Paganism and Diegetic Magic
A couple things really bothered me about D&D. Quite a few things, really. But today I wanted to talk about just a couple things. Two, to be specific.
The first, and very obvious to me even when I was new to role-playing was that magic did not feel very magical. "I cast Fireball" does not evoke a mysterious and dangerous power. A world where your average wizard PC will learn enchantment spells from level one seems completely incongruous to a world where an evil cult is sacrificing virgins to diabolical forces in exchange for those same spells. If all they needed was to be level one for the exact same power, the evil plot seems completely unnecessary.
You may not have this issue. Or you may propose any of many solutions I might have already heard for me to solve this. This is just my preference. I want magic to be inherently mysterious, wondrous, dangerous, possibly evil.
The next issue is that I vastly prefer character development to happen during the course of the game, as opposed to during character generation. For some people, that's a lot of fun. But it is not for me. It's so much more exciting to discover your character during play and have them grow and change throughout.
An idea that really gripped me that would address both of these issues was the idea of a multitude of small gods that grant divine favors.
Originally, I wanted to make a bronze-age era setting for this, but I have become increasingly enchanted by the landscape of prehispanic mesoamerica.
Now consider the possibilities - Instead of selecting "Wizard" when rolling up a character and choosing "Detect Magic", you instead travel to the sacred temple of the moon goddess, swear your fealty, and offer her the entrails of a hare - and then you can call on the moonlight to reveal the true nature of a creature thereafter - as long as you do not consort with the gods of fog.
There are so many benefits to this type of setting.
- This encourages character development and adventure in a very organic way
- The characters by necessity would need to become tangled up in the affairs, agendas, and messy relationships of the gods.
- Spells that would normally be bypassed on optimizer forums might get their chance to shine if for example your characters happen to be in the neighborhood of deity that would grant it, but are unable to find a god that would give them fireball powers, if one even exists.
The benefits are not exclusive to Spellcaster players.
Characters more inclined to fight with traditional weapons might find opportunities to have death's blessing on their dagger, or become an eagle warrior in the service of the Lord of Eagles. Possibly even steal the spear that belongs to the rain gods.
I'm sure this isn't the right kind of system for all players, but for me it solves my two issues outlined above.
Magic that must be discovered is inherently more mysterious than spells that can be read from the rulebook. Discovering your magic during the game instead of during chargen invites your character to grow and change during play.
I'd love to know if there are any existing systems that do this sort of thing, and hear the experiences of people who may have played them, including if they ran into any issues they didn't anticipate.