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The chief reason for this optional rule is to avoid the RPG magic syndrome. GURPS = Generic Universal Role Playing System. As a generic system, it is right that the spells described in Magic be generalized, not traceable to any one tradition or trilogy. In a specific campaign, however, lack of guidelines in the rule book for customizing magic leads to games in which the stripped-down spell versions presented in Magic are treated as the only possible magical system, with a resultant loss of flavor. While Spell = Skill is a useful paradigm, it does not take into account the ambience of wizardry -- it fails to provide the smell of fatty can- dles and incense.
You can swap spells with other characters, but only so long as they are from the same school of magic you are from. You are allowed to learn more than one school, but should keep track of which school you are using when you cast it. (That is, to learn a spell in school X, you also need to learn it's prereq chain in school X, and remember that you are casting those spells in that fashion.)
There are 6 elements involved in creating a school of magic.
This is the foundation of the school in most senses; it represents the school's consensual understanding of how magic works. There are a number of possibilities:
Each of these explanations carries with it certain consequences. For example, a mage who has been taught that he is a conduit for astral and ethereal forces will probably believe in and have studied astrol- ogy, and is likelier than most to be aspected. A magician who sees the world spirit-filled will probably find working with elements and living things easier than working with humans. The magician who is taught that all magic is illusion is likelier to be a sorcerer or illusionist, but could easily learn any spell, under the impression that it works so long as the victim/beneficiary THINKS it works. In a similar fash- ion, the magician whose school trains him to believe that magic is based on innate powers of the mind is likelier to be a psi rather than a true mage--but there is no reason that he could not be a mage under the mistaken impression that he is a psi, or vice versa.
From the way in which magic is defined, a number of bonuses and restrictions can be activated. These are, first, any of the bonuses or restrictions natural to a magician of that particular world view. For example, a magician who has been taught the Laws of Similarity and Contagion is less likely to be able to create chaos, less apt to study destructive spells, more likely to be a mage of knowledge and repair. Conversely, the spirit mage--and even more so, the mage dedicated to a dark spirit--will be both more likely to study and of a higher aptitude for spells of destruction and chaos. The spirit mage may be unable to work magic without the aid of spirits, or may be able to use his own spirit in working limited amounts of magic. All of this may be simulated by giving mages bonuses or penalties of one point in certain skills or spells, or by making certain skills or spells taboo, or by making them required, or by changing prerequisites.
One of the more interesting ways of restricting mages of a particular school is by modifying the time taken to cast spells. Certain schools might not teach spell-casting, for instance, but demand purification in advance and spell-casting only by ritual. Or it might be that to call spirits, it is first necessary to speak with, to bargain with them, in which case spells might take ten times as long to cast--but perhaps have no cost to maintain.
Another interesting modification: classic witchery has dozens of spells to achieve roughly the same purpose with different ingredients (available at different times of the year) or simply depending on the phase of the moon or the season. A GM may decide that if a mage fails when casting a spell for the first time in a partic- ular season/month/phase of the moon/etc., then he or she does not know the spell for that season/etc. This, of course, demands a certain amount of record-keeping, but it provides an interesting alternative to the normal spell- failure rules. Further castings of the spell in that season/etc. will always fail, until the mage increases skill with the spell (at which time the next casting during a previously failed season/etc. is treated like the first casting).
Completely apart from the school's teachings based on its understanding of magic is a series of moral and ethical teachings. These teachings may well be influenced by the conception of magic, but are not part and parcel of them. That is, while the set of restrictions above is relatively rigid (the mage in question just doesn't beleive breaking them to be possible) the moral and ethical restrictions are relatively flexible.
For one example, take a school that teaches that all magic is illusion, which works because the targets believe that it works. Mages of this school are certain to be skilled illusionists, but may be able to produce the effects of other spells, at least in seeming. This implies that the mages must permit their targets to resist with IQ (or common sense), no matter what the spell, and is a rigid restriction, based on the understanding of magic taught by the school. However, it is possible that this school, in bringing illusion to an extremely high art, has also lost its faith in human nature. Mages of this school are generally cynics, their motto: Never give a sucker an even break, and There's one born every minute. Lying, after all, is encouraged. However, this should not restrict the mage from having the detect lies skill, nor should it be impossible for a mage of this school to be a true naif, wandering through the world to cast pretty illusions and ease the lives of the common people.
Take a second example: mages of a school which teaches that all spells are fundamentally one. Such mages should be able to generally ignore prerequisites, tapping into The Spell from different angles according to their need and desire. This is a rigid bonus; all mages of this school should be so endowed. Such a school could well teach a certain moral relativism: since all spells are one spells, all persons are one person, everything is one thing [a warped sort of Zen magic]. This could give them, to continue the example, a reputation as brainless bubble-heads. However, not every mage of the school need believe in the more outre of the teachings, some may have a very strong sense of self and the separation of self from other, and may even, due to their relative prominence in a group of generally vague thinkers, have a reputation for outstanding brilliance (perhaps even if their intellects are no more than average).
The GM may arbitrarily assign bonuses and restrictions to the members of a school, based not on their understanding of magic nor on their moral and ethical teachings, but simply on the tradition of the school or his own fiat. For instance, a GM could easily do away with prerequisites, perhaps replacing the system with a system of apprenticeship and restricted distribution of spell-books. The mages in his game would then learn the spells he was willing to let them learn. Here's an example based on a school's traditions: The Winter Frost school of magery, which is founded on a belief that all magic is accomplished by a delicate balance (or deliberate imbalance) of four elements, refuses to teach any true fire spells (although it teaches fire resistance, heat, and so forth). The reason for this goes back several centuries, to an age when the most prominent mage of the school was a fire mage, and one of little moral fiber. He became a scandal, finally dying spectacularly in a self-inflicted firestorm. Over the next few years, the school's chief learning center, including its valuable library, burned to the ground in a fire started by a lightning bolt in a freak thunderstorm on a hot summer day, and other minor centers suf- fered an outbreak of fire-based vandalism and accidents. Use of fire, except as a balance to water or cold, became extremely unfashionable, the more so as none of the fire-magery books were recovered from the ruin of the library, though a few of each of the other three elements were. Consequently, over a twenty-year period, the school developed the tradition that fire had a temper, and disliked being manip- ulated, and stopped teaching any of the offensive or more blatant techniques; these techniques eventu- ally dropped completely out of the school's repertory.
Though this is pure color, it can add considerably to the enjoyment of a game. The School of the Loquacious Hermit (also known as the School of the Gelded Soprano), for example, teaches that all spells must be cast in a language spoken now extinct non-humans whose voices were an octave above humans, and whose language was both polysyllabic and tonal. As a result, Loquacious Hermits take longer to cast all their spells (a semi- rigid restriction) and act complete fools as they do so, singing nonsense in high falsetto.
A more typical tradition is that wizards wear robes. In all but the most extreme cases, this is a simple tradi- tion, based on the robes worn by scholars and hearkening back to the days when scholars and magicians were one and the same, yet it could serve at the time of the campaign as an identification. Magicians who study astrology might decorate themselves with astrological symbols. Outward symbols serve a dual pur- pose: they identify the mage and to the uninitiated, they may appear to be magical defenses. In one historical school of magic, for instance, all spells were cast by means of magic squares of letters, which were folded, burnt, or placed under the hat. This produces the rather wonderful image of a wizard's duel in which one of the combatants sings in a constant high falsetto, while across the meadow his opponent scribbles industri- ously, folds up the papers he has written, and shoves them under his pointy little hat.
Not a dignified spectacle.
The GM should give each school at least some identifying characteristic, perhaps one that is well-hidden, or that is only seen when the magician is working magic, but something to provide color to the school.
By this time, if the GM has thought about the school being created, it has a great deal more depth and char- acter than most campaigns. However, if a player character will be enrolling in the school, he might consider drawing up a more rigorous program, both to make things clear to the player and to save later arguments.
To do so, the decisions made under the first five elements should be codified and written down, as clearly and precisely as possible, especially in regard to restrictions and bonuses. The GM may then sit down and draw up the school's standard course of study: which spells are learned first (and perhaps why), what skills all apprentices are expected to have, and perhaps (if he is feeling patient enough to do so), a complete list of the spells known to and taught by the college. He may add variant spells, or make the only version of a cer- tain spell known to a college an odd variant. Prerequisites can be added, subtracted, or changed; casting times and costs can be changed in a non- formulaic manner (twice as long for all spells is a formula; twice as long for fireball, half-time for illusions, one day for divination is not).
Prereqs which are disallowed to a particular spell caster can be ignored.
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