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Old 11-13-2015, 03:48 AM   #51
The Colonel
 
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Default Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?

I would suggest that it's perfectly viable to have a knowable, quantifiable magic, but that it should generate a very different feel in setting to one in which magic is chaotic (by any definition). Of course, a setting in which magic is quantifiable but poorly understood is also viable, assuming the knowledge that sooner or later quantification will occur - this would be the sort of setting for which medieval stasis "because magic" would be precisely inappropriate.
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Old 11-13-2015, 05:33 AM   #52
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That depends on how you define techniques.

In art, for example, we talk about "technique" or "technical skill" as a certain set of capabilities that good artists normally have—but they don't exhaust the capabilities of good artists. We may admire the stunning precision of Vermeer's realistic paintings or Dali's surrealistic ones, but things like Dali's wild imagination and recurring motifs are a big part of his appeal. There are technically highly skilled artists who are not first rate, and there are first rate artists who are not technically brilliant. And likewise in literature and music and the other arts.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

When I think of magic, I compare it to programming. Programming is skill (or art) that everyone recognizes but few do and fewer do well. There are some techniques called Design Patterns (they used to be called algorithms). But each has to be adaptive to the circumstances. To me, magic spells are the same way. They have a basic technique but it has to be adjusted when used. Whether you want to call this art or craft or technique is up to you but I think of them all as technique.
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Old 11-13-2015, 09:00 AM   #53
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Default Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?

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When I think of magic, I compare it to programming. Programming is skill (or art) that everyone recognizes but few do and fewer do well. There are some techniques called Design Patterns (they used to be called algorithms). But each has to be adaptive to the circumstances. To me, magic spells are the same way. They have a basic technique but it has to be adjusted when used. Whether you want to call this art or craft or technique is up to you but I think of them all as technique.
Well, yes, but the choice of programming as an analogy is already giving magic a particular narrative slant, and one that isn't the only option. Try some others:

Magic is carrying on diplomatic relations with powerful and quirky beings, following an elaborate protocol.

Magic is creating a work of art that needs to move the audience.

Magic is tailoring a garment to fit a specific individual wearer.

Magic is attaining a specific state of consciousness in which you can do things you might not normally be able to do.

In most of these analogies, you are dealing not simply with an inanimate mechanical system, but with a consciousness—your own or another person's.
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Old 11-13-2015, 09:28 AM   #54
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Default Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?

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Well, yes, but the choice of programming as an analogy is already giving magic a particular narrative slant, and one that isn't the only option. Try some others:

Magic is carrying on diplomatic relations with powerful and quirky beings, following an elaborate protocol.

Magic is creating a work of art that needs to move the audience.

Magic is tailoring a garment to fit a specific individual wearer.

Magic is attaining a specific state of consciousness in which you can do things you might not normally be able to do.

In most of these analogies, you are dealing not simply with an inanimate mechanical system, but with a consciousness—your own or another person's.
Interestingly, around here, when we try to explain how programming works 'on the inside' (as opposing to showing what results it can produce), non-coders tend to reply that it looks like magic/occultism/etc. Which is interesting because that means that people draw this analogy from the opposite side.
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Old 11-13-2015, 09:29 AM   #55
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Default Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
Well, yes, but the choice of programming as an analogy is already giving magic a particular narrative slant, and one that isn't the only option. Try some others:

Magic is carrying on diplomatic relations with powerful and quirky beings, following an elaborate protocol.

Magic is creating a work of art that needs to move the audience.

Magic is tailoring a garment to fit a specific individual wearer.

Magic is attaining a specific state of consciousness in which you can do things you might not normally be able to do.

In most of these analogies, you are dealing not simply with an inanimate mechanical system, but with a consciousness—your own or another person's.
Interesting. Another way to look at magic is that humans can do it but they can only vaguely sense it. They are groping in the dark. And they don't always get things right. :(

Magical creatures like elves, dragons, and unicorns have better senses for magic, so they are better at performing it. But only immortal beings can truly see it.
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Old 11-13-2015, 01:34 PM   #56
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Default Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?

I suppose the key to my approach is that I view magic narratively, in terms of "what kind of effect do I want to add to the drama by including magic?" My paradigms for it are "Something amazing happens" and "I call on the powers in the right way and they make something amazing happen." Anything that's used recurrently or habitually as a tool ceases to amaze and becomes merely useful.
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Old 11-13-2015, 01:57 PM   #57
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Default Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?

Interestingly I'm currently designing (and have only 4 weeks left to finish) a magic system that combines elements of dealing with powerful and quirky beings, attaining a specific state of consciousness, using sheer willpower to bend reality, coding, and crossing ones fingers and hoping.

It is, needless to say, somewhat complicated to master in it's entirety. It has to be, the idea is for the players to learn how to use it in game, and I want them to have plenty to discover, it's going to be a long campaign.

So really magic is whatever you want it to be, you restrict yourself if you try to define it. Though sometimes restricting yourself is the objective.

I'm going to be playing a one off character this Saturday who is that universe's version of a sorcerer, and the magic system is as simple as I tell the GM what I want to do, he comes up with a reasonable penalty to my roll, and I roll. That simple. Of course, you have to be a pretty competent and fairly brave GM to be willing to just make it up on the fly, but it's a valid system. With a competent GM it's one of the quickest, most powerful, and flexible systems out there, it even allows you to be creative, just creative with how you use your power, rather than how you construct the spell.
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Old 11-13-2015, 02:06 PM   #58
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Default Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?

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I suppose the key to my approach is that I view magic narratively, in terms of "what kind of effect do I want to add to the drama by including magic?" My paradigms for it are "Something amazing happens" and "I call on the powers in the right way and they make something amazing happen." Anything that's used recurrently or habitually as a tool ceases to amaze and becomes merely useful.
I view magic as a role-player. Magic has spells, formulas of movement and recitals which achieve a desired end. Like baking a cake. Ingredients go in, methods are performed, results come out. In other words, techniques. At least that is what I picked up from role-playing.
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Old 11-13-2015, 03:55 PM   #59
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Default Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?

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Originally Posted by shawnhcorey View Post
I view magic as a role-player. Magic has spells, formulas of movement and recitals which achieve a desired end. Like baking a cake. Ingredients go in, methods are performed, results come out. In other words, techniques. At least that is what I picked up from role-playing.
I would call that "viewing magic as a wargamer." To me the roleplaying side is how you relate to the powers that grant your spells or rituals their effects, how you think of the universe, and how you feel about your own magical capabilities.

Let me give you another comparison: There is a community of men called "pick-up artists" (google PUA). Their goal is sexual success with as many women as possible, without regard for more than the physical relationship. Their doctrine is that you attain this by learning a series of social maneuvers, whose function is to get the woman's attention, and then to lower her self-esteem so that she'll be emotionally vulnerable.

Now, you can think what you like about the ethics of this. But what strikes me about it is that they aren't thinking of the women as people with whom one might have a relationship. They're thinking of them more like figures on a computer game screen, who can be induced to emit the right responses if you make the right moves in the right sequence. In effect they're trying to find the cheat codes. And you can tell a story about their success or failure—but it's really not a very interesting story.

Now, what I want is to tell an interesting story about magic. And one way to do it is to conceive of magical forces as mediated by spirits that have their own personalities, their own likes and dislikes, and their own attitudes toward people who approach them, and that have to be treated with respect. So that's an approach that I like. Just as I would rather read a novel like Pride and Prejudice, where Darcy's courtship of Elizabeth only succeeds after he appeals to her reasoning mind and her moral judgment.
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Old 11-13-2015, 04:20 PM   #60
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Default Re: What Makes a Great Magic System?

One of the problems with magic in games is that people want it to feel different, more art than science, or something (I think people have difficulty expressing what they want, and may not even know exactly), and codifying it into a set of usable rules tends to make it feel mechanical. This leads to a lot of magic systems that are super-vague where your only real limit may be your fast-talk GM skill, which has its own flaws, or systems where a significant chunk of magic is simply off-limits to PCs.
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