Poll: Magic: How does it work best?

[Neonsilver]

I prefer if magic could achieve anything, in kingkiller chronicles it seems to be very powerful. But it should need some resources or talent or something else.

Most important, a set of rules for the magic should be established and every magic in the story should work within these boundaries.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Of course! Needless to say I was disappointed by the actual subject matter.

Why? Were you hoping to reply with 'lots of SLIGH!!'?! -_-

OT: I prefer there to be limitations based on much like... well, what [user]babinro[/user] said. That said, I liked the separation of magical disciplines in the M;tG universe, based on source core rather than intent. Not sure whether that's relevant, but never mind.

Also, the WHF/WH40K system of cast/miscast/PotW is quite cool, where the power is unlimited but the risk is associated with the amount of power you want to access. Just how much do you want a daemon exploding out y'head?

 

[Texas Joker 52]

To contrast this, I present a book series that does the opposite. Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles (consisting so far of two books: The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear) bounds magic in principles. The main character learns the arcane arts, but the process of learning sounds more like a physics or chemistry lesson than typical magic. There's cause and effect. There are limitations, and crossing those limits can mean ending your life in the process. And to me, this is far more interesting than unbound and unlimited power. How do arcanists accomplish their goal within the rules of their magic? Do they take a chance, pushing themselves to the brink of death to do what needs to be done? It prevents a constant state of problem-solving. And it leads to more intriguing moral dilemmas.

This. Magic is much, much better when bound by concrete laws. Not laws such as: "We shouldn't do this because its wrong or immoral.". No, more like "You cannot do that, because A): It simply won't work, and B): It will either kill you, kill (x) amount of people, or cause (x) amount of utter destruction."

As another poster said here:

Reminds me of alchemy from FMA. I always like the idea of magic that is grounded a bit by physics or nature.

The Alchemy of Fullmetal Alchemist is essentially magic for all intents and purposes. Its just that their 'magic' has a very specific cost that, if not appeased, either makes whatever they were trying to do not work, or worse, backfire completely.

You also neglected to point out something else nice about magic needing to be learned, bound by solid laws of nature, and having limits: Not just any idiot can learn it. You need to have more than just two spare brain cells to rub together, and it isn't just inherent. Oh, someone can have a natural skill it at, that's normal for anything worth learning. But dumb luck can only get you so far in this case, and there's less prevalence for some 'Chosen One', to come around and solve everyone's problems.

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

I like the idea of giant spells that change the very laws of nature themselves, but I also love the idea of a dozen or so elderly wizards chanting together in a circle for hours to make it happen.
Magic, in my experience, in something that should take a lot of work, and has to be paired up with some sort of physical shortcomings. It's best when the person performing the magic can't defend himself.

 

[RastaBadger]

Power should have no limits but the user should have to work incredibly hard to reach the most powerful spells. So you could theoretically destroy a planet but it would take thousands of years to become powerful enough.
Running with this it would also mean gods are basically mages who advanced in power fast enough to extend their life indefinitely and then became more powerful and priest/cleric spells drawn from the gods are merely more of the gods magic.

 

[ace_of_something]

I'm sad this wasn't about what I thought it was... It always works best if you mix it with some red cards.

OT: As long as rules are established it tends to work pretty well.

 

[Blobpie]

I always liked it when magic can be used unrestrained, but it is incredibly dangerous to do so. So organizations or guilds put rules in place to protect the magic users and the world at large.

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

In fiction, I don't like magic. Everything that I write in fiction that deals with something that closely resembles magic, I tend to not refer to as magic. Sometimes its cosmic energy, inner power, manipulation of the elements, or psionic energy.

I don't like magic because it literally can be anything and do anything. There are often no rules/consequences/limits/explanation to how it works and the most common response is that "it's magic, dude. What do you expect?" or that "it's not magic, just a trick." I don't have a problem with it in general, I just don't go near it.

 

[Da Orky Man]

Not necessarily founded in the laws of nature a la what Rothfuss is doing (although that is awesome), but there should be rules. Boundaries that you lay down, and don't cross without explaining it well. Harry Potter kept pulling out new spells that totally changed the game - there were no rules, just convenience. It's okay if it doesn't conform to nature - it's MAGIC. But you lay down the rules, a good sense what can and can't be done, and then explore the consequences of living in a story where that's possible.

Certainly this. I'm mostly a sci-fi guy, and hard sci-fi at that, but I do enjoy the occasional fantasy universe. As for magic, I tend to stick by those where it's limited in use, so you have to think up of innovative ways of doing it. One of my favourite settings would be the Black Magician trilogy with prequel and sequels by Trudi Canavan. The use of magic drains roughly the same amount of energy it would take to do the task by hand, similar to Eragon, though any inefficiencies can be reduced by just being awesome at magic.
I don't like Harry Potter for this exact reason. One wizard could solve any energy crisis, as well as reverse the overall entropy of the universe.

 

[Rowan93]

I generally think of magic as the extra/different set of laws of physics that the fantasy setting's universe has, and that if rules aren't stated to exist, that just means the protagonists don't know what they are, or perhaps the people studying magic don't know either. Given that fantasy settings usually have medieval tech, that's not all that unbelievable.

If a setting has unrestrained magic, I call foul. Magic with no rules or principles over how it works means anyone who can do magic can cast any spell they want, or even any spell they imagine existing, but there's no rule saying it obeys what you think or say or convey with your magic wand gestures, so the spell could do or be anything and nothing. Meanwhile, everybody and nobody is magically gifted, and by the way, where's the rule that says only sentient beings can do magic?
BOOM! The pebble you just stepped on just cast meteor swarm!

A setting with unrestrained magic shouldn't look like a medieval fantasy setting, it should (on a good day!) look like a world that was sucked into the warp and is now ruled by the Chaos God Tzeentch. On a bad day, it doesn't resemble any kind of world.


Yeah, my definitions of "principled" and "unrestrained" might be a bit different. I prefer principled magic because unrestrained magic is a horrible idea, and leads to horrible places and no stories.

 

[loc978]

Basic storytelling rule: "Any sufficiently well-explained magic is science, any insufficiently explained science is magic."

Basically, when you're bending or breaking the laws of physics in a story, the trick is to be consistent. If your magic or tech is completely black-box unexplainable, don't explain it and don't have main characters who are better at it than everyone else. If it has a concrete system; use it, build on it, and again, be consistent.

 

[Bigeyez]

Obviously it depends on the game or series I am playing/watching/reading, but I really like how magic is handled in GOT, for example. Theres still a few magical beings here and there but the series is very much grounded in reality. Not once does something happen because "magic lol".

Not trying to spoil anything but in the later books stuff kinda starts going the way of "magic did it".

Anyhoo magic works best in my opinion if it is governed by a set of rules. It's annoying when magic ends up being the Dues EX way for the writers to get out of every situation.

The worst though is when the writers establish rules and then proceed to break them. Like in Harry Potter the first couple of books make it seem like the most powerful spells need time to prepare/take lots of physical and mental energy/verbal words needed/etc, but then in the later books everyone can pretty much do whatever the heck they want when the writers need them to do so.

 

[Macgyvercas]

Am I the only one who hoped this thread would be about Magic: The Gathering?

Anyway, I think magic works best when wild and chaotic by nature. Remember the inverse of Clark's Third Law:

"Any sufficiently rigorously defined magic is indistinguishable from technology."

 

[Lunar Templar]

magic should be unrestrained by its very nature, nothing should be 'not possible' if magic is involved, probable is another matter.

there should be rules on how it works, but no limits as to what you can do with it, with some of the more 'out there' stuff boiling down not to 'he's a wizard' but rather 'he's that good/powerful'

 

[SwimmingRock]

Always use the cats. Sure, they're hard to catch and scream like fury when you impale them, but it's the only way to guarantee success.

OT: Depends very much on the type of story. I'll put up with a lot more silliness from Discworld than from Hellblazer. It does get tiresome when random bullshit is made up to Deus Ex Machina a story, but by the same token, random bullshit (through magic or otherwise) can make for fascinating stories.

 

[DoPo]

I generally think of magic as the extra/different set of laws of physics that the fantasy setting's universe has, and that if rules aren't stated to exist, that just means the protagonists don't know what they are, or perhaps the people studying magic don't know either. Given that fantasy settings usually have medieval tech, that's not all that unbelievable.

Yes, I agree - I usually view magic like just another natural law of the universe. if you know what to do, you can cause something to happen. Say "you drop an object and it falls" is not entirely different from "you draw a mystic rune and it glows".

But medieval tech shouldn't an excuse for not knowing anything. I mean, there have been some pretty advanced scientific discoveries back in the day - the steam engine had been created once more than a millenium before it was "created" for the first time and ancient Greeks already knew the Earth was round and had done some pretty amazing conclusions about the world and the heavenly bodies without the facilities we have today.

They could be wrong about how magic operates (and that would be fun) but I don't think they wouldn't know anything.