Pushing Past Skepticism

My wife’s birthday was Saturday, and some friends came into town to take us to a Halloween-themed acrobat show called Nightflights, put on by a local school here in Portland. For two hours, we were amazed by our own mini Cirque du Soleil as a live band shared the stage with devil, zombie, and black cat-attired aerial artists for two hours.

And sitting there in those seats, marveling at those acrobats, I caught myself thinking: “I would never have allowed a player to do that in a game without magic.”

This is particularly relevant to me at the moment, as I’m running a monthly Shadowrun session where two of my players are physical adepts. For those without context, that means their magic is based on their athletics and martial arts talent (insert any wuxia movie, such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). I’m almost positive that half of the feats performed I would have believed as impossible for the human body to manage without technology and special effects.

To be fair, there was some tech: safety tech. But make your body rigid and use just your arms to climb a 20-foot pole, fully extended? Nope, didn’t see that as a natural act.

I get this same feeling watching a football game. One-handed acrobatic catches from Doug Baldwin or interceptions from Richard Sherman? Beast Mode a la Marshawn Lynch? (On a side note: sigh Seattle.) They do things in every game that take skill and some amount of talent, but not magic.

So what then, is a magical level of ability? What is superhuman without becoming super hero-levels of absurdity?

Something I need to consider before next session.