11-10-2015, 02:27 AM | #31 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
|
Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
Which is not actually all that intimate a relationship between the disciplines for the reason mentioned. The point is, however that even though the disciplines actually are connected they are not the same and it is not a matter of chemistry being wrong and physics right or vice versa. The difference between chemistry and physics is not a misunderstanding. While both are part of a unified whole, you can say the same about every single thing and force in the universe.
|
11-10-2015, 07:06 PM | #32 | |
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: New England
|
Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
Quote:
|
|
11-11-2015, 12:18 PM | #33 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
|
Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
Which is to say, they're strongly connected but deal with situations different enough that it's usually easier to study them separately? I mean, you can in principle solve problems in chemistry using physics, but it tends to be an unreasonably large amount of work for not much gain.
|
11-11-2015, 04:27 PM | #34 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
|
Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
There is an emerging field called "chemical physics" which seems to be about doing just that. A friend's daughter is taking her undergraduate degree in it, so it isn't that specialised. There's a lot about electron shells.
|
11-11-2015, 05:20 PM | #35 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
|
Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
Quote:
It's also worth noting that most laypeople would assume MacGyver to had studied chemistry, because of all the times he mixes stuff to make it blow up, when in fact he earned his degree (presumably a BS) in physics. |
|
11-11-2015, 05:35 PM | #36 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
|
Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
In another thread, some time ago, Vicky posted this:
Quote:
|
|
11-11-2015, 06:03 PM | #37 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
|
Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
One thing is there should not be a one-to-one fit between magic and technology. The Yrthian hotel with a magical elevator for instance.
__________________
"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
11-12-2015, 08:10 AM | #38 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
|
Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
That's something I would go out of my way to avoid. My feeling is that if you can understand something by scientific methods, experiment with it, achieve predictable outcomes, and so on, you've made it unmagical.
__________________
Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
11-12-2015, 08:17 AM | #39 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
|
Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
Quote:
The other core part is a lot older: chemical thermodynamics and chemical statistical mechanics, the study of energy relationships in systems of huge numbers of molecules (a mole, the standard quantity of a substance, is 6.023 x 10^23 or 602,300,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules). Once you're at that point your statistical regularities become near certainties. And even before statistical mechanics became integrated into chemistry, Josiah Willard Gibbs showed that you could use thermodynamics to predict exact outcomes of chemical reactions. This latter, by the way, seems to have been one of the inspirations for psychohistory, which gave highly exact predictions by examining the behavior of huge populations of human beings—though I doubt that even the Galactic Empire came anywhere near six hundred sextillion inhabitants.
__________________
Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
|
11-12-2015, 02:23 PM | #40 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
|
Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?
I consider that a feature, not a bug. To me a great magic system is the product of a comprehensible set of alternate natural laws.
|
Tags |
gurps, magic, system |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|