Thaumaturgy

[Komuflage]

I don't think Komuflage is hating by any means and I think what he's asking is not in conflict to the creative concepts you're bringing up. I think I understand exactly what you're saying but I guess the question that I am thinking, and I believe Komuflage is as well, is what prevents someone using a macro approach to repeatedly "attempt" to use a skill whilst they go out for a coffee/lunch/weekend break and then come back to find their character is a now master?

Thank you, this is exactly what I mean by that there should be some extra factors to this system

 

[Psychomorph]

...attempting to resurrect a corpse to defend me. And failing because I'm not experienced enough.
And I don't mean just a message popping up with "Skill too low"; but the body standing up for a second before tumbling back down in a hundred rotten pieces.

Absolutely! The more skill and proficiency, the better the result. It shouldn't be just about can or cannot, but about how good you can, also.

Let's say you reanimate a corpse badly in a combat situation. The corpse draws fire so the player has gained some immediate advantage. The corpse is amusingly bad at attacking but has sufficient blocking skill to survive a couple of blows. You could leave it at that or you could allow the player to attempt to improve the reanimation with a chance of making it worse. This could be fun and I think the physics based character animations could be made to permanently or intermittently have the reanimated corpse off balance to simulate the varying degrees of success.

Absolutely! Great idea! The quality of the result speaks for the amount of skill. You could say this: The lower the skill, the worse the range and accuracy of, say, a thrown fireball. If you cast lightning bolts, they're very powerful, but very difficult to control (to aim and guide), the more skill you gain, the better you control it.

Control of Thaumaturgy, is what should be an important element. Not just the ability or inability to cast spells, but the quality of the performed Thaumaturgy.


You guys are definitely getting into the right direction if you ask me.

 

[Psychomorph]

Felling like a hater for commenting about this again, hopefully you wont take it offensive, I'm just trying to figure out a way this would actually work in-game.

Let's take the above example, well written and I think something like this would be quit hilarious if it ever happened in-game. However, if you would perform the spell in-game you would immediately see that your character is actually not invisible.

Second example, also well written and a good example, however from a gameplay perspective, first of you would need to be able to tell the game somehow that you're trying to perform a fireball. Secondly since you know you don't have any displacement/fire thaumaturgy skill, so you know you can't perform the spell yet. You would never (at least I would never, and I guess a few other) try to use this spell, that you know your character cant perform in a combat situation.

You could try to perform it against a tree in a safe location, but it would still be: You, pressing the button, doing the "fail animation" a few times, every time you do it your character would get better at it. First time your character does the "complete fail animation" then your character would be able to create some sparks, then a small fire, then a small fire ball etc until your character finally learn the spell.


Gubbb's idea was quite good, and it would probably work, but you would still know that your character can only partly perform the spell, and at this stage the spell would have 1 out of 3 possible outcomes; either you get a completely useless undead, one that can "Tank" or the best, one that can tank, but also attack. And maybe there would be a 0.5% chance that the undead would work perfectly.

And most people would probably just "grind" the spell in a safe location until they got to a certain level where they think it's good enough to use in combat. (Unless the only way to "learn" a spell, would be while your character is in combat)

non the less we have to look at this from a in-game perspective.


I fell like such a douche bag for bashing on this suggestion, because that is not my intention, I just want to find a way so that this would work in a way that makes sense, in-game.

Personally, I think learning in combat should have results, but the worst results, because you need a certain controlled situation, where you have the time to concentrate and meditate about the outcome.
Combat is messy and not a controlled environment where you can fail too easily, but, success can be a random occurance, where because of the pressure and survival instinct you can suddenly reach a good result and gain some more skill from it.

To summerize: Practicing in your freetime (peace, controlled environment) will give you steady, but relatively slow progress.
Practicing in extreme conditions (combat, fight for life), the result wil be highly dynamical, random and uncontrolled. You may succeed, or you may not, but results can be sudden and extreme, where you unexpectedly throw a massive fireball, something you never did before and this may give you a sudden jump in skill.
Peace=slow but steady / War=unpredictable but potentially effective. The more skill you gain, the better of the named outomes occure, the less skill the opposite. Skill=steady and effective / Low Skill=slow and unpredictable.


What I generally want to say regarding the subject is, that the Thaumaturgic mechanics should be less systematic and mechanical. There should be no grinding and no literal leveling. Various thaumaturgic skills should not be defined much by worse and better, but by what is best for the situation. Low skill shouldn't always mean that your Thaumaturgy is useless, it may be very good, but you may lack the variety to accommodate a variety of situations.
For instance; range may be an advanced skill. If you lack that skill, you're less effective and need to get closer. If you advance, you may gain more range, but not yet the accuracy. When you advance even more, you gain more precision at range. More advancement may give you more focus (more powerful) and more endurance (more and faster attacks), but also more speed (fireball flies faster).
You will not need to see numbers and percentages to know your skill, you experience it first hand and you shouldn't know when it ends (no 0% - 100%). If you seemingly reach the max of a certain magical skill, it may transform into something else. Like launhcing hot fireballs transforms into impossibly hot plasma and you no longer launch orange, burning fire, but blindingly bright, white projectiles. You could always use the lower state of the skill any time, because it may be actually more effective - for instance a plasma bolt costs more energy and is way too focused (burns a small hole), while a lower skill, fire bolt may cost less energy and have a more spreading effect (splash damage). A skillful Thaumatirge would be able to use all the variety of skills and be able to transform abilities into something else.

 

[Komuflage]

Personally, I think learning in combat should have results, but the worst results, because you need a certain controlled situation, where you have the time to concentrate and meditate about the outcome.
Combat is messy and not a controlled environment where you can fail too easily, but, success can be a random occurance, where because of the pressure and survival instinct you can suddenly reach a god result and gain somem ore skill from it.

To summerize: Practicing in your freetime (peace, controlled environment) will give you steady, but relatively slow progress.
Practicing in extreme conditions (combat, fight for life), the result wil be highly dynamical, random and uncontrolled. You may succeed, or you may not, but results can be sudden and extreme, where you unexpectedly throw a massive fireball, something you never did before and this may give you a sudden jump in skill.
Peace=slow but steady / War=unpredictable but potentially effective. The more skill you gain, the better of the named outomes occure, the less skill the opposite. Skill=steady and effective / Low Skill=slow and unpredictable.

Sure you're absolutely right, but once again it bring it back to my first point.

Being able to practice something in a safe location, in real life, where you have to focus and meditate etc. Sure, that's "fun" I guess.

But you can't focus in a game, focusing on a spell, in game, would still be just holding down the right mouse button for 4 seconds.

It's boring, it's grindy, and you could abuse it, with for instance a macro.

This whole Idea is awesome, it really is, but it need more factors to whatever you'll succeed or not.
Because standing still holding down a button is really boring and Imo bad design.

As for right now, I fell I just say the same thing over and over, so I'll stop comment for the moment, maybe BM can comment on this whatever they like the idea or not, and if they think it would be possible to make it into a system that makes sense.

 

[Psychomorph]

Sure you're absolutely right, but once again it bring it back to my first point.

Being able to practice something in a safe location, in real life, where you have to focus and meditate etc. Sure, that's "fun" I guess.

But you can't focus in a game, focusing on a spell, in game, would still be just holding down the right mouse button for 4 seconds.

It's boring, it's grindy, and you could abuse it, with for instance a macro.

This whole Idea is awesome, it really is, but it need more factors to whatever you'll succeed or not.
Because standing still holding down a button is really boring and Imo bad design.

As for right now, I fell I just say the same thing over and over, so I'll stop comment for the moment, maybe BM can comment on this whatever they like the idea or not, and if they think it would be possible to make it into a system that makes sense.

I wanted to get to that. I like the idea of mouse gestures (edit: gesture is the wrong term, rather mose movements). Like suggested before, I'd like to click, hold and move the cursor from near your character to a target to channel the path and unleash a lightning bolt on mouse button release (like it happens in nature, before the bolt strikes there is a charged tunnel ahead of it).
You could do the same with a fireball, sweep the mouse to launch it away from you to a target. Based on what was said above, lower skills would make the fireball and bolt fly toward the target, but less focused (accurate), less fast and far. You'd really observe the way it works and improves.
I also would like to create a "dragon", instead of launching a fire ball, you create a fire whip and you can move the cursor to guide it, around obstacles and such. You could guide it in front of a person to cut off its path, etc. Less skill means the fire snake is harder to control, it burns up faster and doesn't extend that far.

Focus could be simulated by how you move the mouse. If you think you can toss that fireball at lightning speed, you are wrong, because moving the cursor too fast dissolves the focused energy and the fireball disperses. Moving the cursor too slow will have a similar effect.
Sure this wont work with a gameplad, but I couldn't care less about a gamepad, because gamepad = different game, far more than just a different input device. The implications of a gamepad vs. mouse is significant (at least for the kind of game that I see as my ideal).

You use that skills and observe how they get more accurate and effective, slow but steady. You will clearly see how they change and evolve, they will become more and more fun the more you control it.

However, I think there would be limitations. The more you practice, the faster you exhaust you energies, which in turn lowers the effectivity of your Thaumaturgy and even affects your physical efficiency. Compehensive and total fatigue! Everything affects everything. You will need to keep your training in limits or you do more harm than use. You need to be sure to let some strength for actual combat, but also the physical activities (sword combat, running fast, etc). The fatigue would be somehow clearly observable by the player. Necessary mechanics would be implemented.

Basically, as a player you would be far more involved into the process than just clicking a button.

 

[Madoc]

We've covered a fair bit of this before. I'll summarise some relevant points:

Practice grinding
This won't work like it does in other games. Your skills don't increase directly from use but rather using them allows you to learn them over time. It won't really matter whether you do something once or a 100 times, using them every so often during play is enough to learn them at the fastest possible rate. You also choose what skills you want to learn, forget or keep level on you skill sheet. We won't release exact details because that might encourage exploits. In general we will take whatever measures we can to ensure that players just play and do things that make sense rather than stand around practicing.

Improving thaumarurgy
Thaumaturgic power is not a skill, there are skills that aid you in using thaumaturgy more efficiently but mostly not more effectively. We do want to allow some gradual progression of thaumaturgy but ultimately we want becoming a powerful thaumaturge to be difficult and hence involving the death of other thaumaturges, they mostly won't be easy to kill. Generally speaking thaumaturgic power is a big deal with many complications and much of what thaumaturges concern themselves with is related to this (it's a huge part of the lore and events that take place).

There's some more info on this topic here.

We've touched on the topic of how learning new powers works. You can learn new powers "naturally" when it comes to you innate power but other mechanics may still be involved for specific powers. For other forms you will definitely require some external input.

We really like the idea of powers going wrong when they are at the limits of your ability, in particular of them backfiring . This is something we've always wanted to do.

 

[Psychomorph]

As for why I think a mouse sweeping and moving system would be fun. Think about the whole Wii or kinekt thingy. To throw a ball (say in a Wii game) you hold the button, make the ball throwing movement and release the button to release the ball in the game. This is the closest thing to actually do this you can get in a game. We, PC gamers always had a similar input device, except that we are limited to a 2D surface, but we can still move and sweep it around.
I'd like to throw a fire ball with a sweep, because as I said, I "throw" it. If magic was real I'm sure in your mind you would visualize how you throw that ball toward your enemy. In many fantasy martial arts games (i.e. Mortal Kombat), you can see the combatants to charge an ice or fire ball with their hands holding them close to the stomach and make a throwing away movement to launch the projectile. That feels natural, kind of, so I'd like to jump on that bandwagon.

Other means of attack, let's say firing a rifle involve pulling a trigger and nothing is closer to it than pushing a mosue button with your index finger (or admittedly, pulling the trigger on a gamepad). Launching arrows. Generic games do it by holding the mouse button to pull the string and release it by releasing the mouse button and I like that concept. It is the closest thing to performing the action the way you would do it in real life as far as the input device allows as it feels natural. That way you're far more involved in the action and can change the way it works out by the way you move the mouse and the timing when you release the mouse button, etc.
I think that could be fun.

 

[666jet]

As for why I think a mouse sweeping and moving system would be fun. Think about the whole Wii or kinekt thingy. To throw a ball (say in a Wii game) you hold the button, make the ball throwing movement and release the button to release the ball in the game. This is the closest thing to actually do this you can get in a game. We, PC gamers always had a similar input device, except that we are limited to a 2D surface, but we can still move and sweep it around.
I'd like to throw a fire ball with a sweep, because as I said, I "throw" it. If magic was real I'm sure in your mind you would visualize how you throw that ball toward your enemy. In many fantasy martial arts games (i.e. Mortal Kombat), you can see the combatants to charge an ice or fire ball with their hands holding them close to the stomach and make a throwing away movement to launch the projectile. That feels natural, kind of, so I'd like to jump on that bandwagon.

Other means of attack, let's say firing a rifle involve pulling a trigger and nothing is closer to it than pushing a mosue button with your index finger (or admittedly, pulling the trigger on a gamepad). Launching arrows. Generic games do it by holding the mouse button to pull the string and release it by releasing the mouse button and I like that concept. It is the closest thing to performing the action the way you would do it in real life as far as the input device allows as it feels natural. That way you're far more involved in the action and can change the way it works out by the way you move the mouse and the timing when you release the mouse button, etc.
I think that could be fun.

What if to actually launch it when holding the button and aiming you scrolled the scroll wheel? so if you scrolled if up it would shoot a force ball thingy like on the video and like madoc said in the other post theres another one which pushes things away from you in every direction which you could use scrolling down

 

[Cooper Holt]

Firstly, hello!

I have been browsing around but not really felt that I had anything worth adding to any of the discussions before now so have been content to lurk; quite possibly people will suggest I was doing better at that than posting but...



I don't think Komuflage is hating by any means and I think what he's asking is not in conflict to the creative concepts you're bringing up. I think I understand exactly what you're saying but I guess the question that I am thinking, and I believe Komuflage is as well, is what prevents someone using a macro approach to repeatedly "attempt" to use a skill whilst they go out for a coffee/lunch/weekend break and then come back to find their character is a now master?

I think it comes down to what mechanism is used to permit you to make these attempts? If it's just pressing a button it's going to be open to the sort of abuse by just grinding as Komuflage has mentioned; do you have any ideas of how the mechanism could be implemented to avoid this? If the mechanism required some active involvement based upon feedback/visual input then it would at least require the player to actively participate in the process... not really fleshed out that as an idea, just throwing it out there.

It's not a criticism of the idea of having mixed level successes in your path from inept to adept and beyond but rather what is the mechanism of activating your thaumaturgic abilities and what prevents its abuse? It might be that the team already have this covered; I'd be interested in hearing their input on the subject.

I was only joking when I called him out on hating on my think-tank.

Answers:

-One cannot simply attempt again and again, you will have strengths and weaknesses in the spell you're trying to master that your character recognizes and perfects over time; especially with thaumaturgy of the mind (necromancy). I thought I gave some examples for this somewhere in there...

-I'm not sure what type of mechanism could be implemented that would keep this fun yet realistic...
suggestions would be helpful. Otherwise, I think it's okay as it is.

I hope that the devs have some ideas for this subject. I've always loved necromancy, and I hope they don't just have a "resurrect" button that you can use to revive a dog-skeleton or a mangled frog that now does a completely unrealistic amount of damage like in some games.
Another thing I've always hated was not being able to have more than one resurrected minion. I know it would drain your mana and focus a bit if you had to devote some of your power to a walking corpse while still keeping yourself alive.

Thoughts?

 

[Joe Moore]

Sure you're absolutely right, but once again it bring it back to my first point.

<snip>

As for right now, I fell I just say the same thing over and over, so I'll stop comment for the moment, maybe BM can comment on this whatever they like the idea or not, and if they think it would be possible to make it into a system that makes sense.

I think this post from Madoc might be what you are looking for in terms of how the game would implement Thaumaturgy.

 

[Komuflage]

I think this post from Madoc might be what you are looking for in terms of how the game would implement Thaumaturgy.

Thanks, but that's not at all what I'm looking for/Trying to say

 

[Cooper Holt]

Thank you, this is exactly what I mean by that there should be some extra factors to this system

Yay! Compromise!

 

[Cooper Holt]

We've covered a fair bit of this before. I'll summarise some relevant points:

Practice grinding
This won't work like it does in other games. Your skills don't increase directly from use but rather using them allows you to learn them over time. It won't really matter whether you do something once or a 100 times, using them every so often during play is enough to learn them at the fastest possible rate. You also choose what skills you want to learn, forget or keep level on you skill sheet. We won't release exact details because that might encourage exploits. In general we will take whatever measures we can to ensure that players just play and do things that make sense rather than stand around practicing.

Improving thaumarurgy
Thaumaturgic power is not a skill, there are skills that aid you in using thaumaturgy more efficiently but mostly not more effectively. We do want to allow some gradual progression of thaumaturgy but ultimately we want becoming a powerful thaumaturge to be difficult and hence involving the death of other thaumaturges, they mostly won't be easy to kill. Generally speaking thaumaturgic power is a big deal with many complications and much of what thaumaturges concern themselves with is related to this (it's a huge part of the lore and events that take place).

There's some more info on this topic here.

We've touched on the topic of how learning new powers works. You can learn new powers "naturally" when it comes to you innate power but other mechanics may still be involved for specific powers. For other forms you will definitely require some external input.

We really like the idea of powers going wrong when they are at the limits of your ability, in particular of them backfiring . This is something we've always wanted to do.

I kind of like the news.
It doesn't go against my opinions, and I think our ideas could still integrate in to yours.

Two major things, though:

1. Will powers have specific attributes?

I will explain.
For instance, you resurrect a one-armed corpse next to half of a shovel in the corner of the room. You command it, perhaps with your mouse or with a special GUI, to pick up broken shovel and follow you. having done this pays off, because in the next room you find a pack of hungry cave-spiders. The corpse fends off the spiders, giving you time to attack with magic.

2. Will you be able to have more than one resurrected corpse fighting for you at the same time?

One feature I see much too often in games is only being able to revive one dead creature to fight for you. Why does this happen? I don't know. But I sincerely hope that that doesn't happen in SG.

Also, would resurrecting a corpse be "sustained" or "continuous" focus?

Please reply with your input!

 

[Komuflage]

2. Will you be able to have more than one resurrected corpse fighting for you at the same time?

One feature I see much too often in games is only being able to revive one dead creature to fight for you. Why does this happen? I don't know. But I sincerely hope that that doesn't happen in SG.

Also, would resurrecting a corpse be "sustained" or "continuous" focus?

One way that this could work, would be that your character have a fix point system, taking a random number we'll say 100 "Necro-points" (NP) each undead you animate drains a fixed amount of points per second.

Lets take a undead chicken as an example; lets one chicken drains 5 NP/s, that mean as by default you can have 1 chicken for 20 seconds before your NP runs out and the chicken dies.
However if you'll summon 2 chickens, they'll drain 10NP/s (5+5) and you'll be able to have 2 chickens for 10 seconds.

However you would be able to get +NP/s somehow; like the more training in Body/Mind the more +NP/s you'd have, and maybe there would be some trinkets or something that could increase your +NP/s

So anyway, say you got a +2NP/s, then one chicken would only drain 3NP/s (5-2=3) and two chickens would drain 8NP/s (10-2=8)

So you increase your +NP/s to +5NP/s, this mean you would be able to sustain 1 chicken indefinitely. but 2 chickens would drain 5NP/s, and if all your NP would be drained, both chickens would die (Even if you technically can sustain one indefinitely)

There would also be a Max +NP/s you could get, and lets put this number at +50NP/s

Different types of undead would also drain different NP/s, so a skeleton could drain 10, a Tiger (or some other animal ) maybe 20, and a Piggy would drain 60 (So you would need to have Max +NP/s but still only be able to control one for 10sec)

This would create a cool system where one have to build their "perfect army" of different types of undead.
"Should I have 10 killer chickens, that can be sustained indefinitely, should I combine 4 chickens and 3 skeletons? etc"

Instead of the Normal, "you can only have max 2 chickens, 1 skeleton and 1 dog"

Also, maybe giving your minions different commands would drain a set amount of NP, so if you had 10 chickens, you would only have 49 NP (Since you need at least one to keep them "alive") to issue commands with.

Pretty much: (Imo) More complexion and choice = better game

 

[Cooper Holt]

One way that this could work, would be that your character have a fix point system, taking a random number we'll say 100 "Necro-points" (NP) each undead you animate drains a fixed amount of points per second.

Lets take a undead chicken as an example; lets one chicken drains 5 NP/s, that mean as by default you can have 1 chicken for 20 seconds before your NP runs out and the chicken dies.
However if you'll summon 2 chickens, they'll drain 10NP/s (5+5) and you'll be able to have 2 chickens for 10 seconds.

However you would be able to get +NP/s somehow; like the more training in Body/Mind the more +NP/s you'd have, and maybe there would be some trinkets or something that could increase your +NP/s

So anyway, say you got a +2NP/s, then one chicken would only drain 3NP/s (5-2=3) and two chickens would drain 8NP/s (10-2=8)

So you increase your +NP/s to +5NP/s, this mean you would be able to sustain 1 chicken indefinitely. but 2 chickens would drain 5NP/s, and if all your NP would be drained, both chickens would die (Even if you technically can sustain one indefinitely)

There would also be a Max +NP/s you could get, and lets put this number at +50NP/s

Different types of undead would also drain different NP/s, so a skeleton could drain 10, a Tiger (or some other animal ) maybe 20, and a Piggy would drain 60 (So you would need to have Max +NP/s but still only be able to control one for 10sec)

This would create a cool system where one have to build their "perfect army" of different types of undead.
"Should I have 10 killer chickens, that can be sustained indefinitely, should I combine 4 chickens and 3 skeletons? etc"

Instead of the Normal, "you can only have max 2 chickens, 1 skeleton and 1 dog"

Also, maybe giving your minions different commands would drain a set amount of NP, so if you had 10 chickens, you would only have 49 NP (Since you need at least one to keep them "alive") to issue commands with.

Pretty much: (Imo) More complexion and choice = better game

I like it.

So, in a nutshell, each resurrected corpse drains a certain amount of focus per second (fps? :/), so in order to combat only having things for a short amount of time, you must either be more efficient with your focus-per-second. There are multiple ways of being more efficient, and these are affected by power, skills, and experience.
Right?

Also, why would a piggy burn up so much focus?

 

[Komuflage]

I like it.

So, in a nutshell, each resurrected corpse drains a certain amount of focus per second (fps? :/), so in order to combat only having things for a short amount of time, you must either be more efficient with your focus-per-second. There are multiple ways of being more efficient, and these are affected by power, skills, and experience.
Right?

Also, why would a piggy burn up so much focus?

Yes pretty much like that; makes you think of what you're doing with your undeads, instead of just mindlessly summon as many as possible.

About piggy, well I just took a random number, and since piggy is a big badass, I'd guess being able to control one of those for a long time would be op. However, if the devs would like this idea, ofc they need to tweak the numbers so it's balanced.

 

[666jet]

Yes pretty much like that; makes you think of what you're doing with your undeads, instead of just mindlessly summon as many as possible.

About piggy, well I just took a random number, and since piggy is a big badass, I'd guess being able to control one of those for a long time would be op. However, if the devs would like this idea, ofc they need to tweak the numbers so it's balanced.

i like all these ideas there all good ^_^

 

[Madoc]

The current design for this is that an advanced necromancer would raise undead as a continuous power, this means higher concentration skill is required for more "minions" and there's a trade off with the availability of focus and the ability to use other continuous powers.

 

[Psychomorph]

Good ideas and nice concept from BM on this.

When I think about Necromancy. No such thing exists, but in media there are various mechanics. Some deal with raising the dead that persist as undead over centuries or even indefinitely. Others deal with raising dead for a purpose (combat drones). A game, of course, needs to be specific, because it involves mechanics and such.

Just some theories.

1) I like the idea of a "necromant field" as a revival technique. In reality that would mean you stand in an area and draw a circle around yourself with the cursor (circle needs to be closed). Within this circle you can raise dead creatures, who all raise up aimlessly.
How long they persist, how far you can draw the field (during drawing, the circle dissolves if you draw the field larger than you have the power) and how effectively the dead are animated is not a choice, but depends on your individual power.
Reviving them means you give them a package of your power, you charge them up and they prevail for a peroiod of time nourishing from the power you gave them (which is life force). You can shut them down by taking the power away from them and they all fall to the ground dead.
To perform heretic necromancy (self sustaining undead indefinitely = curse) you need to perform a special arcane dark form of necromancy to give the undead the ability to draw life force from the environment (killing it slowly). The devastating thing about that form of necromancy is, that the undead seek life (to kill it and) to persist, all that without consciousness but through the "undead instinct". This form of necromancy can be used for mass genocide, but once the undead took over a town and kill every life, and are unable to travel further distances, they fall into hibernation (living dead lying dead on the ground still living, but being dead ). Interesting is that these undead do not decay further, but somehow prevail rotten as they are, for centuries.
When a traveler passes this dead town, he revives the undead close to him with his presence and they awake and the taveler is in deep shyt. Tricky thing is, that the corpses channel the force and radiate it to others, so the revived undead are able to reanimate other undead who are too far away from the traveler. Needless to say that nature avoids these places and animals don't go there and plants don't grow. Nature's way to isolate the cursed land.
There are rumors of such undead cities somewhere to the north. It is claimed that some powerful Thaumaturges possess the power to mask their life force siganture with advanced thaumaturgy making themselves invisible to the undead and that way traveled the ancient undead cities and gained invaluable ancient knowlegde.

2) To go back to the practical uses. The raised dead can be left alone to travel aimlessly. They will ignore everything as they contain the life force you gave them, but they will become notably hostile and try to kill things when their force package is close to depletion. This is the moment where they will become hard to control, untill you lose control of their actions once they go looking for brains to eat. You can gain control, or sustain it, by transfering more energy to them.

3) You can "program" them and give them tasks that they can perform by themselves, but you can also click on them with the cursor and move them the way you want (like a puppet). Because of the WASD movement system you can move the undead and follow them independantly.

4) Moving skelletons are not necromancy, but a different kind of evil. I don't know which, but I would think of spirits who wear bones as garment. Perhaps even their own remains from the times they were alive.

5) Killing undead? As I mentioned before, their rotten bodies are conserved unnaturally. If you tear off an arm from an undead and carry it in your backpack as a trophy, it will make you sick and tired, because it still draws life force from you.
An undead without a head still "lives", but it needs the mechanics of the head to be able to walk and keep balance. A separated head can still bite, so beware!!! A powerful necromant can still actively control a headless undead like a puppet master and make him stand up and walk.



Anyway, that is how I perceive necromancy and undead. I like there to be actual mechanics that are on the one hand understandable and realistic and on the other hand abstract and surealistic.

 

[Kaizer0002]

Psychomorph's mentioning of circles reminded me of Champions Online. There were spells in that game where as long as you remained in a circle (or quickly returned to it if you got ringed out), you received a benefit of some sort. It wasn't necessarily a buff - sometime it was a useful summoned creature or whatnot. I don't know how important movement would be in Sui Generis, but it could be a fun mechanic to play with and fits with the theme of learning to shape thaumaturgy.