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Post by Sigmaleph on Jan 22, 2011 13:04:02 GMT -5
Hurray.
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Post by kristine on Jan 22, 2011 16:51:05 GMT -5
is it too late to jump in on this? can someone summarize what you have so far?
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Post by John E on Jan 22, 2011 18:50:31 GMT -5
is it too late to jump in on this? can someone summarize what you have so far? Setting is Earth, early 20th century. We're still deciding whether to go with real world names for countries (America, England, Japan, etc.) or to make up new names. Humans, elves and dwarves live in this world. There will probably be djinn, but we haven't decided what they're like/what their nature is yet. There also MIGHT be dragons, but it hasn't been decided, and maybe other sapient races, but if so, they'd be rare. Magic exists, and we're working out the specifics on the wiki. Definitely not too late to get involved, as we're still working most of it out. You can join in the discussion here and/or on the wiki.
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Post by CtraK on Jan 25, 2011 17:38:42 GMT -5
is it too late to jump in on this? can someone summarize what you have so far? It is never too late, although the later anyone does, the fewer decisions they get to make, on account of this linear-flow-of-time thing that's frustrating everybody all the time. John E's summary is fair enough, although for more depth, see the wiki (linked to both in my sig as "Shifting World wiki" and a couple of pages back on this thread). To clarify a couple of things: "early 20th century" means technology and politics up to 1930s standards, which is probably less primitive than it seems, if approached with enough creativity. The vote is 4-1 in favour of new countries, and if that continues, then I'm calling shotgun on a quasi-American one called Vespun Usonia. Or a part of it, at least.
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Post by John E on Jan 25, 2011 21:50:35 GMT -5
New proposal for the djinn, expanding on Yla's concept: (mirrored from the wiki)
A living person is a trinity of body, mind and soul. When a person dies, the body ceases to function, the mind dissipates into the aether, and the soul passes on to the afterlife.
Sometimes, when a death is particularly traumatic or the individual particularly mad, the soul gets trapped on Earth, unable to pass on. This is a ghost, a disembodied spirit with no sapience per se, just pure emotion. Ghosts are usually invisible and have little or no ability to affect the world physically. They can affect people on an emotional level.
Some mages are able to anchor their souls AND minds to this world when they die (mechanism to be determined) and thus become djinn. A djinni is basically a sapient ghost, and because it's a mage, it can interact with the world physically, via magic. They are usually invisible though, and when they appear, they are transparent/not quite there. As a rule of thumb, the older a djinni is, the more powerful it is.
This raises the possibility (in my mind, anyway) of a body without a soul and/or without a mind. Zombies? Vampires? Zoned out slave-people?
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Post by John E on Jan 26, 2011 12:39:15 GMT -5
I have a three-fold proposal regarding races: (mirrored from the wiki)
1. Dwarves originate in northern Europe and in modern times are most common in Scandinavia.
2. Elves originate in eastern Europe / western Asia and in modern times are most common in those regions and northern Asia.
3. To avoid being too Euro-centric, I think we should add one more race, something based on east Asian mythology/folklore, that will have originated and will be most common there. I'm not very knowledgeable of eastern mythology, so I have no idea what race that would be.
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Jan 26, 2011 12:44:18 GMT -5
There's Kami, from Shintoism. Kind of their equivalent of the fair folk, but not really. We could also do something based on those crazy-ass Hindu gods.
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Post by CtraK on Jan 26, 2011 17:41:06 GMT -5
As I mentioned on the wiki*:
So I thought about this and I reckon I have a system, which I'm posting here for reasons of length. Essentially, it's that all creatures have a combination of the following types of bodies, minds and souls.
Bodies: Water, Earth, Fire, Wood, Metal or none. - based on the Wu Xing, or "Five Phases"; not exactly five elements (I subsequently did the research on this), but the close-enough equivalent in ancient Chinese thought.
Minds: Judging-biased, Perception-biased or none - based on Jung's Psychological Types, published in 1921 (i.e. the era we're broadly emulating in scientific terms). Note that the two biases respectively cover "thinking and feeling" and "sensation and intuition", and they're biases, not fixed modes, so characterisation is not rendered unnecessarily simple.
Souls: Logos (mind, nous, or reason), Thymos (emotion, or spiritedness, or masculine), Eros (appetitive, or desire, or feminine) or none. - again, these are biases. I understand that the whole mind-body-soul conception is an ancient Greek one (it might predate it, but I'm familiar with it from there) so it only seemed appropriate to take a Platonic conception of the soul.
E.g. a djinn would have a fire-based body, a judgement-biased mind and possibly a thymos-biased soul.
Overall, this allows for 72 possible combinations. Naturally, we are probably not coming up with 72 kinds of sapient creature, which is why this model would also have to ringfence "natural" and "unnatural" combinations, with unnatural ones only possible through a mage self-transforming.
*just so no-one's looking through this thread for it.
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Post by Sigmaleph on Jan 26, 2011 20:34:17 GMT -5
Ruling out [none, none, none] should be fairly trivial, so that's only 71!
Calling anything within [X, none, Y] (i.e. no mind) sapient is probably right out, as well. So it's 48 potential kinds of sapients.
But anyway. The idea sounds appealing, but I'm not sure I fully understand it. What would humans fall under, for example?
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Post by CtraK on Jan 27, 2011 5:02:55 GMT -5
What would humans fall under, for example? Earth, Perception and Eros is my judgement, because as FSTDT should attest, humans usually have to let their reason overcome their subconscious prejudice, not the other way around.
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Post by Yla on Jan 27, 2011 7:18:51 GMT -5
And what would the dwarves be then, if not the same?
I'm not too thrilled by the system, to be honest, especially by the mysticism (in case of the body).
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Post by CtraK on Jan 27, 2011 19:20:22 GMT -5
And what would the dwarves be then, if not the same? Earth, Judgement, Thymos. I'm slightly stuck on the Mind area, and judged it on the fact that Dwarves are often depicted as craftsmen and would hence be more analytical. I also understand, unless this is just second-hand Tolkeinism, that female Dwarves are usually very masculine, which makes a more masculine soul overall a logical choice. I'm not too thrilled by the system, to be honest, especially by the mysticism (in case of the body). I question the consistency of this objection when we're apparently affirming the existence of bona fide souls, but correct me if I've got this wrong.
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Post by John E on Jan 28, 2011 2:08:37 GMT -5
I find the system appealing, but I'm not sure it's right for this project, for two reasons.
First, because for the system to make sense to use, there would have to be a lot of different races. Not the full 48 or 71, necessarily, but at least enough to take advantage of all the options in each category, and that would be a lot more than the half-dozen or fewer number that seems to be the consensus. Then again, it might work if most of the races were very rare, and there were only a few that were very common.
Second, the magic system we've got so far is pretty grounded, limited and realistic (as realistic as magic can be), and beings made of living fire or water don't seem to jibe with that.
I'm willing to be convinced, but at the moment, it doesn't feel like it fits with the rest of what we've got so far.
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Post by Yla on Jan 28, 2011 4:34:27 GMT -5
I question the consistency of this objection when we're apparently affirming the existence of bona fide souls, but correct me if I've got this wrong. ... that's something completely different...
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Post by CtraK on Jan 29, 2011 10:27:28 GMT -5
I find the system appealing, but I'm not sure it's right for this project, for two reasons. First, because for the system to make sense to use, there would have to be a lot of different races. Not the full 48 or 71, necessarily, but at least enough to take advantage of all the options in each category, and that would be a lot more than the half-dozen or fewer number that seems to be the consensus. Then again, it might work if most of the races were very rare, and there were only a few that were very common. Well the idea is to divide those 48 combinations into "natural", "unnatural" (i.e. can only be created by mages transfiguring themselves) and "impossible" (i.e. cannot happen regardless, as Sigma pointed out with the three "none"s option). The system doesn't allow for anything like 48 naturally-occurring races, and assuming we divide up the chart very, very liberally in their favour, it still most likely won't give mages more than two dozen options for self-transforming. The natural realm could essentially be expanded to about a dozen with hybrids and one-off genetic accidents, but these latter categories don't have to common at all. Anything with a metal or wood body, or none at all, will almost certainly fall under unnatural or impossible. If it's fire-based, it'll be the djinn, the aos si or some other part of that meta-race (we're limited to eight sub-cultures, hybirds and one-offs, and if we don't use all of them then the unused ones are probably impossible). If it's earth-based, it'll be humans, elves or dwarves (which could well mean that most of the other five options will fall under "impossible"). If it's water-based it might well be a Chinese dragon (other seven options potentially impossible). Second, the magic system we've got so far is pretty grounded, limited and realistic (as realistic as magic can be), and beings made of living fire or water don't seem to jibe with that. Like I said to Yla (or at least implied), there isn't 100% realism when we're dealing with a mind-body-soul tripartite system. I should also point out that, as far as I can see, this doesn't take anything away from the existing system; mages will still have to have the knowledge to give themselves metal bodies, for example. And really, the reason for this is to ground and limit the magic and races, by making sure that there are only x possibilities for races and y possibilities for mages.
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