Quote:
Originally Posted by Samiel
I may be wrong, but does the magic system owes a lot to AGONE? I mean, in that game "magicians" use poetry, dance, drawing and songs to cast their spells: am I wrong?
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It's an old topic, but I felt compelled to clarify.
As far as I remember myself, magicians in Agoné (apparently the accent is important - somebody told me it was from the French, but I don't know how accurate that is) do not use poetry, dance etc to cast magic spells. They basically capture a magical creature called a Dancer and either persuade, bribe or force it to perform magical effects on their behalf. It's basically like the old concept of summoning demons, excepting that the magical entity in this case is quite benign and it is purely the wills of their human owners that cause the magic to be 'good' or 'evil'.
Unless there's another game called 'Agone' out there that I don't know about of course.
Reign's magic is more varied than that. There are separate schools of magic, each of which uses different media and methods to produce their effects. The ideas of singers, dancers and artists creating spells is not a new one, that's for sure, but to compare it to Agoné alone would be to miss out a lot of material that predates that game. For example, the Spellsinger novels by Alan Dean Foster feature a character who sings to create magical effects. The ideas aren't new. What is new is the detail about the organisations that teach these schools of magic; it's not just about how people make magic, but the beliefs that have led them to use those methods, the psychology of the average practitioner, and the political structure of the organisation behind them. Each school is a method and means of magic in itself, but they are deeper than just a string of spells.
That said, I think it would be nice if the spell lists were a bit longer. Each has a fairly strict and simple effect rather than a broad utility, as far as I've read so far. Some of the smaller schools could certainly use expanding.
In any case, the similarities between Agoné and Reign's magic systems is superficial at best. The main linking factor is that they both produce magical effects, sometimes by means other than the stereotyped 'spell formula'.
Ash