I'm about the story as opposed to being overly anal about mechanics.  For anyone completely new to DnD, a good free source can be found at:

http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/osric/

In the interest of keeping play moving, I encourage the players to go ahead and roll their own maneuvers (1d20 Roll) if you do something that actually requires skill.  Just let me know what you're trying to do and your roll.  Unless you're trying to do something that is amazingly hard, a natural 1 is a fantastic success and an 20 a fantastic failure.  For a dexterity-based maneuver, roll against your DEX stat, intelligence = INT, etc.  If you have any questions, PM me.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:29, Sat 26 Mar 2011.

WARNING: I am cobbling together what I consider to be best practices from a number of systems as well as some original work.  In other words, if it doesn't work exactly as on the following websites, please remain calm.  PM me if you feel it's something too critical.  I may simply be missing it.

For all things Greyhawk, look at http://www.canonfire.com/.  This is ONLY where you'll start.

For clans and status, I'm using concepts from http://www.tekumel.com as well as 20+ years of information on the associated Yahoo groups: Tekumel and Tekumel-Moderated.

For additional spells and magic items, I'm going to sprinkle in Rolemaster.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:28, Mon 01 June 2009.

In the June 2007 issue of Men's Health, I read that recent research in Self-Determination Theory (SDT) points to three basic needs that must be met to maximize motivation:

1. Autonomy - The choice to do it.
2. Competence - You know what you're doing or at least becoming better at it.
3. Relatedness - The act connects you in some other way to other people.

The RPG best practices that I've observed with "autonomy" include:
a) Choice of whether to play (given)
b) Influence on the outcome
c) Requirement to choose the kind of character you play
d) Requirement to craft your own background with some general guidance
e) Quick reinforcing pleasure/satisfaction (think about how addictive video games are) around goals
f) Manage expectations

This medium is necessarily slower than F2F gaming.  While it certainly has its upsides, creating constant reinforcing pleasure/satisfaction, particilarly in reactive players, is a challenge.  It has negatively affected every game I've played in or GM'd over the past seven years.

Because many people do not write well, "competence" can be daunting.  Keeping activity action-oriented can defuse the competence gap, but leave those seeking more role-playing feeling like they've eaten hors d'oeuvres for weeks.  The other side of this is that people who don't write well frequently don't converse in writing with the other players and become frustrated when their own skills don't allow them to solve a complex situation that requires teaming.  It also means that when salient details are provided by the GM to less active players in the hope of promoting greater participation, those details are frequently not shared.

Players who are not active are necessarily disconnected from the other players.  Encouraging personal interaction with real names, so that people become friends, can help.

This is a tremendously complex question.

Magic is limited to a small, but non-trivial percentage of the population.  Say between 1-20% (Note from Adam: Probably 60% in Rolemaster).  This means it is a commodity, but not so rare that its effects would be limited to the highest echelons of society.  For the sake of argument, let's say about 10% of the population is capable of learning and using magic, without any particular restrictions on what field of magic they can pursue.  Magicians are graded, however, with 'higher level' characters being geometrically less common than lower level ones, limiting what spells they are capable of.

Magic has been introduced rather suddenly, or the current cultural background has been enforced by some external condition which is now raised (otherwise we have cave men capable of casting fireballs and astral chariots, and the entire construction of society would be completely different, probably with mages in charge of everything just as soon as they learn the 'read mind' spell) and that background is say 800 AD Europe (effectively).

Magic is not available, or is limited in use, outside of the geographic scope of this question.

Magic serves to amplify personal capabilities.  It can make any process faster, generally for less cost, and enables all of the crazy things we see in D&D.  Additionally, there are spells that are not mentioned in D&D because they are more economically or politically relevant (so not worth putting in a book on adventuring)  However, if you have an idea for something that might be a valid spell, propose it.

Magical spells require ingredients, some renewable resources, some non-renewable.

Given this situation, we'd see a few major jumps.  Firstly, magicians would rise in ranks very quickly.  A smart ruler would begin testing the peasants for it (assuming it's an accident of birth).  A lot of money would be poured into them and, since magicians are drafted, not volunteers, the king would work hard to keep them happy as well.  This means titles and the like.  However, the king has a tough choice.  He must give the mages enough power that they stay happy, but not so much that they usurp him.  We would likely see a significant rise in the number of mage-rulers, or of mage-ruler partnerships, as well as heavy investment in methods of defeating mages.  A smart ruler will have several mages competing with each other, each offering different mages at different times protection.  A sticky situation indeed!

Economically, the rich ruler is the one who learns how to transport more goods farther faster.  One of the biggest major problems in medieval Europe was the difficulties associated with trade.  Considering it took years for a single caravan to go from say France to China and back, being able to make this trip for a measly 77,000gp will result in a HUGE jump in trade, and allow for free market forces to take effect.  If the Chinese can't teleport and the Europeans can, again, a major benefit to them.  Trade delegations are no longer separated from family and friends, and the ruler now can scout out new areas to conquer and settle.  What's the result?  Imperialism and colonization.  Europeans find they like apples, but they can't grow apples all year round.  Well some smart bloke finds another place that has summer during their winter and they set up people to grow apples there.  Alternatively, if that isn't cost effective, the sheer value-to-weight of spices and gold would allow rulers to set up their own spice farms or gold mines far outside the reach of their non-magical neighbors.

Poor rulers will suddenly find that rapid transit has allowed for free competition, raising their costs to compete.  If a ruler is too poor or stupid to invest in this magic himself, he won't be able to get the best prices, care for his people as well, and will eventually be supplanted.

Meanwhile, the biggest competition rises for ingredients for magic, and spell development.  Just like our current competition for oil, the cost of ingredients for teleportation (and I think we all agree that transportation is going to be the primary single focus of medieval magical investment, because of its tremendous trade and military applications, will skyrocket and towns will rise up for the sole purpose of sourcing this commodity.  I think it's reasonable that we'd find the rich people who have already made a fortune transporting stuff aren't going to be interested in spending time doing things that can be done mundanely.  If they can't make rubies through magic, their focus will probably be on development and research (i.e., magical information).  Development of new spells makes the best use of their magical resources (since these mages can only cast so many spells then are sitting around all day otherwise), offers the best ROI (new weapons no one can counter and an edge against other magical powers) and the best trade implications (once the spell is developed, it's tremendously cheap to reproduce it for sale, unlike mining rubies which is time intensive for each and every ruby).  The rich people would invest in further knowledge, research and education, the poor people would dig in the dirt until they can start affording their own magical resources.

What becomes truly fascinating in the economic realm is the fact that magic is a personal power multiplier.  If I'm a mage, there's no requirement I work for a king.  I just need some start-up money, a little education, and I can start working on my own.  Eliminating such upstarts might evolve into its own profession.  I find a weak ruler, say I'm setting up camp on his land, but that I'll lend defensive measures, and I go to work.  If he complains, I find some other ruler who is more compliant.  This partially skips the steps about the rise of cities and industrialization that we saw in real history, and goes straight to the lowest denominators of free market capitalism.  As more people become able to invest in themselves, they eat away at the economic base of feudalism.  This would likely result in tremendous economic conflict between rulers and mages, and would probably end in fantastic wars.  But ultimately, the mages can pick up and move wherever they want.  North America maybe.  And that takes away all the advantages the rulers had over the mages before, so ultimately the mages WILL win, at least enough to be left alone.  The whole process would take hundreds of years probably to run its course, but it would be unstoppable.

As for war...  the smart rulers will realize war is expensive.  It's bad for business and best avoided.  If there MUST be a war, they'd want to do it clandestinely.  A step beyond what we're facing now.  Biological warfare would be the word of the day, I think.  Why teleport in an attacking army when you can just infest on rat with the black death, another person with small pox, a cow with anthrax, the grain with ergot, and simply overwhelm their healers?  Or more likely, just focus on things that kill other mages.  If you develop a spell that passes like a disease from person to person, but only kills mages, you've won.  You use it once or twice on your main competitors, and from there on, you just roll in the cash, until some new upstart jumps in to hit YOU with something similar.

Early on, it'll be good to be the big guy because you can afford more mages, more protection.  But because magic enables at the individual level, over the long-term, being the big guy just means you're an easier target, and power will shift to the smallest denominators.

Unless there is some condition that limits magic use (e.g., the act of casting consumes magic in an area for a time, there are magically fertile and dead zones), then the economic and sociological forces described above would come to bear.  These might define where civilization flourishes.

In my view, society today is largely defined by transportation, communications, and energy.  All three would be areas of intense magical research.

Those in power would create legal systems and spells to detect and control magic and its users.  Look at what's now happening with nuclear proliferation.

Strategic distinctiveness will give way to commoditization (e.g., railroad, factory automation).  This, in turn, will drive innovation and education.

Economic, cultural, and group inertia are forces that must be overcome to embrace innovation and the resultant consequences.  By inertia, I'm talking about the propensity to continue doing what's been successful in the past.  People tend to do what they're used to.


For every offense, a defense will be developed.

If a powerful magician were in a leadership position with the ability to read and control the minds of others, augmented with proselytizing, that individual could plausibly manipulate the masses to whatever end; even to become effectively a god.  As seen throughout history, but most recently in the Middle East, that mindset becomes self-reinforcing if you can control the environment of individuals involved for a few years.  Poorly educated impoverished people are sheep.

If magical power or ability is limited to just a small percentage of the population, then those without will likely rise up to throw off the yoke of magical oppression, especially where there are abuses.  And let's face it, history would be rife with mad leaders where Caligula's excesses would be sorely tested.  When you add the dynamics of other races, demons, and particapatory gods, the possibilities become infinite.

It is in the pursuit of equilibrium/stability that the opportunities for great gaming exist.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:58, Tue 30 June 2015.