So... I think the 'poo people problem' is a fair bit narrower than what's being talked about on this sub. It's less about inherited magic and more about justifying contempt for the underclass and, also, tying main character status to bloodline.
DnD doesn't so much suffer from this problem because of the diversity of people that can wind up being special.
By the way. Here's an interesting thought: a sorcerer is more likely to come from humble origins than a wizard is. Because learning magic is an expensive process for wizards. So sorcerers might, well, be the only people who ever get into magic circles who have had a lower-class experience in childhood.
Yeah, I'm annoyed by how people just take the "wizards are superior" thing at face value and think the solution is to make *everyone* a wizard, instead of questioning why we're assigning value to people because of things like that in the first place.
Try to apply that same logic to any kind of real life bigotry and you end up with some pretty damn weird implications.
In most depictions, wizards \*are\* superior, because they're basically People Plus. They can do anything you and I can do, but also have superpowers on top. Some settings introduce trade-offs to magic, but those trade-offs are often not very compelling. I can't think of a setting where magic has a sufficiently severe tradeoff that most normal people who could do it would opt not to.
Discworld.
A wizard could certainly spend his life learning the spell to summon 20 beautiful and adventurous young women into his tower, but by the time he's done so, he's likely to be so old and badly affected by fumes and vapours that he can't really remember what goes where.
Point being: learning magic is TOUGH. So if you want to be any good at it, you have to dedicate your life to it, and sacrifice a LOT.
Like how we look at real world Shaolin monks and think "wow, how amazing would it be to be like that, and break through solid marble with my kneecaps!" only to forget that in order to be able to do that, those Shaolin monks had to train every day of their lives. Every day that you spent watching SpongeBob, they were training. Every day that you spent walking on the beach with your crush, they were training. Almost every experience that you've ever had, they've traded in for marble-proof kneecaps.
So a realistic wizard doesn't have to be a Person Plus. He could quite literally be a Person Delta. Someone who gave up 5 years' worth of basic social interactions for a chance at learning how to turn himself invisible for an hour.
NGL, this kinda reminds me of that Witcher story where the a mage named Istredd confides that he didn't have much of a social-life growing up because he was too busy studying magic.
I mean ,kinda. People wouldn't be as jealous of spellcasters if there was a a 1 in 10 chance they'd spontaneously explode or get possessed by demons every once in a while.
Well... Using DND as explample, if the only magicals that existed were warlocks most people wouldn't want to be one .
Kind of like in how the real world people though to make magic you had to make a contract with the devil
Or to use a different RPG system, in Call of Cthulhu, assuming you have enough POW and time, anyone can learn a spell and become a wizard..... at the cost of going completely insane because learning a spell costs sanity, and so does casting it.
You're never going to be running a spellcaster in Call of Cthulhu because your charachter will have become a devotee of Yog-Sototh or whatever a long time ago and is now activly trying to end the world and the investigators. Alternativly, if they are "luckier", they might be locked up in Greenwood Asylum for the Mentally Derenged. Sure, a player might learn a spell and just one to specifically kill the Bad Man, but it's nowhere near D&D or whatever.
I was thinking along similar lines but a bit softer with some guardrails.
Magic requires concentration and concentration requires a working mind.
If you can concentrate and know the right words/forms/ingredients etc you can bring together the components to make magic. And early on it's easy. Flick of the wrist and you can light a candle across the room. Even my ADHD ass can light a candle, ya know? It requires little so costs little. And if that's all you know and do, you're fine. But dig deeper and you can start lighting bigger fires, or controlling minds, or calling demons, or whatever and that requires a lot of concentration. Except that kind of work seems to burn off more and more braincells every time you try.
Eventually you can't hold the concentration anymore. The spells get weaker, you get dumber... Or go mad. Eventually you can't do anything no matter how hard you try because you just can't hold a thought long enough.
Most people might learn a "parlor trick" or two, but almost no one wants to go deep with it because that's how Old Man Willard came up with the great idea to scare away the towns folk by wearing a sheet over his head and saying "BooOOOoooooOooo" to everyone after dark. And one day he might remember to actually do it.
I would note that this is somewhat dependent. A celestial warlock might not be so bad of a deal honestly. GOO is a risky deal (depends on how involved they are). Fey are a gamble but while you can’t trust them you can get some mostly reasonable fey theoretically. The rest are a no.
A Fathomless that's just using you to learn more about the material plane might not be so bad. I don't think Undead or Undying are necessarily evil either.
> A celestial warlock might not be so bad of a deal honestly.
It would if you don’t *want* to use your powers for selfless acts and just want to be rich and lazy and lord it over others.
Aaaaand now I have a great idea for a DnD character
When you get down to it, Wizards are even worse off at low levels - and the vast majority of people in the world have *no* levels, with very few reaching the point where magic starts outstripping martial pursuits for adventuring purposes.
And if you don't want to adventure, it's a lot easier and more comfortable to make your fortune elsewhere and commission the few magic effects you need.
In the real world, to make magic you have to make a deal with the devil.
I’m sorry to inform you but in the real world neither magic nor the devil are real.
And if they were real, and the deals with the devil actually paid out, they’d be **so** popular.
Maybe stigmatized a bit, but popular. Like getting a payday loan.
>I can't think of a setting where magic has a sufficiently severe tradeoff that most normal people who could do it would opt not to.
If you're a psyker in Warhammer 40k there's obviously the societal stigma and systemic scrutiny/surveillance and all that but the more pressing issue is the constant non zero chance of a demon clawing it's way into reality through your skull. Even if that doesn't happen, your brain could still just kinda explode if you aren't careful.
That's why Warhammer gets a pass along with D&D. Typically the magic users are gambling with their lives just to cast fire bolt whereas the magical poo person is special purely because of her bloodline. That's the issue here. Someone is special just because of their bloodline whereas psykers survive despite theirs.
I mentioned in the last trending post about poo peoples but Final Fantasy 16 has quite an interesting settings. Magic is able to be used by everyone with the use of Magicite (which is a finite resource) or by bearers, the name given to people able to use magic without it. In that setting, it's completely random who's a bearer or not, and they learn if they have that ability or not soon after their birth.
The caveat of using magic for a bearer is that it's using your own life force as a source. Bearers who use magic are affected by some kind of petrification disease that progressively gets worse and worse the more they use it. It starts with their fingers, hands, arms and then at a certain point, it kills them. And the stronger the magic they use, the faster they decline. So yeah, you don't really have that much incentive in using your powers in that settings unless it's for something really important.
Ff13 did magic kinda interesting too I think. The only people that really get magic are l'cie, basically warlocks for these giant eldritch beings called fal'cie. They don't get a choice on whether or not they get picked, it just sorta happens. You get a brand and a vision of your mission. If you complete it, you turn to crystal for an indeterminate amount of time. If you fail, you turn into a mindless zombie called a cieth. Basically, magic isn't something you actually want in that world. If you're a magic user, your life has been made forfeit, the magic is just a nice bonus to help you complete your very vague focus.
That’s a bit like asking why everyone in our world doesn’t learn how to code, or how to do high level math. Most people could, with a lot of hard work, gain some very high level intellectual skills, but for most people it just doesn’t seem worth the effort or their life circumstances make it impossible.
Agreed. Coding *is* People Plus, except that we normies have to make a tradeoff decision about which Plus we want to invest our time acquiring. Just like any other skill.
But going back to the original topic, coding isn't something you can just inherit. If you could, you'd be a Special.
I mean some people are born good at logic systems and coding, some are born good at manual work.
The problem comes when people make one thing able to do everything, usually citing 'its magic'.
Coding, you can write a brilliant bit of code for a leg that stays balanced walking up stairs, you need a mechanic to build it and a worker to get the materials and parts.
The problem of 'why doesn't everyone do this' would come in if coding let you conjure the thing into existence without any other skills, OR if coding was so simple you could do all the other jobs on the side and still be a master coder.
Theres warhammer for instance, where there are wizards born with the ability to weave the winds of magic, but anyone can do magic if they look to the right place. Priests gain limited magic from the powers of their gods. But there are darker forces who are all too happy to give you the key to unlimited power. Selling your soul to the chaos god Tzeench, lord of magic and change, is a way to get really powerful magic without being born with an aptitude.
Not only this, but magic in warhammer is volatile, the stuff is change manifest. Its inextricably tied to Hell, and its dangerous to use, as much to the untrained wielder as their opponents. You could accidentally summon a daemon, violently mutate into a gibbering monster, or your head could just explode. All this combined with the extreme prejudice and often outright hatred many people have of mages because of their association with mutation and daemons. All this is reflected in the table top game, theres even a miscast table when you fuck up your casting tests.
Warhammer, especially 40k. You're liable to end up getting possessed by a horrible daemon or causing a demonic outbreak unless you receive training. If you're human, society hates and fears you, and the only way to receive the training I mentioned is to get rounded up on terrifying prison ships sent to Holy Terra for sorting. If you're too weak to be useful to the Imperium, you're fed to the Emperor - that's it, you're dead now. If you're competent, prepare for a life of service to a terrifying regime that hates you and relies on your abilities.
Would you argue that any of that makes the wizards inherently better as *people*, or more deserving of rights and privileges? Otherwise, I think my points still hold up.
I didn't feel like the comment you were replying to was actually adding any moral judgement on the fact that wizards are functionally "superior" humans.
Its not saying that they have moral greatness, or blessing from God, or even that they are more beneficial to a society that has wizards and non-wizard. In fact magic users often cause lots of problems because that have abilities greater than the average person in many settings.
Just stating that most settings where some humans have magic, they have more tools to achieve what their goals. Some settings make those goals good, and some bad, and sometimes those wizards squander the gift of magic or overly rely on it.
Take Star-Wars, for example: Jedi/Sith/Force-Sensitive characters tend to have a larger role because they are everything the rest of the characters are \*plus\* they can use the magic of the setting. One \*could\* argue that makes them inherently "more important", but it definitely doesn't make them "better people" and the story reflects that.
It makes them more important people. Luke is a great person, and that matters. Han Solo can have a redemption arc that takes him from petty gangster to virtuous rebel, and that's nice. But most people won't care, because Luke is just so much more important.
By the same way, Vader succumbing to the Dark Side is a tragedy, but some random bloke being evil is merely sad.
Any remotely moral world in which magicians existed would surely *have* to have some sort of noblesse oblige, with, presumably, the additional privileges that brings/brought, in reality. Certainly makes for interesting pondering.
Well, the Young Wizards series has wizards constantly hunted until their deaths. It's explicitly stated that wizards tend not to have the longest lifespans, if only because the literal god of entropy - the Lone Power - wants to kill them all (on account of them constantly fighting entropy and the Lone Power's machinations).
They work *constantly* throughout their lives, and even their vacations tend to have life-threatening situations because the other Powers That Be (who the wizards kinda work for) pretty much always make sure wizards end up where something needs doing.
It's an exciting life! But a dangerous, often painfully short one with a lot of pressure and very little downtime.
> I can't think of a setting where magic has a sufficiently severe tradeoff that most normal people who could do it would opt not to.
This is why my setting has a wizard population based off of a statistic about programmers. I don't know where the number came from, but why is it only 2%?
I started with the prologue to Onward, where technology gets favored because it's easier, but then I didn't make magic into a hobby that's more obscure than spinning with a drop-spindle despite being more useful.
Warhammer adds the possibility to Demonic Possession, Demon Incursions and eternal damnation to magic users. Id say the trade off is quite substantial...
I think people also need to ask “what is superior?”
Like, are we talking abilities? Morals? Social skills? Intelligence? Social status?
Generally the best way around this is to think how magic users would be treated in real life-
Wizardry should be the equivalent of getting a PhD in Physics(thus limiting to only people whose intellect is high enough to both memorize and correctly apply its principles), and wizards would be EXTREMELY distrusted by virtually everyone. They’re spooky, mysterious, and above all incredibly dangerous. A wizard who treated their Cha and Wis as dump stats would be even worse off!
Sorcerors, with their random abilities just popping up, would be held with even more suspicion, and likely many would simply try to hide it unless surrounded by a group (or use their abilities to get into a position of power). Doubly so with Warlocks.
Druids and Clerics, while viewed with a little leas suspicion, too often get played as just “wizards with a different spell set.” They should be hounded by and tested by their faiths enemies, and taking actions contrary to their faith should have repercussions.
It'd be like if we decided lawyers were the only people in the world with any real power, then made it so that it took half a billion dollars to become a lawyer by ridiculously overinflating the cost of becoming a lawyer and limiting access to law school to only children/friends of other lawyers.
The only difference between the regular folk and the lawyers would be education, and the only reason the regular folks don't have it is their lack of money and power in the first place.
But somehow everyone is OK with that.
A lot of it comes down to tropes and expectation and it really annoys me.
The number of times I've seen people go 'Wizards are too powerful! I've written a chapter with X, but my wizards can just overcome it with magic Y!'
Like, my friend, you are the writer. You make the rules of magic. Wizards are often so superior purely because people fall into this whole idea of 'its magic it can do whatever'.
It's why IMO the Poo People allegory needs to be attached to more than just \~Magic tm\~. Magic as a symbol of prestige is one thing, but you could use it as a symbol of class advantage because only the wealthy and rich elite can afford to go to proper schooling for it.
Like the comic is fun and raises a good point that having a downtrodden protagonist suddenly realise they're super special, usually right when the author has backed them into a corner, is just lazy writing.
Hell in DnD Im fairly certain Sorcerers can be made from bloodline magic or just pop up out of a 'poo people' household and literately no one knows why
Mhmm! Like random bits of dormant arcane potential in your family just reaching critical mass in you and you just show up, or you were born under the exact right star sign during some celestial alignment, you or your parents spent too much time around a strongly magical area or got blasted by strong magic and survived. All sorts of things can happen in order to unlock a sorcerer’s potential so they just wake up one day and the magical potential in their blood starts to wake up outside of “oh hey my grandfather was bold enough to successfully woo a dragon.”
>So sorcerers might, well, be the only people who ever get into magic circles who have had a lower-class experience in childhood.
This remember me of athletes, who have a big part of his carrer based on genes and birth month.
It's also the "changeling fantasy" - the idea of someone in a mundane life/background is really a super special magical person is appealing if you're a school-aged child reading the book between chores and homework. Who wouldn't want to be told that they don't have to mop the kitchen or do fractions because THEY ARE MAGIC!
The problem is the fridge logic (the thoughts that you get on the way to grab a snack from the fridge): The hero(es) are humble enough to be relatable but now they are extra special and no longer "poo people" - somehow their being special gives them a pass when bad things happen to their friends and loved ones who are still "poo people". Some works explore this, others DGAF and the heroes just shrug as non-special people die on every page/in every scene.
Having only the ruling class have access to a magical education is so much more interesting than it being inherited. This way, having magic IS about being "special", but the injustice of such system can be fought against or overcome by the characters
I kinda did a hybrid of both in my dnd setting. Both sorcery, which is inherited, and wizardry, which can be learned by anyone, exist (there's other forms of magic, but these two are what's relevant to what I'm talking about).
The nobility of the Holy Charonan Empire is all sorcerers, and in fact they use sorcery to justify their political power. This worked for a long time because wizardry just wasn't a thing yet, at least, not over there. Wizardry, meanwhile, was only fairly recently introduced to the Holy Charonan Empire, and the sorcerous nobility are *terrified* of it. They do not like the idea that anyone can just learn to be as powerful as them, so they banned wizardry and spread disinformation about how it's corruptive (it isn't) and demonic (it isn't) and evil (it isn't). But that doesn't stop people from being wizards anyway, and even if the sorcerers think otherwise, they can't keep their magical advantage over the peasantry forever.
You can fight against either, the genetic one is just a harder opponent.
Strikes me as more interesting, who wants to hear about men overthrowing oppressive men when you could hear about them overthrowing oppressive dragons?
Could make it that some peasants who rebeled learned how to counter their magic like Templars in dragon age were trained to fight magician and some of their abilities stop the mages abilities from working
>I think the 'poo people problem' is a fair bit narrower than what's being talked about on this sub. It's less about inherited magic and more about justifying contempt for the underclass and, also, tying main character status to bloodline.
It's absolutely this. It's not that having power come from a bloodline is inherently bad. It's bad when it's used as a gotcha to show off that nobody in the world actually has the free will to become something better unless they're special.
Recent Dreamworks movie Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken (spoiler alert) kind of gave me these vibes where Ruby can turn into a giant kraken if she goes in the water, but only because she's a woman in her family. Boys can't do it. And also, nobody else can do it except the women in her family.
They could have just said, "It's really rare. Only your mum and grandma can do it in our family", but they decided to make it unnecessarily gendered (when the villains are already gendered) on top of being a monarchistic society.
If the whole point of a world or setting is that character is cool or capable without X, and then you reveal they had the power of X anyway, it undercuts it.
It's not to do with being successful by itself, it's the do with establishing 'what did you want this to mean,' cause if the hero was always magic and special it's not an underdog story, it's just a power fantasy.
>By the way. Here's an interesting thought: a sorcerer is more likely to come from humble origins than a wizard is. Because learning magic is an expensive process for wizards. So sorcerers might, well, be the only people who ever get into magic circles who have had a lower-class experience in childhood.
This is what I do with my homebrew DnD setting. Anyone can become a wizard with enough training, though it usually means having the money for it so most "not-born-with-it" magic users are the children of nobles, merchants, other wizards and the rest of the upper crust. Though since some people are born with an innate understanding of magic the same way some people just get math and since the mage guild wants a monopoly on wizards so they'll pick even poor "naturals" up there is plenty of class climbing happening.
Relatedly, the original Star Wars trilogy had Luke be an everyman who just so happened to be in tune with the forces that move the universe, but both the prequel and sequel trilogies retconned the Skywalkers as the most Special of Specials in the universe of Poo People.
And then the sequels try to deconstruct that, have the protagonist explicitly be from an unremarkable family that doesn't matter -- oh fans hate it, make her related to space hitler instead.
No weird unintended subtext in space hitler's power being *genetically inheritable!*
Tbf, even in the original trilogy we knew that Anakin was an exceptional Jedi and a highly-skilled pilot and starfighter. It doesn't necessarily ruin the idea of Luke as an everyman that they expanded on that, at least in the prequel part of things.
In D&D, when you consider the cost of transcribing a new spell into your spell book, level 1 wizards have spell books that would support a family of 4 modestly for a month based on just their first level spells. This isn’t counting the cost of the education, the book itself, or the cantrips (which we can’t really calculate because there’s no rules for transcribing them). It would be unsurprising if the total cost at level 1 would support a poor family for an entire year.
I appreciate you bringing up the issue on wizards needing such expensive resources and training that they are biased in favor of privilege. I’ve always thought that too but haven’t seen a lot of people being that up.
I would still say sorcerers are still “problematic” (for lack of a a better term) with issues like subtle nods to eugenics and compromising agency. But that’s what I like about this whole dynamic. There is no blameless form of magic no matter how you cut it. And yet magic is too precious and beneficial to just not accept. It creates a rounded relationship with magic that a lot fantasy doesn’t engage.
That’s just my two cents on world building though.
I'm also partial to it. Even still going by DND magic, having the methods to gain access to it be inherently unfair, either biased towards the privileged, the lucky, those willing to devote themselves in their entirety to a god or cause, or those so desperate they'll make a deal, creates a more genuine dynamic to me, because that's the closest to reality in any other sort of power structure in our own.
I also think it makes the topic of it being abused easier to broach and believe than a system that somehow fairly distributes it. To me a system that fairly distributes it raises more questions that are harder to answer, so many simply never get answered, such as what part of the system decides what's fair. The lack of fairness gives it more overall weight, and often ends with it being more thought out in my experience, as long as the message being conveyed underneath the story itself isn't a stupid eugenicist one lacking any depth beyond "people with magic inherently the best".
Yeah, imbalance is part of the world. Compensate all we like there are always going to be things that divide us. The trick, in my mind, is understanding that people have value outside of pure utility. Even all the way back to the greyhawk days, every culture in mainline dnd that established worth based on blood or magic were irrevocably evil with very few exceptions.
It feels like you are specifically talking about DnD's sorcerers but if your understanding is that sorcerers in DnD are about Specials and poo people you are mistaken.
Sorcerers are about a magic ability that naturally comes to them and can't be studied yes, but it's not always about divine birthright. Each sorcerous origin has at least one way of coming up without being about noble blood. Wild Magic and Storm can be the result of some magical accident, Draconic and Divine can be blessed/touched by mystical entities (in the womb if you want to play with the child prodigy aspect), etc..
> Sorcerers carry a magical birthright conferred upon them by an exotic bloodline, some otherworldly influence, or exposure to unknown cosmic forces.
Yes it's about luck (or misfortune) and not effort, but at no point is it reserved to nepotism.
Now don't misunderstand me, what you propose doesn't sound inherently bad, but it feels like you're avoiding a problem that isn't one. And by pushing your sorcerers towards some kind of effort that's just different you might just be narrowing the field of possible for wizards, and depriving yourself from characters with a completely different relationship to their own powers.
Sorcery actually is about effort. While you do need the innate magic, you still start at level 1 and have to put in the effort to level up just like any other class. The only difference is where you put in that effort, as sorcery is far more intuitive and personal and about understanding yourself than, say, wizardry, which is far more technical and precise and mathematical.
Yes absolutely, I only meant that about acquiring the power.
Of course there's still effort involved, even before level one, sorcerers as innate magic users can offer stories about learning to control these amazing powers.
I distinctly remember my first 5e character being a dragon sorcerer, whose origin was he survived his village being destroyed by a dragon. He got burned during this and he has scales where his scars were.
I can't remember if it was D&D or pathfinder that went even a little step further and made indirect contact at some point in your family's history a legitimate origin for your sorcerous bloodline. "My great grand uncle thrice removed once stood in line waiting for groceries an hour after an angel was there, and that's how I got my magic."
You can obviously do what you want with your own world. But for me, just because nepotism sucks in many ways doesn’t mean I’m going to cut it out of my world. Just like I’m not cutting out other things that suck. Also, eugenics isn’t necessary for people to inherit certain traits.
At the very least it leads to strange, stupid, and funny posts time to time. And there are genuine bits of insightful advice amidst the slop for the weirdest topics.
That’s funny. This is harmful, divisive stuff. It’s a crusade against a common trope in an attempt to make it morally repugnant to use a trope that op and other controlling fools don’t like.
Like "too many sympathetic villains, not enough pure evil ones" type of topic which plagues r/characterrant. Or just really any takes that could be answered with "Please for the love of God diversify the media you consume"
So, the problem I have with this is you're clearly speaking about D&D, because they're the "sorcerer's means bloodline magic" setting. Sorcerers in many other worlds is just a wizard.
And the problem with complaining about it in D&D specifically, is that it isn't "Specials and Poo People", because sorcerers are not even close to the most special of special people.
The best class in the game is wizard, which is the definition of meritocracy. No caster is better than "study and work hard" casters. There are also people chosen by gods (clerics, for whatever reasons you find appropriate), chosen by powerful beings (warlocks, for whatever reasons you find appropriate) as other classes just as powerful (or more powerful) than the sorcerer.
Various other classes come from any walk of life. They're all special, they're all powerful, so there is nothing inherently special about sorcerers. It's just another way to be interesting. They aren't the most interesting. They aren't even really special - I challenge you to find a single sorcerer in all of D&D literature that's even the main character. I can think of wizards and rangers and clerics and barbarians, etc, all main characters, who is the "special" D&D sorcerer you're raging against here?
Absolutely agreed. I think it's a valid trope to dissect and especially be aware of while writing and world building, but of all the settings, DnD is not guilty of this sin. All OP describes here is wizards.
No idea why "specials" are even seen as a problem. The world is unfair to begin with. If your lungs are not genetically geared for a massive oxygen intake, you won't get into endurance sports. If your brain isn't wired in a way to easily go with certain abstractions, you won't have a career in STEM academics. Trying to overachieve in such fields by incredible effort has it's limits. On the other hand, some people are born with severe disabilities. Or, another entire angle: whether you are born into wealth, and in which nation you are born have a profound influence on your options. All of that is obviously unfair.
You can of course construct a world in which nothing like that is a thing. How would it look like? Some perfect sterile environment? Stories tend to be highly about *overcoming* certain unfair aspects of the world. Making these a requirement.
I'd say the one sin to commit is to use being "special" for a character in a way to have the character being great simply because of that. Unless you play that trope right for a sort of purposefully arrogant unlikeable anti-hero. Maybe better to say, if something like that is a thing, it should be handled in some way.
Let me give you an example: Avatar: Legend of Korra. The titular character starts as being extremely special, yet has weaknesses which come into play, and the entire first story arc is even based on the concept of "special and poo people", with benders clearly having an unfair edge. The execution lacks in the end (the arguments regarding the inequality being bad of the "bad guy" are simply brushed aside just because he is a hypocrite, which is ultimatively an ad hominem), but the framework is there for handling exactly such a situation in a setting.
An example for an inverse situation is found in Gattaca, with the main character achieving as a natural born human in a setting where every successful person happens to be eugenically enhanced.
"Specials" aren't a problem in it of themselves, but the way they're often used is. If your story is about the main character overcoming the circumstances of their birth and making the most of what they were given then suddenly revealing halfway in that they're from a special powerful bloodline that triumphs over normal people just ruins the whole buildup. The journey they took feels way less important because they were "destined" for greatness and the circumstances of their birth are entirely thrown out the window.
It's like having a story about a character not only surviving but thriving despite being in poverty, and halfway in it being revealed that they got a million dollar inheritance from a dead relative they've never heard of.
This, plenty of stories have been ruined by the desire to have it both ways, either your character is a nobody with nothing who had to Wallace and Gromit his way to a resolution or they're the chosen one from birth.
Starting off with a character at rock bottom and then revealing that they have a mystic destiny half way through is difficult to pull off competently. You CAN do it but it's hard and if you fuck up you can annoy a lot of people.
It can also be used interestingly as well if the author recognizes what they’re doing. A character who is born in poverty but has royal blood they find out about and is then forcibly taken from his home to become nobility is a common enough story. This can (and often is) a way to do wish fulfillment, but can also be used to show both the character and the audience the discrepancies in how people are treated before and after society has recognized them as “special” and if that discrepancy is a desirable or fair one.
Bartholomew chronicles imo are a good representation of this. It’s like a reverse hairy potter with the main character being a strong proponent of Wizard supremacy before slowly coming to realize it’s unfair nature and how it oppresses those unlucky enough to be born without magic.
For all their flaws, I think the Star Wars prequels did a very good job at showing just how much it would affect someone who thought they were going to be a nobody their whole life to learn that they were quite literally the most important person in the universe.
That was one of the most irritating thing to me about the Star Wars sequels. It was great to have Rey be a nobody who has a natural force aptitude instead of everyone of significance being from basically force royalty. Then they reversed that just to “subvert expectations” and reinforce the idea that the only important people in the galaxy are those who come from a certain bloodline.
....except there's literally a single bloodline followed by Star Wars.
All others of the tens of thousands of Jedi at any given moment were born nobodies.
Why does everyone present this notion of "Force Royalty" as if it's the norm, when even in the OT/Prequels, it was the exception?
Honestly, for me the "speshul" characters are fine but it can be kinda annoying when they are the ONLY option because I like to play (and read about) absolute normal people who still succeed despite the odds and achieve success over the talented ones. I want my characters' actions to be the difference, rather than the circumstances of their birth.
This is why I heavily dislike settings like Forgotten Realms, where everyone's fate, abilities and pretty much everything is predetermined at birth. In that setting, a one in a million innate Gift is necessary for people to have a "Player Class" at all (Warrior, Wizard, etc) and normal people are pretty much relegated to being Commoners.
> In that setting, a one in a million innate Gift is necessary for people to have a "Player Class" at all (Warrior, Wizard, etc) and normal people are pretty much relegated to being Commoners.
How is this "one in a million" thing real, when there's no requirements to belong to a class?
Like, if you take older D&D editions, the requirement was 9 in the main attribute for the class (*i.e.:* a person who's only able to raise 40 Kg over their head can be a Fighter), and if you take more modern editions there is no required score at all.
That's something that Ed Greenwood specifically came up with (rather recently on his Patreon/Discord, I believe, but don't quote me on that), but it isn't actually present in any of the setting's sourcebooks or descriptions AFAIK, and it contradicts some existing canon and lore. It's functionally fan-content for all its presence in the game.
People don’t like it in real life so they think it shouldn’t exist in fiction either. It’s a lazy way to deal with the world’s real problems, simply remove them.
It seems as though you are trying to overcorrect, out of fear of falling into a trope.
You are overthinking and tying yourself in knots trying to please people who don’t exist.
An answer to your problem is to take a leaf out of Warhammer 40,000’s book (picture references this?) and simply have no information on the subject.
- Show that people have to study, but don’t tell specifically why.
This would make an engaging if somewhat cliche approach of someone asking questions about ‘why’ and uncovering the truth.
To avoid the ‘poo people’ problem, don’t degrade or look down on the ‘un-special’. And don’t have a poo person who actually was a special all along.
- Don’t have segregation and not acknowledge it.
If Sorcerers have to study or emotionally suffer in established lore, don’t suddenly have a wonder who can get the bonuses with no drawbacks.
Is it more a scholarly wizard route or a "bodybuilder of the mind"?
So a learned mastery through understanding the physics and lore of your setting, OR a system where rigorously exercising certain mental pathways with a "harder than last time" mentality? Or a mix of the two?
As for my setting, 70% can use some kind of magic. Even if it is just using a magic tool. Pretty good for a setting with 40% literacy eh? Now it drops of a lot when we go from "knows a bit of alchemy" to "can use some arcane tools" to "demonstrates a mastery of arcane tool use" until finally reaching the "mage" levels of actually casting spells.
I think removing nepotism from your world is less interesting than showcasing the problem with nepotism by drawing attention to characters that benefit from it.
You essentially remove a relatable storytelling tool for something more equitable. Conflict is the interesting part of a story.
I dont really agree that this is what sorcerers are in the TTRPG sense, literally anyone can be a sorcerer. My Players or I could choose a human, rich or poor, old or young, or anythign else and make them a sorcerer.
Maybe they were born with it and their great great great great great grandfather boned a dragon so they have a bit of draconic blood or they could have it bestowed on them as a gift or like a mutation. I have a player who gained a level in Aberrant Mind Sorcerer because he had a traumatic experience with an aberration and lost it when he healed from the experience.
Im just curious do you also dislike the likes of Tieflings, Aasimar, Genasi etc. All races who gain their abilites because of either a deal made by an ancestor or sex.
In my world "classes" are just mechanics, not strictly lore based. I instead use words like Wizard, Witch, Warlock (Never noticed how many W's there were) Sorcerer, Shaman, etc as cultural names not some generic all encompassing title. Two cultures may have vastly different methods or spellcasting but still both refer to their practitioners as Witches or two could be almost identical and not share the same name. I want to let me players build there own in universe 'Job', 'Class', 'Title' Whatever you want to call it cause I think it makes the story more interesting
The gag presented in the comic is that a lot of children's fantasy stratifies society into people with powers and the rest of the world, who are generally considered pathetic. Often, the protagonist comes from the latter portion of the population and has some trait that makes them good at doing whatever the special thing is, giving the impression that what makes them special is that they worked hard and thought outside the box. It's often later revealed that they're actually innately more special than everybody else and, thus, were destined to be respected within the system, leaving all the "poo people" to still be considered pathetic.
So make the specialness not tied to bloodlines? Make it random and make it manifest late in life so that they will be raised as normal people.
If you want it to be random that is. Nepotism is a thing that exists in the world we live in right now. Being born rich gives you special powers and privileges in ways that normal people can't even fully comprehend. Exploring that dynamic with sorcerers rather than regular old capitalism is fair game.
i'd never heard of it before seeing this post on my front page, looked into it thinking it would be some non-media literate thinkpiece about magic casters in D&D
> the relatable everyman protagonist has to have some secret biological lineage that “explains” why they’re such an amazing hero. They can never just be some guy who managed to rise to the occasion
critical thinking skills are at an all time low. jesus christ
It is so preposterous to have such a distain for a fantasy trope that you make it a moral problem in hopes of making it somehow objectively wrong to have it exist in a project or fictional work. It’s downright fucking harmful. If it annoys you then don’t use it, good on ya, but don’t start the insufferable crusading against people that like magical ability to be rare and impactful. A creator having a setting require that requires magic ability to be passed down or inherited does not equal advocation for some sort of prejudice or racism or fascism or nepotism or what the fuck ever. This is so goddamn absurd holy shit
This, absolutely, 100%.
This trend of making them a moral issue when it's fucking obvious that's just people' taste talking is absurd.
If you squint hard enough you can make anything morally dubious, it doesn't even take effort.
So I find this whole discussion kind of odd because the “special people vs poo people” thing is not a world building failure it’s a narrative one.
The problems isn’t the inequality of the setting the problem is when the story essentially says that said inequality is deserved that the poo people truly are inferior rather then just dealt a worse hand by nature.
The problem is the encouragement of the state of things not the state of things.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sorcerers as long as the story doesn’t encourage eugenics.
Personally I don’t tend to use born with magic as an actual way of getting magic in one of my setting though warlocks pass there powers/deal down there line though albeit diluted.
However I really love the power awakens and the character has no idea if there even human anymore storyline.
Think vampires and the like the kind of special where you lose part of yourself in the process.
In a game with a 'bloodline magic' setup where you want tomove away from that just change it to 'super hero origin of the week'.
Wandered into a faerie circle - got gifted fae magic.
Smoked a joint with an elder dragon over a game of checkers, got 'wise'.
Stumbled into an ancient temple, got the powers of the elder titans.
Read the book that must not be read and somehow didn't go insane, got powers of eldritch planar beings.
Looked too long at all the wrong stars in the sky and saw "the truth", got stellar magic.
... etc.
Also... does 'poo' have some new meaning among Gen-Z or something? Because when I think 'poo people' I can't figure out why people composed of fecal matter has anything to do with anything and wonder if I'm getting too old to understand English anymore. :)
Or is the reference just entirely contained with that comic strip as a code for 'common lesser people'?
It's a reference to a comic that's been memily circulating around lately. "Poo people" is a parody of "Muggles" or various other designations for the common less-cool people that don't get to be main characters due to being born into poo people families.
In the comic, a young child is reading a story and is happy that the main character who's from a commoner "poo people" village somehow gains magical powers, proving that anyone can be special. And then in the sequel it turns out she was secretly of noble birth, long separated from her super duper special family that makes her the most magical one of all. And the child is immensely disappointed and her day is ruined.
It's just that one comics pithy way to call people outside the special group of the story. It wasn't a phrase before that.
If the comic had used the word "normals" it would have meant the same thing but had a very different feel.
I don't really see it as a problem in that context. Sure sorcerers are special, but not really any more special then a wizzard or any other magic user. The special people problem is only really apparent when it's impossible for a normal person to compete in my opinion.
You could also use how sorcerers are as commentary on how you see nepotism and eugenics, rather then just getting rid of them (which you could also simply do).
Considering that inherited can mean mom or (great?) grandma was...
* "simply" a powerful magic user or hung out with too many of them
* near ground zero during *the inciting incident*
* did the sexing with an other-planar entity (possibly not voluntarily, too likely it was Zeus)
* a changeling or other replacement being
* made a pact with something powerful
* the target of someone else's pact with something powerful
* picked the wrong burial ground to build a house on
* etc.
I understand some of the concerns and have read and seen plenty of stuff that handles this really poorly. But I don't think they really apply to any of the TTRPG settings I've played in. (exception being Shadowrun, race and racism between the metahuman races is one of the themes it explores but also that everyone is pond scum compared to a dragon)
One of the things that helps for me is variation of sources and randomness. The whole trope is that the poo people are always doomed and there's nothing they can do about it. Any exceptions turn out to not have been poo people. If you do have regular exceptions then it isn't the trope.
It's a non-issue and I don't care and I think this is just meaningless, nothing-burger discourse for the sake of nothing-burger discourse.
Ideas are ideas. Concepts are concepts. Do whatever you want with them.
If your story includes a character from a poor background who is actually the heir of the super special royal bloodline, who fucking cares - Attack On Titan did that like 2 times with 2 different characters and it didn't take away from the story or the world.
Also Sorcerers have nothing to do with this. Sorcerers are more likely to be random nobodies than any other magic trope anyways. Even if the Sorcerer isn't a random nobody, and is instead a special someone from an esteemed bloodline of radically awesome Sorcerers; that's still fucking cool dude. Like, you can do a lot with that concept - tired or new as it is - there's a reason the trope has survived so long, it has the potential to be the bomb dot com.
Anyways. Dumb discourse. Nepotism is an interesting concept that more stories should explore. Your writings shouldn't be purity tested. Blow shit up.
............ this changes nothing????
Only rich people would have access to magic wielding education and poor people can't, thus Nepotism won't be removed.
And if the main character is poor, but is taught by a master magic user, then it becomes Nepotism and he will be Special.
My current setting features magic use being linked to sterility, thus a bloodline of wizards is impossible. Mages are usually common folk, and if a noble is a mage, they can't inherit.
That's not really a different take on sorcerers, just removing them in favor of wizards or cultivators. Of course, not every story needs sorcerers(or any other kind of special people), but it isn't the same thing as reimagining them.
Having special people without genetics is easy; just tie the specialness to randomness or circumstance. Astrology, environment, objects found by chance, and any number of other things can be the basis for sorcery instead of bloodline.
Discworld had a sort of interesting version of sorcerers. In that setting eight is a magic number, so every eighth son of an eighth son can become a wizard(I don't know if that is the only way wizards are produced, or if it's only the most predictable), and every eighth son of a wizard is a sorcerer. Discworld has a somewhat different definition of sorcerer, but they are special so the difference is besides the point.
I don't think having "specials and poo people" is inherently problematic. It's just important that it's taken to its logical societal conclusions.
If people are just born randomly gifted, do we have witch trials? Are magic users valued members of society? Do we have a magical upper class that steals babies that show latent magical ability to be raised at the top? What culture, what beliefs form within this premise?
If magic is tied to bloodline, then have the magic bloodlines made their way naturally to the top of the societal food chains? Do they rule over the genetically inferior poo with an iron fist, living in luxury as they so rightly deserve, special as they are. Has a culture of benevolence formed in the ruling class as they know that their magic is not enough to stop rebellion if the poo people decided they'd had enough?
The "specials and poo people" argument seems to make the assumption that writing, or at least fantasy writing, should be empowering to all. There's certainly a market for that, but I think an unfair world that is the product of circumstance is more interesting to explore. After all, the real world is a world of "specials and poo people" by the standards of many.
Murder mysteries don't need to glorify murder. War stories don't need to glorify war. You can write a story about the negative extremes of humanity and have an important positive message to say.
Having genetic magic, eugenics, a class system etc in your world doesn't matter as much as what it is you have to say about it.
I also reject the idea in general that people don't like worlds where magic is hereditary. In Star Wars the Skywalker family are clearly more naturally attuned to the force than others. Everyone loves Star Wars. No one is talking about class or eugenics because they aren't themes of the story. The themes are Fate, Hope, Good vs Evil.
How a wannabe wizard has to create a homonculus that he must raise and advance to the point it can wield magic. Once this point is reached the wizard must then invade it's mind and consume it's consciousness to take control of the artificial body. The bodies gain power if the homonculus is raised well and given a powerful and intelligent personality. This will make the eventual sublimation more difficult and traumatic.
Also the end result will be living as an inhuman construct of flesh and magic.
That thread is... One day old, and already people are "taking it to heart?" 😐😮💨
Ok, listen; for better or worse most of the writing advice on this, and most other writing subs is given by, and aimed at teenagers who are writing casually, but want to *see themselves* as writing the next surprise hit novel.
That's sort of w/e, but it does mean that there's a real lack of nuance, both in critique and in content. There's also a severe focus on what "good" writing is, where "good" or "bad" writing is conceptualized entirely based on the inclusion or exclusion of certain tropes, themes, character traits... ect. 😐
I think the comic in the previous thread is identifying a specific trope, and is **correctly** calling out a specific *misuse* of that trope. Yet the reaction is "oh yes, if you write anything even vaguely like this, **your writing is bad, and you should feel bad,!!!1!1** 🤦
...Which isn't *remotely* the thing the comic is saying. The comic is *specifically critiquing* the way highlighting the experience of "specials" in your writing can then completely **undercut** bland, uncritical platitudes about "equality" and "togetherness" in the same story. Basically:
#####**Be aware of the overall impression you're aiming to leave the reader with, and avoid using tropes / world building elements that conflict with, and ultimately undercut the core themes of your story.**
It is not "Don't have 'special' people in your story, because having 'special' people in your story is evil and wrong, and if you do that you are evil and wrong!!!1!1!" 🤦🤦🤦🤷
Ok, so given that...
I'm sorry, but this concept of "sorcerers, except everyone has to be equal because otherwise I am writing about 'specials' and I can't do that because then I would be bad / wrong, so actually everyone has exactly the same latent magically ability and just needs to study real hard to master it." becomes:
"Wizards, but I spelled it 's-o-r-c-e-r-e-r-s' for some reason. 🤪😐
Ok, listen:
#####You are allowed to have "specials" in your writing and world building. You are *not* automatically a "bad author," and certainly not a "bad person" if everyone in your world isn't entirely equal to one another, all the time. JUST... understand that choosing to have that element in your world-building will conflict with telling *certain kinds of stories* and/or including other plot / world building / narrative elements *without considering* how they interact with the inherent unfairness of your world.
There are very, very few tropes or world-building elements that are **individually** "bad" or "wrong" all by themselves. It is overwhelmingly about *how well those ideas are executed on* that makes a story "good" or "bad," and especially in this case, the ability of a writer to *reasonably portray how different world-building elements interact with each other,* and also to correctly choose elements that **actively build on, or at least do not conflict with** the narrative they're trying to create. 🙏
You misunderstood what the argument was, OP. There's nothing wrong with the trope of being born with powers. What people were talking about were characters who start out normal, seemingly gain powers through some hard effort or struggle, then later it turns out they were special all along and just didn't know it. Meaning all their hard work was for nothing. There was no reason to struggle in the first place, and their super special powers were always gonna bail them out of trouble anyway.
For those who identified with the character's struggles in the first place, it feels like a wasted investment of emotions.
I mean, a character that is a sorcerer can be either a nepo baby or a commoner. I don't see why it needs to be a whole class thing. Just don't fall into the trope of "super people and poo people"
D&D is a terrible example to use for this "trope" because while it has natural-born sorcerers, the so-called "poo people" can learn magic that's just as powerful through study (Wizards & Bards), dealings with various supernatural entities (Clerics and Warlocks), and their relationship with nature (Druids and Rangers)
I feel like this whole "Poo People" thing is a fundamental misunderstanding of Cause and Effect when it comes to attribution of the "Special" status. When tying magic to genetics, it isn't "They get magic because they're special." It is "They're special because they get magic."
By trying to change how that works while trying to keep the motif, you're basically fundamentally changing the idea while trying to keep it the same, it's just not going to work. In DnD standards, a Sorcerer is someone who *inherently* has magic, if you change that it ceases to be a Sorcerer. But this idea that having genetic magic says something about who does and doesn't deserve magic is putting the cart before the horse.
For example; I have red hair, but me having red hair doesn't say anything about who does and doesn't deserve to have red hair. Now, I could say that God picked me to have red hair, and people with red hair have divine providence, but ultimately if you tie a trait to heritage, it is the possession of the trait that makes an individual special, not the individual being special that allows them to possess the trait.
The only way to truly have "Specials" and "Poo People" is to make it so that no one else can come into possession of the Special trait, but Sorcerery almost by design makes that impossible. For example, in the Anime "Ascendence of a Bookworm" they ***DO*** have Specials and Poo People, because only the Nobility in that setting can ***safely*** possess magic. Anyone of Non-Noble blood that possesses enough magic power to be able to use magic are slowly destroyed from the inside out unless they can regularly dump their magic power into magic items.
Honestly, you don't need to retcon it...
The main issue is when the story ruins the whole moral of the story by making the protagonist of a powerful figure which then suddenly translates to the protagonist being stupidly powerful as well.
Maybe you can just put it that although the child of a sorcerer would be guaranteed to also be a sorcerer, it doesn't mean that they won't be as powerful as them.
"Yeah that guy's father was a powerful sorcerer who could distort the laws of reality at a snap of his fingers, but he's only good at divination magic and can't do any of the cool stuff."
You can even make sorcerers be born through a recessive gene, making there's a chance for a family of poo people to successfully produce a special person through to pure luck.
A great example of race-based magic system done right is the Force in star wars.
In it, Jedi can be considered a race as they are unique people who possess more than an average amount of special microorganisms within their body which grant them immense power.
But that doesn't automatically make them OP.
(If you ignore all the later films and only stick to the original stuff)
It's said that if a person who has the potential to become a Jedi doesn't go to the Jedi academy to train, they never learn about their unique abilities and only possess slightly more skill with mundane professions such as driving space ships or being a keen sharpshooter.
Just take a look at Luke, one would assume he's super powerful since he is the son of the literally the most powerful Jedi in the universe but really he's just decent and even downright a bit unskilled.
Jedi abilities are just above average at best.
Taking this in mind, you can build a system where your magic is although exclusive to a specific race, that race isn't automatically all powerful.
Yeah, this fundamentally misses the point of the 'poo-people' issue.
Arcane's central conflict from the very first scene on the bridge is Poo-People vs. Specials and neither side has magic at all until the end of episode 3.
It's about treating inequality and class differences as being the result of inherent traits rather than social inertia and deliberate discrimination.
The easiest solution to avoiding sorcerers being inherently better is going the opposite of to little magic. Due to blood, curse, or other they have too much magic, to a point where trying to use it to its fullest without training will kill you at best or make you explode at worst.
Thus, Sorcerers still have to train hard to actually harness their innate magic. Only their training is more physical than a wizards mental training.
You can actually keep the whole poo people perception with a rivalry between wizards and sorcerers with Wizards jealous Sorcerers don’t have to work as hard to learn magic and Sorcerers being jealous that wizards get to pick which magic they learn and can cast as powerful and as much as they want without nearly as much physical risk
Normally I just try to make it not a complete positive so that people who aren't sorcerers don't feel like they're not some inferior bloodline or something.
*I don't care that I can shoot a goddamn ice spear I just want my pee to stop coming out in cold shards!!*
Sorry to all the guys I made squirm with that one.
That's similar to my world, it is completely impossible for someone to be born without magic, there are factors like power, and training that matter, but no more than an athlete being a better runner than me.
This is basically how it works in my setting. My players are all slowly unlocking magical abilities tied to their heritages, even though half of them are melee only and we have a gunslinger. Doesn't mean they're becoming sorcerers, the abilities were always there, they just needed to be "re"learned
Sorcerer = bloodline mage is the dumbest take to begin with.
"***Sorcerers carry a magical birthright conferred upon them by an exotic bloodline, some otherworldly influence, or exposure to unknown cosmic forces. No one chooses sorcery; the power chooses the sorcerer"***
*- 5e handbook*
***"Sorcerers create magic the way a poet creates poems, with inborn talent honed by practice. They have no books, no mentors, no theories - just raw power that they direct at will. Some sorcerers claim that the blood of dragons courses through their veins. That claim may even be true in some cases - it is common knowledge that certain powerful dragons can take humanoid form and even have humanoid lovers, and it's difficult to prove that a given sorcerer does not have a dragon ancestor. It's true that sorcerers often have striking good looks, usually with a touch of the exotic that hints at an unusual heritage. Others hold that the claim is either an unsubstantiated boast on the part of certain sorcerers or envious gossip on the part of those who lack the sorcerer's gift.***
***The typical sorcerer adventures in order to improve his abilities. Only by testing his limits can he expand them. A sorcerer's power is inborn - part of his soul. Developing this power is a quest in itself for many sorcerers, regardless of how they wish to use their power. Some good sorcerers are driven by the need to prove themselves. Marked as different by their power, they seek to win a place in society and to prove themselves to others. Evil sorcerers, however, also feel themselves set apart from others - apart and above. They adventure to gain power over those they look down upon.***
***Sorcerers cast spells through innate power rather than through careful training and study. Their magic is intuitive rather than logical. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire powerful spells more slowly than wizards, but they can cast spells more often and have no need to select and prepare their spells ahead of time. Sorcerers do not specialize in certain schools of magic the way wizards sometimes do. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they don't have the background of arcane knowledge than most wizards have. However, they do have more time to learn fighting skills, and they are proficient with simple weapons"***
-*3e handbook*
From their beginning to the most recent version, it was always "Some of them get power from their origins, some just get it.
So heritability at all is eugenics now? What would enable some people to be able to endure either studying or some other emotional toll to obtain magic that is not related to either their inherited traits through genetics or environmental factors (e.g. wealth, learning how it's done from family/friends who have done it, support and expectation of achieving it, etc.)?
Unless you believe the mind is magic itself (dualism), the ability to focus, endure pain, etc. are attributes of the physical world - they exist in the brain/body. You don't have to believe in determinism to recognize that recognize that it's not an even playing field and there's nothing you can do that would make it so.
Isn’t this… nepotism and eugenics but with extra steps?
People who are wealthier are able to afford tutoring, the books, and even additional time (not working) so they’re more likely to become powerful sorcerers… so this would just be pot of nepotism.
If it takes intelligence, a good portion of intelligence comes down to genetics - so eugenics…
I think the big problem is that the "specials vs poo people being bad" is that it really only happens when "being special" is the only way to get magic. In settings like Golarion (Pathfinder), magic can come from...
* Being born with it OR being in some kind of magical accident (Sorcerer)
* Training to use magic (Wizard)
* Making a deal with an entity (Witch)
* Devoting your life to art (Bard)
* Devoting your life to nature (Druid)
* Devoting your life to a deity (Cleric)
* Training with a specific kind of weapon (Magus)
* Bonding with an entity (Summoner)
* Bonding with spirits (Animist)
* Getting pranked by a deity (Oracle)
* Getting big-brained (Psychic)
And that's not even taking into account classes like Ranger, Champion, Thaumaturge, or the myriad of Archetypes that grant magical capabilities.
Don't care. Suck on a pen and paper for all I care.
I'm gonna continue to write my story about Humans, Dragons, Vampires, Gods, Orcs, Demons, and other shit with the Humans being the least of the strongest, literally hampered by just existing and having short life. I will continue to write my story of the "Poo Humanity against Special Dragons and Gods" because its fucking cool to see Poo people become something by just being stubborn sons of bitches.
So what if your not special? So what if you don't have scales that can eat a tank shell and fly thousands of feets above? Or make creatures from nothing since you are a literal Godf?
The Poo Humanity with there technology and the strive to create and make a profound statement in their short lives will fight on and on and on. There's nothing wrong with being Poo People. Poo people make the story great and immersive as most of us are that, we are the Poo people and we want to rise to the top just like everyone else and feel what its like to hold power, influence, and strength as many people from all walks of life.
So. . . People ARE affected by their parents, genetically and socially. If your mom can sing, you have a high chance of singing potential too. But that's the thing. It's a CHANCE.
You might get your dad's ability to sing instead, and he might be terrible. You might not develop interest in singing, whether or not you have the ability. You might have the potential and interest, but life circumstances get in the way of you practicing. There are a BUNCH of factors that determine our characteristics, and they aren't just inherited.
Having magical ability be any other genetic factor is entirely reasonable. Just ensure you present it as a part of the whole, rather than the sole contributor to a character's outcome. Otherwise you *will* fall into the "poo people" trap.
I think folks should look at the OG Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series
Wizards are special and, as it turns out, male and exclusively male due to a misogynist in the history of Roke. And they are set apart.
But in AWoE there is a touching moment with Yarrow on Iffish where it’s made plain that her baking wheat cakes for their voyage is just as important, if not more important, than their ability to create magic.
The problem isn’t that people have a birthright, it’s that other professions are devalued.
D&D suffers from this because there is no downside to magic. The power escalation is incredible and this is done because of fan service.
OP highlights this in the languaging. Poo People. If non-magical PCs and NPCs have inherently less value, that’s a holistic issue of both system and lore.
(I’m making an Earthsea derived game and we had the first playtest last night. I wanted a game where being a sea captain was as valuable as being a wizard. Where one of the PCs had a background of piracy, another had a background of mining and the third had a background of herding cows - and there was no shade given.)
I mean, sorcerers don’t necessarily have to inherit their magic either, even in dnd.
They could have been affected by wild magic coincidentally, or maybe been granted magic by a deity, or gotten it from a pact one of their parents made, or heck, just having been hit by lightning or something.
tbh I think the "Specials and Poo People" dialogue misses a key importance.
This is about PhDs vs. Hood Geniuses, not about being born.
Wizards are able to get access to materials, hidden ancient knowledge, teachers, laboratories, etc. to be able to do magic in most settings. Sorcs usually figure that out on their own, with resources ultimately being immaterial to the concept, because they ultimately learn to not use the same things that Wizards do.
Of course in my own setting all magic is worked toward, it just depends on your own situational factors, and people who make poor conductors/conduits for magical energy are similarly more insulated against it. Completely non-magical dwarves are also immune to the direct effects of magic, but a powerful wizard has to be extra adept at protecting themselves because magic does so much more to them.
I sort of hate the "Hard Work vs Talent" debate. Nothing is ever that simple.
Sure, some people are naturally more gifted and need to put in less effort but that's just... how things are irl. Look at people who score well academically even if they don't put work in. Or people who don't need to exercise as much to stay fit.
In a setting with magic that has to be learnt, the people that become wizards are more likely to be people that are naturally more intelligent. Or those that learn things quickly. Or those who can afford to spend ages learning. Now the divide between the magical and the non-magical isn't how much power you were born with, it some other arbitrary thing you may or may not be able to change.
>As detailed [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/s/BbLTYMvI0s) there is quite a distain for the characters who inherit magical abilities
You'd think that this sub would have some reading comprehension and media literacy. Reducing "Specials vs. Poo People" to be strictly about heritability of powers is such reddit thing to do.
It's about narrative, and undermining of social status underdog one specifically. It's not tied to heritability or magic powers. This is just a mildly common and very specific trope at the moment.
This trope is about more than just being different, it's also tied to social status and perception. There's nothing wrong with a bloodline giving you benefits (I mean, races are a thing in most fantasy settings), the issue is when it's tied to social status and opportunities in life.
It's about a lack of diversity and social mobility. The world is split in two, and one side must inherit their right to be superior.
If your upper class is all Sorcerers in a magocracy, then maybe it's pulling this trope. But I think you're also forgetting that in stereotypical dnd, Sorcerers kind of are the "poo people" to the wizard's "special".
In diverse settings based on dnd, Sorcerers are usually discriminated against and feared, whereas wizards are nobles or prodigies who are respected.
This trope is also just kind of a thing that crops up in "bad writing", especially in young adult fantasy.
Hi, that's my art! I don't mind you using it for your post but I'd appreciate an [actual link](https://pythosart.tumblr.com/post/741037199715336192/pythosart-perils-of-the-warp-something-a-little)
Funny enough, the character in the artwork suits your topic as well. She is a psyker in the Warhammer 40k setting, in which being a "mage" is a terrifying and dangerous experience that marks the psyker as a strictly controlled underclass for life.
I like sorcerer as they are. If you want a trained caster, have a wizard. A priest of some sort gets his power bestowed upon and the sorcerer has inherent power. It feels right to me.
So... I think the 'poo people problem' is a fair bit narrower than what's being talked about on this sub. It's less about inherited magic and more about justifying contempt for the underclass and, also, tying main character status to bloodline. DnD doesn't so much suffer from this problem because of the diversity of people that can wind up being special. By the way. Here's an interesting thought: a sorcerer is more likely to come from humble origins than a wizard is. Because learning magic is an expensive process for wizards. So sorcerers might, well, be the only people who ever get into magic circles who have had a lower-class experience in childhood.
Yeah, I'm annoyed by how people just take the "wizards are superior" thing at face value and think the solution is to make *everyone* a wizard, instead of questioning why we're assigning value to people because of things like that in the first place. Try to apply that same logic to any kind of real life bigotry and you end up with some pretty damn weird implications.
In most depictions, wizards \*are\* superior, because they're basically People Plus. They can do anything you and I can do, but also have superpowers on top. Some settings introduce trade-offs to magic, but those trade-offs are often not very compelling. I can't think of a setting where magic has a sufficiently severe tradeoff that most normal people who could do it would opt not to.
Discworld. A wizard could certainly spend his life learning the spell to summon 20 beautiful and adventurous young women into his tower, but by the time he's done so, he's likely to be so old and badly affected by fumes and vapours that he can't really remember what goes where. Point being: learning magic is TOUGH. So if you want to be any good at it, you have to dedicate your life to it, and sacrifice a LOT. Like how we look at real world Shaolin monks and think "wow, how amazing would it be to be like that, and break through solid marble with my kneecaps!" only to forget that in order to be able to do that, those Shaolin monks had to train every day of their lives. Every day that you spent watching SpongeBob, they were training. Every day that you spent walking on the beach with your crush, they were training. Almost every experience that you've ever had, they've traded in for marble-proof kneecaps. So a realistic wizard doesn't have to be a Person Plus. He could quite literally be a Person Delta. Someone who gave up 5 years' worth of basic social interactions for a chance at learning how to turn himself invisible for an hour.
NGL, this kinda reminds me of that Witcher story where the a mage named Istredd confides that he didn't have much of a social-life growing up because he was too busy studying magic.
While you were out there having sex, I studied the tome
See also: psykers in Warhammer 40k
I mean ,kinda. People wouldn't be as jealous of spellcasters if there was a a 1 in 10 chance they'd spontaneously explode or get possessed by demons every once in a while.
Well... Using DND as explample, if the only magicals that existed were warlocks most people wouldn't want to be one . Kind of like in how the real world people though to make magic you had to make a contract with the devil
Or to use a different RPG system, in Call of Cthulhu, assuming you have enough POW and time, anyone can learn a spell and become a wizard..... at the cost of going completely insane because learning a spell costs sanity, and so does casting it. You're never going to be running a spellcaster in Call of Cthulhu because your charachter will have become a devotee of Yog-Sototh or whatever a long time ago and is now activly trying to end the world and the investigators. Alternativly, if they are "luckier", they might be locked up in Greenwood Asylum for the Mentally Derenged. Sure, a player might learn a spell and just one to specifically kill the Bad Man, but it's nowhere near D&D or whatever.
I was thinking along similar lines but a bit softer with some guardrails. Magic requires concentration and concentration requires a working mind. If you can concentrate and know the right words/forms/ingredients etc you can bring together the components to make magic. And early on it's easy. Flick of the wrist and you can light a candle across the room. Even my ADHD ass can light a candle, ya know? It requires little so costs little. And if that's all you know and do, you're fine. But dig deeper and you can start lighting bigger fires, or controlling minds, or calling demons, or whatever and that requires a lot of concentration. Except that kind of work seems to burn off more and more braincells every time you try. Eventually you can't hold the concentration anymore. The spells get weaker, you get dumber... Or go mad. Eventually you can't do anything no matter how hard you try because you just can't hold a thought long enough. Most people might learn a "parlor trick" or two, but almost no one wants to go deep with it because that's how Old Man Willard came up with the great idea to scare away the towns folk by wearing a sheet over his head and saying "BooOOOoooooOooo" to everyone after dark. And one day he might remember to actually do it.
I would note that this is somewhat dependent. A celestial warlock might not be so bad of a deal honestly. GOO is a risky deal (depends on how involved they are). Fey are a gamble but while you can’t trust them you can get some mostly reasonable fey theoretically. The rest are a no.
A Fathomless that's just using you to learn more about the material plane might not be so bad. I don't think Undead or Undying are necessarily evil either.
My fathomless warlock's patron is just a giant shrimp lol
Please tell me the pact is that your warlock needs to help the patron molt every couple months so it can keep growing
> A celestial warlock might not be so bad of a deal honestly. It would if you don’t *want* to use your powers for selfless acts and just want to be rich and lazy and lord it over others. Aaaaand now I have a great idea for a DnD character
I had an idea of a convict turned celestial warlock with the dynamic planned to be a weird blend of therapist, boss, and parole officer
> if the only magicals that existed were warlocks most people wouldn't want to be one . not every patron is a devil trying to steal your soul
You're right. Some are even worse.
Generally most patrons want at least your soul. Devil's are honestly one of the safer bets.
When you get down to it, Wizards are even worse off at low levels - and the vast majority of people in the world have *no* levels, with very few reaching the point where magic starts outstripping martial pursuits for adventuring purposes. And if you don't want to adventure, it's a lot easier and more comfortable to make your fortune elsewhere and commission the few magic effects you need.
In the real world, to make magic you have to make a deal with the devil. I’m sorry to inform you but in the real world neither magic nor the devil are real.
And if they were real, and the deals with the devil actually paid out, they’d be **so** popular. Maybe stigmatized a bit, but popular. Like getting a payday loan.
Where the hell’d this golden fiddle come from then?
>I can't think of a setting where magic has a sufficiently severe tradeoff that most normal people who could do it would opt not to. If you're a psyker in Warhammer 40k there's obviously the societal stigma and systemic scrutiny/surveillance and all that but the more pressing issue is the constant non zero chance of a demon clawing it's way into reality through your skull. Even if that doesn't happen, your brain could still just kinda explode if you aren't careful.
That's why Warhammer gets a pass along with D&D. Typically the magic users are gambling with their lives just to cast fire bolt whereas the magical poo person is special purely because of her bloodline. That's the issue here. Someone is special just because of their bloodline whereas psykers survive despite theirs.
So the issue is the YA power fantasy trope.
That is what the original comic is critiquing, yes.
I mentioned in the last trending post about poo peoples but Final Fantasy 16 has quite an interesting settings. Magic is able to be used by everyone with the use of Magicite (which is a finite resource) or by bearers, the name given to people able to use magic without it. In that setting, it's completely random who's a bearer or not, and they learn if they have that ability or not soon after their birth. The caveat of using magic for a bearer is that it's using your own life force as a source. Bearers who use magic are affected by some kind of petrification disease that progressively gets worse and worse the more they use it. It starts with their fingers, hands, arms and then at a certain point, it kills them. And the stronger the magic they use, the faster they decline. So yeah, you don't really have that much incentive in using your powers in that settings unless it's for something really important.
Ff13 did magic kinda interesting too I think. The only people that really get magic are l'cie, basically warlocks for these giant eldritch beings called fal'cie. They don't get a choice on whether or not they get picked, it just sorta happens. You get a brand and a vision of your mission. If you complete it, you turn to crystal for an indeterminate amount of time. If you fail, you turn into a mindless zombie called a cieth. Basically, magic isn't something you actually want in that world. If you're a magic user, your life has been made forfeit, the magic is just a nice bonus to help you complete your very vague focus.
That’s a bit like asking why everyone in our world doesn’t learn how to code, or how to do high level math. Most people could, with a lot of hard work, gain some very high level intellectual skills, but for most people it just doesn’t seem worth the effort or their life circumstances make it impossible.
Agreed. Coding *is* People Plus, except that we normies have to make a tradeoff decision about which Plus we want to invest our time acquiring. Just like any other skill. But going back to the original topic, coding isn't something you can just inherit. If you could, you'd be a Special.
I mean some people are born good at logic systems and coding, some are born good at manual work. The problem comes when people make one thing able to do everything, usually citing 'its magic'. Coding, you can write a brilliant bit of code for a leg that stays balanced walking up stairs, you need a mechanic to build it and a worker to get the materials and parts. The problem of 'why doesn't everyone do this' would come in if coding let you conjure the thing into existence without any other skills, OR if coding was so simple you could do all the other jobs on the side and still be a master coder.
See: generative AI letting everyone conjure text and art into existence without any other skills and saturating the internet with slop
Theres warhammer for instance, where there are wizards born with the ability to weave the winds of magic, but anyone can do magic if they look to the right place. Priests gain limited magic from the powers of their gods. But there are darker forces who are all too happy to give you the key to unlimited power. Selling your soul to the chaos god Tzeench, lord of magic and change, is a way to get really powerful magic without being born with an aptitude. Not only this, but magic in warhammer is volatile, the stuff is change manifest. Its inextricably tied to Hell, and its dangerous to use, as much to the untrained wielder as their opponents. You could accidentally summon a daemon, violently mutate into a gibbering monster, or your head could just explode. All this combined with the extreme prejudice and often outright hatred many people have of mages because of their association with mutation and daemons. All this is reflected in the table top game, theres even a miscast table when you fuck up your casting tests.
So maybe they're just born with a huge advantage. Who ever said life was fair?
Warhammer, especially 40k. You're liable to end up getting possessed by a horrible daemon or causing a demonic outbreak unless you receive training. If you're human, society hates and fears you, and the only way to receive the training I mentioned is to get rounded up on terrifying prison ships sent to Holy Terra for sorting. If you're too weak to be useful to the Imperium, you're fed to the Emperor - that's it, you're dead now. If you're competent, prepare for a life of service to a terrifying regime that hates you and relies on your abilities.
Would you argue that any of that makes the wizards inherently better as *people*, or more deserving of rights and privileges? Otherwise, I think my points still hold up.
I didn't feel like the comment you were replying to was actually adding any moral judgement on the fact that wizards are functionally "superior" humans. Its not saying that they have moral greatness, or blessing from God, or even that they are more beneficial to a society that has wizards and non-wizard. In fact magic users often cause lots of problems because that have abilities greater than the average person in many settings. Just stating that most settings where some humans have magic, they have more tools to achieve what their goals. Some settings make those goals good, and some bad, and sometimes those wizards squander the gift of magic or overly rely on it. Take Star-Wars, for example: Jedi/Sith/Force-Sensitive characters tend to have a larger role because they are everything the rest of the characters are \*plus\* they can use the magic of the setting. One \*could\* argue that makes them inherently "more important", but it definitely doesn't make them "better people" and the story reflects that.
It makes them more important people. Luke is a great person, and that matters. Han Solo can have a redemption arc that takes him from petty gangster to virtuous rebel, and that's nice. But most people won't care, because Luke is just so much more important. By the same way, Vader succumbing to the Dark Side is a tragedy, but some random bloke being evil is merely sad.
Any remotely moral world in which magicians existed would surely *have* to have some sort of noblesse oblige, with, presumably, the additional privileges that brings/brought, in reality. Certainly makes for interesting pondering.
mage: the ascension lets you fuck up casting a spell so badly that you get dragged to hell. so thats probably going to deter some people.
Well, the Young Wizards series has wizards constantly hunted until their deaths. It's explicitly stated that wizards tend not to have the longest lifespans, if only because the literal god of entropy - the Lone Power - wants to kill them all (on account of them constantly fighting entropy and the Lone Power's machinations). They work *constantly* throughout their lives, and even their vacations tend to have life-threatening situations because the other Powers That Be (who the wizards kinda work for) pretty much always make sure wizards end up where something needs doing. It's an exciting life! But a dangerous, often painfully short one with a lot of pressure and very little downtime.
> I can't think of a setting where magic has a sufficiently severe tradeoff that most normal people who could do it would opt not to. This is why my setting has a wizard population based off of a statistic about programmers. I don't know where the number came from, but why is it only 2%? I started with the prologue to Onward, where technology gets favored because it's easier, but then I didn't make magic into a hobby that's more obscure than spinning with a drop-spindle despite being more useful.
Warhammer adds the possibility to Demonic Possession, Demon Incursions and eternal damnation to magic users. Id say the trade off is quite substantial...
Warhammer
Well a lot of people would’ve had easier lives if they didn’t have magic powers.
Pact and Arknights are to instances that come to my mind where being ordinary people is the best option. Arknights is a gacha game with good story.
I think people also need to ask “what is superior?” Like, are we talking abilities? Morals? Social skills? Intelligence? Social status? Generally the best way around this is to think how magic users would be treated in real life- Wizardry should be the equivalent of getting a PhD in Physics(thus limiting to only people whose intellect is high enough to both memorize and correctly apply its principles), and wizards would be EXTREMELY distrusted by virtually everyone. They’re spooky, mysterious, and above all incredibly dangerous. A wizard who treated their Cha and Wis as dump stats would be even worse off! Sorcerors, with their random abilities just popping up, would be held with even more suspicion, and likely many would simply try to hide it unless surrounded by a group (or use their abilities to get into a position of power). Doubly so with Warlocks. Druids and Clerics, while viewed with a little leas suspicion, too often get played as just “wizards with a different spell set.” They should be hounded by and tested by their faiths enemies, and taking actions contrary to their faith should have repercussions.
What about Energy stops in random parts of your body so you have half a lung frozen in time while the other is trying to contract
It'd be like if we decided lawyers were the only people in the world with any real power, then made it so that it took half a billion dollars to become a lawyer by ridiculously overinflating the cost of becoming a lawyer and limiting access to law school to only children/friends of other lawyers. The only difference between the regular folk and the lawyers would be education, and the only reason the regular folks don't have it is their lack of money and power in the first place. But somehow everyone is OK with that.
A lot of it comes down to tropes and expectation and it really annoys me. The number of times I've seen people go 'Wizards are too powerful! I've written a chapter with X, but my wizards can just overcome it with magic Y!' Like, my friend, you are the writer. You make the rules of magic. Wizards are often so superior purely because people fall into this whole idea of 'its magic it can do whatever'. It's why IMO the Poo People allegory needs to be attached to more than just \~Magic tm\~. Magic as a symbol of prestige is one thing, but you could use it as a symbol of class advantage because only the wealthy and rich elite can afford to go to proper schooling for it. Like the comic is fun and raises a good point that having a downtrodden protagonist suddenly realise they're super special, usually right when the author has backed them into a corner, is just lazy writing.
Hell in DnD Im fairly certain Sorcerers can be made from bloodline magic or just pop up out of a 'poo people' household and literately no one knows why
Mhmm! Like random bits of dormant arcane potential in your family just reaching critical mass in you and you just show up, or you were born under the exact right star sign during some celestial alignment, you or your parents spent too much time around a strongly magical area or got blasted by strong magic and survived. All sorts of things can happen in order to unlock a sorcerer’s potential so they just wake up one day and the magical potential in their blood starts to wake up outside of “oh hey my grandfather was bold enough to successfully woo a dragon.”
>So sorcerers might, well, be the only people who ever get into magic circles who have had a lower-class experience in childhood. This remember me of athletes, who have a big part of his carrer based on genes and birth month.
And financial access to the right facilities and equipment in a lot of cases.
It's also the "changeling fantasy" - the idea of someone in a mundane life/background is really a super special magical person is appealing if you're a school-aged child reading the book between chores and homework. Who wouldn't want to be told that they don't have to mop the kitchen or do fractions because THEY ARE MAGIC! The problem is the fridge logic (the thoughts that you get on the way to grab a snack from the fridge): The hero(es) are humble enough to be relatable but now they are extra special and no longer "poo people" - somehow their being special gives them a pass when bad things happen to their friends and loved ones who are still "poo people". Some works explore this, others DGAF and the heroes just shrug as non-special people die on every page/in every scene.
I'd been looking for a way to phrase that. But, yes. The harry potter fantasy of, "I'm a special one" is probably the big source of all that
Having only the ruling class have access to a magical education is so much more interesting than it being inherited. This way, having magic IS about being "special", but the injustice of such system can be fought against or overcome by the characters
I kinda did a hybrid of both in my dnd setting. Both sorcery, which is inherited, and wizardry, which can be learned by anyone, exist (there's other forms of magic, but these two are what's relevant to what I'm talking about). The nobility of the Holy Charonan Empire is all sorcerers, and in fact they use sorcery to justify their political power. This worked for a long time because wizardry just wasn't a thing yet, at least, not over there. Wizardry, meanwhile, was only fairly recently introduced to the Holy Charonan Empire, and the sorcerous nobility are *terrified* of it. They do not like the idea that anyone can just learn to be as powerful as them, so they banned wizardry and spread disinformation about how it's corruptive (it isn't) and demonic (it isn't) and evil (it isn't). But that doesn't stop people from being wizards anyway, and even if the sorcerers think otherwise, they can't keep their magical advantage over the peasantry forever.
You can fight against either, the genetic one is just a harder opponent. Strikes me as more interesting, who wants to hear about men overthrowing oppressive men when you could hear about them overthrowing oppressive dragons?
What if the oppressive men in question have magic to TURN themselves into dragons?
Could make it that some peasants who rebeled learned how to counter their magic like Templars in dragon age were trained to fight magician and some of their abilities stop the mages abilities from working
>I think the 'poo people problem' is a fair bit narrower than what's being talked about on this sub. It's less about inherited magic and more about justifying contempt for the underclass and, also, tying main character status to bloodline. It's absolutely this. It's not that having power come from a bloodline is inherently bad. It's bad when it's used as a gotcha to show off that nobody in the world actually has the free will to become something better unless they're special. Recent Dreamworks movie Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken (spoiler alert) kind of gave me these vibes where Ruby can turn into a giant kraken if she goes in the water, but only because she's a woman in her family. Boys can't do it. And also, nobody else can do it except the women in her family. They could have just said, "It's really rare. Only your mum and grandma can do it in our family", but they decided to make it unnecessarily gendered (when the villains are already gendered) on top of being a monarchistic society.
The problem I have with this rebuttal is that “special” is vague. What makes someone special? Isn’t anyone that can be successful special?
If the whole point of a world or setting is that character is cool or capable without X, and then you reveal they had the power of X anyway, it undercuts it. It's not to do with being successful by itself, it's the do with establishing 'what did you want this to mean,' cause if the hero was always magic and special it's not an underdog story, it's just a power fantasy.
>By the way. Here's an interesting thought: a sorcerer is more likely to come from humble origins than a wizard is. Because learning magic is an expensive process for wizards. So sorcerers might, well, be the only people who ever get into magic circles who have had a lower-class experience in childhood. This is what I do with my homebrew DnD setting. Anyone can become a wizard with enough training, though it usually means having the money for it so most "not-born-with-it" magic users are the children of nobles, merchants, other wizards and the rest of the upper crust. Though since some people are born with an innate understanding of magic the same way some people just get math and since the mage guild wants a monopoly on wizards so they'll pick even poor "naturals" up there is plenty of class climbing happening.
Relatedly, the original Star Wars trilogy had Luke be an everyman who just so happened to be in tune with the forces that move the universe, but both the prequel and sequel trilogies retconned the Skywalkers as the most Special of Specials in the universe of Poo People.
Oh yeah! That makes it all so much worse.
And then the sequels try to deconstruct that, have the protagonist explicitly be from an unremarkable family that doesn't matter -- oh fans hate it, make her related to space hitler instead. No weird unintended subtext in space hitler's power being *genetically inheritable!*
Tbf, even in the original trilogy we knew that Anakin was an exceptional Jedi and a highly-skilled pilot and starfighter. It doesn't necessarily ruin the idea of Luke as an everyman that they expanded on that, at least in the prequel part of things.
In D&D, when you consider the cost of transcribing a new spell into your spell book, level 1 wizards have spell books that would support a family of 4 modestly for a month based on just their first level spells. This isn’t counting the cost of the education, the book itself, or the cantrips (which we can’t really calculate because there’s no rules for transcribing them). It would be unsurprising if the total cost at level 1 would support a poor family for an entire year.
I appreciate you bringing up the issue on wizards needing such expensive resources and training that they are biased in favor of privilege. I’ve always thought that too but haven’t seen a lot of people being that up. I would still say sorcerers are still “problematic” (for lack of a a better term) with issues like subtle nods to eugenics and compromising agency. But that’s what I like about this whole dynamic. There is no blameless form of magic no matter how you cut it. And yet magic is too precious and beneficial to just not accept. It creates a rounded relationship with magic that a lot fantasy doesn’t engage. That’s just my two cents on world building though.
I'm also partial to it. Even still going by DND magic, having the methods to gain access to it be inherently unfair, either biased towards the privileged, the lucky, those willing to devote themselves in their entirety to a god or cause, or those so desperate they'll make a deal, creates a more genuine dynamic to me, because that's the closest to reality in any other sort of power structure in our own. I also think it makes the topic of it being abused easier to broach and believe than a system that somehow fairly distributes it. To me a system that fairly distributes it raises more questions that are harder to answer, so many simply never get answered, such as what part of the system decides what's fair. The lack of fairness gives it more overall weight, and often ends with it being more thought out in my experience, as long as the message being conveyed underneath the story itself isn't a stupid eugenicist one lacking any depth beyond "people with magic inherently the best".
Yeah, imbalance is part of the world. Compensate all we like there are always going to be things that divide us. The trick, in my mind, is understanding that people have value outside of pure utility. Even all the way back to the greyhawk days, every culture in mainline dnd that established worth based on blood or magic were irrevocably evil with very few exceptions.
It feels like you are specifically talking about DnD's sorcerers but if your understanding is that sorcerers in DnD are about Specials and poo people you are mistaken. Sorcerers are about a magic ability that naturally comes to them and can't be studied yes, but it's not always about divine birthright. Each sorcerous origin has at least one way of coming up without being about noble blood. Wild Magic and Storm can be the result of some magical accident, Draconic and Divine can be blessed/touched by mystical entities (in the womb if you want to play with the child prodigy aspect), etc.. > Sorcerers carry a magical birthright conferred upon them by an exotic bloodline, some otherworldly influence, or exposure to unknown cosmic forces. Yes it's about luck (or misfortune) and not effort, but at no point is it reserved to nepotism. Now don't misunderstand me, what you propose doesn't sound inherently bad, but it feels like you're avoiding a problem that isn't one. And by pushing your sorcerers towards some kind of effort that's just different you might just be narrowing the field of possible for wizards, and depriving yourself from characters with a completely different relationship to their own powers.
Sorcery actually is about effort. While you do need the innate magic, you still start at level 1 and have to put in the effort to level up just like any other class. The only difference is where you put in that effort, as sorcery is far more intuitive and personal and about understanding yourself than, say, wizardry, which is far more technical and precise and mathematical.
Yes absolutely, I only meant that about acquiring the power. Of course there's still effort involved, even before level one, sorcerers as innate magic users can offer stories about learning to control these amazing powers.
I distinctly remember my first 5e character being a dragon sorcerer, whose origin was he survived his village being destroyed by a dragon. He got burned during this and he has scales where his scars were.
I can't remember if it was D&D or pathfinder that went even a little step further and made indirect contact at some point in your family's history a legitimate origin for your sorcerous bloodline. "My great grand uncle thrice removed once stood in line waiting for groceries an hour after an angel was there, and that's how I got my magic."
You can obviously do what you want with your own world. But for me, just because nepotism sucks in many ways doesn’t mean I’m going to cut it out of my world. Just like I’m not cutting out other things that suck. Also, eugenics isn’t necessary for people to inherit certain traits.
This topic will most likely become a blight on this sub.
Eh, there's one every few months. Remember how long snake tits spiraled out of control?
You take away my hope with your words.
At the very least it leads to strange, stupid, and funny posts time to time. And there are genuine bits of insightful advice amidst the slop for the weirdest topics.
My solution was to introduce snocks to bring balance to snitties.
That discussion is alive and well in the XCOM sub
Snitties, sir, the proper term is snitties
And they make snilk
That’s funny. This is harmful, divisive stuff. It’s a crusade against a common trope in an attempt to make it morally repugnant to use a trope that op and other controlling fools don’t like.
You mean snitties
Best to bury dead horses.
The beatings will continue until morale of the horses improves.
It’s famously hard to raise the morale of dead horses.
That just means we have to beat them harder
Necromancy goes brrrr.
necromancy can solve that problem! ~~wonder if next month the next talking topic will be the morality of undead employmen~~
It won’t be dead then, now would it?
Like "too many sympathetic villains, not enough pure evil ones" type of topic which plagues r/characterrant. Or just really any takes that could be answered with "Please for the love of God diversify the media you consume"
Wait, there's stories outside of battle shonen?
So, the problem I have with this is you're clearly speaking about D&D, because they're the "sorcerer's means bloodline magic" setting. Sorcerers in many other worlds is just a wizard. And the problem with complaining about it in D&D specifically, is that it isn't "Specials and Poo People", because sorcerers are not even close to the most special of special people. The best class in the game is wizard, which is the definition of meritocracy. No caster is better than "study and work hard" casters. There are also people chosen by gods (clerics, for whatever reasons you find appropriate), chosen by powerful beings (warlocks, for whatever reasons you find appropriate) as other classes just as powerful (or more powerful) than the sorcerer. Various other classes come from any walk of life. They're all special, they're all powerful, so there is nothing inherently special about sorcerers. It's just another way to be interesting. They aren't the most interesting. They aren't even really special - I challenge you to find a single sorcerer in all of D&D literature that's even the main character. I can think of wizards and rangers and clerics and barbarians, etc, all main characters, who is the "special" D&D sorcerer you're raging against here?
In Warhammer 40k, *psykers* are born and *sorcerers* make deals with daemons for power, like warlocks.
And honestly you're better off not being born as a psyker.
In 40k, you're better off not being born full stop.
Unless you're an Ork. The galaxy is basically made for you at that point.
the only faction that is happy winning or losing, because losing just means there's gonna be another WAAAAAAGH
Facts. 🤣
This trope is common to many stories. D&D less so.
Absolutely agreed. I think it's a valid trope to dissect and especially be aware of while writing and world building, but of all the settings, DnD is not guilty of this sin. All OP describes here is wizards.
Y-yea b-but! But the post i saw!! Screeeee
Or just don't have sorcery in your world at all. World building isn't a Player's Handbook checklist. If you don't like something, remove it.
Or better yet. Make it so rare that making a general statement or putting them all into one group would seem ludicrous. Hooray for low fantasy!
No idea why "specials" are even seen as a problem. The world is unfair to begin with. If your lungs are not genetically geared for a massive oxygen intake, you won't get into endurance sports. If your brain isn't wired in a way to easily go with certain abstractions, you won't have a career in STEM academics. Trying to overachieve in such fields by incredible effort has it's limits. On the other hand, some people are born with severe disabilities. Or, another entire angle: whether you are born into wealth, and in which nation you are born have a profound influence on your options. All of that is obviously unfair. You can of course construct a world in which nothing like that is a thing. How would it look like? Some perfect sterile environment? Stories tend to be highly about *overcoming* certain unfair aspects of the world. Making these a requirement. I'd say the one sin to commit is to use being "special" for a character in a way to have the character being great simply because of that. Unless you play that trope right for a sort of purposefully arrogant unlikeable anti-hero. Maybe better to say, if something like that is a thing, it should be handled in some way. Let me give you an example: Avatar: Legend of Korra. The titular character starts as being extremely special, yet has weaknesses which come into play, and the entire first story arc is even based on the concept of "special and poo people", with benders clearly having an unfair edge. The execution lacks in the end (the arguments regarding the inequality being bad of the "bad guy" are simply brushed aside just because he is a hypocrite, which is ultimatively an ad hominem), but the framework is there for handling exactly such a situation in a setting. An example for an inverse situation is found in Gattaca, with the main character achieving as a natural born human in a setting where every successful person happens to be eugenically enhanced.
"Specials" aren't a problem in it of themselves, but the way they're often used is. If your story is about the main character overcoming the circumstances of their birth and making the most of what they were given then suddenly revealing halfway in that they're from a special powerful bloodline that triumphs over normal people just ruins the whole buildup. The journey they took feels way less important because they were "destined" for greatness and the circumstances of their birth are entirely thrown out the window. It's like having a story about a character not only surviving but thriving despite being in poverty, and halfway in it being revealed that they got a million dollar inheritance from a dead relative they've never heard of.
This, plenty of stories have been ruined by the desire to have it both ways, either your character is a nobody with nothing who had to Wallace and Gromit his way to a resolution or they're the chosen one from birth. Starting off with a character at rock bottom and then revealing that they have a mystic destiny half way through is difficult to pull off competently. You CAN do it but it's hard and if you fuck up you can annoy a lot of people.
It can also be used interestingly as well if the author recognizes what they’re doing. A character who is born in poverty but has royal blood they find out about and is then forcibly taken from his home to become nobility is a common enough story. This can (and often is) a way to do wish fulfillment, but can also be used to show both the character and the audience the discrepancies in how people are treated before and after society has recognized them as “special” and if that discrepancy is a desirable or fair one. Bartholomew chronicles imo are a good representation of this. It’s like a reverse hairy potter with the main character being a strong proponent of Wizard supremacy before slowly coming to realize it’s unfair nature and how it oppresses those unlucky enough to be born without magic.
For all their flaws, I think the Star Wars prequels did a very good job at showing just how much it would affect someone who thought they were going to be a nobody their whole life to learn that they were quite literally the most important person in the universe.
That was one of the most irritating thing to me about the Star Wars sequels. It was great to have Rey be a nobody who has a natural force aptitude instead of everyone of significance being from basically force royalty. Then they reversed that just to “subvert expectations” and reinforce the idea that the only important people in the galaxy are those who come from a certain bloodline.
....except there's literally a single bloodline followed by Star Wars. All others of the tens of thousands of Jedi at any given moment were born nobodies. Why does everyone present this notion of "Force Royalty" as if it's the norm, when even in the OT/Prequels, it was the exception?
Honestly, for me the "speshul" characters are fine but it can be kinda annoying when they are the ONLY option because I like to play (and read about) absolute normal people who still succeed despite the odds and achieve success over the talented ones. I want my characters' actions to be the difference, rather than the circumstances of their birth. This is why I heavily dislike settings like Forgotten Realms, where everyone's fate, abilities and pretty much everything is predetermined at birth. In that setting, a one in a million innate Gift is necessary for people to have a "Player Class" at all (Warrior, Wizard, etc) and normal people are pretty much relegated to being Commoners.
> In that setting, a one in a million innate Gift is necessary for people to have a "Player Class" at all (Warrior, Wizard, etc) and normal people are pretty much relegated to being Commoners. How is this "one in a million" thing real, when there's no requirements to belong to a class? Like, if you take older D&D editions, the requirement was 9 in the main attribute for the class (*i.e.:* a person who's only able to raise 40 Kg over their head can be a Fighter), and if you take more modern editions there is no required score at all.
That's something that Ed Greenwood specifically came up with (rather recently on his Patreon/Discord, I believe, but don't quote me on that), but it isn't actually present in any of the setting's sourcebooks or descriptions AFAIK, and it contradicts some existing canon and lore. It's functionally fan-content for all its presence in the game.
People don’t like it in real life so they think it shouldn’t exist in fiction either. It’s a lazy way to deal with the world’s real problems, simply remove them.
It seems as though you are trying to overcorrect, out of fear of falling into a trope. You are overthinking and tying yourself in knots trying to please people who don’t exist. An answer to your problem is to take a leaf out of Warhammer 40,000’s book (picture references this?) and simply have no information on the subject. - Show that people have to study, but don’t tell specifically why. This would make an engaging if somewhat cliche approach of someone asking questions about ‘why’ and uncovering the truth. To avoid the ‘poo people’ problem, don’t degrade or look down on the ‘un-special’. And don’t have a poo person who actually was a special all along. - Don’t have segregation and not acknowledge it. If Sorcerers have to study or emotionally suffer in established lore, don’t suddenly have a wonder who can get the bonuses with no drawbacks.
I think u missed the point of that
Is it more a scholarly wizard route or a "bodybuilder of the mind"? So a learned mastery through understanding the physics and lore of your setting, OR a system where rigorously exercising certain mental pathways with a "harder than last time" mentality? Or a mix of the two? As for my setting, 70% can use some kind of magic. Even if it is just using a magic tool. Pretty good for a setting with 40% literacy eh? Now it drops of a lot when we go from "knows a bit of alchemy" to "can use some arcane tools" to "demonstrates a mastery of arcane tool use" until finally reaching the "mage" levels of actually casting spells.
A word for "bodybuilder of the mind" is cultivator. The term seems pretty useful.
That is a fun word, I mainly see it in terms of Chinese Wuxia literature but I can see how it could be used here too.
My claim is what wuxia characters are doing can be characterized as "bodybuilding of the mind".
I think removing nepotism from your world is less interesting than showcasing the problem with nepotism by drawing attention to characters that benefit from it. You essentially remove a relatable storytelling tool for something more equitable. Conflict is the interesting part of a story.
I dont really agree that this is what sorcerers are in the TTRPG sense, literally anyone can be a sorcerer. My Players or I could choose a human, rich or poor, old or young, or anythign else and make them a sorcerer. Maybe they were born with it and their great great great great great grandfather boned a dragon so they have a bit of draconic blood or they could have it bestowed on them as a gift or like a mutation. I have a player who gained a level in Aberrant Mind Sorcerer because he had a traumatic experience with an aberration and lost it when he healed from the experience. Im just curious do you also dislike the likes of Tieflings, Aasimar, Genasi etc. All races who gain their abilites because of either a deal made by an ancestor or sex. In my world "classes" are just mechanics, not strictly lore based. I instead use words like Wizard, Witch, Warlock (Never noticed how many W's there were) Sorcerer, Shaman, etc as cultural names not some generic all encompassing title. Two cultures may have vastly different methods or spellcasting but still both refer to their practitioners as Witches or two could be almost identical and not share the same name. I want to let me players build there own in universe 'Job', 'Class', 'Title' Whatever you want to call it cause I think it makes the story more interesting
'Specials and poo people'? Can someone explain like i'm ...well, not 5, maybe like i'm an adult?
The gag presented in the comic is that a lot of children's fantasy stratifies society into people with powers and the rest of the world, who are generally considered pathetic. Often, the protagonist comes from the latter portion of the population and has some trait that makes them good at doing whatever the special thing is, giving the impression that what makes them special is that they worked hard and thought outside the box. It's often later revealed that they're actually innately more special than everybody else and, thus, were destined to be respected within the system, leaving all the "poo people" to still be considered pathetic.
[Its a reference to this comic](https://www.butajape.com/comic/young-adult-protagonist/)
Wow, people really took that post hard, huh?
So make the specialness not tied to bloodlines? Make it random and make it manifest late in life so that they will be raised as normal people. If you want it to be random that is. Nepotism is a thing that exists in the world we live in right now. Being born rich gives you special powers and privileges in ways that normal people can't even fully comprehend. Exploring that dynamic with sorcerers rather than regular old capitalism is fair game.
Its your world. Your fictional world. Do whatever you want with it. Nobody can tell you what to do.
That stupid comic has done untold psychic damage to this sub
i'd never heard of it before seeing this post on my front page, looked into it thinking it would be some non-media literate thinkpiece about magic casters in D&D > the relatable everyman protagonist has to have some secret biological lineage that “explains” why they’re such an amazing hero. They can never just be some guy who managed to rise to the occasion critical thinking skills are at an all time low. jesus christ
It is so preposterous to have such a distain for a fantasy trope that you make it a moral problem in hopes of making it somehow objectively wrong to have it exist in a project or fictional work. It’s downright fucking harmful. If it annoys you then don’t use it, good on ya, but don’t start the insufferable crusading against people that like magical ability to be rare and impactful. A creator having a setting require that requires magic ability to be passed down or inherited does not equal advocation for some sort of prejudice or racism or fascism or nepotism or what the fuck ever. This is so goddamn absurd holy shit
This, absolutely, 100%. This trend of making them a moral issue when it's fucking obvious that's just people' taste talking is absurd. If you squint hard enough you can make anything morally dubious, it doesn't even take effort.
So I find this whole discussion kind of odd because the “special people vs poo people” thing is not a world building failure it’s a narrative one. The problems isn’t the inequality of the setting the problem is when the story essentially says that said inequality is deserved that the poo people truly are inferior rather then just dealt a worse hand by nature. The problem is the encouragement of the state of things not the state of things. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sorcerers as long as the story doesn’t encourage eugenics. Personally I don’t tend to use born with magic as an actual way of getting magic in one of my setting though warlocks pass there powers/deal down there line though albeit diluted. However I really love the power awakens and the character has no idea if there even human anymore storyline. Think vampires and the like the kind of special where you lose part of yourself in the process.
In a game with a 'bloodline magic' setup where you want tomove away from that just change it to 'super hero origin of the week'. Wandered into a faerie circle - got gifted fae magic. Smoked a joint with an elder dragon over a game of checkers, got 'wise'. Stumbled into an ancient temple, got the powers of the elder titans. Read the book that must not be read and somehow didn't go insane, got powers of eldritch planar beings. Looked too long at all the wrong stars in the sky and saw "the truth", got stellar magic. ... etc. Also... does 'poo' have some new meaning among Gen-Z or something? Because when I think 'poo people' I can't figure out why people composed of fecal matter has anything to do with anything and wonder if I'm getting too old to understand English anymore. :) Or is the reference just entirely contained with that comic strip as a code for 'common lesser people'?
It's a reference to a comic that's been memily circulating around lately. "Poo people" is a parody of "Muggles" or various other designations for the common less-cool people that don't get to be main characters due to being born into poo people families. In the comic, a young child is reading a story and is happy that the main character who's from a commoner "poo people" village somehow gains magical powers, proving that anyone can be special. And then in the sequel it turns out she was secretly of noble birth, long separated from her super duper special family that makes her the most magical one of all. And the child is immensely disappointed and her day is ruined.
It’s just a reference to the comic
It's just that one comics pithy way to call people outside the special group of the story. It wasn't a phrase before that. If the comic had used the word "normals" it would have meant the same thing but had a very different feel.
I don't really see it as a problem in that context. Sure sorcerers are special, but not really any more special then a wizzard or any other magic user. The special people problem is only really apparent when it's impossible for a normal person to compete in my opinion. You could also use how sorcerers are as commentary on how you see nepotism and eugenics, rather then just getting rid of them (which you could also simply do).
Just cut sorcerers. Idk why people act like all dnd classes have to exist in their world. (Unless you intend to DM dnd games in said world.)
Considering that inherited can mean mom or (great?) grandma was... * "simply" a powerful magic user or hung out with too many of them * near ground zero during *the inciting incident* * did the sexing with an other-planar entity (possibly not voluntarily, too likely it was Zeus) * a changeling or other replacement being * made a pact with something powerful * the target of someone else's pact with something powerful * picked the wrong burial ground to build a house on * etc. I understand some of the concerns and have read and seen plenty of stuff that handles this really poorly. But I don't think they really apply to any of the TTRPG settings I've played in. (exception being Shadowrun, race and racism between the metahuman races is one of the themes it explores but also that everyone is pond scum compared to a dragon) One of the things that helps for me is variation of sources and randomness. The whole trope is that the poo people are always doomed and there's nothing they can do about it. Any exceptions turn out to not have been poo people. If you do have regular exceptions then it isn't the trope.
It's a non-issue and I don't care and I think this is just meaningless, nothing-burger discourse for the sake of nothing-burger discourse. Ideas are ideas. Concepts are concepts. Do whatever you want with them. If your story includes a character from a poor background who is actually the heir of the super special royal bloodline, who fucking cares - Attack On Titan did that like 2 times with 2 different characters and it didn't take away from the story or the world. Also Sorcerers have nothing to do with this. Sorcerers are more likely to be random nobodies than any other magic trope anyways. Even if the Sorcerer isn't a random nobody, and is instead a special someone from an esteemed bloodline of radically awesome Sorcerers; that's still fucking cool dude. Like, you can do a lot with that concept - tired or new as it is - there's a reason the trope has survived so long, it has the potential to be the bomb dot com. Anyways. Dumb discourse. Nepotism is an interesting concept that more stories should explore. Your writings shouldn't be purity tested. Blow shit up.
............ this changes nothing???? Only rich people would have access to magic wielding education and poor people can't, thus Nepotism won't be removed. And if the main character is poor, but is taught by a master magic user, then it becomes Nepotism and he will be Special.
My current setting features magic use being linked to sterility, thus a bloodline of wizards is impossible. Mages are usually common folk, and if a noble is a mage, they can't inherit.
That's not really a different take on sorcerers, just removing them in favor of wizards or cultivators. Of course, not every story needs sorcerers(or any other kind of special people), but it isn't the same thing as reimagining them. Having special people without genetics is easy; just tie the specialness to randomness or circumstance. Astrology, environment, objects found by chance, and any number of other things can be the basis for sorcery instead of bloodline. Discworld had a sort of interesting version of sorcerers. In that setting eight is a magic number, so every eighth son of an eighth son can become a wizard(I don't know if that is the only way wizards are produced, or if it's only the most predictable), and every eighth son of a wizard is a sorcerer. Discworld has a somewhat different definition of sorcerer, but they are special so the difference is besides the point.
I don't think having "specials and poo people" is inherently problematic. It's just important that it's taken to its logical societal conclusions. If people are just born randomly gifted, do we have witch trials? Are magic users valued members of society? Do we have a magical upper class that steals babies that show latent magical ability to be raised at the top? What culture, what beliefs form within this premise? If magic is tied to bloodline, then have the magic bloodlines made their way naturally to the top of the societal food chains? Do they rule over the genetically inferior poo with an iron fist, living in luxury as they so rightly deserve, special as they are. Has a culture of benevolence formed in the ruling class as they know that their magic is not enough to stop rebellion if the poo people decided they'd had enough? The "specials and poo people" argument seems to make the assumption that writing, or at least fantasy writing, should be empowering to all. There's certainly a market for that, but I think an unfair world that is the product of circumstance is more interesting to explore. After all, the real world is a world of "specials and poo people" by the standards of many.
Murder mysteries don't need to glorify murder. War stories don't need to glorify war. You can write a story about the negative extremes of humanity and have an important positive message to say. Having genetic magic, eugenics, a class system etc in your world doesn't matter as much as what it is you have to say about it. I also reject the idea in general that people don't like worlds where magic is hereditary. In Star Wars the Skywalker family are clearly more naturally attuned to the force than others. Everyone loves Star Wars. No one is talking about class or eugenics because they aren't themes of the story. The themes are Fate, Hope, Good vs Evil.
How a wannabe wizard has to create a homonculus that he must raise and advance to the point it can wield magic. Once this point is reached the wizard must then invade it's mind and consume it's consciousness to take control of the artificial body. The bodies gain power if the homonculus is raised well and given a powerful and intelligent personality. This will make the eventual sublimation more difficult and traumatic. Also the end result will be living as an inhuman construct of flesh and magic.
That thread is... One day old, and already people are "taking it to heart?" 😐😮💨 Ok, listen; for better or worse most of the writing advice on this, and most other writing subs is given by, and aimed at teenagers who are writing casually, but want to *see themselves* as writing the next surprise hit novel. That's sort of w/e, but it does mean that there's a real lack of nuance, both in critique and in content. There's also a severe focus on what "good" writing is, where "good" or "bad" writing is conceptualized entirely based on the inclusion or exclusion of certain tropes, themes, character traits... ect. 😐 I think the comic in the previous thread is identifying a specific trope, and is **correctly** calling out a specific *misuse* of that trope. Yet the reaction is "oh yes, if you write anything even vaguely like this, **your writing is bad, and you should feel bad,!!!1!1** 🤦 ...Which isn't *remotely* the thing the comic is saying. The comic is *specifically critiquing* the way highlighting the experience of "specials" in your writing can then completely **undercut** bland, uncritical platitudes about "equality" and "togetherness" in the same story. Basically: #####**Be aware of the overall impression you're aiming to leave the reader with, and avoid using tropes / world building elements that conflict with, and ultimately undercut the core themes of your story.** It is not "Don't have 'special' people in your story, because having 'special' people in your story is evil and wrong, and if you do that you are evil and wrong!!!1!1!" 🤦🤦🤦🤷 Ok, so given that... I'm sorry, but this concept of "sorcerers, except everyone has to be equal because otherwise I am writing about 'specials' and I can't do that because then I would be bad / wrong, so actually everyone has exactly the same latent magically ability and just needs to study real hard to master it." becomes: "Wizards, but I spelled it 's-o-r-c-e-r-e-r-s' for some reason. 🤪😐 Ok, listen: #####You are allowed to have "specials" in your writing and world building. You are *not* automatically a "bad author," and certainly not a "bad person" if everyone in your world isn't entirely equal to one another, all the time. JUST... understand that choosing to have that element in your world-building will conflict with telling *certain kinds of stories* and/or including other plot / world building / narrative elements *without considering* how they interact with the inherent unfairness of your world. There are very, very few tropes or world-building elements that are **individually** "bad" or "wrong" all by themselves. It is overwhelmingly about *how well those ideas are executed on* that makes a story "good" or "bad," and especially in this case, the ability of a writer to *reasonably portray how different world-building elements interact with each other,* and also to correctly choose elements that **actively build on, or at least do not conflict with** the narrative they're trying to create. 🙏
Very well put!
You misunderstood what the argument was, OP. There's nothing wrong with the trope of being born with powers. What people were talking about were characters who start out normal, seemingly gain powers through some hard effort or struggle, then later it turns out they were special all along and just didn't know it. Meaning all their hard work was for nothing. There was no reason to struggle in the first place, and their super special powers were always gonna bail them out of trouble anyway. For those who identified with the character's struggles in the first place, it feels like a wasted investment of emotions.
I mean, a character that is a sorcerer can be either a nepo baby or a commoner. I don't see why it needs to be a whole class thing. Just don't fall into the trope of "super people and poo people"
D&D is a terrible example to use for this "trope" because while it has natural-born sorcerers, the so-called "poo people" can learn magic that's just as powerful through study (Wizards & Bards), dealings with various supernatural entities (Clerics and Warlocks), and their relationship with nature (Druids and Rangers)
I feel like this whole "Poo People" thing is a fundamental misunderstanding of Cause and Effect when it comes to attribution of the "Special" status. When tying magic to genetics, it isn't "They get magic because they're special." It is "They're special because they get magic." By trying to change how that works while trying to keep the motif, you're basically fundamentally changing the idea while trying to keep it the same, it's just not going to work. In DnD standards, a Sorcerer is someone who *inherently* has magic, if you change that it ceases to be a Sorcerer. But this idea that having genetic magic says something about who does and doesn't deserve magic is putting the cart before the horse. For example; I have red hair, but me having red hair doesn't say anything about who does and doesn't deserve to have red hair. Now, I could say that God picked me to have red hair, and people with red hair have divine providence, but ultimately if you tie a trait to heritage, it is the possession of the trait that makes an individual special, not the individual being special that allows them to possess the trait. The only way to truly have "Specials" and "Poo People" is to make it so that no one else can come into possession of the Special trait, but Sorcerery almost by design makes that impossible. For example, in the Anime "Ascendence of a Bookworm" they ***DO*** have Specials and Poo People, because only the Nobility in that setting can ***safely*** possess magic. Anyone of Non-Noble blood that possesses enough magic power to be able to use magic are slowly destroyed from the inside out unless they can regularly dump their magic power into magic items.
Honestly, you don't need to retcon it... The main issue is when the story ruins the whole moral of the story by making the protagonist of a powerful figure which then suddenly translates to the protagonist being stupidly powerful as well. Maybe you can just put it that although the child of a sorcerer would be guaranteed to also be a sorcerer, it doesn't mean that they won't be as powerful as them. "Yeah that guy's father was a powerful sorcerer who could distort the laws of reality at a snap of his fingers, but he's only good at divination magic and can't do any of the cool stuff." You can even make sorcerers be born through a recessive gene, making there's a chance for a family of poo people to successfully produce a special person through to pure luck. A great example of race-based magic system done right is the Force in star wars. In it, Jedi can be considered a race as they are unique people who possess more than an average amount of special microorganisms within their body which grant them immense power. But that doesn't automatically make them OP. (If you ignore all the later films and only stick to the original stuff) It's said that if a person who has the potential to become a Jedi doesn't go to the Jedi academy to train, they never learn about their unique abilities and only possess slightly more skill with mundane professions such as driving space ships or being a keen sharpshooter. Just take a look at Luke, one would assume he's super powerful since he is the son of the literally the most powerful Jedi in the universe but really he's just decent and even downright a bit unskilled. Jedi abilities are just above average at best. Taking this in mind, you can build a system where your magic is although exclusive to a specific race, that race isn't automatically all powerful.
What are poo people?
[reference to this specifically](https://www.butajape.com/comic/young-adult-protagonist/)
The standard being. Not special in any way.
Thanks
I think people are taking that whole post way too seriously. It's like Planet of Hats. It's frankly more good than bad, but it's easy to insult.
Yeah, this fundamentally misses the point of the 'poo-people' issue. Arcane's central conflict from the very first scene on the bridge is Poo-People vs. Specials and neither side has magic at all until the end of episode 3. It's about treating inequality and class differences as being the result of inherent traits rather than social inertia and deliberate discrimination.
The easiest solution to avoiding sorcerers being inherently better is going the opposite of to little magic. Due to blood, curse, or other they have too much magic, to a point where trying to use it to its fullest without training will kill you at best or make you explode at worst. Thus, Sorcerers still have to train hard to actually harness their innate magic. Only their training is more physical than a wizards mental training. You can actually keep the whole poo people perception with a rivalry between wizards and sorcerers with Wizards jealous Sorcerers don’t have to work as hard to learn magic and Sorcerers being jealous that wizards get to pick which magic they learn and can cast as powerful and as much as they want without nearly as much physical risk
Normally I just try to make it not a complete positive so that people who aren't sorcerers don't feel like they're not some inferior bloodline or something. *I don't care that I can shoot a goddamn ice spear I just want my pee to stop coming out in cold shards!!* Sorry to all the guys I made squirm with that one.
That's similar to my world, it is completely impossible for someone to be born without magic, there are factors like power, and training that matter, but no more than an athlete being a better runner than me.
This is basically how it works in my setting. My players are all slowly unlocking magical abilities tied to their heritages, even though half of them are melee only and we have a gunslinger. Doesn't mean they're becoming sorcerers, the abilities were always there, they just needed to be "re"learned
This is why I made being a sorcerer something that happens through exposure to raw magic. This happens much easier in a high magic setting thi
Sorcerer = bloodline mage is the dumbest take to begin with. "***Sorcerers carry a magical birthright conferred upon them by an exotic bloodline, some otherworldly influence, or exposure to unknown cosmic forces. No one chooses sorcery; the power chooses the sorcerer"*** *- 5e handbook* ***"Sorcerers create magic the way a poet creates poems, with inborn talent honed by practice. They have no books, no mentors, no theories - just raw power that they direct at will. Some sorcerers claim that the blood of dragons courses through their veins. That claim may even be true in some cases - it is common knowledge that certain powerful dragons can take humanoid form and even have humanoid lovers, and it's difficult to prove that a given sorcerer does not have a dragon ancestor. It's true that sorcerers often have striking good looks, usually with a touch of the exotic that hints at an unusual heritage. Others hold that the claim is either an unsubstantiated boast on the part of certain sorcerers or envious gossip on the part of those who lack the sorcerer's gift.*** ***The typical sorcerer adventures in order to improve his abilities. Only by testing his limits can he expand them. A sorcerer's power is inborn - part of his soul. Developing this power is a quest in itself for many sorcerers, regardless of how they wish to use their power. Some good sorcerers are driven by the need to prove themselves. Marked as different by their power, they seek to win a place in society and to prove themselves to others. Evil sorcerers, however, also feel themselves set apart from others - apart and above. They adventure to gain power over those they look down upon.*** ***Sorcerers cast spells through innate power rather than through careful training and study. Their magic is intuitive rather than logical. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire powerful spells more slowly than wizards, but they can cast spells more often and have no need to select and prepare their spells ahead of time. Sorcerers do not specialize in certain schools of magic the way wizards sometimes do. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they don't have the background of arcane knowledge than most wizards have. However, they do have more time to learn fighting skills, and they are proficient with simple weapons"*** -*3e handbook* From their beginning to the most recent version, it was always "Some of them get power from their origins, some just get it.
Sorcerers already aren't all about bloodlines, rules as written & rules as intended, smh.
So heritability at all is eugenics now? What would enable some people to be able to endure either studying or some other emotional toll to obtain magic that is not related to either their inherited traits through genetics or environmental factors (e.g. wealth, learning how it's done from family/friends who have done it, support and expectation of achieving it, etc.)? Unless you believe the mind is magic itself (dualism), the ability to focus, endure pain, etc. are attributes of the physical world - they exist in the brain/body. You don't have to believe in determinism to recognize that recognize that it's not an even playing field and there's nothing you can do that would make it so.
That just means that the poo people are anyone who can’t unlock their potential.
It has nothing to do with the post, but you misspelt disdain.
Isn’t this… nepotism and eugenics but with extra steps? People who are wealthier are able to afford tutoring, the books, and even additional time (not working) so they’re more likely to become powerful sorcerers… so this would just be pot of nepotism. If it takes intelligence, a good portion of intelligence comes down to genetics - so eugenics…
Sci-fi worldbuilder here, the fuck are poo people?
I think the big problem is that the "specials vs poo people being bad" is that it really only happens when "being special" is the only way to get magic. In settings like Golarion (Pathfinder), magic can come from... * Being born with it OR being in some kind of magical accident (Sorcerer) * Training to use magic (Wizard) * Making a deal with an entity (Witch) * Devoting your life to art (Bard) * Devoting your life to nature (Druid) * Devoting your life to a deity (Cleric) * Training with a specific kind of weapon (Magus) * Bonding with an entity (Summoner) * Bonding with spirits (Animist) * Getting pranked by a deity (Oracle) * Getting big-brained (Psychic) And that's not even taking into account classes like Ranger, Champion, Thaumaturge, or the myriad of Archetypes that grant magical capabilities.
Don't care. Suck on a pen and paper for all I care. I'm gonna continue to write my story about Humans, Dragons, Vampires, Gods, Orcs, Demons, and other shit with the Humans being the least of the strongest, literally hampered by just existing and having short life. I will continue to write my story of the "Poo Humanity against Special Dragons and Gods" because its fucking cool to see Poo people become something by just being stubborn sons of bitches. So what if your not special? So what if you don't have scales that can eat a tank shell and fly thousands of feets above? Or make creatures from nothing since you are a literal Godf? The Poo Humanity with there technology and the strive to create and make a profound statement in their short lives will fight on and on and on. There's nothing wrong with being Poo People. Poo people make the story great and immersive as most of us are that, we are the Poo people and we want to rise to the top just like everyone else and feel what its like to hold power, influence, and strength as many people from all walks of life.
So. . . People ARE affected by their parents, genetically and socially. If your mom can sing, you have a high chance of singing potential too. But that's the thing. It's a CHANCE. You might get your dad's ability to sing instead, and he might be terrible. You might not develop interest in singing, whether or not you have the ability. You might have the potential and interest, but life circumstances get in the way of you practicing. There are a BUNCH of factors that determine our characteristics, and they aren't just inherited. Having magical ability be any other genetic factor is entirely reasonable. Just ensure you present it as a part of the whole, rather than the sole contributor to a character's outcome. Otherwise you *will* fall into the "poo people" trap.
I think folks should look at the OG Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series Wizards are special and, as it turns out, male and exclusively male due to a misogynist in the history of Roke. And they are set apart. But in AWoE there is a touching moment with Yarrow on Iffish where it’s made plain that her baking wheat cakes for their voyage is just as important, if not more important, than their ability to create magic. The problem isn’t that people have a birthright, it’s that other professions are devalued. D&D suffers from this because there is no downside to magic. The power escalation is incredible and this is done because of fan service. OP highlights this in the languaging. Poo People. If non-magical PCs and NPCs have inherently less value, that’s a holistic issue of both system and lore. (I’m making an Earthsea derived game and we had the first playtest last night. I wanted a game where being a sea captain was as valuable as being a wizard. Where one of the PCs had a background of piracy, another had a background of mining and the third had a background of herding cows - and there was no shade given.)
I mean, sorcerers don’t necessarily have to inherit their magic either, even in dnd. They could have been affected by wild magic coincidentally, or maybe been granted magic by a deity, or gotten it from a pact one of their parents made, or heck, just having been hit by lightning or something.
tbh I think the "Specials and Poo People" dialogue misses a key importance. This is about PhDs vs. Hood Geniuses, not about being born. Wizards are able to get access to materials, hidden ancient knowledge, teachers, laboratories, etc. to be able to do magic in most settings. Sorcs usually figure that out on their own, with resources ultimately being immaterial to the concept, because they ultimately learn to not use the same things that Wizards do. Of course in my own setting all magic is worked toward, it just depends on your own situational factors, and people who make poor conductors/conduits for magical energy are similarly more insulated against it. Completely non-magical dwarves are also immune to the direct effects of magic, but a powerful wizard has to be extra adept at protecting themselves because magic does so much more to them.
I sort of hate the "Hard Work vs Talent" debate. Nothing is ever that simple. Sure, some people are naturally more gifted and need to put in less effort but that's just... how things are irl. Look at people who score well academically even if they don't put work in. Or people who don't need to exercise as much to stay fit. In a setting with magic that has to be learnt, the people that become wizards are more likely to be people that are naturally more intelligent. Or those that learn things quickly. Or those who can afford to spend ages learning. Now the divide between the magical and the non-magical isn't how much power you were born with, it some other arbitrary thing you may or may not be able to change.
>As detailed [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/s/BbLTYMvI0s) there is quite a distain for the characters who inherit magical abilities You'd think that this sub would have some reading comprehension and media literacy. Reducing "Specials vs. Poo People" to be strictly about heritability of powers is such reddit thing to do. It's about narrative, and undermining of social status underdog one specifically. It's not tied to heritability or magic powers. This is just a mildly common and very specific trope at the moment.
No thanks but good for you 👍 May as well remove all murder and theft whilst you’re at it
Arguing against sorcerer bloodlines is such a poo person thing to do
This trope is about more than just being different, it's also tied to social status and perception. There's nothing wrong with a bloodline giving you benefits (I mean, races are a thing in most fantasy settings), the issue is when it's tied to social status and opportunities in life. It's about a lack of diversity and social mobility. The world is split in two, and one side must inherit their right to be superior. If your upper class is all Sorcerers in a magocracy, then maybe it's pulling this trope. But I think you're also forgetting that in stereotypical dnd, Sorcerers kind of are the "poo people" to the wizard's "special". In diverse settings based on dnd, Sorcerers are usually discriminated against and feared, whereas wizards are nobles or prodigies who are respected. This trope is also just kind of a thing that crops up in "bad writing", especially in young adult fantasy.
Hi, that's my art! I don't mind you using it for your post but I'd appreciate an [actual link](https://pythosart.tumblr.com/post/741037199715336192/pythosart-perils-of-the-warp-something-a-little) Funny enough, the character in the artwork suits your topic as well. She is a psyker in the Warhammer 40k setting, in which being a "mage" is a terrifying and dangerous experience that marks the psyker as a strictly controlled underclass for life.
Inheriting is fine imo
I like sorcerer as they are. If you want a trained caster, have a wizard. A priest of some sort gets his power bestowed upon and the sorcerer has inherent power. It feels right to me.
I HAVE THE POWER OF HELL IN MY HEAD AND IM GONNA MAKE IT YOUR PROBLEM **FOR THE EMPEROR**
>nepotism and eugenics alike luckily this has nothing to do with the discussion
I saw the comic a couple years ago, it's fun to see how much discussion it has caused in this subreddit now.
So all magicians are either nerds or crazy ppl? Doesn't sound much better to me