Lets talk about magic and magicians

[Landros]

Lets talk about the mage guilds now. So far, among the dudes and dudets on the discorde there are 2 main currents of tought regarding this.

One of the two states that magic should be treated as universally free and open to pursue no matter its tipe as long as you become a mage, and thus are considered worthy. The adepts of this current of thought consider that not only the two circles of magic (fire and water) but also Xardas the necromancer are on the best of terms in spite of the fact that they have decided to apparently go their separate way and thus would always support each other with the full extent of their knowledge.

Another current would prefere some degree of knowledge barriers between the circles of magic. Memebers of this current of thought (so far, oficially just me XD, but am sure there are more who see the logic in my arguments) are of the opinion that the above is an utopic situation that doesn't have much in common with how normal human beings usually act. Also ruins quite a lot the idea and meaning behing "reuniting the circles" as nameless, if there are virtually no barriers between them.

Proof 1 - the two mage groups have split. Not only that, but the water mages have moved to a whole different camp, that are also direct rivals to the OC. Indeed, the fact the the 2 camps are at each others throat doesn't mean so are the mages which do have good diplomatic relations with each other trough the messengers, but still... it does clearly evidentiate the fact that they aren't the same group anymore, and thus would guard their secrets, their knowledge, as knowledge is power and you generaly tend to keep it for your own.

Proof 2 - in G1, while being a fire mage, you are not admited to the water mages until you are given a password even if you present yourself to the guards wearing your fire mage robe. This clearly implies that being a mage doesn't grant you access to the water mages, thus their knowledge. This also implies that it is not usual for the mages of the 2 circles to directly interact. (otherwise the guards in the NC would have known to admit you do to clearly being a fire mage) Not interacting, for sure means they aren't exchanging magic knowledge either.

Proof 3 - at no time during the game do you see fire mages and water mages intermingle between each other in any of their locations. They are clearly segregated. If they were to share knowledge, if they were to research magic together, they would for sure be intermingling. Which they are most definetly not.
Now, this is a remake, and you can change it how much you like, but in my personal opinion, making the guilds of magicians guard their knowledge judiciously and only sharing it with members of their group would make much more sense, would give logical meening to being a fire or water mage and would also give meenig for the idea of being accepted in more than one group and thus reunite the circles of magic. (Archmage)
Would actually make for a cool quest chain for magicians... just saying.




And about magic now... would love if we could have actual magic, not just rune magic.
I mean, keep the rune magic as main magic, the art of inbuwing magic elemets onto magic ore thus creating the magic rubes, but also grant the possibility for the consumate magician, for the invested archmage that reunites the elements to be able to also learn a spell or 2 of the ancient true magic, that is independent of runes. Would be cool ;)
But either way, would love some elemental based restrictions to learning magic.

For example, only fire mages should be able to learn the highest fire magic with some lower lvl spells from other circles (like healing from water/Adanos) but also only necromancers should be able to summon undead and demons, the other mages being restricted to golems of their own element. An exception could be someone who manages to reunite the circles... but that should be hard to achieve so as to keep it meaningfull. Perhaps trough some certain conditions set by certain quests being achieved with the propper outcome.

Another cool thing would be for each element to have its own inherent benefit. For example the element of fire could give its explosive nature to spells, thus improving their dmg, while the element of water could improve the mana eficiency of spells making them cost less mana and thus be more cost effective. This could give an aditional skill to the one that manages to reunite the circles of magic (the archmage) of imbuing aditional benefit to a spell of a certain element by adding this inherent benefit from the other oposite element, (fireballs cost less mana, ice block freezes more than one target but only if they are close together) thus giving making the idea of reuniting the elements deeper.

[Vasemir]

Hell no, it's no D&D nor Harry Potter.
Ancient magic could coexist with runes, but it should have no place in colony-themed gameplay.

I'd argue that mages split happened long, long before the Barrier, around the time of Haran Ho's assasination. Even though they may share some authority in the eyes of common folks, I don't think they would be eager to cooperate as they have different, contradictory goals.

[Siberian Software]

@Landros
Your argument about two circles of mages being separate entities makes a lot of sense.

It's obvious that Fire and Water mages are two different Orders of mages, not one.
This is exacerbated due to the fact that magic is related to religion in Gothic. Fire and Water aren't just two elements, but are manifestations of two gods -- Innos and Adanos. Note that there are no mages of Earth or Air as would be classical for magic based purely on element. And mages aren't just mages as well, but also perform functions of priests of their respected gods. At least some of them. In Gothic 2 you can see how Vatras preaches to people on a square in Khorinis for example. Note that there are no priests who wouldn't be mages. There isn't a word about guilds of mages, but instead Fire mages dwell in a monastery both in Gothic 2 and 3. Which means that magic isn't purely instrumental, but has strong religious meaning.

This all clearly indicates that Circles of mages are religious orders and mages play similar role as Magi of Zoroastrianism in Kingdom of Myrtana. Fire mages would be direct analogue of Ancient Persian mages. Just in Gothic there are two such orders in one kingdom. Obviously there would be a strong division between them.

[Landros]

Originally posted by Vasemir:

Hell no, it's no D&D nor Harry Potter.
Ancient magic could coexist with runes, but it should have no place in colony-themed gameplay.

I'd argue that mages split happened long, long before the Barrier, around the time of Haran Ho's assasination. Even though they may share some authority in the eyes of common folks, I don't think they would be eager to cooperate as they have different, contradictory goals.

Well, perhaps for a future Gothic 2 remake if this is done properly :)

[Landros]

Originally posted by Siberian Software:

@Landros
Your argument about two circles of mages being separate entities makes a lot of sense.

It's obvious that Fire and Water mages are two different Orders of mages, not one.
This is exacerbated due to the fact that magic is related to religion in Gothic. Fire and Water aren't just two elements, but are manifestations of two gods -- Innos and Adanos. Note that there are no mages of Earth or Air as would be classical for magic based purely on element. And mages aren't just mages as well, but also perform functions of priests of their respected gods. At least some of them. In Gothic 2 you can see how Vatras preaches to people on a square in Khorinis for example. Note that there are no priests who wouldn't be mages. There isn't a word about guilds of mages, but instead Fire mages dwell in a monastery both in Gothic 2 and 3. Which means that magic isn't purely instrumental, but has strong religious meaning.

This all clearly indicates that Circles of mages are religious orders and mages play similar role as Magi of Zoroastrianism in Kingdom of Myrtana. Fire mages would be direct analogue of Ancient Persian mages. Just in Gothic there are two such orders in one kingdom. Obviously there would be a strong division between them.

I strongly agree with your view point, but most dislike the conection between religion and magic (even tough its quite clear) and prefere a more liberal aproach. They rather prefere the more chill gods of G1 rather than the more crusade like athmosphere of G2. Thats why I went the neutral way in this regard... showing why even like this, mage groups should guard their secrets. :)

When also this rout due to it being a remake, not a remaster, so they might chance a lot of stuff, which is quite good in my opinion, as long as they keep the core elements there. The story imo, isn't one of those core elements. :) Eventually, we should still get to bring down the barier and banish the sleeper, but the jorney itself, I hope its quite changed.

[Rhobar V]

Gothic 1, strongly implies that Magic and Religion are closely related, as well as having fire or ice themed spells only availiable through respective circles. That may be due to the split in thought while in the barrier, however.

Gothic 2 is much different. Less exclusive magic and more union between the circles.

I prefer the 'opposing guilds' system because it makes lore more interesting.

[Landros]

Originally posted by Rhobar V:

Gothic 1, strongly implies that Magic and Religion are closely related, as well as having fire or ice themed spells only availiable through respective circles. That may be due to the split in thought while in the barrier, however.

Gothic 2 is much different. Less exclusive magic and more union between the circles.

I prefer the 'opposing guilds' system because it makes lore more interesting.

well, I guess you are right, tough the fact is that you still can buy and use spells from any mage order as being part of any of them. I rather think that a huge oversight that can be fixed in the Remake.