoko was tied fifth under average ranking, sixth under STV, and otherwise barely in it.
Qiqqit was tied fifth in two rankings, but outside the top eight in SP
HandsomeRob was tied fifth in one ranking, but outside the top eight in all of SP, Borda and STV.