Playing a Magic-User in RIFTS, Part 8: The Warlock

Palladium's failure at nomenclature manifests again with the Warlock. This Occupation, originally from Palladium's fantasy game, is actually about a man with an innate connection to one or two of the four Classical elements of Western High Magic: Air, Earth, Fire, or Water. (This concept would be reused, and refined, in a more effective manner as the "shugenja" of Legend of the Five Rings.) This connection marks the magic-user as part of the spiritual community that the spirits of these elements possess, as a "little brother", and as a result this Occupation is akin to the Mystic in that their use of and comprehension of magic is both colored by this innate connection and comes from it. It is, for all intents and purposes, a shaman variation and should be handled as such.

The Warlock, therefore, has a background built into it that all Warlock characters will share. Below are the salient qualities.

• Warlocks are born, not made; their connection to the elements is an inborn quality, especially the connection to the specific element or elements from which a specific Warlock gains his spell-casting abilities.
  
• Because their powers are intuitive, as a Mystic's powers are, the powers that a Warlock manifest are a reflection of their life's events to date, barring any specific mentorship to foster the development of specific abilities; a Warlock that never needed to attack or defend won't develop powers that do so, so mentorship will artificially foster such things to achieve those ends, in the way that a martial arts master holistically trains students.
  
• A Warlock's ability to contact, communicate, and summon elemental spirits is an innate quality; this means that they manifested early in life, and grew in power and sophistication as the Warlock came of age. Warlocks are insiders; Shifters, etc. are outsiders. This totally colors how they see the summoning and control of elements- regardless of their morality, sanity, etc.
  
• Because Warlocks have had direct experience with spiritual entities since birth, as other shamanic sorts do, they are difficult--if not impossible--to turn into religionists as we in the real world comprehend that idea. These are people for whom talking to sentient walking things of raw elemental substance is as ordinary as airplanes or robots; it's a concrete, verifiable reality to them. You can't convince them that it's not real, or that it's all some sort of trickery by (insert boogeyman here).
  
• Warlocks, being marked by the spirits, and enjoying a relationship with them, tend to extend into generational lines of Warlocks because immortal spirits prefer to go with reliable mortal counterparts- so young Warlocks are often the children of Warlocks, and over time form blood-tied societies or clans in the way that Stalkers or other innately-powered Occupations routinely do.
  
• Education and training, as such, is not a priority for Warlocks. They learn everything that they need to know through their experiences with their spiritual brethren, and their own experiences as individuals, with some specific communities having elder Warlocks mentor emerging ones as they grow up. A Warlock's lived experience is that formal schooling, regimentation, etc. is a waste of time; what they need to know is what life and the elements put to them- and this is the seed for Warlock stoicism, even a sense of fatalism at times, that this Occupation's culture is infamous for.
  

So, let's put this together. A Warlock is an individual marked as a mortal relative to the immortal elemental community, and through this connection he acquires the powers of one or two elements as well as the ability to communicate and call forth those immortal brothers. He is an insider to this magic society, and treated as such by them. Because he learns his abilities through intuition and experience, formal training and education doesn't help him in his development much (and is often seen as worthless); his is a world where you do or die, and death is just a thing that happens, so it's not that big a deal- and this holds regardless of his moral character, as it is an ethical framework and paradigm. So, your elder Warlock is far more like the old martial arts master than anything else, and your young ones are more like eager fighters.

A Sample Variation

Deep in what formerly was known as the Boundary Waters, a survivor group that formed immediately after the Coming of the Rifts started manifested as Warlocks when they started having children. As the Boundary Waters is an area dominated by lakes, these Warlocks are always attuned to Water, with some taking secondary attunements to Air or Earth. Over time, the powers of these Warlocks merged with the survivalist skills of the original survivors. The result is a magical society of elementally-attuned rangers, now known as "Forestwalkers", and they have a loose affiliation with nearby powers such as Tolkeen as well as a long-running conflict with Stalker tribes that roam those same areas.

Most of this community is magically-active (i.e. are Warlocks), but the basis of their community remains the skillset of woodsmen, rangers, hunters, and so on (i.e. Wilderness Scouts). Playing a Warlock from this community is an easy thing to do: take as many skills from the Scout skillset as can be had, and use magic to compensate for the gaps. Think like someone who's some form of tribal warrior that's also a practicing shaman. You're not required to conform to the withered wizard in robes steretotype, so don't; this variant is here to show that you can mix elemental magic with a mundane skillset and create a viable, effective hybrid that adds value to a group. (Running games with such communities makes having the Occupation in a campaign far more interesting, so do that.)

Playing a Magic-User in RIFTS, Part 7: The Witch

Palladium Books is not known for clear use of language, especially compared to the common use or established professional/cultural usage thereof, and this is most obvious with regard to the Occupation known as "Witch". It resembles only lured horror movie stereotypes and the Early Modern witch craze that all such images stems from, and neither the historical reality nor the Neo-Pagan reconstruction of pre-Christian forms of nature worship, and the term "Diabolist" (which Palladium uses for its specialist in Ward Magic, non-nonsensically) is more appropriate. That said, let's get on with how to best play this sort of magic-user.

The Witch is a Pact-making Occupation. It is the most fundamental iterations of that sort of magic-user paradigm, so let's look over the core of what sort of individual typically--iconically, you might say--takes up this Occupation.

• The supernatural patron chooses the mortal to act as its agent in the world. Even if the mortal is aware of the entity's existence and seeks it out, the mortal is still no more than a helpless s act as its agent in the mortal's wupplicant compared to it, and at best can do no more than to argue that he is the best possible agent to carry out the entity's agenda. So, at best it is Employer-Employee and usually it is Principle-Agent or Master-Slave because the Witch is utterly and totally dependent upon the entity for his ability to act effectively at all.
  
• The supernatural patron preys upon the weak and vulnerable. You should think of the Witch's patron as a cult leader, so you're looking at the psychology of a malevolent psychopath--for a supernatural entity, definitely a primary psychopath (i.e. a born one, not someone damaged into it- that's a secondary psychopath)--who seeks to transform other individuals into vessels through which it satisfies its needs and accomplishes its goals. It seeks to do this because it is either unable or unwilling (often both) to do for itself, so it finds those who are most vulnerable to its influence- someone who is emotionally and mentally weak, often materially poor and socially incompetent or excluded and bitter about it.
  
• The mortal who accepts the pact offer is a loser. The Witch is usually uneducated, originally poor in financial and material terms, ambitious and prideful far beyond his actual competency and potential, outside or on the edge of social acceptability, and is unwilling (usually) or unable (rarely) to do what it takes to achieve its goals under their own power. (This is one of the reasons for why the stereotypical Witch of Hollywood and the Early Modern witch craze was a woman.) He believes that the power offered to it by the patron will be his alone to command, comes at a trivial or easily paid cost with no undesired effects or consequences, and through this power all of his grievances and troubles will be readily resolved in his favor- and his life thereafter will be that of a god amongst men (i.e. Easy Street). He is an individual of poor character, weak mind, low cunning, and powered more by desperation and delusion than anything else; if he does not develop any charisma, he will soon double-down on his bitterness and wield his borrowed power for ends far below what that power's potential actually allows. This is wholly acceptable, even desirable, on the part of the patron; Witches are wholly and utterly expendable.

There is room to maneuver here, but there's your baseline to work with. What this means for the Witch is that they are not independent actors; they are always tied to their masters, serving their masters and executing the will thereof. Some accept this and make the most of it, but most do not; they do it unwitting and often half-heartedly while pursuing their own goals. Adolescent thinking produces adolescent behavior. Because of this known phenomenon, Witches--regardless of sex, age, social class, etc.--are often akin to high-school/secondary school students taken to an exreme (as most real cults do) so use them for your modeling of player and NPC Witch social networks, groups, and interactions.

Witches, therefore, are predators but not at the apex of their specific dominance hierarchy; their patron is always (at the least) above them and will deal with them when they find it necessary to do so (if not immediately with a Witch steps out of line). They're not that different from Palladium's vampires, really; the patron uses the first Witch to build up a cult, and then spins off cell-like subsidiaries through additional Witches recruited into the cult (assuming that the first Witch doesn't fuck things up), building up until they can take over or bring through the patron into the world (which usually means taking over). (This justifies the Alignment restriction.) This is an inherently predatory pattern of behavior, which cannot be and is not justifiable as being good.

Notes on Their Powers

While Witches are treated as spell-casters, Witches explicitly are utterly ignorant of how their powers work, and their mechanics would be enhanced by having their powers work differently. I recommend that the Game Master pick the Witch's powers instead of the player, and the player be told only the necessary information required: what it is, its general effect, and how often they can use it (in terms of actions/round or how often until they have to rest). In other words, more like how Palladium handles other forms of power instead of magic (which best resembles traditional High Ceremonial magic), because this is a better way to experience the Witch's relationship to the powers that he gets from his patron. (If it serves to further discourage Witches as player-characters, I find this acceptable; in my experience, most who go for this do so to troll the group and be a colossal dick.)

Playing a Magic-User in RIFTS, Part 6: The Tattooed Man

Now that we've addressed the basics and the three major archetypes of magic-users, we're going to start talking about specific types of magic-users.

A Tattooed Man is, as described in RIFTS Atlantis, a humanoid individual who augments his extensive martial training regiment and practice with a large array of power-generating tattoos. Within the environment of RIFTS Earth, and in much of the Megaverse, Tattooed Men are presumed (correctly) to be a caste of slave warriors for one of the Splugorth species of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens- and otherwise to be scions of one of the Atlantean houses long dispossessed of their Earth homeworld. This is not always the case, and below I shall describe one way that a Game Master may reinterpret this specific form of magic-user for his own campaign. I will also address the major error in terms of game mechanics, and provide one solution that better fits what the powers of a Tattooed Man. While the game makes distinctions between various Occupations that fit this description, I will--for the purpose of this article--lump them together.

Notes on the Occupational Culture

The culture of Tattooed Men varies upon how the power-imbuing process goes for them, but there are common elements. The slave-warriors produced by the Splugorth in industrial quantities experience severe physical trauma due to the tattoo masters there not caring about the recipient's health or sanity; those that fail to endure the process are dispatched and have their corpses fed to other slaves. Those created by the Atlantean houses express far greater care, as their Tattooed Men are often treated as elite warriors and therefore enjoy higher value in the eyes of those creating them- manifesting in both longer times taken to imbue the tattoo powers as well as more comprehensive care taken in both preparation as well as recovery from the imbuing process. This formative, initiatory experience sticks with a Tattooed Man thereafter and becomes one of the defining experiences informing his character and identity. Because the process for becoming a Tattooed Man is, inherently, an initiatory one there is a certain commonality of perspective amongst Tattooed Men regardless of their relationship with others like them. It's not the same as that between Warlocks and the Elements, but rather the sort that often arises in real-world professional societies.

The fact that Tattoo Magic is known to be physically traumatic means that the process by which the tattoo master imbues the recipient with the power that the tattoo conveys is an amplification of the real-world tattoo process, which is not without discomfort if not outright pain willingly taken by the recipient. So, let us imagine that the Tattoo Magic technology takes that real-world tattoo process and uses it as a means to introduce a limited form of physiological retro-fitting of the body to accept the necessary infrastructure needed to wield the power that the tattoo imbues. This process, as one would expect, should be akin to receiving cybernetic or bionic augmentation (or, indeed, any other augmentation of the body; to get the same result, the process must also be the same). Taking this process slowly, as one would for any mundane form of major surgery (because that's the closest mundane equivalent), minimizes the impact to the recipient's physical and mental health. Going through it fast reliably damages both; imagine getting put under the knife while awake without anesthetic with upwards of a dozen procedures done in rapid succession or in parallel, and then patched up in a haphazard manner before being pushed out the door- that's the Splugorth way of doing things. If you're not taking this into account, you're doing the Tattooed Man wrong.

A Note on Tattoo Magic

In terms of how the game mechanics interpret their powers, I see this as a major flaw. The rules treat them as if they were just a hobbled spell-caster, when they have no such knowledge or ability whatsoever, and as a result it is difficult to avoid playing (as-written) a Tattooed Man as just another form of Fighter-Mage (or "Gish", to borrow yet another term of D&D-originated jargon). The visual depiction of Tattoo Magic reinforces this erroneous notion, when the mythological origins of Tattoo Magic are ignored instead of emphasized; Tattoo Magic should not result in an individual who looks like they ran with an outlaw biker gang for too long, or whored it up for Suicide Girls, but instead should resemble the Celts covered head-to-toe in woad with knotwork draw over their flesh or the warrior society tattoos found in many peoples present and past: specialized, integrated, highly-symbolic whole-body tattoo system networks that link the body's points of power together to fuel the powers granted by the tattoos. (Hell, your stereotypical Yakuza better fits the Tattooed Man than what Atlantis depicts.)

So, instead of spending mana as if a spell-caster, Tattoo Magic should work the way that Committed Charms do in Exalted: the player spends motes of mana to activate the effect, and until the player decides to end the effect the Tattooed Man cannot recover those spent motes. Furthermore, some of those powers that (as-written) require the use of a specific tattoo power to generate the effect should instead be made baseline to the Occupation's core powers (such as the Armor power; it should be presumed as part of the Tattooed Man's transformation from an ordinary mortal into a super-powered warrior). A power that discharges attacks upon a target should have an activation cost that follows this commitment scheme, which should itself be a nominal one, and a per-use cost thereafter. Tattoos that generate animated minions should have a high commitment, but no other costs, as the minion itself is sufficient to warrant the cost. (Which also means that there needs to be a significant revision to the tattoo powers.)

A Variant Example: Tolkeen

There is no doubt that the City-State of Tolkeen (especially my revision of it) would use Tattooed Men. However, the magical society there would not condone the usual Splugorth practice and neither would it tolerate the conservatism of the Atlantean procedure, not when there is an alternative that generates the faster production of the former while retaining the superior quality of the latter. As usual, the secret stems from the incredible store of mana that Tolkeen possesses coupled with the scientific and engineering know-how of the dominant magical society; having reverse-engineered Tattoo Magic from Atlantean and former slave Tattooed Men, Tolkeen figured out exactly how Tattoo Magic works and created an improved procedure that avoids the hassle and the risk. The drawback is that it requires the properties that, on RIFTS Earth, only exist in Tolkeen's Inner City.

The Tolkeen procedure work by taking the recipient into a facility wherein he is stripped naked from head to toe and then has his whole body scanned; this information appeared on the technician's screen, providing him with a complete DNA profile as well as real-time monitoring of all vital signs. At this point, the technician initiates the process; the recipient is told to visualize himself as if being armored up for the first time. (This is, for all intents and purposes, true.) The technician, under supervision, guides the recipient through the imbuing process via guided imagery; this allows for easier acceptance of the augmentations installed while minimizing any awareness of discomfort. The actual drawing of the tattoos is done by the supervisor, using the recipient's DNA and psychological profile to customize the symbolic imagery necessary for the tattoos to function properly, and he does so using a remote-operated robot.

Instead of using ink and a needle as the medium and tool of transmission, this is done directly through a laser transmitting the epigentic signals to the recipient DNA and directing the DNA expressions with the help of the recipient's mental state (hence the guided imagery). This completely avoids using the harsher processes that going through the body's cellular or grosser level of organization to achieve these results usually employs, achieving the same speedy results, and getting the recipient to aid in his reconstruction as it happens avoids the mental health issues entirely. Instead of taking days or weeks to finish, including recovery, Tolkeen's procedure takes hours; it's a full working day process, but the recipient is ready for action immediately afterword.

(Note: Tolkeen provides this procedure to anyone willing to commit to a period of reservist service in Tolkeen's militia lasting no less than five years; no other form of payment is accepted. Furthermore, Tolkeen's results tend to produce Tattooed Men whose aesthetic runs to Asimovian blends of high-technology and high-magic (e.g. Tron Legacy, Saint Seiya) than the Woad Warrior types.)

Playing a Magic-User in RIFTS, Part 5: Those Who Discover Facts

When one thinks of a magic-user in fantasy literature, or its sources, one often thinks of the figure that itself stems from various strands of Western systems of high ceremonial magic and the mythology surrounding them. Of those sources, one pattern that emerges that that the successful and competent practitioners are those who comprehend the reality of how magic works--its fundamental principles, confirmed by repeated experimentation over time and in various places--and then seek to apply that knowledge to create wonders heretofore impossible to achieve in any other way. In short, they are scientists and engineers and the facts that they discover become the basis for new and improved technologies--new spells, rituals, ceremonies, etc.--that others can employ and benefit from. In short, these magic-users are people who--for all intents and purposes--approach magic as just another science.

In the core rulebook we have the Ley-Line Walker, the Shifter, and the Techno-Wizard. Each of these Occupations are expressions of the aforementioned archetype, with different elements emphasized. The Walker focuses on casting spells, the Shifter on ritual magic, and the Techno-Wizard on magic item creation. Yet each one is capable, to some diminished capacity, on doing the others' thing; this is not the mono-maniacal focus that one sees in craft traditions. These Occupations other notable abilities are direct derivatives of their core capacities, sample applications of the principles that are fundamental to that Occupation's discipline as well as indicators of the basis for their body of knowledge.

Magic-users of this sort find a lot in common with Body-Fixers, Cyber-Docs, Rogue Scientists, Rogue Scholars, Operators, and similar mundane scientific and technical Occupations that deal in non-magical science and engineering pursuits as well as professions (such as law) which promote a similar mode of thinking and reasoning in its practitioners. Therefore, playing such a magic-user should involve the player getting familiar with how such people think and behave in their work lives; there is a commonality of thought and behavior for these professionals, even if they exhibit a wide array of behavior in other areas of their lives, so knowing how they think and do will serve you well in maximizing your gameplay experience.

The other thing that magic-users of this sort often do is pursue research. While pure research is good for setting verisimilitude, and Game Masters are wise to pay attention to this both for adventure potential as well as for campaign management, players are advised to focus upon applied research; they should focus on application of discovered principles instead of seeking out new principles, which translates into creating new magic technologies (spells, rituals, items, etc.) and techniques for their use. Creating new technologies is one of the best ways for a player to distinguish his magic-user from all others, so it would be wise to learn what rules exist (or make new ones if not satisfactory) to do just that; remember that these creations are intended to be verified by recreating the process, so having a sound system for doing so is a feature and not a bug.

Your magic-user will need downtime to get the full benefit of his skills and knowledge, and he will need a place to do research and conduct experiments; Game Masters should be friendly to these requirements and accede to players' wanting to establish such things for their magic-users. In particular, the Game Master should work with players to establish what the magic-user needs to do to accomplish the research objectives. As has been the case since 1974, these sorts of magic-users are campaign-drivers in their own right when both players and Game Masters exploit this potential. The other Occupations in the game, and their variants, of this sort show the incredible diversity available for those willing and able to make use of it; I recommend taking the time at and away from the table to make this happen.

Starting next week, I'll move into more specific examples.

Playing a Magic-User in RIFTS, Part 4: Those Who Work Crafts

In the development of magical practice, there is a next step from striking pacts with supernatural entities capable of imbuing power into mortal users. If this persists within a community long enough, that community will inevitably figure out how to replicate some of those powers as a consequence of their innovation over how to use those powers. The subsequent refinement into a systematized practice is much like how early martial art systems came to be, which is why I refer to these types of magic-users as "crafts". This does not mean that they comprehend what those powers really are, or how they work, so we're not talking about a proper application of science and engineering to the use of magic (yet). We're talking about those who figured out, over time, through a simple process of accidental discovery and later refinement into a systematized practice. In short, this is what I call a "craft".

A craft is a system of magical practice wherein the magic-user learns to harness some combination of discovered knowledge and practical application that produces manifest effects in the physical world. The comparison to martial arts traditions is an apt one, and another apt comparison is to tradesmen of a pre-modern or early-modern sort. In both cases, the knowledge itself is considered valuable due to the power of the effects it produces. Because it is so valuable, access to it must be kept away from the many and restricted to a few who have proven their worth to the keepers of these secrets. What we are talking about here is a mystery cult. These magic-users are the sort who view secrecy and privacy as values greater than any other than survival of those secrets.

The most obvious Occupations in the game that follow this model are the Druid variations from RIFTS: England. (The Millennium Druid is of the Pact sort.) They possess and apply a body of knowledge, maintained through secrecy over long periods of time, that has demonstrable supernatural effects and recruit/train through an initiatory process. They are not dependent upon another entity, in whole or in part, for their power but their comprehension of is lacking; within their base of knowledge what they know makes sense, but errors of judgement and a lack of cultural support for proper inquiry and research (often due to isolation) means that their often trapped in a narrow paradigm with strong boundary conditions that inhibit proper breakthroughs of new discovery. The subculture of a craft emphasizes tradition and conservatism for legacy reasons, reasons that have to do with the craft's origins that have not been properly processed and put into its place, and only sometimes due to those conditions persisting.

The other thing about crafts is that they are, in the long-term, an unstable state. Either they collapse under the weight of their conservatism and secrecy or they complete the transition into a full-fledged discipline akin to that of a real-world scientist or engineer. This is because of how they acquire and maintain the knowledge that permits their powers to exist; accidental discovery is a thing, where someone does something that works but is not expected, and eventually it is both reproduced and transmitted to others. This process inevitably reveals patterns, and those patterns reveal that these powers can be studied, researched, and developed; sub-cultural resistance to such things comes up, and either the progressive elements win and transition to a proper discipline occurs or the conservatives win and the status quo persists- and if this remains long enough then the craft collapses due to being unable to change as their environment changes, destroying them.

Therefore, moreso than most, playing and running a craft-based magic-user means knowing what the current state of that craft's subculture is; your man's experience with this subculture matters greatly towards how he views his magic and how he uses it. Playing a Druid is not playing a Vanguard, and playing one of those 10 years earlier is not default time. Playing the culture game is necessary for these sorts of characters, and in later posts I'll show how this works through examples.

Playing a Magic-User in RIFTS, Part 3: Those Who Strike Pacts

This week I'm going into some depth about those magic-users who get their powers through some form of client-patron relationship with a supernatural entity.

Some magic-users gain their powers through a direct connection to a supernatural source. This source is often a distinct entity, such as a spirit or a god, but this paradigm that also includes a source that is a collective entity such as the elemental powers that Warlocks derive their power from. These magic-users do not comprehend what magic truly is, or how it works; they are not akin to scientists or engineers. They are, at best, akin to technicians in that they know what their powers do and how they can best apply them, but they have no comprehension (outside of what their patron allows them to know) so you can expect them to master the practical employment of their powers, but be unable to innovate such that they can create new ones. They are users, not programmers.

The Witch and the Priest are the two most common examples of this paradigm in practice. In both respects, the magic-user enters into a contract with a supernatural entity. The magic-user agrees to act as the entity's agent in the user's environment in return for the entity's investment of power into the user, making the user's continued employment of his powers conditional upon fulfilling his patron's agenda (which means following orders). This is not a negotiation that goes entirely as the user intends, as the entity enjoys a massive power differential over the user, but the patron is rarely so aware or intelligent that it cannot be outwitted by an exceptionally cunning user. Whether this is because the entity is unaware, uncaring, or merely entertained by the user's attempt to get around the patron's constrictions upon the user's end of the pact is not that important; what matters is that he is not the source of his powers, and that he has some constraints on their use for reasons that are not emergent properties of those powers.

The Shaman and the Warlock also fall into this category, as are some Druid variants, but they are looser examples. The Shaman is chosen to represent his patron to his people, and the Warlock has a tie to the elemental planes that is neither his choice nor inherent to his being. Their powers are as ill-comprehended by them as the Witch and Priest comprehend theirs, but the constrictions upon those powers are so much looser; this is due to the nature of the relationship between the supernatural entities imbuing them with power, compared to the two Occupations above. The Shaman is not a subordinate of his totem spirit; this is not a true patron-client relationship, but rather principle-agent (and in both directions; he represents the totem to his people and his people to the totem). The Warlock's relationship is more like that of an adoptee or a master-student pattern; the elements decide that the user is a good choice for their association, and the imbuing of power into it (and training in the use thereof) is their way of forging that bond. Unlike the others, it is unheard of for a Warlock to lose his ties to the elements; this is (rightly) seen as being reflective of their overall long-term thinking and general apathy vis-a-vis mortal perceptions of time and the importance of mortals' lives.

Another variant is the Tattooed Man and its variants. These magic-users are actually men-at-arms. Their magic powers are bestowed upon them by their patron, in return for servitude (in the case of slaves or indentured servants), yet they have no comprehension whatsoever as to how these magic tattoos operate. All that they know is how to activate them, use the effects generated, and manage the power that fuels them; they might as well be Vagabonds in all other respects. While their powers can't (usually) be stripped, as such, the powers that they possess are nothing like what proper spell-casters and the ritual-workers that typify Warlocks, Shaman, Witches, Druids, etc. are; their lesser power (by comparison) makes up for their lack of vulnerability to losing their powers. This category also covers super-powered individuals such as D.C.'s Shazam (i.e. Captain Marvel), and those like him (e.g. Buffy, some Magical Girls); they receive their powers, in the form of human physical augmentation instead of spell-casting, but are otherwise the same.

The Shifter is not, in the baseline sense, in this category. He slides into it when he makes use of his Occupation's ability to contact supernatural entities and strike pacts with them, at which point he's in the same boat (with regard to those gained powers) that a Witch is- but he has the notable advantage of knowing how magic works in a very academic and scientific manner, which allows him to turn the powers he gains from these pacts into the sorts of rituals and spells that he ordinarily uses. This makes the Shifter, if he is both sufficiently resilient as well as ruthless, a dangerous magic-user; he can make pacts, extract new powers wholly under his command from them, and then dissolve those pacts before restarting the process anew.

By now, you can figure out for yourself what other Occupations fit into this paradigm. Now that we've got this established, let's get into playing them.

Your man is a user. This means that the sort of deep and thorough examination and study of how his magic works--the sort of thing that a Ley-Line Walker, Shifter, or a Techno-Wizard possesses--is not present. He is more like the Mystic in that respect, and often has his powers manifest in a similar manner (in that they appear suddenly; the user intuitively knows what to do and how to do it); otherwise, his patron instructs the user after receiving the investment of power. He views his powers in the way that a Coalition soldier views his tools, and like that soldier he can (and often does) refine his technique such that he can innovate new applications for those powers. Yet, when faced with a situation that demands a knowledge of the workings of how supernatural power works he is as useless as a Vagabond. (Don't ask a Warlock about how to best exploit a Nexus Point; he does not possess the knowledge required to do so.)

Your man does not think of himself as a magician. He sees himself as a priest, shaman, etc. if his powers originate from a clerical Occupation (which includes the Witch; he's a cult leader), or otherwise as a soldier/warrior/artisan whose powers are but tools of his trade. He views magicians as the sort that Shifters, Ley-Line Walkers, Stone Masters, etc. are, and that is often due to his ignorance regarding the nature of his powers. He sees his powers as gifts, grants, blessings, etc. and not spells and rituals and his language usage will reflect this perception. He views the fact that those same Stalkers that go after "magicians" also view him as prey to be due to the supernatural power imbued into them by their source; it is, at best, part of the price for their powers and not proof that they too are magicians. (Stalkers, for their part, are just as likely as not to buy this line of argument; they aren't experts on what magic is or how it works either.) That his powers interact with the spells and rituals of magicians, by and large, doesn't bother your man either; power is power.

Your man's relationship with the source of his powers is the primary relationship in his life and it comes before all else. Maintaining this relationship is always top priority, and as your man is typically the client or agent of that source that always means being prepared to fulfill the obligations put upon him by that patron/principle. While, in play, this should not (typically) be the all-consuming thing that it could be it should never be out of your mind- because it is NEVER out of your man's mind. The price your man pays for power is servitude, if not outright slavery; you're playing the sort of man who is always on call, and so must be prepared to drop everything when duty calls- OR ELSE!

Running campaigns for these characters is actually really easy, in that it provides ready direction and content for your players to go with and work through. However, it works far better if you sit down while away from the table working out the nature of those characters' patrons/principles/etc. before you bring them front-and-center like that. I advise you to do just that; it's preparation time well-spent, and brings great returns on that time investment when you make it recur time and again.

On a similar note, these characters are great NPCs- be they as allies or enemies. They come ready-made with motivation and means, making them great choices for external actors driving events in your campaign environment. Some are good even as minions, but most are better used sparingly as NPCs; keeping them rare usually works better for both verisimilitude and player suspension of disbelief. They're the leaders of movements, institutions, nations, and kingdoms; if you need a faction, employing one of these sorts of magic-users is a good choice. Enjoy.

Playing a Magic-User in RIFTS, Part 2: Becoming Familar What Your Character Does and How He Does It

When you play a magic-user, you play someone who wield supernatural power and therefore has some sort of relationship with supernatural power. It is not enough to know the rules behind how your magic-user's powers work, though that is important. It is no less important that you--the player--comprehend the power that your magic-user wields, and how they relate to that power. To achieve this level of comprehension, you are required to employ the full power of your imagination; you must see, hear, smell, taste, and touch the power that your magic-user wields- you must experience it, as best that imagination allows one to experience anything. If you do this, then you acquire some measure of your magic-user's unique perspective, and therefore become better able to decide on what your magic-user says and does when you play this character because you comprehend better who he is, what he does, where he does it, when he does it, why he does it, and--most important, in practical terms--how he does it. Remember that I am not talking about those born supernatural, but rather those born ordinary who became magic-users by choice.

Let me show this by way of example.

Let us, for the sake of example, say that I'm playing a Ley Line Walker. By choosing this Occupation, I already made a decision on what relationship that my character has with the supernatural power that he wields. Specifically, I chose the detached and experimental relationship typical of classic Western High Magic traditions; he sees the study and use of magic as no different than the study and use of the natural world, and comprehends the supernatural as a step beyond the physical world of ordinary existence. He is an educated man, literate and fluent in at least two languages and broadly familiar with an array of sacred and profane knowledge (and I use those terms as real-world scholars do, not in their popular sense; "sacred" means nothing more than "the supernatural world" and "profane" equals "the ordinary world"). He may not be a medical doctor, a physicist, a chemist, an engineer, or some other well-educated professional or highly-trained tradesman in the ordinary sense but he is does possess an array of useful knowledge that can be applied to an array of likely situations. In short, I'm playing someone who is best thought of as a Gandalf sort of figure: an individual who travels far and wide, has many contacts of varying intimacy (acquaintances, allies, friends, relatives, etc.), and often--as a direct consequence of his comprehension and usage of supernatural power--acquires a "Big Picture" perspective on things that can come into conflict with more provincial or shallow-thinking individuals.

A Ley Line Walker, specifically, is a magic-user who acquires a mastery over the useful qualities of Ley Lines. It is this mastery that promotes the "Big Picture" perspective. The ability to nigh-instantly communicate and travel by way of Ley Lines results in the Ley Line Walker acquiring the mind of a frequent traveler, a jet-setter sort, who has no problem being comfortable in places that--in real terms--are vastly distant from one another. Time and distance perspectives become altered accordingly; when your man wake up in Tolkeen, take in lunch on Center, meets up with his on-and-off Atlantean lover for dinner on a planet in another galaxy, and come home to a warm bed in Tolkeen (traversing mind-boggling distances with aplomb several times in a day) it sometimes becomes difficult to remember that the people selling their farm produce in the marketplace regard a day's travel by foot as being very far away. Similarly, when your man can telepathically communicate with his buyer in Atlantis by way of Ley Line communications it is difficult at times to remember that many people can't get fast and reliable communications across a field, let alone across a community. What this means is that I'm playing a character who, for all intents and purposes, is akin to someone who is not only always online, but can teleport ala Star Trek to anywhere on the network.

We haven't even addressed the spell-casting yet.

A Ley Line Walker otherwise uses magic in the manner of a Western High Magician: he studies the supernatural world, conducts experiments to test various hypothesis, records the results, and in time refines things until he develops a technological artifact from that work- a specific spell or ritual. He is as much a valid scientist as any physicist, chemist, or other hard-science practitioner. These findings and applications can be repeated by others, verifying those findings and applications as one would any real-world science or technology (respectively). The only reason for why my character's Stone Golem ritual creates a Stone Golem that does not look like another's Stone Golem is for purely cosmetic reasons. He uses magic; it is a tool to him, nothing more, just as a chemist uses his knowledge of chemical processes and interactions to create smokeless gunpowder. The key difference is in the experience of using that source of power to make his spells work.

Let's take, as an example, casting a simple Fire Bolt spell. I will draw out the specific steps of what your magic-user experiences for illustrative purposes; remember that, for your character, all of this happens in three seconds or less.

1. Your character fixes his senses on a specific target.
2. Your character fixes in his mind the idea of a small bolt of fire leaping from his hands, flying nigh-instantly to that target, and incinerating him to ash.
3. Your character, following the formula that he'd previously mastered, begins to generate the mana required for this spell and transmute it into fire. This requires that your character apply his mastery of vocal techniques, breathing techniques, and guided imagery to accelerate the frequency of the mana that he's cupping in his hand until its structure becomes too agitated to remain in its pure state. The ball-like shape allows an outer shell to remain in place while the internal space transmutes into fire; this is necessary to safely handle the spell effect during the casting of the spell. Your character's vocalization and breathing is how your character manipulates the frequency of the mana, so to others you sound like your voicing the wrath of an angry god or spirit. (They are not exactly wrong; you're mimicking said entity, using principles of similarity to apply that effect.)
4. Your character feels the heat gathering about the palms of his hands; this is how he learned to track how long he has to finish his casting.
5. Just as the shell holding in the fire is about to collapse from within as the last of its is transmuted into fire, your character "throws" the bolt at the target; this is a somatic ritual component, as the spell doesn't actually generate anything so solid that your character could actually throw it as if it were a snowball or a rock. Your character wills the bolt to strike the target; success or failure is a contest between your will to strike and your target's will to not die.
6. Either your character's will prevails, the bolt strikes the target, and he is burned or the target's will prevails and he blocks or dodges the bolt. If the bolt strikes or gets blocked, then the fire burns what it strikes as if it erupted there and then. It has no solidity, so there is no kinetic component; you're just throwing magical Molotov Cocktails. If it misses, it still exists and may strike another thing if within the effect's range.

Again, all of this happens in three seconds or less. Now, imagine your character learning how to cast this spell. Imagine the sensation of willing fire into existing through the application of known principles of the supernatural world, known principles of the natural world, fueled by your will and shaped by your imagination. Imagine realizing that the power to directly translate a desired change in the world from an imaginative idea into a manifest reality by way of knowledge and will alone means that you are no longer confined by the boundaries of the ordinary world--no one that undergoes this experience can remain the same thereafter; this alone is an initiatory act--and how this realization forever removes you from the ordinary world that you came from. Your character, in becoming a magic-user, is no longer an ordinary man; your character, therefore, will not think or act as those that have not experienced this initiation would. Yet all magic-users were once ordinary men; your character made a deliberate choice to step beyond the ordinary and become something greater than that. Keep that in mind; there is are very obvious parallels to real-life to be seen here, so obvious that I need not specify them, with some applicable for Good character and others for Selfish or Evil ones.

So, while being familiar with the rules and mechanics regarding what your magic-user can do is important, that is not the end-all/be-all. To fully and properly appreciate what it means to play your magic-user, you must employ your imagination and get into your magic-user's head--into his life--and see through his eyes what it means to be who and what he is (and do what he does). Once you do that, you can better appreciate his perspective, and that means deciding what to do at the table (and in the game) through that perspective. By immersing yourself into your character's reality, you stop being just a guy looking at numbers and mechanics playing a boardless wargame and start truly playing a role; once you become familiar with your man, you'll start wanting to spend time with him more often--and that means playing him more often--which leads to the last bit for this post.

For you, as the Game Master, you're not off the hook. What you need to do does shift a bit, however, in that instead of doing this for a character you will be doing this for entire groups as a whole. Each form of magic-user represents some form of magical society, however formal or informal, and thus has a presence in the environment; this is especially necessary to deal with if you will allow players to play members of that Occupation. This all a part of world-building, so you need to have the vital parts done before the first player rolls up his man. When you know how these magic-users think, act, behave, etc. you'll start seeing emergent creations that you would not have imagined otherwise; this is exciting, so roll with it and see where it takes you- some of the best that tabletop role-playing has to offer stems from such events.