Metaphysics and All its Fabulously Gnarly Implications

[HangedMan]

The ability to empirically quantify and measure these metaphysical properties does open up some interesting story telling possibilities.

 

For example, if heaven and hell do exist then conceivably, you would be able to measure the amount of good deeds that it would take to get into heaven and the amount of bad deeds to get into hell.

 

So the clergy would almost be like accountants where people can go to audit their souls and calculate how close they are to heaven or hell and how many good deeds they would need to do in order to escape from hell and get into heaven.

Oh, god, this is a brilliant idea. I might just yank this idea for a homebrew game I'm working on, if you don't mind.

[Paul D]

Could the soul be viewed as a conduit, rather than a consumable. That is, the purity (or darkness) of the soul improve the ability of the character to channel energy from the alternate plain. Viewed this way it could open potential ideas for story telling, such as possession (good and bad). A characters actions therefore improve (or damage) the viability of the conductive power of that characters soul, and therefore, the power which can be tapped. One could then find souls to items (remembering soul-gems from other games) to have those items then able to channel power.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

Mystwalker has a fairly good point there, we have no way to know that the soul stuff is for real, or just a try on the world's denizens' part to explain how magic works.

[The Sharmat]

The ability to empirically quantify and measure these metaphysical properties does open up some interesting story telling possibilities.

 

For example, if heaven and hell do exist then conceivably, you would be able to measure the amount of good deeds that it would take to get into heaven and the amount of bad deeds to get into hell.

There is in fact a series of fantasy novels that explores that very possibility as a major theme. I wonder if any of the writers have read it.

[KenThomas]

I like pop's posts.

 

Also, the words "Gnarly" and "Rad" totally need to get more use in the English language.

 

re: soul is taken can it be mended

 

- would they need to recover their soul from the person / thing that took it or would it be able to be restored by something like a cleric?

 

If the latter, is there some kind of metaphysical soul realm or well of soul power it is drawing from? In Carnivale (tv show) in order to heal others life force was taken from the surrounding areas, ie a field of corn or flock of birds etc.

 

If the former, would those who held the souls of others have them essentially enthralled? If it was the basis of a caste system as you suggest, perhaps something like a former king being enthralled by his conqueror as an object lesson to any who would oppose him?

 

This is cool, but I have to admit that while writing this I do have the apprehensive feeling that if they're wanting to write an entirely original story and not take any suggestions that by simply speculating on it we are restricting what they're able to write into the game. That said if they're open to it and don't mind where good ideas come from as long as they're good, rock on.

[KenThomas]

Just throwing out an idea there for what happens to souls when they pass on. Maybe they get purified, sort of scrubbed clean of all that accumulated personal experience, reprocessed, and packaged up into a new body?

And if this is the case, what would people think of that? I rather like having memories myself, thank you. Not that the denizens of that world necessarily know the nature of their afterlife.

 

I think if a soul was being reused over and over again in each life cycle it would make living at all seem rather pointless. It's just throwing the souls at each other in an endless loop. Also, it would make for a fixed population and is reminiscent of the idea of various eternal mythological struggles, even when people weren't warring in those mythologies. If however the population wasn't fixed and was instead growing, yet there was a finite amount of soulstuff, individuals of each successive generation would get progressively weaker, allowing them to be dominated by individuals who had found a way to prolong their lives or make themselves immortal or who found a way to keep their soul from being split and redistributed upon their death or reproduction.

 

If someone retains the entirety of their soul power in their next incarnation, it seems likely their children would have absolutely zero soul power or that they'd be unable to have children at all. If each parent gives up half of their soul power in order to create a child, then imbalances in soul power between parents would determine the strength of the soul of the child and the parents would immediately become weakened by half upon creation of one life. Also, subsequent children would only be half as strong as their older sibling due to the diminished strength of their parents at conception.

 

It seems to me that a closed system where soul power is only scrubbed clean and reused, where it's a finite amount and does not come from an external source presents a LOT of problems (keep in mind here I am skimming the surface of the topic for the sake of post brevity). That says to me that the musings in my previous post with the example about a cleric being able to restore soul power is likely the more logical and workable system.

Edited September 19, 2012 by KenThomas

[Pop]

Jarsh is gonna give us a Soul Update tomorrow, or so he says on Twitter. PUMPED

[KenThomas]

- Can having a soul be dangerous, beyond the simple fact of potentially being able to use powerful and dangerous magic / abilities? Are Big Soul folk susceptible to certain personality flaws, or certain illnesses? Do they have a tendency toward schizophrenia, or violent bouts of rage, when their size 10 soul stirs within them? Can they start to affect other people's souls at will, or by their mere presence?

- Can a particularly big soul exert influence over mind or body, changing it? Can it turn you into a monster? A God?

 

It sounds like you're positing that souls retain some sort of consciousness of their own independant of the body they're inhabiting. If so, whose? If for instance it is a size 10 soul, meaning it's 10 times larger than the soul found within your average power person (using person philosophically as refers to an individual consciousness as opposed to meaning "human"), does that mean it's an amalgamation of 10 different people's past lives ie the preborn in Frank Herbert's Dune series? Or is it instead simply due to its relative size overpowering to other souls it comes into contact with? If so, the holder of the powerful soul perhaps sometimes feels like their mind is being invaded by foreign thoughts as their huge soul has a kind of soul gravity or magnetism to it that allows them to essentially experience the thoughts and feelings of those who are weaker than they are that are nearby whether they want to or not.

 

If that was the case, would a person with a big soul of high intelligence be able to use this information to gain extra influence on the people around them? Would a person with a big soul yet low intelligence sometimes fall victim to external urges and act irrationally, perhaps needing to be isolated in order to stay sane? Perhaps the more apt attribute would be willpower, how well they're able to compartmentalize the extra information they're being given and retain control over their own personality.

Edited September 19, 2012 by KenThomas

[KenThomas]

Jarsh is gonna give us a Soul Update tomorrow, or so he says on Twitter. PUMPED

 

Yeah that is going to be cool. Regardless, you've gotten me started and its been a while since I've even seen philosophical discussion, let alone participated.

Edited September 19, 2012 by KenThomas

[Pop]

It sounds like you're positing that souls retain some sort of consciousness of their own independant of the body they're inhabiting. If so, whose? If for instance it is a size 10 soul, meaning it's 10 times larger than the soul found within your average power person (using person philosophically as refers to an individual consciousness as opposed to meaning "human"), does that mean it's an amalgamation of 10 different people's past lives ie the preborn in Frank Herbert's Dune series? Or is it instead simply due to its relative size overpowering to other souls it comes into contact with? If so, the holder of the powerful soul perhaps sometimes feels like their mind is being invaded by foreign thoughts as their huge soul has a kind of soul gravity or magnetism to it that allows them to essentially experience the thoughts and feelings of those who are weaker than they are that are nearby whether they want to or not.

 

If that was the case, would a person with a big soul of high intelligence be able to use this information to gain extra influence on the people around them? Would a person with a big soul yet low intelligence sometimes fall victim to external urges and act irrationally, perhaps needing to be isolated in order to stay sane? Perhaps the more apt attribute would be willpower, how well they're able to compartmentalize the extra information they're being given and retain control over their own personality.

We don't know yet if there's a reincarnation aspect to the way souls work. For all we know, the soul might just be some sort of ~life force~ that is created when you're born / conceived and is extinguished when you die. It could be that souls are quite literally like fire - not a substance but a manifestation of a substance acting a certain way, a reaction to (meta)physical forces, and not really an entity in any sense at all.

 

As for what I was getting at, yeah, if the soul is imbued with power then I was wondering if, like fire, its energy can become too volatile and strong for its vessel to contain. A soul "gravity" is exactly how I would describe it - powerful souls, by some (meta)physical law or force, affect other souls in their vicinity. This might go a ways toward explaining things like spiritual movements or cults (bright souls affecting dimmer ones) or the reason why a person with a particularly powerful soul might be inclined to become an ascetic mystic or a remote hermit - either to minimize the power he/she has over others, or to cultivate it such that he/she can control it to a greater extent.

 

I like the notion of greater power creating, as a side effect, greater danger, both for the vessel and those around him/her. The player would, in his travels, come across people who have learned to somehow use their power for their own interests, to the detriment of others, people who have practiced some measure of control over their power, and people who might not even realize their "gift", and whose lives have collapsed as a force beyond their perception exerts control over them and their surroundings. A (perhaps THE) focus of the game would be on how to mitigate the extent to which these forces run rampant on the setting, and on the characters. Perhaps the nature of souls is not particularly well understood, perhaps there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that maybe souls aren't a force, but an entity that can either be a symbiote, parasite, or even a controller.

 

I don't know if anyone played the "Red Steel" 2nd ed D&D setting, but it has a similar sort of dynamic to it - characters gain power but as they do, they accumulate strange and horrific traits, like a thin, unremovable layer of crystal that covers their entire body (through which they have to puncture constantly, if they want to breathe).

[Monte Carlo]

As long as I can wantonly suck souls from my victims, a la MotB, and give myself sick new powaz, i'll be happy.

[KenThomas]

I take it that when you said

 

Perhaps the nature of souls is not particularly well understood, perhaps there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that maybe souls aren't a force, but an entity that can either be a symbiote, parasite, or even a controller.

 

You were allowing for the possibility in the story that souls had a will of their own? It looked like the rest of what you were saying had to do with them instead being an unconscious yet very evident effector of people's lives.

 

As an overall framework, I do think that the idea of soul power and its philosophical implications works very well for explaining trends in human sociology. We've all heard of examples where someone was born to riches and influence yet were unable to make much of an impact with their lives and eventually lost what had been built up by their predecessors. Also, there have been many people in history who were essentially born to nothing yet have managed to rise up to create empires of one type or another, going far beyond the means they started with. Why couldn't that be because of something metaphysical? Perhaps the overwhelming power of someone's soul makes someone accept and support an idea that they would've rejected if it had come from others. I'm sure we've all experienced moments where we've either been part of or witnessed an idea being weighed not on its own merits but on who the person is who's presenting it.

[salty]

A soul is basically like a car battery, to put it in layman's terms.

[Wintersong]

So people in this setting have souls. Therefore we can ask:

-Does the quality of the soul depend on the midi-chlorian count?

 

I apologize for the very bad joke.

 

Waiting eagerly for that update about the souls.

[incubus9]

The way the devs choose to treat the subject of the soul will be interesting. A world in which the power of your soul gives you magical powers gives all sorts of intersting implications. What gives individuals stronger souls? Is it training? Luck? Are they farther along in their cycle of reincarnation? Where does the power of the soul come from? Is it generated internally or is it perhaps tapped from a larger source like a god? In subjective idealism, physical reality is merely a reflection of our minds, a mass illusion as disembodied minds interact. A more materialistic approach would say that our minds are merely the illusion of the physical. I can't wait to see how they tackle all the deep implications of the soul.

[Giantevilhead]

The ability to empirically quantify and measure these metaphysical properties does open up some interesting story telling possibilities.

 

For example, if heaven and hell do exist then conceivably, you would be able to measure the amount of good deeds that it would take to get into heaven and the amount of bad deeds to get into hell.

There is in fact a series of fantasy novels that explores that very possibility as a major theme. I wonder if any of the writers have read it.

 

I would assume that's how a lot of lawful gods in D&D judge their worshipers.

[Gurkog]

Since rumors of the Wheel of Time were mentioned... the details about the protagonists plight really parallel that series.

 

Are people bound to the cycle of souls?

 

Can they control and develop the manifestation of power or does the soul naturally reveal its true nature the more it is exposed to stress?

 

Is there reincarnation or just a random chance or the gravitation of soul bits from a prior manifestation collecting in unusually high concentration due to a tendency for a soul to want to 'heal' itself or like a smart metal it will try to realign the bits that fit together in a pattern that was shaped by a 'prior' strong soul?

 

If a person puts extreme stress on their soul by expending powerful magic does it break apart and reassemble in a possibly different way leading to a loss of sense of self and possibly insanity as it ries to emulate its familiar pattern through a different structure? kind of like seperating the sounds in a note and reassmebling them but not quite how it the original resonated so it sounds a bit... off

 

Can a soul remain immortal as long as it can find a suitable 'shell' to contain the bits so they do not disassociate and be replaced into a new mortal body?

 

Would a body with weak soul lack the capacity to attract and incorporate a powerful soul into itself? Does it take a powerful soul to sort of draw in those bits as if they are powerful magnets?

 

Would broken souls and soul bits try to fit back into a soul that is similar to its past environment or would they seek a more stable and complete soul that has just enough room for them?

 

Can the presence of a strong soul be felt by other strong souls? by those with weak souls? with virtually no soul? and the other way around?

 

Can souls only feel the resonance of similar formations? A good person can sense good in others? Souls of chaotic, destructive power feel the unbridled chaos in others?

 

Is there an 'anti-soul' that can negate magic while near a person? Can the two opposite energies be combined into a neutral soul that is strong, yet inert? Does one consume the other or is it like exact opposite sound waves that cancel each other out? Would a person die if their soul is 'neutralized'?

 

bah... i am rambling now.

[Pop]

Yes! Speculation!

 

Fwiw, the Ferg and co have said that there is no "karma" system per se, only faction and region reputation. This would indicate a strong unlikelihood that souls reflect specific or even gestalt moral actions. Purity / taint of a soul in that way is an explicit indicator of some objective, universal ethics.

[Pop]

Souls confirmed B)

[Pop]

I'll be taking credit for all of this btw

 

yr welcome Josh

[The Sharmat]

I would assume that's how a lot of lawful gods in D&D judge their worshipers.

I was more discussing the abstract themes associated with that. In other words, the morality of objective morality. What if you disagree with the reasons for being damned? For example, many people would find the Old Testament book of Leviticus to have some morally reprehensible concepts. What if you found out that the powers of your world actually operated that way, and had defined reality such that bathing in a river while menstruating was a sin, and contributed to your damnation? Is a moral act moral because a God/Gods said so?

 

There's also questions of 'gaming' the system. What if you know the morality as outlined by your Lawful Good deity, and simply follow the precepts for brownie points to get into heaven rather than any genuine belief in said precepts or inherent 'goodness'? How does the world respond to such a thing? There's some fun stuff that can be done in a fantasy universe along these lines.

[Torgamous]

Is a moral act moral because a God/Gods said so?

It's probably better to just look at it as legal/illegal rather than moral/immoral. And an endless cycle of reincarnation doesn't leave much room for damnation, so that isn't an issue.

[The Sharmat]

I doubt anyone wants to be reincarnated as a tape worm.

 

I'm also not suggesting that an ANSWER be given on those questions, at least not a single answer. Just that the question is raised, since that's the kind of thing people ask. Humans question everything.

[KenThomas]

I'll be taking credit for all of this btw

 

yr welcome Josh

 

 

oh I see, you're THAT guy!

 

I do recall some smarty pants being involved helping you refine your ideas and adding new ones, not to mention that this is exactly what I was talking about when I said

 

This is cool, but I have to admit that while writing this I do have the apprehensive feeling that if they're wanting to write an entirely original story and not take any suggestions that by simply speculating on it we are restricting what they're able to write into the game. That said if they're open to it and don't mind where good ideas come from as long as they're good, rock on.

 

 

Realistically the framework was already there. At most WE (jerkface) :D maybe helped refine a concept or two.

[The Sharmat]

I don't think that he meant that statement to be taken seriously at all.