Magic and the Fantasy World

[Xeviat]

Magic is, by far, the hardest thing to incorporate into a fantasy world while still letting the world feel "real". If a world existed with the kinds of spells that exist in, lets say 3rd Edition D&D, so much of the world would have to be altered to account for it. An assassin couldn't just break into a castle and kill a king, he'd have to break into the castle, kill the king, imprison the king's soul, and then hide the device. Now, such consequences can create excellent plot points, but only if they are addressed from the get go.

Normally, I worry that my posts are overtly self serving. I have been working on my setting for so long that everything I do ultimately leads back to it. But this is a topic that I think affects everyone's setting, that is everyone who includes magic. So, I'd like to discuss how you all think magic's mere existence would have shaped the world if it existed from the get-go (Interestingly enough, most urban fantasy stories either have magic as something new, or magic as something that's secret; I want to see an urban fantasy where magic has always existed and is mainstream).

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If magic has always existed, I think it needs to progress through time much like our technology has progressed. Perhaps the magical formulas get closer to the universal truth. Perhaps knowledge like chemistry allows the finer distillation of magical ingredients. Perhaps better wands or staffs are designed which focus magical energy. Either way, I think it should be analogous to weapons technology, such as the progression from bronze to iron to steel to gunpowder ...

Even in a world where only certain individuals can cast magic, it is safe to say that it would become a part of the fabric of the world very quickly. But what technologies would be fully replaced by technology? Would magicians have created gunpowder? Would it operate chemically, or magically? Would Iron forging happen sooner, with magic powered forges enabling the melting of iron? Would mages create "guns", or wands that anyone can operate?

Would mages, in a world where magic proficiency is rare, hoard their knowledge? Would it be possible for them to, and for how long?

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How have you tackled this issue in your setting? Most setting seem to handle it by making magic rare. I'm interested in exploring the ramifications of a world where performing a magical ritual is like cooking: anyone can do it with the right ingredients and a recipe, but not everyone can be great.

[LordVreeg]

http://www.thecbg.org/index.php/topic,75892.0.html
http://www.thecbg.org/index.php/topic,76541.0.html
http://www.thecbg.org/index.php/topic,71946.0.html
http://www.thecbg.org/index.php/topic,71339.0.html
http://www.thecbg.org/index.php/topic,74329.0.html
http://www.thecbg.org/index.php/topic,82200.0.html
http://www.thecbg.org/index.php/topic,77299.0.html
http://www.thecbg.org/index.php/topic,207252.0.html
http://www.thecbg.org/index.php/topic,73886.0.html
http://www.thecbg.org/index.php/topic,51675.0.html

OK, there is a quick look at threads dealing nearly exclusively on the effects of magic on a setting.  Similar questions are asked and answered...

I have tackled the question; for Celtricia, in the Age of Legend and the Age of Heroes, magic was a guarded secret for the few and upper class.  But at the end of the Age of Heroes and in the begining of the Age of Statehood, Guiulds of magic began to operate as power bases unto themselves to some degree.  And one way to increase their power was to train more mages loyal to them.  Over the millenia or so since that started, magic has become more of a universal fact.
There is actually a skill set, called Ritual, which allows for less powerful casters to use better ingredients and more preparation time to cast a spell that they could not "hardcast".  There are other aids to concentration as well.
http://celtricia.pbworks.com/w/page/14955496/Discussion%20of%20Magic
"Celtricia's early history was often one of survival, of very small settlements dotting a huge and wild world, where magic was in the hands of a tiny percentage of the population and the rest served them. It has been the last three thousand years where magic has become more formalized, and has allowed the acculturated world some measure of security. As the use of dweomercraft spread, magic and the creation of spells became geared to solve the problems of the day, as opposed to the great and powerful magic of the early Omwo~. The progress of magic is the story of the advance of civilization in Celtricia, in the place of technology. It is in the subtleties of the daily existence where it helps with survival and labor. The Marcher breed of cows produce 8 gallons of milk a day, Tempersails use the power of the the House of Air that is No Longer to attract mindless elementals to aid their ships, Evercoal is charged with the power of the House of Fire that is No Longer to burn longer and hotter to allow the Cold North of Celtricia to be populated."

You need to look at the rules and the freqency distribution of magic; with strength of the spell on one axis and the % of population that can use it.

[Lmns Crn]

Nice thread index, Vreeg. I'm going to enjoy looking over those old discussions again. It's interesting to see how consensus shifts over time, or how my own opinions change, all that stuff.

To the issue at hand, Xeviat, I don't think there are many hard and fast answers. I think just about any interpretation can work if you're thinking about it and being consistent.

Building themes of innovation and progress into your magic is one way to go, but I certainly don't think it's a necessary one, or that magical-industrial advancement is an inevitable product of wizards x time. (I am personally not such a big fan of magic feeling like just another flavor of technology, so I typically go out of my way to avoid this one.)

If you want an aesthetic where wizards-as-scientists are experimenting with magic-as-a-force-of-nature, then you might see a long, slow, gradual curve of advancement, as small breakthroughs build on previous small breakthroughs, so that the overall big-picture view of magic is not unlike the overall big-picture view of electricity-- we've always seen naturally occurring lightning (dangerous and mysterious), and gradually over the course of a few hundred recent years, we've learned to build lightning rods, crude batteries, electric filament lights, simple circuits-- all the way to supercomputers and satellites and incredibly powerful, tiny, versatile devices. (Think about the difference between what computers were a generation ago, then think about the phone in your pocket.)

That's a fine model for magic and I think it produces some interesting results, but it's not the only model you could choose that works. A lot of your cultural options depend on your initial decisions on how magic works.

If magic is an inborn talent, you may end up with something like a caste system, where mages rule the ungifted (perhaps by subjugating them with magical might, or perhaps the populace trusts mages, viewing magical talent as a sign that a person has been selected for greatness by destiny or the gods), or you might go the other way and decide that mages are so useful and/or feared that they are brutally subjugated by their non-magical overlords (imagine a whole city shaped by chain gangs of enslaved mages, worked to death, forced to build a magnificent city with their magic and executed at the first sign of insubordination).

I do a thing for the Jade Stage where most magic is learned and teachable, there are several traditions that work differently, and most of them are somehow tied up with some sort of spirituality or religion. I like the notion of the sacred and mysterious for magic. The world is in the midst, simultaneously, of the early throes of industrial revolution and a magical dark age-- some esoteric magical traditions have died out, and things that were once possible are now lost knowledge. This accomplishes several things I wanted to achieve with the mood and feel of things: it means there are lots of weird ruins to explore, full of arcane secrets; it gives you a backdrop of quasi-mythological history including wars between impossible magics and whatnot; it makes actual magic artifacts and whatnot unbelievably priceless (since no one has been able to smith a magic sword in a few hundred years, the surviving ones tend to have names and histories and exhorbitant price tags, like Stradivarius violins). Magic is teachable and learnable, but there are also a lot of lost secrets and dead-ended traditions and things that are simply not known.

I bring this up an example just to point out that just because you've made a particular decision at the outset, that doesn't mean you're locked into a specific logical path to a specific result. You still get to continue making choices. (The key is to make them thoughtfully, rather than arbitrarily.)

As to what cultural/societal role magic would fill, that depends a lot on what it's actually capable of. I think the difficult thing about this thread is that you're asking a lot of questions in a general context that can really only be answered in a specific context.

[Steerpike]

I think one of the big things to consider is how magic gets integrated into and otherwise affects existing power structures.  Too often, I think, magic seems to be the province of powerful individuals rather than groups.  You mentioned an assassin breaking in to kill a king and how his plan would change in a world with magic; but in a world with magic would there even be a king?  A peasant revolt with a few sorcerers on its side is going to be a lot harder to put down than when they only had pitchforks.  If magic is only wieldable through scholarship, there will probably be exclusionary societies set up to protect that power.  You mentioned castles as well, but how common are castles going to be if Transmute Rock to Mud, Stoneshape, and Fireball are available?  Far from supporting medieval stasis, it seems to me that widely available magic would probably alter social conditions in a very big way.

As to what cultural/societal role magic would fill, that depends a lot on what it's actually capable of. I think the difficult thing about this thread is that you're asking a lot of questions in a general context that can really only be answered in a specific context.

Hugely agree with this.  It all depends on what magic can do, who has access to it, how easy it is to increase its power, what you need to accomplish it, etc.  Instead of seeing magic as opposed to technology it's better to view it as a kind of technology.  What resources does it consume, if any?  Is it affected by geography (ley lines, wild magic zones?)?  Does it require a lot of time (rituals)?  How many people have magical ability?  If it's not many, why is that?

[sparkletwist]

You can try to think about this realistically, and to a point that's good, but I think it comes down to what you want.

A lot of settings have immensely powerful magic that would revolutionize/destroy the quaint Medieval/Renaissance/whatever sort of world that it's been put into, but it's had little to no effect. I'd dare to say everything built on the "Gygax D&D" mold is this way. So, if you want players to be throwing fireballs and otherwise violating thermodynamics laws but still adventuring in a quaint town resembling merry olde England (or France or Holland or whatever) then don't stress out about it too much. We're doing this for fun, after all. Just go ahead and introduce a nice sizable amount of applied handwavium into your setting and go for it-- it worked for D&D and for a bunch of people since.

On the other hand, if you do want some attempt at "realism," whatever that means in this context :grin: then maybe look at stuff like Eberron. I like it because it tries to take magic into account and create a society where the kind of magic that is being thrown around has had a real influence on the society. Even Eberron would probably be destroyed by some of D&D's high level magic but I think all that really means is that high level D&D magic is crazy and Eberron would be a lot better not loaded down with D&D crap... but that's another rant for another time.