GURPS SHADOW WORLD

Spiritual Magic


There are a number of ways to approach the standard priestly powers in GURPS. 

You can create various deities, and assign them schools of Magic that they can learn from, and allow them to cast spells that are identical to the ones that Mages cast, but their power source is different.

For a direct conversion of Shadow World, this is probably the best approach, since in Rolemaster, the realm of Channeling defined spiritual powers granted by a greater deity.

My approach is totally different, and can lead to some very interesting results.


Religion

I never liked the way in my old RPG's that if you played a Priest or Cleric, you worshipped the gods and prayed to them all the time; and if you didn't play one of these, you weren't religious in the slightest.  I have tried to combine present day religion with that found in the Shadow World sourcebooks.  The Haalkitaine book states that most people in Rhakhaan claim to be religious and worship one or more of the gods at the appropriate times of the year.

To me, religion in an RPG should be a matter of personal belief and faith, and not dictate what type of character you play.  GURPS is ideal for this in the way it is a classless system.  Religion becomes an extra bit of description for the character, and nothing more, unless they choose to be a member of the church and take the appropriate advantages (Clerical Investment, Claim to Hospitality etc.)


Clerical Spells

Here is the big change, it's very different from standard fantasy settings. There is no clerical magic.  None at all.  The gods / deities / high powers do not have the ability to channel spells through their followers, even though they may be able to use magic themselves.

"Hold on a moment!" you may think, what about the standard "Going to the temple for healing" and all the other things associated with priests. Believe it or not, my change doesn't actually alter anything, it just opens it up a lot more.

Remember the fact that anyone can be religious, it should be described on the character sheet along with height and weight.  Therefore spell-users can be religious.  They may even work at the local temple.  They are the ones who provide healing services for donations.  But, they are Mages, and no different in what they do than Mages who are not religious.


Here's where it gets interesting

Although when I was coming up with this system, I kept telling myself that it wasn't going to work, the more I developed it, the more I liked it.  Take the above Mage.  He is very religious,  he was saved from death by a priest of Kuor as a child and dedicated himself to the worship of the gods.  After years of study and prayer, and teachings from the high priest, he gained the ability to heal others.

Compare this to a non-religious mage who learns the healing spells from his master.  There is no difference.  The power comes from the same source (The Essænce).  The only thing that is different is their understanding of how the magic works and how they do it.  The Mage who works in the temple, has been trained by the high priest (who is also, just a mage), but they both believe they get their powers from the gods.  In actual fact, all the praying didn't help, but they don't know that.

In GURPS terms, a player who chooses to be a magic using priest should have the disadvantage of delusion (thinks that his spells come from the gods), but that may be just easy points.  And, one of the spell using religious types in my current campaign isn't aware of my changes and honestly thinks that she is using powers from the deities she worships.


Problems that can arise

Religious beliefs have been known throughout history as causing a lot of trouble and people being killed for blasphemy.  I have tried to recreate this situation with various cultures on Kulthea.

A lot of priests, spell-users or not, believe that the use of Magic is blashpemous.  The gods have already chosen who their messengers will be (spell-using priests), and any use of any Magic outside of this is wrong.

Some of them believe that Magic is actually using the evil forces in the world, and that all Mages should be killed.

Some of them think that people outside of the church who use Magic are actually invoking the powers of the Gods, but they don't know it.

As far as Mages go, very few of them know the truth.  Even some of the Loremasters believe that clerical magic does exist, for proving that it doesn't would be impossible and potentially cause a huge change in the way that religion is viewed on the planet.

If you were a Mage who suspected that the priests at your local temple were nothing more than Mages themselves, do you think you would be able to convince them?

Most Mages believe that they tap into the natural essence flows to gain their powers and that priests channel the power down from Orhan.  This is not true, they both get their power from the same source.


Summary

The above ideas have really worked for me in my Shadow World campaign, especially when some of the players know the truth and others don't.  It also gets around the fact that GURPS does not have any specific separate spells for priests, so that there is no difference between a spell cast by a Mage, or a spell cast by a Priest.

I would like to hear from anyone who has any comments.

Paul Grogan
Runestone Games
Paul@runestonegames.freeserve.co.uk