Opinions on the Gift

[Frederick Hastings]

Well, I for one am not an advocate for the Gift. However, since this is Tortall, the Gift will imminently be present. Because I have seen people with all-encompassing Gifts or seen them abuse having the Gift, I'm establishing Shell to be basically a "Gift moderator".

What I would like to set is a standard for the Gift on this site. Should Gifts be elemental? If not elemental, then what? Should they be rare? How many Gift-possessing characters per player? How do we feel about Healers vs. "Modern" Medicine?

If you've got any other opinions, throw them out here.

[Aislin of Port Legann]

Being a Biotech major, my opinion is that the Gift should be treated like a recessive gene. This would make it rather rare, as it would take two Gifted parents to have a gifted offspring, but it was probably also pop up occasionally if two 'carrier' parents both passed it on the an offspring.

Sorry, I like to make fantasy things scientific...

I've personally never seen the appeal to playing a Gifted character, but obviously some people like it. Perhaps we could have Gifted characters specialize, rather like when people get a degree or the like nowadays. One character could have worked to specialize in healing, so while theoretically their Gift could be used for other things, they don't use it that way. We could have healing mages, warding mages, mages that make protective talismans, things like that.

Just a few ideas, though. Feel free to disregard them.

[Frederick Hastings]

No, I don't mind turning the Gift into a recessive gene. It makes sense to me. And in the instance of the Contés having the Gift, it's pretty natural. Recessive traits show up in real royal families all the time because of their tendency to intermarry with one another.


I like the specialization idea of a wide range of Gifts. The University, if we could get its butt going, could be a place where a person may get a "degree" (for lack of better term) or specialization in their Gift use. At the same time, persons who don't have the means or Gift type/strength to go to the University, could opt instead for an apprenticeship or a master––this type could perhaps be a "practical" Gift?

One thing I didn't like about Healers is that they had a tendency to "heal all", or rather, that people had a tendency to make characters with healing Gifts. I feel that those with the healing Gifts that find themselves at the University should work alongside students studying medicine/to become surgeons. Although Healers will have a slight advantage over their non-Gifted peers, I don't think that it should be that profound. Healers use their Gift, non-Gifted surgeons use instruments. A Healer may be able to work with something that a surgeon can't; given the setting of this board, Healers would probably be preferred, but surgeons are the easiest option.

However, given that Daine was actually required to study animal anatomy extensively, I have to wonder at Tortall's level of medicine. My impression is that in the 18th century, they either amputated something, bled you out or stuck a bunch of leeches on you. Do we feel that Tortall is capable of being at a higher level than this? If so, then that justifies how a surgeon could be at a similar level to a Healer––although I correct myself, they would be at a great disadvantage as far as actually operating... hmm. Opinions on this as well?

[reganofwellam]

Haha. I'm the complete opposite of everyone here I think. It's kinda something I noticed when I started reading up on this forum. I couldn't figure out why everyone was pushing away the gift, I really think without the Gift, without the magic and the gods... what's the point of this being Tortall? The Gift in Tortall is VERY COMMON it's really the scope of power that people see the 'badness' of the Gift.

Let's examine the people who have the Gift in the books. Numair has an incredibly expansive Gift, but he's one of only a few who had the Black Robe in the known world, he also states that people with big gifts don't live long lives. The bigger the gift, the harder more complex the spells, the more likely the spell will take you in. Also, the bigger the Gift, the more a government will try to control you and the more mages you'll have to face, and the more risks you have to face.

Now, in Kel's books, I believe with her battle for the bluff she had two people with the gift. Neal, with a healing gift, who created a weak veil to hide them, and some other kid (I forget his name) who was a light bringer.

Light bringers, fire makers and that kind of magic seems to be very common in Tortall. It's also common in Beka's time. I don't see this going away, especially with the expanse of time between Beka and Kel.

This is Tortall. Tortall is a place where a legendary object is held by the Queen that can make the very trees and earth of the country fight. This is a place where the Bazhir commune nightly through an ancient spell and its carrier, The Voice, who is everyone and no one at the same time. This is Tortall where pigeons carry the spirits of the dead and dust clouds carry the voices of the people. You cannot deny the magic of Tortall without denying Tortall itself.

I think you need to embrace The Gift, the Wild Magic, and the Gods of Tortall to be able to write inside it. Mages and the Gift are not revered. In Beka's time mages are even made fun of when they don't have enough power to be a great mage and pretend to be more powerful than they are. (Look at the treatment of mages in the Dogs and how Berryman and Aniki's friend are treated (gah, how do I remember Aniki's name and not the mage!?).

The Gift is not elemental. People with the Gift can be good at creating light, making fire, moving objects, healing, seeing, making people tell the truth,etc etc. I'm hoping to make Regan have a gift that applies mostly to secrets.

All emcompassing Gifts don't exist in Pierce's Tortall, so they shouldn't exist in the RP. If a mage uses (or tries to control) magic out of their league, they use up their life force and die.

People with healing gifts in RPs are made too easy. How Daine studies animal healing is how actual Healers study in Tortall. I mean Alanna drags Neal to various towns and villages if she so much hears a sneeze to make him study every kind of sniffles there are. The amount of healing you can do applies to how much magic you have. And disease can get ahead of a healer that cannot be healed. Beka's mother's lung rot was too advanced for any Healer to heal. Healers are not all powerful. However, their ability to burn out infections even in Daine's time makes it seem that they're maybe even ahead of 18th century medicine.

>_> I'll be your population of magical people. Lisan the character I am still thinking about is a half Bazhir Game Warden who has wild magic. (Just enough to detect animals around her and gives her a special bond with her horse)

[Duke Gideon of Genlith]

We're not saying that the Gift is a bad thing, or that no one can have it, but TP made it clear that those people you mentioned were really, really rare. If everyone who wants it has the Gift, then most people would make Gifted characters. And often, either they don't use their Gift or they have super strong Gifts that can do anything/heal anything.

To quote the Geico commercial (with a little tweaking): 'Even the savviest RPer can go astray.' We don't want the Gifted population to be larger than the un-Gifted. And of those Gifted, we don't want them to be super strong. As for Wild Magic, the Carthaki mages refused to believe in it's existence because it was so very rare. Daine was also a demi-goddess, and while Stephan had it, he could only barely sense the most strong of his horses feelings.

As for one person playing all the Gifted/Wild Magicked people...sorry. I think we'd like it to be more spread out.

[reganofwellam]

I was kidding about the one person thing.

I understand about not wanting a bazillion people running around going "Woo! Look at me! BAM! I made that dude alive! And noes, he's not zombie! Ooooh Now I make him dead again with one word. etc. etc. etc."

... That was my n00bie speak. It could have been worse.

I'm just saying if you ignore the gift then why would you place this in Tortall?

Besides, the gift can be so fun to add into society. I mean, Beka's mother shows the prejudice that poor mothers don't want their children to have the Gift, because it's one more thing to deal with. So what about high class parents? How would parents feel that their daughter has a gift for war magic, a very unfeminine thing? Perhaps would this society create different classifications of magics? Masculine Magics and Feminine Magics? Numair's past lover (gah, I need my books with me at all times) enjoyed her very "feminine" Gift that was all about parties and being a good hostess. Would society put pressure on gifted aristocratic women to mould their gift to fit this kind of "Feminine Gift" while pressuring Men with the Gift to use it for Masculine things?

Oh and I think because the university doesn't believe wild magic exists doesn't make it rare. You forgot Onua (who was a mistake being both Gifted and have Wild Magic, but her culture revolves around horses), the Banjiku (everyone in the tribe has wild magic) and Toby. I think it only seems rare because the society hasn't understood it completely yet. People with some aspect of wild magic would be the people who could become the best breeders of animals, the best stablemen, and the best gamewardens.

[Duke Gideon of Genlith]

The main problem with all that is that abosulutely everyone wants to have a character with problems like that. But not everyone can be super special. We need normal people. The only thing that makes those people special is because most everyone else is normal. So to have that contrast you need normal, regular, everyday people. And to have a good population of normal, everyday people, you need to put restrictions of the number of special people.

My thoughts are that people who want to have a Gifted/Sighted/Wild Magicked character have to be able to post well with that sort of person. I've noticed that people who have them tend to either ignore their character's Gift, overuse it, and/or go beyond the range of their previously listed powers. I think players who have Gifted characters need to prove that they can play them without exhibiting those things.

[Queen Amedessa of Conté]

At present, we have two Gifted characters among our eight active.

As Amedessa is a Conté and the monarch of a country in which the Gift is present, she naturally has the Gift. To me, Amedessa's Gift is inherently potent, but it is something that she chooses to lay aside unless she needs it. Likewise, the Dominion Jewel has accepted her as the rightful ruler and if need be can enhance her power over the land. I'm sure as a child and a teenager she was taught spells and how to wield her Gift, moreso than either of her sisters. While she has the Gift, I see it as encompassing and nonspecific (a type of 'governing Gift', if you will) as well as something Amedessa feels that she should not need to use at every turn even if she very well knows how to use it.

It is not that we push away from the Gift because we dislike it or think it is stupid. We push it away because a lot of us here have had bad experiences with players and their characters who either abuse their Gift, don't use their Gift, or have ridiculously powerful Gifts. To preserve the integrity of the Gift and the perception that it is as unique as the individual who has it, we want to keep a tighter hold on the reins this time around and not let people get by with every which and what as far as Gifts go.

Another difficulty that I'm trying to work my mind around, is how a Gifted person may post with another person and not 'powerplay' with their Gift. That was also another issue with past players/characters we encountered. If you are going to have Regan have a Gift related to secrets, you will need to find a way to make it non-intrusive on other characters' posts––which would probably mean you would need to continually ask the character's player if it is alright if Regan 'discovers this' or 'discovers that' with the help of her Gift. You may have no problem with that, but I'm just giving you a heads up that might be a problem if that's what her Gift type is going to be. One of the reasons I suggested the Gift be 'elemental' was to avoid problems like that, though I realize that the Gift in canon is not always elemental.

The setting of the board also has some effect on the influence of the Gift. The game year is 712 HE, and while there are still some Immortals running around, most of them have fallen back to their mythical status. For example, here we have the Kraken still and its two noncanon immortal accomplices, the Drakon and the Hakon––they're here largely to keep the sailors on their toes. Personally, the way I've seen it, is that a lot of the fantasy and legendary things that occurred in Alanna/Daine/Kel/Aly/Beka's time are beginning to fade out of influence as 'reason' and 'enlightenment' come forward. Tortall and the world around it is advancing and changing; the one thing that has remained constant is the Gift, it's just a matter of how constant, how common and how important it still is.

Why choose the setting of the board as Tortall if I'm going to diminish the importance of the Gift? Well, partly the reason I chose this setting is because it is a relatively simple canon fantasy setting and that members could join with a reasonable familiarity of the setting. The different time period is to challenge members joining that are familiar with the canon and also just another way to enjoy the canon itself. It's representing Tortall and the Tortallan universe in a new light; it's just that there are a few quirks left to get figured out and redefined... like this Gift issue, the University, the Navy and even the old shield earning. A board with this same premise, not using canon, would have been very difficult to start and attract members to. Not to mention I would have had to come up with my own original canon for that RPG, and I have a tendency to be protective of that sort of stuff since I've realized there are some people out there who like to take (and take for granted) and not give credit.

What I am considering on doing is one of the following two options:

A) Have periods of 'Accepting Gift? Yes' and 'Accepting Gift? No'
or
B) A 'Gift Proficiency Test', where new players have to prove their capability to play a Gifted character, more specifically to play their Gifted character with the level of Gift they specify. (Which would mean I get to round up a 'Gift Police' if some people get too carried away with how powerful their Gift is? xD)


I've got leave to go to my class, but I'm still open to opinions and suggestions. Sorry if this is all mashed together, I was sort of doing it in a hurry.

[reganofwellam]

When I was a board owner of an RP (I've been admin of... three over the years I think) We had problems of people always wanting to have that kind of gifted person. (It actually wasn't a Tortall board but it was kind of the same thing) What we did was have a ratio between characters with it and without it. So basically I would figure out how many characters there were, and then figured out how many people could apply as those types of characters without over running the forum.

We also did have everyone who applied to the forum to write an roleplaying sample so we could clearly see when we were going to run into problems with them.

[Duke Gideon of Genlith]

Ratios wouldn't help with the wrong people making Gifted characters. While that would limit the number of Gifted characters, unqualified RPers would still be able to gain Gifted characters. As you said, a sample would help, so some combination of the two would probably work out. Perhaps both an 'Accepting Gifts/Not Accepting Gifts' and a 'Gift Proficiency Test.'

Bah, I have to go.

[reganofwellam]

I know you guys don't have it but I really suggest roleplay examples for every new member who joins, not just those with the gift. It also helps to get an idea if someone knows their character or can act it even if their personality is a little weak or so.

But yeah roleplay samples and ratios are good things. If someone has a weak roleplaying skills you can help them before they start joining threads.

[Frederick Hastings]

Well, I personally feel that if they have put together a good character bio, that's already been a lot of typing for them. If I notice that they seem to be weak or struggling with their writing, I've got this RPing coaching deal I could get going for them before they are fully accepted.

What I think I will do is require an example post for those applying with Gifted characters. It'll be our 'Gift Proficiency Test' so to speak.