META: Magic in Fenspace

[robkelk]

If we're going to be 100% honest, it just "slipped in" when the Whole Fenspace Catalog had material on practical magic loaded into it back in 2013.

Well, the WFC also lists things that just don't work in Fenspace but do work elsewhere, and things that are obviously fictional...

So here's what the Soviets are doing with magic: they're doing good Soviet industrial stuff with it. The important thing to note here is that prior to breaking the locks on the magic section of the Catalog, Black Mesa (by which I mean "the Deehive") was working with a) there's this really interesting quantum field effect floating around, b) it seems to be tied to a number of interesting side-effects, c) so where does it come from, and how do we break it? What follows isn't so much a magical tradition as it is a ground-up research program on the nature of magical energy. The Soviets aren't developing spells or rituals - those are for mystics. They're looking at magic in the same way physicists look at electricity, with the same sort of end-goal modalities in mind. I don't know if any of that makes sense, but that's how the Soviet approach to magic works in my head.

If I'm understanding you correctly, the VVS is working on that "unified theory of magic" that Warriors' World has (or at least has a start on), but from first principles instead of from comparison of existing magical traditions... Nifty.

My opinion os that we should avoid making "real world" magic work, for one simple reason: It has never worked before. So I think all the mythical and folk magic traditions should have the same relation with "real" magic as, say, the Philosopher's stone to chemistry or the Four Humors to medicine: They may have some basis in truth, and be the eventual parents of the real thing, but are fundamentally flawed or outright supertitious theories.

Sounds good to me.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012