Setting Metaphysics: How does summoning work?

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Simlasa

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I'm curious how people explain (or don't explain) summoning in the fantasy games they run... what is going on when a wizard summons/conjures a thing?
Is it created out of thin air?
Does it attract a creature that is already nearby?
Does it open some sort of magic portal and pull the creature through?
Where does conjured food and water come from?
Is the magic than can summon a thing similar to the magic that can open a portal to the place the thing came from (does summoning create a portal?)?

Do people care if there are vaguely consistent magical 'laws' about such things?

Part of the reason I'm asking is because I'm working on a fantasy setting where magical portals are destructive to the fabric of reality... so I'm wondering if I want to label summoning as being something similar.
 
The trope of summoning demons and other supernatural entities seems fine to me to me, but summoning animals always seemed like a strange concept. The idea of using a portal or something like that I think depends on summoning something specific. I mean, if you're summoning a bunch of bats and that ends up opening dozens of portals all over the countryside, it seems like a very powerful mechanism to result in a weak effect. I suppose one way you could do that is that casting the spell essentially causes an effect in the past that sends the summoned animals towards your location before you cast the spell. Still weird, but no portals.

Whether or not summoning otherworldly entities involves a portal depends on how you conceive of these other worlds. If they are sort of abstract and spiritual, then they might not have an actual spacetime fabric. But if these other worlds are actual spaces like parallel universes, then I think some kind of spacetime warping would be necessary.

For conjured materials, I leave behind strict physical notions of conservation of mass and energy. I think of them as sort of thoughts made solid. They are close kin to illusions; in a fantasy setting, I don't think of as illusions as holograms as much as "dreamstuff." In that context, some "illusions" might be more real than others, and that's what conjured matter and energy generally are made of.

Consistency is the bugbear of small minds and fantasy settings, but when you want actions to have consequences, it makes sense to think at least a little about the underlying nature of things. Magic can be whatever you want, but once you explain some aspect of it, you need a good reason to abrogate that. It's a fine line, because you never want to lift too much of the curtain on magic.

Another approach you can take is to use this notion of instability to limit the powers of certain kinds of effects. As long as there is a common thread to those effects, you can just declare this by fiat and come up with an explanation later. Or not. Wizards might not fully understand the forces they are dealing with, so you don't have to explain it all.
 
I like the multiverse model of the universe. So I've always kind of gravitated to the notion that summoning is the art (or science?) of beings and things being forcibly ripped from their home universe,/place or perhaps these entities are eager to cross "the veil" to work whatever mischief or other ends they have? Likewise with conjurers; the thing they are "creating" is actually being pulled from some other place to whatever effect.

I only have the vaguest recollection that I may have read an adventure module that was all about the effect of wizards summoning things, and the havoc this wreaked on some alien world, and the revenge these aliens sought because of that. Maybe it was a DCC adventure? (Hell, it could have been a whole season of Fringe for that matter?)
 
I only have the vaguest recollection that I may have read an adventure module that was all about the effect of wizards summoning things, and the havoc this wreaked on some alien world, and the revenge these aliens sought because of that. Maybe it was a DCC adventure?
I was in a DCC game where a wizard kept summoning our group at inopportune moments to help him fight off cantankerous locals. Which was an interesting twist.

As for conjuring food... I guess there's a spectrum between having a lavish feast appear, all set out on a table with fine china... and the version in Earthdawn where a mage can create a bland grey porridge out of grass and dead leaves that will feed a person hungry enough to eat it.

There's also the old spiritualist trope where the friendly dead folks leave 'portents' such as bits of old jewelry and other little trinkets.
I like Poltergeist's suggestion that such things were what they'd been buried with.

I agree that it's not good to overthink these things... but it's nice to have some general concepts to draw on when off-kilter things happen.
 
One of my favorite metaphysical models is the kinda Mage-related. But with a little more specificity. R. Scott Bakker does an amazeballs job of putting this into play in his fiction (the Prince of Nothing - where he defines anagogic/analogic/intuitive philosophies *as* schools and methods of magic).

It's the idea that outer/inner planar denizens are more consciously powerful and directly impact reality itself. In fact it's so powerful - they define reality by their mere presence (i.e. because we're less objectively powerful in our own conception - they are able to do more things via their own will. Subjective to them, objectively to us). The ability to override this phenomenon is precisely what defines "magic". That magic-users generally are using a method of re-writing objective reality to their wills, but that re-writing is flawed (hence mishaps, paradox, curses etc). The corollary of this that objective reality is defined by the presence of greater beings (the Gods) whose very subjective view of reality is so insanely powerful it overrides and *becomes* our objective view of the world.

Our objective reality exists as a matter of subjective will of the Gods themselves. We're merely within the "event horizon" of their will/being etc.

Think of it like gravity. The natural taxonomy of beings begets greater objectivity to reality and defines it.

This means *summoning* - as a discrete magical act is the ability to re-draw reality and pull something subjectively more powerful into a larger objective reality against it's will (and the will of reality itself as defined by the greater powers).

This method has its own dependencies - magic is flawed. Magic has consequences - that it's terribly painful to the summoned, and required effort to override objective reality on behalf of the caster. It might require specific means of congress - to get the practitioner in the correct frame of mind/body to work the magic.

The cool way of looking at it like this is that it applies to nearly any kind of magic in game terms as a fairly solid metaphysical view. You'd have to tweak it as needed for your setting of course.
 
The natural taxonomy of beings begets greater objectivity to reality and defines it.
very subjective view of reality is so insanely powerful it overrides and *becomes* our objective view of the world
That's what this experiment sought to test:
(Scientific Paper, just to show it's not bollocks: https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080)
They seem to have found that there is a hierarchy of viewpoints whose subjective views are more objective than those beneath them. This is a very old prediction of Quantum Theory dating back to the 1960s. Fortunately we're essentially at the top, at least locally (i.e. within our supercluster)
 
I'm curious how people explain (or don't explain) summoning in the fantasy games they run... what is going on when a wizard summons/conjures a thing?
Is it created out of thin air?
Does it attract a creature that is already nearby?
Does it open some sort of magic portal and pull the creature through?
Where does conjured food and water come from?
Is the magic than can summon a thing similar to the magic that can open a portal to the place the thing came from (does summoning create a portal?)?

Do people care if there are vaguely consistent magical 'laws' about such things?

Part of the reason I'm asking is because I'm working on a fantasy setting where magical portals are destructive to the fabric of reality... so I'm wondering if I want to label summoning as being something similar.

Totally unrelated but your comment about destruction to reality reminds me of the show Fringe!
 
I do like to think that summoned creatures are pulled from their own lives full of hopes and dreams. However, it does seem like their wills are bound by the intentions of the summoner.

As a side note, I really liked that Horn of Valhalla from AD&D, I'm not sure how it has evolved over the years, but we bonded with those guys!
 
They were pulled from the closest available place by a Logrus tendril. You're lucky they don't know who did that:shade:!
 
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