Science and Magic: How Do?

How do you introduce seemingly supernatural elements into a science-based campaign? Do you explain it by way of science, or do you just lol magic nao!

Any scientific explanation for magic is going to come off as forced and/or completely wrong 99% of the time.

I play Delta Green, and while computer and forensic science is handled with real-life research, the supernatural stuff is unexplained. Trying to explain that (unless it's coming from a skeptical NPC) just takes away from the terror

Magic is just administrator access.

The way I typically do it is that every given supernatural phenomenon operates by its own set of unbreakable rules, but that those rules do not have to be consistent with mundane physical laws. Every supernatural phenomenon is essentially its own system, and two cosmetically similar phenomena will not necessarily follow the same rules. One guy's pyrokinesis might allow him to generate and hold fuel-free fire in his hands and throw it, launch it or turn into a walking inferno, while another might only be able to set things on fire with their mind and has no control over what happens after.

Very slowly

Magic IS science, just not science for humans.

Look at the Laundry series. It has magic apps on phones, spontaneous magic, arcane magic, and darker powers. The trick is to define it. Is it a gadget for the protagonists? Then it should be clearly described in all its limitations and compromises. Is it an enemy weapon to overcome? Then its weakness must be laid out precisely. Is it a power beyond human control? Then the dangers in even noticing it must be illuminated.

The Laundry novels do all of this, and do it well. Charlie has a few short stories from the franchise up on his blog if you want to take a peek. Charge up your Tillinghast resonator, make sure your summoning grid is closed and powered, raise the thaumic resonance with a choral intonation from your iPod speakers, and have the right Dho-Na function ready in your mind to bind the external entity in case things go wrong. But don't overdo it or you will get Krantzberg Syndrome which is basically a magic self lobotomy.

These.

'Goes along with Clarke's definition of "technology sufficiently advanced...magic" etc. Nothing wrong with keeping a little mystery (OP's pic related) and it makes a good story.

This may not be the answer you wanted, but since the world I'm playing in is a Samurai Jack-type world where the Sauron rip-off won... Well... Most of the Spess Opera stuff like FTL and Laser Guns are explained away by scientists harnessing the power of magic to do ridiculous bullshit. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. The Spess Magic let not!Sauron conquer the not!Federation, but at the same time let humanity expand into the final frontier.

Of course, the Robots and genefixed clone slaves are still "light" science fiction.

>science-based campaign
What the fuck is a science based campaign?
Do you force the player to incrementally find out the game mechanics?
Are you playing a D&D wizard game where inventive rules lawyering is encouraged?

I don't think you know what the word means.

Read some transcendant\hallucinogenic litarature and use it to paint an extraordinari triplike scene for the first time characters sees true magick. Once is enouph to set thei imagination on fire. Look for the Doctor Strange trailer to see what i mean.

It means a setting with basis in the scientific world you faggot.

Science is teh magic explained. magic is the science that have not been explained. at any given time when science explain everything, magic won't exist anymore, just like IRL

So magic exists?

Because we sure as shit don't have an explanation for anything.

...

When it comes to the higher concepts of scientific theory do you immediately understand what it is being said?

When you look at super long math equations for high level math doesn't it sort of look like weird runes and scrawls of a wizard privy to such knowledge?

You don't have to go out of your way to explain everything thing in minute detail otherwise most science fiction settings would look more like text books.

If need be, just say that this magitech gadget works with [insert name here] principle and give a few details on how it works but not on what makes it work.

People seem to forget that making a campaign doesn't mean you have to bore your players by saying how arcane energy interacts with sub atomic particles to allow the wizard to fart fire and piss lightning.

Magic is allways stuff from beyond.

Ah, so we're going with that definition?

So any scientific discovery involving dimensional travel or whatever is magic?

Like any tech is magic, since magic is knowing procedures to change reality

So a setting that is internally consistent and can be explored through empiric methods?
I would have expected that this goes without saying, unless you are doing fae shit or Exalted or something.

Do you maybe mean technology-based setting?

>When you look at super long math equations for high level math doesn't it sort of look like weird runes and scrawls of a wizard privy to such knowledge?
I would use chemistry as an example instead, actually.
That shit lends itself really well to looking like magic, due to all of those schematic drawings that you use to visualize shit.
Like, have you had the naming schemes of alcohols in school? That's alchemist-like as shit.
Or most of the atomic models. Or electro-negativity and dipols and whatever the fuck.
It's what I expect magical theory to be like.

as in not fuckin' warlocks in wizards ya numbnuts

i think he means that literary mundane setting you see everyday from your window. And character suddenly discover magic. Its like WoD Mage, but OP actually asked about magick from nonmage point of view and those systems lack especially that.

Gonna second the Laundry Love.

>i think he means that literary mundane setting you see everyday from your window.
Oh, now I understand it.
I was genuinely confused.

I think the approach taken should depend on how the players relate to the entire thing.
If it's a horror thing that hunts them down, hints should support both mundane and magical origins.
If it's something to be fought, you can either make it magical if you want players to do research into the occult and shit or mundane if you want them to investigate the source of the threat and dismantle it in a more methodical way. (e.g. magical beings can be literally immune to anything but cold iron, while a mundane being would go down to enough fire even if cold iron was its weakness for some reason)
If it's an ally, factors such as infrastructure ("can I get one of these?" or "where does it get its energy?") and feasibility (spirit guidance makes more sense as a spirit or a mental illness than nanomachines, unless it's a sci-fi setting) would determine what would be the best basis.

tl;dr: Base it on the needs of the story.

>2000 years ago a comet was a omen of dissaster for magicians, epillepsy was a demonic influence and opening a corpse was necromancy
>Now they are explained as an astrological rock, a dissease and an autopsy
Do you understand now?

Just make it technology that's so far advanced from the setting of the story that the characters can't understand how it works.

Like the Shrike and the Void Which Binds from Hyperion.

You changed names. Magic still stays where it is.

Magic never existes technically

Use the magic to explain the science

Like psychic powers being the result of scientific experiments on magic (which actually exists in-universe)

I like how Destiny handles it. Of course, it mostly handles it by having be mysterious for the most part, hinting at possible mechanics and rules by which it operates but never quite elaborating on it in detail.

Also mostly it's metaphysics, philosophy, and weird fringe science and fantasy mixed up in a way that actually seems to produce a consistent and thematic narrative, even if there's a lot of questions unanswered and a lot of mysteries remaining around pretty much everything.

>technically
"science of craft", from Greek τέχνη, techne, "art, skill, cunning of hand"
>magic
1. the art of producing illusions as entertainment by the use of sleight of hand, deceptive devices, etc.; legerdemain; conjuring: to pull a rabbit out of a hat by magic.
2. the art of producing a desired effect or result through the use of incantation or various other techniques that presumably assure human control of supernatural agencies or the forces of nature.

Like the dictionary itself not completely agrees with you.

>Presumably
Here you go

As far as I'm concerned gravity IS magic. It's got its own set of rules that are sort of coherent, as long as you ignore that they don't make any sense and that they fall apart under scrutiny.

magic is rule lawyering the rules of the universe to do something abnormal

So the Elder Scrolls?

If gravity is magic, who are the wizards?

>If gravity is magic, who are the wizards?
the gods

Warframe actually does the same thing, having a great sense of mystery, especially in the fashion in which the power and semi-magic "Void," works.

Simple, alternate realities with alternative laws of physics. Allows to to precipitate magic appearing from an event.

Alternatively, pic related.

Not to mention they're both top-tier aesthetic-wise, even if they are perhaps lacking gameplay-wise.

When I bring the "supernatural" into a scifi setting I explain it as phenomena from alternate realities with divergent physical laws impinging on our reality. This disrupts physics and causes effects which defy normal physical laws.

>supernatural elements

Okay.

>in a science-based campaign

Ah.

Well, fortunately, we live in a science-based campaign IRL, so there's that part sorted - and then one day along comes magic? Hmmm. I guess I don't see the quandary.

"Magic" is the miracle of getting something for nothing, so once that becomes a thing, it'll shake-out like every whiz-bang new discovery: Scientists will burn Newton in effigy, wail and gnash their teeth, write a billion peer-reviewed theorems of no consequence, and then try to kill magic, sex it, eat it, break it, use it to cure MPB and ED or as a weapon. Meanwhile, us "flyover jagovs" will just be happy to leverage its overt properties without caring that we don't "understand" them.

Sounds like good times.