From:	abortion_engine abortion_engine@*******.com
Subject:	Magic
Date:	Thu, 5 Aug 1999 16:56:42 -0400

I've also noticed something wierd here: what is the magical proportion of
the population in everybody's games? I mean, Arcady's player's British Troll
had bartender contacts who were powerful mages! (Granted, the player is used
to AD&D...)

Supposedly, according to the books, the mage population is, what, one in a
million? For full-blown, priority A mages? And how many of those are really
powerful?

We used to run a campaign with all sorts of magic. Everybody had it. I'd
break into some facility, and the secretary would flame bomb me. But the GM
sort of had to; I was the magic expert, and I had a really game-spoiling
power-mad full-blown mage. (Yes, I was a jerk.) Then again, it was a more
comic-book type game; we had metahuman variants everywhere; every bouncer
was a lizard-man (don't ask) and everyone, everywhere, was elven.

Well, now we've started out all over, from the top, after ten years of
playing, with by-the-book characters and GMing. And man, if your team has a
mage--and don't all of them?--you can sure do some neat stuff. Because
they're rare, see?

So, what is the proportion in your games? And in massive magical
proliferation games, how do you keep everything plausible, but balanced?