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    •  
      CommentAuthorCGilga
    • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2009
     

    We have threads running on Protagonists and Antagonists , and since most of us seem to favor the fantasy genre, a magic system thread seems to be a decent addition. It follows the same principle. Give advice, examples, all the authorial words of wisdom.

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2009 edited
     

    I don’t really understand Paolini’s system. :P

  1.  

    OOOOH YESSS!!! I was talking about this with a friend the other day.

    Did CP borrow his magic system from anyone? Cause I really liked that one. (lol, Puppet pipped me at the post.)

  2.  

    Ursula K. LeGuin’s magic was very similar to Eragon’s… Wow, imagine that. rolls eyes And Puppet, yes, I agree. ;) I dunno, I didn’t really like the magic in Harry Potter; too vague in my opinion.

    •  
      CommentAuthorZombie Devin
    • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2009 edited
     

    Paolini’s magic system seems to be a ripoff of le Guin’s magic system in her Earthsea series.

    Edit: Yeah, what RVL said. But the problem with too specific a magic system is that once you start making up more rules, and contradicting natural laws in more places, more and more holes start appearing in the system, and you need a way to explain that. Paolini’s magic system fails in this way.

  3.  

    I dunno, I didn’t really like the magic in Harry Potter; too vague in my opinion.

    The whole point of ‘magic’ is that it is an unexplainable phenomenon. It’s just there, and it works like that in HP.

  4.  

    True, but if you look at magic systems like LeGuin’s, they at least lost some energy while directing their magic; there was a bit of… I guess an explanation as to how the magic worked. Does that make any sense at all? ;)

    Devin, yes, completely true.

  5.  

    I know. If done well enough, I can ignore vagueness, but I prefer a magic system of some kind.

    Tamora Pierce’s systems annoy me so much. But I can forgive her, because her characters are what make the story.

  6.  

    Steph, how does Pierce’s system work?

  7.  

    You know what? I’ve forgotten! Somehow, all I remember is that I disliked her system. Sorry. What a supremely useless waste of a post.

    •  
      CommentAuthorCGilga
    • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2009
     

    I’ve never actually read any oof Tamora Pierce’s work. What type of system did she develop?

  8.  

    Is that the Circle of Magic series system? I totally forgot that I read those when I was like seven and loved them, but didn’t really understand them very well, lol.

  9.  

    Yeah, the Circle one. There was something about there being two kinds of magic and one could be controlled but the other couldn’t but it turned out that it could and it was so complicated :) but I can’t remember much.

  10.  

    Yeah, I don’t remember any of that.

  11.  

    My major project is set in a fantasy universe where two worlds share a connection through twin ethereal rivers that flow from a shared point. These are their rivers of time: the Gods placed each world’s rivers of time in the other world, so that humans do not try to change their stories and neither do djinn (the human river is visible only to humans and vice versa). Each river comes to an end at a point within each world’s respective ‘Time’s Temple’, where Time’s Priests watch over the river, and make sure it is not disrupted. There is one priest for each temple, and they are the sole djinn/human in the human/djinn world. Due to their appointment by the Gods, they possess powers over the passage of time and can will it how they wish: they are thoroughly disciplined to only use these powers in times of emergency (such as if someone has disrupted the flow of time and it needed to be fixed). These powers are, unfortunately for the Gods, hereditary, and so the Time Priests have always been forbidden from having families.

    The main characters of my story are descendants of the single Time Priest who broke this rule and slept with a human. As they have djinni blood, they are aware of the river of time (which isn’t a very literal river; it travels across the sky) and one of them wants to use his powers to overthrow first the djinni world, then his own, and finally the Gods themselves.

    •  
      CommentAuthorCGilga
    • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2009 edited
     

    I’m writing a steampunk fantasy in which they no longer burn coal. I honestly have no name for the substance (because magecite is so over used), but when burned the material produces smoke, as well as a liquid, that builds up at the bottom of the furnace. When refined and ingested the byproduct will give the magical traits to the specific person, temporarily. Of course there are different refinement methods, different qualities, and such. The government collects the liquid, pre-refinement, does this itself, bottles it, divides it by quality and source, and sells it. Citizens get the basics, government officials get a little bit higher quality, law enforcement gets higher, the military gets higher, and so on. Throw in the effects on one’s health, and it gets pretty bad.

    Let’s say there is some one who has been using a specific brand their entire life. And they’re a farmer. Let’s say this farmer stops taking the brand, and moves on. Over the course of his life the liquid has leeched away at this skill. While he has a steady supply, there is no problem, but upon changing brands, he no longer has the buffer to continue resisting the loss. He loses a natural talent. No longer is he skilled in gardening. It takes a larger toll out of him, and he just can’t keep up with his former ability. Switching back to the brand won’t help. He has lost it. Now, this is a very small case but, the higher the quality, the higher the dependence, and the more important the ability or skill that is lost is.

    Let’s say the same farmer never stops taking the brand he has always been taking. Instead, he notices something. His power (or magical abilities, if that is what they materialized as) is weaker, even immediately after drinking the liquid. Continuous use throughout his life has made him develop an immunity to the effects of that particular brand. He no longer gets the same effect. Once an immunity is built up, he even loses the buffer it provided to his natural ability, and drinking it is no longer necessary. It provides no power, and his natural ability is drained. The inverse can happen too. He can become more adept, more powerful in the ability. If so, his natural ability becomes enhanced as well.

    •  
      CommentAuthorMoldorm
    • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2009
     

    I’m not using magic, beyond slight-of-hand and trickery. The wizard-ruled kingdom keeps everyone in check by spreading rumours and using illusions, along with their highly-trained and well-armed guard force.

  12.  

    Pao Paos “system” gives me headaches. And fits of murderous rage. It is just so very… stupid. If often seems like he got tangled up in his own web and his writing shows that. The passages on magic read more like excuses rather than explanations of what actually happened. If that makes any sense…

    @Dr Alligator – that is a fascinating concept. I would like to learn more:)

    My magic system works thusly: there are several basic sources of energy – elements (earth, water, fire and air), Life and Death. Certain gifted individuals can sense flows of these energies and by utilizing creative means use it as they will. By creative I mean that a talent in a certain field of art can be an indication of magical talent – if somebody is gifted musically, artistically, can give the energy a certain rhythm (by rhyming, lol), can use it. However, pure energies are very dangerous to use, so magic users have to go for combinations of two or several of them. Also, if you are a magic user, not only do you use energy, the energy uses you as well. That is why in my world, very few mages live to old age. Most of them destroy themselves by overuse of the energies or at a certain point, they stop using magic altogether. Please let me know if this system is ridiculous. I appreciate honest, constructive feedback.

    Apart from mages, there are also these creatures who utilize these energies in a different manner. Rather than let them flow through, like the mages do, they bind the given energy directly to themselves. In this way they can store quite the supply of magical power, but on the other hand, they themselves can only sense large storages of energy, so unlike mages, they cannot identify miniscule fluctuations of these energies. As they are not human, these forces do not affect them as destructively, but have other unpleasant side – effects.

    Please let me know if this system is ridiculous. I appreciate honest, constructive feedback. And I am really curious what you guys think about it.

  13.  

    Steph, how does Pierce’s system work?

    OK, I’m probably going to get this wrong, since I barely understand it myself, but here goes:

    The Gift: Magic, pure and simple. Comes out of your essence or spirit or whatever. Use too much of it, and you start using your own energy, which can kill you.

    Wild Magic: Also part of you essence. Enables you to talk to animals, understand them, shapeshift, and/or other animal related things. If it runs into your human essence, you essentially become an animal.

    Circle Magic/Ambient Magic: There is magic in everything. All you have to do is tap that power, then direct it into something else, or speed up what naturally occurs. For instance, you can unravel someone’s clothing, or make plants grow faster. Such a bond with your magic makes you feel at home with the thing your magic does – plants and fabric moves towards you, and lightning feels pleasantly warm.

    Lightsbridge Magic: Your everyday charms, pentacles, and potions. I thought that you either had the gift for Lightsbridge magic or you were an ambient mage, and you had to have the spark for either to work, but I guess that’s wrong, because Tris, an ambient mage, is going to Lightsbridge despite the fact that a magic-sniffer didn’t find any of that magic in her. Oh, well.

  14.  

    Falcon, I like your system; it makes sense to me! As I’m a fairy logical person, the fact that it makes sense helps. ;) Although, the rhyming…. Er, a bit done don’t you think? Other than that, trés cool!

  15.  

    I haven’t really considered my magic system yet, which is not good. Right now, it’s kind of in an embryonic stage. It’s going to change a lot.

    I was thinking that magic could be a sort of genetic mutation or something that happened in a group (I need a reason why this would happen, of course, since this is a world without radioactivity or anything). One group stayed on land, and did not really differentiate that much from human beings, except for being able to do some magic. The other took to the sea, and while some in the shallower parts kept their human form, with some adjustments, the majority became only vaguely humanoid. The two different groups have different specialities- the earth magicians can shapeshift, for example, while the sea magicians can summon ocean storms (which causes significant problems for the humans around).

    Magic is also flexible, and as a person’s mind grows (they often use meditation), their magic changes and becomes more powerful and controlled- but this is a slow process and can take years. However, using magic is very hard on the body, and so people who use it often carry food on them to restore energy after they do something magical. They are also not physically strong for this reason. If they overstretch themselves magically, there can be several unpleasant side effects- coma, breaking of all the bones in the body, (which is practically synonomous with death), insanity, and, well, death.

    I know this is kind of vague and I really need to flesh it out. But so far, is it somewhat plausible?

  16.  

    I like your system, Falcon! I’d love to see a pure Death-energy person…

  17.  

    That would be interesting- would they be a necromancer or something like that?

  18.  
    Geasa are probably the best magic system I ever encountered. You keep your promise, you gain power. You break your promise, you die. Everything else just seems so arbitrary to me somehow.
  19.  

    @SWQ – that is a very logical system. And from the sound of it, very interesting as well. Does not sound vague at all:)

    As for pure – Death energy – this one is impossible to use. Necromancers use a combination of Death/Life. Death is the trickiest source to use, it is very unstable and very greedy – takes a heavy toll on the user. If they are alive, that is;)

  20.  

    My story has ether, not magic.

    • CommentAuthorLccorp2
    • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2009
     

    Does it matter what you call it?

    I just make it up as I go along. So long as it appears internally consistent, I’m fine with it.

  21.  

    Lccorp2, ditto.

  22.  

    Appearances are everything, aren’t they? :D

  23.  
    I kind of favor a Tolkien style magic. It's not like it's 'magic', Rather certain people have certain supernatural abilities, which can be accelerated by the Rings and other similar tokens which have been endowed with abilites by people who have abilities. It doesn't require rules, just common sense.
    •  
      CommentAuthorCGilga
    • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2009
     

    I’ve gone back and elaborated on mine. Feel free to critique or criticize. I agree with SWQ, I’m only in the developmental stages too.

  24.  

    Where? I didn’t find it. Weird.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2009
     

    My magic isn’t really magic either… and it’s not supernatural or anything. It’s a physical thing stored in your body, just like blood or something. Most humans can’t consciously control it, but if it’s strong enough in them, it will manifest as unusual abilities (extraordinary musical talent, brilliance with numbers, etc., along with the more traditional “magic” traits like minor psychic abilities). But for all intents and purposes, humans do not have it (at least not very much) and cannot see it or affect it in any way.

    Non-humans, on the other hand, usually can consciously control it. They also can see it, etc. If a human is exposed to a lot of it, they gain the ability to see it (or at least sense it), and with practice some can learn to control it, although once you consciously control it, you lose the unconscious effects of it (musical talent, etc.). But if someone can consciously control it, it can be used for many things. It sort of is a physical thing, but it can also have mental effects, so it could be used to control your mind (well, not so much control it… more like suggest things to it. So if it’s “suggested” to your mind that you don’t pay any attention to someone, you probably won’t look at them or remember them later.) or even for fighting- it can’t cause actual injury, but it can trick your brain into feeling pain. It even has some medical uses, because it can “suggest” to your mind that pain isn’t as bad as you think it is, sort of like a mild anesthetic.

    The non-humans who can use it (I call them “dalar”) sort of need this “magic” or “power” at all times. They have a finite amount of it bound to them, so if they use too much all at once without giving it time to build back up, they could lose it completely. It wouldn’t kill them (necessarily), but it definitely would do some screwy things to their head. They’d basically be in a home for the rest of their life. So it’s very important that they watch how much they use. A “transfusion” of “magic” given very quickly after they use all theirs can help them rebuild their own, but the person who gives up some of their own “magic” to give it to the other person never gets it back, and it might not work anyway, so that’s a risky business.

    With both my nonhuman race species and with my “magic” (it’s not really magic, but we don’t have a better word for it in English), I tried to make there be definite benefits, but also some significant downsides. Everything should have a trade-off. You might be able to do all this cool “magic” stuff, but if you aren’t careful, you could either die or be mentally impaired for life, and so on.

  25.  

    @Dr Alligator – that is a fascinating concept. I would like to learn more:)

    I’m glad you’re interested. :) I was writing another description but that was descending more into lore.

    ...Now that sounds discussion worthy all on its own.

    •  
      CommentAuthorApep
    • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2009
     

    I’ve got two magic systems (each with it’s own setting):

    The first has the mage/wizard/whatever acting as a conduit for magical energy, sort of like the filament in a light bulb. The more powerful the spell, the more energy the caster has to channel through their body. So a simple spell (like lighting a candle) requires a little energy, while a more complex spell (like a fireball) requries more. The down side is, if a caster channels too much energy, they can ‘burn out’, with generally disasterous results (think exploing, burst into flames, etc.)

    The other relies on using ‘spirits’: elementals and nature spirits. They can either be bound to an object (ex: a blacksmith binds an air elemental to a sword to make it lighter), or merged with a person (a hunter merges with a predatory animal spirit to hunt better). Again, there are consequences (the air-spirit sword isn’t as strong as a regular sword, the hunter develops some characteristics of the animal).

    Comments are welcome.

  26.  

    @Lccorp2

    >Does it matter what you call it?

    Yes, when it involves burning people in special furnaces in order to extract their life energy, which is stored in Leiden jars and used to power police walkers and lightning coils.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2009 edited
     

    It matters for mine, too- saying “magic” automatically summons up (heh) images of witches and sorcerers and spells and so on. But my system of supernatural (in the sense of “beyond the natural”, not in the sense of mystical) power isn’t anything like that.

    @Dan – blink That’s interesting…

  27.  

    I know. It was inspired by the most unlikely thing.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2009
     

    Dare I ask…?

  28.  

    The Misadventures of Flink, an old Sega CD game and one of my favorite games ever. Basically, when you kill enemies, a little ghost flies out of them and you collect it, which fills up your magic supply and allows you to cast spells. I took the idea of using souls to fuel magic and ran with it.

  29.  
    In my story everyone just has magical energy running through veins seperate to blood veins in their body much like chakra from naruto. Or maybe I'll just make the magic inside their blood. In Naruto, chakra is their physical and spiritual energy mixed together and certain people can mix those two energies with natural energy from the environment around them to get tons stronger. Well my magical energy is basically just spiritual without anything else. And like in Harry Potter, using your spiritual/magical energy to cast spells and such doesn't tire you out or kill you if done too much.

    What differs it a bit more from a Naruto rip-off is that the rule to use magic is that your own magical energy needs to interact with an outside source of magic; an object with magical properties, like a wand made of something magical (but there are no wands in my story). That's the only way it can escape your body. Now everyone has this magical energy inside them but not everyone knows how to use it or that they even have it inside them. Only certain cultures have found out about it and figured out a way to use it. So there are 3 main cultures that have figured out how to use magic so their ways to use it differ greatly.

    Probably not the most original or coolest form of magic but it works for my story and there's more to it than that.
  30.  

    CGila, you’re writing Steam Punk? If you’d like to talk about writing in the genre sometime, I’d love to, because one of my two world building projects is Steam Punk, and I find it a fascinating kind of setting.

    In that world, Earth’s history (starting around 1500 AD) began to differ more and more radically from our own, due to the development of alternate “sciences” influenced by the Papacy’s involvement with the scientific revolution. The science most like traditional magic is called thaumaturgy (Latin for miracle working), “which giveth certain order to make strange works, of the sense to be perceived and of men greatly to be wondered at”. The thaumaturgic process involves the conversion of the “ether” (an omnipresent, untraceable substance that is outside the realms of both matter and energy) into energy. All this unstable energy is chaotic, but with enough focus a thaumaturge can use the energy to create order. However, this requires vast amounts of effort, and even the most modern machines designed to control the process are capable of creating only a little order, so thaumaturgy is most commonly (and much more easily) used to destroy, either for clearing land for roads or mining, or for war. In fact, it took the dropping of extremely destructive thaumaturgic bombs over Austria and Japan to bring the Great War to an end with a victory for the Allies.

    There are other fields that would be called magic, all of which involve contacting alternate universes. Alchemy breaks the natural laws of our universe by manipulating what people of more common knowledge call the ethereal plane, a universe attached to and identical to ours, butwith more flexible physical and chemical rules, to alter corresponding matter in our universe. Demonology contacts “demons”, conscious beings from other universes, for knowledge or to make a servant. Golemancy involves the binding of these consciousnesses to mundane objects to give them a physical use to the Golemancer.

  31.  

    Sounds interesting, Devin! Summoning demons reminded me of the Bartimaeus books, but that was inevitable, I suppose.

    Thaumaturgy is a great name, I have to admit.

  32.  

    This thread is great! There are so many interesting systems – it is interesting to compare different approaches different people took in constructing their own, unique system. Keep them coming:)

  33.  

    I need an interesting name for my magic practitioners- for the sake of convenience, I’ve always thought of them as witches. But should I use something more creative?

  34.  

    Alright, I’m no writer, but one idea for a magic system in a game that I’ve been wanting to use would have the different generic types of magic (fire, water, etc), but most of the game would involve combining the different types. So;
    Water -> a simple Ice attack
    Water + Fire -> A wave attack or something
    Water + Fire + Life -> A healing attack that hits multiple people

    Fire -> A simple fire attack
    Fire + Air -> Lightning ( SHAZAM! )
    Fire + Water + Fire -> A blast of Steam

    Earth -> Small gravity attack
    Earth + Fire -> Boost armor or something
    Earth + Life -> Necromancy

    Etc, etc. And then combine the different types with characters, so that;

    Wind + Wind + Sword -> Super speed attack in a straight line or something.

    Just an idea i’ve been kicking around. :D

  35.  

    @SWQ: If witches seems most natural to you, you should go with that. Their name would likely be influenced by how others see them. If they are scorned by those who do not use magic, witches or perhaps sorcerers or warlocks would be best. Magician is a more neutral term, and if society recognizes them as a valuable asset they might be called by a professional term (for example, I used thaumaturge to describe a magical “scientist”), or even by priest/ess, if magic is a dominant part of society. Some less common words that I can think of are magus (magi plural), theurgist, marvel, and (for a respectable position in society) doctor.

    I’ve been wanting to read Bartimaeus for a while, it looks interesting and the world sounds similar to mine.

    @OLD: That sounds like a more complex version of the system I am using for the Druid class in the RPG I am making as a Warcraft III mod. Casting a rune of fire on a target damages them over time, and adding a rune of earth consumes both runes and does immediate damage. Water heals slowly, and adding an air rune heals immediately. Air and earth do nothing on their own, but in combination give the target an armor bonus, and a combination of fire and water decreases the target’s chance to hit significantly.

  36.  

    Dan, I’d suggest Grandia to you. It has a similar magic system to yours that goes:

    Fire
    Water
    Wind
    Earth

    Fire x Earth = Explosion
    Water x Wind = Cold
    Fire x Wind = Thunder
    And so on.

  37.  

    I played Grandia 2 once, and it had the best my favorite attack leveling system ever. You would spend experience on the item, and then whomever had the item could use those abilities. This made sense to me, and was fun! In a “gotta unlock ‘em all” kind of way :D

  38.  

    Sounds a bit like Materia from FFVII, eh? I’ve only played the first one, and it had what I explained above. Just thought you might be interested.

    •  
      CommentAuthorOverlordDan
    • CommentTimeJun 23rd 2009 edited
     

    EDIT: Final Fantasy games give you a choice: you can either spend forty hours playing underwater foosball or watching chocobos screw or whatnot, which eventually gives you your ultimate weapon so that you can defeat the final boss pretty handily. Or, you can spend those forty hours actually fighting the final boss. It’s up to you. You want a quick game, go play pinball.
    -Lore Sjoberg

    This sums it up quite well. Thank goodness TvTropes is back online :P

  39.  

    OLD, your system seems a bit complex, but each to his own I guess!

  40.  

    @ Devin- yeah, that sounds reasonable. In any case, it’s not such a big deal. Worst case scenario, I can do ‘find and replace’ every time I change my mind.

    @ OLD- your system sounds interesting and pretty reasonable. But what’s a healing attack?

    •  
      CommentAuthorMoldorm
    • CommentTimeJun 23rd 2009
     

    Yay, Grandia!
    In Golden Sun and Grandia, healing spells are usually water.

  41.  

    But what’s a healing attack?

    An area-of-effect attack that heals instead of wounds. Probably some form of projectile made from the essense of Holy.

  42.  

    Oh.

    • CommentAuthorDeborah
    • CommentTimeFeb 7th 2011
     

    Only one of my worlds actually has a magic system. So far its based on hand movements, and if someone’s hand is crippled they can’t practice it anymore. That’s all I’ve gotten so far.

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeFeb 7th 2011 edited
     

    I like that, Deborah. The old Kung Fu masters in China used to “take away their students’ kung fu” if they misbehaved badly enough, by breaking their wrists. You could possibly incorporate something like that in your world’s magic-using community. Maybe a punishment for major crime would be to have a finger cut off?

    My “system” of magic, if I have any, is purposefully unexplained. To me, “magic” is the unknown and unknowable, the unexplained and unexplainable, the untamed and untameable. Any use of magic in my works is so subtle that everyone is left wondering if magic is even real. If you define magic by rules and laws, it becomes just another science, another mundane tool for mundane works. I object heavily to the Harry Potter world, in which magic is used for such things as cooking, cleaning and other everyday tasks. Where is the majesty, the awe and wonder of something so beautifully alien, so utterly beyond our grasp or comprehension? To me, magic is the feeling you get when you step into a huge old building like a church, with high roofs and exposed wood beams. Magic is that shiver of apprehension, the smell in the air before a storm, and that mysterious gust of perfumed air in the middle of the night that sends shivers down your spine. If it’s up-front and in your face, it’s just another element like fire or earth. The best magic systems (in my opinion) treat it like wind, invisible and barely there, only measurable by how it affects other things, but always flowing and ebbing and surrounding us.

    tl;dr: Magic is cool when you don’t know how it works. Strike that, it’s cool BECAUSE you don’t know how it works.

    edit: oldthread is old, but there’s still something to be said.

  43.  
    Yay! We're actually discussing writing on a site about writing.

    Taku, you have just summed up everything I believe about magic systems.
    •  
      CommentAuthorApep
    • CommentTimeFeb 7th 2011
     

    Well, yeah, I can see the advantage of not defining how magic works in a setting, but there are times when it’s better to have a clear system in place – namely when magic is incredibly prevalent or one of the major characters (i.e. a POV character) is a wizard/witch/magician/whatever. Not explaining how magic works in Lord of the Rings is alright, because Gandalf isn’t the main focus of the story; not explaining it in Harry Potter? Doesn’t work.

    •  
      CommentAuthorFalling
    • CommentTimeFeb 7th 2011
     
    Wow, haven't been on here for awhile.

    I think with magic system's you can choose to have the magic clearly defined with rules in place or it can be undefined and mysterious. Depends on how how you want to you want magic to function in your story.

    However, both have limitations. If you're going the mysterious, undefined magic it really cannot be used to get out problems. The magic is more often the problem or else adds an element of the supernatural without creating a god-mode. If every time a problem comes up and it's solved via the unexplained magic, it is clearly deux ex machina and not very interesting because we don't know the limitations of the power. All we know is every time something comes up, the wizard suddenly has a new ability. LotR's avoids this problem. In fact I would say the magic is fairly subdued/ subtle compared to many other fantasy series.

    The other method is to have a rigorous magic system with clear limitations and well defined abilities. Then, when a problem comes up we know that the wizard is pulling from a limited set of abilities for a limited amount of time. We can still have plot tension with a lot of dramatic magic fireballs etc, because we know the limits and the wizard can't escape via some ability the author 'forgot' to tell us about. It's a lot more akin to the magic system in DnD roleplaying.

    I personally prefer the LotR's method. I don't enjoy that a lot of flashy magic firework shows with a scientific magic system. I much prefer the atmosphere of the world that contains hostile, unknown magic. It's a little bit like the supernatural-thriller feel more than anything. (Rather than having wizards casting magic missiles, etc.) However, if the author is rigorous in their magic system, it could make for a good story.
  44.  

    ^ Apep makes a valid point.

    Also, if people have the ability to use magic as they do in the Harry Potter universe, they would totally use it as a labor-saving device! It would make no sense otherwise. That’s why I don’t have as great an objection to the mundane use of magic in some cases there. To some extent, despite all of this, magic is still rather unexplained in some ways. I think it’s interesting that the fundamental nature of magic is never explored, but rather its practical uses are looked at in the Harry Potter books. That might be a strength or a weakness, I don’t know.

    A question that has come to interest me lately is integration- in most books, the magical and non-magical worlds are conveniently separated, but what kind of lovely, fascinating messes could result if you tried to re-integrate magical folk back into society? What kind of jobs done by regular people could be done so much more efficiently by magic-users? What effect would this have on the structure of society in general? How would people react to desegregation? I definitely want this to be a big theme in the world I’m writing currently. Now that I think about it, researching desegregation of African Americans might be an interesting topic to look into.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeFeb 7th 2011
     

    The whole undefined magic thing can backfire if not handled carefully. I think even if the magic system isn’t well-explained to the reader, the writer needs to have a fairly concrete idea of how it works and its limitations. Otherwise, it would be far too easy to make it too powerful, with New Powers As The Plot Demands. Or at least the appearance of deus ex machina; you might realize that a certain power is possible, but if the reader isn’t set up for it, they could call foul on it.

    The first books that I can recall reading with a “scientific” approach to magic are Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles, and it really stuck with me. I liked the idea that in a world where magic was common, of course you’d have people studying it and classifying it, just like people do with the physical world. You’d have your Aristotle trying to classify things, you’d have a “magical method” of studying and experimenting with it, you’d have people trying to work out the natural laws behind it, and so on. I find that approach to magic extremely interesting.

    This shouldn’t be taken to mean that I’m not a fan of mystical magic, though! As much as I like the neatly classified and clearly outlined kind, there’s something very special about the sort of magic that you can’t possibly understand. The Fair Folk dancing in fairy circles and changeling children and superstitions and all that sort of stuff, there’s a certain wonder and awe around it all, to borrow Taku’s words. It’s almost… spiritual. (which I guess you could say Tolkien deliberately invoked, if you take Valar/Maiar to be angels)

    On integration—that’s one I’ve wondered about too! In particular, I have to wonder what the fallout would be if it came out that this magical group of supernatural people had been living among normal humans for so long. Would there be movements to ban non-human children from schools? Would there be genetic/whatever testing to check whether or not someone is a normal human before they’re accepted for a job? Would they be forbidden from being involved in politics, even if they fit the requirements otherwise? (so if they were born in the US and were old enough, they still wouldn’t be allowed to run for President) I think people would be scared of magic users, quite reasonably, and if ordinary humans vastly outnumber the supernatural ones and hold most positions of power, I can see it being a very long time before other groups would really be part of society.

    The only book/series I can think of that goes into detail about this sort of thing is the X-men, with the anti-mutant sentiment.

  45.  

    Would there be movements to ban non-human children from schools? Would there be genetic/whatever testing to check whether or not someone is a normal human before they’re accepted for a job? Would they be forbidden from being involved in politics, even if they fit the requirements otherwise? (so if they were born in the US and were old enough, they still wouldn’t be allowed to run for President) I think people would be scared of magic users, quite reasonably, and if ordinary humans vastly outnumber the supernatural ones and hold most positions of power, I can see it being a very long time before other groups would really be part of society.

    Well, genetic testing is kind of out of my frame, but I’ve been thinking about a lot of the questions you posed for my specific ‘world’. I’m toying with the idea that magic-users and regular people have been fighting over the same area of land for centuries but have finally reached a stalemate (or a surrender of sorts, I haven’t decided yet) and decide to try to accommodate everyone…which obviously doesn’t work off so well immediately. I don’t know, it’s just something I like to think about.

    • CommentAuthorDeborah
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2011
     

    The only magic system I really liked was Earthsea’s.
    And I’ll have to refine this magic system more. It becomes a major plot point when the hero gets his hand crippled by a falling beam and loses his magic. That was a good idea about it, though.

  46.  

    If every time a problem comes up and it’s solved via the unexplained magic, it is clearly deux ex machina and not very interesting because we don’t know the limitations of the power. All we know is every time something comes up, the wizard suddenly has a new ability.

    IMO, the “new ability to solve the problem of today’s episode”-thing can be handled without making it a deus ex machina, by doing the following:
    -set up the possibility of the new spell/power existing before using it to save the day. (ie Chekov’s gun of Chekov’s skill)
    -show our hero/heroes practising it. (best example = HP)
    -don’t forget this new power/spell as soon as the day is saved. By that I mean that next time, they should try (or at least consider) using it against the new threat, since “it worked last time, guys,”.

    but if the reader isn’t set up for it, they could call foul on it

    Which is why I suggest introducing the reader to whatever new power/spell you want to use to save the day, before actually saving the day with it.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2011
     

    Of those three important things, I think undoubtedly the most important is the third. I can accept something coming out of left field, I can accept it coming easily, but if it isn’t consistent after that point, it makes it really obvious that it only appeared in service to the plot. (If you hold to this rule, it can also avoid the problem of conveniently gaining a too-powerful ability/power, because if you force yourself to write it into later stories, you’ll make it restrained so it can’t solve every problem on its own!)

    Once you’ve got that down, hinting at it beforehand is also a good idea. The one problem is if even you don’t know that this power exists until you write about it. A lot of these sort of things come up because the author writes themselves into a corner and has to invent something quick to get the hero out of it. So either rewrite to avoid those situations, or… build in some possible powers earlier, even if you don’t know whether or not you’re going to use them? I dunno. Maybe just learn to write better.

  47.  

    The one problem is if even you don’t know that this power exists until you write about it.

    Like the Volturi. Yeah, technically they’re characters and not powers, but still – back when writing Twilight, SM didn’t know they existed. And it shows.