I normally never read enworld, but lately they've had a number of threads about wizards casting in armor.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/246147-wizards-armour-collective-consciousness-6.html

 They had some highly educated examples:
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Malagigi/Maugris from the Legends of Roland/Charlemagne
Atlantes from Orlando Furioso

There are, of course, modern fiction examples:
Elric, Grey Mouser, Thulsa Doom, etc.

However, while reading the thread I realized that I was tremendously inspired by the legends and not at all inspired by the traditional pulp fantasy.  I don't care about Elric right now.  Malagigi, on the other hand, fills me with the urge to start a new campaign.

The thing about legendary magic is that it wasn't chopped up into divine vs. arcane, armor-wearing vs. non-armor-wearing.  It was not burdened with those particular Gygax-tastic tropes which have dominated a *lot* of games, both on the tabletop and on computers.

Since my GURPS Steampunk is going nowhere, I'm thinking of putting it on hold and doing GURPS Thaumatology as a campaign basis instead.  The idea would be to get as much "legend" feel as possible.

I'd *like* to get medieval/Renaissance history-of-magic in there as well, but of course historical occultists sometimes led very boring lives compared to Ray Harryhausen stars.  Giordano Bruno getting arrested for heresy, compared to Sinbad sword-fighting animated skeletons ... it's kind of hard for me to bridge that gap.

Edit:
For example, in many pre-modern cities, many educated and middle-class men were allowed to wear swords.  Anyone who picked up a sword might be able to use it, and so when one reads of Giordano Bruno wearing a sword to walk the streets, it's primarily asserting that he was not lower-class.  It's not saying that he got into a lot of sword-fights.  Furthermore, old grimoires often either depict the magician holding a ritual sword or else demand that he must have several swords -- so swords are not exactly alien to legendary accounts of magical training.  Of course Gygax didn't read any grimoires that I'm aware of.

Another example: The Count of St. Germain was claimed (by C.W. Leadbeater) to wear a suit of golden chain mail for certain occult rituals.  This is not quite a legend of the count fighting battles in chain mail, but it's a pleasant break from Gygaxian D&D-isms.

Suggestions are welcome, especially on literary and historical sources that show enchantment as part of ordinary life.

I'm not sure what exactly your goal is, here. Are you trying to make your wizards less Gygaxian; are you trying to make your wizards more historically accurate; are you trying to make them closer to how they're depicted in a certain selection of literary sources which probably doesn't make them historically accurate at all; or just what?

It's hard to offer any meaningful insight without knowing what you're exactly trying to achieve; but as far as historical wizards are concerned, I don't think they would make very viable adventurers, at least not in a D&D-ish dungeoncrawling kind of way. Now, I'm not really familiar with European medieval and renaissance wizardry, but I did study a bit of Arabic magic at university, which in turn borrows many things from ancient Greek thaumaturgy.

And, well, most of these spells are by and large rather slow. At the very quickest, you need to perform some symbolic act of purification and segregation, then do some handiwork creating a mixture of components or embroidering something in a napkin and chant or say something. The slower ones involve long chants, waiting for the proper time of night and going out into the countryside, or leaving the offerings in the room for a day. These kinds of spells do not exactly lend themselves to casting in the middle of a heated battle.

Of course, you might still be able to use them for a different kind of roleplaying campaign, like Ars Magica does.

Gerald of Wales Journey to Wales is a good starting point. He mixes in 'real life' observations of 12th century wales with plenty of folk lore and myth that show enchantment as part of ordinary life. It doesn't discuss people doing magic but has lots about faeries, curses and saints and shows how belief in the supernatural formed an integral part of everyday belief in the world.  

For that matter I would think most of the hagiographies would be useful as one of their purposes is to show how the subject's inherent holiness creates miracles around them. The lesser and more historical saints are probably better as the writers had to really struggle to put a magical spin on real life events (one of St Anselm's miracles has something to do with rabbits).

Any book about medieval medicine would also do you I think. Astrology, belief in humours and sympathetic magic formed a core part of the high middle ages canon of medicine along with herbalism. Although they tries to place it within a framework of reason (heavily influenced by Galen and Arabic writers), there is lots of everyday enchantment there as well.

There's the Malleus Maleficium as well, although again thats the lurid imaginations of what magicians are supposed to get up to rather than their own reports.

I'm a big fan of the Gygax-isms myself, but appreciate what you want to do. I agree with Premier about historical European magic - it's time consuming and involves carefully prepared rituals. You could try going the route of say, Call of Cthulhu, with fewer, more powerful spells (with far more unsettling restrictions than just armor) or the Fantasy Wargaming route with a focus on alchemical formulae and astrological magic which may only work 'when the stars are right'.

If you want rapid-fire spellslinging, try looking at a few non-European sources. The divisions between magic users and non-magic users is much blurrier, and the magic itself is usually done quickly and with a lot of flash.

1,001 Arabian Nights (Middle Eastern)
Mahabarata/Ramayana (Indian)
Romance of the Three Kingdoms/Journey to the West (Chinese)

For a more modern take on the fighting magician, look for Lin Carter's novel Kellory the Magician, a tale of a swordswinging, chainmail wearing, spell-slinging badass.

Finally, the computer role-playing game Darklands (available as abandonware around the net) is set in medieval Germany, and has a very interesting magic system involving alchemy, saints, and astrology.

I recall, as a teen, reading 1st edition Chivalry & Sorcery and being impressed with the magical model the authors pursued.  My recollection isn't good enough to comment on its authenticity now, but I do recall the Demonologist character class (or was it Necromancer?) that was described in loving detail as holing up in a secluded tower for months at a time, performing research that was dreadfully easy to interrupt, and performing elaborate and intricate invocations that were even easier to interrupt.  Frankly, it was all a little unplayable, but I'd love to have another look at it a couple and a half decades on.

Kellri's suggestion of adopting Call of Cthulhu magic to your game is a good one.  While not 100% authentic (after all, unlike in the real world, this magic really works), it shies decidedly away from the flash-boom school of magical casting and at least tries for verisimilitude (with, of course, the exception that it really works in the game).  You might also check out the Nephilim core book, and its counter-supplement Liber Ka, both of which can be had on the cheap, and both of which detail a more ceremony-dependent and condition-influenced style of magic.  Arguments will be made for and against the authenticity of either book, but if it's a workable model you're looking for, I'd suggest either.

!i!

The Savage worlds of Soloman Kane also has a nice ritual based magic system, which is rather simple and flexible.

I've read a bit on mainly late classical magic. Curses, luck, and mind bending along the lines of love spells were the most common. Location often mattered - for example a curse tablet against the opposing chariot team might have to be buried under the track. A curse or charm might have to be hidden under the bed.
 
Various kinds of astrology/prediction/portents were common too.  
 
Arcana Mundi by Georg Luck has quite a few translations of original sources.

Oh, yeah, and if you're doing steampunk you better check out Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John novels. Back-country ritual magician who's not afraid to use a gun.

The book Fantasy Wargaming, already mentioned, had a lengthy discussion of role-playing in a more medieval-like society, including magic. From memory there were different magical traditions for different social classes and religions. The group that were most like role-playing wizards were upper-class Christians. They were believed to be devil-worshippers, but they themselves believed their magic came from God, and their rituals involved various kinds of purification (wearing unsullied white garments for example).

Quote from: Premier;271419I'm not sure what exactly your goal is, here. Are you trying to make your wizards less Gygaxian; are you trying to make your wizards more historically accurate; are you trying to make them closer to how they're depicted in a certain selection of literary sources which probably doesn't make them historically accurate at all; or just what?

... These kinds of spells do not exactly lend themselves to casting in the middle of a heated battle.

I should have been more specific.  I had several purposes:
1) Typical fan-boy gushing about how much I love these sources;
2) An appeal for people to share their favorite sources (which several folks have already kindly done);
3) A reflection on how Gygaxisms are pervasive and how to design a game without them.

You mentioned "casting spells in the heat of battle."  Definitely, most people did not do magic as such in battle -- they didn't even pray with long, elaborate ceremonies in battle.  A quick "Deus Lo Volte" might make the cut, but anything longer didn't get chanted, for the most part.

However, people definitely had battle frenzies, and some of them interpreted those experiences mystically.  Likewise, if one takes psionics to be rooted in fact, any warrior who had a quick, inexplicable intuition that he must dodge a danger he couldn't see is having an in-battle psionic experience.

I guess that I should make a list of Gygaxisms:
1) Wizards are self-contained, fragile artillery pieces;
2) Wizards do not wear armor/armor causes spell failure;
3) Arcane magic cannot do any kind of healing effect;
4) Magic runs on energy (rather than being a nonlocal effect);
5) Magic spells are easily seen and noticed, like comic-book superhero stuff;
6) Magic is a special class ability and ordinary folks can't do it;
7) The dynamics of magic don't lead to a worldview;

I bet there are more.

The first three are game-focused, IMHO.  But (4), (5), and (6) make me wonder how many comic books Gygax had to read in order to turn traditional legends of magic inside out.

The legends of magic don't seem to be highly constrained by energy, ammunition, and similar modern ideas.  Magic has an infinite amount of force.  The limits are that one must be purified of mundane concerns, one must concentrate one's mind, and possibly the external (e.g. astrological) factors must be right, etc.   This notion was appropriate for humans living in a world that felt dominated by natural forces far beyond human control -- e.g. the seasons, the motions of the stars, etc.  Doing magic was a utilization of cosmic force for many ancient philosophers.  (Of course, beliefs about magic were highly diverse.  Not everyone was a Hermetic Monist.)

Gygaxism (4) implies that external circumstances short of an "anti-magic field" or armor on the wizard are irrelevant, but the internal limit of whether the wizard has enough spell slots is very important.  This Gygaxism turns magic inside out for me.  Magic is no longer cosmic or monistic, but rather another specific chunk of a world.

(5) drives me crazy.  The whole reason magic was special was that it was almost always invisible.  People saw unexplained things and they didn't know -- is this magic or not?  Is my son sick because he just got sick, or is he sick because a witch cursed him?  Does the old, abandoned house feel creepy because I'm a scaredy cat or because I'm sensing a ghost I can't quite see?  

This leads into (6), the fact that most people believed they could infer the presence of magic even if they weren't wizards. This way that ordinary people felt that they could almost sense magic,that magic words were always on the tip of the tongue, but not quite conscious -- this is a defining aspect of magic for me.


Many thanks for the references suggested so far!  I will try to gather them into a list and check them systematically.  Many of the cited references are familiar to me, such as Arcana Mundi and Fantasy Wargaming.  Some sources, such as Journey to Wales, I have not encountered before.

Quote from: Ian Absentia;271446Kellri's suggestion of adopting Call of Cthulhu magic to your game is a good one.  While not 100% authentic (after all, unlike in the real world, this magic really works), it shies decidedly away from the flash-boom school of magical casting and at least tries for verisimilitude (with, of course, the exception that it really works in the game).  You might also check out the Nephilim core book, and its counter-supplement Liber Ka, both of which can be had on the cheap, and both of which detail a more ceremony-dependent and condition-influenced style of magic.  Arguments will be made for and against the authenticity of either book, but if it's a workable model you're looking for, I'd suggest either.

!i!

Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, I ran a lot of Call of Cthulhu.  In retrospect, I shouldn't have; while I love Lovecraft, and I love the BRP framework, I really hate Call of Cthulhu.  Unfortunately it took a few years of pain for me to stop the cycle of problems.

I love Nephilim.  It's not suitable for my current group, but I might be getting a new group.

The key difference between Nephilim and anything put out by White Wolf is that the creators of Nephilim (seem to have) loved occultism and (seem to have) respected occultists, whereas White Wolf seemed to hate occultism and seemed to feel contempt for occultists.  Ironically, some former White Wolf writers are scraping by, making ends meet by selling articles to occult magazines.  

Anyway,IMHO, Nephilim does a much-better-than-average job of getting the feel of occultism into gameplay.  I could look up a few specific examples -- I think the feast of the Dying God is an effect that might have been inspired by some real-life occult orgies.  Of course, in the TRPG, the magic can't be disrupted by outside interruptions, and in real life occult orgies are quite vulnerable to police raids.

Quote from: riprock;2715975) Magic spells are easily seen and noticed, like comic-book superhero stuff;

Charm Plants
Clairaudience
Clairvoyance
Clone
Comprehend Languages
Confusion
Contact Other Plane
Distance Distortion
Erase
ESP
Extension
Feign Death
Fools Gold
Forget
Fumble
Glassee
Hold Portal
Infravision
Knock
Legend Lore
Locate Object
Magic Jar
Massmorph
Mending
Permanency
Polymorph Self, Other, Any Object
Push
Remove Curse
Shape Change
Sleep
Suggestion
Tenser's Floating Disc
Trap the Soul
Unseen Servant
Ventriloquism
Water Breathing
Wizard Lock
Write

Ars Magica, and Harnmaster Magic are two that attempt to have a more medieval feel to their magic. Ars Magica in particular has tried to encompass the full range of folklore and history in their rules and supplements.

Quote from: StormBringer;271602Charm Plants
Clairaudience
Clairvoyance
Clone
Comprehend Languages
Confusion
Contact Other Plane
Distance Distortion
Erase
ESP
Extension
Feign Death
Fools Gold
Forget
Fumble
Glassee
Hold Portal
Infravision
Knock
Legend Lore
Locate Object
Magic Jar
Massmorph
Mending
Permanency
Polymorph Self, Other, Any Object
Push
Remove Curse
Shape Change
Sleep
Suggestion
Tenser's Floating Disc
Trap the Soul
Unseen Servant
Ventriloquism
Water Breathing
Wizard Lock
Write

All of those are spells which are more atmospheric and less comic-book-y.  So if you intended them as counter-examples, point well taken.

I know they didn't get a lot of play in most actual play situations I've seen -- the big winners were magic missile, invisibility, fireball, fly.

Quote from: estar;271620Ars Magica, and Harnmaster Magic are two that attempt to have a more medieval feel to their magic. Ars Magica in particular has tried to encompass the full range of folklore and history in their rules and supplements.

I've never played Harnmaster: that magic looked a lot like Andre Norton/Leigh Brackett/Jack Vance psionics.  That's a compliment, by the way.

Ars Magica, in its original edition, definitely got a lot of medieval atmosphere into the game.  I'm not entirely crazy about that game, but it definitely warrants praise.