Keep in mind that you're straddling 'theme' and 'mechanics' here.

Don't expect players to be very interested in using magic if they run a good chance of their characters turning inside out when they do. So yeah, any magic system is gonna have to be worth the risk.

This is one of the problems with later D&D editions. Yeah, magic wasn't hugely risky in 1E or 2E, but a magic-user paid for it with an anemic hit die and general incompetence in combat beyond tossing darts or daggers.

Quote from: Ocule on August 18, 2021, 03:44:15 PM
Magic in games is reliable, instant, repeatable, poses little to no risk the user and hell even having to study it is mostly out the window considering most wizard ages these days are super young. What makes magic magical?

Key words [Arcane] [Divine]

Quote from: Ocule on August 18, 2021, 03:44:15 PM
Something I've been pondering lately is what separates magic from just, super powers? Way a lot of games and stuff are these days x-men and wizards are pretty much the same thing.

Magic in games is reliable, instant, repeatable, poses little to no risk the user and hell even having to study it is mostly out the window considering most wizard ages these days are super young. What makes magic magical?

In a word... ignorance.

Take the principles of 21st Century medicine and chemistry back to Medieval Europe and try to tell them you're not a wizard. That's what a LOT of real life historical "wizardry" was... early chemistry and and medicine before there was a scientific method and the mindset to share your discoveries instead of keeping them as trade secrets. That and attempts to call upon supernatural entities for aid which may or may not actually be answered (and sometimes if they were answered at all is subject to interpretation; did he recover from his Illness because God intervened or was his immune system just strong enough to handle it... or was his immune system strong enough to handle it because God intervened).

That's basically stage magic today too... its only "magic" until you understand the principles of what's actually happening.

The same with fantasy creatures; there's some pretty solid evidence that stories about griffins originated from people finding the fossils of protoceratops (which are found in the region where the legends began) and their beaks resembled a bird, the bones of their crest without knowing the musculature looked a lot like wings and its general shape was more like a great cat... so they used what they were familiar with to describe what they found and since all they could find were bones it was clearly a creature that lived back in the days of myths and legends, the same with the cyclops (elephant/mammoth skulls) and other critters. Others were just misinterpretations of stories people told about creatures from far off lands (there's a good chance unicorns are just misapplied stories about rhinos).

Many instances of "spirit" activity was just the misunderstanding of various natural processes. We get the word Cobalt from the Kobolds; mischievous mining spirits that could make people sick while mining for cobalt; what we know now is that arsenic is commonly found in cobalt deposits and can poison those who mine it... and if you don't know what arsenic is... well, evil spirits is at least an attempt at an explanation.

So yeah, a lot of fantasy magic is basically super-powers; people with secret knowledge that use it produce effects the common man can't explain (plus laws of physics that are NOT those of the real world) or which have the right bloodline to channel various forces in ways normal humans can't or which have an alliance with noncorporeal or extraplanar entity with the ability to perform various acts that normal humans cannot.

Final thought on that... the word Arcane, in its normal non-gaming definition, means "poorly understood." I think its a fantastic term for a lot of fantasy magic because most of it could be described via Clarke's Law (any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic) and its inverse (any sufficiently studied magic is indistinguishable from technology)... i.e. D&D wizards are just people with some knowledge of 24th century science living in a world where the general level of knowledge is that of 8th Century Europe.

The Net Wizard's Handbook from the AD&D days had some discussion on different kinds of magic systems.

https://www.enworld.org/attachments/64586487-net-wizard-s-handbook-third-edition-pdf.107598/

It rates magic on two axes: controllability and quantity.

Controllability has three broad ranges: magic as chaos, magic as art, and magic as science. Typical D&D worlds (i.e Faerun, Krynn) fall into the middle "art".

Quantity has three ranges: abundant, "normal", scarce. Typical D&D settings fall into the middle "normal."

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 18, 2021, 06:30:47 PM

Quote from: Ocule on August 18, 2021, 03:44:15 PM
Something I've been pondering lately is what separates magic from just, super powers? Way a lot of games and stuff are these days x-men and wizards are pretty much the same thing.

Magic in games is reliable, instant, repeatable, poses little to no risk the user and hell even having to study it is mostly out the window considering most wizard ages these days are super young. What makes magic magical?

In a word... ignorance.

Take the principles of 21st Century medicine and chemistry back to Medieval Europe and try to tell them you're not a wizard. That's what a LOT of real life historical "wizardry" was... early chemistry and and medicine before there was a scientific method and the mindset to share your discoveries instead of keeping them as trade secrets. That and attempts to call upon supernatural entities for aid which may or may not actually be answered (and sometimes if they were answered at all is subject to interpretation; did he recover from his Illness because God intervened or was his immune system just strong enough to handle it... or was his immune system strong enough to handle it because God intervened).

That's basically stage magic today too... its only "magic" until you understand the principles of what's actually happening.

The same with fantasy creatures; there's some pretty solid evidence that stories about griffins originated from people finding the fossils of protoceratops (which are found in the region where the legends began) and their beaks resembled a bird, the bones of their crest without knowing the musculature looked a lot like wings and its general shape was more like a great cat... so they used what they were familiar with to describe what they found and since all they could find were bones it was clearly a creature that lived back in the days of myths and legends, the same with the cyclops (elephant/mammoth skulls) and other critters. Others were just misinterpretations of stories people told about creatures from far off lands (there's a good chance unicorns are just misapplied stories about rhinos).

Many instances of "spirit" activity was just the misunderstanding of various natural processes. We get the word Cobalt from the Kobolds; mischievous mining spirits that could make people sick while mining for cobalt; what we know now is that arsenic is commonly found in cobalt deposits and can poison those who mine it... and if you don't know what arsenic is... well, evil spirits is at least an attempt at an explanation.

So yeah, a lot of fantasy magic is basically super-powers; people with secret knowledge that use it produce effects the common man can't explain (plus laws of physics that are NOT those of the real world) or which have the right bloodline to channel various forces in ways normal humans can't or which have an alliance with noncorporeal or extraplanar entity with the ability to perform various acts that normal humans cannot.

Final thought on that... the word Arcane, in its normal non-gaming definition, means "poorly understood." I think its a fantastic term for a lot of fantasy magic because most of it could be described via Clarke's Law (any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic) and its inverse (any sufficiently studied magic is indistinguishable from technology)... i.e. D&D wizards are just people with some knowledge of 24th century science living in a world where the general level of knowledge is that of 8th Century Europe.

Congratulations, you just ruined fantasy! You just turned magic into a fictional version of electricity. And there's nothing more to that.

If magic is just science, you end up having spell factories, magitek powered by crystals, mass produced charms and... basically Eberron or any other freakshitting setting in which all races (or species) coexist since there is nothing that would keep them all from living in the same city, hanging out at the same inn and studying at the same college of wizards; since now magic is probably out there in the open, like the science it is. Eventually, you just end up having sci fi with pointy ears.

Magic is simply reduced to "energy" instead of rituals, summonings, charms, components, symbols and unexplained phenomena. You can't have Cinderella, King Arthur, Roland and the Paladins, or ghost stories with that sort of magic, because it follows a certain set of rules. There is no reason why a form of natural energy would stop working after midnight, or how that energy would consciously give you good luck, or require that you recite a certain incantation to make someone fall in love.

Here's a golem powered by "magic"; proving how it simply turns magic into fantasy electricity



I'd rather stay with mystical 90's internet gif wizards straight from a DIO or power metal song who don't go around counting mana points

QuoteCongratulations, you just ruined fantasy!

No one ruined fantasy. There's just as much weird folklore fantasy as there is superpower magic fantasy or occult-tech fantasy. Something nice for everyone. It's just you onetruwaying in a bullshit way.

Quote from: Wrath of God on August 18, 2021, 07:14:17 PM

QuoteCongratulations, you just ruined fantasy!

No one ruined fantasy. There's just as much weird folklore fantasy as there is superpower magic fantasy or occult-tech fantasy. Something nice for everyone. It's just you onetruwaying in a bullshit way.

I'm being sarcastic; you did not ruin fantasy. If anything I think you're doing yourself a disservice, but it's a matter of taste.

There's bits and pieces from various systems I quite like.

Runequest's spirit magic where disease is caused by spirits and shamans stalk the etherial plane while their familiar spirit guards their body is very flavorful.  I'm never really thrilled with the rest of their magic rules but I do really like the Magic World rules from Worlds of Wonder.  Limiting how many spells a wizard can have studied up on and ready to go is a nice balance between D&D's vancian magic and Runequest's spells as character features approach.

I've always liked Sword Bearer's magic system with its containment of nodes of elemental and spiritual energy in items.  But making steel is a fairly powerful spell in the system and one of the best attack spells is creating water in the target's throat to make them choke.

Galloway's Fantasy Wargaming is interesting for what it tries to do by focusing more on how much a wizard can do rather than exactly what.  I've always thought it was in many ways a response or reaction to Chivalry and Sorcery's approach.  More modern games like Ars Magica and Mage the Accension follow this tradition.

Tunnels and Trolls implements a lot of things like spell points and flexible spells with improved effects but the list always feels a bit too limited.  Very much a magic as super powers system.

GURPS Magic is pretty dry but very functional.  Sometimes the prerequisite trees are a bit weird.  But I've always liked it a lot. Lots of people like Ritual Path Magic from Grimoire.  Fantasy HERO went with a straight up spells as powers approach.

The Fantasy Trip does a pretty good job of the same things T&T does in a more structured and tactical form.

Rolemaster (yeah, I was gonna go there) is very nice and has a lot of flavorful professions and a really neat structure to the whole thing but it's pretty rigid and there's really not that many actual effects, just lots of variations on them.  Very much a mechanical system but magic is pretty weak compared to D&D with turning into an animal and having its abilities being about a 15th level spell.

I tried to put more process into my The Arcane Confabulation magic system.  So, effects are pretty cut and dried mechanically but you've got to look up spells you haven't learned as skills and casting generates miasma that accumulates in the aether which can be mitigated with ritual purification.  I very much wanted to avoid magic as superpowers or special attack abilities.  The only problem is that at present it doesn't really do alternate methods.  I've got notes on what stuff like ki and such but it's a slow accumulation.  http://www.uncouthsavage.com/uploads/1/3/3/2/133279619/thearccon.pdf

I wouldn't say that any of the systems I've listed really manage to escape the mechanical nature or simply oozes flavor but in the end, a roleplaying game needs rules.  In many ways I feel AD&D does about the best job of feeling arcane.  It's messy, inconsistent, the spells are obscure and have odd uses and really feel like they're not following a structure or rules that we can see.  Of course, it get worse as editions go by with fifth edition making Fantasy Hero look all mystical and immersive.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on August 12, 2021, 08:49:06 AM
Tangentially related, but I fucking love weird magic items that are useful but strange and maybe even a little uncontrollable.

Things like the wand of wonder, the bag of beans, the immovable rod... all great fun and even if the party is careful enough to identify stuff, it's still just a little... strange.

The immovable rod is an awesome example of something that looks both technological and magical. There is no "fairy logic" or curse; it looks and works like a tool. But HOW it works is entirely unexplainable. So it MUST be magic, or "sufficiently advanced" tech.

I love this stuff.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on August 19, 2021, 12:09:16 PM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on August 12, 2021, 08:49:06 AM
Tangentially related, but I fucking love weird magic items that are useful but strange and maybe even a little uncontrollable.

Things like the wand of wonder, the bag of beans, the immovable rod... all great fun and even if the party is careful enough to identify stuff, it's still just a little... strange.

The immovable rod is an awesome example of something that looks both technological and magical. There is no "fairy logic" or curse; it looks and works like a tool. But HOW it works is entirely unexplainable. So it MUST be magic, or "sufficiently advanced" tech.

I love this stuff.

Exactly.

You can have your cake and eat it too. Magicians can harness magic reliably. But when they try to break it down to logical consistency, it should always go a bit off the rails. They should know 'OK, this works', but they might not necessarily know why -- or how.

There was a neat article years back in Dragon about using alternate material components and the effects they could have. I love that stuff too. 'OK, I don't have a piece of normal leather for my armor spell... but I do have a chunk of displacer beast hide. Let me try it and hopefully it works...'.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on August 19, 2021, 12:17:19 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on August 19, 2021, 12:09:16 PM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on August 12, 2021, 08:49:06 AM
Tangentially related, but I fucking love weird magic items that are useful but strange and maybe even a little uncontrollable.

Things like the wand of wonder, the bag of beans, the immovable rod... all great fun and even if the party is careful enough to identify stuff, it's still just a little... strange.

The immovable rod is an awesome example of something that looks both technological and magical. There is no "fairy logic" or curse; it looks and works like a tool. But HOW it works is entirely unexplainable. So it MUST be magic, or "sufficiently advanced" tech.

I love this stuff.

Exactly.

You can have your cake and eat it too. Magicians can harness magic reliably. But when they try to break it down to logical consistency, it should always go a bit off the rails. They should know 'OK, this works', but they might not necessarily know why -- or how.

There was a neat article years back in Dragon about using alternate material components and the effects they could have. I love that stuff too. 'OK, I don't have a piece of normal leather for my armor spell... but I do have a chunk of displacer beast hide. Let me try it and hopefully it works...'.

This is what Net Wizard's Handbook labels "magic as art."

QuoteMagic Is An Art. In most AD&D campaigns, magic falls into a middle ground between predictability and randomness. Spells and magical effects are fairly constant but suffer from inexplicable chaos on a more detailed level. For instance, a Fireball's damage or color may vary from casting to casting, but it will never suddenly summon a giant butterfly by mistake. Furthermore, many mages cast spells that are outwardly the same using totally different words and gestures. In other words, one wizard's fireball spell may require the speaking of "abracadabra" and the use of a pinch of sulfur, while another mage may speak "ala kazam" and hold a live glow worm. Why two seemingly different actions produce nearly the same results is a mystery, but it explains why mere warriors cannot simply pick up a spellbook and start casting things willy nilly.
Wizards are generally considered to be practitioners of a complicated art or craft. As such, they belong to guilds, possess trade secrets, and educate prospective entrants to the field by apprenticeship or technical education (e.g. magic colleges). Spells tend to be learned like recipes, and research is usually carried out using a heavy dose of trial and error -- because not everything can be just told to the prospective wizard. By and large, though, magic is no more dangerous for the mage than a mechanical loom is for the spinster -- it is merely a powerful tool that must be respected.
Mages are probably the most common single wizard type in these worlds, although all of the specialist types are possible. Metamagicians can exist in such a campaign, but would probably be very rare.
Virtually every kit is represented in such a world.

In fact, the NWH scheme is extremely useful for this sort of discussion. Here are the axes illustrated using examples of published fiction:

Magic is...
Chaos/Abundant: The world of Michael Moorcock's "Elric" Saga.
Chaos/Normal: The world of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & Grey Mouser series.
Chaos/Scarce: Best exemplified by the short stories of H. P. Lovecraft.
Art/Abundant: The lands of Glantri and Alphatia from the D&D Known World.
Art/Normal: The normal worlds of the AD&D Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance accessories.
Art/Scarce: Each of the various worlds in DeCamp and Pratt's The Compleat Enchanter.
Science/Abundant: The land of Kelewan from Raymond Feist's "Riftwar" Saga.
Science/Normal: The land of Earthsea from the series of books by Ursula K. LeGuin.
Science/Scarce: Probably the land of Midkemia from Raymond Feist's "Riftwar" Saga.

Two things came to mind when I read this.  And they're both somewhat antithetical to this post as they're both themed around a scientific understanding, but still retain their special feeling.  These two systems are thaumaturgy and sympathy. 
Let's start with thaumaturgy because it's what I'm most familiar with and it's most relevant to Eberron.  Thaumaturgy is a system of magic that often intersects with technology, alchemy, metallurgy, and other protoscientific practices.  Since many pieces of media use the term in such a wide variety of meanings, I'll mainly be focusing on two main media: Amnesia, and Thaumcraft (a minecraft mod for those who don't already know); both works, I believe, excellently depict the wonders and horrors of this magic system.  Thaumcraft depicts thaumaturgy as a system of humble beginnings and dangerous advancement.  I will be mainly focusing on thaumcraft 4 for mechanics.  The two building blocks of this system are vis: the primordial energy that seeps into the primaterial, and essentia: the condensed essence of all physical matter.  These two things are kept largely separate from each other as they are not meant to reliably mix or be converted into one another without dire consequences.  Thaumcraft has you starting out creating, and procedurally writing a book, known as the thaumonomicon, with information you gather by exploring the world and studying everything from the basic stone and water, to complex portals and tools.  As you write this book, you gain access to recipes for advanced wands and other devices that make use of either vis or essentia.  With these devices, you can create small, yet consistent effects that mostly include transmutation, conjuration, and evocation.  The larger effects, however, may lead to long lasting consequences.  There is a third building block that is made as a byproduct of essentia called Flux.  The best way I can explain it is that essentially isn't supposed to be congealed into a pure physical form.  And the first way a thaumaturge generates this, is by throwing items into a special cauldron of boiling water.  Since the essentia is exposed to open air, it often flows out as an unidentifiable energy that, if not taken care of, can hinder your ability to channel energy, and even warp reality.  Vis, on the other hand, is energy that steadily flows out from small holes in the overworld called nodes.  A thaumaturge can tap these nodes and extract traces of elemental energy from them to fuel his studies.  However, if he takes too much from these nodes, he can run the risk of damaging it or even corrupting it.  Some of these corruptions include sinister nodes: a type of node that functions normally, but darkens its surroundings with a strange, eldritch energy that sometimes conjures undead, a hungry node, which devours all solid matter around it, growing larger and larger as it does.  This can be compared to a portal with a reversed polarity.  And then there's a tainted node: a type of node that slowly changes its surrounding area into a vile space of warped reality.  Prolonged exposure to this warping can lead to poisoning, which, if you succumb to it, will turn you into a mindless infected thrall that wanders around, further spreading the taint.  The other effect can result in a permanent form of insanity called warp, which can create various effects that can even physically manifest if it's severe enough.  So yes.  While you can harness magic in this system to create automation, it still poses very dangerous threats that will never completely go away.  Every new advancement in this practice will always be special because it means that you avoided a crisis that would require a full evacuation.
The Amnesia series is very similar, though it's magic system is a lot more hidden.  Amnesia uses a lot of the same concepts as thaumcraft with some minor differences.  Instead of taint, there is an entity/substance called shadow, which functions exactly as taint.  Essentia, I believe is still largely there, except that the game largely focuses on a single substance called vitae, which draws parallels to the vitus essentia in thaumcraft, based on the same Latin word, meaning life.  This substance is derived from living creatures, which usually requires some unethical practices to get large quantities.  Exposure to this substance often leads to wounds healing, accelerated fetal development, and, if continually infused throughout the body, extended life, as it acts as a supplement to one's own vitality.  Thaumaturgy in this game is depicted as having been advanced far beyond what one man can achieve in one lifetime, which naturally means that the dangers posed by this science are far more commonplace, and far more violent.  Shadow covers entire expenses of land, undead thralls litter the labs of once foolish thaumaturges who met their untimely ends and extradimensional gateways have been opened that connect the material with an unknown eldritch world saturated with vitae, that thaumaturges still decided to build more labs in.  Performing the most basic magical procedures to survive in this setting feels like a massive achievement as those who came before you have shown well enough that even their genius was not enough to prevent catastrophic events that you stand in the fallout of. 
Sympathy, or much better known as sympathetic magic, is the closest there is to physics, as it attempts to explain objects acting on each other long after they are separated.  This is split into three laws: correspondence, which states that the two objects must be similar to act on each other, consanguinity, which states that two pieces of an object can represent the whole, and conservation, which essentially represents the law of thermal dynamics.  The way this law is used states that the force acting on both objects can't be nothing.  So if you were to use one coin to pick up another coin from a distance, the coin you are manipulating would be twice as heavy, as you are applying force to two coins.  This practice uses a science to create effects on a perfectly reliable basis, but the difficulty in achieving these effects is very high, causing the practice to retain its special nature. 

For the love of God, man, break that into paragraphs. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Sorry about that.  I was on my phone and forum posting is a new animal to me.