After a discussion on my saga agreeing that a Jewish Sukkah counts as a room, a player designed a spell that just... Conjures a room for Diameter so he could cast Room target DEO to attack hiding demons.
As always, saga dependant. I believe a room should have clearly delineated borders, and be considered enclosed. And I suppose, small enough to not be a structure or Boundary.
There are certainly downsides to the spell, I agree! (And yes, I was thinking of a Cr(Pe)He(Im) spell.) We would want AC range, though, that's definite, and we might be trying to spy on an inanimate object.
It's not clear to me that Group target is very efficient for InIm. Ten times as much as an individual only increases the area by x3 linearly, I think - you'd need a lot of size modifiers before you got much context.
I'm going to double up on this. Even a Saga may be internally inconsistent. You are playing the myth as told 100 years later and not what actually happened.
The Sukkah is a great example. On the assumption that what works for Talmudic logic also works for magical realism, consider the eruv.
There's a bit of Sabbath law that forbids the carrying of anything from a private space into a public space on the day of rest. Very Orthodox Jewish communities circumvent this by stringing a narrow wire --called eruv-- around an entire neighborhood, making it all one private room.
I can imagine magi coming up with a similar solution, perhaps invented by the Karaites from HOH:Societas.
I can see it now.
PC Magi: I cast {room spell} in the corridor.
SG: Roll an Artes Liberales check. Tell me if the result is odd or even.
PC:Odd or even? Don't you want the result? don't you have a target number for whatever you are doing?
SG: Even or odd is good enough. {You can add a "You dare question me!? roll." if you want)
PC: Um, Ok, odd.
SG: You were recently reading Archimedes, and based on his theories, a corridor is clearly a room, the spell succeeds.
[Insert 3 months later spongebob image]
PC Magi: I cast {room spell} in this corridor.
SG: Roll an Artes Liberales check. Tell me if the result is odd or even.
PC: Even this time.
SG: You were recently reading Pythagoras, and based on his theories, you consider a corridor is not a room and the spell fails.....
Note: Archimedes and Pythagoras chosen for comic effect. I have no realistic grasp of their theories (beyond the triangle one everyone who did high school maths knows).
I’m really not understanding how anyone is seeing a corridor as “not a room.” It meets all the criteria of Room, it just happens to be long and skinny and its primary purpose is moving from one other room to another. Hell, I’ve been in some kitchens that are practically corridors in shape.
Corridors would generally be excellent examples of rooms. I strongly suspect that @Fishy chose them as a semi-arbitrary example. Basically, just putting a word in.
And, playing with a troupe mostly consisting of engineers, I can very much see @silveroak's suggestion leading to ... problems, down the road.
I can see a case being made for the corridor that opens into the stairway and another corridor and the hall and whatnot. Many corridors do not have clear and obvious boundaries, but I agree with you that if it has, it's a room.
Corridor is definitely a room in my opinion. I was just using corridor as an example that if one was an incredibly pedantic SG, one could say it is not a room. And for a stupid joke (which was the aim) the more ludicrous, the better.
I'm often a fan of looking at how far a certain interpretation will get to, to see if it's a good idea. "A room must be the specifically defined area most people see as a room" is not a good place, as it means a corridor fails.
Engineers should take a break and just live the story in their spare time. I teach engineers at daytime, but I do not want my players to reason like engineers when I try to take time off.
Stupid or not, I think you just captured exactly how magic is supposed to work. It depends totally on belief, if not universally, at least very commonly in fiction.
And if you insist on reasoning like an engineer, sorry, there is no magic at all, and your spell fails regardless of what a room is.
In point of fact I am an engineer.
I have also taken classes in philosophy and have yet to see an engineering solution to the Ship of Theseus.
Sometimes its useful to look at the world through a different perspective, especially when you are considering an alternate world that may not run based on consistent principles at all.
If you stop and look at it, the whole idea of "room" is one defined by consciousness and language, not scientific observation of natural phenomenon. In contrast maxwell's equations work for any arbitrary space whether enclosed or not, and the whole point of a farraday cage is to utilize the material properties of the cage to create a barrier against electromagnetic signals, not to define the space within. Defining the space is about consciousness, not engineering.
While I agree we are playing Magical Arts not Magical Science, Bonisagus theory is pretty much an attempt to break free of superficial magic understanding in favor of an well structured magic framework. It's not by chance that you need an actual room (whatever this means) to cast T:Room spells, you can’t target a room sized abstract space.
The fact that we, as players, disagree on what the metaphysics of a room is (or a group, or a boundary, or D:Sun, etc) doesn’t mean that these things are not solid, well defined things (even if poorly understood by hermetic magi), or that they are defined by consciousness rather than having meaning by themselves.
And even if we assume fluctuation of consciousness and understanding will change the result of magic (a concept I agree with) this is more than accounted for by the dice. You rolled well and succeeded? Your mind is steady, you think you understand "Room". You failed? Your understanding on what a "Room" is fluctuated. You botched? Your understanding collapsed upon itself. Go reflect about it for 7 years trapped within a kaleidoscope of rooms folded on themselves, maybe you will be enlightened by this and improve your MT.
But I will once more fall back to my previous comment about this, because the point here isn't actually about the metaphysics of a game as seen by me or by anyone else. I'm not making a point of "there must be an universal, consistent, definition".
My point is "there must be a self-consistent definition". And I'm saying this from the perspective of narrative, not rules.
When the factual truth of the world is arbitrary, defined by the whims of the SG du jour or by a toss of coin, player choice loses it's meaning. Choice is only meaningful when it's informed and based on a consistent understanding of the world. Otherwise, the player might as well just guess.
That's why I say the definition of Room should be self-consistent within a saga. And note I'm not even saying it must be known to the players, just that it needs to be self-consistent.
SG: Troupe, to avoid trouble in the future, definitions regarding what constitutes valid R/D/T will be provided by Bob. His word is final regarding this and supersedes even mine, ok? And Bob, you must inform anyone about any obvious understanding regarding R/D/T, but feel free to withhold information on corner cases until they are specifically requested due to the needs of the story or specifically tested and investigated. Ok? And of course, the rulebook is above you, you can't overthrown something in there without a very reasonable explanation, because that is the baseline held in common by all of us.
Troupe: Ok.
Bob: If everyone is ok, so am I. I'll try to do a good job.
If I was converting the Eruv to Ars Magica, I'd call it a boundary with the definition of 'private space'. Maybe an extended spiritual structure.
Either way, the Sukkah is a temporary living space that lets you also enjoy the outdoors- but it does generally have walls and a roof.
For me, the real question comes to more indistinct sturctures - Valley vs Chasm vs Cavern. Tunnel vs Corridor vs room.
I understand you want this as a goal, but there is a very good reason to compromise, at least in real-time games. Consistency means that every decision makes precedent, and the SG should consider carefully before they make a decision for the rest of the saga. This means that they cannot just make an on-the-spot decision and let the game flow; they have to consider the impact on the rest of the saga too.
IIRC this is canon advice from some edition.
Now, we could have a discussion on just how edge a case has to be before the arbitrary whim is acceptable, but that too depends on how invested the troupe is, the genre they play, and how well they respond to improvisation.
A space defined by temporary walls is a room (as otherwise discussed); roomness seems to be related to whether there is an underlying linked line.
Consider:
A circle is not broken; that is, a broken circle does not function magically.
A room is usually pierced through one plane at least. The opening in a room seems to have no effect on roomness; neither doorways nor windows nor even lack of one plane (wall, roof).
So, questions:
I'd say 1 yes, 2 yes, 3 no, and 4 apparently.
I'd say Yes to 3 if the area was roofed. The Parthenon would be a structure which may have slightly different rules but it is only bumped up because it has rooms within it. If it had none, it would be a room by my reasonings.
My point is not that the definition of a room should fluctuate capriciously, after all even if it is defined by consciousness it is still something that generally is well defined by that consciousness. My point is that borderline conditions where it becomes a real question could easily fall into a definition based on genuine belief, where a mage who is looking at the situation going "this should work" has at least a chance of success, while someone thinking "maybe I can get away with this" would not, even if it the same principle being used.
Which may not hold together so well for narrative as it does for simple fairness of the game.
OK, that seems odd to me. A roofed column room does seem to be a room, albeit one where the walls are much pierced. An unroofed column room (a ruin, I assume, otherwise why would the columns be there - columns support roofs) seems unlinked and therefore a structure. Yet, an unroofed chamber is a room.
Hm!