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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: gatordave96 on September 23, 2012, 11:02:12 PM
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Just curious as to how many of you are creating the "rules" associated with magic in your world? What is the most popular theories of magic that are prevalent? Is it like "The Force" in your world? Or does it involve complex incantations and an "eye of newt"? Or maybe it is like the Dresden universe that has to follow the rules of physics?
I've been playing around with the alteration of probability by my "magic users" as the source of their "magic." It has worked so far, but I would like to see if there is any sage advice on how to build your own system of magic.
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There was an article on io9 awhile back about magic for novels. They also had one about why magic should have rules.
My take, thaumaturges or dwimmer folk as I call them, can do almost anything, except bring the soul back from the land of the dead. Magic is also not cheap, wizards can burn themselves out or die from from botched spells.
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The thing about magic with rules is very many people do them as simple game-like rules, and very few people have done them more complex ways - Walter Jon Williams' Metropolitan and City on Fire are a very nice example of magic as utility, if you're looking for a different paradigm.
One of my lower-priority projects is based on magic which used to be understood in an Aristotelian paradigm, was then synthesised by Newton, had another paradigm shift at the turn of the twentieth century or so which is the point at which magic starts changing the course of history in a major way, and is in the early 21st century in the process of being revolutionised yet again; I am a working scientist who had a very fortunate experience of initial PhD study in one of the world's top institutes in my field, and the atmosphere, understanding, attitude and sense of being on the cutting edge there is what I am trying to capture in the attitude to magic. They have known how to do fireballs for all of history, basically, and how to do heavy industry for about a hundred years, they've implemented an equivalent of the internet somewhat earlier than we did, there's been a White Russian magically-backed colony on the Moon since the second decade of the twentieth century; I've seen enough variations on urban fantasy where huge secret organisations of supernatural being have somehow been around for millennia and yet mundane history is exactly the same to want to do something with really complex large-scale interconnections with mundane history.
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You also get this idea that magic and science can't mix, when I think that they can work together.
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The word magic means many different things depending on who you talk to. Most early magic had to do with the spirit realm. Later magic fit more into the "any science sufficiently advanced" model. I don't think that it is coincidental that early depictions of wizards showed them with beakers and books. To simple illiterate people even the most primitive science smacked of the supernatural. Even simple mathematics and reading could be considered as magic by some primitive peoples.
Some see science as a different path to knowledge. Science, like any power, has always been blended with politics. The idea that some things have been covered up because they didn't fit with the popular theories of the day makes for a very interesting form of magic. This can easily lead to stories of secret societies and backroom politics. Others dress their magic with "scientific" terms like telepathy or telekinesis. Then there is the magic that flies in the face of science. If well done, it can be fun too. This, to me, is real magic. A 190 pound man that can transform into a two hundred and fifty pound wolf without drawing the mass from anywhere else. Mages that can freeze things without worrying about what to do with the absorbed heat or create fireballs or flames without an energy source. This can annoy me if the fact that it flies in the face of the laws of physics is never addressed but when it is clear that the author is making the point that magic is outside of the rules of the physical universe it can be very interesting. The idea of magic by the alteration of probability is often used in comic books. I know that Marvel comics has used it several times. I don't know the DC universe as well so I am not sure about them.
The Wiz series by by Rick Cook introduces a magic system that works like a computer language. Brandon Sanderson is well known for his creative magical systems. I personally enjoyed the magic in Harry Connolly's Twenty Palaces series and I loved the magical system in Dave Duncan's series A Man of his Word. A good magic system is not enough to make a good book but it is enough, for me, to take an already enjoyable book up to the next level.
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Does anyone know of any good articles explaining how physics would be used in casting magical spells? More specifically elemental spells like fire and water?
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One of my lower-priority projects is based on magic which used to be understood in an Aristotelian paradigm, was then synthesised by Newton, had another paradigm shift at the turn of the twentieth century or so which is the point at which magic starts changing the course of history in a major way, and is in the early 21st century in the process of being revolutionised yet again;
Would this read better with Bacon?
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Does anyone know of any good articles explaining how physics would be used in casting magical spells? More specifically elemental spells like fire and water?
Not sure what you're asking for here...
...are you asking for details of mundane world physical processes, that could be modified to include 'magicalness'? Physical processes like "how does a candle burn"? Some of those (including the candle one) are awesomely complex, and could be compelling reading if written well. (though, IMO, the fusion bit in Stross' 'Iron Sunrise' was a little obsessive)
...are you asking for a 'How to' on which mundane world physical effects/principles to keep around for the magic user to experience, however he does his magic? Like Newton's laws, as in things keep going or action reaction? Like conservation of mass/energy/spin, as in sucking heat from somewhere else?
...are you asking for details of how to devise alternate-physics that would allow for something analogous to magic to exist?
All of that seems a hard, clayey patch to hoe, not very worthwhile unless it makes for better pacing or better fuel for an essential conflict.
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Would this read better with Bacon?
Roger or Francis ?
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Francis mostly; Roger seems to fit the general notion of 'an Aristotelian paradigm' and we might pass over with just a footnote.
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I had a really long post. Then I decided it told too much for the internet.
I pick things I think will be fun, and then fit them to the theory
Power Source
Cost
Effect
Give limitations, weaknesses, etc until it balances with the other systems present.
Break it like a Magic The Gathering Deck. Write the characters doing that last part.
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I think a well defined set of rules is very important.
It makes it feel more real, more thought out. Random spell casting without a good system comes off as cheesey to me. If you want magic to mean something you need to make sure what ever system of magic you use is well defined.
One of they key things to making your own magic system is figuring out what its limitations and costs are. Once you know what can reasonably be done you can work back and come up with spells that fit within your system. You dont want magic to become a fail safe to get characters out of every dangerous situation they get in.
Also with a defined system you can make stronger/weaker magic users fit where they belong better.
Molly and Harry are two very different grades of wizard but we would not know that if Jim didnt define it. Instead of just having two magic users that use different spells, we have an understanding of what both are good and bad at, and we get to watch them grow.
So I think the best thing you can do is really flesh out a system that fits your story, then stick to it. There is nothing I hate more than random magic, but that might just be me.
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I think a well defined set of rules is very important.
It makes it feel more real, more thought out. Random spell casting without a good system comes off as cheesey to me. If you want magic to mean something you need to make sure what ever system of magic you use is well defined.
One of they key things to making your own magic system is figuring out what its limitations and costs are. Once you know what can reasonably be done you can work back and come up with spells that fit within your system. You dont want magic to become a fail safe to get characters out of every dangerous situation they get in.
Also with a defined system you can make stronger/weaker magic users fit where they belong better.
Molly and Harry are two very different grades of wizard but we would not know that if Jim didnt define it. Instead of just having two magic users that use different spells, we have an understanding of what both are good and bad at, and we get to watch them grow.
So I think the best thing you can do is really flesh out a system that fits your story, then stick to it. There is nothing I hate more than random magic, but that might just be me.
Just don't take the rules too far. Before I understood the backing behind Brandon Sanderson's worldbuilding I definitely felt Allomancy was too artificial.(Then I learned it basically is artificial, so I wasn't wrong. He just had the worldbuilding to manage an artificial magic system.) Make sure most of the rules you create have reasons or are at minimum intuitive.
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I think a well defined set of rules is very important.
It makes it feel more real, more thought out.
I'm inclined to disagree with that...
Random spell casting without a good system comes off as cheesey to me.
..though mostly to agree with this, depending on the feel you're aiming for. (Traditional fairy-tale logic, or magic that works by dream-logic, does not benefit from the feel of an underlying system.)
The problems with working out the rules for your setting as if you were playing D&D or Magic the Gathering is that it has the failure mode of your book reading like a write-up of a D&D game or a Magic game; and while there's any amount of D&D or MtG spin-off fiction out there, and certainly there's a market for books with neatly designed magical systems that work on about that level of complexity - I would think of Brandon Sanderson as an example of an author of original worlds that have that sort of feel - I can't say I find them appealing or convincing.
What gives a world like the DF the feeling of realism is that how magic works is complex, and the more we find out about it, the more complex it is; it's not a well-defined set of rules you can sketch on one page, so therefore it plausibly comes across as something that you can spend years of study getting better at and understanding better without by any means having all the answers, as I think the volume of discussion about it in the on-topic parts of the forum demonstrates. Harry doesn't know everything; he understands the basics of his form of magic, but much of the rest of how the universe works he is picking up as he goes along, and sometimes he is out and out wrong; at the start of the series he believes that the magic he knows how to use is inherently a positive life-generated force and black magic only happens when that force is abused for evil ends; he later bumps into several examples of magic that appears to be inherently evil or otherwise hostile to life, such as Mavra's black barbed-wire spells in GP, the mordite in DM or the curse in BR. And, indeed, he has his assumptions about how inherently negative necromancy is shaken by Kumori's using it to keep the random gangster alive in DB.
I have no idea whether Jim has notes somewhere as to exactly how the black barbed-wire spell stuff relates to necromancy; there's plausible grounds in the text for arguing that they are the same thing, or unrelated forces. But that sort of uncertainty, on the edge of what a viewpoint character knows and where they have not had the time or the motivation to dig into it in depth, reads to me as more plausible for a realistic character's understanding of a realistic world than a neat system where everything is understood to the last detail.
In a similar vein, think through the consequences of what your magic actually does to your world. The number of fantasy universes that potter along with medieval-type populations despite having magical healing that clearly implies drastic reduction in infant mortality compared to a medieval setting is kind of ridiculous; and far too few people pay attention to what magic does to economics. (I highly recommend Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet as a good example of interestingly different magic being really integrated into the workings of a society.)
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Make sure most of the rules you create have reasons or are at minimum intuitive.
Why ?
Relativity isn't intuitive. Quantum physics isn't intuitive. Economics clearly isn't intuitive, or people would not disagree on it so.
The real world doesn't fit entirely into neat little boxes. A setting that does is failing at realism.
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Why ?
Relativity isn't intuitive. Quantum physics isn't intuitive. Economics clearly isn't intuitive, or people would not disagree on it so.
The real world doesn't fit entirely into neat little boxes. A setting that does is failing at realism.
Because not many people want to have to spend the mental time to understand relativity just to understand the magic system of your book. We aren't creating real worlds, we are creating entertaining worlds, and while I enjoy a good debate on non-intuitive things, I have yet to find a writer capable of making a non-intuitive magic system make sense within the structure of a narrative.(So Human limitations.)
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Because not many people want to have to spend the mental time to understand relativity just to understand the magic system of your book.
Oh, I agree entirely. I'm just not seeing why you think understanding it in every detail makes it entertaining.
while I enjoy a good debate on non-intuitive things, I have yet to find a writer capable of making a non-intuitive magic system make sense within the structure of a narrative.(So Human limitations.)
Intuitively clear varies far too widely between different people for me to back off on something interesting because it strikes me as non-intuitive.
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It strikes me that intuitive magic systems will also be existing magic systems (meaning some culture somewhen has devised it as a belief) unless the basic physics is also different.
(and I must say I'm coming away from this thread with a craving for magic in highly accelerated systems, a craving strong enough to impress pregnant women)
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How precisely I want my magic defined depends on why I have the magic in the story. If magic is mostly just for setting, I may define it a little but I'm not going to define it in detail any more than I am going try to explain astonomy because a character is looking at the stars. If understanding how the magic works is important to the central conflict in the story then I am going to want it more well defined so that the conflict resolution won't feel cheap. I do like complex magical systems. In Chalker's Dancing Gods series it is explained that magic is too complex and requires too much work for most people to ever use it. It wasn't a matter of being born with a "gift" or having a magical gemstone it was just a matter of aptitude combined with a lifetime of study. This was not the most fun magical system that I have ever read about but in many respects it was probably the most logical.
In some books the lack of knowledge about how the magic works is what makes the book ...well...magical. Sometimes, for some fantasy settings, it works much better if the characters knowledge about magic is similar to earlier civilizations understanding of science. Some things they may understand while other things they may know work but have no idea why they work. There may be some things that they think work a certain way but actually something completely different is going on and some things are just a mystery. There is no unifying field. In the right stories this can work very well. Of course the author has to keep a hand on it to preven Deus Ex Machina type endings (unless that is what he/she wants). Much of the horror genre would not be nearly as affective (or effective either for that matter) if the magic in the stories was well understood.
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How precisely I want my magic defined depends on why I have the magic in the story. If magic is mostly just for setting, I may define it a little but I'm not going to define it in detail any more than I am going try to explain astonomy because a character is looking at the stars. If understanding how the magic works is important to the central conflict in the story then I am going to want it more well defined so that the conflict resolution won't feel cheap.
Fully agreed, I have expressed similar sentiment above.
I do like complex magical systems. In Chalker's Dancing Gods series it is explained that magic is too complex and requires too much work for most people to ever use it.
He did have a bit of fetish for body changing and its impact on self-definition though.
In some books the lack of knowledge about how the magic works is what makes the book ...well...magical. Sometimes, for some fantasy settings, it works much better if the characters knowledge about magic is similar to earlier civilizations understanding of science. Some things they may understand while other things they may know work but have no idea why they work. There may be some things that they think work a certain way but actually something completely different is going on and some things are just a mystery. There is no unifying field. In the right stories this can work very well.
Like Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar or maybe Lustbader's Silent Warrior cycle? Sure, that can be fun.
On the other hand I absolutely adore novels with systematic magical reasoning (Zahn's Triplet comes to mind here) and books with counterintuitive consequences to apparently intuitive systems (Cherryh's Rusalka and its sequels).
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He did have a bit of fetish for body changing and its impact on self-definition though.
I don't know if I have read every series that he wrote but I have read a lot of them. I noted that in every series of his that I have read a man ends up in a woman's body at least once and often multiple times. Usually it's temporary but not always.
I have read some Zahn but I don't believe I have read Triplet. I will have to look at it.
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Oh, I agree entirely. I'm just not seeing why you think understanding it in every detail makes it entertaining.
Intuitively clear varies far too widely between different people for me to back off on something interesting because it strikes me as non-intuitive.
I'm mainly just saying it shouldn't pop the reader out of the story as they go huh? For instance, Sanderson's Time Bubbles ignore red/blue shift not because he didn't think of them but because they would just get in the way of the story and confuse people unfamiliar with the phenomenon. Water magic shouldn't start fires without explanation. That kind of thing.
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That would seem to be substantially contained within 'use language appropriate to the readership', no? Fire resulting from water magic seems to clash with the basic definition of 'water'.
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Well, let me see if I can get your take on what I am trying to build in my system of "magic." I always had some fascination with the idea of psionics in the old AD&D system. There was a Dragon magazine article on the subject way back when, I think. Wish I still had it as a reference, but lost it long ago. So I am trying to base a system of magic based on the use of the mind to alter probabilities.
And the purpose of creating a believable system of magic is to create friction or a hierarchy in society. Those with the most ability are a select few with both telepathic and kinetic abilities; they also hold the greatest risk of losing grip with reality when they manipulate probability. Beneath that are those with kinetic ability (run faster, jump higher, limited control over energy). And then there are the normal humans that hold a lot of fear, jealousy, loathing, etc. Throw in the additional friction of those with power versus those who have none, economics, and religion and stir vigorously.
I thought it would be fun to start with a very ordered society and then watch it all come tumbling down. The "new order" is saved for the sequel, I think.
Now it is just a matter of trying to figure out the limits of power and what happens when one goes too far. I have kept it simple, with those practitioners who push themselves making themselves ill both physically and mentally. Megalomania takes a prominent role with the antagonist. But it is difficult to know the difference between straining credibility and creating a situation where the reader sits back and says, "hey, that was cool!"
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For instance, Sanderson's Time Bubbles ignore red/blue shift not because he didn't think of them but because they would just get in the way of the story and confuse people unfamiliar with the phenomenon.
And not having red/blue shift in is what popped me out of the story.
All other things being equal, I'd sooner err on the side of overestimating the reader than of treating them as dumber or less informed than they are.
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Fire resulting from water magic seems to clash with the basic definition of 'water'.
If you correlate lightning with storms, I can buy that as a method for water-aspected magic to start fires.
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And not having red/blue shift in is what popped me out of the story.
All other things being equal, I'd sooner err on the side of overestimating the reader than of treating them as dumber or less informed than they are.
But imagine the stupid complications that would have on the story. He'd have to explain red shifts and blue shifts first off, from the perspective a fairly primitive society. He'd have to do so in a way that made sense to them. And it wouldn't add anything of interest, as well as ruining the stealth factors of the time bubbles. Basically, it would be detrimental to the story. Sure, it popped you out, but for every you that reads the story there are four people who have no idea what red and Blue shift are and ten that don't care/ didn't think about it. It's not marketable.(I could go into the number of things his time bubbles don't do that they should. It's a long and interesting list. For instance the slow time ones should create wind tunnels.) It would have been a better book for you but a worse book overall.
Everybody has sciency bits that they've come across that most people won't. I got popped out of Alloy by the compounder's lack of pain. Anybody with healing factor should feel pain far more severely than you or I do to nerve's regenerating. We can't fix everything, nor see every scientific bit. Hence going with intuitive. It makes sense that a man who has been shot hundreds of times and heals constantly would have epic pain tolerance until you look at the science, but its better to ere on the side of intuition.
If you correlate lightning with storms, I can buy that as a method for water-aspected magic to start fires.
You can also use the heat index of water, showing just how much heat is stored in water like Dresden. There are ways to explain everything, just explain it if it defies common sense.
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But imagine the stupid complications that would have on the story. He'd have to explain red shifts and blue shifts first off, from the perspective a fairly primitive society. He'd have to do so in a way that made sense to them.
No he doesn't. It just has to be obvious to a reader who expects that. It can look like incidental flash and bang to a reader who doesn't.
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No he doesn't. It just has to be obvious to a reader who expects that. It can look like incidental flash and bang to a reader who doesn't.
Yes and no. But I mainly look at it this way. Every single superspeedster in comics has ignored red/blueshifting since the beginning of comics. One of the best lesser used aspects of superspeed is being able to move quickly to turn invisible, an effect that showing a puff of blue light(which isn't really what would happen either) every time a time bubble is used and somebody moves would nullify. Lastly he interviewed his readership base on the subject and was convinced by them that red/blueshifting was overdoing the science.
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Too bad. Red shifting down to radio range would have been awesome on a radio-interference level and blueshifting up into the Xray range would have been awesome on a "get a free chest Xray" level.
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Too bad. Red shifting down to radio range would have been awesome on a radio-interference level and blueshifting up into the Xray range would have been awesome on a "get a free chest Xray" level.
There is a lovely riff on the latter early on in Daniel Keys Moran's Emerald Eyes.