Last Free Human
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Whole Earth Grimoire
06-25-2014, 08:21 AM
I was curious as to where (if anywhere) there was more information on the Whole Earth Grimoire. Specifically I am wondering about authors, where it was published, what spells it contained, when it was first published, what the general reception of it was, etc. Anyone have any answers, suggestions or examples of what you have done in your own campaigns?
Thanks,
M
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From the outline for IST 25, in the "history" chapter:
CC The Mage-Age Revolution DD The Unified Theory of Magic released in 1996 C-BOX The Whole Earth Grimoire (1997) C-BOX The UTM and the Grand Unified Theory DD Practical and Research Theology, Theurgical Studies DD American government restricts magical research dramatically due to Evangelical Christian influence on the Buchanan administration; only the threat of
foreign magical attack prevents it from being
outlawed entirely.
There will also be coverage on it in the "Magic" chapter.
I will expand on this as space allows -- I have an unfortunate history of overwriting my books and I'll be trying very hard not to this time around -- but to answer your question in brief, the circumstances are very much like those I mention in Drunkard's Walk -- a coalition of physicists and mages across a number of universities who got tired of there being a thousand different ways to cast a light spell but no coherent explanation why, working for twenty-some years to uncover the real underpinnings of magic; I've not given any of them names yet. The contents of the Grimoire were intended to be the spells found in GURPS Magic for Third Edition. General reception was -- with the exception of America as noted above and probably the Vatican -- a mix of blase acceptance (from the man in the street, who's got more important things to be concerned with than egghead theories), general relief (on the part of scientists and parascientists who'd been dealing with magical types for decades already), hostility (from those mages who were certain that their way was The Truth, and from religions and political groups that didn't like magic), and cautious acceptance (from those mages who practiced "no true way" styles or who approached magic in more organized, methodical ways).
Legal changes had already been percolating since the first verifiable mages had appeared in the 1930s; the publication of the Grimoire accelerated legislative and judicial attempts to outlaw "black" and/or dangerous magics and regulate the rest. And by 2015 they still haven't thrashed out all the ramifications of sapient undead -- the three main ares of which I have classified in the outline as "Dead is dead", "Undead is not dead" and "Chicago voter registration".
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Bob Schroeck Wrote:The contents of the Grimoire were intended to be the spells found in GURPS Magic for Third Edition.
Is that going to change now that GURPS Magic incorporates so much of what, in Third Edition, was GURPS Grimoire material?
Quote:hostility (from those mages who were certain that their way was The Truth, and from religions and political groups that didn't like magic), and cautious acceptance (from those mages who practiced "no true way" styles or who approached magic in more organized, methodical ways).
I'm guessing Theodore "Necron" Klein falls into the latter category.
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Quote:Is that going to change now that GURPS Magic incorporates so much of what, in Third Edition, was GURPS Grimoire material?
Probably. I came up with the Whole Earth Grimoire when I wrote the 90s timeline, well before 4E was released. 4E changed a lot of my base assumptions, and I really don't know how I'm going to concisely get across the contents of the WEG yet.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Last Free Human
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Bob, Thanks for clearing up some of my confusion. I am wondering however what the publishers of the WEG would be able to leglly get away with. For public safety if nothing else, I would imagine it would be limited to "good" spells as "evil" or violent magic would, I would assume, be heavily regulated due to the danger inherent in magic. Magic is easily as dangerous as a gun (more so in that there are fewer methods for detecting a would-be garage wizard with a pocket full of flame spells than noticing that someone is holding a gun. I imagine it might be full of "useful" spells rather than potentially (or outright) dangerous ones. I realize that it is less dramatic for players than a book chock full of ice knives, fireballs and demon summoning XIII. Alternatively, it could be that the powers that be suppressed much of the original work and replaced it with a version with the more dangerous spells being "flawed", unworkable or simply more dangerous to the dumbass garage wizard trying to cast it than the general public.
For my own campaign I had the final book be the brainchild of a few doctoral students who were trying to codify magic and who succeeded in their doctoral theses which became the basis for what would become the WEG. Copies of the original theses and the first boutique print run eventually led to the collaborative efforts of theoretical thaumaturgists from all over the world. I was planning to simply use the Book Magic rules from Thaumatology. The workings witin the WEG have been subtly altered by agents of the Warehouse to keep the dangerous spells from being dangerous to anyone but themselves.
Cheers and thanks for taking the time to answer,
M
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Last Free Human Wrote:... For public safety if nothing else, I would imagine it would be limited to "good" spells as "evil" or violent magic would, I would assume, be heavily regulated due to the danger inherent in magic. ... There are very few spells which are unambiguously "good" or "evil," though.
Case 1: Somebody uses Create Food to fill someone else's lungs with food-paste, suffocating that person.
Case 2: Somebody uses Mind Control to "convince" a terrorist to not blow himself up in a crowded shopping mall.
Do these cases make Create Food "evil" and Mind Control "good" (contrary to the usual perception) or do they show the spells are only as moral or immoral as the people who use them?
Switching gears for a moment: Last Free Human Wrote:... the WEG ... West End Games?
--
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
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Rob has a good point -- consider, for instance, the importance of necromantic magic to healing magic. And as it was an academic effort, it is unlikely to have "controversial" spells censored, especially if they are in the prerequisite chain for less controversial magics, or if they are necessary to demonstrate particular principles.
And you raise, perhaps inadvertently, another good point with your mention of Thaumaturgy. Perhaps I should simply define the contents of the Grimoire simply as "a broad selection of spells or formulae suitable to beginner through mid-level practitioners of the magic system you have chosen to implement in your campaign".
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Last Free Human
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Bob does indeed have a good point. How wide is the circulation of the Whole Earth Grimoire? Can you buy a copy in your local Barnes and Noble? Is it kept locked up in University libraries like a post-modern Necronomicon? This brings up the next issue of how regulated is magic, magical practice and such?
M
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On p.71 of GURPS Fantasy, under the heading "The Control of Magic", Bill Stoddard provides a justifiable set of Legality Classes for magic, from 4 (healing; perception, knowledge, and communication; crop fertility and food production) down to 0 (gate spells; necromancy; large-scale destruction or mind-control or curses). Whether actual Krypton-1 case law has gotten to that point, or is still playing catch-up, we can work out as we go.
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I've always assumed that whatever precedents exist from 60-70 years of supers prior to the Grimoire's release would already apply to magic. Just because the underlying principles are better known doesn't make the law suddenly invalid or obsolete.
That said, though, I would be very hesitant to use those Legality Classes if only because then one could argue that similar classifications should apply to non-magical super powers. And that opens up a whole can of worms I'd rather not have to explore in detail.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Last Free Human
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I can see the United States going crazy about this legally. I would imagine it would be something akin to the way weapon control laws are handled here. Since magic can be acquired/learned where super powers tend to be (mostly) the result of genetics. Ugh.
How accessible is magic to the common man anyway? Is magic the result of Magical Aptitude or can anyone pick up a spellbook and through practice learn to break reality?
The take I use in my campaign was of the two-tiered variety; tier one was the magic that anyone with a little talent could pick up on from reading a spellbook. Kind of like really hard maths that require a certain mental state to produce effects from. Then there was tier two, where Alice falls through the mirror and into not-quite-your-daddy's Wonderland. The spots marked "here be monsters" where the real wizards and spooks play and who greatly resent having to clean up the messes made by the amateurs.
I like your solution to the Whole Earth Grimoire being the "whatever works for your campaign" I was going to go through and try to find the most useful and least upsetting spells to use for it, adapted to 20th and 21st century world views. Leaning towards the sort of spellbooks you can find in bookstores with all the baggage clipped loose and actual scientific rigor applied. I was also going to have lots of imitators and at least one version being the Anarchist's Cookbook of the modern age. If I can find the time I might write up some of its for my site.
M
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Last Free Human Wrote:I can see the United States going crazy about this legally. I would imagine it would be something akin to the way weapon control laws are handled here. Since magic can be acquired/learned where super powers tend to be (mostly) the result of genetics. Ugh.
It was really bad during the Buchanan administration, as noted on the outline, but for all the catching up the US did under the Catalano and Cruz administrations, I imagine it's still not good. On Krypton-1, as in OTL, the US may not be officially a Christian nation, but it's still very much a nation of Christians, particularly those Christians whose only sense of anything outside their faith is that it makes the Baby Jesus cry.
Quote:How accessible is magic to the common man anyway? Is magic the result of Magical Aptitude or can anyone pick up a spellbook and through practice learn to break reality?
The outline specifically states that Meeranar techno-magical devices don't require Magery to use, but presumably, spellcasting does, regardless of your magical system, unless you're in at least a high-mana zone. Infinite Worlds I.S.T. says the world is low-mana; the Kirby-2 article from Pyramid says normal-mana. I assume normal with variations from low to high.
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Follow the IST declaration -- as as has been pointed out elsewhere, "Kirby" doesn't seem to be exactly the same place as "canon" IST.
-- Bob
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...and my shoes began to squeak.
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The world in Infinite Worlds I.S.T. seems more like Kirby-2 than Krypton-1 to me, but yeah, as the "weirder" of the two, the Kirby line should probably have the higher mana level. In both worlds, more free-form mages, like Necron -- those who, built under the first edition of GURPS Supers, would've had "Magic Power" -- could use the Magical Powers Talent from p.159 of GURPS Fantasy.
(Speaking of Necron, I've thought for a while that the vignette for the "Magic" chapter should involve him muttering to the effect that he could've started the Mage Age a decade early if those fools at the University had only listened to him...)
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Heh. I like that.
-- Bob
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...and my shoes began to squeak.
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*bows* Thanks, chief. I've got other vignette ideas, but I think I'll start a new thread for them rather than derail this one any further. 
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