ForgotPassword?
Sign Up
Search this Topic:
Forum Jump
Posts: 12412
Member Since: 02/17/05
09/30/12 10:34 AM
HRogge wrote:Do they publish this results?
Rakhasa wrote:What worries me slightly is the political damage about all the secrecy, because it goes way too close to dystopism, ...
-- Rob Kelk "Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007
09/30/12 10:38 AM
Ace Dreamer wrote:Maybe the Wizards got hold of a Catgirling Machine, really early on, and adapted it to help them create all the 'magical creatures' that they want for their fandom? Then, found some of those creatures turned out to be a lot more magical than could be easily explained by handwavium and biomods?
Posts: 1598
Member Since: 01/12/11
09/30/12 10:42 AM
robkelk wrote:Do they publish this results? If they don't, then they're just like Noah Scott... who they broke relations with specifically because he didn't publish.
Do they publish this results?
Posts: 2328
Member Since: 09/25/02
09/30/12 11:43 AM
Fenspace Moderatorand Registered User
Posts: 3737
Member Since: 01/31/04
09/30/12 01:57 PM
Posts: 1004
Member Since: 05/06/03
09/30/12 03:23 PM
09/30/12 04:51 PM
M Fnord wrote:Do they publish this results? Naturally. It's not like they hold press conferences or anything - all that does is light up a big sign reading "I AM A CRACKPOT PLEASE IGNORE ME (EXCEPT FOR YOU, GULLIBLE AND SCIENCE-ILLITERATE MEDIA)"[1] - but the results of all their experiments and theorizing is written up and published in as many respectable journals as will take them. Which to be fair isn't many; Fen science is still looked upon with a bit of a gimlet eye by mundane scientists. But it is published, and people are replicating the results & confirming parts of Black Mesa mechanics.
10/01/12 07:11 AM
Posts: 2732
Member Since: 07/23/10
10/01/12 07:38 AM
10/01/12 08:21 AM
Ace Dreamer wrote:It might be worthwhile trying to make clear what sort of magic works in Fenspace.
Ace Dreamer wrote:Really fundamental magic, that lets you re-write the structure of reality, that trumps any 'natural laws'... I'm assuming that doesn't work in Fenspace. Or, if it does, Skuld didn't hand out any administrator passwords while she was visiting, that would let people tinker with the underlying (maybe purely information based?) structure of reality.
10/01/12 08:23 AM
Dartz wrote:What I want to know is... Can this magical field be blocked? Like a Magic(Quantum?) Faraday Cage?
10/01/12 09:56 AM
Posts: 256
Member Since: 05/08/12
10/01/12 10:58 AM
10/01/12 11:50 AM
10/01/12 11:53 AM
10/01/12 01:15 PM
10/01/12 01:26 PM
Posts: 24553
Member Since: 09/20/02
10/01/12 01:31 PM
Chief Screwball andLoon Wrangler
Ace Dreamer wrote:Historical magic would have no real solid theoretical basis, just loads of 'working rules', many of which might be useless, or worse than useless. But, here and there, there would be useful practices, such as use of meditation, emotional control, training a 'magic self', that sort of thing.
In case it's useful (and in case no one's quoted it in the remaining 2/3 of this thread that I have yet to read), here's the "Unified Theory of Magic" passage from chapter 2 of Drunkard's Walk VIII, which I believe is relevant to the matter at hand.Let me explain. Magic at its deepest, most basic level is a fundamental force of nature which can, when directed, change theway *other* fundamental aspects of space-time behave, includingthose which are loosely and fuzzily described as "spiritual".In order to direct this force, you need two things -- a genetictrait which allows you to perceive and manipulate that force, anda system which abstracts and organizes the process of using thatforce.
The trait is the magegift. It's like being born with eyes andhands for magic.
The system is something called a magical tradition. (Or a school of magic, or a style, or any of a dozen similar terms.) It is a combination of knowledge, skills, techniques, and shortcuts which allow a practitioner to manipulate mana and use it to accomplish certain tasks. A system always includes a model of what magic is and how it behaves, which defines what is and isn't possible with the methods available to that system. The model does not need to be "true" as long as it is internally consistent and maps somehow onto the lower-level reality of magic; different traditions can and do have mutually contradictory models, all of which work. It's sort of like how geocentric astronomy is nothing like reality, but still functions just fine for the purpose of navigation on both land and sea.
The catch is, while the model empowers you to do what it says ispossible, it also restricts you with what it says is *impossible*. Of course, the model can be changed, but until thetwentieth century this was a slow, trial-and-error process -- andeven if a revised model worked, sometimes there was a cultural orreligious context that would not allow it to be implemented. (For example: ask a Catholic exorcist what he thinks about grafting some Voudoun onto his bell-book-and-candle system to give it a bit more *ooomph*. Be prepared to run.)
Anyway, along about 1949 a small group of theoretical physicists scattered among several colleges along the East Coast of the United States started wondering *why* there were dozens -- hell, *hundreds* -- of different ways to do magic, and no two of them agreed on more than a couple axioms or principles. Working with some equally-curious mages from the same colleges and several different traditions, they figured out that no single magical system actually described the objective reality of magic -- they just provided toolkits to *use* that reality. With that breakthrough made, they began to work backwards from the various systems to figure out just *what* that objective reality actually *was*.
The result was the creation by 1974 of a Unified Theory of Magic. (Which turned out to be the missing chunk of the Grand Unified Theory that made the whole thing work, but that's neither here nor there at the moment.) The UTM by itself wasn't a magical system, but it described how magical systems *worked* from the ground up, and how they could be designed and implemented. And since no science can be done without mathematics, the UTM had an entire branch of math of its own -- along with a notation system that turned out to be very useful not only for quantifying systems, but also for defining magical techniques -- "spells" --in a system-neutral manner.
In the latest iteration of "The South Is Rising", the magic portions of the Catalogue are released to provide an edge against whatever unknown force transposed the Continental US with its counterparts from Turtledove's novel. In those passages it's mentioned that the requirement of the mage gift is very much at work in Fenspace -- not everyone can work magic. This will be just as applicable in mainline Fenspace as in this alternate,and gives us a "brake" of sorts to slow the adoption of magic into the setting to whatever speed we need. It doesn't matter what you find out with research -- if you don't have enough people with the genetic gift to use it, it's not going to upset the applecart.
10/01/12 01:33 PM
blackaeronaut wrote:... You know, once Ben gets wind of what Mal's doing at Black Mesa, I'm pretty sure his first reaction is to get Bob on the line and go, "I think they got the right idea, but maybe they could use some help. You wrote about this stuff, after all."
10/01/12 01:40 PM
Share This