When did you realise reducing magic to dice rolls and number calculations removes all of the magical aspects of it...

Neither of those are convincing. Dice rolls model processes too unknowable or too arcane to explicitly design rules for. If anything, they're the superior choice by your logic.

Don't see what your point is here.

What's wrong with being opposed to the idea of melee not being reduced to dice rolls?

I would make an argument that melee is an actual physical thing in real life, empiricism can be applied to it, whereas the same cannot be said for magic, so therefore attempting to simulate it in such a way isn't as bad, it just needs to be done well (which it usually isn't).

Except like I said, it reduces it to numbers. The whole problem here is attempting to model magic. My solution is to not do that, then you have truly magical magic.

Well no you should have to gather your god dam material components fuck the component pouch.

Op is a faggot though.

So your argument is that the only acceptable tabletop games are pure abstraction, like checkers? Otherwise, you are reducing the subject being modeled to numbers, which loses some essential part of the genuine experience. Only a game which models nothing loses nothing.

That is correct.

A story driven fantasy game should purely be freeform storytelling, the dice rolls impede it.

You know traditionally magic does have defined cause and effect.

Its incredibly dificult to refute your argument because you have no argumentto begin with.

I like to throw fireballs.

Certain Tabletop games and videogames let me play a guy who can shoot fireballs.

>OP: "YOU'RE HAVING BADWRONGFUN BECAUSE I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I WANT BUT YOUR THING SUCKS!"

And fuck chess, too, amirite? It reduces the chaos of the battlefield to a cold, calculating ritual. IT'S SHIT

>freeform

The problem with roleplayers these days is that they can't handle a little abstraction. Yeah, you want to do a cool flip over that wall and land on a guy while stabbing him? Sure, just roll dex+combat modifier, since that's an appropriate metric for the skills you'd use in real life to do that sort of thing.

Traditionally magic has been seen as a mysterious thought, and people didn't attempt to understand how it functioned.

You'd see the effect of it, and perhaps would might trigger it (for example speaking and incantation or something like that) but the rest of it is up to the gods, or satan, or whatever you're gaining your magical power from.
Keep your mindless power-fantasies then, I for one want fantasy to go somewhere.
Chess is so abstract it isn't reducing anything, and you could possibly argue that cold detachment of it all is saying something about military commanders.

*force not thought

>Chess is so abstract it isn't reducing anything, and you could possibly argue that cold detachment of it all is saying something about military commanders.

Sure, but then you'd have to admit that a tabletop game could include magic as long as it the game wasn't well-grounded in simulationism, and did its magic in a way that made an artistic statement about the subject. Are you sure you want to allow that?

My point is that magic is inherently at odds with knowing how it functions (dice rolls) since it takes away a certain level of mystery that isn't neccessary for it to be magic.

You could include it in a tabletop game, but not mechanically. It would have to be purely a story element.

I sympathize with your argument, OP, but you're making a piss-poor case for it.

All RPGs are models. All models reduce reality/concepts to numbers. It's an inherent part of the process and without it you don't have anything more than a story. People who want to play a game, or want to have a cooperative story where people aren't just shouting random things at each other, need models and rules. Numbers are always a consequence of that.

Now what you should be arguing is that magic in RPGs needs more randomness, less cause-and-effect empiricism. But not in every case, since there are there many schools of magic in the real work that were essentially proto-sciences, with discrete rules, numbers and models for how magic was to be cast (hermeticism, alchemy, even voodoun).

The key difference is that while science is a system for explaining everything (and testing it, refining it, rejecting it, a meta-system basically), different magic types are conflicting systems of thought that are hidden (hence, hermetic and esoteric) from common knowledge. So in order to be more mysterious, magic has to be "more hidden". Down to an individual level if need be.

>Traditionally magic has been seen as a mysterious thought, and people didn't attempt to understand how it functioned
You mean they did not work to understand the underlying principles.
Because that is false.

And if you mean they did not try and study it and learn to use it thats even more false.

I think you dont know what it is you want you are just spewing irrelevant bullshit because you decided you wanted magic to exist in the world rather then as spells.

Which is a perfectly valid desire for a setting but your logic or attempt at logic is bullshit.

After some thought, I think that what OP might mean is that RPGs could be greatly improved by having magic users that don't 100% know how magic works.

The best way to do this would be to just have the DM take care of it all, but that would probably slog the game down a lot. Maybe there's like a secret DM forum somewhere where new DMs can learn how magic works and old ones can teach and come up with new theories and rules. But hey, I'm no game designer and I know this idea is shit.

There didn't use to be anything magical about magic, alchemy and so on. Follow the script, thing happens. If not, well, nothing ever really goes to plan.

The magical and mysterious bits were simply that no one understood any aspect of the world all that well back then. Everything was mysterious.

Then as we started to figure out the bits of the world that have the most direct impact on our daily lives, we've discovered that some of the old shit was correct, and some of it was pants on head retarded. The latter we call magic, superstition, and so on.

But this is a distinction we make.

Back in the day there was no such difference between honing your sword, asking the Holy Virgin to put in a good word for you, and writing the abracadabra triangle on the blade (or some such, I'm not bothering to see which particular things may have been popular at the same place and time). They would all have been well known, complementary and widely practised methods of bringing about the same result, that is victory in battle.

I guess the most obvious example of magic and science going hand in hand, and then splitting up when people started making note of what worked measurably and with reproducibility is chemistry as we know it taking off from alchemy.

The hardon for mystery comes into play when you either don't like what reality is, or when you can't be arsed to put in the work to understand the scientific explanation, preferring instead a great mishmash where there's no right but what you feel should be right, and no one can thus tell you that you're flat out wrong. (Until you try a flight potion as an alternative to a parachute, and the ground decides to terminally veto your ideas.)

>You could include it in a tabletop game, but not mechanically. It would have to be purely a story element.

So you want the players to decide the exact affect of there spells instead of the gm and even decide if they sucedd in casting.

Leaving aside how inherently retarded that is your shit about mysteriousness and whatnot does not even connect in a logical way to this desire.

If you look at how magic is depicted within mythology, it is not some kind of science or logical practice that can be comprehended. It's source is usually something extremely abstract and often beyond human, such as a divine being.

Due to this nature of it being beyond human understanding on a technical level, breaking it down into dice rolls does give you an understanding of it, thus chipping away at it's magical nature.

I'm not against spells, I'm against a direct technical understanding of magic. Slicing up three frogs and whispering three magical words to put a curse on someone is not at odds with magic. Rolling a dice and hoping for a twenty is.

Someone should decide what their magic spells do, as long as it fits within the narrative, tone and theme of the story.

If you can't trust your players to be responsible and good for the story, why are you playing with them?

It might also be that op has a hardon for wild magic like the guy who wrote complete arcane.

> Magic for low to moderate level casters = numbers and calculations
> Magic for masters of magic and powerful magical beings = plot device/do whatever the fuck you want button

Do it differently and you're doing it wrong.

>Melee draws from the cultures and techniques of whatever culture it's a part of
>Dice rolls break it down into something resembling an extremely crude science.

Trying to make science of melee, with varying degrees of success, can be culturally appropriate.

You are such a faggot holy shit

>If you look at how magic is depicted within mythology, it is not some kind of science or logical practice that can be comprehended. It's source is usually something extremely abstract and often beyond human, such as a divine being.
Yes correct
>Due to this nature of it being beyond human understanding on a technical level, breaking it down into dice rolls does give you an understanding of it, thus chipping away at it's magical nature.
These things dont lead into one another

>I'm not against spells, I'm against a direct technical understanding of magic. Slicing up three frogs and whispering three magical words to put a curse on someone is not at odds with magic. Rolling a dice and hoping for a twenty is
You dont understand that the d20 roll represents your success at said frog cutting your not just thinking and it happens.

So what you want is more material, somantic and verbal components.

I dont get to say this often but

HAVE YOU TRIED PLAYING D&D

I don't play tabletop, precisely because of the problems I'm describing.

At least vidya can mask it to an extent.

The dice rolls give you an example of what dictates magical success and how it relates to your characters ability. How is this not giving you a technical understanding of it?

The effect of the frog-cutting should come from how well it would serve the themes and plot, not from a dice roll. A dice roll would cheapen the curse, whereas leaving it to whatever bizarre forces you are placing your trust into keeps the illusion of magic.

>If you look at how magic is depicted within mythology, it is not some kind of science or logical practice that can be comprehended. It's source is usually something extremely abstract and often beyond human, such as a divine being.

They depicted everythign like that. Day and night? Two divine chariots race around the world carrying the sun and moon. The smith made a good sword? He was good both at hammering and mumbling incantations. Earthquake flattened the village? Someone didn't suck up to the gods properly. magic was just another skill, or part of a range of skills and crafts.

Then they made those gods extremely human and understandable (they're assholes, that's about it). So much for that mystery.

>I don't play tabletop
>The effect of the frog-cutting should come from how well it would serve the themes and plot

>Slicing up three frogs and whispering three magical words to put a curse on someone is not at odds with magic. Rolling a dice and hoping for a twenty is.

Okay, OP. I want to make the Emperor's head explode. I burn three incense sticks and a black goat's head, then pour milk on it. His head explodes, right?

Why or why not? Who decides? How do they decide?

Are you basically arguing for arbitrary GM fiat? How is a newb GM supposed to adjudicate all this mysterious shit?

i think making a system with that kind of magic-"mechanic" would make it broken enough to not be usable by PCs at all.

i mean, let's start by looking at how you deal with magic mechanicly if you remove any of the rules that are supposed to deal with this.

also, good bait thread.

These mundane elements are giving magical and divine properties. Magic should both be relatable to the individual, yet also mysterious enough to seem beyond the individual. Deifying things like smithing support this.
I'm simply trying to help people who also like fantasy make better settings.
Decide beforehand who might decide on that, and place trust in that you are playing with that they'll make a choice that contributes to the plot.

If the story time threads are to be believed I doubt 50% or more of the people on this board play any /tg

So go freeform then. No dice to worry about. Of course, that does put you at the mercy of whatever bizarre forces you are placing your trust into, aka the DM. Throwing Empress Fortuna's polygonal bones for a reading may prove preferable, even if they have a tendency to speak clearly.

>I don't play tabletop
Then why are you trying to tell us how to play it?

>I'm simply trying to help people who also like fantasy make better settings.
You clearly dont know what you are talking about then because almost every game has the sort of stuff you are describing underneath the dice rolls.

I dont think i have ever played an rpg without at least material components to the magic.

You're playing it wrong, that's why. Video games and tabletop have a large influence on fantasy, whether you like it or not, and I want fantasy to flourish.

You're not interested in playing tabletop and no one is going to put your austistic bullshit into action. This his thread isn't Veeky Forums related take your shit to

>Decide beforehand who might decide on that, and place trust in that you are playing with that they'll make a choice that contributes to the plot.

>decide how?
You're just shifting the decision process further away.

But let's say you assign Bob as the judge of whether spells work. So if I want to make the Emperor's head explode, Bob now tells me (Mike) that I can't. So Bob has now taken all agency away from me and is basically playing my character. Everyone's character, in fact, if everyone wants to do magic.

>contributes to the plot

Fuck you, making the Emperor's head contributes to the plot! Why is Bob making my decisions for me?!?

>the dice rolls impede it
Confirmed to not know what he's talking about. And only have played/read shit games.
The thread should have stopped there.

Man, until you busted that one out, I almost believed you. Good work.

>But let's say you assign Bob as the judge of whether spells work. So if I want to make the Emperor's head explode, Bob now tells me (Mike) that I can't. So Bob has now taken all agency away from me and is basically playing my character. Everyone's character, in fact, if everyone wants to do magic.
Well here you hit one road block with placing someone in charge of something, you can get decisions you don't like.

Regardless, it doesn't take your agency away. You chose to do the spell, and the spell failed. You can't control the forces of the world to get your way all the time, and this isn't even covering that you don't need to dedicate your character to only casting bizarre satanic spells.

Nah ops a faggot but i would not call him Veeky Forums
>I'm simply trying to help people who also like fantasy make better settings
Alright yeah you were right completly fucking Veeky Forums those guys will flip there lid if you so much as put an elf in a city they hate diversity in a genre.

I'm not baiting. Maybe you aren't playing it wrong, but I think it's a detrimental way of playing and keeps fantasy as schlock.

>You can't control the forces of the world to get your way all the time
Yes exactly thats what the fucking dice are for.
I get that you want a person to decide to make the story work better but you also seem to want randomness you cannot have both.

Oh wow you really are Veeky Forums
It sickens me that the book board which should probably be the most mature board on Veeky Forums is so fucking stuckup.

I once made a thread to talk about how much a book fell apart towards the end and all the responses were basicly just waaaaah this book mixs genres and has a funny title.

>You can't control the forces of the world to get your way all the time
Then why does Bob get to control them? Who decides?

You haven't answered the question. Your proposal is incredibly impractical and silly and doesn't solve any of the problems of how to decide effects and resolve competing claims.

You're either baiting, or profoundly ignorant about games.

>Then why does Bob get to control them? Who decides?
Because you placed your trust in him? If you don't trust Bob, don't hand power over to him.

If my proposal is impractical, than tabletop games are impractical for good magic, and thus should focus on other things instead.
But like I said, the dice reduce the mystery of magic.

Please leave

>But like I said, the dice reduce the mystery of magic.
And bob reduces the mystery of magic far more.

>I'm not baiting.

Oh yes you are. Now fuck off.

>2016
>Doesn't know about Wonders & Wickedness or Talislanta 4e or you know, any game that isn't D&D 3.X or later.

Well don't give him that power then, give it someone who can keep the mystery.

I honestly think op really is enough of a pretentious cum guzzling faggot to be serious here.
Which makes it even more impressive that he managed to make Veeky Forums auctualy mad which is a hard thing to do.

What fucking mystery.
Your basicly turning the game into a colective writing exercise every time somebody casts a spell.

>Which makes it even more impressive that he managed to make Veeky Forums auctualy mad which is a hard thing to do.
Whenever I seem to post my opinion on here it seems to rile Veeky Forums up. I guess they just don't like things against the hivemind? I don't know.
And? I'd argue that writing and human feelings are more compelling and hold more mystery than rolling a dice.

You are aware that this board is about games right? Games need rules or "mechanics" to function. The rules either come from a book, some poorly balanced homebrew nonsense, or dm fiat. It's not like the rulebooks go into the specifics of how any of it works under the hood; they just explain what is possible within the setting and how the outcomes are determined. The dice simply emulate the random nature of the setting.

I guess I don't get what your point is. It seems like you'd like a game that lets you do literally anything you want, which is already possible if you find a willing DM and group, but good luck with that.

The dice are the greatest mystery there is you faggot
Veeky Forums is incredibly willing to try all sorts of things your thing is just phenominaly fucking stupid.
What could be more mysterious then the possibly of random failure at the whim of chance.

If you want to write a story with people then fucking do that dont try and wrap it up in some horrible coruption of an rpg

>I guess they just don't like things against the hivemind?

No, we just have a hard time with pretentious, arrogant assholes.

You can have a game, even a fantasy game, without magic if you insist on dice-rolling dictating everything.

I would argue that non-dice rolley magic is compatible with a standard dice-rolling game, you just need to restrict how players can use it.

>Veeky Forums is incredibly willing to try all sorts of things your thing is just phenominaly fucking stupid.
Except it isn't. They're more interested in ironing out technical details rather than meaning, metaphor or symbolism behind fantasy.

How are dice mysterious? They are an incredibly mundane item which is easily comprehended and understood by human beings. When I played warhammer, I didn't view it as a mysterious implement. I viewed them simply as my road to victory, or loss.

>you just need to restrict how players can use it.
You want a system that has a more abstract act of casting magic and you tell your dm what you want to do.
That is fine but all those systems will still involve a fucking die

>That is fine but all those systems will still involve a fucking die
Why? I'm saying that it doesn't need that. Not only does it not need that, it's a detriment to the magic.

>When I played warhammer, I didn't view it as a mysterious implement. I viewed them simply as my road to victory, or loss.

That is a flaw in your perception of the world. Fix it.

>Decide beforehand who might decide on that, and place trust in that you are playing with that they'll make a choice that contributes to the plot.
"No, you can't make the Emperor head's explode, he's crucial to my story!
-Fuck you man, I wanted to be an asshole anarchist wizard, not listen to your semi-historicak fanfic. I told you last week."

>They're more interested in ironing out technical details rather than meaning, metaphor or symbolism behind fantasy.
There is a thread right fucking now about abstract mimics
We have near constant discusions on morality.

>That is a flaw in your perception of the world. Fix it.
Not an argument
How is this a flaw with what I'm saying?
This is a flaw with the people you are playing with.

>it's a detriment to the magic.
You've yet to explain how, except for bullshit 'muh feelings' subjective arguments.

>You've yet to explain how, except for bullshit 'muh feelings' subjective arguments.
The only bullshit here is what you just said.
All arguments when talking about fantasy are going to be subjective, and literally all arguments are rooted in feelings.
Worldbuilding threads are people talking about the rivers being right and the geography making sense.
Armour threads are about the armour being practical and making sense.

Veeky Forums is riddled with a technical view of fantasy

We're not talking about fantasy you stupid nigger, we're talking about game mechanics.

OP seems to be incredibly confused.

He claims in mythology magic was more mysterious. That's because usually in mythology the magic is used by something that is beyond human, like a spirit or god.

Every magical human institution has rules, rituals, cause and effect, whether with ingredients or with a power. We don't get to use the mysterious magic, we are bound to the material in our understanding.

What you want is absurd fairytale bullshit magic.

He sure seems fond of bullshit.

>ma symbolism.
When you try and put symbolism in every little thing symbolism becomes meaningless.

I hate to break this to you, but you're really coming across as a troll. Rolling dice to determine outcomes is fine, stats for health, strength, constitution, charisma are all fine, but magic is special and can't be reduced to numbers because you think it negatively impacts the fantasy genre as a whole. Where are you getting these ideas? What makes you think D&D has a greater impact on fantasy authors than vice versa? Tolkien wasn't thinking about a table top role playing game when he wrote LoTR.

You've already said you don't enjoy or play tabletop games and that you're posting on the traditional gaming board to proselytize about the harm these games do to the fantasy genre. I'll give you some advice. Stop trying to convince people that you're views are more important than others without even having an explicit well thought out argument with sources and don't expect a type of game that's been around for decades because you complained about it online anonymously. That sort of thing is just going to agrevate people and has no chance of changing anyone's mind. You should seek out a group that is interested in fantasy, improv, and role playing. That's what you're describing. People collectively decide the ground rules and people are free to operate within them. No dice or rulebooks required. That won't change the fantasy genre to you're liking, but at least you stand a chance of enjoying it.

Magic is a skill. It is a thing that you can do. When someone does a thing, there is a chance that the thing will work or fail. The better the person is at thing, the more likely the thing is to work rather than fail.

I fail to see how using dice is a bad way to represent this.

>we're not talking about fantasy
>when I make it explicity clear we are
We're talking about how fantasy and mechanics interact, that is talking about fantasy.
If you click on the left hand side of your browser, you can scroll around and look at other posts, then you can read them to understand what we're discussing.
Helpful, eh?
Magic without mystery is cheapened, and I'd argue is on a fast track to not being magic at all.

What you call bullshit magic actually has meaning and says something, it speaks to human feelings.
Symbolism was an example of something that could be discussed in fantasy, that Veeky Forums likes to gloss over.
I'm not trying to come across as a troll.

The thing about health, strength, etc is that they are mundane concepts. I do think reducing them to dice rolls can be harmful, but that's primarily because it creates a disconnect rather than them being impossible to simulate. The problem for them is that they often aren't simulated very well.

Magic is something that is supposed to be beyond human understanding, if someone can understand how it functions, it ceases to be magic (or the being ceases to be human, if you want to play around with something like that). Therefore you as a player knowing that it's just dice rolling breaks they mystery of it, reducing it to nothing more than a tool to play the game with.
>Magic is a skill
Is it? You say that as if magic is inherently a skillful practice. But even if it is, simulating it with dice is still a bad choice. Like I said, it cheapens the mystery of it. You're placing your trust in dice, a mundane object, not some all-powerful force.

>Traditionally magic has been seen as a mysterious thought, and people didn't attempt to understand how it functioned.

Oh I see you are just making things up, okay.

>My point is that magic is inherently at odds with knowing how it functions (dice rolls)

Dice rolls don't determine how magic functions, dice rolls determine the end result of an attempt to use it.

Magic is usually depicted as a skill or a knowledge exercised by those who study and practice it. By comparing that to other things people study and practice at, such as Olympic sports and spelling bees, we know that even professionals something fail.

Dice allow for a chance of failure or success.

How the magic "works", what the results of failure or success are, and how much magic is shrouded in mysticism is entirely up to the fluff of your setting.

>What you call bullshit magic actually has meaning and says something, it speaks to human feelings.

No, if anything it's just something allegorical or done for the sake of plot as those stories were. It has no substance.

Actual real world magical institutions were nothing like it.

>You're placing your trust in dice, a mundane object, not some all-powerful force.

Because it's a game, not a circlejerk storytime.

Go back to Veeky Forums faggot.

It's your conception of what is an RPG that is flawed.
If Jim told me last week that for our next one-shot he wanted to be an Asshole Anarchist Wizard, and I said "Ok, that's cool", he should be able to do so.
But if every time he does something desructive he manages to accomplish it with zero effort because we all agreed the game would be about blowing up stuff, he's gonna be very bored, very quick. On the other hand, if he wants to make something explode and I say "No, you don't" because I don't want that thing to explode, I'm basically stealing his power to act on the game's fiction and world. But if I say "Well, you can try but that'll requires a nat 20 because the Emperor's Chancellor is a really powerful wizard protecting his master, you sure you don't want to negotiate?" he has the choice of saying "Huh okay, we'll try talking about that mess first" or "Nah, fuck it, I want his dumb face gone". Or whatever else, like "Shit, I walk out of the throne room".
If you concentrate all final decisions in the hand of a single player, an all-powerful GM, that GM is the one writing the story and the players are only there to suggest stuff.
That's not what an RPG is about. An RPG is about people pretending to be wizards and cyborgs and vampires in a world you have created for them. Not about you writing a story with their help.

>Magic is something that is supposed to be beyond human understanding, if someone can understand how it functions, it ceases to be magic
So only your definition of magic is allowed
>Therefore you as a player knowing that it's just dice rolling breaks they mystery of it
Your not meant to think of it as a player you think of it as a character you know roughly how likely this spell is to succeed and the player rolls the dice to work out if you did succed.
>You're placing your trust in dice, a mundane object, not some all-powerful force.
Stop thinking of the dice as an object and think of what it represents it is random chance one of the greatest forces there is.

>>Magic is something that is supposed to be beyond human understanding

Then play D&D without wizards. They're the only class that actually studies magic and has any idea how it works and none of that is explained in the books; players and DMs come up with that.

Druids get their magic from nature; this isn't explained. Clerics get their magic from a deity; this isn't explained. Warlocks get their power from a pack with a magical entity; this isn't explained. Sorcerers are innately magical because of their blood line; this isn't explained.

>>Therefore you as a player knowing that it's just dice rolling breaks they mystery of it, reducing it to nothing more than a tool to play the game with.

This isn't a universal statement. What you're describing is weak roleplaying skills that make it impossible to stop meta-gaming. The die rolls and mechanics are only as important as you make them. If you choose to roleplay well and are good at it then these things will become invisible to you and will only be used by the dm. You could even get the dm to roll for you and explain things to you without using numbers if you really wanted. It'd be a little challenging to find a whole group that plays like that, but it could be done.

>Magic without mystery is cheapened

No it isn't.

When did you realise reducing reality to dice rolls and number calculations removes all of the magical aspects of it, and thus cannot work properly if you allow people to simulate it in tabletop games or video games?

>Dice rolls don't determine how magic functions, dice rolls determine the end result of an attempt to use it.
That isn't a bad point, but what determines it's success or failure is ulimately something that determines a part of how it functions and what's commanding it. It reveals too much information, and causes magic to lose weight.
It can be done in a shallow manner or a meaningful manner, it depends on the author.

The ability for it to be done well is what matters, which is something magic that is caught up in with mechanics cannot achieve.
Not an argument.
Like I said, you should place trust in your players to make decisions that contribute to the plot. If they are incapable of that, don't play with them.
I'm arguing that my definition is what makes magic magic, and therefore you shouldn't remove it. I'm not ordering you to do it differently, I'm merely trying to show you why it would be better if you did it a different way.

Yes you are supposed to be in character, but ultimately your normal thoughts are still there, and you know how the magic functions, causing a further disconnect between player and character.

I suppose magic that plays on the idea of pure chance might favour dice, but many different types of magic imply to be placing their power in some kind of higher mystery, a demon, a deity, something like that.

>Druids get their magic from nature; this isn't explained. Clerics get their magic from a deity; this isn't explained. Warlocks get their power from a pack with a magical entity; this isn't explained. Sorcerers are innately magical because of their blood line; this isn't explained.
But dice does determine their spells/magic/whatever, right?

You can say it's weak roleplaying skills all you want, but ultimately it's impossible to completely immerse yourself into it, and you'll always have an awareness that numbers determine it, not something higher.

This is why games can mask it to a degree, as you don't see the behind the scenes calculations, but you ultimately can still see it for what it is.

>When did you opinion that opinion opinion opinion

>All arguments when talking about fantasy are going to be subjective, and literally all arguments are rooted in feelings.
So there's no point in debating it.
Goodbye.

>But the DM does determine their spells/magic/whatever, right?
>You can say it's weak roleplaying skills all you want, but ultimately it's impossible to completely immerse yourself into it, and you'll always have an awareness that DM fiat determine it, not something higher.
>This is why games can mask it to a degree, as you don't see the behind the scenes intuition, but you ultimately can still see it for what it is.

>I'm arguing that my definition is what makes magic magic

You would be wrong, as your idea of magic only exists in fairytales where they had no rules and were more examples of allegory and facilitators of plot.

Again, actual real life magical institutions were nothing like it, and the primitive forms of science actually came from those same practises.

If you don't see a point in debating about anything, that's fine.

A human can make something seem far more mysterious and can speak to you as a person far more than a dice can.

It's why when Gandalf performs magic it's magical, and when your lvl 10 wizard shoots a fireball isn't.

Magic should take inspiration from fairy stories and mythologies, not proto-scientifice institutions.