conworlds.info

[Xhin]

I've been poking around some magic systems, and tinkering with some of my own, as well as video games and the like, and it just hit me.

Most of the talk on this forum is about how a magic system works. Do people think magic? Do they inscribe runes in the ground? Is magic embedded in artifacts? Etc.

But, the question I think is important, and the topic of this thread is what magic actually is supposed to do.

Is it elemental? Can it summon things? Does it do what technology would do?

How do you classify your "spells"? Do they interact, combine, cancel each other out?

Etc.
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GameTalk X.0 -- Here

[Xuanzang]

My system has been devised in this exact manner. I'd need to work out a few things in another thread before posting the full details, but here's my original premise / intention for what the system is supposed to enable a caster to do:


1. Create temporary or permanent matter or any sort (by drawing the energies to fashion the matter from elsewhere)
2. Learn information about a person, place or thing (via multiple means I'll go into later)
3. Imbue an item with temporary or permanent energies that convey qualities it never did or ever would have
4. Create a temporary, energy-based effect (energy channeling)
5. Move living or non-living matter between physical planes (dimensional shifting, discussed elsewhere; uncertain yet if this will be two different concepts)
6. Communicate with extraplanar beings; control them; ward against them
7. Steal, return, manipulate life or anti-life energies (detailed elsewhere)
8. Change non-living physical matter into a different type (alchemical transmutation)
9. Change the physical characteristics or essential nature of an existing thing (alchemical transfiguration)
10. Manipulate the physical being of a living creature (convey new qualities or physical characteristics it otherwise would/could not have -- alchemical transmogrification)


More might follow in terms of categories but this is the core of it.

Motivation: to get away from magical systems with canned effects in my games. Back in the day I didn't like vanilla spell lists that all casters had to draw upon/use; I first allowed players to invent their own variations on existing spells (originally for flavour,) and then evolved toward making concepts like those above available to the players and have them invent 'spell effects' on the fly, with the limitation being range/damage/volume etc. by level.

I found this was far more versatile and interesting for player purposes.

Cheers,
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-Xuanzang is 60 Lawful-Chaotic and 26 Good-Evil, or Neutral-Evil - What are you?

"If one learns from others but does not think, one will be bewildered;
if one thinks but does not learn from others, one will be in peril." -Analects, ii.15.

[Nugan]

I want magic in my setting to be comparable to the powers offered by globalization, and magicians to be comparable to 1st world elite.

As a result, I want my magic to produce four main effects:

1. Transportation. Magic must make travel easier, allowing magicians to travel quickly across long distances and allowing them to develop networks of interaction between each other while dealing with peoples who are isolated from each other. Basically, they must be able to teleport.

2. Communication. Magic needs to offer magicians the ability to communicate over long distances and compress and organize valuable information in ways that makes it more accessible to them while keeping it inaccessible and useless to the people with which they deal (or, exploit). Basically, this means information tagging and limited telepathy.

3. Comodification. Magic needs to be able to allow magicians to obtain natural resources and turn them into finished products and to take disorganized people and turn them into engines of mass production. Basically, this means economic manipulation and assembly lines.

4. Dehumanization. Magic needs to demoralize the magicians. It has to be complex, repetitive and dissatisfying. It has to deny magicians access to monumental individual power and turn them into parts in a larger structure of power that none of them control. Basically, they cannot be Gandalf or Merlin, but must instead be peer reviewed and published.

These are the goals I was trying to achieve when I created the notation system. It's still way too early to know if I succeeded.

Edit: I just wanted to clarify that this isn't the only magic in my hypothetical maybe someday conworld. This is just what D&D would call "arcane magic," and what I think I might call "institutional magic." There are other varieties, but I know almost nothing about them yet. Might do posts about them later.

[jseamus]

Magic is technology in my worlds, and ultimately it serves the same purpose: making subjects happy. Subjects do not know what they really want, and so they dicker around with magic; they make gold, build giant edifices to themselves, enchant the minds of others, and ultimately build worlds. What subjects ultimately think they want is lives, and so they build worlds and lives for themselves.

That is the ultimate purpose of magic, and what the most powerful gods end up using it for. Magic is technology, technology is an extension of the user, and the user wants to be happy. Magic is the users way of doing what he or she otherwise could not. The user uses magic to give him or herself a happy life, or at least try.
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This is the world.

[Foolster41]

Oddly enough in my con world the setting is sub-technological middle ages type world but there is no magic at all in my world. At least, there are no wizards or shaman or such. I suppose you could say the world is "magical" since it has lizard folk and monsters with magic-like powers and such.

Me and my bro decided early in the design of the card game that this con world was going to be a part of that were going to have no magic except maybe inherent in the planet. I don't think it was because we had any morale objections to using magic, but we kind of felt it was a little cliche and we wanted to set our world apart. (Heck, the obvious champion of the game genre we were entering has Magic in the name!). Also I guess because we felt it was challenging to do a no magic fantasy world.

[bloodb4roses]

In Etrea, magic has some of the qualities of technology. There are items that can make life easier, or let people travel faster, or communicate more quickly. But it's also on a personal level and any human-made magical artifacts cannot be made by just anyone, because each person has one or two elemental affinities based on personality. And there is still an amount of study to actually do the spells. There is no way a magical item could ever be mass produced.

Spells are usually elemental: starting a fire, channeling electricity into something, getting a river to flow in a different direction, helping a tree grow after a disease, making a box that turns everything inside it cold.

Even some spells that aren't thought of as elemental usually have an element they work best with. (Gaining information uses air, influencing others uses electricity, etc.) But in these cases, there is some leeway for people who are creative.

Some people's elemental affinities even change as they age while others stay pretty constant.

In the world with the Nephilim, magic is used on the fringe among most humans and usually is for minor things; it's kind of a stat boost. For one thing, from the human point of view, there are multiple working magic systems and the rules for when they cross are complicated. So, since humans don't have most, let alone all, the factors that are important figured out, they can only really do so much. (+3% healing rate anyone?)

Then again, how powerful magic's effects are also depend if you're in the physical, spirit, fairy or astral realms, and sometimes what parts.
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[Cerne]

For me, magic is simply technology that can not yet -or ever - be explained. When it exists in my conworld it comes in the form of a wierd gadget or type of technology that seems to defy explanation. Maybe because I am too lazy to find a way in which it would actually work, or maybe because sometimes I just want a break from all of this realism I am trying to overwhelm my conworld with.

[Fetus Commander]

In order of priority:

1. Abolish possibility for righteousness: When literally every action you take is shift work for some asshole's second afterlife ("angels" who expire in the setting get the honor of serving as the tired gears that run reality), you don't have the right to take a moral high ground on anything. Everyone exploits, and not only is it the natural law of the cosmos, but the desire of an advanced civilization to have more time for intellectual pursuit is a key reason the situation is like it is. About 5% of the world's mythical creatures- elves, dragons, faeries, etc (so called 'living stories')- live so isolated that they may or may not need reality babysitting, since their ability for conscious thought is theorized to depend on proximity to human activity. Guess where the biggest post-afterlife vacation spot is?

2. Be cool: While trampling over minorities and every one of the targets of my real-life bigotries, you must wear badass looking robes and carry wicked staffs. No fucking exceptions.

3. Allow people to imagine how spells would be created, or to create their own spells: The current iteration of my 'Cooperative Logic' system can almost do these. Currently, it revolves around so-called "creation bureaucrats", some in the service of governments, others not so much, finding holes in the operation of reality and taking whatever steps they find appropriate.

If you're a creation bureaucrat who finds that some part of the world has a code violation, you might:

1) Report on the disturbance and persuade the monolithic Tech Support to grant you tools to fix the problem (or not; maybe you just want to play around with the tools to make your life easier, or someone else's harder)

2) Persuade them to punish the wayward workers, because you're a cock

3) Make a deal with with the foreman who leads the group of reality dispensers that are malfunctioning. Maybe they're slacking off. Maybe their aether machines are giving funny readouts and could use some pork barrel luvin' from a Tech Support officer who gives a particular shit about the area. Maybe they're intentionally making subtle, or even noticeable, skews for personal reasons (you might observe falling rocks hitting black people harder in a sector swept out by a cadre of former slave owners).

4) Request a meeting with a Council of Cooperative Logic in Heaven (video conference call, obv, Heavenly execs are busy), and argue that new doctrine should be introduced to explain the behavior, thus standardizing it. You might argue that this behavior has precedent in, or is even the logical extension of, one of God's scriptural or "scientific" truths. Argue it creatively enough and you could overturn some laws of the universe. You might also argue that aesthetically, the erroneous change is neat. Lastly, you might argue to a Mechanics-heavy council that, frankly, this shit saves resources (man or machine), and doesn't cause that much hassle.

Unless you're working with a large government that uses either Agrafascism or Academic Orthodoxy to do research finagling (and damn extensive, reality-breaking finagling: information harvesting, "Art Computation," Geofictionism), you'll probably get audience with one of the lower parts of the Cherubic council. It will usually be one that oversees the municipality or sector that the shit is going on in. The higher stakes version of the process takes place at the national government level, with large-scale reality appeals mediated by a kind of supreme Cherubic council. I guess you might call that big magick to our irl big science.

5) Do something else i haven't thought of
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“Learning would forever spoil the best slave in the world…it would forever unfit him to be a slave." -Hugh Auld

[Avjunza]

Quite simply, magic does 5 things:

1. It damages, harms, and/or kills
2. It heals
3. It protects
4. It powers machinations (similar to how it heals organisms)
5. It summons manamorphs (beings composed of solid magical energy with limited intelligence that can do all these things except summon others of their kind)

So basically, its a weapon, an energy source, and a way to provide slaves (manamorphs) without using humans. It powers technology, so in a way it does what technology does; and it summons things that do what slaves do, but more efficiently, obediently and with magic.

Magic isn't used as spells so much as in bursts. Magic can be used in blasts, shots, jets, beams, waves, streams, pools, barriers or shields. Blasts are medium sized balls of mana that travel at high speed. Shots are smaller, and travel faster. Beams are medium sized, and medium speed. Jets are smaller, and high speed. Waves are the largest, and also the slowest. Nearly as slow are the pools, but they have no offensive power at all, (mostly used for healing or summoning) and can be of any size. Streams are faster than pools, but again have no offensive power, are usually healing and medium size. Shields deflect and absorb offensive magic, and are used to protect individuals. Barriers, or magic walls, are large scale, immovable magical shields, that protect everything within them.

Incantations are useful for concentrating, speaking (as in saying anything at all) can help as well, but not quite as much. Neither are required, however; they just help novice magicians learn to use their powers.
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[Velkas]

I've just created this system of magic, so it'll probably go through lots of changes and improvements.

In my conworld, magical energy is everywhere. In some places it is more concentrated than others; in those places it is easier to do more powerful magic. If I decide to have my conworld created by god-like beings, the magical energy was created as a way for these deities to influence and maintain the planet.

Some people can manipulate this field of magical energy, to use in the following functions:

• Force: Magic can be used to create a "pushing" force. This function of magic can also act as a shield against another magical force. When two magic-users use this function against each other, the lesser sorcerer or the first to lose concentration loses, and can be pushed by this force. This function of magic can also be used to shape, or break, various objects.
  
• Growth: Magic can be used to speed up the growth of living things. This function of magic can also heal wounds and such, but the person or thing being healed ages. More advanced magic-users can focus this to only age the person slightly, when they heal them. Advanced magic users can also influence how something grows (ex: make a tree grow into a certain shape)
  
• Light/heat: Magical energy can be used to generate light and/or heat.
  

Concentration is essential for the proper functioning of a magical function, otherwise numerous things could go wrong. For this reason magic-users often use incantations to focus their magic. (Not really necessary at all, it just helps the magic-user to concentrate.)

[Foolster41]

I've been writing a fantasy novel now for a few years, and it's not exactly con-worldish like the others (it's set in Seattle 1930s, the only difference is there is some crazy pseudo-science/alchemy magic).

The story is about girl who was kidnapped and transformed by a mad alchemist/magician to turn into a bird. She escaped before she could be transformed the whole way, so now she's a bird at day and a girl at night.

The reason he did this was while he was transforming another girl to a bird he accidentally enchanted his daughter to a bird, and in order to turn her back he had to use a girl and transform her in her place.

Sorry if that's really confusing. Basically he wanted to change a bird to a girl, but he needed an "equivalent exchange" (Man, I was hopping I could avoid use that line from Full Metal Alchemist) and only got half-done so now each girl is half and half.
I have no idea how this actually works, whether it uses electrodes or injections or something else. I'm thinking the only thing that makes sense for an accidental transformation would be an explosion and "shock wave" of some kind. (Accidentally injects her? Uh, no. )

It was actually loosely inspired by a obscure poem I read.
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"You don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body." - C. S. Lewis
The Bikaesh Foundaiton
Lawful Neutral

[Blake]

[Foolster41]

Interesting, but if he needs the "equivalent exchange" to change his daughter back, how did he transform this bird in the first place?
(I'm assuming in this world changing bird -> girl costs nothing since birds are simpler form. I know it doesn't make exact sense, but it's fiction.)
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"You don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body." - C. S. Lewis
The Bikaesh Foundaiton
Lawful Neutral

[Cerne]

Question: What happens to the other girl who was used for the exchange spell? Does she become half girl, full bird, 1/4 bird, etc.?

[Foolster41]

Ok. This is getting really confusing, and it's my fault. I should have used names or something in the first place (pronouns, bah! ). I'm afraid I don't understand the question, and this is probably why.

The scientist's name is Emanon, his daughter is Lovette and the girl he uses to change Lovette back is Mary. The first girl he transformed we can call Sue (I didn't have a name for her in the novel, she's never mentioned.).

So my original idea was Emanon was experimenting on Sue (human form -> bird) and it was maybe successful or not, I don't think it mattes since as I said girl -> bird is "free". In the process Lovette was changed to a bird (24/7). Emanon then kidnaps Mary and attempts to use her. He manages to go half-way with both (both Mary and Lovette are birds 1/2 the time). Mary escapes. This is shortly before where the story starts.

Hopefully that answers the question.
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"You don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body." - C. S. Lewis
The Bikaesh Foundaiton
Lawful Neutral

[Cerne]

But if Mary was full girl and Lovette was half girl before the spell took place, why is Lovette still only half girl after the spell? Wouldn't the bird half be transferred to Mary, making her half bird? Why is Lovette still half bird and how did Mary suddenly become half bird too? It doesn't seem like anything was exchanged here.

...or has this even happened yet?

[Foolster41]

That's not it. At the beginning both Lovette and Mary are human form. Then Lovette was changed to a full bird (as I said, 24/7) and Mary was used to "even them out" at the middle (both 1/2, so Mary goes from human -> 1/2 bird and Lovette goes from bird -> 1/2 human), and this is where the novel starts.
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"You don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body." - C. S. Lewis
The Bikaesh Foundaiton
Lawful Neutral

[jseamus]

[Foolster41]

If you feel this should be split into another topic, then go ahead.
EDIT: Or did I misunderstand what you meant?
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"You don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body." - C. S. Lewis
The Bikaesh Foundaiton
Lawful Neutral

[Blake]

[Foolster41]

Because it is the catalyst for the story. Emanon is the antagonist of the story and curing his daughter is his motivation. The other girl (Mary) is one of the main protagonists in the story (the other is a boy she meets who helps her). Now the scientist needs Mary, since he preformed the operation already half-way with Mary he needs Mary to finish it, and so is perusing her.

As for cost, actually there is sort of a cost, though less straight foreword. I was kind of thinking that since bird's don't have what we might call "souls" or "ghosts" (Yes, I'm a big Ghost in the shell: standalone complex fan) that that part is lost in the transformation. With a partial transformation perhaps there is no loss of ghost (I'm not liking in terms of plot having her become a stupid bird during the bird time), but over time there may be damage to her ghost and if she is ever transformed completely she will loose her ghost eventually (i.e die and the body will be inhabited by basically a bird)

I've written about 9 chapters and I'm almost 1/3 the way done, though I'm kind of stuck plot-wise. I'm willing to do a re-write if I need to, though I'd rather not if I don't have to.

Edit: I'm not trying to deflect criticism here, but I thought I should point out what I have, and kind of the ideas I have already. Like I said, I'm not opposed to redoing stuff, and I may have to this is after all only my first draft.

Edit 2: Or did you mean removing sue as unnecessary? I could see that as a possibility.
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"You don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body." - C. S. Lewis
The Bikaesh Foundaiton
Lawful Neutral

[Leo]

[Sakir]

A magic system I'd like would have to make the following things possible:

+Bag of Holding/Pocket Plane
+Extraplanar Motion (teleport, astral projection, something like that)
+Fireballs
+Necromancy (skellies and such)

I'm not sure I'd like extra stuff beyond that though: for example, I usually think shapeshifting, telepathy, animal communion, and jedi mind tricks to be pretty lame, and it usually turns me off whatever uses it. I don't mind the 'luck mage' meme though: it can be fun used sparingly

The style I'd like the above in?

+Relatively easy to pull off small feats, but impractical to get sustained effects.
+Unhidden: I think the 'recluse loremaster mage' trope is a bit cliche, and prefer a more 'physical' presence of magic.
+Moderation: I dislike the idea of a single guy Blessed From Upon High with Prodigious Talents Hitherto Unknown To This Sphere to be able to sneeze and accidentally Render His Foes Into Dust And Wind.
+'Natural': Nature shouldn't give a damn about "Teh Balance". I'm so tired of this hippy druidic theme in magic
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My Color Is: Decommissioned to counter the Sig-meme I helped propagate.

[vaja]

Hi guys.

I really hadn't decided yet about how my magic system would work. But I have elaborated it, just for this neat post

As a first consideration, my magic system is based on a script. So basically it's the rune and inscription thing. Actually, there is a language to communicate with what I call 'aether'. This language has no human origin and it's unknown how it came to the world. But, to make things work, there is one book, like an initial pressing , that contains the outlines of the language and the mechanisms the script follows.
So spells are cast, if the sign is written down and "given into" the aether. While the writing is not that much of a problem, the performance and the dangerous errors are what's making magic difficult.
To make a sign work, or to create a new sign, one has to write a complicated order of sign into a book. The book is then sealed with the new sign and can then be used. The idea is, that the aether doesn't understand the human world at all, though the aether is far larger and all-embracing it has to be "programmed". That's done by using the mysterious "inital pressing" and use the sign provided there to create new meanings.
It get very dangerous, if you attempt to overwrite a sign that already exists. You never know how the aether will respond.
That's why magic is taught in libraries and includes extremely annoying studies of hundreds of symbols.

The possible effects are not that spectacular for the eye. I don't like this woosh-boosh-bang brighly colored magic. It's created to be more subtle. Nevertheless it is dangerous and forceful.
For example:

Portals: To teleport to a certain place by using the sign. This is often done by drawing the sign on the ground.
Foreseeings: To look into the future and to another place.
Cursing: To cause someone to have a sickness or disability, but it's quite hard to kill someone fast. That's better done with a weapon.
Summoning: To summon creatures and ancestors. Once summoned, they may develop their own course of will.
Power Ups/Auras: To strenghten the body or material, like an amour or a weapon. There are no elemental effects, but the durability of material can be increased. An aura allows to affect other living beings. It is NOT always active like in some RPGs. The jedi mind trick would fall under the category 'aura' here.

One can principially cast anything s/he can think of. The high art is to find the right 'code' to make it work without errors. So, anyone can use magic. Although most people are afraid of it, because of it's devastating side-effects.

[intermundi]

*Portals (requires gates at both ends) and teleportation
*Telekinesis/levitation
*Telepathy: only works if both participants have this skill and are open to each other, mostly useful for (long range) communication.
*Farsight/precognition
*Spiritual possession: often resulting in a fight for dominance over the body. It usually ends whit one of the spirits being expelled; it is also possible to "transfer" a spirit from one body to another.
*Changing the structure/appearance of inanimate objects and living beings: like healing or changing coal into diamond.
*Slow down "time" within a confined area.

[vaja]

[intermundi]

[Blake]

[chiarizio]

[Tharivious]

Funny how as old as this thread is, I've yet to make a contribution. That's probably because up until now, magic in Veghinix has been up in the air. I didn't really know what I wanted it to do, because I was trying to stick to the old standards of covering all of the archetypal magical options with a limited number of sources for the power that made it possible. Thanks to the revisions I'm working with now, I've finally pegged what I want magic to do in Veghinix. This is all a work in progress, but here's the outline that I roughed out this afternoon.

First off, there are three primary sets of magical power: planar magic, dragon magic, and arcane magic. Each set of magic is divided further, but I'll get to that in a bit. All magic users are mages now (ie, no cleric types), but their repertoire and, for the most part their influential behaviors, are determined by their choice in magic, as each mage is restricted to a single division of spells.

Planar magic is mostly transformation-based. Each set changes the mage to become more like the extraplanar immortal the magic is designed to emulate. Each set also has a secondary effect. Celestine magic allows sympathetic desires (Azu-darahk) or antipathic revulsions (Qura-gorram). Fey magic allows manipulation of emotion, typically either fear or fascination. Primeval magic allows control over mundane plants and animals. Shadow magic allows the mage to speak with the dead and summon wraiths and specters and such for assistance.

Dragon magic is more primal and iconic. Like the planar magic, it has one sphere dedicated entirely to transformation, allowing the mage to take on draconic traits like scales and claws and wings. Dragon magic is also where you find the elemental powers in the form of five (currently, a sixth or seventh is possibly in the works) spheres that create impressive elemental attacks, but offer no form of protection (a major sacrifice, as mages now rely on magic for defense more than any previous incarnation).

Arcane magic uses raw, unattuned magical energy, and has three sub-sets. Protection offers exactly that, in the form of shields, barriers, and providing resistance against various attacks. Energy magic (might get renamed "kinetic magic", or something to that effect) focuses mana into direct, physical effects, usually telekinetic in nature. And lastly, countermagic allows the mage to act as a walking power sink, dispelling or suppressing others' magic or even shutting magic off entirely for a time.
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[jseamus]

With the continuation of the "Gothic" story, I have been thinking about magic, not as a technological extension of the subject (i.e. a tool) but as an unconscious and unintentional extension of the subjects psyche (a twisted mirror, a defense mechanism, or self-sabotage). So there will be no magic "system," no handy outline of known and applied rules. Magic will be mysterious and fully integrated into the world.

This might take some of the marvel out of it for the characters (no one marvels that rain falls), but I think I can replace that simple sense of wonder at the unusual with a more complex combination of fatalistic dread of the inevitable toll of magic and uncertainty about it's exact particulars. No one marvels that it rains, but plenty of people (in the present and in the past) have begged the gods to bring or call off the rain. People can still be in fear and awe if not in childlike wonder.
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This is the world.

[Captain Kerv]

The magical system of my conworld has been neither fully fleshed out nor organized properly. But nonetheless:
Magic in my conworld is a spiritual ability, and because its source is transcendent of space and time, it can affect those media in limitless ways.
Uses: Healing. Terraforming. Teleportation over vast spatial distances. The creation of life. Possibly, various superhero-esque abilities.
Time-warping stuff would fit in, but I have yet to put it in my story.