Working on rules of magic

[shamguy4]

So im at the point where I need to hammer out the rules to my magic. I know I don't have to explain fully how my magic works, but I think its good for me to try and make as much sense of it as possible so there is less suspending your belief.

In my world magic is broken down into parts. There are creatures with innate abilities.
But everyone can learn to use a certain magic by focusing your mind and pulling pure magic out of a separate realm and using it. In a way, I guess it works similarly to the green lanterns power.

This universal magic is what I am wokring on here.

You can create anything out of this pure magic but it is temporary and you cannot make any physical things. Like you cannot conjure up real wood. (You can summon wood from elsewhere if you have some…)
But you can make the pure magic as friendly or as lethal as you want. As thick or as thin. Its like playing with pure energy or plasma.

So then I was asking myself questions to see if this works:

Can you make money? No. It would be temporary and its a pure magic that cannot become physical. Check.

Can you make a fire?
Well you can blast out a ball of pure magic and it can cause a sort of magical explosion, and you can shape the magic to look like fire but it wont be a real fire…
Will it burn?
Well you can make it as lethal as you want to, it can be hot or freezing…

So it can burn and can look like fire so… in essence is it a fire?!

I dunno!?
When you stop making it, will there be smoke in the air or all traces are gone?
Can I make water?! Can I drink it?

ok… go post on sff and see what people have to say about this…

 

[tinkerdan]

I don't do much magic, but I have a few thoughts.

Magic has to be consistent within itself. That means once you define how the magic works that should be the canon unless or until the story builds a plausible explanation for any change. Be consistent within the story no matter how much handwavium you expend in the process.

The other thought is let's say you magic a gun and bullets and use the gun and in your scenario it vanishes and the bullet vanishes. I assume the result-you shot someone- does not go away. So there are immediate consequences except now you have that place where the evidence is gone unless someone can prove magic and magic is an acceptable form of evidence.

The next thing is that magic takes it toll. For every bit of magic-whether it's through incantation or some other sensational affectation has to have some sort of cost. You can't make fire or freeze things without some cost. Either a cost to the user or something around the user or in user world because there is some sort of action or reaction to transfer the energy to create fire not to mention whatever energy it takes to do magic. Consider the costs.

So you magic fire onto your finger to light a fire. Then the next half hour you bundle up in tons of clothing because you can't get warm from all the energy it took to start that little fire. Or maybe it's the opposite maybe fire is so available on the other side of magic that you have to take all your clothes off because you're burning up because you had to hold a whole bunch of fire back just to play with that little bit.

Just things to consider that will give you consequences and help make the magic more interesting.

 

[shamguy4]

Sounds like a show I used to watch... Once upon a time... "All magic comes with a price!"
It was always a deadly price...

I mean I am now looking at Harry potters magic. She doesn't go into too many rules but it would seem people can conjure up chairs. Where from or out of pure magic? I don't know...

Can someone replicate money in her universe. I dunno..
Maybe I'm working too hard on my magic

 

[Ray McCarthy]

You can create anything out of this pure magic but it is temporary and you cannot make any physical things

Glamour, if it's all illusion.
If it's not all illusion, then Magic traditionally, of the making real money, real fire, real food is at extreme cost and skill (fire is a cost, food is cost and skill, paper money is low cost but maybe needs a sample or a lot more skill to have detail
@chrispenycate did a good article.

There are many sorts in fiction (and pointlessly practised in real life!). Decide on the rules, but don't tell the reader what they are. As @tinkerdan says, the important thing is internal self consistancy.
For extremes compare Piers Anthony Xanth series (relies on puns), Terry Pratchett Discworld (there are various kinds there, esp the Tiffiny Aching books), Larry Niven (though I've not read his yet, only his SF, they consume "mana"), LOTR, Trudi Canavan's Magician series, L.E. Modesitt Recluce (Chaos & Order Magic), David Eddings (two main kinds, one is prayers to "gods" the other is Sort of Wizards, Polgara, Belgarath etc), Raymond E. Fiest Midkemia/Rift wars.
There is magic realism, were Mass/Energy is conserved and "fairy tale" magic (frogs to princes etc). Early Celtic magic has a lot of shape changing, resurrection/healing stuff (cauldrons, wells etc) and invulnerable weapons.

Harry potters magic

The Magic seems made up as she went along, the strengths of those stories lie elsewhere. Not a good starting point. Potions, Fake latin, and some enchanted objects plus wands to focus or point the incanted spells.

 

[shamguy4]

For me I'm not so into a big cost to use magic. Everyone in my world can use it. It's a skill you can learn and its limit is your minds capacity and your willpower.

For some it's a talent. Like drawing. You can learn it or just be born with it. It takes patience and skill.

And there is a way to gain more abilities which opens more doors but that's beyond...

 

[Zebra Wizard]

Sounds like you have a rather limitless type of magic system. I think you need to ask the #1 question that is, how would it effect the world?

Depends on how hard your fantasy is or whimsical.

If there are alot of people doing it, are magic users seen as ordinary, so would they be doing ordinary jobs like conjuring energy to freeze/store foods, power furnaces and metalworks, would they replace the need for horses if they can create kinetic energy? What other practical applications does it give? (how would a magic user make a living). Will there be alot of bandit wizards robbing people, what laws are in place against it, yada yada yada.

 

[tinkerdan]

If your magic becomes laissez-faire then it becomes a minor-unimportant part of the story. So then what is your story really about and can it survive without the use of magic and then if so why use magic?

 

[shamguy4]

Well it's centered around magic. There's a rich history and the climax of the story reveals something about magic...
Magic is big in this story!
But it's not like special to one group.
Anyone can use it. Some choose not to.
I have all that figured out.
Its how the magic works that I'm slightly troubled with...

 

[tinkerdan]

Okay so it's like computers; and so you have to approach it like that.

Everyone can have a computer- up to a certain point- some chose not to-some can't afford it- in some places they may be encouraged not to have one.

You have your linux users who are the geek's that would want you to think they know more about your computer than you do and with many users they do.

There are mac users who are into specific professions that mac's targeted early on and it's taken a long time for win to catch up to those users with comparable performance.

There are your win gurus who know all about windows and dos.
There's the average user who doesn't use all the available features because there is too much for them to understand.
There are the hackers who seem to know more about computers than the linux guys or do they. Where do they get those kits they use to do their hacks.

Even though you want your magic to look like a phone if it's important to the story then there have to be all those layers like an onion that need to be explored to make it come to life or it's just a phone.

 

[shamguy4]

Oh wow! It's funny you say all this...
You see I'm a web developer so from the start my magic is very much like software. You need to buffer in the magic to use it...
There's a lot from my developing world that I'm using but i don't want to give that's stuff away!

My main issue was I was getting all bogged up because I allow things to be conjured up and that leads to a lot of power... And adding layers of rules on top can just be confusing.

 

[Zebra Wizard]

interesting comparison. I was going to use martial arts.

Where it is useful but limited in day to day practicality. You could easily beat someone who doesn't know it, and theres different forms of it that one specialises in. But it takes alot of effort to do it.

Well you seem to have things worked out so i'm not sure what you are asking?

you said you can only summon illusions (not physical) and energy (heat, cold), fire would be a physical thing (its a gas), unless you conjure an illusion of fire and make it hot.

And you trying to figure out ways to conjure it? (e.g. chanting, runes and pointy sticks?)

 

[shamguy4]

Well someone told me it didn't make sense. Like how can he conjure a hot fire without calling it a real fire.

And then the illusions. Can someone conjure something like a piece of wood that isn't real. So if someone tries touching it what does it feel like?

I decided they could only conjure pure raw magic because of that. I wasn't sure how to deal with that.

Then there is teleporting. Still haven't decided on that one.

 

[tinkerdan]

You'll want some rule. Even if you don't tell them all to the reader, you should have a list that keeps you in check. If you just allow the magic to exponentially mutate you will eventually reach Deus ex Machina. Or in this case Deus Ex Magica. The rules are the release valve that prevents things from getting out of hand.

 

[tinkerdan]

How much magic fiction have you read?

Well someone told me it didn't make sense. Like how can he conjure a hot fire without calling it a real fire.

And then the illusions. Can someone conjure something like a piece of wood that isn't real. So if someone tries touching it what does it feel like?

I decided they could only conjure pure raw magic because of that. I wasn't sure how to deal with that.

Then there is teleporting. Still haven't decided on that one.

Most have explanations of these things but you have to consider also that you've turned magic into the cellphone of the future.

What I mean by that is that normally you could say that an illusion holds in many magic stories for as long as the magician has the subject under their control and usually other practitioners are difficult to fool because they can recognize illusion based on their own level of expertise. How it feels would be real to the ones fooled and to others it feels magic'd or looks it and that can be any description you want to make it.

But to get back to magic as a cellphone. Now everyone has varying ability so what good is an illusion to a world full of people who can preform them and know about them and I suspect would be less susceptible to being fooled. So perhaps in the world of cellphone magicians there are no illusions because everyone knows this stuff isn't real. The magic might have to deal with concretes that are real which means there are no illusions it exists for a period of use and then vanishes. Otherwise anything it does while illusion-ing would not be real but part of the illusion.

As for teleporting- you will need rules for that or you'll have people teleporting into the center of mountains while the earth spins and rotates and they try to pick the spot they want to end up. Check Earths rotational speed and its orbital speed and put those into your character's calculations when they port. Or at least give some lame explanation about how two object can't occupy the same space so the physics behind porting shift the porter to the nearest unoccupied location.

Also if we go to pure magic and that would mean that everything accomplished is real but it has a sense of magic so it would be like magic'd fire magic'd ice magic'd bullets which somehow differentiate from the real thing. We still go back to some earlier mention that these things don't persist in the world and vanish after a time or do they?

Anyway as far as what they feel like-you could make that anything you want. But if they feel real then maybe they are or for all intent an purpose they could be; so you'd be magicking real items into the real world from out of--nowhere.

 

[shamguy4]

Alright. You have given me food for thought. Thanks.

A lot of stories I have read usually have a sidekick doing all the cool magic... So we never fully know how it works...

 

[shamguy4]

ive read a nice amount of magic fiction but I have become very picky with books.
Obviously I read harry potter.
I tried reading Name of the Wind, but I have a rule: if the books is still boring by page 100 were done... so that one ended.

Off the top of my head I read stardust, Eragon (hated it. Nothing happens for the whole middle of the book. You can skip like 5 chapters), first book of lord of the rings (too slow for me), bartemaus, percy jackson, Artemis Fowl, Dragon on a pedestal, pendragon (not sure if I finished this. Couldn't stand the main character, very whiny)…

Im rattling off here random books, mostly young adult and that is what my books aims at. Well my main character is around 17.

So any books I should have read that I don't know about? I don't like books that have long drawn out chapters that could easily be ripped out and the book would still make sense.

 

[Zebra Wizard]

since your magic is common place, you should probably put a restriction on it. maybe drawing from a person's own energy, or make this "buffer" a very rare commodity and perishable.

The way you describe your magic makes me imagine it to be more like nanomachines controlled by imagination, but with magic instead of nano-machines, objects can be created depending on the creator's vision (or similarly to a 3D printer). the lifespan of magic pulled into the world deteriorates after a certain amount of time.

As for books theres no real books that does magic "right" they are all very different, and its basically up to your imagination. Since your writing a YA type novel you don't need it to be completely explained, like a painter may not know how the paint is created, or even what the brush is made out of, but they can still paint. Just make sure what limitations are clear to the reader at some point.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

percy jackson, Artemis Fowl,

I forgot those two. Pretty much JK rowlings level of magic, though all three are different. Good fun.
Try the other ones I suggested

Eragon series isn't bad, he was very young when he started, but magic isn't that important to it or well thought out.

 

[Maieius]

I've recently found Brandon Sanderson lectures on youtube extremely helpful. His books are very highly rated and he talks about magic in a lot of detail in his lectures. I've yet to start reading his books, but from what I've read about them in reviews, his magic is quite highly praised. There's even description of his three laws of magic on his wikipedia page. For the lectures, find the user 'Write About Dragons' and you'll find it easy. I've found them really insightful.

 

[shamguy4]

Thanks. Yeah he sounds smart.
I do believe that magic, if used by the main character, needs some sort of system. If its used by only a sidekick it can remain mysterious.

I remember hearing Rowling say the most important thing is to lay down what you CANNOT do with magic.
I'm guessing this is because you can spend forever coming up with cool things your magic can do. And you want to leave your magic open to possibilities just in case.
But you need to have a scope and limits of some sort and its easier to list things it cannot do than what it can. This creates the boundaries.