[Aimless]

Hmm. I've spent years working out how I want magic to work in my worlds, and, while it's been fun as all hell, I'm currently under the belief that my way forward will be through aggressive gimping of all magic. I liked my ideas about magicians and gods performing magic by giving the world instructions and changing its rules, a la Matrix (among others), but I've become summat disenchanted with those ideas. I've had to drop some other ideas because I realised I had no palatable explanation for why magic hadn't led to a far more advanced society. I've dropped some ideas because I decided, after many years, that they just shouldn't work. Ecen though I desperately want them to work!! :'(

I enjoy fascinating systems of magic as much as the next guy, but I'm going to keep the magic down for a while. Themes and metaphor and psychology, that'll be the inspiration. Not phony physics and corny chemistry

If I've been inspired by other writers I think it's mostly been through the lessons I've learned from their magic. Those writers that keep gods out of the picture, they got it right. Those that kept their magicians down, they got it right. Pratchett got it right, with his narrativium and his imps

[Primateus]

My idea of magic is, I think, not very original.

Let's say that a long time ago there was an ancient race of beings who taught the mortals how to use magic. But as we all know, power corrupts and the mortals started abusing the power. So those ancient beings (let's just call them dragons for the sake of argument) destroyed the mortal magic users and all traces of mortals ever having it. They then waited for a long enough time for it to have faded out of memory

They then started again, this time with a different approach. They created a whole new magic system they would teach the mortals how to use in order to limit the amount of power it would be possible to gain. Basically indoctrinating people into believing that this was how magic was done and it could not be done any other way.

This could be with incantations, concepts of light and dark magic, hand gestures, etc.

Only, it's just a big ruse, because the real, terrifying truth about magic is that training is nothing and the will is everything.

In magic there is no light or dark, no law or chaos, no need for spoken incantations or waving your hands, there is only magic.

So he or she who has the will to wield magic, can wield magic!

But people don't know that.

This post has been edited by Primateus: 25 August 2010 - 03:48 PM

[Defiance]

For several years I've wanted to create my own fantasy world. In fact, I have a rather broad concept which, if I do decide to become a writer, I'm going to put to use. The magic system is definitely the trickiest thing when building a world (at least for me). The real challenge is creating a system that is understandable, enjoyable, and unique. For me, magic can't "just exist." I'm a sucker for explanations, even if my readers won't get them (at least for a long time). Making a system that people understand, though, brings a new difficulty; if you're making it unique, that is. How will you go about explaining it to the reader? Just have magic be used on a fairly regular basis, and eventually they'll start to grasp what it is and how it's used (SE took this approach, in my opinion). Or do you set aside a chapter or several paragraphs towards its explaining? I'm not a big fan of this one - any time I've read a book and seen giant explanations thrown in, they generally feel out of place. Now, for one's magic system to be enjoyable, I feel that there always needs to be an air of mystery surrounding it. If the reader has knowledge of everything that magic can do that's not a good thing. Of course, you have to be careful with this - there's a fine line between "holy shit, magic can do that?!" and "wow, deus ex machina".

Of course, I'm probably just repeating what many of you have already said. I didn't bother doing more than a light skim of this thread before I posted.

[Tapper]

Hmm, for my setting (some classical mythological thingie) I have been thinking on two different forces for what can loosely be called 'a start.'

The first is based on people having a member of an outerworld species (djinni a.k.a. gods) in their family tree.
They're called Blooded as a result, and they're physically/mentally enhanced: faster, more resilient, stronger, telepathic, but seldom more than two of these, thanks to the efforts of an order of monks as well as due to cross-breeding with regular humans, which delutes the blood.
The Blooded are officially monopolized by an order of monastic monks that cross bloodlines to breed the strongest possible expert Blooded, who are then hired out as assassins, bodyguards and crusaders, or used as breeding stock for the next generations. Lucrative business, and thus, the order wages a brutal shadow war against those intending to infringe on said monopoly. Of course, there are wild Blooded, but their talent is unrefined.

The second system is based on 'demon' summoning and the concept of binding oaths.
Basically, you call up a demon (usually by starting with the summoning of a demon intermediariy who can transfer between worlds to act as brokers and notaries to the species you want), then makes a pact with a demon of the type you want.

One can then call on that demon or the demons abilities, depending on the contract, as long as one holds ones own side of the bargain. So, some mages have a towering seven-armed monstrosity with massive teeth at their disposal to summon to a battlefield, while others have tiny creatures that mess with time and space and can thus teleport, levitate etc.

Naturally, if you fail in your bargain or your demons of the same type end up dead after a short time of service (an not uncommon faith for towering seven armed monstrosities with massive teeth summoned exclusively for use in battle), there's quite the chance that the demon or its friends end up punishing you, so demonology is basically the art of summoning the correct demon and diploming with it, and because this includes all kinds of shitty linguistics (few demons speak human languages), it is only taught in rather expensive schools, to religious nutters who worship demons, or by magi making a profit by teaching students, thus keeping mages exclusive... also because no-one wants some moron messing up the summoning of a seven-armed monstrosity and it going on a killing rampage.

I think both concepts are quite easy to grasp, the first is very rigid, the second quite flexible, but with enough of a backlash to keep it from becoming cheesy and making magic the ultimate solution to every single problem.

Needless to say, I'm way too much of a procrastinator to do anything useful with these thoughts.