What Makes a Great Magic System?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by whswhs

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.

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.