Magic sucks. Games based around cyberware, technology, space travel, or any combinatino thereof are superior.
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Magic sucks. Games based around cyberware, technology, space travel, or any combinatino thereof are superior.
>magic sucks. Technology sufficiently fictional as to be indistinguishable from magic is superior
Yeah, cyberpunk doesn't have magic, sure
I fricking hate how that game turned hacking into cheap magic shit
Then why does every game "without magic" make technology function like magic?
Because actually explaining the technology requires level us understanding that 99% of people in the hobby are incapable of.
>highly concentrated fissile salts dissolved in water are pumped through mediator gubbins that ensure they don’t go critical to rocket’s thruster where tehy go critical, energy released by the the chain reaction is absorbed by the solvent which is pushed out of the thruster at MAXIMUM VELOCITY. This makes the rocket GO.
Good enough?
good enough o prove my point
mana from my hands make flames go BBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
haha 😀
Hit button and spaceship go WHOOSH.
Pull trigger and gun go BOOM.
Wear helmet or lungs go CRUMPLE.
Because technology already functions like magic.
This thing the size of a fingernail can contain the text of more books than you could read in a lifetime, yet if you crack it open, it just seems to have a little piece of tinfoil and some dust. Moreover, only a handful of people alive actually understand how it works in sufficient detail to make one from scratch without reading instructions. If that doesn't sound like magic, I don't know what does.
t. Gay and has no friends
you like describing yourselff, right?
It’s almost like… humans aren’t satisfied with nature and the tools of paradise they’ve been given… and magic is only what they deem it to be… dishonestly… disrespectfully… everything is magic and yet nothing is…
“That’s not magic, THIS is Magic!”
Humans are a garbage species. Tolkien was right.
t. Also gay with no friends
Dude, it's just written in really small text. Nothing magical about that.
>Magic sucks
YOU suck
Hahah when the wizard passes the vibe check
How is that game now? I heard they fixed all the bugs.
>WE GONNA KILL THE CHUPACABRA TONIGHT
>WE GONNA KILL THE CHUPACABRA TONIGHT
>WE GONNA KILL THE CHUPACABRA TONIGHT
>KILL THE CHUPACABRA
>KILL THE CHUPACABRA TONIGHT
What about games based around cyberware, technology, space travel AND magic?
I hate sci-fi tech-magic when it’s not really based on speculative technology that could be invented, but some bullshit that could never happen
Additionally most space games include psionics which is essentially space game magic
How do you feel about Mass Effect?
All those things are improved with the inclusion of magic. For example, without magic you can't go faster than the speed of light.
Mass Effect is explicitly space psionics with some handwavium about dark matter in there.
ME is one of those "we have one free bullshit tech to hang everything off" but I rather like it.
Character can see in the dark from magic
>Cringe
Character can see in the dark due to his oversized sunglasses
>Cringe
Invent more magic replacement science fiction gadgets and keep lying to yourself.
Why not both?
>Why not both?
With lots of racism and bigotry thrown into a Corp run world.
>High Tech
>Low Life
>Like, wake the dog up Scoob, we got a scooby-snack to earn
Frick, that reminds me, gotta get a game together for spooky month.
>pic
Greatest thing I've seen on /tg/ this week.
Do morons really?
>Magic sucks. Games based around cybermagic, techmagic, space magic, or any combinatino thereof are superior.
Okay, so what are some good TTRPGs that use cybernetics instead opf magic?
Occult tech and alien/eldritch understanding is indistinguishable from magic tho: it is all arcane/esoteric
A mad scientist is the modern/futuristic rendition of the sorcerer
This. This board doesn’t fricking know what magic is anymore.
You’re gay and boring and likely have no friends
A computer is a series of metal slabs with arcane runes engraved onto it that allows you to connect to a place that is nowhere and everywhere at once, writing messages of light.
Technology is magic.
Give me a good cyberpunk setting with good lore. Just one.
GURPS Transhuman Space.
It's more believable that Elves exist and the government is just keeping them a secret than it is that FTL travel is physically possible. Simply put given the age of the universe and its size, if it were possible someone would've figured it out a billion years ago, and the geometric expansion of such an empire would have long since been at minimum visibly noticeable in the galaxy around us. Dyson spheres should be flying up all over the place, there should be evidence of reaction mass exhaust in the solar system, etc.
Ergo, there's really nothing to recommend science fiction from the perspective of realism, as it's all wishful thinking. Fantasy, at least, is highly honest about being fantasy, it's got an authenticity to it that you really only see in the most serious of science fiction, and magic reflects this, fulfilling essentially the same role of Technology without the ludicrous proposition that it might someday be possible.
So what it really comes down to is aesthetics, and aesthetic preferences are sadly subjective.
>makes bold statement
>hinges it all on our shaky calculations of the universe’s age
Sorry broski, but those elves are just a fantasy
>magic sucks because... IT JUST DOES OKAY?!
moronic thread. provide an argument as to why magic isn't fun in games or frick off.
[Personal opinion] touted as a factual statement is not an interesting thread topic and never will be. That being said, the correct answer is both. I prefer the classical D&D fantasy approach of starting off in a magical low-tech setting and slowly introducing more sci-fi elements to the players as they go.
I don't like Shadowrun though because it feels like Cyberpunk with magic lazily stapled ontop. I'd rather have technology that feels otherwordly because technological advancement was influenced by the existence of magic.
I disagree. Technology imposes limits, magic is limitless. The manner in which game systems sidestep the limits of technology usually results in dumb wtf moments and items that Just Work™. This breaks immersion. It's much easier to suspend disbelief in a fantasy setting and therefore it is superior.
>Nooo not the heckin magic I want the heckin combinatino
Fantasy is prefered in he west because the west is collapsing from not being able to get any more imperial spoils from Africa anymore and they corncob themselves into the past while yelling about how based and tradcath and other homosexual shit they are.
Magic is cool because it’s whatever
What the frick even is magic. This is the problem with magic. Everyone keeps trying to come up with principled systems that let you do magic in consistent, well-explained ways. But magic that's so dull as to be explainable with experiments is indistinguishable from science.
Think about the word wizard. Wise-ard, like drunkard or dullard, someone who's habitually wise. Or think about herbalists and chemists and healers. Phármakon, drug, it's used in ancient greek epics to mean drug, poison, spell, ritual things you do with plants (ultimately it comes from a verb meaning "to cut (at the root)"). Have you ever read old medieval recipes? The times to cook things are often delineated in hymns or prayers. Cook for some number of Our Fathers. This is common especially in medical manuals. It's hidden knowledge which even the practitioner might fail to explain. "It came to me in a dream". Magic is a catch-all for the results of knowledge and ritual which you can't explain. A spellcaster is someone who knows all this stuff. It's why they're mistrusted, someone who makes their power on knowledge is fundamentally dishonest.
>setting has magic
>magic cannot interact with the physical world (so no fireballs, no levitation, etc.)
>just have stuff like sense auras, commune with dead, etc.
>magíc users also have high chance of having a mental illness
So, any magic user is somewhat crazy and none of their abilities can be measured by scientific instruments, thus it's just as likely they're simply crazy people making shit up.
Not terrible! The trick is to remember that for premodern people, basically all knowledge is like this. The scientific method is simple enough to derive but the accumulated knowledge that you and I have access to in books, teachers, the internet, etc just doesn't exist at all. To them the ability to fix kidney stones is roughly as supernatural as the ability to speak with the dead. It's all spectacle and ritual.
Magic users are weird people. Maybe your wizards can do fireballs. There's a weird old man who reeks because he carries around bat guano. What he does it with it to make it explode is unknown. He talks for hours on end and then goes silent for days. His method is eminently reasonable and people love hearing him but it makes no sense to them. He tried to explain to the cleric (an intelligent, well-read man) how to make those vials full of sulfur and some strange bits of rock but it was lost on him. They came upon a locked tomb and the thief struggled with the lock for more than an hour before the wizard disassembled it in under a minute. How did he do that? Maybe in a past life he was a thief or a locksmith. He never mentioned it before. He points out passages in the colossal book he keeps wrapped in blankets and skins and they are written in a scrawl that only he can read and even then only up close.
Magic is just knowledge. Normal, mundane knowledge. But because no one can read (and those that do do so fairly slowly and often aloud, as if possessed) and institutions are bad at passing down knowledge, knowledge is very rare. Magic users are people who know things.
In case anyone wonders, the other magic user words:
Sorcerer: Latin "fortune-teller"
Druid: druwits, "tree-knower", someone who knows about nature
Warlock: Wǣrloga, "liar" or "oathbreaker", eventually got used to mean "satanist", apostate, someone who'd broken their vows to Christ
I have thechnology everyehere in my life. It's boring and sucks and smells of smoke and cancerogenic food.
Magic is nice and divine and I encounter it very, VERY rarely irl so i choose it every time.
Running Call of Cthulhu right now. It's hard to disagree with your individual points even if I disagree with your overarching direction.
>Magic sucks
Yep.
>Cyberware
Real scary and real cool.
>Technology
Real scary and real cool.
>space travel
Real scary and real cool.
I disagree, but you are entitled to your opinion since I am not playing at your table anyway.
Cyberware is just a magic item system.
Then why is every trpg about them so boring?